Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
When surveying the modern political landscape one thing stands out: the unreasonableness of so many opinions. One can find mainstream figures who believe that men can become women, Hamas protests are totally acceptable, and it is fascist to ban pornographic books in public school libraries. Indeed, the modern leftist attitude is one of skepticism towards our ability to know right from wrong and truth from falsehood. To tell a person that right and wrong exist is to deny their lived experience and foist one’s own conception of the world upon them. Hence the new phrase “my truth.” We must keep an open mind to all perspectives because they are all equally valid. Proponents of this view would do well to follow the advice of G.K. Chesterton: “Do not be so open-minded that your brain falls out.”
Unfortunately, the problem of open-mindedness leading to perverse viewpoints has also infected certain segments of the right. Whereas the left displays skepticism towards our ability to understand objective moral rules, many conservatives have adopted an abiding suspicion of “official” narratives. The regime in power is viewed as being so corrupt that one must be skeptical of everything. Thus, popular commentators like Tucker Carlson frequently claim that they are merely asking questions in order to find the truth. While there is certainly nothing wrong with asking questions, one must do so with a firm moral compass beforehand. If one asks questions without a prior set of values then they will be unable to interpret the answers they receive.
Indeed, this spirit of uncritical open-mindedness was put on full display in a recent interview between Darryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson. Cooper, who hosts a so-called history podcast, attempted to rewrite the history of WWII with Churchill as a villain on par with Hitler. Cooper told Carlson that in order to provoke his podcast partner he “told him that I think — and maybe I’m being a little hyperbolic, maybe — but I told him, maybe trying to provoke him a little bit, that I thought Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War.” He then portrayed the Nazi death camps as unfortunate accidents that were the result of improper logistics. Despite (or perhaps because of) all this, Carlson called Cooper “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”
In light of his other statements, Carlson’s willingness to entertain such absurd and immoral ideas is likely a result of his profound skepticism. For example, he recently said that “the fact that these lunatics have used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history disgusts me.” Apparently he came to the conclusion that because government officials say Churchill is good, he must be bad. Such fallacious reasoning is the mark of an uncritical skeptic who has allowed his brain to fall out and is a prime example of how unbounded skepticism destroys reasoning. Skepticism does not produce affirmative belief and leaves one defenseless against the depredations of the unjust.
The only people who are fit to relentlessly question the regime and the “official” narrative are those who have a deep and abiding moral sense. Without this, the questioner cannot filter out the true from the false and the good from the bad. Skepticism must never be the driving force behind any intellectual movement. Skepticism towards moral truths led the left to embrace moral relativism. On the right, a mere skepticism of the “official” narrative will lead to similarly dark places.
