Knowing What Is Right

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“Few things have captured in microcosm what has gone so painfully wrong, where racial issues are concerned, like the recent election for mayor of Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, under whom the murder rate has gone down and the school children's test scores have gone up, was resoundingly defeated for re-election. […] One key fact tells much of the story: Mayor Fenty received more than 70 percent of the white vote in Washington. His opponent received more than 80 percent of the black vote. Both men are black. But the head of the school system that [Fenty] appointed is Asian and the chief of police is a white woman. More than that, most of the teachers who were fired were black. […] There are many reasons but the trend is ominous. One key factor was the creation, back in the 1960s, of a whole government-supported industry of race hustling. President Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty"-- a war that we have lost, by the way-- bankrolled all kinds of local "leaders" and organizations with the taxpayers' money, in the name of community "participation" in shaping the policies of government. […] Lyndon Johnson once said that it is not hard to do the right thing. What is hard is knowing what is right. We can give him credit for good intentions, so long as we remember what road is paved with good intentions.” [emphasis added]
— Thomas Sowell, 2010/09/21 (townhall.com)

Lyndon Johnson was wise beyond his ken. And I do sincerely believe he meant well. But good intentions, and even knowing intuitively that "knowing what is right" is hard, is not sufficient basis for social engineering policy on a grand scale. Because "knowing what is right" is not just hard; it is beyond knowing, a priori. How do I know this? Because, dear reader, no major attempt at proactive social engineering has ever succeeded since 1787. There are simply too many unknown variables, as well as too many unforeseen and unintended consequences.

The only approach that has ever worked, with spectacular general (albeit not universal) improvements for society, is free market capitalism in a constitutionally-constrained free society. Every attempt at proactive social-engineering legislation leads to an unending cycle of kludge retrofits to fix bugs, close loopholes, and tune the outcomes, which inevitably no one can possibly be satisfied with. The best example is the IRS Tax Code. Another example in the making is Obamacare, which no one will ever know completely despite what that nitwit Nancy Pelosi claims.

The Obama and His like-minded nincompoops are fond of disparaging conservatives as "the party of no". But in the circumstances where both Chambers of Congress and the President are hell-bent for proactive social engineering policy, the best and only rational position the minority party can cling to is "just say no". An alternative comprehensive and proactive social-engineering policy is not, I repeat not, the answer to our problems, whatever those problems are perceived to be. That approach has been repudiated time and time again.

The best approach must be modeled on the most successful legislation in human history — the Constitution of the United States, which has been amended a grand total of 27 times in our Nation's 200-plus years (the First 10 Amendments being cotemporal with the main document itself). All the Amendments were incremental modifications to adjust the great concept itself in some limited detail that was found lacking. None of them were a complete and monstrous overhaul of what had already proven to be conceptually sound.

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