Tip-Off #204 - Contradiction and clarity

“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.” - Blaise Pascal, "Pensées."

James Ensor’s Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889 (painted 1888)—an oil on canvas spanning 8 ft 4 in × 14 ft 2 in at the J. Paul Getty Museum—A carnival swallows Christ (barely visible in the upper middle), parodying the contradiction between spiritual ideal and societal chaos. - Public domain.

I need something bad to feel good. Otherwise, what difference does it make? If you can't be wrong, why should it matter if I'm right? Traditionally, the religious have needed some hell to make sense of heaven—moral depravity, ignorance, or simply that others believe differently.

The same goes for political extremists, left or right. Each defines itself in opposition to the other. Belief, pushed far enough, tempts its own reversal.

The golden mean—in politics or religion—seeks balance between extremes. Yet even this ideal depends on the poles it moves between. Moderation isn't the absence of contradiction but engagement with it.

Heraclitus observed that opposites often define each other. Building on that, famed physicist Niels Bohr argued that while the opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false—either it's raining or not—the opposite of a profound truth may also be profoundly true. Take the claim "Reality is objective." Its opposite—"Reality is shaped by perception"—is also true. That’s not a category mistake, like asking what color jealousy is. Science defines reality through laws; perception shapes how we experience it. Contradiction doesn’t cancel meaning; it deepens it.

This isn't just philosophy—it's psychology too. F. Scott Fitzgerald called the test of first-rate intelligence "the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Maybe that's just a basic skill for staying sane.

What’s often labeled "populism" today—especially in its guise as common-good conservatism—isn't a rejection of democracy so much as a rebellion against liberalism. It claims to defend the people’s will against a detached elite but does so by inverting liberal ideals and using liberal tools—elections, speech, constitutional protections—to erode the institutions that enabled its rise. It suppresses competing visions of the common good, replaces deliberation with imposed consensus, hardens differences, and undermines the very values it claims to defend.

Consider leaders like Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Donald Trump: they rose within electoral-democratic systems, only to co-opt those same norms to prosecute dissent.

Like a shadow shaped by light, the populist imagination depends on the liberalism it rejects. Though anti-liberal in tone, it assumes a liberal audience that values participation and recognition. It frames grievances in liberal terms: liberty, fairness, dignity. Its intellectual support runs through elite circles, with its own billionaires in Silicon Valley.

The real threat to democracy isn't the "anything goes" imputed to liberalism, or the moral laxity some claim follows. It lies in the presumption of answers closed to debate—the arrogance of certitude masquerading as truth, dogma posing as faith. We may not notice the security and prosperity the liberal order provides until they’re gone—by then, it may be too late.

History gives warning in the face of rising Christian nationalism. As Justice Hugo Black wrote in his majority opinion forbidding state-sponsored prayer in public schools: "Whenever government allies itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result has been that it incurs the hatred, disrespect, and even contempt of those who hold contrary beliefs. People lose their respect for any religion that relies upon the support of government to spread its faith."

The danger to liberalism is adopting the same rigidity it opposes. If liberals fight fire with fire, mirroring the closed tactics of their adversaries, they, too, risk burning down the very foundations of the free society they seek to preserve.

Conservatism and liberalism began as rival visions of liberty—persuasive, not coercive. Harvey Mansfield, a leading conservative thinker, presents his strong views as arguments, not decrees. He condemns “common-good conservatism,” populism, and the resurgent Right for rejecting the liberal, rights-based core of representative government. These movements trade deliberation for emotional majorities and cast resentment as democratic legitimacy. True conservatism, he insists, must defend the liberal constitution—its rights, structures, and commitment to reason.

Democracy isn't a golden mean but an ongoing argument sustained by hard-earned trust. The alternative is tyranny, whether justified by divine authority or popular will. Both erode the trust democracy requires. The choice remains ours.

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Notes

“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.” - Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Despite a questionable view of human nature, Pascal is admired for his psychological insight.

“All things come into being through opposition." - Heraclitus, Fragment 53 (standard numbering). Heraclitus lived circa 535–475 BCE. - Presocratics: Natural Philosophers before Socrates by James Warren (Routledge reprint 2013).

"...the opposite of a profound truth may also be profoundly true." - paraphrased from a personal conversation with Niels Bohr recounted by his son, Aage, in “My Father,” Niels Bohr: His Life and Work As Seen By His Friends and Colleagues (1967). Like his father fifty years earlier, Aage won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975.

"The ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” - The Crack-Up (1936), written during an emotional breakdown, unsure if he could keep going.

“Whenever government allies itself with one particular form of religion..." - in Hugo Black, Majority Opinion in Engel v. Vitale, 1962, found in Law and Religion, Peter Radan et al., 2004, "School prayer." The prohibition against government-mandated or organized prayer in public schools remains the law today. Debates and clarifications regarding individual religious expression continue.

“Agitation and mutability are inherent in the nature of democratic republics, just as stagnation and sleepiness are the law of absolute monarchies.” - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America - Book I, Chapter XVII (1835; various current republications).

• Harvey Mansfield - the job of conservatives is to save liberalism from liberals.

  - Based on his essay “Conservatism and the Common Good,” National Affairs (Spring 2023); interview with Bill Kristol (Dec. 19, 2016); “An Interview with Harvey Mansfield,” Editors of The Point (Jan. 15, 2012).

The Fate of the Union Hangs in the Balance

Tip-Off #203 - A second wind

About 2 + 2 = 5