September 8, 2003 -- Eric Alan Beltt: Intellectual Laziness: The Hallmark of Modern Liberalism

Now I realize that there are always exceptions to vast generalizations like this, but I think it’s accurate nonetheless. There are plenty of educated, intelligent, honest, well-meaning liberals who are dead-set in their wrong-headed views, and the only reason that’s true is because they aren’t willing to try to answer the hard questions.

What is two plus two? Now that isn’t a hard question. All of us can spit out the answer without so much as a single thought. But consider the question, “What is three-hundred and forty-two plus six-hundred and fifty-eight?” Unless you’re an autistic savant, coming up with the answer to that takes genuine thought (a little bit anyway). And that’s what liberals avoid at all costs.

Ask a liberal how to prevent crime and he’s likely to answer “four”, metaphorically speaking. That is, he’ll give you the answer that’s been drilled into his head over and over again, or that some person of authority (to him) has said. In the time between the question and the answer, he isn’t thinking, he’s recalling. And if he can’t recall it, he’ll give you whatever answer sounds right, even if simple examination shows that it’s deeply, deeply wrong.

Consider moral relativism for example. A lot of liberals subscribe to that deeply flawed philosophy, the basis of which is that right and wrong are inherently subjective. Without discussing why moral relativism is so wrong (which is beyond the scope of this article), we should note the intellectual consequences of it.

If right and wrong are inherently subjective, then there are no right answers to moral questions. Personal feelings are the only thing that matters, and deep thought is not just irrelevant, but utterly futile. For a person who subscribes to moral relativism, answers to difficult moral questions are easy to come by, and deep independent-thought is unnecessary. If right answers don’t exist, one need not concern himself with finding them. To the intellectual sloth, that’s very appealing.

But also consider how liberals talk as an indicator of their thought processes, or lack thereof. Many are very quick to classify their adversary – we conservatives – as evil, mean-spirited, greedy, uncaring, racist, sexist, homophobic, backward, unsophisticated, or any other number of undesirable things.

The important thing to note about this phenomenon is that it’s a symptom of intellectual laziness. It’s much, much easier to just assume someone has different values than you than it is to try to understand why they believe what they believe. Pinpointing factual mistakes and errors of logic is tough intellectual work, something liberals are averse to.

Now, another important aspect of this is something I hinted at earlier... what liberals do when they have to respond to a question for which they haven’t already been told the answer. Being averse to deep intellectual thought, they don’t consider their answer intently. They don’t tend to weigh benefits and drawbacks against each other, or spend much time looking for logical mistakes. They simply pick the answer that sounds right.

Take their apparent fixation with “shades of gray”. “The only thing that’s absolute in the universe is that nothing is absolute in the universe”. “Things aren’t as simple as black and white”. It sure sounds good on paper.

But scientifically, we know that some things are absolute. A hydrogen atom for example, has exactly one proton, always and absolutely. If it doesn’t have exactly one proton, it isn’t hydrogen. And actually it seems that in physics, until you start talking about quantum mechanics, everything is absolute. So clearly, some things really are as simple as black and white, which is misleading because “black and white” can be exceedingly complex.

Liberals can almost always be counted on to latch onto the answer that simply sounds right, even though it isn’t. Gun control, the welfare system, affirmative action, socialized healthcare, the anti-war movement, and aversion to tax-cuts. They’re all right-sounding but disturbingly wrong-headed solutions to the complex problems of crime, poverty, racial disparity, infirmity, war, and a weak economy.

The people that come up with and support these things aren’t stupid, ignorant, immoral, or dishonest, but they’re decidedly wrong. And I think it’s clear that the only explanation for these positions is intellectual laziness. There’s a lack of thought taking place on the left, and that’s not because it isn’t available. It’s because liberals are genuinely averse to it. Thinking is hard work.

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Eric Alan Beltt is a senior majoring in Physics with Engineering Emphasis at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology, and is the current maintainer of the conservatism community at LiveJournal.com.
belt0033@tc.umn.edu