Transition from normative to empirical politics in America

Abortions should be banned.

Marriage should be between a man and a women.

The tax system should be used to reduce economic inequality.

Guns should be kept out of the hands of the mentally ill.

Criminals shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

All the above statements are normative; they describe the way things ought to be. This is the usual domain of American politics. People who have different opinions on how they want the world to be come together, debate each other, vote for laws that shape the world so it matches their worldview, and support politicians who have a similar vision for the future.

Vaccines cause autism.

The world is flat.

Global warming isn’t caused by humans.

Heavy things fall towards the earth.

The above statements aren’t normative, they are empirical. They don’t describe the way the world should be, they describe the way the world is. Or rather, the last one does. The first three are false. But they all have truth values. Empirical statements are either true or false. Someone who utters an empirical statement in earnest is making a claim that the statement matches reality, the objective world, the way things are.

The distinction between normative and empirical statements is important. But what people believe about the way the world is strongly influences the way they think the world should be. For instance, if you believe that a human soul inhabits a zygote the moment it is created, this belief about the way the world is will make you more likely to think abortions should be outlawed. This fact — that empirical beliefs affect normative opinions — is exploited in order to pressure people into changing their opinions. If I want to get you to agree that we need a restrictive voter ID law, I can first persuade you that there is massive voter fraud. If I want you to convince you that my rival should not be given the levers of governmental power, I can tell you that he comes from a family of degenerates.

So politicians and political groups have a large incentive to get people to believe empirical falsehoods in order for them to change their normative positions. What acts as a check on this pressure? Why don’t people lie to each other constantly in order to get everyone to side with them?

Consider the following normative statements:

People should tell the truth.

Politicians should be removed from office if they are caught lying.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

A population educated with the facts will make better decisions.

These normative statements have historically been supported by the vast majority of the American populace. These common opinions have been the counterbalance to the pressure to lie. Because we believed in the virtue of honesty and the vice of dishonesty, when we found out that a public figure was lying, we rejected them.

That set of normative values that held our empirical world together is now under attack. What is more important: your tribe/party winning, or honesty? “All politicians are liars, so I’m going to pick the one that benefits me” might be the idea that sends America to its grave. As soon as we tolerate dishonesty, we lose our attachment to a common reality. And once our common reality is fragmented and we disagree on basic empirical statements, on crowd sizes and popular votes, we increasingly disagree on normative statements as well. We should declare a state of emergency if violence is rising to society-shattering levels.

We must not tolerate dishonesty.

So what can we do to fight this slide into empirical anarchy and normative tribalism?

Simply follow the same dictum that society has been repeating since you were a child. Telling the truth is the most important thing. We can debate about the way things should be. But we all must attempt together to find out the way things are. We must not lie to each other, and we must punish people who lie to us. If we tolerate dishonesty, if we give people who lie to us a pass, we are removing the foundation of our society. We are encouraging liars who will trick us into believing things that will cause us to hate each other. And then our common reality, our shared empirical world view, will be impossible to recover. By tolerating the presence of a liar in the White House, we are ending American greatness.