The Attack on our Principles

HISTORY'S HISTORIES

At a certain point in my writing career, I gained the (rather useful) ability to mentally flag an experience that I see, hear, or live through for later digestion and documentation. It is the life we live that leads us to the philosophy we hold. We should not take this lightly, considering the potential any situation has to teach us more about ourselves. 

A prime example of this was something my AP US Government and Politics teacher said in class a few months ago. Before we begin, I must issue a brief disclaimer: The following topic I address is not the same topic I believe my teacher was endorsing or dissuading. Her words merely acted as a spark for the organized thought that followed.

To my untrained eyes, an essential part of my teacher’s pedagogy seems to be the art of metaphor. In attempting to explain what her class’s main goal is, she declared: “This class is all about canceling out the noise and learning what’s really behind all the rhetoric and party politics.” In the moment, it made sense. Yet upon further consideration, I have come to ponder the definition of the “noise” she spoke of. 

One thing I believe most commonly overlooked in the political sphere is the difference between principles and pure unfiltered politics. It happens to be the line I always toe, and the reason why I’m not exactly sure what part of “politics” I want to focus on in my future. 

Regardless, it caused me to consider the difference between the two categories. Why have our country’s “principles” always seemed bigger than the politics that appear in our headlines every morning? And even further, why does it seem that their influence has diminished over the years? 

What type of “noise” was my teacher referring to? 

To any well-adjusted political mind, I believe it is obvious that principles are the deeper, eternally-inspired rules that ought to guide our thinking. This is one aspect of political theory my teacher seems to effectively embed in the minds of my peers.

There is a reason why our justices are careful not to identify themselves with the ever-changing, ever-morphing political parties of our day, ruling instead with the virtues of the constitution in mind and opting instead to judge with core principles in mind, and why justices are not subject to limited terms or elections: Being the highest court in the land, and the final arbiter of what is constitutionally just or unjust, the Supreme Court must depend solely on the “clear[est] principles,” and act as “an essential safeguard against the effects of occasional ill humors in the society,” as Publius proclaims in Federalist 78.

However, I write this not as a sequel to the unmatched prose of Alexander Hamilton, but to advocate for the return to the classical way of envisioning our political arena. 

My teacher’s ober dictum of “canceling out the noise” reminded me of a common line many use as a trepid preface to a political discussion: “I always approach every issue with the most unbiased view possible!” 

While I do not encourage surrounding yourself with one-sided news, I believe there is a wildly Machiavellian layer of meaning to this mitigation created by postmodernism and upheld by the education system: That our personal and national  principles ought to have no bearing on our political landscape. 

This issue is not limited to children, as we are all encouraged to approach every new issue with a tabula rasa (“blank slate”) mindset. We are looked down upon if we hearken to our most deeply held philosophies in the face of a novel issue. Christians are relentlessly attacked for asserting biblical principles or church dogma in the search for an answer to the catastrophe of abortion. Those arguing against a federal approach to a novel dilemma are criticized for considering the disastrous outcomes of past government intervention. All who feel convinced to turn to a trusted philosophical leader to teach about an issue are flamed for failing to create their own unsupported solutions. The postmodernists behind this insidiousness have urged us to forget the one thing we must remember to keep our society intact: the reason why we came to believe in the fundamental American and Western principles in the first place. 

As I was considering this issue, I recalled the conversation Socrates had with Meno in one of Plato’s Five Dialogues, (aptly named) Meno. In venturing to discover “whether virtue can be taught, or whether it comes rather by practice”¹ , Socrates poses a dichotomy in which two men successfully direct a group of travelers to Larissa. As one man has been on the journey to the city and the other is purely guessing the route, the two interlocutors conclude that absent virtue from the scenario, the man with merely the “right opinion… will not be a worse guide than the one who knows.”²

Yet upon considering virtue, Meno speaks to the ages, observing:

“...the man who has knowledge will always succeed, whereas he who has true opinion will only succeed at times.”³

Today, the "noise" we are encouraged to cancel out is undoubtedly the steadiest, most important noise we cannot live well without. Our virtues must necessarily be the first tenets we consult in times of “occasional ill humors”⁴ in our society, and anyone who is brave enough to do so becomes hated by the establishment. Free people do not approach the upsets of the world void of any guiding light. Free people “hearken not to the unnatural voices”⁵ that coerce us into separating ourselves from our brethren, closing our ears to Providence, and ignoring the most foundational virtues that forged the very country we live in today.

As long as we are made in the image of God, humans will never be blank slates, and so it would do us a great disservice to act in a way that entertains such a destructive theory. 

We must no longer submit to the tortuous process of deciding our positions on current issues and overall fate as a country. The United States of America was founded not on right opinion, but on knowledge, faith, and passions that run so deep in the fiber of our nature as individual Works of God. We are not a mistake, and neither are our virtues. Our principles are not “noise.” Our philosophy is not a barrier to trample in hopes of assuaging our desires for an effortless life. 

Forcing ourselves into ignoring the True, the Good, and the Beautiful is the greatest offense we can make to our present. Teaching this fallacy to our children is the greatest offense we can make to our future. 

I believe in these principles. I maintain that they are the only virtues that we need to create a great country, and face any modern quandary at hand. I have and will continue to construct my beliefs around my faith in these virtues. I will never rely on the hope of arriving at a correct opinion because I will never rely on the advice of those who wish to coddle (only inevitably to control) us.

“True opinions… are not willing to remain long, and they escape from a man’s mind, so that they are not worth much until one ties them down by [giving] an account of the reason why… After they are tied down… they become knowledge… That is why knowledge is prized higher than correct opinion…”⁶