When you are the custodian of a fragile orthodoxy, you cannot afford to allow a hint of dissent.

Uh oh.  Two writer whose work I have admired.  One now criticizing the other.  

Megan McArdle used to be a strong empiricist of libertarian/Classical Liberal (Hume, Smith, Kant, etc.) orientation.  She joined the Washington Post a few years ago and her empiricism has become more mooted: you can see her working hard to express what the evidence suggests in a way that won't bring the Woke horde down upon her head.  It is regrettable, but at least she is employed.

Anne Althouse is a left/centrist retired constitutional law professor with an abiding interest in language and clear argument.  

This morning I see her recent post, "How can official orthodoxies persist for so long even when few people believe them?" Althouse is quoting from McArdle's recent article in the Washington Post, The transgender orthodoxy is cracking/Malpractice suit and shifting clinical guidelines show cracks in transgender orthodoxy.

From Althouse.

Megan McArdle asks, in "The transgender orthodoxy is cracking/Malpractice suit and shifting clinical guidelines show cracks in transgender orthodoxy" (WaPo)(referencing the book "Private Truths, Public Lies" by political scientist Timur Kuran).

Public orthodoxies that diverge from private opinion may be surprisingly stable, but they can also prove remarkably unstable, because they depend on private thoughts to stay private, giving doubters the illusion that they are lone deviants rather than members of a silent majority....

Why is this surprising? It's the familiar story of "The Emperor's New Clothes," which everyone has always easily understood.  

Starting around 2015, an orthodoxy on transgender issues crystallized, seemingly out of nowhere....

Once you've said "2015," you've got your answer staring you in the face! Why don't you see it? That was the year gay people won their great victory, a right to marry, in Obergefell v. Hodges. McArdle has "an orthodoxy... crystalliz[ing]" — as if a mysterious disembodied force emerged out of nothing — ex nihilo!

But real human beings were involved and their incentive to acquire a new cause is obvious. The activists had won, but they still needed to work, they still needed contributions, they still needed to push conventional people to move forward into challenging new territory. They couldn't just allow people to become decently accepting and empathetic to the gay people who, after all, are human beings who sometimes love each other and want a home and a family. 

Indeed.  In many ways, the entire past forty years feel as if they were driven by the progressive movement seeking to replicate the glory days of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.  That was such a resounding victory, finally righting bad laws.  It was a clear evil that was fully (in the law) rectified.  

That was truly a great victory.  And then progressives sought to reach further, maintain the momentum.  Instead of equal rights, by the 1970s and 1980s, the new cause was special rights for various groups (women and racial minorities principally.)   Affirmative Action and EEO provided the foundation for later DEI.  Momentum.  Activists got to keep active, regardless of the cause, regardless of the principles.  Regardless of the morality.

Till this moment, when virtually all progressive causes can de facto be presumed evil till proven otherwise; entirely incompatible with American traditions, with Classical Liberalism, with Christianity, with Empiricism, and with Age of Enlightenment thinking.  

To be fair to McArdle, I have not seen many others make the connection Althouse does between the Obergefell (gay marriage) victory and the sudden lurch of progressives into true evil (coerced butchery of minors before the age of consent.)  

Althouse has a great insight (Obergefell gay marriage victory as catalyst to Woke and Trans craze) which is worth debating but likely usefully correct.  

But McArdle is making a completely different argument - ideologies at odds with reality depend on suppression of free speech to survive and that once free speech functions, the probability of a preference cascade increases dramatically, overturning the ideological orthodoxy.

Could/should McArdle have included the Obergefell (gay marriage) victory insight?  Possibly.  I think it is an important insight but I also recognize that McArdle is often writing against the orthodoxy of her company and colleagues and also that she is already making a complicated and intricate argument that doesn't need to be made more complicated.  

She introduces new information and a frame of thinking.  She does this sort of thing with some frequency and I like it.

In his groundbreaking book, “Private Truths, Public Lies,” political scientist Timur Kuran attacks a vexing question: How can official orthodoxies persist for so long even when few people believe them?

