Explaining the Left’s moral blindness with regard to Israel

The image always has the last word [1]

In his book, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt introduces the concepts of Moral Foundations psychology. Moral foundations psychology studies the moral frameworks our minds appear to have built into them. These frameworks are what lead us to see the events around us in a moral way. This means, for example, that instead of simply seeing a strong person abusing a weak and vulnerable person we experience feelings of offence, emotional intuitions which arouse anger towards the bully and pity towards the victim. This is what gives us a sense that a bully is ‘in the wrong’ and should be stopped, reprimanded, and possibly punished. It is this that gives us the sense that people should not behave in this way. These moral foundations have evolved during the course of human evolution and form the basis of all our moral thinking and moral codes. Different moral codes emphasise the different moral foundations in slightly different ways but they are all built using the same basic components.

Six moral foundations have been identified so far. They are expressed as pairs of opposites which define a specific dimension of morality. They are:

• Care/Harm
• Fairness/Cheating
• Liberty/Oppression
• Authority/Subversion
• Loyalty/Betrayal
• Sanctity/Degradation

I’ve examined these dimensions in more detail here. I want to focus on the two which are most relevant to the political left: Care/Harm and Liberty/Oppression.

As discussed in my previous post, Care/Harm and Liberty/Oppression are given particular emphasis by those on the political left. You can see this reflected in their political aims: concern for the weak and vulnerable; the desire for greater political and economic equality; the protection of various minority groups from discrimination; a distrust of those in power and a desire to reduce power differences.

(I would be the first to agree that left-wing policies often have the effect of disempowering the weak but the moral aspiration is our concern here not the actual outcomes.)

The Care/Harm foundation is the basis of our outrage at the sight of cruelty and persecution. We feel motivated to protest against the suffering of others and we feel hostility towards those causing it. From this foundation springs our opposition to torture, the exploitation of children (sexual and otherwise), and our tendency to run to the defence of the defenceless.

Caring for the young is beneficial for survival and genes associated with this behaviour have a better chance of being transmitted to the next generation. The original trigger for the Care/Harm response was a child in distress or danger. The original trigger then became associated with other subjects. For example, many more people are sensitised to the suffering of animals and see it as morally wrong to be cruel to them than was the case 100 years ago.

The triggers for these responses are susceptible to cultural variation, both between cultures and within the same culture over time. The extent to which individuals within societies experience these responses varies too.

We can see that the Care/Harm foundation is active in the politics of the left in their concern for the poor. The poor suffer higher levels of just about all social ills: poorer health, lower life expectancy, higher levels of mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, child abuse, etc. All these are manifestations of suffering and elicit the duty of care in the left (generally by spending other people’s money).

This also underlies the tendency of the left to take the side of the perceived victims and to see the poor as the victims of circumstance. Their poverty is never understood as the result of their poor decisions. They are also very uncomfortable with the idea that the poor reach their natural position within the social order according to their level of innate ability.

The Liberty/Oppression foundation is most clearly seen when people unite to take collective action against a bully or tyrant. A sense of righteous anger is often the driving force for corrective action against a powerful person or group that is seen to be too dominant over others.

Moral foundations theory accounts for this reaction in the following way:
Humans, like our primate forebears, are naturally adapted to living in hierarchies and have learned how to navigate successfully through relationships of dominance and submission. However, the archaeological evidence shows that our ancestors lived as bands of mobile hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. Hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian.

Hierarchical societies become widespread later once agriculture develops. Private property and the accumulation of wealth lead to inequalities of power. So, are we natural egalitarians trapped in hierarchical social structures?

No we aren’t. The anthropologist Christopher Boehm has studied tribal cultures and also chimpanzees. He was struck by the remarkable similarities in the way humans and chimpanzees display dominance and submission.[2] We are wired for hierarchy. He suggests that at some point in the last half a million years we underwent a political transition whereby dominant Alpha males were taken down through collective rebellion. These mechanisms allowed our ancestors to maintain egalitarian groups.

By doing this, we created the first moral communities in which violations of group principles (that no individual should bully others and hog resources) were punished by ostracism or death. These changes were facilitated by the development of language and weapons. The first giving the group the means to communicate disgruntlement and plot the overthrow of the bullying Alpha male; the second, giving the means for weaker opponents to attack him.

This foundation is expressed in situations where justice is seen to be served by groups of weaker individuals uniting to overthrow a dominant group or individual. People still retain the tendency to dominate others when they can get away with it but we also have the desire for a more equal distribution of power and resources when we are the underdog.

