"Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself-such is the vital function of...a hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for...the simulated generation of differences."-Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
"I stand for conservative values." Those five words will get you far in American politics. They are invoked by nearly every Republican candidate, conservative commentator and pundit, and a multitude of preachers, grassroots conservative organizers, and conservative activists. The effect of these words is to make conservative-leaning individuals in the audience more receptive to an argument. When a speaker leads with this phrase listeners immediately identify with them. This person shares their worldview, no more, their values. Other people, other groups don't understand traditional values. They try their best to erode them, they wage a war on them, they are trying to criminalize traditional values with movements like the War on Christmas. This person, however, doesn't just understand them, they share a worldview that makes them who they are, that gives them their character. They stand for conservative values.
But what are conservative values? I'm sure that every conservative has a different definition of what conservative values are and that, like in a Venn diagram, many parts of their definitions overlap. I am also sure that human opinion is always diverse, and that the variation in these definitions is probably comparable to that of snowflakes. They all share common properties, but their exact structure is innumerably diverse.
What, then, is the effect of such a term as "conservative values" becoming a part of the national zeitgeist? As always, philosophy has the answer. Jean Baudrillard is a post-modern philosopher who remains relatively obscure in most modern academic circles (that's boh-dree-yar for you non-francophones). The most notable reference to him I've seen in media is, incidentally, by a conservative preacher in a little documentary entitled Waiting for Armageddon. (You may also have caught a glimpse of his book, Simulacra and Simulation, as Neo's money/illegal software stash in The Matrix. I'm unsure whether that was intended as a jab or a compliment). It's no small coincidence that the preacher's complaint against Baudrillard was that he argued against the existence of fixed truth. According to a worldview where truth is nebulous, conservative values like those of the preacher serve little practical purpose.
Actually, in Simulacra, Baudrillard says just the opposite. The enshrinement of conservative values in the public sphere serves a vital purpose for our society, only one he views as nefarious (it should be noted that Baudrillard doesn't single out conservative views, his argument is more systematic and far-reaching). The homogenization of myriad definitions of conservative values into one public definition is part of a process that Baurdrillard refers to as the procession of simulacra. This process is one of representation, one which ultimately results in a masking of the one truth left in modern society, that there is no truth (which suggests the reference in The Matrix was more complementary than not). This isn't a fact that Baudrillard praises, rather he laments it. He often refers to the loss of truth in terms of a death with references to memorials and funeral rites (though it's more ambiguous whether or not he believes we can actually do anything about it).
This offers an interesting contrast to the aforementioned preacher. Whereas Baurdillard recognizes a lack of truth and laments it, the preacher denies a lack of truth by attacking Baudrillard as some insidious deceiver. He portrays Baudrillard (and to be fair, other post-modernists) as someone who is actively attempting to erode truth and, by the same token, conservative values. I view Baudrillard, rather, as an ally of real valuation. Though he may not have been anything near resembling a conservative, I believe his real agenda was attacking the lack of meaning in our society rather than any specific ideology (at least primarily). In fact, his primary thesis was that ideology defeats true meaning. In this procession of simulacra the first step is true representation. Using our example, this would be the public understanding of conservative values matching up almost identically with the values actually espoused by conservatives. After this is where things get complicated.
The second order of representation is the masking of a reality, in this case the true values held by conservatives. Have you ever lamented that the public perception of individuals within your political ideology is incongruent with the real views those individuals hold? That, perhaps, not all conservatives are climate science deniers or not all liberals are bleeding heart idealists? This is second-order representation wherein the truth is masked and distorted by the representation, in this case the public understanding. Baudrillard here makes an interesting assertion that "When the real is no longer what it was [after the second stage of representation] nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a plethora of myths of origin and signs of reality-a plethora of truth, of secondary objectivity, and authenticity. Escalation of the true, of real experience, resurrection of the figurative where the object and substance have disappeared." This perfectly encapsulates the behavior of the preacher attacking Baudrillard. In a world where truth has disappeared the preacher responds with a sort of nostalgia, a grasping at past values that are little more than apparitions in today's society.
