The Danger of Fact-ist Politics — The New Atlantis
Hopelessly polarized though our era in global politics seems, we may be grateful that it pales in comparison with the first half of the twentieth century. What had begun as a rhetorical battle between competing political ideals ended with total war. The tendency for grand political narratives to fanaticize and foster totalitarianism inspired The Open Society and Its Enemies, a famous 1945 book by the Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper. The book’s message for us today is that the threat to democratic, “open” societies is not misinformation or ignorance but rather fanatical certain...