As Jonathon Haidt says, “The hatred of oppression is found on both sides of the political spectrum. The difference seems to be that for liberals−who are more universalistic and who rely more heavily upon the Care/Harm foundation−the Liberty/Oppression foundation is employed in the service of underdogs, victims, and powerless groups everywhere.” [3]

Perception and Reality

In an previous post I looked at the selective and interpretive nature of perception. From all the information arriving in our senses our brains create the interpretation that we treat as reality. This doesn’t mean that what we see is a fiction. What it does mean is that ‘reality’ is skewed and coloured by a whole range of factors including emotion, memory, selective attention, expectations, assumptions, and so on. The internal representation is an approximation to reality. Some approximations are better than others. Some are outright distortions.

This must be even truer when the reality we are trying to understand is hard to apprehend, highly complex, hotly contested, and covers a long period of time. Such is the case with respect to Israel and the history of the Jews. Much of what we ‘see’ as we try to understand the reality is held in our imagination. As such it is affected just as much, if not more, by all those factors listed above which are skewing and colouring the representation that we hold.

The Liberty/Oppression framework is applied by the Left to Israel and the Palestinians with Israel cast as the bullying Alpha male. This model is sustained by focusing on Israel’s strength relative to the angry mobs of Gaza and the West Bank; on Israel’s ability to hit back hard when provoked. It is also maintained by focusing on the unequal number of casualties on each side and ignoring the fact that whereas Israel seeks to protect its citizens (and that is why it is fighting in the first place), Hamas puts its people in harm’s way because this helps to reinforce the view that Israel is an oppressive bully.

The mental models that people hold are also sustained by filtering out information. This is particularly the case with morally charged models: they are not tested against the full range of facts in an objective way but rather facts and the interpretation of events are selected in order to sustain the model. The result is then paraded as the truth.

We should all recognize in ourselves the tendency to avoid information that conflicts with our viewpoint (internal models). We should also recognize that we find it harder to remember information which conflicts with our viewpoint. The internal model organizes our response to a particular subject and when the subject is highly charged and controversial this organising is particularly vigorous, having a strong tendency to discard information that conflicts with the model.

We usually enjoy information (however unpleasant in itself) which confirms our model of reality. We dislike information that is dissonant. Dissonant information is more likely to be questioned, distorted, avoided, or forgotten.

Moral foundations form part of the mental architecture that organises our perception of reality and the internal representation of it that we build and maintain. In the case of Israel and the Left, the dominant moral foundations of the Left are very active in forming their perception and internal representation of Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians and the Middle East as a whole. They act like a template which forces information to conform to a predetermined pattern or narrative. Information which conflicts with the template is blocked; that which conforms is endlessly rehearsed.

Within the framework of this template, Israel is cast as the stronger opponent while the pitiful Palestinians take the role of plucky victims standing up to the Alpha male. They take on the mantle of virtue in the face of oppression, only wanting to live in peace and freedom, while Israel is the ironclad monster that dominates and terrorises, taking more than its fair share of resources and trapping the Palestinians in misery and poverty.

Seen in these terms, the Left then justifies terrorism as the “weapon of the dispossessed”, an understandable recourse for those in an intolerable situation. Glowing with feelings of identification with the oppressed they then rehearse their endless slogans in solidarity with the enemies of Israel.

What we must remember is that this application of the Liberty/Oppression framework is relatively new; the mental structure underlying the framework is as old as mankind.

David and Goliath

Whist writing this article I came across a review by Daniel Greenfield of a new book by Joshua Muravchik called Making David into Goliath: How the world turned against Israel. This sets out how Israel has come to be cast as the bullying Alpha male in this conflict, how it is deemed by the Left to be the oppressor and not the victim of persecution.

The story of David and Goliath is a great metaphor for the Liberty/Oppression foundation and the perceptual template derived from it. It even includes a long range weapon being used to bring down a stronger opponent. I can just imagine Hamas rockets being romanticised in the same manner. The youths throwing stones at Israeli tanks certainly fit the pattern.

The turning point in the West’s (but particularly the Left’s) attitude towards Israel was the Six Day War of 1967. Until this time Israel had been something of a darling for the international Left: it was democratic, liberal, egalitarian and communal, all neatly encapsulated in the kibbutzim movement.

It previous conflicts with the Arab states surrounding it Israel had looked like David fending off Goliath but the very swiftness and decisiveness of its victory in 1967 provided the seed for a new approach by the Arabs.

Incapable of destroying Israel by brute force the era of Palestinianism began - meaning the presentation of the Palestinians as the hapless victims of Israel’s military and economic superiority, a dispossessed people suffering perpetual exile.

Ironically, it was the dazzling display of military prowess by Israel against all the odds that would be used against Israel, used to present it as Goliath, the evil oppressor that should be overthrown. This pattern would be reiterated in a thousand conferences and used to demonise and delegitimise the only country in the region with civilised standards; in fact, the true David in the situation, not oppressors but the victims of centuries of persecution defending the homeland that is so obviously needed in the face of all the hatred now directed against it. Hatred of Israel proves Israel’s necessity.

