How
has it come to pass that in America a man can identify as a woman and his linguistic
affirmation by itself, at least in New York City, obligates others to address him as
“her”? And why is it increasingly considered
mandatory to declare that men taking female hormones can compete against
natural born women in sporting events? What
aberrant philosophical doctrine, you may ask, is behind the assertion that
there are sixty-three genders or that marriage must no longer be considered the
union of a man and a woman? The answer
to these and other absurdities can be found in Robert Curry’s new book Reclaiming
Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World. This brief and manageable philosophical
analysis forms a welcome addendum to Curry’s earlier work, Common Sense Nation, which “explores the thinking of the American
Founders” and “present[s] to Americans today what was once known by virtually
every American.”
What
Americans once knew was humorously summarized by Abraham Lincoln when he posed
this question, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs would a dog have?” Abe’s answer: “Four, because even if you call
it a leg, it’s still a tail.” This
“common-sense realism” was once, as Curry points out, the currency of both
everyday Americans and the nation’s academics. The author, however, goes well beyond
Lincoln’s yarn to explain the philosophical background of “common-sense” as
developed in the writings of Scotland’s Thomas Reid. Reid notes the foundational quality of
certain “self-evident” truths not only for practical living [You can’t fly if
you jump out a fifth story window.] but also for intellectual and moral pursuits. These basic truths are not ideas that can be
proven. Instead, they are the necessary
presuppositions of rational analysis and moral reflection. Furthermore, these basic, “self-evident”
truths aren’t always obvious, but rather are recognized as rational or moral pillars
once discovered. Even simple mathematical
truths, to say nothing of more advanced axioms, require a grounding in the
discipline to be seen clearly. With
respect to morality, the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” was
capable of being clearly perceived only after history and thoughtful refection
prepared individuals (like the Founders) to see and acknowledge this seminal insight.
So
when did Americans begin to lose this common sense perspective that was an
essential component of the Founders’ belief that self-government was
possible? Curry points to the ascendance
of German-trained academics among American intellectuals in the latter part of
the nineteenth century. With the
importation of “Romantic” and “progressive” ideals that often sailed under
heading of science, intellectuals dismissed the notion that ordinary folk were
capable of discovering the not-so-obvious truths according to which society should
be ordered. Psychiatrists, sociologists,
and political scientists would henceforth, they believed, set down rules for
raising children and organizing society. This perspective was widespread among American
intellectuals in the early twentieth century as the philosophical gap between academics
and ordinary Americans widened tremendously.
A
Marxist variant of these “progressive” ideas became “all the rage” on American
campuses in the sixties and seventies thanks to another German émigré, Herbert
Marcuse. By that time, however, the
illusion that Marxism and science were joined at the hip was becoming
implausible. Eventually, instead of
rejecting Marxism or other utopian constructs, science and reason were themselves
jettisoned in favor of the unbridled emotions that always lay at the heart of Marx’s
romanticism. The absurd conclusion of
this intellectual cul-de-sac is today’s “linguistic realism” that asserts people
actually are what they say they are.
Thus, a boy in a tutu and tiara who insists he is a girl, must be
considered a girl -- a proposition that has strayed considerably from the
common sense statements about dogs, legs, and tails put forth by Lincoln. A further consequence of this escape from
reality is the assertion that speech itself is violence, a corollary of attributing
to words the status of reality and thus the justification for hate-speech laws.
A pseudo-scientific cherry on top of
this irrational hodge-podge was the popular misunderstanding of Einstein’s “theory
of relativity” as asserting that “everything is relative,” including morality
-- thus the contemporary ubiquity of the phrase “my truth.”
All
these philosophical twists and turns are unpacked slowly by Curry and in a
manner that doesn’t require a formal background in philosophy or intellectual
history. Dreams, for example, are used
to illustrate the romantic alternative to common sense perceptions, and Jane
Austen’s two major characters in Sense
and Sensibility provide literary examples of two different approaches to
life, one based on common-sense moderation (Elinor) and the other ruled by
self-destructive emotion (Marianne).
Other
than showing us exactly how far we have traveled from the common sense
doctrines of Thomas Reid and the Founders, Curry provides in this short work no
advice for reversing course other than admonishing each reader to “make the
life-defining effort to become a person of robust common sense.” Perhaps a third post script to Common Sense Nation will take on that necessary task with more detailed strategies which
extend beyond an appeal to individuals to adopt a perspective that’s at odds with the enormous emotional
power of a corrupt academic and popular culture (cf. Attorney General Barr’s Notre Dame
speech) that
controls almost all the major instruments of communication and education.
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in
Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy:
"Who's to Say?" is also available
on Kindle
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