Damon Linker: Against Common Sense
[Damon Linker is a Special Correspondent for The New Republic]
Conservatives would have us believe that they hold a monopoly on common sense. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and many other right-wing rabble-rousers regularly portray themselves as defenders of the good, old-fashioned common sense of average Americans against an out-of-touch liberal elite. A growing cadre of ambitious politicians likewise aims to lead a crusade in the name of “commonsense conservatism.” Glenn Beck has even gone so far as to publish a runaway bestseller that explicitly piggybacks on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to argue against the danger of “out-of-control government” and the forces of organized foolishness that would foist it on the American people.
The unanimity is impressive. But it is also ridiculous. The fact is that the right’s appeal to common sense is nonsense. Unfortunately, though, it is a form of nonsense with deep roots in the American past and a very long history of political potency. Whether it continues to prove effective in the future will depend in no small measure on how cogently the rest of America responds.
The United States is a nation founded on an egalitarian creed—on the supposedly self-evident (commonsensical?) truths that all men are created equal and that all legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed. In such a nation, public appeals to authority would be much less persuasive than they had been throughout most of human history. Tradition, the divine right of kings, the will of God as interpreted by his designated clerical representatives—in America none of these authorities would benefit from the deference they have typically enjoyed in other times and places. Add in the ever-increasing social pluralism of modern life, and it becomes perfectly understandable why political actors and commentators in the United States would seek to win public disputes by appeal to the only authority still available—the authority of the people and their common sense. Whether such appeals are coherent is another matter.
In Common Sense, Thomas Paine famously inaugurated the American tradition of attempting to win contentious public arguments by praising the good judgment of average citizens. When Paine’s incendiary pamphlet first appeared, in January 1776, the colonies were divided about whether to declare their independence, with many colonists still loyal to the crown. Those on both sides of the issue recognized that taking up arms against the King of England demanded justification. Those who favored revolution did so for complicated reasons flowing from the ineptness of George III’s rule, which was increasingly viewed as arbitrary, dictatorial, and contrary to the economic interests of the colonies. A few, including Thomas Jefferson and Paine himself, went further, to supplement their case with abstract philosophical arguments about natural rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. But regardless of the rationale, it was almost universally acknowledged that proposing insurrection against British rule was a profoundly radical act—one involving a dramatic break from precedent and tradition. And yet Paine chose to portray the case for rebellion as transparently obvious—based, in fact, on nothing more than “simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.” Today Paine’s tract is thought to have done more than any other piece of writing to foment the American Revolution.
Not everyone was convinced by its argument, however. Later that same year, loyalist Lt. Col. James Chalmers penned a scathing polemic against Common Sense titled Plain Truth. In his own pamphlet, Chalmers ridiculed Paine’s presumptuousness in professing to speak for commonly held views in the colonies or good judgment in general. In Chalmers’s view, Paine’s position was a particularly irresponsible example of “quackery,” not an accurate reflection of common sense, which clearly pointed in the opposite direction—toward reconciliation with the English throne. The Revolutionary War thus began with dual acts of excommunication from the ranks of common sense, showing with vivid clarity that the concept was originally devoid of content, merely expressing the desire of one party in a dispute to claim as much popular support as possible for his side.
The Paine-Chalmers debate was the first in a seemingly endless series of rancorous clashes in the early republic over contradictory appeals to common sense. By the mid-nineteenth century, these clashes increasingly focused on the issue of slavery and Southern Secession from the Union. Readers of the Northern press during the 1860s were regularly informed that their opposition to the expansion of slavery was commonsensical, that Abraham Lincoln was a font of “homespun common sense,” and that Southerners were “as deaf as madmen” to common sense. Yet the view from the Southern states was, quite naturally, the reverse. In late 1860, for instance, the Charleston Mercury newspaper spoke for many in the South when it editorialized that “no man of common sense” could doubt that “the time for action” against the North had arrived.
While politicians and editorialists throughout the rest of the nineteenth century continued to employ the empty rhetoric of common sense, a group of Protestant theologians worked to provide the concept with some content. Drawing on the Scottish tradition of Common Sense philosophy—which asserted that commonly held opinions are our most trustworthy guide to truth—writers connected to the Princeton Theological Seminary naively suggested that spontaneous universal concord on every matter of moral, scientific, and spiritual significance should be possible. Men and women need only open their eyes to apprehend directly the timeless, objective, self-evident truth about all things: God, nature, right and wrong.
