Vincible Ignorance
The Catholic Church defines "invincible ignorance" as ignorance that cannot be remedied by diligent application of all the information and reasoning capacity available. One is not morally responsible for errors arising from invincible ignorance. By contrast, "vincible ignorance" is remedial; it can be overcome through honest effort. The present ignorance of the political Left on many matters is seemingly calculated and more aptly described, in a context far different than that originally intended by the Church, as "affected" ignorance, ignorance that is "deliberate and fostered." One cannot escape moral culpability for errors arising out of affected ignorance.
Examples of affected ignorance that have grown into articles of faith on the Left abound. A non-comprehensive list might include the following:
- Senator John Kerry really won the vote in Ohio and therefore the election in 2004 despite a recount and a 2% vote margin comparable to the 3% margin President George Bush enjoyed country-wide.
- Vice-President Al Gore would have won the 2000 election if the votes had only been counted. They were and he didn't.
- Bush allowed guilty Saudi nationals to sneak out of the country just after the September 11 attacks. According the 9/11 Commission Report, everyone who left was appropriately vetted by the FBI.
- The Saudis were going to keep oil prices down to help their friend George Bush win re-election. Prices actually rose and did not come down significantly until after the election. You do not find those who uttered such a belief now concede that they were wrong, lest the whole sand castle of conspiracy be washed away by a flood of reality.
- "Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing [the Bin Laden tape released less than a week before the election]." OK, only Walter Cronkite was making this unfounded assertion, but few on the Left were repudiating the remark. It fit so pleasantly and conveniently into the world view of the Left.
Add to this growing list, a new assertion. Corey Pein in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) disputes the conventional wisdom that the documents presented by CBS News and Dan Rather and used on 60 Minutes to discredit George Bush's service in the National Guard were forgeries. He claims that the evidence is not conclusive. Pein is pained by the fact that uncontrolled blogs first called attention to inconsistencies in the documents and believes that the entire episode "looks less like a victory for democracy than a case of mob rule."
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