Noel Pearson has the courage and political maturity to speak out against the deleterious effects of welfare on indigenous Australians and what is his reward? Personal abuse by Pat O'Shane ("Pain but no gain for Aborigines on Pearson's posture", Opinion, May 11). O'Shane agrees there are deleterious effects wrought on people by the uncritical application of welfare policies. She also agrees we need critical analysis of such policies and can't resist drawing our attention to her own past soundness in this regard.
But suppose Noel Pearson was completely wrong in what he said, what would that imply about him as a person? Absolutely nothing.
Yet O'Shane, like many Australian commentators, apparently cannot separate disagreement about ideas from personal attack. Such personal abuse is hardly a necessary part of public debate.
One can disagree with someone about an issue -- even think their ideas or policies are stupid -- without it following that you think they lack intellectual integrity or are morally deficient.
Indeed, since the quality of an opinion and the quality of a character are completely independent, even if you proved to any reasonable person's satisfaction that someone was a creep without any sense of personal honour that would imply nothing at all about their opinions on any issue under the sun. Even dishonourable creeps can be completely correct about issues of public life.
So, such a style only makes sense if one somehow believes that the quality of a person does determine the quality of their opinions: if you believe that proving X is a creep does indeed show that X's opinion is wrong.
This is -- except in those cases where it casts doubt on whether they believe what they say -- a very strange thing to believe.
But, suppose you do believe such a thing, what does it imply? That opinions maketh the person.
So a person with good opinions is a good person. Displaying good opinions is proof that you are a good person and disagreeing with such opinions is proof that you are a bad one.
Suddenly, all is revealed.
What we see in the behaviour of O'Shane and her ilk is a defence of their moral assets.
If certain marker opinions shows one's status as a good person, to accept debate about such opinions undermines their ability to provide status, because it raises doubt as to their actual worthiness. To preserve the moral asset and to punish transgressors, one is driven immediately to personal abuse and attacks on integrity as an argument style. The greater the moral vanity -- the greater the use of particular opinions to display your high moral status and to mark yourself as a member of a moral vanguard -- the greater the bitchiness and personal nastiness to opponents.
Thus the self-identified progressives' fervent tendency to attempt to "prove" opponents are racist, label them as traitors to their community or in any other way mark them of as people of no account -- anything to avoid serious debate about the actual issues.
This is an attitude deeply inimical to reasoned debate and the functioning of democracy. It is the point neither the more simple-minded critics of political correctness nor the people whose position might be characterised as anti-anti-PC quite grasp.
It is perfectly true that, outside the academy, there has been no explicit censorship of politically incorrect opinions, though it is worth noting that someone whose opinions are well-represented in public debate may not be aware of how much contrary opinions are filtered out by various gatekeepers.
There has, however, been a concerted attempt to delegitimise certain types of opinion and to avoid debating issues on their merits, a problem particularly rife for issues such as multiculturalism, immigration, indigenous affairs and the environment.
This undermining of reasoned debate is the main harm that rampant moral vanity and moral status-seeking -- and the political correctness which flows from it -- have done to public debate in Australia.
Use of personal abuse and unwarranted attacks on people's intellectual integrity of the sort O'Shane has unleashed on Pearson are not contributions to debate but attempts to close them down and to buttress the moral vanity of the abusers.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment