Ayn Rand: The Season of Platitudes
The Season of Platitudes
OCTOBER 7, 1962 -- For the next few weeks there will be no political discussions in America: we have entered the Season of Platitudes -- an election campaign.
All issues, principles and definitions vanish during an election campaign. They dissolve into a fog of rubber term that can mean anything to anyone -- while the candidates compete for how to be misunderstood- in the greatest number of ways by the greatest number of people.
For instance, here are two statements launching the present campaign:
President Kennedy extolled his party's "record of progress and compassion" -- and declared that his opponents had been "deadlocked in divided, divisive, do-nothing government."
Governor Rockefeller, comparing the two parties: "Ours is a clean, clear record of progress, growth and human concern. . . . Theirs is a record of stagnation, obstruction and incompetence."
Ask yourself whether there is any political party anywhere in the world whose program would not fit under declarations of this kind.
Yet this is the only type of statement we are given, to indicate in what direction our candidates intend to lead us.
Any differences among them are only a matter of degree and are chiefly confined to one category: larger of smaller handouts to various pressure groups, such as "Medicare."
It is during a campaign that the clearest thinking and most honest debating are needed. Instead, it is during a campaign that people throw their minds out of focus and go through the motions of ritual, in a daze of hope and bromides.
Who is responsible for it? The voters, when they pretend that they are hearing something. The politicians, when they pretend that the nation has given them a "mandate" -- for a program they never discussed.
The greater part of the blame rests on the voters. When people understand political principles and hold clear-cut convictions, they demand the same of their politicians. But in a "mixed economy," it is political principles that are mixed -- and no politician dares unmix them.
A politician's first concern is to get elected -- without which he cannot achieve his goals, whether they are noble or ignoble, whether he is a crusading idealist or a plain ward-heeler. [sic]
If the voters approach elections with nothing better than the desperate feeling that "somebody ought to do something," if they evade or ignore political principles -- a politician will follow suit. (Which is why our age is not distinguished by the great stature of its political leaders.)
An election campaign is not the time to teach people the fundamentals of political theory, and a candidate is not a teacher. He can only cash in on such ideas as he believes the people to hold. He is not the cause of political trends, he is their product.
Who, then, is the cause? The country's intellectuals.
The study and definition of political theory is a full-time job. Just as all people cannot be automobile manufacturers, but can judge and select which car they wish to buy, so they cannot be political philosophers, but can judge the theories presented to them and form their own convictions accordingly. It is on this crucial responsibility that modern intellectuals have defaulted.
The dreary clowning of today's election campaigns originates in our college classrooms. The evasive mess -- a mixture of Marx, Keynes and moral cowardice -- taught in most classes of political science, would make our candidates look like paragons of frankness and precision, by comparison.
The people know that something is terribly wrong in today's world and that they are given no choice. But how can they make themselves heard? They are not in the profession of "opinion-making."
They sense, but cannot identify, that the real issue under all the evasions is: capitalism versus socialism. But that is the issues which neither the "liberals" nor the "conservatives" dare face or discuss.
The people are taking the only way out, still open to them: the protest vote. Predominantly, they are voting, not for anything, but against it. The trend in most semi free, notably in England, is to keep voting out whoever is in. It is a temporary means to prevent the entrenchment of a single clique in power.
But those who are concerned with the future should realize that political trends are merely registered, not made, at the polls. And to change today's trends, it is not enough to be merely anti-collectivist.
It can be done only by: (a) acquiring the knowledge of a full, consistent- theory of capitalism; (b) communicating it to others; (c) bombarding- political representatives, not with emotional appeals, but with intelligent questions aimed at making them specify the meaning of the generalities they offer us.
People should be taught not to accept it when candidates promise the country to sail, without saying where -- or promise a New Frontier, without stating of what -- or promise "a vigorous leadership," which fearlessly blasts our steel industry, but folds up in Cuba and Berlin.
To change the trend, one must work to create an enlightened electorate. And one must begin by realizing that elections are won in every month of the year -- except November.
