Our thought for the day comes from Timothy Snyder via Thomas Melia at American Interest:
Historian Timothy Snyder explains the seriousness of this distinction between fact and fiction in his brief 2017 manifesto, On Tyranny. “To abandon facts,†he writes, “is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. … Post-truth is pre-fascism.â€
If there is a Resistance today, it is against facts. Facts have no political party although what you’ll accept as a fact does. We can’t rely on experts to tell us what the facts are without some basis for evaluating their assessments. In the 115th Congress there are 11 scientists or engineers (14 if you include physicians). There are 167 lawyers most of whom haven’t taken a science or mathematics course since high school and, since for the average senator that was nearly a half century ago, which means they very little understanding of scientific or statistical evidence.
It may be true that the Congresses of the federal period had much higher percentages of lawyers than those of today but that was when you became a lawyer by reading law. Those lawyers, like Jefferson, were also engineers, scientists, and probably knew as much about medicine as most of the physicians of the time. We are now in an era of specialization and most of today’s Congressmen have actually specialized in being Congressmen. They know little else.
If this is what professionalism gives us, we need more amateurs.
And yet the cult of the professional politician certainly dominates media and academia, seems to be accepted by voters and, naturally, is considered the natural order by career politicians.
A good part of the vitriol against Trump derives from him exposing the folly of this.
There are some things in which I prefer to rely on experts. Medicine, for example. Professional holders of elective office are experts in that but I don’t believe that expertise is one that actually serves the public.
I think it’s pretty obvious why there are more lawyers in politics – the skillset aligns much better than scientists, who are trained to be analytical and therefore aren’t as good at the kinds equivocation necessary to succeed in politics.
The Irony is that all these lawyer politicians don’t actually read or write their own bills – there are specialist experts in the House and Senate do that for them.
That’s exactly right. I think the argument can be made that being a lawyer is actually a handicap for a Congressman. Into the future I think it will become increasingly the case that neither the practice of law nor working for a Congressman is the path for becoming a Congressman.
Also, given the way today’s practice of law works, IMO the Congress would be better off having laws drafted by contending teams of lawyers.
The article makes good points, but we don’t need scientific experts to tell us that NRA-friendly politicians are blocking the CDC from doing research on guns and violence or that Devin Nunes is an idiot. We just need people who are willing to tell the actual truth without resorting to Orwellian cliches about how great it is to tell the truth. Timothy Snyder, btw, is a real writer, but he writes books about genocide in the Ukraine in the 30s and how the Soviets learned to kill properly, and not dumb op-eds about what American means, has meant, and shall mean.
1. Well, that’s, right Dave. And the problem.
2. Yes, Andy. Staff do the dirt work. (hear the echo?) But I don’t read every word of the legal docs that our high priced NY attorney’s craft either. I just have done this so long I know what questions to ask them. They know what words need to be used. That doesn’t bother me as much. But you can bet I, period full stop, understand the investment dynamics and general legal construction of a potential investment up front. Our politicians just seem to be half salesmen half political horse traders.
Open question. Is it not true that the majority of legislators used to come from the military?
In 1965 the majority of Congressmen had served in the military but I think that was a byproduct of WWII and the universal draft that persisted for many years thereafter. I don’t have the figures to back it up but I suspect that between 1900 and 1955 very few Congressmen were veterans (before 1900 I suspect quite a few had served in the Civil War).
I don’t have the figures handy, but last I checked veterans are over represented in Congress compared to their portion of the total population.
That’s right, Andy, a higher percentage of Congressmen are veterans than Americans are generally. However, it’s still far below the 60% it was in 1965.
I woud heartily support having more non-lawyers in Congress, but I do understand why they end up there. If you are writing laws, lawyers kind of make sense. I don’t think you need non-lawyers so much of the professional expertise they bring, but just for a different POV. I think it is pretty much a given nowadays that whatever engineer, scientist, physician or whatever professional enters Congress will defer their professional training to the political ideology of the party they join in Congress, but they will still bring a different world view. Plus, on things that are not ideological, whatever that might possibly be anymore, their expertise might help.
Steve
But they aren’t writing laws, steve. They’re making policies while staff lawyers write the laws. As we’ve learned they aren’t even reading laws. I think you’ll find that your average farmworker can not read laws as well as a lawyer.
The assumptions made by Hamilton in Federalist #35 are no longer operative. The learned professions now constitute interest groups. There should be no more preference for lawyers in the Congress than there is for physicians or astrophysicists.