Whenever I comment on various forms of reasoning—and especially on logical fallacies—I cannot avoid recalling one particular text in which a liberal champion of political correctness displayed an almost touching degree of honesty. I do not know who stands behind the Substack account in question, but several thousand paying subscribers place it among the more influential voices of its kind. The author was discussing an old television appearance by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke from 2008. In the end, he was forced to concede that Duke was correct on every individual point and that his arguments were logically airtight.
What, then, is a liberal supposed to do in such a situation? According to the author, the answer is obvious: demand that viewers “absorb the correct conclusion from the culture around them, to feel what we feel, and to suppress the argument unexamined because the person making it has been socially discredited.” The writer aptly calls this the “David Duke Test.” A sophisticated reader, we are told, should be capable of distinguishing David Duke from other authors and judging his arguments by a different standard.
And that is indeed how the system works. A few slogans in the proper media outlets are enough to set the politically correct crowd in motion toward a virtual lynching. But if you expect this kind of behavior from your supporters, you cannot allow them to attempt applying logical standards on their own when sorting and evaluating texts and opinions. You must instead move to the position that “logical thinking is useful, but it should only be used sometimes.”
Yet the statement “logical thinking should only be used sometimes” is ultimately identical to the statement “logical thinking should never be used.” Both claims imply that logical methods are not fully reliable and that some higher principle exists above them—a principle that decides when logical criteria may be applied and when they may not.
Once you accept that premise, it will reliably corrupt your thinking. It is not the sole cause of elite imbecility, but it contributes to it in no small measure.
It also helps explain why such a ruling elite has not yet been swept aside. The opposition is immersed in the same form of intellectual decay.
Taken together, this leads toward civilizational decline and perhaps eventually civilizational collapse. Still, to the author’s credit, it should be added that he regards the criterion of “social discrediting” as merely provisional and would prefer to replace it with something more substantial.