OCTOBER 7, 1962 -- For the next few weeks there will be no political discussions in America: we have entered the Season of Platitudes -- an election campaign.
All issues, principles and definitions vanish during an election campaign. They dissolve into a fog of rubber term that can mean anything to anyone -- while the candidates compete for how to be misunderstood- in the greatest number of ways by the greatest number of people.
For instance, here are two statements launching the present campaign:
President Kennedy extolled his party's "record of progress and compassion" -- and declared that his opponents had been "deadlocked in divided, divisive, do-nothing government."
Governor Rockefeller, comparing the two parties: "Ours is a clean, clear record of progress, growth and human concern. . . . Theirs is a record of stagnation, obstruction and incompetence."
Ask yourself whether there is any political party anywhere in the world whose program would not fit under declarations of this kind.
Yet this is the only type of statement we are given, to indicate in what direction our candidates intend to lead us.
Any differences among them are only a matter of degree and are chiefly confined to one category: larger of smaller handouts to various pressure groups, such as "Medicare."
It is during a campaign that the clearest thinking and most honest debating are needed. Instead, it is during a campaign that people throw their minds out of focus and go through the motions of ritual, in a daze of hope and bromides.
Who is responsible for it? The voters, when they pretend that they are hearing something. The politicians, when they pretend that the nation has given them a "mandate" -- for a program they never discussed.
The greater part of the blame rests on the voters. When people understand political principles and hold clear-cut convictions, they demand the same of their politicians. But in a "mixed economy," it is political principles that are mixed -- and no politician dares unmix them.
A politician's first concern is to get elected -- without which he cannot achieve his goals, whether they are noble or ignoble, whether he is a crusading idealist or a plain ward-heeler. [sic]
If the voters approach elections with nothing better than the desperate feeling that "somebody ought to do something," if they evade or ignore political principles -- a politician will follow suit. (Which is why our age is not distinguished by the great stature of its political leaders.)
An election campaign is not the time to teach people the fundamentals of political theory, and a candidate is not a teacher. He can only cash in on such ideas as he believes the people to hold. He is not the cause of political trends, he is their product.
Who, then, is the cause? The country's intellectuals.
The study and definition of political theory is a full-time job. Just as all people cannot be automobile manufacturers, but can judge and select which car they wish to buy, so they cannot be political philosophers, but can judge the theories presented to them and form their own convictions accordingly. It is on this crucial responsibility that modern intellectuals have defaulted.
The dreary clowning of today's election campaigns originates in our college classrooms. The evasive mess -- a mixture of Marx, Keynes and moral cowardice -- taught in most classes of political science, would make our candidates look like paragons of frankness and precision, by comparison.
The people know that something is terribly wrong in today's world and that they are given no choice. But how can they make themselves heard? They are not in the profession of "opinion-making."
They sense, but cannot identify, that the real issue under all the evasions is: capitalism versus socialism. But that is the issues which neither the "liberals" nor the "conservatives" dare face or discuss.
The people are taking the only way out, still open to them: the protest vote. Predominantly, they are voting, not for anything, but against it. The trend in most semi free, notably in England, is to keep voting out whoever is in. It is a temporary means to prevent the entrenchment of a single clique in power.
But those who are concerned with the future should realize that political trends are merely registered, not made, at the polls. And to change today's trends, it is not enough to be merely anti-collectivist.
It can be done only by: (a) acquiring the knowledge of a full, consistent- theory of capitalism; (b) communicating it to others; (c) bombarding- political representatives, not with emotional appeals, but with intelligent questions aimed at making them specify the meaning of the generalities they offer us.
People should be taught not to accept it when candidates promise the country to sail, without saying where -- or promise a New Frontier, without stating of what -- or promise "a vigorous leadership," which fearlessly blasts our steel industry, but folds up in Cuba and Berlin.
To change the trend, one must work to create an enlightened electorate. And one must begin by realizing that elections are won in every month of the year -- except November.
