Refreshing Candor

Peter Edman

Perhaps we are getting to the point where we can actually get back to arguing again. A couple of recent articles indicate a larger trend I think I’m seeing: people are increasingly willing again to go against political and secularist correctness in public. It indicates that the tide may be turning against those who would exclude opposing opinions from the public square by fiat.

First is Terry Teachout’s insightful piece on art and persuasion from In Character, reprinted in the Wall Street Journal, “When Drama Becomes Propaganda: Why is so much political art so awful?” (6 June 2005).

It isn’t just that they feel no responsibility to make arguments that might prove persuasive to those who disagree with them, or at least haven’t yet made up their minds. They no longer acknowledge any responsibility to their audiences. They appear to believe instead that so long as an artist thinks all the right things, he need not go to the trouble to be amusing, subtle or even interesting. All he need do is make his characters say the right things, and he’s entitled to the approval of his enlightened brethren. No one else matters.

A recent column in TIME Magazine from Charles Krauthammer is more ephemeral but also worth reading. “In Defense of Certainty: It’s trendy to be suspicious of people with ‘deeply held views.’ And it’s wrong” (June 1, 2005, web only).

The campaign against certainty is merely the philosophical veneer for an attempt to politically marginalize and intellectually disenfranchise believers. Instead of arguing the merits of any issue, secularists are trying to win the argument by default on the grounds that the other side displays unhealthy certainty or, even worse, unseemly religiosity.

We’ll leave Teachout with the last, constructive, word:

All art, political or not, must make everything more beautiful in order to fulfill its most essential function, that of seizing and holding the viewer’s attention. Any political artist who aspires to be more than a cheerleader for the converted must first learn this lesson, and learn it well. A boring work of art cannot convince anyone of anything, not even that we should believe what it tells us about the world in which we live. And nothing is more boring--or less believable--than a story with only one side.

Gleanings, Arts and Culture, Public Square, Mon 06 Jun 2005