Pride and Prejudice
Allow me to briefly weigh in on the Great Spears Debate between Sullivan, Douthat and Salam.
Sullivan says:
How does allowing gay couples to get married somehow impact the illegitimacy rates of the Spears family? The only conceivable linkage is that many rednecks’ disdain of gays means that allowing us to marry inherently debases the institution and thereby makes it less attractive. But this argument requires raw prejudice as a premise. And a premise that Ross and Reihan – who have not a soupcon of homophobia between them – just assume as a given.
Here’s the thing: conservatives ought to hold that, all else being equal, it is right and proper to respect and even cater to irrational prejudice – that, indeed, the fact of such prejudice’s irrationality is the very reason why it should be respected and catered to, since if it were founded on reasons that could be refuted, there would be no problem presenting such refutation. This is, I would argue, a cornerstone of the conservative temperament. So it should not surprise Sullivan that a conservative like Ross who does not hold with an irrational prejudice nonetheless accept that prejudice as a premise – because they recognize it even if they don’t share it. That just proves he’s a conservative.
Sullivan’s argument must be either that the prejudice is not so strong as conservatives believe it to be, or that there is a strong enough claim to justice to override the presumption that is otherwise given to irrational prejudice, or both.
As for Ross’s and Reihan’s point: one must distinguish between explaining and justifying the social conservative position. It makes perfect sense to say that people in unstable family situations are more likely to find a family values pitch appealing, and that, therefore, there’s nothing paradoxical about downscale voters being more likely to get divorced and more likely to support politicians who promise to strengthen the institution of marriage. But that amounts to an explanation of the appeal, not a justification; a justification would require an argument that, in fact, the proposed remedies will address the identified problem. Both Ross and Reihan are pretty sophisticated about the limited efficacy and even counterproductivity of certain social conservative shibboleths (for example, Ross knows that abstinence education doesn’t work any better than sex education – which is to say: it basically doesn’t work). I’m pretty sure Reihan favors same-sex marriage, which presumably means either that he accepts that the claims of justice outweigh the negative consequences of flouting popular prejudice, or that he accepts Sullivan’s arguments that same-sex marriage would in fact have the effect of strengthening marriage for everyone, and therefore that socially-conservative prejudice against it is not only irrational but counterproductive in its own terms. (I’m not sure what Ross thinks.)
In any event, the challenge for someone with Reihan’s views is: how do you move social conservatives to your position without it backfiring on you by convincing them that you’re another brie-eating Havard-educated God-denier. (Which, as it happens, he is.) And the fact of that challenge probably does more than anything to explain the phenomenon – the implicit or explicit acknowledgement rather than the denunciation of the claim from prejudice – that is perplexing Sullivan.
You’ll never make me believe that Reihan eats Brie.
— Alan Jacobs · Dec 27, 08:42 PM · #
Roquefort? Pol le Veq? Port Salut? Savoy Aire? Saint Paulin? Carrier de lest? Bres Bleu? Bruson?
— Noah Millman · Dec 27, 08:58 PM · #
…ok. So, simply filing this away for later use— you must believe then that irrationality is a precondition of the conservative worldview, right? Or at least, a refusal to privilege the rational over the irrational.
— Freddie · Dec 27, 09:13 PM · #
Well, if you mean that the conservative worldview depends on irrationality – that it is based on irrational prejudice – then no, I don’t think that. If you mean that the conservative worldview depends on the rational belief that irrationality will persist – then yes, I probably do think that. If you think that human beings can actually be made perfectly rational, then you are not a conservative. And the desire to purge society of irrationality as an end in itself is not a conservative one.
But respecting the irrational and exalting the irrational are two very different things. A Burkean, traditionalist conservative does the former. A romantic radical – quite possibly a right-wing radical, but not really a conservative – does the latter.
Traditional British food is objectively lousy. Any rational person should be able to agree. Someone who sets out to convince the British to abandon their traditional cuisine, and learn to cook, may be doing a deed of kindness to future generations of Britons, but he’s not a conservative. By contrast, someone who applauds a Britisher’s stubborn attachment to boiled beef and mushy peas is a conservative.
