Will Consensus Save US?
I saw James Baker and Lee Hamilton interviewed by Charlie Rose the other night, and the best thing they could say about the Iraq Study Group’ list of 79 recommendations was that it was the product of consensus. Apparently, the commission’s procedural rules required that each and every item in the final report be unanimously approved by the 20-member committee.
Why is consensus—not wisdom, justice, ingenuity, or any number of higher values—the supreme virtue in this undertaking? Why is something as important as U.S. strategy and tactics in Iraq to be formed over the absolute lowest common denominator? Is philosophical or ideological sameness the ultimate good?
“Cultural diversity” is proudly and piously held up as a fundamental goal of America’s dominant institutions throughout government, the media, academia, and the corporate world. America’s vaunted commitment to diversity, however, does not apply to ideas, only to racial heritage, religion, or sexual identity. This ought to be the other way around.
Cultural diversity (“not that there’s anything wrong with it”) is fine, especially if that means equality before the law and mutual respect among different peoples. Besides, having people around of diverse racial and ethnic make-ups is certainly more interesting. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. Yet this kind of diversity is enforced with such rigid fanaticism that it often becomes a parody of itself (as in large corporations and universities which have full-time “diversity officers” who impose penalties on those who are not diverse “enough”).
I would humbly suggest, however, that as nice as cultural diversity is, it might be more important to value diversity of ideas—which can be profound, consequential, and history-making—more so than diversity in the relatively superficial human traits of skin color and ethnic background. As iron sharpens iron, ideas are improved through robust debate, by being compared to opposing ideas, by being held up to critical scrutiny by their detractors.
Yet we seem to fear this kind of debate. Sure it can be contentious, and it makes people uncomfortable. We don’t want to come across as “ideologues” (though one person’s ideologue is another’s “man of principle”). We want to appear above the fray. Pragmatism is fashionable, idealism passé. Thus James Baker, the ultimate purveyor of Realpolitik, the art of the possible, the lowest common denominator.
The clash of ideas is indeed messy. It was messy when America’s founders declared independence and created a nation. It was messy when Americans finally confronted the injustice of slavery. It was messy when America saved the world from Nazism and, eventually, Soviet Marxism.
There is no Oracle at Delphi. In none of those critical periods in American history did a committee—with the uninspiring charge of reaching “consensus”—deliver a kernel of genius that could prevent or resolve the messy, bloody, but necessary clash of ideas.
Copyright 2006, FaithfulAmerican.com