As Muravchik says, “The world’s historical “Clock” for Israel has been set to right after 1967. The initial perceptions of its aftermath; Israel’s military superiority, the “oppressed” Palestinians who suddenly came into being after coming out of the rule of Egypt and Jordan, and the urgent need for a negotiated solution, have been frozen in time as the default worldview with little regard for what came before or after.”

This frozen view of Israel has been consolidated in the ensuing decades. Muslim spokesmen have multiplied in the West thus affording them the opportunity to frame Israel as the oppressor to Western audiences. Departments of Middle East Studies have been established with Arab funding which shamelessly echo the Arab/Muslim demonization of Israel and promote the view that all conflicts have as their ultimate source the Israel/Palestinian issue; that once this is addressed (in favour of the Palestinians) all will be well in the world; the opportunities to portray Israel as a bullying usurper and occupier have been exploited to the full.

Acting as an organising framework for all this information in the minds of Western audiences is the Liberty/Oppression foundation. It is this which appears to give the Palestinians a moral cause against Israel. The Liberty/Oppression framework also plays into the tendency of people (probably the majority) who think with their emotions. When those emotions are also given a moral fervour we witness the hideous sight of leftists marching in lockstep with Islamo-fascists in self-righteous hatred.

Given that the media is dominated by liberals and leftists, it looks at the world through the template of Liberty/Oppression and defines Israel as the bully. Its focus is narrow and looks at events in an ephemeral manner, giving emphasis to the sensational. A glib narrative suits its purposes. Thus, by and large, it takes the view that justice is to be served by siding with the Palestinians; Israel does not need or deserve a fair hearing. Media bias then reinforces the perceptual template in millions of minds and thus drives the need to redress the balance against Israel ever further – a need the media is eager to satisfy; to subject the Palestinians to any critical scrutiny is seen as oppressive in itself.

A good insight into pressures affecting media bias with regard to Israel is provided here. Once the cycle of distortion is established it becomes self-reinforcing, like fresh concrete being slapped onto a wall.

Summary

The complex relationships and historical realities of Israel and her neighbours have become simplified and distorted in such a way as to cast Israel as the oppressor. The Liberty/Oppression moral foundation is triggered by this perception and leads to the increasing demonization and de-legitimization of Israel. The application of this pattern to the situation allows the Palestinians and the wider Arab/Muslim world to manipulate world opinion in accordance with an inversion of the David and Goliath story. Israel is seen to be powerful and wrong, the Palestinians as weak and virtuous.

This view can only be sustained by ignoring the wider context of Israel’s vast, heavily populated neighbours, many of whom have massive (unshared) wealth derived from natural resources, and the Jew-hatred that has been endemic in Islamic culture ever since Muhammad. The Palestinians are simply the frontline in Israel’s conflict with the Islamic ummah.

Because the Left has swallowed the bait of Israel as oppressor, the inference that Palestinians are victims is intuitively accepted. Having succumbed to this fallacy they then imagine that the Palestinians must be motivated by a desire for equality and freedom – they see a desire for liberation where there is none. This is the logical conclusion offered by the moral architecture underpinning their perceptions. The overwhelming evidence that this is not so is filtered out by the organising effects of the Liberty/Oppression framework on perception, memory and thinking.

This perceptual framework is writ large in the work of the mass media.


Conclusions

Given that the Liberty/Oppression foundation exerts a strong organising force on the thinking of the Left and makes it extremely difficult to alter their viewpoint on a subject like Israel and the Palestinians, are there any lessons to be drawn from the foregoing analysis?

I think we can try and deconstruct the application of the Liberty/Oppression foundation in the following ways:

1. Investing Palestinians with the mantle of the oppressed can create the impression that they have egalitarian aspirations. This is demonstrably false:
      a. As stated emphatically in the Hamas Charter, they seek the complete destruction of Israel and all Jews.
      b. They seek the implementation of Shariah law which is far from egalitarian
      c. The current regime run by Hamas is male-dominated, brutal, coercive and anti-democratic
2. Expand the time frame. Muslims have been persecuting Jews for centuries. Muhammad hated Jews and taught that Muslims should do likewise.
3. Religion comes first in the Islamic world. Religion drives events and jihad drives the religion. It is amazing how many Christians in the West attribute the actions of Hamas to poverty and lack of freedom. It seems too far-fetched to these religious people that Muslims are motivated by their religious beliefs. But they keep referring to religion in all their pronouncements.
4. The battle is not between Israel and the Palestinians but between the West and the Muslim ummah. Israel/Gaza is just one front in the global jihad. Israel is a tiny beacon of enlightenment surrounded by a sea of darkness.
5. Israel is still David and the Philistine is still Goliath

Finally, with regard to Israel, there is also the consideration that Israel is better than Gaza and the wider Muslim world for which Gaza is the spearhead. On any measure of human progress or achievement, scientific, artistic, political, humanitarian, it is far in advance of its Arab/Muslim neighbours. Should the superior yield to the inferior on the say-so of the international Left? As Pameler Geller puts it, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage,support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad."

