“Whataboutism” and the Nature of Principles

“Whataboutism” (1, 2) is an accusation of inconsistency.

In recent years it has become a form of the tu quoque (“you too”) fallacy: “what about your (America’s) human rights violations?” But it has another form that has been around probably since the beginning of intellectual argumentation.

“You don’t believe women should be drafted into the military, but what about men?”

“You don’t believe small business should be regulated, but surely you believe big business needs regulation?” What about the steel industry? What about automobiles? What about high tech?”

When it occurs in this form, it might be a logically valid point, or it might be a dropping of context by failing to connect to reality. To understand the difference, we need to understand principles and their application.*

Slightly adapting a definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, principles are fundamental truths on which others depend that provide causal explanations and guidance to human action.

For example, water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level, lower at higher elevations or higher if the water contains impurities. This is a causal explanation and implicit guidance—adjust cooking recipes in high altitude.

Never lie in human relationships, unless threatened with initiated coercion, uninvited invasion of privacy, or when a blunt truth may unnecessarily hurt the other person. This is a guide to human action, a moral one at that, and an implied causal explanation of what is required for benevolent cooperation and friendship.

Principles are combinations of concepts and each concept in the principle must be true, that is, correctly identify the facts the concept subsumes under it.** In this way principles state truths and enable subsequent truths to rest on them to build our personal knowledge (unique to each one of us) and our physical, biological, and human sciences.

Truth is not in reality to be corresponded to or “grasped” as the traditional theory of truth holds, which is to say truth is not in the thing intrinsically as Aristotle and other naïve realists believe.

Truth and falsity are in our heads based on how well—correctly or incorrectly—we have processed reality, performing certain mental actions to make our identifications. If I call the glass of water on my desk a leprechaun, I have mentally processed the object in a way that the content of my consciousness contradicts the facts. This violates one of Aristotle’s many major contributions to rational thought, the law of non-contradiction.

If I call the object a glass of water, I have mentally processed the object in a way that the content of my consciousness correctly identifies it, that is, subsumes it under the concept “glass of water.”

Correctly identified truths are universal, as are correctly formed concepts, but the fundamental principle that guides all our identifications is Aristotle’s law that includes a crucial phrase at the end of his statement: “at the same time and in the same respect.”

Concepts and principles are formed and applied within a context. Water does not boil at 212 degrees Fahrenheit without appropriate qualifications. Herein lies the problem with the “whataboutists” who fail not just to understand the correct nature of principles but also the context in which they apply, hence the many repeated questions “what about this?” “and this” “and this?”

The principle of individual rights identifies freedoms of action that are universal in a social, political context, meaning they apply to all individuals in society, whether male, female, black, white, American, or Chinese. The principle of rights also applies to anyone who runs a business, any business.

And these rights are violated by initiated coercion, especially when imposed by the government.

This means the military draft is involuntary servitude for both males and females, no matter what rationalizations the Supreme Court has given to justify it. Being against the draft for women means also being against it for men, and vice versa.

If initiated coercion is used to regulate business people, the consistent conclusion of universal individual rights applied to business must be laissez-faire capitalism.

Applying principles means recognizing specific cases that are subsumed under the principle. Men, women, blacks, whites, etc.—and business people—are all included in the principle of universal individual rights, which means all of the individuals’ rights must be protected by the government, not violated through the initiation of physical force.

If, however, we say that some human beings should be drafted into the military, a disconnect from reality has occurred and a concession to the alternative principle of servitude has been made. This sets up a problem of logical consistency: either men and women both should be drafted and turned into slaves, or no one—morally and legally—should be. There is no way consistently to apply the principle of involuntary servitude to one and not the other.***

The same applies to business people. If it is okay to regulate one, consistency of the regulation principle makes it okay to regulate all. This is how government interventions in our personal and professional lives necessitate a full march toward socialism, which is where we are heading today and have been for the past one hundred years.

Consistency means no contradictions, but that can mean what follows deductively from a principle detached from reality or whether the principle is anchored inductively to facts. “Draft and regulate everyone” follows from the principle of servitude, but individual rights as freedoms of action that are violated by initiated coercion are rooted in and derive from the nature of human beings that possess the capacity to reason. Consistency, fundamentally, means being connected to and anchored in reality.

In today’s postmodern culture where facts don’t matter, consistency doesn’t either. Throw in the mixed economy that by its nature violates principles to combine freedom with dictatorship and you have many inconsistencies to call out with “what about this?” “and this?” “and this?”

Nonetheless, there are occasions in which a “what about this?” question, as I alluded to earlier, may bring up a valid point you may not have thought about. Such a questioner, however, must be sincere.

As a teenager I was introduced to whataboutism from one or two adults who condescendingly said, “What about this? I’m just trying to help you. I don’t really believe any of this” (crap was the full implication of the adult’s statement). One even said, “It’s just good debate,” meaning there is no such thing as truth.

These whataboutists are people who do not take ideas seriously and I have no use for them.


* This post is based on Ayn Rand’s epistemology, especially her theory of concepts. See also this earlier post.

** From the OED’s etymology discussion of the verb to identify: “to subsume (several things) under one idea or concept (1610).” Identification means to recognize similarity or sameness in order to classify whatever is similar or the same under a particular concept or principle. Rand’s notion of measurement omission gives us the causal explanation of how we abstract to form valid universals, and the guidance to form them.

*** See my earlier post and Ayn Rand’s comments on the anatomy of compromise of principles (1, 2).