It's all about stacking the deck

You can't hide from God. That's what they say in the Bible. If God exists then God sees everything and knows everything. We humans lack that perspective. It isn't possible for anyone of us to see everything and know everything. But that doesn't stop us from feeling certain that what we know is true. Indeed, if we didn't feel that way we would never commit ourselves to anything.

In order to engage in an argument I have to respect my opponent. I have to be willing to listen to their side in order to answer or question their claims. But by participating in an argument I am taking the risk that I could be shown to be wrong. It's only by risking being wrong that we can be open to discovering the truth. Unless each party to an argument is willing to be convinced by the other it's just people talking past each other or one person attempting to bully another.

Recent history is full of examples of people who believed that they, like God, couldn't possibly be wrong. When these people gained power they always destroy Open Society. Communism and fascism were political systems that imposed their perspective on everyone by force. The communists believed that they had a monopoly on truth and so they forbade political and moral dissent. They knew they were right and they refused to risk being wrong. Every professional and every “elected” representative had to be a member of the communist party. The representatives didn't debate the proposals of the communist leaders, they simply rubber stamped them. The legal system always ruled in favour of the communist state because it was always right.

Nowadays communism and fascism are spent forces that have lost all credibility so they are no longer such a danger to Open Society. People who now take the “God's eye” perspective are called Fundamentalists. And like the communists and fascists, they try to stack the deck in their favour whenever they gain power. I agree with George Soros that there are two kinds of modern fundamentalists. Religious fundamentalists and Market Fundamentalists. Most people believe that they themselves are right but what distinguishes Fundamentalists is their refusal to risk being wrong in a fair argument.

For instance, there is no evidence that would convince a Christian Fundamentalist of the truth of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Fundamentalists pretend to engage in argument with evolutionary biologists but behind the scenes they try to stack the deck by taking over school boards, by getting states to ban the teaching of evolution and by intimidating publishers from including the subject of evolution in high school biology textbooks.


Market Fundamentalists believe that free markets are always more beneficial than government regulated markets. Like Christian Fundamentalists there is no evidence that would ever convince them that they are wrong. Not the rising income gap between the rich and poor, not the demise of the middle class, not the “dirty thirties”, not the recent sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and not the spectre of global warming. In fact, a good portion of U.S. Republicans still believe that global warming is a hoax.

The Republican party under the guidance of Karl Rove has gone farthest in bringing the two kinds of fundamentalists together as the "base" for their electoral campaigns. Rove's signature is the anonymous smearing of the opponents and critics of the Bush administration. The swift-boat ads that slandered John Kerry in 2004, the whisper campaign against John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries, and the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame in order to get back at her husband for publicly casting doubt on Bush's WMD justification for invading Iraq - these are all associated with Karl Rove.

Rove is widely suspected of orchestrating the systematic harassment and suppression of minority voters that helped decide the election and re-election of George W. Bush. Then there is the firing of six federal prosecutors who refused to aggressively pursue dubious cases of voter fraud during the 2004 campaign. And the recent suppression and distortion of scientific evidence of global warming by the Bush administration. They all lead back to Rove.

It is no coincidence that Karl Rove identifies the Republican party with the two kinds of fundamentalism: market and religious. He and his boss, George W. Bush believe that they, like God, are always right.That's why they refuse to accept the risk of being wrong - the risk of losing a fair argument or a fair election. Like the fascists and communists of yesterday, they are doing everything in their power to stack the deck in their favour.