Character-Driven Ideologies: The Superhighway to Hell
[Writer’s Note: This was originally posted on my website on 12/6/2019. There is a full podcast in video and audio format covering this article. I also found it hard to properly characterize this ideology’s name when I first wrote this piece. I am not sure ‘Character-Driven’ is the right way to describe it because I do not want the reader to think I do not care about character. Character is very important. Maybe a better name is ‘Personality-Driven’ or ‘False-Idol’ ideology. Either way, please understand I am not against character, but I am against worshipping specific politicians or believing one man/woman can fix all of our problems.]
Character is important in politics. This article will not dispute that. The lack of character leads to a lack in principles or inconsistency in values. Character, or the absence of it, should influence decisions when figuring out what public figures we should vote in, but if the ideas that candidate is pushing relies on their character to be successful, precede with caution. In other words, if someone pushes an ideology that relies on the wisdom, intelligence, and compassion of any group of people, that person is asking for power to change your life according to what they believe is best for you. The lesson here being, never trust the human condition.
In today’s social media culture, we engage in political discussions with faceless avatars without the fear of any real repercussions from what we say. But when we engage with our close friends and family, we typically try our best to avoid those hot button political topics, but everyone has that one friend or family member who posts hardline political ideas with the intention on going into battle with anyone who comments with criticism. If you have a differing opinion, the best-case scenario is you hold your tongue and do not engage at all. Worst case scenario is you comment on the post and 24 hours later and 159 comments in, that significant someone tells you where you can shove your differing opinion. An instance like this was my motivation for writing this article. To be more specific, replying to a political opinion from a close friend ended in a few broken friendships, since then mended, greatly due to the thesis of this article. An argument over a character-driven ideology will result in a character-driven criticism by those who believe that ideology. In fact, one of the main virtues of character-driven ideologies is to use character as a weapon to earn votes and slander the opposition. This is a common strategy that is not exclusive to only one side of the political spectrum.
The right-wing has had their run-ins with character-driven ideologies in the past. We have mostly seen this with the right-wing in Europe with fascist dictators promising a healthier and stronger society if they could be given power to eliminate the people who oppose their ideas. As I have explained in previous articles, there is a big difference between the right-wing in Europe and its American counterpart (please refer to written content Conservatism Defined for more context). Character-driven ideologies have been pushed by the right-wing in the U.S. but in much smaller capacity. This is a tendency of all human beings. Most people truly believe they could make the world a better place if they just had the power to change circumstances in an instant. Like a genie granting you three wishes. God-like powers to change the world for the better. That sounds like a good deal as long as the person with the power is a good, pure of heart individual who has the best of intentions on how to use that power. There is a major problem with that line of thinking that is dependent on how you view the world and human nature.
Thomas Sowell called this the “conflict of visions.” If you do not know who Thomas Sowell is, I strongly recommend you stop reading this now and pick up any book written by Dr. Sowell so you can learn from the best non-fiction author I have ever read. Thomas Sowell wrote a book called A Conflict of Visions in which he explains how differing worldviews change the way you see certain ideologies. In his book, Sowell explains there are two different broad categories of how we view human nature: the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. Sowell defines the unconstrained vision as, “man [is] capable of directly feeling other people’s needs as more important than his own, and therefore of consistently acting impartially, even when his own interests or those of his family were involved.” He continues to define the constrained vision as, “trade-offs are all we can hope for, prudence [the carful weighing of trade-offs] is among the highest duties.” The main contrast between the constrained and unconstrained visions is the human ability to force change in human nature. The unconstrained vision imagines that human behavior is completely, or mostly, malleable and can be altered under the conditions given by certain ideologies. The constrained vision imagines human behavior to remain largely unchanged by conditions set by human influence. An easier way to explain this is analyzing the effects of social and economic policy through the lens of each vision.
A free market, also known as capitalism, is the free exchange of goods and services without the interference or influence by government (for the exception of enforcing laws). For individuals who see the free market through the constrained vision, a free marketplace is the best economic and social option because it allows human nature to act on its best impulses. If an individual is greedy, that person must provide goods and/or services to build capital and fulfil their greedy tendencies. If a producer is prejudice against another group and does not want to employ or sell to that group, that producer then loses out on the opportunity to select employees from the largest talent pool, decreasing the chances at finding the best quality employees, and decreases the size of their consumer base by not selling to certain groups of people. People who look at the free market through an unconstrained vision will make the opposite characterization. Producers will only do what is in their best interest and accumulate wealth that increases their influence over the poor and lower economic classes.
A fixed market, also known as socialism, is the ownership of the means of production by the state. A fixed market viewed through the constrained vision is the worst possible economic and social option because market action is now dictated by the state, not the producers and consumers in the marketplace. The government will use social conditioning to do what they see is best for the people regardless of what the people want. A fixed market viewed through the unconstrained vision is the best way to get as close to a utopia as we can. Social conditioning is the best way to advance humanity.
