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.Such bias (due as much, understand-ably, to wishful thinking as to habits of loyalty) is often compounded by an ignorance, wilful among the public,deliberately instilled within the state, and typically spread by inherited distortions of history and tradition.In order to acquire sufficient force in circumstances like these, the waves in question must become phases in a ground-swell that carries over to other parts of the world, to areas unaffected by this particular bias, where the undesirable effects of short-sighted international policies and incipient imperialism on the part of one nation can be hindered by popular opinion in others.One powerful argument against the Publicpolitical globalization, then, is the need to retain an effectively Oncensorious public, one that must be wider than that of a 98single state.It would be wrong, however, to think of the pressure as exclusively top-down.As mentioned earlier, a common tendency within a population is to acquiesce in a government’s policies of non-involvement, typically from fear of upsetting internal stability.But people may also be roused to deplore what they see as a weak-kneed passivity inconsistent with their own and the nation’s tough image, thus threatening to undermine their own and the nation’s reputation.Examples abound here too.It is generally accepted, for instance, that it was only in the face of a general restlessness on this countat home, and of pressure from the French president, that President Clinton began the bombing of Serbia.4 Yet a popular memory, selective in itself and suitably aided by the press, is more than willing to repair such damage.The American public may now look back on the Serbian adventure as proof of a determination to eradicate ‘evil’ wherever it is found.We forget that, as proof that a US-led ‘war’ on terror was not a war on Islam, a succeeding president exploited in the guise of a ‘defence of Muslims’ what was in effect a last-minute decision made under popular pressure.It may be unfortunate that due to its singular influence in the world today the US should provide so many vivid illustrations of the vagaries and weaknesses of this ‘thing’ called public opinion.But the fact of their appearing, especially to outsiders, so painfully evident in that context reveals something of the consequences of having to maintain a nation or commonwealth as ‘extensive’ as the US.More than most, it is a nation that sustains itself on its image and historical record, in both of which it makes a heavy investment.Who, for example, on visiting the Holocaust museum in Washington could assume anything but that the US has a record of hands-on A Common Senseopposition to known genocide abroad?99In cases like this the literal truth is too easy to discover for us to have to talk about a privileged vantage point from which to discern it.And that is the way it is in general.The vantage point is reached by moving not closer to the truth but further away.The evidence is already available but it requires a certain kind of disengagement even to want to examine it.One must first be willing to envisage alternatives to the view on show.We may expect this more readily of an outsider, but then if the outsider in one context is an insider in another, there is a danger of demonization.The more reliable outsiders arethose who acquire some distance to their own political settings.That can be either in the present or as a member of a later public able, due to distance in time, to loosen its loyalties to what is past.Critical outsidership in the present is something we shall return to, but one quite significant factor here is the familiar reticence we feel compelled to maintain due to fear that in admitting the truth we are playing into the hands of our nation’s enemies, who will again distort the truth but this time in the service of an unfriendly stereotype.A glaring example is the widespread refusal in Germany today, even among intellectuals, openly to support the Palestinian cause.The fear, which on any plausible account of what it is to employ one’s reason is an irrational fear though unfortunately no less real for that, is that by doing so they will be accused of anti-Semitism.On the face of it, such lack of good sense appears too absurd for the explanation to be a simple one.However there are several things one can point to in mitigation of accusa-tions of unreason here, including the point just made that in the Publicmaking the rational point one may be playing into the hands Onof those less rational.But in the remainder of this chapter, two 100quite different perspectives will be outlined, each with its characteristic perspective on unreason and how to escape it.The former is a philosophical perspective.By that I mean a perspective that appeals to what everyone in a properly rational mood would be expected to assent to.It differs from Hume’s general opinion in, at least on my reading of Hume, supposing a specifically philosophical vantage point above the variety of traditions.5 It may be illustrated by a now familiar example of a well-known philosopher’s encounter with what, for want of a better name, may be called public unreason.It is worth examining the implications of the example in somedetail.It relates to Peter Singer’s cancelled lecture tour in Germany in 1989.Singer had been billed in June 1989 to give a public lecture, in the university town of Marburg, on euthanasia.His general thesis was to be (cautiously enough) that, in certain circumstances, it might be ‘ethically permissible to take active steps to end the lives of infants’.The circumstances in question included severe disability where death is considered to be best for the infant, but also in some cases where consideration can be taken of the family as a whole (for example where there is no acceptable alternative to the child staying with the family).6 The lecture was to be part of a symposium entitled ‘Bioengineering, Ethics and MentalDisability’ under the auspices of two large organizations for parents of intellectually disabled infants.However, these organizations were put under pressure to cancel their invitation to Singer, on the grounds that although his views might be discussed in closed academic circles, he should not be allowed to promote them in public [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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