Episode Details

Ayn Rand recommended a technique for understanding, if not resolving, irreconcilable differences of opinion: “First, check your premises.” It’s pointless to argue with someone when your basic assumptions and goals are unalterably different. In politics these aren’t discussions, they’re unproductive exercises in rhetoric, gamesmanship and grandstanding ,at least on one side.

Imagine an argument on economics between Milton Friedman and Bernie Sanders.

A profound illustration of this concept was provided by James Burnham in his classic book, “Suicide of the West,” published in 1964. It addressed the fundamental conflict in world view and the order of values between those on the ideological left and right. It’s just as insightful today.

Burnham defined four key values:

Liberty – National independence, self-government, and sovereignty.

Freedom – In the sense of individual liberty.

Justice – In the sense of a “social justice” welfare state with where egalitarianism means equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity.

Peace – The absence of large-scale warfare among major powers.

He observed that most people believe in all of these values to one extent or another but are often forced to make choices when one value conflicts with another and when prioritizing these values in order of relative importance. For example, would you jeopardize peace to defend liberty? Or override individual freedom to achieve social justice?

This is an approximation of Burnham’s forced-ranking as applied to today’s political divide.

Right (conservatives) Left (progressives)

Liberty Peace

Freedom Justice

Peace Freedom

Justice Liberty

Conservatives and progressives

Our founders crafted the Constitution and its Bill of Rights with particular attention to limiting government and safeguarding the natural rights of individuals. The conservative order of values reflects a traditional view of human nature and society. It recognizes that the world is often a harsh and competitive place populated by imperfect — and imperfectible — beings and that there are limits to what public or private institutions can do to mitigate this condition.

Conservatives believe our constitutional republic and private enterprise economy have produced the greatest measure of political freedom and economic achievement the world has ever known and that it is perpetually threatened by serious adversaries both foreign and domestic. War is a constant of human history and always will be, and peace through military strength is the best deterrent.

Today’s progressives have elevated pacifism to a principal value. Their economic vision is a socialist welfare state enroute to a communist utopia, and they share the Marxian delusion that human nature can be changed and perfected. They believe our Constitution is fatally flawed. They’d open our borders and join a world government body (imagine a largely anti-American UN with muscle). They believe disarmament is achievable, and that war can be eliminated. (Woody Allen once humorously prophesied, “The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep.)

In the 1960s, Burnham noted that leftists are infected with the promise of communism simply because they share so many of its ideals such as peace, egalitarianism, secularism, collectivism, full employment, and free social services. To wishful thinkers, useful idiots, and fellow travelers, the constitution of the Soviet Union sounded better than our own. But it was all a pack of lies and its promises were never delivered. (Co