Dealing with Fanatics (essay)

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Don't believe all you think!

1

Our Founding Fathers do not seem to have had to work or struggle with fanatics. They themselves were not motivated by dogma, bias, certitude, superstition, anger or fear, and – apparently – neither were those they had to work with and against, not even the British. Thus, the Founders were able to operate on the basis of observation and experience, reason, knowledge, wide reading (even outside their own culture), practicality, and what they would have called “enlightened self-interest” – a reasonable and predictable interest in providing sufficiently for themselves and their families - and they seem to have been confident of the likelihood that others would operate the same way...at least more often than not.

Another defining trait of the Founders was their optimistic expectation that individuals and also societies could be expected to improve or make progress.

As the decades passed, our forebears spread all the way across the continent, reaching their geographical limits, and the nation apparently became less confident in the future and more vulnerable to intermittent waves of fanaticism. But unlike most others of the basic realities we still face today, this does not seem one for which the Founders of the United States can provide us much guidance.

Americans' vulnerability to fanaticism has made it even more difficult than it would have been otherwise to maintain the republican democracy that is the most precious gift we have received from those who created our nation.

2

Just about all of us pride ourselves on our heritage of democracy and the republican forms of government that facilitate democracy. The fanatics among us claim to do so as well, but as true fanatics, they do not in fact believe in liberty (or justice) for all but only for those whom they perceive as like themselves.

Despite pious claims to the contrary, they do not seek to emulate the Founding Fathers; and, unlike Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and the others, they are not motivated by knowledge and wide learning, observation, reason, and practicality but instead by emotion, belief, dogma, bias, superstition, force, and their own superiority to their compatriots.

For democracies to work, most citizens must be confident in the basic decency, the common sense, and the good will of most other citizens. Not believing that the majority have these qualities would be to question the wisdom of democratic rule itself. Those of us who prefer not to think or behave like fanatics do not want to undermine rule by “we the people.”

3

The fanatics who threaten our essential institutions and conventions look back to forerunners who believed (or claimed) to find truth not by looking around them and by learning from the observations and experiences of others, but instead by looking within. Like all religious men and women, they were more interested in eternal truths than with the everyday facts that surrounded them and surround all the rest of us. Those capable of finding within themselves the higher truths, then as now, may be educated or not, predictable or not, public-spirited or not, disingenuous or not.

They are convinced and passionately believe that they know the one and eternal truth and that the rest of us do not. This is the basis of their elitism; in matters of debate, their position is right, and differing opinions are wrong.

We can tolerate this snobbish, anti-intellectual stance in a democratic republic and have in fact done so for generations. When a majority of Americans have agreed with the view espoused by the fanatics, we have passed laws and have taken other actions along the lines they believed were right. When the majority of Americans have not agreed with the fanatics’ opinion, however, we together have done something different. Then and now, what they do in their own lives is their business, not ours; but as a society, the majority are surely going to adopt policies and allow personal behaviors that the fanatics deem wrong, contrary to their "higher truths." We have muddled along well enough in this fashion for 150-200 years.

In our time, however, we are facing several circumstances that underline the threat to democratic rule posed by fanatics.

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Fanatics gain true and certain knowledge from looking within. They proceed by starting with the truth they have discovered in this fashion and then look for facts or knowledge gained through observation or by experience of others which supports or confirms the truth with which they began. An old joke seems to fit them: they use information as a drunk uses a lamppost - for support, not for illumination. Once they have found an observation or a fact that can be interpreted to support the a priori truth with which they began, they sometimes use the techniques of reasoning – or at least rhetoric – in order to convince others.

Since they begin from the premise that they have superior knowledge, of moral truths as well as others, fanatics think it is their duty to convince others. This usually takes the form of exhortation or their kind of argumentation, appeal to emotions, and warnings of dire consequences for those who do not come to believe as they do.

But none of this is new to American culture. For generations, fanatics have tried to convince others of the truth of their positions and values by “reason,” inspiration, and attempts to instill fear (or what could be called intimidation). What appears to be a growing threat now is that more and more fanatics are seeking to impose their views on others by force.

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Fanatics are ruled by emotion, not reason; in our time it is fear that seems to rule them most often. Since the others in the world are not in touch with fanatics' eternal truths, they cannot be trusted. In fact, they should be seen as a threat and every expression of opinion contrary to the fanatics' way of thinking should not only be rejected but stamped out, destroyed, since it is viewed as an attack.

The high degree to which the fanatics among us today think and act this way is new. Not only is it in direct contrast to our Founding Fathers, who respected others' opinion even when they disagreed; it also inhibits the discourse that must be allowed to fluorish if our republican democracy is to thrive.

And the emotion that typically follows fear is anger. If you are significantly different from me, I despise you; I hate you. If you try to say something blatantly contrary to my eternal truth, my canon, I will angrily shout you down. I will call you ugly names. Secretly or publically I will condone violence exacted upon you or your sort, and I will take every opportunity to promote such violence in the future. If you oppose my personal values, you are my enemy; I not only fear you; you and your allies make me furious!

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Since our time's fanatics are so susceptible to fear and so easily moved to anger, they are particularly vulnerable to intimidation and manipulation. To win their support and gain power over them, a cynical would-be leader need only express passionate adherence to one of their cherished tenets or behaviors, using their vocabulary when it already exists and, when it does not, creating emotive and simple phrases designed to capture their passionate conviction.

Such phrases need simply to identify the particular threat to their tenet in question and identify it - or those who support it - as the enemy to be feared and reviled. The fanatics' emotions may then be enlisted in support of a policy or an action that the would-be leader wants, even if he or she wants it for an undisclosed reason, perhaps merely for personal gain. In this fashion, the fanatics' proclivity to fear and anger is rather easily manipulated in support of actions and policies of which they are unaware.

Since their form of "reasoning" starts with emotion, no evidence challenging their conviction or their leader can threaten their allegiance to the leader's cause. Only observations or facts that can be used to defeat the odious enemy are credible since they alone are in tune with the emotional commitment the fanatic has already made.


7

Fanatics are essentially spontaneous, moved by passions, but those who have the power to exploit them - by hypocrisy, intimidation (appealing to their built-in fear), and manipulation (appealing to their anger) - are free to operate by a long-range plan designed explicitly to prolong their own control.

Many fanatics themselves are not particularly self-interested – to an astonishing extent – but cynical big businesses and the media that big businesses now control are essentially greedy, for both money and power. This is a critical source of the prudent concern that today our repulican democracy, pursuing "liberty and justice for all," is in peril.

Since so many, loud, media voices today espouse the views fanatics are known to hold and to identify as enemies to be hated and attacked opponents of these views - though fanatics remain in the minority - they are mobilized by self-interested big media to "defend the faith."  They can thus be unwittingly used to support the policies and actions that their leaders secretly pursue for personal gain and extension of their own power. And since they are convinced it is their duty to impose their views on others, fanatics are willing to use force and violence when necessary to do so, extending their leaders' control or at least influence over others.

Through intimidation and manipulation, fanatics can be led to espouse a cause that more reflective individuals - like the humane and rational Founding Fathers whom we all profess to venerate - would probably see as distinct from the fanatics' own cherished beliefs, seeking to force not only their adherents but all of us to follow their narrow dictates and in so doing to bring us under the control of leaders whose goals they do not accurately perceive.

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