For these theologians, the very idea of a genuine (as opposed to a spurious) conflict between reason and faith, science and religion—let alone between opposing political views—began to seem inconceivable. They thus tended to trace disagreements to defects in the mind or morals of whomever dissented from prevailing religious, scientific, social, cultural, or political opinion. Maybe the dissenter had succumbed to the sin of pride, which led him astray. Or perhaps he made an innocent error of reasoning, or got caught up in futile metaphysical speculation. And then there was the most ominous possibility—that he was seduced by unbelief or false religion. Whatever the case, the disagreement was assumed to flow not from the intrinsic complexity of either the world or the nature of the mind but rather from an accidental failing rooted in a particular individual or group—a defect that could potentially be removed, thus restoring the inevitability of universal agreement based on self-evident common sense.
And yet by the turn of the century, whatever cultural, moral, and religious consensus prevailed in the United States seemed to be collapsing on multiple fronts. The nation’s cities were filled with impoverished immigrants, many of them from non-Protestant (and in the case of Jews, non-Christian) cultures. At the same time, industrialization was transforming American life in unpredictable ways, disrupting small-town life, driving the young to seek their fortunes in those same cities, exposing them to unimaginable moral temptations and objectionable ideas. Meanwhile, the nations schools were beginning to introduce Christian children to disturbing new unbiblical theories about the origins of the human race. For many, the suggestion that human beings evolved from apes sounded both morally monstrous and fundamentally unscientific—a form of demonic speculation wholly divorced from a properly commonsensical study of the natural facts. And then there was the rise of theological liberalism—or “modernism”—in some of the nation’s leading churches, which showed that not even the nation’s Protestant clergy could maintain agreement on the fundamentals of the faith.
The political and cultural history of the American twentieth century was shaped in countless ways by two movements that arose in direct reaction to these destabilizing trends: populism in politics and fundamentalism in religion. “Common sense” now became a term of flattery, offering praise for the religious and cultural outlook of Americans who continued to uphold the naïve views defended by the Princeton theologians. These were the views of those who lived in small, homogeneous agricultural communities and who believed their way of life to be under assault by the decadence and corruption of urban economic and political elites. Populist leader William Jennings Bryan used the term “common sense” in this way during the 1890s, and he revived it at the end of his life when, in the Scopes Trial of 1925, he passionately defended the right of fundamentalist Protestants in Tennessee to insulate their children’s commonsense (i.e., literalistic) reading of the Bible from corruption at the hands of overly educated biology teachers, who wished to expose their students to the theory of Darwinian evolution. Though the verdict in favor of creationism was overturned on appeal, Bryan’s effort to defend the simple common sense of average citizens against the godless pretensions of educated elites was a populist time-bomb that would eventually explode in the American public square...
Read entire article at The New Republic
Conservatives would have us believe that they hold a monopoly on common sense. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and many other right-wing rabble-rousers regularly portray themselves as defenders of the good, old-fashioned common sense of average Americans against an out-of-touch liberal elite. A growing cadre of ambitious politicians likewise aims to lead a crusade in the name of “commonsense conservatism.” Glenn Beck has even gone so far as to publish a runaway bestseller that explicitly piggybacks on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to argue against the danger of “out-of-control government” and the forces of organized foolishness that would foist it on the American people.
The unanimity is impressive. But it is also ridiculous. The fact is that the right’s appeal to common sense is nonsense. Unfortunately, though, it is a form of nonsense with deep roots in the American past and a very long history of political potency. Whether it continues to prove effective in the future will depend in no small measure on how cogently the rest of America responds.
The United States is a nation founded on an egalitarian creed—on the supposedly self-evident (commonsensical?) truths that all men are created equal and that all legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed. In such a nation, public appeals to authority would be much less persuasive than they had been throughout most of human history. Tradition, the divine right of kings, the will of God as interpreted by his designated clerical representatives—in America none of these authorities would benefit from the deference they have typically enjoyed in other times and places. Add in the ever-increasing social pluralism of modern life, and it becomes perfectly understandable why political actors and commentators in the United States would seek to win public disputes by appeal to the only authority still available—the authority of the people and their common sense. Whether such appeals are coherent is another matter.
In Common Sense, Thomas Paine famously inaugurated the American tradition of attempting to win contentious public arguments by praising the good judgment of average citizens. When Paine’s incendiary pamphlet first appeared, in January 1776, the colonies were divided about whether to declare their independence, with many colonists still loyal to the crown. Those on both sides of the issue recognized that taking up arms against the King of England demanded justification. Those who favored revolution did so for complicated reasons flowing from the ineptness of George III’s rule, which was increasingly viewed as arbitrary, dictatorial, and contrary to the economic interests of the colonies. A few, including Thomas Jefferson and Paine himself, went further, to supplement their case with abstract philosophical arguments about natural rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. But regardless of the rationale, it was almost universally acknowledged that proposing insurrection against British rule was a profoundly radical act—one involving a dramatic break from precedent and tradition. And yet Paine chose to portray the case for rebellion as transparently obvious—based, in fact, on nothing more than “simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.” Today Paine’s tract is thought to have done more than any other piece of writing to foment the American Revolution.