A conservative can certainly say that rational claims – to justice, to efficiency, to what-have-you – outweigh an irrational attachment in any number of situations, even in most situations. But that irrational attachment must have a claim of its own to be weighed in the balance.
A conservative could certainly have opposed segregation, for example, and supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that made a wide variety of kinds of private discrimination illegal. But the argument would have to have been that some larger good justified forcing people to employ people and house people they would prefer – irrationally, let’s say – to avoid. Because otherwise, that irrational preference should, properly, have been catered to.
I think most people at the time understood the magnitude of the change that was being demanded, and so appreciated that it could be justified only by great claims of injustice – which, indeed, existed. But in retrospect we have forgotten this, and are ashamed of our ancestors for having held irrational prejudices that (many of us) do not share, and have begun to argue as if irrational prejudice is something that any moral person should avoid, and be ashamed to admit to; whereas in fact irrational prejudice is a universal aspect of human nature, and it is injustice that any moral person should avoid, and be ashamed to admit to.
— Noah Millman · Dec 27, 09:50 PM · #
I usually find it difficult to have these kinds of discussions without some reference to Judeo-Christian morality. After Christmas, Laughing Cow cheese is more appropriate to many of our budgets.
— Joules · Dec 27, 10:28 PM · #
When it comes to something as trivial and harmless as a person’s taste in food, I think most people would agree that stigmatizing people for having silly opinions isn’t all that necessary or useful. But surely there is a fairly large class of irrational prejudices—ranging from racism to private sexual preferences—that conservatives won’t want to respect, let alone cater to. How, then, to distinguish between the first category of irrational prejudices and the second? If the answer, as you have suggested, is appeals to claims like justice, autonomy, and so forth then perhaps the conservative aversion to abstraction is misguided.
But more fundamentally, even if only a slight net gain will result from a policy reform that is opposed by the public because of an irrational prejudice, why shouldn’t we carry out that reform? I can imagine circumstances where such a reform might antagonize the public and thereby prevent more important future reforms, but barring these cases, it is far from obvious why public figures should “cater” to irrational prejudice. Do you really disagree with the sentiment that “irrational prejudice is something that any moral person should avoid, and be ashamed to admit to”? I agree with you that we can’t eradicate irrationality at either the personal or societal level. But surely once we’ve identified specific irrational beliefs, indifference isn’t the proper response.
The mistake you’re making is conflating two kinds of irrationality which are really quite distinct. Imagine two people, both of whom oppose gay marriage. One opposes gay marriage because of the supposedly deleterious effects it will have on society. The second’s opposition is more visceral; Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, dammit. Now, there is very little you could say to even attempt to change the second person’s mind. But at least in theory, the first person could be swayed by statistics, studies, and other empirical evidence. Now suppose that as it turns out, the empirical evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of the pro-gay marriage advocates. But the first person remains unconvinced; the evidence he claimed would overturn his opposition has in fact failed to do so, although he can’t clearly articulate why beyond a general wariness of changing his mind. This is a common enough phenomenon, and psychologists have dubbed it belief perseverance.
Now I propose that the two people I am talking about are really afflicted by different sorts of irrationality. The second person’s irrationality is transparent. If you asked him to provide an argument for his opposition to gay marriage, he couldn’t do so beyond re-stating his antipathy for homosexuality. The first person’s irrationaity, however, is opaque; he can provide an argument, but his argument’s failure by its own standards does nothing to disabuse him of his belief.
The type of conservatism you are talking about directly addresses transparent irrationality, but a fair number of irrational prejudices (and people) are more opaque. What should conservatism say about this? Is the correct posture really respectful deference when people don’t participate in civic life with anything approaching sound practices? I don’t think so, and I don’t think a healthy, public-minded conservatism will want to commit itself to accommodating bad habits, even when those bad habits ratify the policies of conservative intellectuals.
