In defense of close-mindedness

Jonathan Chait is not open-minded about destroying Social Security — and he makes an excellent case today that there’s nothing wrong with that.

In the Social Security debate, apparently the worst thing anybody can say about you is that you’ve made up your mind. A Washington Post editorial writer penned an Op-Ed article praising “the thoughtful voice of a Democrat not reflexively opposed to personal accounts.” Joe Lieberman’s spokesman piously insists the Connecticut senator is “still in a listening and learning stage and keeping an open mind.” Well, good for him. But I’ve read several books and many articles advocating Social Security privatization, and it still strikes me as a horrible idea. Can I stop listening and learning now? Or must I remain thoughtfully agnostic while the same unconvincing arguments are repeated ad nauseam, in the hope that another repetition will finally sway me?

What’s on display here is something you could call militant open-mindedness. Of course, it’s good to have an open mind. Like all virtues, however, open-mindedness can be taken too far. In this case, it’s being used to self-righteously impugn the motives of everybody else — or at least everybody who has a clear position — while placing one’s own beyond reproach.

Quite right. Since when is it considered dishonorable to be well informed and capable of drawing conclusions?

In the fight over the future of Social Security, being inflexible is hardly a vice. Republicans want to privatize the system, fulfilling a multi-generational GOP dream of killing the program once and for all. Dems, meanwhile, disagree and resisting the effort with all their might. Who cares who’s open-minded?

The right has one policy goal, the left has the opposite goal — high-minded detachment from knowledgeable lawmakers, in this situation, sounds more like a character flaw than a trait worthy of praise. The facts are widely available and the debate has been raging in political circles for decades. Lawmakers, who sought public office because of their policy expertise and willingness to make tough decisions, have no reason to straddle the fence, and newspaper editorials have no reason to praise their indecisiveness.