If we are seriously concerned about reducing oppression then a far more logical strategy is to support Israel instead of becoming the dupes of the global jihad; for that is all Hamas is, a brutal, theocratic puppet for far more extensive Islamic forces intent not only on the destruction of Israel but of the entire non-Muslim world.

[1] A very perceptive maxim given to me by a dear friend
[2] The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt p. 170
[3] ibid. p.175

Cultural Meltdown

The Rotherham horror finally surfaces. The inaction of multicultural ideologues is exposed. The evidence points unequivocally in the direction of Muslims. There is a clear link with Muslim attitudes to non-Muslims.

Nietzsche warned of Europe becoming so decadent that it would lack the will to defend itself. Well, here it is.

In my friends and acquaintances I see further denial, an unwillingness to talk about it. Their timidity terrifies me; it makes me realize how it could all happen again anywhere and the same spineless liberals now showing enough dazed indignation in order to avoid appearing uncaring would be just as ineffective in confronting it, just as they are ineffective at confronting all aspects of the Islamic invasion.

We now have a culture so compromised that it cannot respond adequately to a scandal like Rotherham. Once a few scapegoats have lost their jobs and their reputations (and deservedly so) we will return to the status quo ante.

We are in cultural meltdown.

Perhaps we even deserve what’s coming to us. This same decadent society which cannot stir to its own defence also condemns a less decadent society for defending itself from annihilation – Israel.

Even now with all the attention that Rotherham is getting a cover-up is still taking place, collective denial is still hard at work. None of the key questions are being confronted:

• Why are so many Muslims involved?
• Why so much brutality?
• Why such extensive complicity in the whole Muslim community?
• Why so much fear about racism?
• Why so much fear about ‘community cohesion’?

There are symptoms of dhimmitude written all over this case:

• Silencing the victims in order to appease the Muslims
• Avoiding confrontation with the Muslim community
• Failure to inform ourselves about Islamic culture
• Looking to ourselves as the source of the problem

How is it that in spite of everything the Muslims still succeed in portraying themselves as the victims of discrimination and ‘racism’? They are virtuosi on those instruments!

The accusation of racism is a theme running through this horror story:

• the girls are initially seduced by a Romeo who tells her that her family’s opposition to the liaison is due to racism
• the authorities and carers are paralysed by their fear of the same accusation of racism
• being thought racist created a fear of doing, saying, or even thinking about objecting to what was going on

This same fear is crippling our response to the wider jihad. The same multiculti felons have criminalised any proper discussion of Islamic doctrine by means of their nonsensical and hysterical accusations of racism. 

Poisoning the Well

As Daniel Greenfield at FrontPageMag reports, the movie “Honor Diaries” is already beginning to make waves:

“The Honor Diaries is making headlines for documenting the challenges faced by female activists taking on the abuse of women in the Muslim world. The movie focuses on Muslim female activists and was screened at the Museum of Tolerance.”

Most societies which have this honor culture are Islamic and those seeking to protect Islam are out to destroy the credibility of the movie before it can do too much damage.

Megyn Kelly and Fox News have done a fantastic job of standing their ground on this issue and Kelly has been very candid about CAIR’s attempt to silence Fox News.

I’d like to focus on one of the tactics that CAIR and their attack dog Richard Silverstein are using to impose a silence on this issue. It’s a tactic that Leftists and Islamists employ frequently.

Silverstein led the attack with an accusation that the producers of the film were Jews.

This is very interesting because he’s using a debating tactic known as “Poisoning the Well” which in this case also reveals an underlying anti-semitism.

Once again I am indebted to fallacyfiles.org. As it says there, “The phrase "poisoning the well" ultimately alludes to the medieval European myth that the black plague was caused by Jews poisoning town wells—a myth which was used as an excuse to persecute Jews.”

  

The implication of what Silverstein says is that the movie lacks credibility (i.e. it cannot be trusted) because Jews produced it. This echoes the time-honored calumny that Jews cannot be trusted to serve anyone but themselves; that they are creating mischief through misinformation.

The poisoned well metaphor is very apt because if a water source is deemed to be poisoned we should not accept water from it; by the same token, if an information source is “poisoned”, we should not accept information from it. This is what the well-poisoning attack is attempting to do: destroy the credibility of the speaker in advance. It fosters fear of contamination by the information source; a source that cannot be trusted due to vile motives etc.

CAIR ended up with egg on their faces following Silverstein’s sordid attack. In order to try and limit the damage CAIR put out a statement which says:

“American Muslims join people of conscience of all faiths in condemning female genital mutilation, forced marriages, ‘honor killings’, and other forms of domestic violence or gender inequality as violations of Islamic beliefs. If anyone mistreats women, they should not seek refuge in Islam. The real concern in this case is that the producers of the film, who have a track record of promoting anti-Muslim bigotry, are hijacking a legitimate issue to push their hate-filled agenda.” [my italics]

The first part of this statement is a generic condemnation of things which are endorsed by Islam and therefore it rings completely false. But the second part is a more generic form of Poisoning the Well. What we have now is not “Jews” but people with “a track record of promoting anti-Muslim bigotry” and “a hate-filled agenda”. Ibrahim Hooper, although admirably pinned to the ropes by Megyn Kelly on Fox in a recent interview, still managed to keep spitting out the “hate-filled agenda” phrase, reinforcing it in the viewers minds.

The implication of the tactic is that if you listen to these people you too may end up as a bigot and full of hate. You will be contaminated by what they have to say. What Poisoning the Well does is to lay a logical boobytrap for the unwary listener: “If these people are full of hate, what they say must be false.” This is an ad hominem argument and is a logical fallacy; any argument must stand or fall on the merits of the evidence and the logical reasoning. The nature of the speaker is irrelevant.

Also, the phrase "hate-filled agenda" leads the listener into another fallacy: namely, the argument that if a statement arouses hostility or hatred in the listener it must therefore be false. This is absurd; the truth or falsity of a statement is not dependent on whether it arouses hostility or affection. No-one is arguing that we should not teach children about the Holocaust in case it arouses hostility towards Germans.

To any clear-thinking person it is obvious that Hooper and CAIR want to stamp out critical scrutiny of Islam and silence truthful voices. In the interview with Megyn Kelly Hooper is constantly trying to talk over her to drown out what she says. We know that Islam sanctions the killing of critics based on Muhammad's own example.

CAIR cannot actually silence everyone so Poisoning the Well is the next best thing. By rendering critical voices off-limits and sowing distrust of everything they say, the strategy effectively erects a glass wall of disbelief between the critics of Islam and the audience. They can say whatever they like but they'll not be listened to; they have effectively been silenced.

The Hitler Divide - an outline

Holocaust victims piled up

Muslims showing their admiration for Hitler

• Western civilisation was profoundly shaken by the experience of WWII and has been engaged in a long process of recovery. Not only economically and structurally but also culturally. Hitler stands as a unique personification of evil and has come to represent all that should be avoided. He represents a moral black-hole that people in the West seek to distance themselves from and any proximity to him is regarded (generally rightly) as a slippery slope towards perdition.
• Much research such as Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies (1962) has been inspired by the events of WWII. A long process of soul-searching has taken place. To the extent that people feel distant from Nazism they feel good and virtuous. It is a benchmark of depravity.
• Images of the holocaust have a profound significance for Western civilisation. They represent the nadir, the lowest point that we reached and to which we never want to return. The European Union is partly the product of the desire to avoid any such outcome ever again. Nationalism in whatever form is seen as a source of disorder and warfare. De-fanging the nation state has become a commonly supported goal.
• Nazism and its greatest exponent, Adolf Hitler, have been so thoroughly discredited that no-one wants to be associated with it. Playing the Hitler card in a debate has become a common tactic to put an opponent on the defensive and to derail his/her argument. This is one of the many fallacies discussed at fallacyfiles.org.
• No such process has occurred in the Muslim world. In fact, quite the opposite. Islam has deeply ingrained anti-semitism, tyranny, and belligerence within it. Many prominent Muslims supported Hitler and Mein Kampf is still widely read.
• Hassan-al-Banna, Syed Qutb, Amin al-Husseini, and many others admired Hitler and many prominent Muslims today speak well of him. Hassan-al-Banna was the father of the Muslim Brotherhood, arguably the most influential Muslim organisation in the world today. Syed Qtub was the father of modern Islamism, a man with total contempt for democracy, Western freedoms, and the equality of the sexes. Amin al-Husseini was an ally of Hitler during WWII and helped to organise Muslim SS units in the Balkans. He was hopeful of continuing Hitler’s Final Solution in the Middle East once Hitler had finished the job in Europe.
• For sure, the existence of Israel has become a rallying point (and convenient disguise) for Muslim/Arab anti-semitism, but the roots of Jew hatred are far deeper and more extensive than the existence of Israel.
• Muslim culture is not well-suited to critical self-examination anyway but even if it were, the attitude towards WWII and Hitler is markedly different to our own.
• Thus, in respect of this crucial figure of recent history and his embodiment of tyrannical, anti-semitic attitudes, the West and the Muslim world have totally different perspectives.