— Ashish George · Dec 27, 10:50 PM · #
Ashish:
I think that part of the problem is that it’s often hard to know when a belief is irrational vs. “apparently irrational”. Because we are not omniscient, one of the reasons to respect tradition is that it represents, in part, a piece of the Darwinian inheritance of our culture which embeds tacit knowledge useful for survival.
— Jim Manzi · Dec 27, 11:29 PM · #
It frequently happens that a belief, or a policy, is in fact correct, and therefore can in theory be rationally defended; and yet there is nobody capable of defending it, so that the force of all known rational arguments is against it, making it appear irrational. Conservatism, keeping in mind the limits to our knowledge, therefore accomodates prejudices that people have but can’t explain. Ignoring such prejudices on principle, demanding that all one’s beliefs be supported by explicit proofs, is equivalent to claiming perfect rationality for oneself, in distinction from ordinary people — and there’s nothing conservative about such claims …
— Michael Brazier · Dec 27, 11:40 PM · #
He eats brie! I knew it! I knew he was a good man…
And Noah: I think you mean Pont l‘Évêque, but other than that, great spelling.
— PEG · Dec 28, 12:05 AM · #
There seems to be a weird double standard present in your post, Noah. None of you folk writing here would just say “this is my irrational prejudice, and I don’t have to explain it.” Am I right? Perhaps I’m using a different definition of irrational than you are. On the other hand, you seem to be saying “it’s just fine for the public to do that.” But why should the different standards apply that way?
— Justin · Dec 28, 12:37 AM · #
Jim—
I understand and appreciate that point. A reform proposal that isn’t well-supported and robustly explained in the public square is just reform for reform’s sake, which is unlikely to do anyone any good.
I think we can agree—or at least hope—that the choice we most often face is not an unreflective scorn for tradition on the one hand and a fideist attachment to custom on the other. But tradition as “a piece of the Darwinian inheritance of our culture which embeds tacit knowledge useful for survival” is merely one description of the function of tradition. Tradition can play extremely unsavory roles, and some of them are even compatible with your more charitable characterization. For example, traditions in much of the developing world that maintain rigid patriarchies, hierarchical caste systems, or fierce tribal loyalties may have served useful roles in preserving the societies in which those traditions developed. But utility may have been all that those traditions served. For the women, untouchables, and rival tribes who suffered under them, they could hardly be described as attitudes oriented toward liberal conceptions of freedom, equality, or charity.
By any metric, what to do about gay marriage is not nearly so stark a question as the ones confronting those developing nations. But if tradition is to be invoked in defense of the conservative position, it is well worth asking whence the tradition itself came.
Michael—
I don’t really see why you think that demanding that people have reasons for their beliefs is tantamount to claiming perfect rationality for oneself. Everyone of every political stripe has some irrational beliefs. The relevant question, though, is if it is permissible to craft government policies that will affect us all based on the opinions of a segment of the population who cannot articulate their positions to others outside their camp.
You write: “It frequently happens that a belief, or a policy, is in fact correct, and therefore can in theory be rationally defended; and yet there is nobody capable of defending it, so that the force of all known rational arguments is against it, making it appear irrational.” But why should this handicap be excused in political debates when we (rightly) wouldn’t excuse it in any other sphere of life? The epistemic frustration you describe certainly wouldn’t get much sympathy in the laboratory, the boardroom, or the factory—situations in which our actions will have very real consequences, some of them potentially devastating. Why should it get any more credibility in Congress or the White House?
— Ashish George · Dec 28, 01:27 AM · #
There are any number of arguments against Gay Marriage that do not either cater to anti-Gay sentiment nor tradition.
The best one is that noticeably, marriage is the fundamental basis for Western society and is in decline. Therefore, extending marriage to gays will only allow a slippery slope of erosion of marriage (already under threat) into meaningless form.
