Why you can’t rely on the news media to understand… Abstract principles

The difficulty of sustaining abstract ideas in the age of emotion lies all around us. It does not invalidate the abstract idea, but it does subvert it and hit it on terrain which is at once both relevant and irrelevant. For instance, defend the principle of borders on a television programme and you may be shown a picture of a dead child whose family failed to make it over a particular border. Suddenly the defence of borders is not a defence of an abstract principle which also happens to be one of the most basic assurances of the security of any nation and its people. Rather the defence of borders means the support of, or contentment with, the death of a child. In such a situation, the abstract principle is almost always going to give way. At least in the studio. The bow must be to the immediate, often quite swiftly passing, public sentiment. But outside the studio the greater and more lasting public sentiment (the defence of national principles including national self-determination) returns. But it does so quietly. In the age of mass media, abstract principles – unless the stars happen to align with passing moods and recent examples – are not for the studio.

Once you notice this happening, you notice it all around.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, for instance, was torn apart by the horses of social media last year when he said in a live television interview that he was in favour of the Catholic church’s traditional stance on abortion. Whatever the media and the Twitter-sphere implies, the Roman Catholic Church’s stance on abortion is held by a fair number of people.  Most of the world’s Catholics, to name but one group. I happen not to be in agreement with that principle myself, but it is a principle derived from a serious body of tradition and thought. It was not thrown up yesterday, as an idea, but is a concept which is undoubtedly central to the Catholic view of the sanctity of life and the origins of human value.

In that same interview Rees-Mogg also expressed his support for the Vatican’s teaching on gay marriage. Again, for what it is worth, I happen not to be in agreement with that teaching but I recognise that the church holds it and professes opposition to it not because of some concerted effort to be homophobic but because the Catholic view of the family is a very specific and doctrinally clear view.

Rees-Mogg caveated these comments by rightly, and repeatedly, pointing out that he had no intention ever to attempt to express these beliefs in anything like a legislative fashion. They are matters of private conscience for him. But again, the abstract principle he was holding to was not only not given an airing, or a fair hearing – it was treated as though it was the most thoughtless, impulsive display of ignorance imaginable. And as though people on social media who responded by saying that they were ‘offended’ were a legitimate counterweight to a principled position.

Of course, it is all good story-fodder. Tabloids and broadsheets are happy to run stories which talk of a ‘backlash’ after public figures voice almost any opinion: even – or especially – when the ‘backlash’ consists of no more than a couple of people on Twitter saying that they don’t like what has been said. And so almost the whole body of intellectual thought that has brought us to the place our societies are in – whether religious, or political in origin – seem at any moment able to be washed away on a tide of current feeling.

Naturally this is in part the fault of the many public figures that buckle before such tides but the media should be aware of their role in this. No opinion could have total support from every reader or viewer. In the same way, no abstract principle is going to be agreed upon by everyone on Twitter. Sticking feelings against principles does a disservice to both.  Using emotion as a counterweight to thought-through positions diminishes both. But the modern media has undoubtedly exacerbated a tendency to respond to ideas with emotion and to principles with feelings. Until principles are countered by other principles, and ideas with other ideas this process will not just diminish the discussion of ideas, but make all such discussion impossible.

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Douglas Murray is an author and journalist.

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