No Exceptions: The Machiavellian Way of Truth

Several commenters have been kind enough to say they liked our recent pieces on the Middle East.  I am grateful for  the kind words. I am no expert on Middle Eastern affairs, though I flatter myself I know a few things about the history of the region. If my way of thinking has any distinctive merit, it is because I have followed a line of thought you can find in such diverse political thinkers as Thucydides, Machiavelli, the Marquis of Halifax, Gaetano Mosca, Roberto Michels, and Sam Francis. One might sum it up in the proverb spoken by one of the cynical and evil characters in literature, the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel: "He who says A, must say B"--one of Lenin's favorite sayings. If you once decide to commit murder your children and fail, you will have to try again," and if you are a political commentator who observes a pattern of behavior that involves the murder of innocent civilians, then you have to assume that such people are capable of murder and you will not pretend to yourself or anyone else that they are humanitarians.

Years ago I summed up my position, in answer to a query, by taking the position of the so-called New Philology of the 19th century: There are no exceptions to a rule.  If we have the best Congress money can buy, then our starting assumption must be that our own congressman, for whom we voted, whose principles we approve, and to whose campaign we have contributed money, is a crook until proved otherwise.  If it is generally true that people in their job or profession seek first to maximize their self interest, we shall not be astonished to find out the megachurch pastors, Catholic bishops, doctors, and social workers are not exceptions.  Many people seem astounded to learn that some physicians are pushing trans-gender procedures as a bonanza--an argument made on camera by physicians at Vanderbilt University hospital.  James Buchanan deservedly won the Nobel Prize for Economics by proving his thesis that public employees are primarily interested in feathering their own nests--an argument similar to Northcote Parkinson's analysis of bureaucracy which led to Parkinson's Law.  Many people think Parkinson's Law, that work expands to fill the time allotted, is only a witticism.  It is witty enough, but it is the statement of a profound truth.

Yes, there are saints and philosophers and decent men and women who live by a higher code.  But you rarely find such people working for Wall Street firms, TV networks, major newspapers, or politicians above the town council level, and even at that low level they constitute a fairly small  minority.  A general way of putting this is that if someone is regularly celebrated in the media, he is almost always a self-seeking crook, whether it is an actor like Alec Baldwin or Kevin Costner, a film director, a political leader like Biden and Netanyahu, a noble leader of a national liberation movement, or especially a humanitarian.  As a dumb kid I realized there generally had to be something wrong with grown men who wanted to go on camping trips with other people's sons.

Mencken tells the story of how his father forced him to take classes at the YMCA.  Whenever Mencken protested about the sports or PT, his father told him to do what he was told.  Then one day, he repeated the YMCA leader's fulminations against alcohol and tobacco, Mencken's father realized he had put his son in the hands of the insane.  Or from my own life, when I was about 19 I was going out with a wholesome athletic young lady, who told me her tennis coach told her the reason I smoked cigarettes in her presence was to get her to smoke.  This was a prelude to persuading her to drink alcohol, and from there it was a moment's work to slip her between the sheets.  I asked her if she was aware that her coach was a Lesbian.  She hotly denied it, but as things developed, it became impossible to deny.

The attitude I am recommending is not cynicism, but only skepticism.  It is based on the Christian and pagan view of human nature as flawed and self-seeking and a lifetime of paying attention to what people do instead of being impressed by what they say.  The next step is to subject your own plans and decisions to the same skepticism, and you can avoid doing a lot of bad things under the delusion that you are only out for the good of other people.  And, above all, always be skeptical of people who profess skepticism.  I have often thought of drawing up a manifesto of skepticism that would be aimed at debunking all the debunkers, showing the inadequacy of their knowledge, their shallowness of understanding, that tawdriness of their motives.  Unfortunately Christopher Hitchens died before I could use him as the poster child of my campaign.

An excursus you are free to skip over:  The English expression "the exception that proves the rule" is no exception, partly because there is so much confusion about what it means. Fowler tries to save the conventional interpretation from the trap of nonsense by interpreting it thusly:  The fact that we can find or invent an exception proves that there is a basic rule. It is generally assumed that the English comes from a legal maxim going back to Cicero: Exceptio probat regulam, casibus exceptis (in cases excepted).  The problem is that exceptio in legal writing, "exceptio" refers to a defense counsel's objection to a principle or line of argument, as in English,  "I take exception to that," while probare in its most basic sense means not prove but subject to a test and later something like to decide something is good or approve.  Thus by taking exception to a stated principle or line of reasoning, we are evaluating its validity.