Chris Wallace (on Fox News Sunday 6/21/15): Karl, whether you agree with the president on gun control or not, you certainly have to agree with him that we see these cases of mass violence way too often and we see them more often in the United States than in other advanced countries. And I mean, you know, you are in a position to say, what do we do about it whether it’s government, whether it’s community, whether it’s family, how do we stop the violence?
Karl Rove (former George W. Bush advisor and Republican guru): Well, I wish I had an easy answer for that. I don’t think there’s any easy answer. We saw an act of evil, racist, bigoted evil. And to me, the amazing thing about this is it was met with grief and love.
And think about how far we’ve come. 1963, the whole weight of the government throughout the South was to impede finding and holding and bringing to justice the men who perpetrated the bombing and here we saw an entire state, an entire community, an entire nation come together grieving as one, united in the belief that this was an evil act.
So, we have come a long way. Now, maybe there’s some magic law that will keep us from having more of these. I mean, basically, the only way to guarantee that we would dramatically reduce acts of violence involving guns is to basically remove guns from society, and until somebody gets enough oomph to repeal the Second Amendment, that’s not going to happen. I don’t think it’s an answer.
What’s Karl Rove doing? Don’t Republicans usually favor the Second Amendment? Rove appears to be calling for its repeal; or at least implying that its repeal would be a good and necessary thing.
The answer can be found by examining the definition and concept of ideological pragmatism.
Philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand [author of Atlas Shrugged] was talking about Karl Rove when she wrote:
[The Pragmatists] declared that philosophy must be practical and that practicality consists of dispensing with all absolute principles and standards—that there is no such thing as objective reality or permanent truth—that truth is that which works, and its validity can be judged only by its consequences—that no facts can be known with certainty in advance, and anything may be tried by rule-of-thumb—that reality is not firm, but fluid and “indeterminate,” that there is no such thing as a distinction between an external world and a consciousness (between the perceived and the perceiver), there is only an undifferentiated package-deal labeled “experience,” and whatever one wishes to be true, is true, whatever one wishes to exist, does exist, provided it works or makes one feel better.
It’s tempting to label Rove’s statements a “Freudian slip.” A Freudian slip refers to when you say what you really think and feel instead of what you normally claim to think, feel or believe.
However, Rove is a pragmatist. He’s constantly lecturing Republicans who try to take a more consistent or principled approach to politics — as in limiting government, cutting regulations, cutting taxes — to be more “practical” and live in the “real world” of politics where those things are never going to happen.
As Rand wrote, the implicit belief of the philosophical pragmatist is that there is no objective reality, and there are no permanent or fixed truths, or principles, of any kind. The result? We end up with the Democratic Party’s socialist version of truth and principles.
Rove illustrates a fascinating philosophical error and psychological tactic here. On the one hand, he suggests that removing guns from the citizenry is “magical” thinking, and cannot be accomplished. On the other hand, he suggests that it still might be a good thing to outlaw all guns; he even implies that he thinks outlawing guns would, in actual fact, “remove” them from society — including from the hands of people who really matter, i.e. violent criminals.
Yes, this is completely at odds with the arguments that most Republicans make, including most of the Republicans he has advised and worked for, over the years.
But Rove is a political consultant. He makes his living at attempting to help politicians (Republicans, up until now) win elections. It’s clearly his view that since Democrats continue to win the White House, and at present show all indication of continuing to do so, that Republicans must change their views, or at least make those views fuzzier. By providing an equivocal and incoherent statement about the Second Amendment, Rove opens the door to a suggestion that Republicans can now be against guns too — even while they’re in favor of gun rights.
These are the attitudes, words and actions of a philosophical pragmatist. Rove’s pragmatism is nothing new. Pragmatism has always been rampant on the Republican side. The Democratic side? Not so much.
People on the Democratic side of the spectrum have demonized Rove as an ideological conservative, but Karl Rove is not an ideological anything. He stands for whatever advances the interests of power. If the prevailing winds suggest that being both for and against the Second Amendment at one and the same time might help Republicans squeak by and win a presidential election for the first time in 12 years — well, so what, then?
“What works, works. The truth is what works. Logic, facts and certainly principle do not matter.” That’s what philosophical pragmatists define as “practical.” How practical is it to run on a contradictory message while the other side is unyielding, unflinching and uncompromising, as Obama and the Democrats have been, on gun control and everything else? And how practical is it to stand for no principles in particular, and then hope to achieve something when you actually manage to gain office for a few years? The pragmatist doesn’t think that far ahead.
It’s hard to judge who’s worse: The philosophical pragmatist, like Karl Rove, who knows that “gun control” is magical thinking, and yet who still longs for it; or the ideologically consistent people in the Obama and Hillary Clinton camps who harbor no such concerns for objective reality when it comes to getting their will and their way.
One thing is for sure. Anyone who favors the Second Amendment is right to detest Karl Rove. It’s not that he came out against it; it’s that he won’t defend any principles at all, because that’s not what pragmatists do.
At least the uncompromising authoritarians on the gun control side state it plain and simple: “You don’t have an individual right to protect yourself; only the government may do that.” Yes, even Obama is still a little skittish about taking on the Second Amendment too directly. But if the only defenders of that Amendment are Karl Rove, rest assured that Obama and the other opponents of individual rights have nothing to fear.
Rove is not unlike the “opponents” of socialism who nevertheless concede it as the ideal. Rove is likewise saying that the “magical” thinking of outlawing guns would undoubtedly be a good thing — if only we could attempt it. He tries to have it both ways. “I agree with you gun control advocates that removing guns from the citizenry is a good thing; we just can’t accomplish it.”
Oh, really? What about Obama’s “pen and phone,” his phrase for extra-Constitutional executive orders? And Hillary’s pen and phone, if she wins? They’ll show you what they can accomplish, and if the Constitution gets in their way — tough. These people do not care.
America’s continuing crisis results from the fact that we have one principled party, the Democrats, who are consistent and ideological in their belief in the totalitarian welfare-regulatory state; and one pragmatic, unprincipled party, which stands for almost nothing in particular, and mainly wish to gain and hold as much power as they can, without anything in particular to achieve.
What Rove does not understand, and never will grasp, is that philosophical conviction actually is practical when it’s in defense of rationally and objectively valid ideas. Economic freedom and inalienable individual rights are the most practical things in the world, so long as we unflinchingly stand up for them. So long as we leave the defense of freedom’s remnants in America to people like Karl Rove, those freedoms will most certainly continue to fade away.
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