It's an Open-and-Shut Case
In the Social Security debate, apparently the worst thing anybody can say about you is that you've made up your mind. A Washington Post editorial writer penned an Op-Ed article praising "the thoughtful voice of a Democrat not reflexively opposed to personal accounts." Joe Lieberman's spokesman piously insists the Connecticut senator is "still in a listening and learning stage and keeping an open mind." Well, good for him. But I've read several books and many articles advocating Social Security privatization, and it still strikes me as a horrible idea. Can I stop listening and learning now? Or must I remain thoughtfully agnostic while the same unconvincing arguments are repeated ad nauseam, in the hope that another repetition will finally sway me?
What's on display here is something you could call militant open-mindedness. Of course, it's good to have an open mind. Like all virtues, however, open-mindedness can be taken too far. In this case, it's being used to self-righteously impugn the motives of everybody else -- or at least everybody who has a clear position -- while placing one's own beyond reproach.
The militantly open-minded are particularly exercised against those who would take options "off the table," to use the cliche du jour. "For anyone to take anything off the table at this point would be counterproductive," barked Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), who heads the House subcommittee on Social Security. "I hope we will all calm down and say everything is on the table." Everything? What about mass euthanasia of retirees? That would take care of Social Security's financial problems.
To be sure, nobody is proposing anything that compares morally with mass murder. But there are some fairly important principles at stake. If you believe in Social Security's basic function as social insurance, then introducing private accounts is anathema.
Indeed, it's precisely because conservatives oppose Social Security and the concept of social insurance that they came up with the concept of privatization in the first place. Opposing something that would undermine the core liberal domestic achievement of the last century is hardly, as privatization advocates suggest, a petulant tactic intended to humiliate President Bush. It's the essence of a principled disagreement.
