An Old Man Pet Peeve

It has been quite some time since I have written a blog about a pet peeve. Now that we find ourselves firmly in the dreadful grasp of winter, I figure that now is as good a time as any. This particular pet peeve runs the risk of making me sound like an old man screaming at the clouds, but, when has that ever stopped me in the past?

Here’s the thing...when I hear people arguing about politics, especially the roll of government, tax policy etc..I get the distinct impression that most people who argue such things on the internet, and doubly especially—younger people, have come by their opinions solely by parroting their favorite pundits, or their ability to perform Google searches faster than their competition. Their thoughts always seem to boil down to cut and paste hot takes from someone on National Review, The Daily Kos or Vox. Honestly, if I came of age in the internet era, perhaps I would do the exact same thing. But, I didn’t. I attended college during the heyday of libraries and the dreaded card catalogue, where finding a hot take took you all night. As a consequence, if I wanted to figure out what I believed about such weighty matters as economics or political theory, I was reduced to reading source material...and believe me, source material on these topics is dreadfully dull reading. For example...

During my four years at the University of Richmond I read the following works about economics and politics:

Das Kapital

The Wealth of Nations

The Road to Serfdom

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The Federalist Papers

Capitalism and Freedom

The Gulag Archipelago

The Communist Manefesto

Witness

The Prince

Leviathan 

Back then I must admit that I didn’t fully understand every word I read, but I picked up enough to develope a world view on matters of geo-politics and economics. When Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was all the rage, I picked up a paperback copy and labored through the thing. Although there were parts of it that I liked, I quickly rejected her ideas because I didn’t believe them to be consistent with my Christian faith, and that was that. Over the years, some of my views from all this reading have changed, modified by changes in the world. But, the point is, before I could have enough confidence to develope a reliable opinion, I felt the need to at least attempt to understand the source material upon which all the debating was about...not someone’s review or critique of the material, but the material itself. Maybe I’m wrong, but my trick knee tells me that the most self assured keyboard warriors on these topics haven’t spent ten minutes in any of these books and never will. Their views on politics and economics are forged on websites that reinforce what they already think about such matters. This parroting of hot takes is a bipartisan practice. People today tend to form their opinions about politics base upon how they feel about what makes sense to them, then find pundits and websites which agree with them and presto...instant infallibility.

I am an unrepentant reader. I will forever be a consumer of ideas. They fascinate me. It makes no particular difference to me whether or not I agree with an idea, I just want to know about it. When my daughter came back from three months of teaching in China a few years back, as a joke she brought me a little red book of the sayings of Mao, the butcher of Communist China...tiny little thing about the size of a pocket New Testament, which she said were on sale practically everywhere in Beijing. Guess what? I read it! Total authoritarian bullshit...but I couldn’t resist.

I’m not saying that people who have never read any of these books don’t have honest and heartfelt opinions on these things, and I’m not naive enough to think that very many people care at all about what John Maynard Keynes had to say about macroeconomics, or what exactly Frederick Hayek’s fears were about the power of the state. But I sure would feel better if more people would take the time to avail themselves of something more substantial than a Google search of hot takes before deciding what they think about our complicated world.