On The Irrational In Public Affairs

Duly Noted

Terror rules where the irrational is allowed to govern human affairs.

This week’s “Duly Noted” must begin with a personal experience. It is the kind of bit from the past that can shed light on the present during the process that converts it into a future. 

Whether stated or not, our individual encounters with the forces that shaped our world act as sieves. Through these, we are programmed to perceive, not unlike a film through a color filter, the objective components of life as these evolve around us. The result makes us especially sensitive regarding some trends and can hone our insights. Similarly, our experiences can disorient us as we are made by them to perceive possibly distorted dangers and opportunities.

One of the determining, for me a major, but for official history insignificant event happened when I was an observant eight-year-old. I can still see my grandfather Marich, “Brother” Müller, and myself. We are standing in front of the iron portals that separated our “Black Castle” from the strategic highway beyond the park. Now then, the “Brother” in the last sentence needs to be explained. Local National Socialists made one use the term that was intended to replace other traditional ways of address. German Nazis used “Genosse” which translates into “Comrade”. In their case, to create light between themselves and the International Socialists who also called themselves “Comrade”, the word “Volks” that is “people” meaning “racial” was added. By then, even if only eight, I knew these things. From a Waffen-SS man whose crew also lived in our house, I also learned that when someone says “Heil Hitler” I should watch out. In case the other guy just shouts “Heil” he might not be marching too close to the “Party Line”. He means "hail" to what? said Billmayer. That person might have his own unstated deviant ideas. These might be yours. The instruction I rate as my first lesson in subtle communication intended to diminish risk in a dictatorial context. Regrettably, that skill came in handy in the years that followed under a new occupation. Obviously, the Waffen-SS man who taught me this once I greeted him with the full standard phrase was not a True Believer. Besides this lesson, I owe those guys something because they saved our lives. But that is another story.

The time of our roadside gathering must have been in December 1944 or January 1945. At that time the front in our area –western Hungary- has been stationary for several weeks. Even so, in one direction, across a lake, the artillery was only about 8 miles away. One got used to it. After an especially loud barrage Grandfather, who could not hold his tongue, turned to Brother Müller. The Brother was a native Nazi that was evacuated as the Red Army moved west. Müller, with whom we had to share our place was an irritant and definitively not to be trusted but had to be put up with. 

My grandfather was too bold to care and too naïve to assess the risks. What he was about to do was called “the undermining of defense capacity”. Indeed, before long he would pay with his life for standing out. Triumphant, Grandfather lost a bit of his self-control and turned to Müller asking him “what do you make of that?”  Müller, who was too stupid to make the choice between reason and nonsense, seems to have grasped some of the irony implied by the question. He pulled himself in a pose that made him seem grow by a few inches. Standing almost at attention he blurted out for the world to hear “We shall triumph because we have to win.” 

Even as a child, I sensed that this was one of the stupidest things I ever heard. Had I then known the term “irrational”, I would have used it to tag the reply. I would also have concluded that Müller’s assurance of “final victory” was at par with the belief in the “Wunderwaffe” (the miracle weapon). That ace did not exist and if it did, then it was the Americans that had it. However, it is a safe bet that that was not quite what Göbbels meant. So Müller’s “assurance” stuck in my mind as a piece of reality-defying nonsense. Perhaps I should say “reality replacing”. To give an example, later when the Communist party announced yet another victory in the “coal battle”, we had no fuel and the school was unheated.

It took about a decade once the Müller’s were gone and the Communists came to stay that, after many unwanted adventures, I found myself in 1957 studying Political Science in the USA. In the course on American Government, the opening theme had been the Constitution. While useful, the details of Professor Schleicher’s elaborations do not stand out in my mind any more. What I really wanted to know then was why America was a successful society and why so many others, including my own, have failed. To that, I found my own answer. Yes, it is only one of many responses and admittedly, there are explanations that are more learned. Even I know that and so I hope that by presenting my case no storm of correctives asserting tunnel vision compounded by ignorance will be provoked. 

What my instinctive search for the pre-conditions of a successful society made me see was that the framers of the Constitution that created the successful system were enlightened. As such, they did not avoid expressing their differences and did not strive for Marxist style unity in the spirit of the Nazis’ “Gleichschaltung”. They were intellectually bold enough to debate their creative conflicts openly. That they were able to do because they were, regardless of their differences, rationally thinking and feeling persons. Accordingly, in the order they created was a rational one. Accordingly, they accepted mankind as perfectible albeit burdened by its innate limitations. The upshot reflected the insight that the perfect society that totalitarians of our days pursue was not attainable. The goal of paradise on earth is an irrational concept. Its pursuit it leads to a growing gap between reality and an irrational concept’s prediction. Totalitarian terror is a consequence of this gap. Terror is applied in this case as an instrument that is justified by the goal pursued. The violence is intended to close the gap between reality and an abstract and irrational goal. Therefore, terror rules where the irrational is allowed to govern human affairs

As realists, the Founders had confidence in the common man. Consequently, they assumed that a good order must work and should assume that, having reason; man has the capacity to govern himself. This attributed ability to reason qualified man to improve his personal condition and thereby the welfare of his peers. Being able to express his enlightened, reason-governed interests and finding the means suited to accomplish these, enable him to exist as a self-directed and autonomous individual. “Guidance” from above and from outside –the revealing signs of dictatorship- was superfluous to secure a good society. 

All the above made me recall Brother Müller and prompted a conclusion. It was that the greater and lesser derailments of modern times have a common denominator. They are moved by ideologically fed irrationality that is imposed to determine personal and collective fates. 

The news of our days has a way of reminding me of Bother Müller’s proud defiance of logic. A recent news item stands out in my mind. It is reported that Hugo Chavez who is the Grand Wizard of his mythical “Bolivarian Revolution” had the real Simon Bolivar’s body exhumed. With that done, modern science failed to measure up to Chavez’ doctrine. It could not prove the cause of death by poison that Chavezism requires to support its ideology. Nevertheless, not unlike Brother Müller, the Leader remained unshaken in his commitment to his theory that depicts things the way they should be. Therefore, he announced “They have killed him. I have no proof and I do not know whether we will ever have any”. Seldom has a fact been proclaimed with more conviction and less evidence. The inmate of the asylum seems to have gotten hold of the keys. Poor Venezuela.

common and uncommon men

As realists, the Founders had confidence in the common man. Consequently, they assumed that a good order must work and should assume that, having reason; man has the capacity to govern himself.

"Man" is sometimes too generic, too abstract a word/concept to be used in all circumstances that highlight group phenomena.  I think it is better to state that "some men" have the capacity for self governance, but that others need guidance.  Those capable must create the necessary ground in which those incapable may reasonably act.  The ground is law, the immediate goal is order, and then end is virtue.  If law itself is based upon a more natural order, then the possibility that "man" may prosper is certainly increased.  Sadly, there are no guarantees.