Hiatt On Social Security

I suppose one should be nice to the head honcho at The Washington Post editorial page, but it occurs to me to point out that Harry Frankfurt wrote a nice prebuttal to today's Fred Hiatt offering. Indeed, the Frankfurt essay describes a great deal of the misguided political commentary in this fair nation of ours:

Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased. Without assuming that the incidence of bullshit is actually greater now, I will mention a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it is currently so great.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled — whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others — to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs. The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world.

Indeed. I try pretty hard to restrict the bulk of my political writing to topics I know something about. More to the point, when I realize that in the future I may feel compelled to write a great deal about something I'm not well informed about -- Social Security not all that long ago -- I try to learn about it so as to not just be bullshitting. Hiatt and politics aside, the essay is fantastic and comes highly recommended.

UPDATE: Edited to correct mispelling of "Frankfurt" as "Frankfurter." Super Bowl left me with hot dogs on the brain.