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Don’t Trust the Experts
Daniel O’Rourke
01/08/10
Beware the experts. They know everything about their field of expertise, but that very specialization restricts their vision and wisdom. Their knowledge is exceptional and in one specialized area remarkable, but paradoxically that erudition narrows their view. The experts see things clearly and bolster their positions with logical arguments, footnotes, citations, and precedents - but the reasoning is limited by the logic of their expertise. Remember, logic is like whiskey at some point it loses its beneficial effects - and too much of it can make us delusional.
I reflected on the limitations of experts when I tried to get my head around the recent Supreme Court decisions on handgun legislation in Chicago and Washington, D.C. As the New York Times editorialized, “The arguments that led to Monday’s decision undermining Chicago’s law were infuriatingly abstract, but the results will be all too real and bloody.”
Any cop on the beat could have told them that, but the justices were more interested in the application and limitations of the Second Amendment to federal and non-federal jurisdictions than fearing being shot or killed by handguns in Washington or Chicago. Too bad we don’t have a former police chief on the Court. He would bring some common sense to their narrowly pedantic discussions. As San Rayburn once told Lyndon Johnson about all the Ivy-league experts in JFK’s cabinet, “I just wish one of them had run for country sheriff.”
The limitation of experts came to mind again when I heard retired generals and military experts expound on President Obama’s firing General McChrystal and appointing General Petraeus to administer this unending and God-forsaken war in Afghanistan.
These jurist and generals are intelligent people some are brilliant - certainly more intelligent than this columnist - but their thoughts wander far from reality. The Generals’ words were not rooted “in events on the ground.” I thought of medieval theologians, who were also, highly educated, multilingual and brilliant (in their field) arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Despite their expertise, they were off somewhere in fantasyland. I have the same reactions when the Generals pontificate on “counterinsurgency,” “take and hold strategies,” “collateral damage” and training a basically illiterate Afghan army. Or when they try to spin the jerry-rigged election of President Karzai or the continuing corruption in his administration.
But back to the Supreme Court. Like many others, I had the same reactions to experts with their heads in the air and feet off the ground concerning January’s corporations voting right decision. A bitterly divided Court overruled important precedents by ruling that the governments may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. Some said the decision was a misreading of the First Amendment on free speech; others ominously predicted that it is the end of democratic elections, as we know them. Strong criticisms of the Court, but it deserved it.
I thought of the American composer and satirist Frank Zappa who said, “The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.” Or of the 18th Century Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke who said the study of law sharpens the mind - by narrowing it. The corporation voting decision does not pass the smell test for the average non-expert, but for now it is the law of the land.
Certainly, everything legal is not prudent, moral or just. Everything Adolph Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal under existing German law. Today no one would claim that his actions were just or moral. They might have been legal, but they were horrifically evil. Often the courts in any nation don’t deliver justice but only legalities, which experts plodding argue.
I suspect some will characterize this column as anti-intellectual. Rather it is an appeal for a broader, more human, intellectual approach. In fact it is a plea for a more liberal education in our law schools and military academies. What would happened if those school curriculums required future justices and generals to read poets like W. H. Aden or novelists like T.S. Elliot? Or biographies like David McCullough” on Harry Truman? What if they were required to watch the documentary film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of [Secretary of Defense] Robert McNamara and then report on it? Such assignments would broaden their vision and make it difficult to ignore views competing with the narrow specialization of their expertise. This would help future generals and jurists bring a human and humane perspective to the political and policy issues they will inevitably confront.
The words of Saint Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:6, are germane here, “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
Retired from the Administration at State University of New York at Fredonia, Daniel O’Rourke lives in Cassadaga, NY. His newspaper column appears in the Observer, Dunkirk, NY on the second and fourth Thursday each month. A grandfather, Dan is a married Catholic priest. He has published a book of his previous columns, The Spirit at Your Back. To read about the book or send comments on this column visit his website http://www.danielcorourke.com/