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We do not live by facts. Some people may think they do, but they dont. They live by values. It is values that direct our actions; facts merely tell us how to get where we want to go. Whether we should provide healthcare access to all, or just to those who can afford it, is a values question (and the correct value answer is to all). But whether our country can afford to provide healthcare access for all is a fact question (and the fact is that yes, we can). Those who say that we cannot afford it are ignoring the real facts because they dont want to acknowledge those facts. Their real issue is that they follow a different value system, but they usually prefer not to say so out loud, so they pretend to use facts.

Now, because those people dont really care about facts, it may seem that using facts against them is a waste of time. But this is a mistaken conclusion; facts still matter in the United States (and the rest of the civilized world), and even though having the facts on your side doesnt guarantee an easy victory, it certainly helps, since most people will go along with facts that have enough evidence behind them. (See Galileo, Semmelweis, and/or Wegener.) Even though Republicans are banking heavily on that no longer being true, America still tends to be a mostly fact-based society, where the difficulties have more to do with persuading people what the facts really are, rather than persuading them to use facts in the first place.

But as we stress the importance of facts in making decisions, it is important to remember that facts apply equally to both sides. There is no such thing as a liberal fact or a conservative fact. Liberal and conservative values are different, but facts are the same for everybody. Therefore, if the facts turn out to contradict a Progressive idea, then Progressives must be prepared to adjust or abandon that idea, so that they dont do the very thing that they (rightly) accuse Conservatives of doing.

As an instructive example, lets consider a major Progressive mistake: reforming the teaching of reading in public schools.

There have long been two general methods for teaching children how to read. The traditional method is usually called phonics. The other method is variously described as look-say or whole word or whole language. Through most of the 1800s in the United States the phonics method dominated, although there were some teachers who used the alternate method. But by the early 1900s many leading educational reformers (i.e. Educational Progressives) were strongly arguing that look-say produced better results. That is, children who were taught with the look-say method were able to read better, and, more importantly, they learned to read with better comprehension. Eventually this view came to dominate American public education. In 1930 the best-known product of the look-say revolution was published: the famous Dick and Jane reading books. The Progressive victory seemed complete.

But then. . .well, I wont recount here the history of the phonics wars between Progressives and Traditionalists, except to say that a war erupted, and it dragged on for years. But the important point, as far as facts are concerned, is that in 1967 a Harvard professor, Dr. Jeanne Chall, published a comprehensive book that described the available research on the effectiveness of the competing methods of reading instruction, and concluded that the phonics method (which she called decoding) was unquestionably the more effective method. In 1983 she published a follow-on book that concluded even more strongly than before that decoding produced not only better rote reading but also produced better comprehension. The facts were in, and they were conclusive. The reformers were wrong.

And that should have been the end of the war. Well, in some ways it was, but there still remained some people who clung to the whole word method despite the evidence that proved beyond doubt that it was not the better method. But, ironically, they were now the Conservatives who had become accustomed to a particular point of view and were now unwilling to move on from it. The point is that even in Progressive circles there are some who cling to an idea that they like even if the facts dont support it. And if that is wrong when Conservatives do it, then it is equally wrong when Progressives do it. If we are going to call ourselves fact-based, then we have to live it, not just say it.

See original here:
Progressives, as much as Conservatives, ought to adjust their ideas to fit actual facts - Daily Kos