Now Folks, I'm no fan of reality [It Has a Liberal Bias] and I am no fan of encyclopedias [Just Fat‐Ass Dictionaries]. I've said it before: “Who is Britannica to tell me George Washington had slaves?” If I want to say he didn't, that's my right.
– Stephen Colbert
The Colbert Report, July 31, 2006
Suppose you are arguing with Report‐Colbert about whether George Washington owned slaves. You present historical evidence and arguments that he did, but Colbert simply says, “Doesn't it feel like he wouldn't own slaves?” When you point out to Colbert that he is thinking with his gut, and explain why gut thinking is wrong, he will respond, “Well, I have a right to my opinion.” This is a common thing for people to say, so maybe the real Colbert believes it. But do people really have a right to their opinion? Before answering, we need to figure out what people like Report‐Colbert mean when they claim this alleged right.
Colbert might mean he has a legal right to his opinion. If this is what he means, he is correct. No one can haul him away for just thinking or speaking his opinion. But I doubt this is what he had in mind. Was he actually thinking you were about to call the cops to haul him off? No. Instead, Colbert might mean that he has an epistemic right to his opinion. “Epistemic” comes from “Epistemology,” which is the study of knowledge and how knowledge is justified (obviously Colbert missed that day of philosophy class). A belief to which one has an epistemic right is a belief that is justified by rational defense and argument. But, given that we have already established he is just thinking with his gut, it's obvious that he has no rational defense or argument. Thus, he is mistaken if he thinks he has an epistemic right to his opinion.
What Colbert probably means is that he has a moral right to his opinion. Moral rights create moral duties in others.37 For example, people's moral right to freedom gave Colbert the moral duty to free the Jews living under his desk on Birkat Hachama.38 So, if Colbert has a moral right to his opinion, then you have a corresponding moral duty to treat that opinion in a certain way. What way? In Crimes Against Logic,39 Jamie Whyte makes three suggestions.
Maybe Colbert thinks you have a moral duty to agree with his opinion. But if he has a right to his opinion, you have a right to yours, and that would mean that he is obligated to agree with you. Not only would Report‐Colbert never agree with anyone but himself, but given that the two of you disagree, that does not make any sense.
So maybe he thinks you have a duty to listen to his opinion. He may want that, but that cannot be right either. Everyone has a right to his/her opinion if Colbert does, so we would be obligated to listen to everyone's opinion, and that is impossible. There is just not enough time. And we cannot be obligated to do the impossible. (Besides, Colbert would also have that duty and to “hear” everyone's opinion would require a lot of reading – and Report‐Colbert was certainly no fan of reading.)
Given that Colbert is trying to end the discussion without changing his mind, what he probably means is that you have a duty to let him keep his opinion – you should stop arguing with him and looking stuff up in books and just let him think what he wants to think. He thinks he has a right to believe whatever he wants, and thus you have a duty to let him. But your possession of such a duty is far from obvious. Suppose Colbert is about to cross the street in Baghdad, to go to Saddam's Water Palace to do a week of shows in Iraq.40 He believes there are no insurgents around, poised to shoot him, but his escort corrects him, points out the insurgence, and tells him to wait until they are dealt with. Does his escort violate Colbert's right by curing Colbert of his ignorance? Of course not. And Colbert would agree; he would rather not be shot. “If someone is interested in believing the truth, then she will not take the presentation of contrary evidence and argument as some kind of injury.”41
This reveals what is at the heart of Report‐Colbert's claim that he has a right to his opinion. He does not care about believing what is true, but only believing what he wants to believe. Your presentation of arguments and evidence is keeping him from doing this, and so he sees it as an injury and thinks you have a moral duty to stop.
But, even though Colbert does not care about truth and even though you are “injuring him” by keeping him from believing what is most comfortable, you still do not have a duty to let him keep his belief. If there is a duty to let people believe what is most comfortable, then the factanistas in the media violate our rights every time they tell us something we do not want to hear – like when they reported the NSA wiretapping and our secret European prisons. As Colbert pointed out at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006:
Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super‐depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good – over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times – as far as we knew.42
If we each had the duty to let everyone believe what they wanted and what was comforting, then educators – and particularly philosophers – would have the most immoral jobs on the planet. As Report‐Colbert pointed out in his book, nothing endangers cherished beliefs like education and philosophy, and nothing hurts more than learning new ideas.
Let me ask you this: Why were you happier when you were a kid? Because you didn't know anything. The more you know, the sadder you get. Don’t believe me? By the time you finish reading this chapter, over a hundred dogs and cats in animal shelters around the nation will be euthanized. Bet you wish you could erase that knowledge. But it's too late. You learned a New Idea, and it made you sad … Look at the story of Adam and Eve. Their lives were pretty great – until they ate from the Tree of Knowledge … God's point: Ignorance isn't just bliss, it's paradise.43
We clearly do not have a right to opinions we cannot defend, especially if they are so clearly contrary to fact. Thus, the real Colbert cannot really think he has a right to believe, contrary to fact, that George Washington did not have slaves – or, for that matter, that the Panama Canal was finished in 1941 (instead of 1914).44
How to do Philosophy
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, I hope it lands on a philosophy professor.
– Stephen Colbert
I Am America (And So Can You!) 45
We've considered many examples of Report‐Colbert saying things so profoundly stupid that we have to conclude that he was only kidding. But wait, is not he mocking conservative pundits, like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, by imitating them? We know Rush and Bill were not offering up satire (sadly, both were deadly serious about the moronic things they said). Neither was Sarah Palin when she said she had foreign policy experience because of Russia's proximity to her home state of Alaska, or Donald Trump when he said that climate change was a Chinese hoax, or used the phrase “for the 1/100th time” (when he meant for the hundredth time) when talking about Coronavirus testing. How do we know that Colbert is not doing the same thing?
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