Water Works 54 - 9/27/04

First Principles First

I avoid talking about water with people I don’t know very well. The result usually depresses me. I would almost prefer that water was more of a hot-button topic, the way political questions often are. Of course that’s why we avoid talking about politics with people we’ve only just met. Talk about water does liven up a bit when you mix it with politics, but the problem with that approach is – if you are willing to risk an argument with a stranger – before long you end up just talking about politics. Confine the conversation to water and usually you won’t have much of one at all.

A friend told me a story the other day about a woman who holds a doctoral degree in a scientific field, who could not explain how the water that runs out of her kitchen tap gets there, beyond: “We have our own well.” A while back, when Franklin conducted a well testing program to track some water quality problems the township had been having, I heard of one family here that wasn’t at all concerned about their water. Why? “We have our own well.” When I hear that sort of thing too often it makes me want to run out, find a stranger somewhere and start arguing about politics – it beats trying to talk about water.

The difference between arguing about politics and talking about water is simple. A serious discussion about water requires that you attend strictly to facts, like them or not. You have to understand the fundamentals of the subject and the first principles for evaluating evidence. That is what makes it hard for most people. They don’t know where to begin, so they never get past their own back yards. Look how long it took to sift through all the evidence in the story I just told you. I could have summarized the whole business in a tenth of the space I took, but you would have understood very little of what the NJDEP has done here in Franklin without the other ninety percent: the fundamentals and first principles.

Political disputes are governed by very different first principles: always put your best foot forward, stay “on-message,” and never concede a debating point unless it will cost you more to hang onto it than it will to give it up, among others. “Spinning” issues is a fact of life in a healthy, functioning democracy. Even I would hesitate to vote for someone who couldn’t show me at least a few skills in public relations and the art of managing controversy.

All political creeds, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Anarcho-
Syndicalist – whatever – provide those in need of such things with another set of ready-made first principles: rules for judging questions of public policy. It’s like buying a ready-made suit. You pick one you like off the rack, tailor it a bit around the edges, and before you know it you have a belief system all your own, fit for all occasions. You also have a special pocket somewhere – all the suits have that in common – with a memory hole for losing inconvenient facts the belief system of your choice can’t handle.

The first of all political first principles is: loyalty among the wearers of similar ideological suits. The members of each faction have to make sure what they say and do is not at cross-purposes with their team’s larger mission. That’s why the arts of spinning issues, staying on-message and using memory holes effectively are so essential. The requirements of honesty absolutely demand them. Without them, it’s hard to imagine how we would manage to accomplish anything in public life.

There are limits to what political spin should try to accomplish though. I’m a registered Republican, as I’ve told you. I’m a New Jersey Republican in more than the technical sense. To say I’m a Hunterdon Republican is to risk being redundant – even Anarcho-Syndicalists register as Republicans out here – but where I part company with many of my fellow Republicans here and elsewhere is when too much politics gets mixed in with talk about water, and as a result I’m asked to believe nonsense.

A choice example is my favorite bit of rhetoric concerning the Highlands Water Protection Act: “The Highlands Act has very little to do with protecting water.” I have read three variations on that theme in only the past two weeks. There can be no doubt that the Highlands Act will have substantial impacts on matters like municipal “home rule,” commercial ratables, affordable housing, the price of farmland, and development pressures on towns outside the Highlands. But whatever you think of those impacts, you only need to read the bill to understand that the foremost purpose of the Highlands Act is to protect water.

To suggest otherwise implies that we are all victims of some sort of conspiracy, if only an unwitting conspiracy of the clueless; that the main thrust of the bill got lost somehow, and only the most noxious side-effects remain. I know better, but what concerns me is the impact of that kind of rhetoric on people who don’t know much about water beyond “We have our own well.” Ask them what else they know and it won’t take long to hear how the Highlands Act has very little to do with protecting water. Why shouldn’t they believe it? They probably heard it from someone who belongs to the same political team, with the same taste in suits, or someone they know and trust enough to elect to public office.

At that point, asking if they know of any better alternative to the Highlands Act is irrelevant. They’re already feeling like dupes of their own state government – it seems like piling on to press the issue further. And after an experience like that, sensible people tend to be skeptical about any schemes to protect water, in the Highlands or anywhere else. Before you know it, all questions and answers about water stop and all you have left to talk about is politics.

What gets lost in that shuffle is vital to New Jersey’s future. We should always be careful about spinning facts or dropping them down memory holes when we talk about water. Truth is, we will all be better off if we leave politics out of the discussion. As first principles go, I can’t think of a better place to start.

Ron Gutkowski