When a lie sounds good people often believe the lie, especially when it doesn’t really effect them personally.
A couple clear examples comes from libertarians and anti-war advocates. Libertarians will often say that sacrificing liberty for the sake of liberty is absurd. Anti-war advocates will say war for the sake of preventing war is absurd. They certainly sound absurd if you don’t, and never will, think more than 5 seconds about it. It is exactly the contrasting terms in these slogans that make them sound somewhat profound.
The truth is that it is quite possible to sacrifice a little of something to prevent losing a lot more.
Libertarians often like ex-post corrective policies – if I steal from you I have to give it back with an extra fine. That’s trading liberty for the sake of liberty. But ex-anti preventive policies trade a little liberty to prevent a lot more being taken away. A camera in every house might help liberty, but just because the liberty-liberty tradeoff exists does not mean that every possible case is one. Even having a government at all is a liberty-liberty tradeoff.
It is perfectly possible that starting a small war that costs thousands of lives and billions of dollars could prevent a big war that costs hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. Of course, the pro-war advocates seem to think that by simply saying that the tradeoff theoretically exists, that’s the tradeoff we’re making. It is hard to see that as the case, but if you’re going to be against the war, I don’t think it is a thoughtful response to simply assert that the war-war tradeoff is absurd. It isn’t.
