Using the K.I.S.S. Principle in Politics

Growing up, I can recall a number of my teachers extolling the values of simplicity and clarity. The acronym that some of them used was K.I.S.S., which stands for "Keep it simple, stupid." While the maxim is not universally applicable (most people would be reluctant to consider the K.I.S.S. principle as sound advice for a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon), I would argue that the vast majority of our elites (for instance, politicians, bureaucrats, members of the media establishment, and members of the religious establishment) could use a healthy dose of it.

Why did I suddenly begin to contemplate the need for reviving the K.I.S.S. principle? It began last night, as I read an article in the U.K.'s Telegraph entitled "Taliban can be admired for their faith and loyalty, says bishop." Upon first reading the article title, I quick checked the URL of the website to make sure I hadn't somehow been re-directed to The Onion (for those who aren't familiar with The Onion, I recommend checking it out...they do outrageously funny, phony news stories but make them look incredibly genuine). But no, the article was all too real. (Here's the link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6804155/Taliban-can-be-admired-for-their-faith-and-loyalty-says-bishop.html)

In the words of Bishop Stephen Venner, "We've been too simplistic in our attitude towards the Taliban...The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other...To blanket them all as evil and paint them as black is not helpful in a very complex situation.”

Such noble sentiments, right? Among many on the Left, especially in the media and academia, Venner's statements would likely resonate. It fits in perfectly with their soft-headed political correctness crusade and multicultural agenda. But these aren't noble sentiments at all. They're wrong, they're ludicrous, and they're dangerous. Perhaps Venner should have talked to the Afghan women who have had acid thrown in their faces by the Taliban for the sin of trying to get an education. Or someone who has had a hand or arm chopped off as a punishment for a minor wrongdoing. Or the family member of someone who was executed for a petty crime. For the cultural/moral relativists on the Left who argue that there is no universal code of human rights, that every "culture" must be equally respected because, well, shucks, they're just "different" than us Westerners, it is a slippery slope. And Venner slid down that slippery slope when he openly trumpeted his admiration for these barbarians. It's not a "very complex situation." It's a clear, universal case of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil.

As I continued to ponder the tendency of many squeamish members of the Western elite to seek refuge by seeing "complexity" when there simply isn't any, examples kept coming to mind. I'll share two of them, both related to recent events that the media spent lots of time covering (although, in the first case, it was not enough time, and in the second, it was and continues to be FAR FAR too much).

The first is the Fort Hood massacre. Within hours of the deadly shooting, as I flipped through the channels, I saw the fat face of the useless Dr. Phil on Larry King Live. Phil was going off on some rant about "psycho-babble," allowing his mind-numbing arrogance to take over. No one should have been rushing to judgment about the shooter's motives...yet here was Phil diagnosing Nidal Hasan, the radical Islamist murderer, as some sort of PTSD victim who we all should pity. Sure...Hasan was just a lonely, marginalized fella who went crazy...except he didn't. It turned out he had never been deployed into combat. So you would figure that this simple (un-complex) fact would end the inane PTSD narrative that was beginning to take root in the media. But you'd be wrong. Instead, the information gave rise to a new theory: second-hand PTSD, where Hasan somehow caught the illness from his fellow soldiers.

Members of the media and many on the Left never brought themselves to admit the simple fact: the Fort Hood attack was a terrorist action by a radical Muslim. Even when evidence began to pour forth showing Hasan's radical ties and his well-documented jihadist beliefs and statements, many left-wing elites in the media, brainwashed by the corrosive agenda of political correctness, opted for some sort of theory that emphasized the complexity of the attack, along these lines: yes, he talked to a radical imam who openly praises murdering Americans, but he was also a loner with no friends who was spurned by a white, Christian society, and he was also pained by the stories of soldiers returning from combat. The narrative being concocted created complexity where there was none. Hasan was an evil man who murdered brave American soldiers in the name of his perverted religious views...and he fits squarely into the violent tradition of radical Islamic extremism that has repeatedly shown itself to those of us willing to see simplicity rather than invent complexity.

Finally, and I realize this story is seemingly unrelated and far less significant, not to mention apolitical: the Tiger Woods fiasco. The story is quite simple: an extraordinarily talented, world-famous athlete worth an ungodly sum of money put sexual gratification ahead of his wife and his two little children. And yet, there were articles written about Tiger's infidelity that focused on the racial make-up of his dozen or so mistresses. Others claimed that Tiger Woods cannot really be blamed since he is, wait for it...ill. That's right, according to some, he suffers from an illness, an addiction to sex, for which he cannot reasonably be blamed. This sort of response has made considerable inroads throughout too much of our society, as people are increasingly likely to reject the idea of free will in favor of claiming that many people who make bad decisions are either 1) sick with some sort of medical condition and therefore free from blame or 2) products of a flawed society and therefore free from blame- and, I would add, deserving of a chance (or two, or five) at "rehabilitation." This pervasive tendency to deemphasize our freedom to make good or bad decisions, morally correct or immoral choices, and to instead stress the medical or social-structural causes of these actions is yet another example of creating an air of complexity when the overriding reality is much more simple and straight-forward.

None of my statements here are intended as an across-the-board assault on complexity or nuance. Many situations, events, or policy decisions do entail a significant amount of complexity, and they call for taking a knowledgeable, informed, and nuanced position. But far too often, members of the elite, politically correct Western establishment have been all too willing to dodge simplicity and embrace complexity in situations where the K.I.S.S. principle would serve them much better. Here's hoping Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues in the Senate have a similar epiphany soon, and scrap the incredibly confusing, complex, 2000-plus-page bill to reform the American health care system. If they don't "keep it simple," the last word in the K.I.S.S. acronym will describe them perfectly: stupid.