In the previous entry I made a claim that an empiricist would, by now, want to test a theory that reduced intervention in the Middle East would lead to greater stability, based on the evidence of what the Middle East was like before western intervention escalated during World War I. The main proponents of continued intervention are neoconservatives, and they are not to be confused with being empiricists. They hold to dogmatic beliefs and will cherry-pick whatever evidence they can to justify those fixed beliefs. The question I would like to address now is “Why?” Why do neoconservatives and other dogmatists refuse to treat their beliefs as theories and are so adamant against alternatives being tested?
“Essay 21 – Cowardice and False Neoconservatism” from Systems out of Balance details the neoconservative manifesto. In simplest terms, neoconservatives believe in the spread of democracy in order to achieve greater security and greater morality throughout the world. There is, however, an important caveat to this. Democracy for the neoconservative equates specifically with American democracy, the only legitimate kind in their view. While they may claim to want global security, both their words and actions focus on the specific benefits to American or western security. While they speak of morality in absolute terms they provide no universal foundation for what is moral; morality for them is relative to the western experience.
This relativism to the western experience provides one of three answers to why neoconservatives are dogmatic. Neoconservatives do not have the courage to consider alternatives to their worldview. Democracy practically demands empiricism, demands the experiences of the many to constantly tinker with their own governance. But tinkering threatens unknown change, and any change that does not make things more western leaves neoconservatives fearful. Their biggest neoconservative fear about nonintervention would not be if the Middle East evolved something worse than western democracy, but if they evolved something better.
Testing alternatives to your own dogma requires a certain type of courage, a courage that neoconservatives do not have, and thus they will never embrace the democratic approach to knowledge known as empiricism.
Tags: Interest Groups, Middle Class Politics, Political Misinformation
