“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).

Naïveté, Gutlessness, and Concessions: On the Anatomy of Compromise

“The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” This is the motto of the left and I quoted it in an earlier post.

Its meaning? Say and do whatever will work to achieve power. Cloak your words and actions in “democracy” or, as in today’s “anything goes” cultural atmosphere, call anyone who disagrees with you a racist or fascist or, perhaps worst of all, someone who is deplorably lacking in compassion and, of course, is selfish. When one issue fails to work, move on to the next, with relentless energy.

In our Goebbelsian culture facts don’t matter. Truth and objectivity are out.

BS (Applying Principles, pp. 307-09) is the accepted method of communication, which means: say what sounds good and true to advance your agenda, not what is good and true.

How do we oppose this leftist juggernaut and why do the leftists seem to have so much energy? The answer to the second question, aside from their envy-ridden and hatred-driven motivation, is that the leftists’ most important value is politics and the drive for power and control. The rest of us have lives and careers beyond politics.*

Opposing the leftist juggernaut, in answer to the first question, is more challenging and requires, of course, thorough knowledge to answer any arguments the left may put forth, though intellectual argument today is rare. It even more importantly requires realism not to be naïve in the face of their pretended sincerity, and courage to stand fast against their onslaught. It requires the refusal to compromise our principles.

Insincerity needs to be called out as such, not swallowed as its opposite and taken seriously. Fabricated accusations of all kinds are rampant today and need to be named and condemned with moral indignation, as we would do to any nonpolitical friend or acquaintance who lied to or BS’d us.

Why so much insincerity? It’s built into leftist theory: Marx’s rejection of a universal Aristotelian logic (polylogism, Applying Principles, pp. 309-10), updated today as postmodern group identity theory, and Marx’s premise that anyone who is wealthy, especially business people and their companies, stole their wealth from the group currently held up as having been exploited. No one who is wealthy or a capitalist deserves truth or objectivity, even if such virtues were possible.

To take these leftists seriously makes us vulnerable to compromising our principles. When we compromise, the left moves forward with greater and greater confidence, because they do not compromise. Their greater consistency is precisely what today has moved them further and further left, perhaps too far, having underestimated the “deplorables” of middle America.

Ayn Rand (in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, chap. 14) has provided an interesting “anatomy of compromise” to help us understand what we must and must not do in debates. She suggests three rules (paraphrased): (1) when two people or groups hold the same basic principles, the more consistent wins, (2) when two people or groups collaborate, the more evil or irrational wins, and (3) when opposite principles are clearly defined, the more rational wins, but when hidden or evaded, the more irrational wins.

All three can be seen operating in debates about or with the left. Indeed, the rules have been present and operating in US politics for many decades. The right (conservatives and Republicans), by “me-tooing” and often outdoing the left with leftist policies, are the biggest compromisers.** Both sides accept altruism and self-sacrifice as the correct ethics and both sides accept the use of initiated coercion by the government to violate individual rights as the proper method of governing society.

Let’s look at these premises and apply Rand’s rules. The left is far more consistent (rule one), which is why they are winning. The left wants full (totalitarian) governmental control. The right makes concessions by trying to uphold a mixture of freedom and control, that is, the “mixed economy.”

The right is, and has been for decades, collaborating with the left by granting them sincerity and apologizing for them by saying, “they mean well” (rule two). But they don’t.

And the right is foolish when it thinks the concept of rights used by both sides means the same thing (rule three). Rights to conservatives and Republicans usually means individual rights, but to the left it means group identity. In accordance with rule three, this difference is hidden and evaded. It should be exposed for what it is: group privilege to take wealth away from those who have earned it.

The worst premise accepted by the right is that of altruism and self-sacrifice as the proper ethics of a free society. The left also accepts altruism, but is quite clear about its meaning (rule one): everyone must sacrifice to the state; everyone, especially the well-off, must pay higher and higher taxes so their wealth may be redistributed to the groups that are allegedly less well-off and allegedly have been victimized by those who are wealthy; and the United States must sacrifice itself and its wealth to all other countries in the world, especially those in the so-called third world.

To collaborate with the left by saying, “we are just as compassionate [altruistic] as you are” is a disastrous trap. The left simply responds by saying, “No, you’re not, because we want to do this, this, and this,” that is, move further and further left. Those on the right, as a result, often end up saying nothing, as unfortunately was demonstrated by many congressional conservatives and Republicans over the past two years (rule two).

To fight the leftist juggernaut, conservatives and Republicans must endorse rational self-interest and reject any form of self-sacrifice as a valid morality. They must then explain it clearly and openly (rule three).

Naïveté, gutlessness, and concessions and compromise are not the path to maintaining the freedom and prosperity of this country. The left wants to tear it down. Giving in will only hasten the process.

What is slowing this destruction is the sense of life of our current president and his constituents, the “deplorables” of middle America. As I have written before, sense of life is an emotion, but emotion is not enough to defend the American way of life and Western civilization. Strong, articulate intellectual arguments are needed, as well as realism and courage to stand up to the left.


* There is an analogy between the political and criminal personalities, and no doubt some in politics exhibit a criminal element, because they relish the coercion and control of others. “Take my crime away, and you take my world away,” is what one offender said to Stanton Samenow. Replace the word “crime” with “politics” and you have one explanation of the leftist’s motivation and energy.

** The press and business need to be mentioned. Many journalists blow with the wind and today that direction is to the left. They are not introspective to identify their hidden biases, or, in some (many?) cases, are explicit in their biases and therefore are complicit with the left. And contrary to their pretensions, courage is not a virtue of most of the press. Nor is it of most business people, especially those who cave to the email blasts threatening them with boycotts unless they remove advertising from certain cable broadcasters. Granted that business people are busy running businesses, they need to understand that they are the primary targets of leftist attacks. It would be nice if they showed some spine.