The Flaw in Logic

If you debate someone with opposing political views long enough, no matter how well-thought-out your position, you will usually come to a place where you are both looking at each other wondering what planet the other guy is from or thinking, "this is what happens when you drop a baby on its head."

After all, you're an educated person. You don't just know what you believe, you know why you believe it. How could this other person look at the same facts and come to such a radically different conclusion? What is wrong with their logic?

Nothing, actually. We tend to assume that two logical people, looking at the same facts, will make the same choices. This is far from the case. Why? Because logic doesn't tell you what to want, only how to get it. Logic is a map, but it does not choose the destination. Furthermore, logic does not say whether it is better to get there by the fastest means, the safest means or the most efficient means. These are left up to your personal value system.

A value system isn't just a list of the things we think are important, it's a hierarchy. Most Americans would list a lot of the same values - freedom, security, life, family, education, fairness. It's the order they put them in that varies, not just from person to person, but from day to day. For example, in the post 9-11 world, a lot of Americans have put security ahead of freedom. Prior to the destruction of the World Trade Center, few of us would have been willing to walk through a full-body x-ray machine just to get on a plane or have people's phones tapped without a warrant.

We make pretty subtle distinctions, too. Life is one of the highest values I have, personally, but at the end of the day, I have to admit that I value my own life more than most strangers' lives and definitely more than the life of anyone trying to do me harm. I value the lives of my nieces and nephews above the value of my friends. (Sorry, friends). On a more material side, I value having enough food to eat and I value chocolate more than lettuce.

To translate that to politics, Democrats and Republicans have such different opinions not because they don't understand each other, but because we don't want the same things, except maybe to be reelected. In a general, broad picture sense, most of us want a safe nation where people have enough to eat and a place to live.When you get down to specifics, though, there's very little common ground. For example, most on the left define poverty based on the difference between what the richest have and what the poorest have. Why? Because 'fairness' is a very high value in their system and 'economic success' is very low. The right, on the other hand, tends to define poverty based on what the poorest have with no regard for what the richest have, because they value 'economic success' much more highly than 'fairness'. If the owner of a business makes 10 times what the employees make, the left views that as superior to a system where the owner makes 1,000 times what the employees make even if the employees make twice as much under the second system.

If you concede, as most people will under enough examination, that the fetus is basically a human being, some people will still argue that abortion is generally acceptable and should remain legal. Why? Because on their value system, there are a lot of things are more important than the assumption that no one should be denied life, liberty or property without due process. Personally, I think there is something fundamentally wrong with those people and I wouldn't trust them with a goldfish, but the flaw is not in their logic, but in their values.

A $50,000 piece of paper

Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney are taking heat this week for statements they made about college education in America. Romney is being lambasted for suggesting that students not choose the most expensive college they can get into, Santorum for stating that universities are largely in the business of left-wing indoctrination. According to their detractors, they are hypocrites for making these statements because they both have advanced degrees. 

I have to wonder how anyone who is struggling with student loans can argue with Mr. Romney's position. Cost is ALWAYS relevant. Encouraging 18-year-olds (with their myriad of life experiences) to go six figures into debt to study Medieval dance at NYU is not doing them any favors. It's great to think that we should all pursue our wildest dreams and fulfill our intellectual potential, but at the end of the day, somebody has to pay the bills. Personally, I advise young people to borrow for a four year degree only if it is going to result in a marketable skill. For every person who 'finds' themselves in a liberal arts program, there's someone who finds themselves crying over their master's degree before they go to work at Wal-Mart.

You might think that I'm opposed to higher education. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I'm opposed to is thinking that education is a God-given right, that Harvard is worth any cost, and that the straight-through preschool-to-PhD education is ideal. I'm opposed to the assumption that the world doesn't need trades people. I'm opposed to pressuring younger and younger kids to commit to their life's work. What the modern world needs are life-long learners who expect their career path to have unexpected turns. We need to stop allowing academics to be the gatekeepers for so many professions.  We need to blaze paths that allow people to earn as they learn. We don't need to get our fries from a guy who speaks three languages, but we do need to learn some respect for the guy who works his butt off mopping floors so he can feed his kids. 

As for Santorum, he's sort of wrong. Statistically, most young people leave college with the same political leanings they arrived with, despite the best efforts of their professors. The indoctrination that has been more effective is the one that equates letters after your name with success, the one that believes that the philosopher is superior to the farmer, the one that says a skill is only relevant if it comes with a $50,000 piece of paper. 

The assumption that Santorum and Romney are guilty of hypocrisy is only reasonable if you accept that there is only one path to success and fulfillment. In fact, matching our ambitions to our abilities and our education to our aptitude is a much surer road to happiness than buying the biggest, shiniest degree we can.