Since We Agree Neither Upon Principles Nor Upon Demonstrations There is No Place for Argument

From Season Three, Episode Four of The Newsroom: [It] is toxic. It poisons the national conversation and culture.

Not committed to having a coherent view about things like that - Michael Walzer: Can There be a Decent Left?

(The post title is from Francis Bacon, Novum Organum.)


Ta-Nehisi Coates in his own words:

1.
Sean Illing quotes Ta-Nehisi Coates:

“You write to your son, ‘Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage.’ The innocent world of the dream is actually built on the broken bodies of those kept down below. If there were no black bodies to oppress, the affluent Dreamers ‘would have to determine how to build their suburbs on something other than human bones, how to angle their jails toward something other than a human stockyard, how to erect a democracy independent of cannibalism.”

2.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells:

[Jeffrey] Goldberg asked what [Ta-Nehisi Coates] would do if he were in [Mitch] Landrieu’s position — surely there was something, “I don’t know what I’d do if I were mayor, but I could tell you what I’d do if I was king.” [Ta-Nehisi Coates would] let criminals out of prison, he said. “And, by the way, I include violent criminals in that.” Goldberg asked what he meant by “violent.” “Gun crime, too,” Coates said. (Emphasis added)

3.
Manuel Roig-Franzia:

But what also has been notable is the reaction of like-minded readers to the piece, which took two years to complete. Everywhere he goes, Coates hears versions of the same plea: What about my group? What about Native Americans? What about Latino immigrants? What about me?

“You get here and people say, ‘Why can’t you do that for our community?’ ” Coates says one morning at a Capitol Hill coffee shop. He calls the reaction “disrespectful” ... Disrespectful because he believes the experience of blacks in America deserves its own, focused examination.

4.
Terry Gross, Fresh Air:

Ta-Nehisi Coates: There was definitely another part of me that basically recognized them [the police] as another element within the society, within the community, with no real moral difference from the crews and the gangs and the, you know, packs of folks who dispensed violence throughout the neighborhood. ...

5.
Terry Gross, continued:

Ta-Nehisi Coates (On the unjustified shooting of Prince Jones by police): Oh, it was devastating. It totally devastated me. A year later 9/11 happened and I just - I had no compassion. I had none. I was cold. I was absolutely, absolutely cold because they killed him. They killed him, and no one was held accountable. (Emphasis added)

These statements by Ta-Nehisi Coates reveal that he does not agree at all with fundamental and indispensable principles of our liberal, public-spirited, egalitarian democracy. They also show that his "demonstrations" (his rhetoric, his "arguments") are indifferent to the criterion of evidence and reason, to the standard of good faith,* and to the principle that fallacy discredits.

As far back as 2002, Communitarian Michael Walzer refuted those who, like Ta-Nehisi Coates in (5.) above, acted as if the murder of three thousand of their fellow citizens was justified:

Michael Walzer:

Those emotions [festering resentment, ingrown anger,] were plain to see in the left's reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack or to acknowledge the human pain it caused, in the schadenfreude of so many of the first responses, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved. Many people on the left recovered their moral balance in the weeks that followed; there is at least the beginning of what should be a long process of self-examination. ...

Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as politically incorrect. That’s why they had such difficulty responding emotionally to the attacks of September 11 or joining in the expressions of solidarity that followed. Equally important, that’s why their participation in the policy debate after the attacks was so odd; their proposals (turn to the UN, collect evidence against bin Laden, and so on) seem to have been developed with no concern for effectiveness and no sense of urgency. They talked and wrote as if they could not imagine themselves responsible for the lives of their fellow-citizens. That was someone else’s business; the business of the left was...what? To oppose the authorities, whatever they did. The good result of this opposition was a spirited defense of civil liberties. But even this defense displayed a certain willful irresponsibility and ineffectiveness, because so many leftists rushed to the defense of civil liberties while refusing to acknowledge that the country faced real dangers--as if there was no need at all to balance security and freedom. Maybe the right balance will emerge spontaneously from the clash of rightwing authoritarianism and leftwing absolutism, but it would be better practice for the left to figure out the right balance for itself, on its own; the effort would suggest a responsible politics and a real desire to exercise power, some day.

But what really marks the left, or a large part of it, is the bitterness that comes with abandoning any such desire. The alienation is radical. How else can one understand the unwillingness of people who, after all, live here, and whose children and grandchildren live here, to join in a serious debate about how to protect the country against future terrorist attacks? There is a pathology in this unwillingness, and it has already done us great damage. (Emphasis added)

In thirteen years, Ta-Nehisi Coates has not "recovered [his] moral balance."

(1.) repeats Ta-Nehisi Coates' assertion, a year ago, that "Slavery Made America":  [He tells his son in his latest book] “The innocent world of the dream is actually built on the broken bodies of those kept down below. If there were no black bodies to oppress, the affluent Dreamers ‘would have to determine how to build their suburbs on something other than human bones, how to angle their jails toward something other than a human stockyard, how to erect a democracy independent of cannibalism.”

This is economics as magical thinking. If there had never been a slave in North America the United States would be more prosperous than it is now. Slaves are less productive than free men for many reasons, among which are greater motivation and better education on the part of the free. Coates has inadvertently implied that, except for its moral problem, slavery is good economics and good utilization of human resources.

That is utter lunacy. (For that matter, "cannibalism?") 

(2.) [If he was king Ta-Nehisi Coates would] let criminals out of prison. ... “And, by the way, I include violent criminals in that.” Goldberg asked what he meant by “violent.” “Gun crime, too.”

It should be clear, even to Ta-Nehisi Coates' progressive sympathizers among national journalists, that rejecting the rule of law ought to disqualify anyone who poses as a political columnist. His assertion, in (4.) that public law enforcement officials are not morally different in principle from members of criminal gangs would make the law of the jungle the law of the land. (In this he echoes Michel Foucault's assertion that all power is the same: there is no moral difference between "power" in the hands of criminal justice system civil servants and "power" in the hands of violent felons.)

It may be relevant that seldom, if ever, has a journalist in a democracy expressed even an implied wish to be a totalitarian ruler. 

(3.) In a free society, in which the citizens constitute the government, "we are all in this together," as President Barack Obama has noted. Two of the first three words of the Constitution are "the People." When he was President George Washington spoke repeatedly of "the public good."

But just as Ta-Nehisi Coates was "cold"-hearted toward the slaughter of three thousand of his innocent fellow citizens on September 11, he is mean-spirited toward the "plea: What about my group? What about Native Americans? What about Latino immigrants?":

He calls the reaction “disrespectful” ... Disrespectful because he believes the experience of blacks in America deserves its own, focused examination.

This the same person who in The Case for Reparations called for his fellow citizens, in the name of shared moral obligation, to voluntarily assume a financial burden of hundreds of billions of dollars. (It reminds one of the piece, "Fie on Goodness" in the musical "Camelot": "If charity means giving, I give it to you.")


--*-

(*) One of the great passages concerning specious argument:

However, the greatest problem with historical revisionism is not its lack of objectivity but its lack of integrity. History is always being revised as new data come to light and new generations ask new questions. But ''revisionism'' has a characteristic trait: it is typically in the business of denying the obvious and uncovering conspiracies. [...]

The bad faith of all such ultra-revisionist undertakings lies in a sustained preference for a priori reasoning over human testimony. [...] Nothing can ever count as evidence against such assertions, because they do not rest on evidence in the first place. - Tony Judt, Writing History, Facts Optional, April 13, 2000