In the third stage of representation the existence of a reality itself apart from the representation is masked. This is, in part, what the preacher is engaging in when attacking Baudrillard. The lack of truth, if real, represents an uncomfortable prospect, one which the preacher feels compelled to combat. He attempts to establish his values as truth and in so doing masks the fact that the original reality (the values actually held by conservatives) is gone. Here that reality is actually replaced by the public perception of conservative values. They are the real and, far from representing the real that actually existed, they obscure the fact that the original reality existed apart from them. The fourth and final stage, or true simulacra, is when these representations become the real. There are no longer originals to be represented, there are only representations that compete with each other. Conservatives (or liberals for that matter) no longer have opinions that later become a part of the zeitgeist, they join an existing zeitgeist.
What does all of this have to do with Scotsmen? Well, my impetus for this was reading an article in which an Evangelical Christian group is pushing for action on climate change: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/20/3439695/evangelical-environmental-network-rick-scott-petition/ This article was, in some ways, refreshing as I've maintained for a while that Christians should be more concerned about environmental issues in light of the Bible's casting of humans as guardians of earth. At the same time, however, this struck a sour chord with me. One reason is that it continues to feed into destructive rhetoric. The president of this group, Rev. Mitch Hescox, makes such statements as "climate change is not a liberal issue" (as if liberal issues should be summarily ignored), "I think [Rick Scott has] gotten caught up...in some of the rhetoric...of climate change being...a polar bear issue" (as if preserving polar bears on their own isn't enough to makes this an issue, which strangely conflicts with his statement about Christians being concerned about all forms of life), and "for us, it's a pro-life issue" (as if an issue must fit into some Christian or conservative talking point for it to be a relevant issue). The point here should not be to feed into these common conceptions of what a liberal or conservative or Christian is, these simulacra. Baudrillard asserts that participating in this process, even in an iconoclastic way, feeds into it. Hescox is feeding this process. He is challenging the perception of what conservative values are, but in so doing simply creating an alternative perception. He is not challenging the notion that we should stop fighting each other based on these perceptions, these ethereal entities, of what conservatives and liberals are.
The "No true Scotsman" fallacy is forth-order representation, true simulacra. When employing this fallacy one asserts that no true member of a group would exhibit a certain behavior. If someone told me, for example, that no Christian would support abortion and I pointed out that plenty of Christians support abortion, a reply of anyone who supports abortion isn't really a Christian would employ this fallacy. While Hescox doesn't explicitly employ this fallacy, he comes close. His appeal to Florida Governor Rick Scott to stop denying climate change and start to take action on it is based on what he believes a Christian to be, someone who cares for all life on earth. This, however, is not what a Christian is, this is simply what Hescox envisions a Christian to be. He is offering this vision up as a fourth-order representation of Christians in opposition to the dominant fourth-order representation. I'll also briefly mention that I don't believe Hescox and Scott share the same religion. They share in the representation, but their own religion, the true reality within them, is quite different. Christian is the public simulacrum that they both identify with, but it is also the private beliefs within their hearts, two entities that are quite distinct from each other.
So what is the solution to all this? Stop. Stop worrying about what a true Scotsman is and whether or not someone is acting like one. Stop acting as if we need to adhere to a public conception of conservative values or liberal values because we consider ourselves conservative or liberal. The preacher who attacked Baudrillard, in fear of losing real value, obscured the absence of it and encouraged others to live without it, albeit unknowingly. The Dao de Jing tells us "If you wish to become whole, let yourself be partial. If you wish to become straight, let yourself be crooked. If you wish to become full, let yourself be empty. If you wish to be reborn, let yourself die. If you wish to be given everything, give everything up." Sometimes wanting something and striving for it, as in the case of the preacher, are counter-productive to achieving it. Don't try to achieve truth and value by insisting on them, live as if they don't matter and they will be found. "If you want to take something, you must first allow it to be given. This is called the subtle perception of the way things are."