If gays can be married (marriage as understood changes from 2,000 years of Judeo-Christian history from one man married to one woman to … whatever) then why not polygamy? I imagine that Gay Marriage advocates REALLY want merely to redefine the institution out of any relevance and allow polygamy.
Canada has allowed gay marriage and polygamy for some time. Very few gays have been married, but many polygamists have had their marriages recognized.
Polygamy is a dagger aimed right at the heart of Western society. A poison dagger. That if allowed will turn Western Societies into some form of Arabian or African society — a bunch of marginalized young men without women sitting out in the bush/desert and plotting all sorts of things, from Charles Taylors cutting off arms/legs to jihad.
Since the danger of polygamy is so great and the payoff of gay marriage so unimportant (there are not that many gays that their needs take precedence over everyone else, and even less demand among gays to get married)
Most lower-class Americans understand that ANY proposal from coastal elites have the principal aim of screwing them over in one way or another. That hostility is returned in spades. Given that gay marriage will simply allow polygamy (legally there is no way to allow one but not the other which is entirely the point) and price out of the marriage market (to the degree it has not already been done) working class men, Gay Marriage is a non-starter.
There is nothing irrational or bigoted with seeing your interests being screwed over by hostile coastal elites. It’s as old as the Republic and certainly Jackson vs. Adams.
— Jim Rockford · Dec 28, 04:50 AM · #
Ashish:
Just so it’s clear: I was making a general point and was not implicitly commenting on gay marriage.
I agree that there are constant balancing tests vis-à-vis tradition and reform, that all traditions change on some time scale and that facts and reason should play a role in how anybody should reflect on these changes. That said, traditions aren’t designed, they evolve; therefore, we should have some humility about our ability to predict the impact of any proposed reform.
— Jim Manzi · Dec 28, 06:06 AM · #
Everyone knows that polygamists’ strategy is to ride the coattails of gay marriage to international domination. So shouldn’t we realize that Jim Rockford’s is associating the two in order to transfer legitimacy from one to the other? I suspect that he is a crypto-polygamist.
— Justin · Dec 28, 06:49 AM · #
I’ve read every post involved in this debate, and I still don’t understand what it’s about.
Is the question about illegitimiacy? Gay marriage? Gay marriage and illegitimacy? Gay marriage and social conservatives? Social conservatives and illegitimacy? Gay marriage and illegitimacy and social conservatives?
Sounds like a party to me.
— PEG · Dec 28, 03:35 PM · #
PEG, the discussion is mostly over my head, but seems to be primarily about cheese. As far as I can tell . . .
Reihan likes a bunch of fancy cheeses that don’t actually taste good, but his Harvard friends and high-brained family all ate them, so he “developed a taste for them,” as they say.
Freddie holds fancy cheeses in contempt, and thinks that Reihan’s cheese should be confiscated by the state and distributed to the poor, who at least have the good sense not to like it. Ashish argues that whether or not we seize the cheese itself, we should at least be agree to pity Reihan for convincing himself that he likes eating mold.
Manzi is coy on whether he finds Reihan disgusting or not, but is willing to argue that at least theoretically, it would be possible to defend intellectually some sort of sypathetic understanding of Reihan’s depraved tastes.
— J Mann · Dec 28, 03:49 PM · #
J Mann, it’s highly unlikely Reihan’s high-brained family all eat cheese. For some reason or another, most South-Asia born South Asians generally hate the stuff. And most of us first gens love love love it. Only Reihan knows for sure but I’ve little doubt that he can chirp out “Wensleydale,” cheerful Wallace-style.
— Sanjay · Dec 28, 03:57 PM · #
Is someone going to make a joke about cutting the cheese (talk) or are we all too high-toned for that sort of thing? Is it up to the preacher’s kid to make all the vulgar, low-brow suggestions? Apparently so.
PEG, I’m with you. I’m not sure what we’re talking about but I’m pretty sure the Spears girls are going off the tracks for a variety of reasons: they led an unnatural life in the spotlight at too young an age for starters.
— Joules · Dec 28, 05:30 PM · #