But not all opinions are equal, regardless the opinion that many express to the contrary.
To mangle an otherwise perfectly fine comment by a character in a James Doohan/S. M. Stirling novel, Ah, Congress, “…[w]here mountains of supposition are constructed from molehills of [mis]information and presented as incontrovertible fact.”
*heh*
Let me back up to the question of authority. There are three basic types of authority: divine (whether modern pagan humanists recognize it or not), natural and constructed.
Setting aside divine authority, for most humans–apart from the proclamations of The Church of Anthropogenic Global Waming nutjobs and satanic phony “Christian” pastors and their siblings in other cults–do not presume to possess divine authority, I’d like to briefly address the other two classes.
Natual authority stems from knowledge, acquired ability and reason. When someone who’s strongly connected to reality (as opposed to reality-based fantasists who simply wish to call their fantasies reality–see The Church of Anthropogenic Global Waming, et al), has a deep well of fact to draw on in applying reason to an issue and has worked to possess the abilities to adress issues in the field he’s addressing, that person speaks and acts authoritatively.
Example from left field: musicians speak of “chops” meaning essentially what I described above. Someone who has the chops to competently handle performing a piece of m usic can actually make music. That makes them authoritative in “speaking” the music into existence.
Another: an experienced and competent carpenter can authoritatively address the need to frame a home, whereas a competent musician may have little or no natural authority to address such an issue, and vice versa. Talent enters into the nature of authority only insofar as a talented person applies themselves diligently to develop that talent into competent ability.
Just so, one can readily see that many politicians, Mass Media Podpeople, etc., have little or no natural authority in their areas of functionality. Politicians, to speak and act with natural authority in their chosen field of civil governance, must know the facts of our system of government, be well-schooled in analyzing situations and able to reason out theeffect of government actions they support. Those are the very loose, very minimal standards politicians must meet in order to speak and act with genuine natural authority within their chosen field of work.
Obviously, given the track record of politicians in general, they must reply on some other sort of authority to operate, and they do: the authority of The Stick, supplemented with the fake authority of The Lie. First, of course, comes The Lie, wherein politicians lie about their intent and lie about the effects of their words and deeds. This is too common to even deal with at all. Anyone who is unaware of this fundamental aspect of most modern politicians is about as sharp as a bag of marbles.
(Read for “anyone” in the previous sentence, “the average sheeple”. Indeed, I have often thought that sticking the average sheeple in a voting booth and expecting them to make a sensible decision is about as reasonable as sticking the same sheeple in a dark closet with a flashlight and a mirror on a stick and expecting him to be able to find is own butt. Neither case is likely to result in a desireable outcome… )
But once dumbass, lazy sheeple have been conned into buying The Lie, The Stick comes to bear. Think, “TSA.” The authority of the TSA’s airport (IN)security theater that is nothing short of the very model of anarcho-tyranny: threaten common citizens with horrific abuse and punishment for behaving as free men and women while doing little or nothing to enhance actual security or the capture and punishment of evildoers. This is the common “authority” of most politicians (and their evil spawn, bureaucrats): “I can seriously screw you up if you try to get in my way.”
That kind of (illegitimate) authority is destructive of truly civilized society, but it is the authority normatively practiced by our various governments–and the more distant, the worse it is. A local politician–a city councilman or mayor–may face serious consequences for such behavior, and the smaller the town, the more serious the consequences and the more likely the local pol will be to face ’em, in my experience. Big–and distant–government seems naturally to become less legitimately authoritative in its behaviors the bigger and more distant it becomes.
The cure: government needs to FEAR the People… and the People needs to disrespect the illegitimate behaviors of governors (no, not state “goverors”–anyone excercising–and abusing–civil power).
A president does everything in his power to stymie enforcement of one particular aspect of laws he is tasked with enforcing? He ought to be impeached and convicted of failure to uphold his duties of office.
And that applies as much to Bush’s deliberate failure to enforce federal immigration laws (and area the federal government has primary, legitimate responsibility to enforce) as to Clinton’s disrespect of sexual harassment laws (an area the federal government has only scant–if any–legitimate constitutional responsibility to enforce).
From the highest to the lowest, we must begin to say, over and over, “You guys work for ME. I will NOT bow and scrape to you!” to each and every to politicians and the ticks (bureaucrats) they spread we encounter, if not in actual words, then in demeanor and every other aspect of our discourse with them. If they have opinions, make ’em demonstrate, by citation of fact and sound reasoning, that their opinions are worth listening to and worth considering as public policy.
Curb their power and their illegitimate authrity they practice or Freddie and Fannie and all the troubles that’ve resulted from them will simply spread again… and again, until we are wiped out by our own politicians use of illegitimate authority… ceded to them by us.
*sigh*
And that brings me to the real problem. In public discourse, we MUST require of each other the same natural authority we ask of our politicians and other leaders. When your neighbor is spouting nonsense, you must call them on it. Cite facts; propose sound, reasoned argument. Point out where they are wrong. Do not simply say, “Well, that’s your opinion,” when their opinion is demonstrably stupid, unsupported by fact, and reasoned by an idiot. You will likely NOT persuade the idiot, but you MAY persuade someone else who is a party to the discussion.
And never fear to confront a politician if you are able to do so directly–town meeting, letter, email, phone, etc.–with fact and reason opposing a stupid or dishonest utterance. Sure, you could be singled out for a Clintonista-style State retaliation, but so? What? You wanna live forever?
🙂