Each vision sees ideologies largely dependent on how they manipulate human behavior. Just like the extremes of the political Left and Right are not correct on every issue, the answer lying somewhere in the middle, the extremes of a constrained and unconstrained visions are not correct either. We do know we can change human behavior through systems like government, religion, and other forms of social conditioning. We also know human behavior can be rigid especially when it comes to evolutionary behaviors (sex, protection and favoritism of kin, etc.). A common modern view of human nature is we use to be constrained by our nature, but now have the technology and innovation to transcend our constrained bodies and minds into unconstrained territory. The use of drugs and human genetic manipulation allow us to evolve faster than ever. But the conflict of visions is often not a matter of “if” and “how,” but a matter of “should” and “ought.”
Thomas Sowell wrote another book on the topic of visions called The Vision of the Anointed (written before A Conflict of Visions). This book goes over what Sowell would later call the unconstrained vision and how people who hold that vision refuse to fail at implementing their worldview whether it achieves its intended goal or not. An example Sowell uses is the “war on poverty” and how more government control can fix the issue. The “crisis” given by the Johnson administration in the 1960’s was there are too many people in poverty and people were growing dependent on assistance. The “solution” to that problem was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The “results” of that act increased the number of people dependent on government assistance to remain above the poverty line even though that number was decreasing before the act was passed (poverty in general was decreasing before the act was passed). Yet advocates of that legislation, and other legislation intended to fight poverty, hold the poor up as a social group who must be helped. This creates more advocacy for policies that enlarge or ignore the problem. Thomas Sowell refers to these targeted groups as “mascots.” Sowell explains, “A mascot’s own well-being is not so crucial as its role in enabling others to ‘make a statement.’ Many social groups are treated as the human mascots of the anointed, whether or not that ultimately works out to the benefit of those groups themselves.” Many people who hold visions of social engineering policies as a “greater good” will ignore the results of their policies for the “greater good.”
To bring this back around to character-driven ideologies, unconstrained visionaries rely on the character of the powerful to lead the rest of use to greener pastures. Omnipotent leaders will make decisions for the flawed population. This advancement toward perfection often results in a “win at any costs” mentality. If government programs fail, it is because they are “underfunded” or “undercut by the opposition who wants you to fail.” In reality, no one person or small group of people can decide what is best for every individual. The answer to the world’s problems does not rely on the ideas of a few men, but on the cumulative knowledge of every individual. This does not mean the character of our leaders is not important, but rather the character and health of our culture is.
Since these ideologies rely on positive character arguments for their leaders and supporters, they also rely on negative character attacks on their opposition. Conversely, ideologies that do not rely on character, but rather law and oath to a constitution, must not attack character because it weakens their argument. This is demonstrated in the previous example of free market employment. A producer can have weak character which will most likely result in selecting from a smaller talent pool and more turnaround with their employees. Poor character is punished by the system in the form of less efficient and effective production, not by arbitrary rules set by a governing body. A character-driven ideology relies on the self-defined good character of those who support that ideology and the contrasting poor character of the opposition. Because of this, character attacks by those who support these ideologies not only use character attacks often but must use them to prove their points.
This is why heated arguments on certain political ideas on social media result in broken friendships and hurt family members. As I explained before, character attacks are not only used by both sides of the political spectrum but are most commonly used by those pushing character-driven ideologies.
The example I see most of this behavior is posts by Bernie Sanders and his supporters. Senator Sanders is a perfect example someone who holds a character-driven ideology and the policy positions that come from it. Almost all his positions start with the premise that one group is made of people of high character and they are being oppressed in some way by a group of low character individuals. The poor are poor because of the rich. The sick are sick because of evil corporations. The minority is oppressed because of the majority. Not only is every crisis a result of one group oppressing another, but the solutions are based on power given to a moral authority. This moral authority can force equality on the population. Whether or not the moral authority’s solutions work is irrelevant because they can always demand more power to correct all imbalances.
In a perfect world, we could give power to a pure hearted leader who will only do what is best for the people. The obvious problem with this is who defines what is best for the people, but for the sake of argument, let us assume this leader makes all the decisions that improve our lives. That would be great… for 4 to 8 years (assuming this is a presidential position) until they no longer hold public office and someone new comes in. As I always say to my Bernie supporting friends, “If you want Bernie to have the power he is asking for, then you have to be okay with someone like Trump having that power too.” The only way around this is getting rid of the democratic election processes and starting a dictatorship. This is similar to what China recently did because the most efficient way to run a socialized government is through dictatorship. If the government has absolute power over the economy, that power becomes extremely volatile if there is sudden change in government majorities through democratic elections. A dictatorship is less volatile and if the person or the majority that is in power are made of high character people, the civilian population have a better chance of being governed without all their liberties being taken away. Of course, no one person or majority ever keeps power as we have seen throughout human history which is why all socialized governments eventually fall into tyranny. The easiest way to make everyone equal is to make everyone equally poor.
Understanding why your friends and family may attack your character in defense of their ideas is important if you want to a productive dialog. When the character attack comes, make sure you let them know you are arguing in good faith. Make it clear you assume they want to help people and have no sinister motives and that they should grant you the same position. Intentions should never be assumed out of convenience because that creates a strawman argument. If that strategy does not shutdown their defenses, the next best option is to let them know you are willing to have a discussion once they can agree on making good faith arguments and walk away.
I will end this article with the closing paragraph from Thomas Sowell in The Vision of the Anointed because he perfectly sums up what those who advocate for character-driven ideologies believe. Sowell wrote, “In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly ‘thinking people’ who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many.”
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