The Age of Mediocrity (Part III)

"The "creationists" are not a new phenomenon. Their ancestors launched the Scopes trial in 1925. They even won it, but it did not do them much good. Why, then, are they an ominous phenonmenon today? Because the ground has been prepared for them; because they are riding on the horrible helplessness of today's intellectuals who have no answers and no defense to offer.

The 'creationists" are proclaiming that school textbooks must state that the theory of evolution is only a theory, not absolute knowledge. But of course!--yell the defenders of science--everything is only a theory, there is no such thing as an absolute! How do you know? ask the "creationists." There is no such thing as knowledge! answer the defenders of science.

In a recent television debate, two members of the "Moral Majority" were pitted against two liberal professors. The mystics presented their case confidently and almost condescendingly. They did not engage in personalites and did not attack the professors. But the professors kept hammering on a single subject: "Would you call me immoral? How can you call me immoral?" Occasionaly they added: "How can you be so certain? Nobody can be certain!"

It was embarassing to watch. How often, for how many years, had I seen conservatives--and businessmen--fumbling before professors of that kind, afraid to antagonize therm, surrending this country's freedom and their own rights? And here were those academic ogres unable to defend their schools against and invasion of primitive cavemen, anxiously begging for the cavemen's approval.

The great miscalculation of the twentieth century--of its liberal intellectuals--is the notion that evil is the product of a self-confident mind, while doubt and uncertainty protect society from the ambitions of tyrants."

"Apart from the obscenity of ascribing logic to the Nazis, the terrible error is to assume that undercutting man's self-confidence will turn him into a mild, humbly benevolent citizen, and that destroying his confidence in reason will make him peacefully tractable. The exact opposite, of course is true: a profound send of self-doubt or an inferiority complex is the outstanding characteristic of Nazis, communists, gangsters, and criminals in general. The evasion of reason leads either to despair and violence, or to hopeless apathy. Who would fight against evil and tyranny when he can be certain of nothing--neither of what is evil nor of his own value?

Observe that with the accelerating destruction of philosophy--and, therefore, of reason--in the past few decades, our cultural atmosphere has not been acquiring a tone of joyous benevolence and liberation from "the strait jacket of logic." It has been growing progressively grayer, duller, and more desolately empty. We have entered an Age of Mediocrity, not of terror-- or rather, not yet of terror¹. The profiteers on Kant's destruction of the mind are the envious, pretentious mediocrities who swoop down on the positions vacated by the proscribed men of first-rate ability. The monsters come later--after the mediocrities have cleared the way for them by making life unlivable.

Today's swarms of militant mystics are doing their share of the movement in that direction. And, believe it or not, they are trying to acquire a philosophy of their own. One cannot really call it a 'philosophy'--so its identification will have to be: 'that which happens when philosphy vanishes'.

Somebody called Gilder has written a book defending capitalism. I have not read and will not read that book, but I will quote from an article which will tell you the nature of the book and why I will not read it. The article is 'The New Right' by Peter Schwartz in the September 15, 1980 issue of his newsletter The Intellectual Activist."

Mr. Schwartz summarizes.

"In other words, Mr. Gilder's philosophty is: To follow ones own judgement about an uncertain futher requires blind faith; to follow a dictators Five-year Plan represents rationality. To desire their freedom to live and to produce is altruistic; to desire the security of a jail cell is selfish. (Presumably , the countless millons who escape or try to, from socialism are all zealous philanthropists yearning for the opportunity to case their bread upon capitalist waters)

Your can see why I would not be able to read stuff of that kind. If some liberal wanted write a devastating satire on a conservative "thinker," he could not make it quite so bad as this, because nobody would believe him. Yet, Mr. Gilder has written a book and, I am told the book is worse than these exceerpts. It would be funny--except for the fact that Mr. Gilder was one of Ronald Reagan's speechwriters for the acceptance speech at the Republican convention; that David Stockman the allegedly hard-headed budget-cutter, was the editor of that book; and the fact that a number of prominent members of the Reagan administration are endorsing it. Well, God help America!"

"You can see now what I hold against the Reagan Administration. I would be happy if I were proved wrong--if that Administration took a more rational course. But I do not think that I will be. All the signs are dismal.

The liberals and the Carter Adminstration were not much better intellectually--but they had been thoroughly discredited, as collectivism and the Welfare State have been discredited all over the civilized world. The road was cleared for a renaissance of reason, freedom, and capitalism. The people were ready for it; that is what they thought they were voting for when they voted for Reagan.¹ If, instead, they get faith, "Family" and a self-sacrificial Wall Street, it will be more terrible a betrayal than any in our history. No, a president does not have to be a philosopher; but there ought to be a moral limit on his ignorance of the subject¹.

The Republicans and the advocates of capitalism have been regarded for years as anti-intellectual-predominantly, with justice. If the Reagan Administration brings us for years of grotesquely mindless fantasies--as it has done so far--the disaster might be irreparable. The road will be open for a liberal-collectivist rebirth, by default; the anti-intellectual reputation will cling to the advocates of capitalism for another two or three generations, as the ghosts of Hoover and the Great Depression had clung to the Republicans. This new ghost will be harder to exorcise, because the sickly, homey smell of small-town mindlessnes will linger.

So the battle for capitalism will be harder to fight. I do not believe that the Reagan Administration will accomplish much even in the field of short-range economic policy--because nothing can be accomplished by men who discard the mind. Irrationalist succeed occasionally-- by sheer luck and not for long. But nobody should count on so much luck as this country needs today.

But, hard or easy, whe have to continue to fight. It will be harder, lonelier and more necessary than ever. We cannot give up this magnificient country--to nothing. To drowning mediocrities, scared power-lsuters, and trembling professors. That is the most uninspiring, demoralizing kind of battle. And, perhaps the most heroic.

I gave you an indication of the nature of that battle, in a passage about the start of Dagny's career in Atlas Shrugged:

The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found honor in challenging; it was ineptitude--a gray spread of cotton that seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way.²

When I speak of fighting, I mean of course intellectual battle. Stick to the advocacy of reason--there is no other way to lead a succesful life. Spread your ideas as widely as possible. Don't give up- and above all, don't cooperate with, or compromise with, or endorse the mystics and the weirdos. Don't give them the sanction of the victim. You still have a chance to win."