Administration blocks out the challenges to its beliefs

It finally got cold enough here last week that I had to bring in the last of my pepper plants. I'm always amazed by the difference between the frail seedlings I set outside in April and the sturdy plants that develop after a couple of seasons in the garden.

What had been a spindly stalk too weak to resist a mild breeze is now robust enough to support a dozen peppers hanging from its limbs. I sometimes wonder if pepper plants could use slogans - what doesn't kill them only makes them stronger.

Ideas are kind of like that, too. As our views get buffeted by the winds of dissent or scalded by criticism, we must work to reshape and strengthen them. Lacking substantive challenges to our beliefs, we might never realize their flaws or recognize how to improve them further. In fact, this free exchange of ideas has long been a staple of strong democratic societies.

I'm mixing gardening with philosophy here, and I only claim expertise in the former. John Stuart Mill seemed to know something about the latter, however, and he agrees with me pretty well.

Pointing out the loss suffered by those who silence dissenting views, Mill wrote in "On Liberty," "If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

Much like my garden peppers that grew into viable plants only after suffering through seasons of wind and rain and sun, truth also must face adversity in order to thrive. As Mill put it a century and a half ago, "It is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied."

All of this makes me rather worried about the prospects for solid ideas and truth in society today, most particularly in the White House and the U.S. Congress.

In his first four years in office, George W. Bush has appeared almost exclusively in front of rigorously screened audiences. He's held fewer formal press conferences than any president of the television era. Throughout the recent presidential campaign, Bush's handlers worked assiduously to maintain the partisan purity of the presidential crowds.

At some venues, access was allowed only to people who signed oaths of loyalty to the Republican Party - and at least once, police led suspected protesters to a location miles from where Bush was actually going to speak. However anti-democratic these measures might seem, they pale in effect when compared to the chilling moves that Bush and Republicans in Congress have made since Nov. 2.

Since the election, a half-dozen of Bush's top appointments from his first term have announced plans to step down. Of the proposed replacements for these positions to date, Bush has turned exclusively inward - to trusted friends and longtime associates whom he can count on not to question his policies or even to voice dissenting opinions.

As the circle of advisers draws ever more tightly around him, Bush increasingly guarantees that only his version of the truth will be considered. With a second-term agenda targeting major domestic issues including Social Security and the tax code, Bush's ideological insularity will no doubt make us yearn for even the mild voices of opposition we've heard the past four years from the likes of Colin Powell and George Tenet.

It's becoming apparent that dissent and its strengthening properties will need to wait for another time and different leadership.

Down the block in the U.S. Capitol Building, we see a similar trend taking shape. One of the first measures approved by congressional Republicans was the lifting of an ethics standard they had adopted in 1993. In what can only be viewed as a crass effort to protect the job security of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay - who might be indicted by a Texas grand jury for political corruption - the GOP retreated from its position that no member under indictment could hold leadership positions.

This not only gives a glimpse into GOP leaders' assessment of DeLay's chances before the grand jury, but it also speaks volumes about how unwilling these officials are to hear other perspectives.

In the wake of the elections, we might have hoped to see revitalized Republicans turn toward strengthening our democracy, engendering free discourse and embracing the populace that ostensibly elected them. What we see instead is a pitiful retraction from honest debate and oversight, a weakening of democratic principles and a series of moves motivated by fear and insecurity.

Contact David Havlick at havlick@email.unc.edu.