18th Feb 2014

Integrity can be defined as loyalty to a principle. It can therefore be understood in terms of Moral Foundations Theory. Intellectual integrity can be defined as loyalty to the principles of Reason and evidence. Liberals tend to score lower on the Loyalty/Betrayal measure than conservatives. We do see evidence of lower intellectual integrity among liberals - they are often flagrant violators of Reason and Logic (see previous post on Laurie Penny). In The Uses of Pessimism, Roger Scruton in coined the phrase 'unscrupulous optimism' to describe the Utopian thinking of the Left. They are often guilty of making the most optimistic assumptions and deriving the most optimistic extrapolations from them. They want their dreams to come true and they'll stop at nothing to see that they do. Liberals frequently employ the most unscrupulous tactics to argue their case because they do not care much about intellectual integrity - they are intellectually unscrupulous. The loyalty that they feel is towards 'the vision'; you cannot sustain loyalty to Reason if you are committed to an imagined Utopia. In fact, very soon the ends come to justify the means.

Liberal Culture and the Loss of Reason

Laurie Penny

A recent article called "It isn't feminism. It's Islamophobia" by Laurie Penny in The Guardian is a good demonstration of where politically correct thinking takes us eventually. In his book The Retreat of Reason Anthony Browne argues that political correctness is an abandonment of Reason in favour of feeling; feeling guided by those presented as victims versus those presented as villains, typically those deemed to be powerless versus those deemed to be powerful, poor/rich, weak/strong and so on. Laurie Penny’s article takes us into this mental landscape.

Robert Spencer has provided a very good rebuttal of her article here but I want to explore the mode of thought that it represents. Penny deploys a catalogue of fallacious arguments. The ones I’ve identified are:

1. Poisoning the Well – vilifying the speaker in advance in order to discredit what he/she says.
2. Argumentum ad odium – (argument to hatred) whereby either the speaker is deemed to be so hateful that their argument should be discounted or the argument leads to such a hated conclusion that it cannot be true. Sub-type of appeal to emotion.
3. Argumentum ad hominem – (attack the character of the speaker)
4. tu quoque – a charge of hypocrisy as an attempt to invalidate what the speaker has said. It’s still a fallacy even if the charge of hypocrisy is justified.
5. Straw man – exaggerate or take an extreme case of what the speaker is saying in order to counter this instead of the more reasonable case that the speaker is actually making
6. Guilt by association – the speaker’s argument or point of view is invalid due to the people they can be associated with or the people who may share their point of view

You will find fuller definitions and examples of these fallacies at www.fallacyfiles.org

The above are examples of fallacious reasoning which have been recognised for centuries but Penny (and modern liberal culture) introduces new variants of fallacious reasoning which are the fruits of political correctness:

1. An argument is valid because the speaker belongs to a recognised victim group and what they say must be accepted uncritically
2. The speaker cannot be criticised because he/she belongs to a recognised victim group
3. An argument can be true for one group and simultaneously false for another. Each group can have a different truth.
4. Some arguments are highly offensive to certain recognised victim groups and must therefore be false. One suspects that even if true they would still be forbidden.

One thing that we learn from studying fallacies is that Reason has rules. Go against those rules and you go against Reason. Reason has guided us out of the darkness for centuries and we abandon it at our peril.

Instead of trying to write cogent arguments Penny attempts to discredit viewpoints through vilification (or assumed viewpoints which are given to her a priori as a consequence of which group someone belongs to in her conceptual world).

She writes, “the rhetoric and language of feminism has been co-opted by Islamophobes, who could not care less about women of any creed or colour.”

This statement reveals a lot. She has labelled those showing concern about women’s rights under the impact of Islam as Islamophobes. This label is a term of vilification for her. She thinks that anyone she defines in this way cannot possibly have any real concern for women. She is thus poisoning the well by declaring that anyone in this group should not be listened to regarding women’s rights. She thus attempts to invalidate their arguments based on the group she assigns them to. This is fallacious reasoning and we can see how it arises out of politically correct modes of thought.

Instead of being pleased that support for women is coming from unexpected quarters, she proceeds to base her evaluation of this concern on her own prejudiced and demonized view of those expressing concern. If she took the time to listen to their arguments and the evidence that supports them she would discover that she has in fact missed something. But she will not do this because she has defended herself against reason will fallacious thinking.

