Pragmaticism

Matt Yglesias:

For my part, I’m continually baffled by the degree to which thought-leaders and politicians on the center-left think it’s credible and/or political useful to present our agenda as wholly un-ideological and “pragmatic,” somehow emerging magically through empirical study.

In the current The New Yorker Atul Gawande  reports (subscription needed) on a successful attempt to moderate health care cost that arose from and rests on a theory derived from careful study of the actual per patient costs, which is to say hard work interpreting the facts in the light of how the world actually works led to improved health care at a lower cost..  He is cautiously optimistic about the new method and is clear that the it magically arose from empirical study. The solution, by the way, is to find the most expensive patients and give them more health care because, it turns out, the most expensive patients often take really crappy care of themselves and inundating them with trusted health care providers, social workers, and compassionate nags leads to measurable improvement in their health, well being and a decline in the costs of taking care of them.

My point is this, for someone who is more or less ignorant of the facts of the matter retreat to ideologically driven argument makes sense as an ideology allows the construction of an easy argument or solution to complicated problems. Ideology, the last refuge of the intellectually lazy.