The Error of Idealism
24th June 2021
‘He who is not a republican at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.’ Thus spake M. Anselme Polycarpe Batbie, a 19th-century French academic jurist whose sentiments, variously phrased, have also been attributed to John Adams, François Guizot and Georges Clemenceau. A generous heart and the ability to learn from experience are very good things, certainly. An even better one is common sense: a native attribute that age does not diminish. Mencken claimed that he had never changed his mind on any matter of importance. Donald Trump said in regard to John McCain that he preferred war heroes who didn’t get captured. Myself, I like thinkers who were right from the beginning —and stayed that way.
To believe otherwise, so it seems to me, is to suppose that the error of idealism, among the profoundest of all errors to which the human mind is prey, has any redeeming value whatsoever; which it plainly doesn’t. There is no moral virtue in thinking wrongly on any subject at any age. If to be born good is desirable — something no one has ever denied — then so is to be born wise and without illusions. What value could there possibly be in being wrong for part of your life — idealists, like all liberals, would generally say the best part — when you could be right for all of it?