Whether Activism Matters
“Activism matters.” That is the conclusion from Glenn Harlan Reynolds’s Sunday reflection on the recent Supreme Court decision McDonald v. Chicago. I find the conclusion unconvincing. It’s like saying action matters. The issue is really, what kind of activism that matters?
From my perspective, political activism not backed by intellectual activism is ineffective, if not dangerous. For, isn’t it true also that the gun-control activists on the “Establishment” side were just as active and well funded as the gun-ownership activists in the recent decade? The decisive factor is on the truthhood of the political cause, and that takes intellectual activism. It takes intellectual activity to marshall evidence into generalizations, come up with sound arguments, to communicate and persuade from reason. This is what changes minds, whose individual owners then will act.
Witness the recent judicial case. Not one single Supreme Court justice decided the case from fundamental rights. At best, Justice Clarence Thomas decided from the premise of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment. All the other eight justices decided from the pragmatism of either the cultural Right or the cultural Left.. It can be said, therefore, that there was insufficient intellectual activism leading to this climactic decision, not only because the tight 5-4 decision but also because the truth, properly reached intellectually, of the right for individuals to own gun has yet to be conveyed sufficiently through the culture.
Ultimately, it is one’s own life that matters, and activism must aim toward that ultimate value. But activism begins with thinking. It is a matter of thinking about an issue in one’s own life (including one’s environment) and of deciding from principles to do something about it; that is to say, it is a matter of knowing one’s values and of acting from virtues.