“It's the dishonesty that angers me most.(1) It's the hypocrisy of men claiming to stand for women's rights while appropriating our language of liberation to serve their own small-minded agenda.(2) Far-right groups like the English Defence League (3)  and the British National party (4) rush to condemn crimes against women committed by Muslim men (5), while fielding candidates who make claims like "women are like gongs - they need to be struck regularly". (6)

(1) Appeal to emotion

(2) Conclusion drawn from stereotype – what makes the EDL far-right?

(3) Assumption based on her own prejudice

(4) Guilt by association

(5) The nature of the speaker does not invalidate the accusation

(6) Biased sample, guilt by association, tu quoque

Penny is playing games with victims and villains in this paragraph. Her thinking is dominated by which group a person belongs to and who they are associated with in her own mind. The validity or otherwise of the things they say are buried underneath this heap of fallacies. Of course, having accepted guilt by association as a valid form of reasoning she is hoisted on her own petard since she now feels that feminism may be deemed in some way guilty by association because members of the EDL and BNP are actually agreeing with them. Perhaps the motivation for the whole article is an attempt to forestall this terrible eventuality.

Elsewhere in the article she says,

“I am not writing here on behalf of Muslim women, who can and do speak for themselves, and not all in one voice. I am writing this as a white feminist infuriated by white men using dog-whistle Islamophobia to derail any discussion of structural sexism; as someone who has heard too many reactionaries tell me to shut up about rape culture and the pay gap and just be grateful I'm not in Saudi Arabia; as someone angered that so many Muslim feminists fighting for gender justice are forced to watch their truth, to paraphrase that fusty old racist Rudyard Kipling, "twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools".”

There is a lot of politically correct diplomacy at work in this paragraph (as well as a fantastic array of fallacies). She doesn’t want to appear culturally imperialist so we get the disclaimer about not writing on behalf of Muslim women. There is an implication that all Muslims are black when she says that “she is writing as a white feminist infuriated by white men using dog-whistle Islamophobia” and that all those opposed by Islam are white men. White men are apparently her principal villains and we have already seen how poisoning the well has poisoned her thinking about them. The black/white footwork is probably designed to distance her from any accusations of racism – the cardinal sin of the left. But the thing which really intrigues me in this paragraph is the phrase “their truth”.

This points to epistemological relativism, the view that the truth status of something can only be evaluated relative to the cultural background and assumptions of the speaker. It’s a popular view with politically correct thinkers because it provides them with a means of escape from making judgements about other cultures which could be deemed culturally imperialistic. So, within the Islamic culture that we’re concerned with here it is true that Muhammad was Allah’s final messenger and it is their mission to cleanse the world of unbelief. That’s the truth for Muslims whatever we might think of it so we have no basis on which to question it since we belong to a different culture.

It is on this basis that Penny and her ilk give Islam uncritical acceptance because the people holding these beliefs belong to a “good”, politically recognised group. Of course, if she was to be consistent (dream on) she would also accord the likes of the EDL and BNP “their truth” since they belong to a culture or sub-culture which could be treated as self-validating. But no, they have been assigned the role of villains and nothing they say or think has any validity.

Consistent with the cultural and epistemological relativism that Penny espouses we would presumably be forced to accept (which in fact we are) the argumentum ad baculum (the use of force or threat of force to silence an argument) which is justified in Islamic culture (but which is nonetheless a logical fallacy from the viewpoint of rational culture).

For Penny, as for many in her camp, an opinion is not to be judged on its merits in terms of evidence and supporting arguments (abiding by the rules of logic) but rather given uncritical acceptance or rejection based on who is speaking and which ethnic/racial/cultural or political identity that she assigns to them. This mode of thinking is particularly vulnerable to the effects of affective priming and perceptual set discussed elsewhere.

One commenter at “Comment is partly free” gave another twist to this which was very witty,

Laurie is understandably upset that certain sections of our society are too lazy to make their way to Oxbridge, but the fact remains the testimony of 4 feminists is only equal that of one male EDL supporter

In order to maintain her black and white conceptual world Penny has to ignore or find some means of excusing all those pieces of reality which don’t fit: Muslim patriarchs, non-white members of the EDL, black victims of Muslim persecution, sex slavery justified in Islamic theology, etc. You can see why relativism is so useful to her.

But in this process she continuously distorts reality and supplies justifications for doing so based on her politically motivated assumptions. This allows her to avoid ever questioning these very assumptions. It is rapacious, ill-disciplined thinking like this which has fuelled the explosion of irrationality that we see today in liberal culture.

What Penny’s screed demonstrates above all is the dire consequences of abandoning Reason and its rules: a descent into error, then confusion, then madness (random, emotive, and purely associative ideas predominate). Conversely, it also points the way out of this madness which I have called Malsi-Tung. We must abide by the rules of Reason and follow its guiding light.

