Joe Carter discusses the divide between “Joe Sixpacks” and “elites.” He made this observation, which I think does get at the heart of the problem:
Consider foreign policy. For the JSPs, the opinion of a twenty-something Army Sergeant who just got back from patrolling the streets of Baghdad carries more weight than the twenty-something Harvard grad who writes for The American Prospect or The Weekly Standard.
That’s right, which doesn’t say much for the “JSP” perspective in this case. The “elites” in this case are trying to have broader perspective and are attempting to think strategically and not tactically. That is, they are attempting to make arguments about policy. They may be good arguments, they may be terrible, but they are arguments that are necessarily more abstract and also wider in focus. The danger of abstraction is that it can lead to utopian programs or theoretical constructs that bear no relationship to the real world, which result in destructive and coercive policies (see Iraq, war in). Abstraction is unavoidable, however, if we are going to be able to think about large-scale problems in a coherent way.
Unless we’re discussing the tactical situation in Baghdad or Iraq as a whole, it’s not at all clear that the opinion of the sergeant is necessarily more useful or valid when determining what our Iraq policy ought to be. The two don’t have to be in opposition, and ought to be complementary. There’s no question that people with first-hand experience of a war zone have extensive practical knowledge and understand the way things really are, at least in the areas where they’ve been, so they have knowledge that others do not have and cannot readily acquire. There is no guarantee, however, that this perspective is a better basis for setting policy. Policymakers, journalists and pundits cannot and must not be oblivious to that first-hand experience, but that experience cannot be the only or main basis for policymaking and debate.
What to do?
1 year ago
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