Then she develops the argument.

These might seem like small shifts. But as Kuran notes, when public orthodoxy differs widely from private opinion, orthodoxies are prone to a “preference cascade” where public opinion snowballs. Medical association support has been one of the strongest arguments offered by proponents of pediatric medical transition. Now that support seems to be weakening, opening up space for more doubt.

Public orthodoxies that diverge from private opinion may be surprisingly stable, but they can also prove remarkably unstable, because they depend on private thoughts to stay private, giving doubters the illusion that they are lone deviants rather than members of a silent majority. Each skeptical voice makes it more likely that further doubts will be raised, triggering a rapid shift to a new equilibrium.

If you’ve wondered how communism collapsed, that’s how. And if you’ve wondered why communist regimes are so oppressive, that’s also your answer. When you are the custodian of a fragile orthodoxy, you cannot afford to allow a hint of dissent.

She has the obligatory head nod to the keepers of the orthodoxy (who, as of Thursday, are now on their way out the Washington Post door.)  

For one thing, I’m not opposed to pediatric transition. I simply believe we need better evidence before making it standard medical practice. 

McArdle raises a very interesting and critical point that needs far more attention but is not treated in this particular column.  

It is now clear that the evidence for these assertions was weak, and it’s not clear why so many medical associations offered such strong endorsements with so little to back them up. But once issued, they all reinforced each other — questions about one could be quelled by pointing to all the others, and who has any right to question our most eminent medical professionals?

Well, anyone has the right, but that orthodoxy was vigorously protected by freelance thought police who answered even the mildest query with accusations of transphobia. Those accusations could have real costs, like your job or your friends.

You think of the long list of public policy positions of the past twenty years which hav had material negative impacts on the majority of the population:

Covid policies

 

Global Warming 

DEI

Trans

Affirmative Action/Racial discrimination

Decarceration

Defunding the police

Homeless policies

Just to mention a few.  All vociferously and brutally imposed.  And all with only the most vestigial evidentiary support and all refuted or in the process of being refuted.

Ordinary people and the Classical Liberal, Empiricist interpretation was right all along.  The fragile, ephemeral, novel orthodoxies were all wrong.

I think the Obergefell (gay marriage) victory insight would have been nice to weave in but I can see why there are reasons why McArdle, even if she had that insight, might have avoided making it.  I think the more egregious claim in the piece is actually this one.  Again, I interpret this as McArdle as having to supplicate to her own Woke colleagues.

This manufactured consensus looked invincible, until it wasn’t. A few years ago, it was risky in many professional circles to even hint at doubt. But slowly, journalists began raising more and more concerns.

This simply is not true for any of the above issues.  In all instances Woke mainstream journalists were proud and vocal advocates of the fragile and baseless orthodoxies.  They did not raise more and more concerns.  They fought desperate rear guard actions against the emergence of evidence and truth, denying the evidence and truth and seeking to suppress it all the way to the point where it became unsuppresable.  Like when a court of evidence awards $2 million against those following the orthodoxy.  Legacy mainstream corporate journalists have almost never been the heroes of this story.  They have been the ignorant, unstable, emotional enemies of Classical Liberalism and Empiricism.

Althouse has a great insight.

But real human beings were involved and their incentive to acquire a new cause is obvious. The activists had won, but they still needed to work, they still needed contributions, they still needed to push conventional people to move forward into challenging new territory. 

But McArdle has a great insight too.

Public orthodoxies that diverge from private opinion may be surprisingly stable, but they can also prove remarkably unstable, because they depend on private thoughts to stay private, giving doubters the illusion that they are lone deviants rather than members of a silent majority. Each skeptical voice makes it more likely that further doubts will be raised, triggering a rapid shift to a new equilibrium.

If you’ve wondered how communism collapsed, that’s how. And if you’ve wondered why communist regimes are so oppressive, that’s also your answer. When you are the custodian of a fragile orthodoxy, you cannot afford to allow a hint of dissent.