If we have truth on our side we have nothing to fear from Reason.

Liberal Idea #3 - Education is the Key to Progress

Since, according to Liberalism, there is nothing intrinsically prone to wickedness in human nature and since we are essentially rational beings, social ills must caused by ignorance and dysfunctional social institutions. It is these bad institutions and social structures which lead people to do bad things. Poverty, inequality, and injustice (the first 2 being aspects of the 3rd) are the real engines of crime, conflict, and misery. Eradicate poverty and inequality and improve justice and we will become better people. There will be no crime because people will have what they need and as inequality is reduced, envy of others and the desire to steal from them will reduce too.

In order to solve social ills people must be educated to use their rational faculties to understand the causes of social problems and to acquire the means to solve them. They must become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. Liberal education which aims to break down prejudice and discrimination is essential to this effort. People must learn to respect each other, whatever their differences, and this will foster peaceful and productive societies.

Upon these foundations of human plasticity, rationality and the external source of social ills Liberalism bases one of its most tantalising features: historical optimism. Since there is nothing intrinsic to human nature which leads to wickedness and since the means to improve the social institutions can be rationally deduced and spread through education, we can expect there to be a gradual improvement in the condition of mankind. Hence we can expect the future to be better than the present. This is historical optimism. In fact, so optimistic is this outlook that many have foreseen humanity eventually attaining perfection. Consider this from the Marquis de Condorcet,

The aim of the book that I have undertaken to write, and what it will prove, is than man by using reason and facts will attain perfection...Nature has set no limits to the perfection of the human faculties. The perfectibility of mankind is truly indefinite; and the progress of the perfectibility, henceforth to be free of all hindrances, will last as long as the globe on which nature has placed us. (Outline of the Progress of the Human Mind)

Similar sentiments were echoed by the Americans for Democratic Action in 1962:

...the goals of liberalism are affirmative: not only the fulfilment of the free individual in a just and responsible society at home but a world where all people may share the freedom, abundance, and opportunity which lie within the reach of mankind - a world marked by mutual respect, and by peace. [my emphasis]

If only people will behave rationally and adopt the liberal ideology and programme these are the results that can be expected.

This is a solution-oriented creed; the belief that for any social problem there can be found a rational solution. William Beveridge in his planning for the British welfare state identified five giant evils: Squalor, Ignorance, Idleness, Want, and Disease. These, and many others besides, are the problems that liberalism has sought to remedy. (The Beveridge Report 1942) The provisions of the report set out plans for overcoming these evils. Thus was instituted a welfare system that can claim many victories but which, as of 2013, also claims a massive proportion of Britain's national income (with no end in sight for the massive spending or the elimination of the problems which at times appear to be Hydra-headed). Nevertheless, the historical optimism of liberals springs ever-hopeful. In fact, to be a hope-filled person is to be among the good and the just as far as liberals are concerned. Anyone who thinks differently is just a crabby curmudgeon.

Without education none of the above is possible. Education not just of the young but of everyone. Education to teach people of the benefits of rationality and the solutions that reason reveals to us.

The two concepts of an infinitely malleable human nature and the power of education and social reform enable liberals to discard the evidence of thousands of years of human history and the less optimistic picture that it presents. Having cast this evidence aside they can then argue that once social institutions have been perfected, discrimination and inequality abolished, that human nature (as we call it) will lose its noxious aspects. This is a human nature conjured out of ideas, not the one rooted in the visceral reality of semi-animals vying for survival and advantage and greater control over their environment - an environment that in each individual case includes all other people.

Of course we are not only beings with an individual nature, we also exist as members of larger wholes: relationships, families, communities, companies, nations and other collective entities. We are partially dependent on these collectives and both served and constrained by them. We are engaged in a constant process of balancing an urge towards greater individual autonomy against both our need and desire to be accepted as members of these larger wholes. This is our inescapable condition.

The science and reason that Liberalism originally advocated have both taught us a great deal - including a great deal about human nature. But many of those calling themselves liberals today still cling to the false notion of human nature of early liberalism in what is a wholly irrational manner. They do this because they fear the consequences of changing their views in case their utopian ideals also require modification. But that is a very irrational position to take and is largely antithetical to the original doctrines and aspirations of Liberalism. To adopt a rational, scientific approach but refuse to change your theory in light of the evidence is a pretence of rationality. Naturally, it is a very human thing to do, one arising from our nature, an example of feeling overriding reason.

Our groupishness is one of the major obstacles to our rationality. Because we depend on our groups for so much we are very reluctant to jeopardise our position within them. For a liberal to acknowledge that our nature is not wholly plastic and changeable is to show disloyalty to his/her reference group. The liberal position has thus become yet one more dogma instead of a working hypothesis.