Not everyone was convinced by its argument, however. Later that same year, loyalist Lt. Col. James Chalmers penned a scathing polemic against Common Sense titled Plain Truth. In his own pamphlet, Chalmers ridiculed Paine’s presumptuousness in professing to speak for commonly held views in the colonies or good judgment in general. In Chalmers’s view, Paine’s position was a particularly irresponsible example of “quackery,” not an accurate reflection of common sense, which clearly pointed in the opposite direction—toward reconciliation with the English throne. The Revolutionary War thus began with dual acts of excommunication from the ranks of common sense, showing with vivid clarity that the concept was originally devoid of content, merely expressing the desire of one party in a dispute to claim as much popular support as possible for his side.
The Paine-Chalmers debate was the first in a seemingly endless series of rancorous clashes in the early republic over contradictory appeals to common sense. By the mid-nineteenth century, these clashes increasingly focused on the issue of slavery and Southern Secession from the Union. Readers of the Northern press during the 1860s were regularly informed that their opposition to the expansion of slavery was commonsensical, that Abraham Lincoln was a font of “homespun common sense,” and that Southerners were “as deaf as madmen” to common sense. Yet the view from the Southern states was, quite naturally, the reverse. In late 1860, for instance, the Charleston Mercury newspaper spoke for many in the South when it editorialized that “no man of common sense” could doubt that “the time for action” against the North had arrived.
While politicians and editorialists throughout the rest of the nineteenth century continued to employ the empty rhetoric of common sense, a group of Protestant theologians worked to provide the concept with some content. Drawing on the Scottish tradition of Common Sense philosophy—which asserted that commonly held opinions are our most trustworthy guide to truth—writers connected to the Princeton Theological Seminary naively suggested that spontaneous universal concord on every matter of moral, scientific, and spiritual significance should be possible. Men and women need only open their eyes to apprehend directly the timeless, objective, self-evident truth about all things: God, nature, right and wrong.
For these theologians, the very idea of a genuine (as opposed to a spurious) conflict between reason and faith, science and religion—let alone between opposing political views—began to seem inconceivable. They thus tended to trace disagreements to defects in the mind or morals of whomever dissented from prevailing religious, scientific, social, cultural, or political opinion. Maybe the dissenter had succumbed to the sin of pride, which led him astray. Or perhaps he made an innocent error of reasoning, or got caught up in futile metaphysical speculation. And then there was the most ominous possibility—that he was seduced by unbelief or false religion. Whatever the case, the disagreement was assumed to flow not from the intrinsic complexity of either the world or the nature of the mind but rather from an accidental failing rooted in a particular individual or group—a defect that could potentially be removed, thus restoring the inevitability of universal agreement based on self-evident common sense.
And yet by the turn of the century, whatever cultural, moral, and religious consensus prevailed in the United States seemed to be collapsing on multiple fronts. The nation’s cities were filled with impoverished immigrants, many of them from non-Protestant (and in the case of Jews, non-Christian) cultures. At the same time, industrialization was transforming American life in unpredictable ways, disrupting small-town life, driving the young to seek their fortunes in those same cities, exposing them to unimaginable moral temptations and objectionable ideas. Meanwhile, the nations schools were beginning to introduce Christian children to disturbing new unbiblical theories about the origins of the human race. For many, the suggestion that human beings evolved from apes sounded both morally monstrous and fundamentally unscientific—a form of demonic speculation wholly divorced from a properly commonsensical study of the natural facts. And then there was the rise of theological liberalism—or “modernism”—in some of the nation’s leading churches, which showed that not even the nation’s Protestant clergy could maintain agreement on the fundamentals of the faith.
The political and cultural history of the American twentieth century was shaped in countless ways by two movements that arose in direct reaction to these destabilizing trends: populism in politics and fundamentalism in religion. “Common sense” now became a term of flattery, offering praise for the religious and cultural outlook of Americans who continued to uphold the naïve views defended by the Princeton theologians. These were the views of those who lived in small, homogeneous agricultural communities and who believed their way of life to be under assault by the decadence and corruption of urban economic and political elites. Populist leader William Jennings Bryan used the term “common sense” in this way during the 1890s, and he revived it at the end of his life when, in the Scopes Trial of 1925, he passionately defended the right of fundamentalist Protestants in Tennessee to insulate their children’s commonsense (i.e., literalistic) reading of the Bible from corruption at the hands of overly educated biology teachers, who wished to expose their students to the theory of Darwinian evolution. Though the verdict in favor of creationism was overturned on appeal, Bryan’s effort to defend the simple common sense of average citizens against the godless pretensions of educated elites was a populist time-bomb that would eventually explode in the American public square...