I was thinking the other day about the rather draconian laws my home state passed concerning smoking. On paper the purpose of such laws is to protect non-smokers from the dangers of second hand smoke, and superficially that does seem to be the purpose. However, when viewed objectively, one comes to realize that the laws, far from protecting non-smokers actually increases their exposure.

Back in the later 1980's Maryland had little in the way of laws concerning smoking. In the late 80's I recall smoking in the hallways outside of my college classroom, as well as in the smoke filled offices of my first few low paid telemarketing jobs. A few offices did institute special smoking areas by the end of the 80's, and I think the law insisted on moving smokers to special enclosed rooms by the very early 90's, but that was as far as the law went.

And these "smoking rooms" were really the ideal solution. They allowed smokers to smoke indoors, out of the elements, while, at the same time, keeping the smoke in an enclosed area where it would not offend nonsmokers. And, despite the dogma of some extremist anti-smoking crusaders, the trivial amount of smoke entering the building from these enclosed room posed no threat to nonsmokers.

The problem was, allowing smoking indoors appeared to be giving smokers too much acceptance. So the extremists of the antismoking movement decided that they needed to punish smokers more. So, rather than allow smokers to smoke in isolated, enclosed areas, they insisted smokers could not smoke indoors at all, a sit was too dangerous to nonsmokers. And so smokers were chased outside as punishment for their sin of smoking.

And that decisions is one example where dogma won out over practicality.

How so? Think about it. Whether you think second hand smoke it a terrible toxin or not, which is more of a risk to nonsmokers, trivial amounts that seep out of enclosed smoking rooms? Or the huge clouds you walk through pushing past the mob of smokers outside the front door of every building? By chasing smokers outside, the antismoking zealots ensured that every nonsmoker would inhale hundreds of times more smoke than they would were smokers allowed to smoke indoors in an enclosed area*.

But this is not a post about smoking, it is instead a post about how often the dogma of a group ends up causing it to eschew practical solutions in favor of less effective, but more doctrinally pleasing solutions. In the case of smoking, the ostensible goal of protecting nonsmokers ends up suffering because the advocated are more interested in "punishing" smokers, or in forcing them to quit through inconvenience, than they are about protecting the nonsmokers.

Nor is smoking unique. Think about the housing boom. The dogma was that cheaper loans would allow "poor people" to buy houses. However, the reality is that by forcing an absurdly low interest rate, combined with normal inflationary pressures, housing prices skyrocketed, placing houses out of the reach of even lower middle class buyers. The obvious solution was to allow rates to rise, cooling off the housing market. It might not allow the very poor to buy houses, but it would have allowed the lower middle class into the market once again, thus making housing more "accessible".

But the doctrine was that the poorest of the poor needed to be housed, whether they could afford it or not. So the government, rather than cooling off the market, threw gasoline on the fire, by loosening loan requirements, forcing rates even lower, and bullying lenders into giving loans to the worst risks possible. As a result, prices rose even more, at the same time we were putting poor people into houses they could never afford. At the same time much of the middle class either found themselves suddenly "house rich" from the houses they already owned, or "house poor" as they paid exorbitant prices for even the smallest new home.

But the dogma would still not allow for the government to stop trying to force the very poor into homes. So even as the housing market was priced out the reach of more and more families, as more and more homes were snatched up as "investments", where profits were made more on paper gains than on real appreciation or improvements, as the poor defaulted in ever greater numbers, the state continued blindly forcing more loans through the banks. They even managed to sell these loans as investments thanks to promises to indemnify buyers through Fannie and Freddie.  And so, as we have seen, a bad doctrine managed to pull down the entire economy, rather than admit their basic premise (that the only thing keeping the poor out of houses was greedy bankers) was wrong.

And we may be seeing still another example of dogma defeating practicality. This time in the case of Guantanamo, and of military tribunals. For years the left told us that Guantanamo was unneeded, as were military tribunals, as the US criminal justice system could handle the terrorists just fine. And so Obama ordered Guantanamo shut down, only to discover than no prisons wanted his prisoners, nor did any of our allies, leaving him with a closing prison camp and nowhere to put his prisoners.

On the more positive side, Obama is showing himself a little less doctrinaire in his decision to continue using tribunals rather than criminal trials. He managed to disguise it with some meaningless bells and whistles, but in this one case he has shown himself a bit better than most of the left, though it has cost him some of that left wing support.

I could obviously go on and on, and if I did there would be a few offenders from nearly every political persuasion. However, I am afraid that even the few examples I have given have made the wrong impression.

Some, reading this post, will probably conclude that I am arguing for "practicality" and "pragmatism" over "ideology", and nothing could be farther from the truth. As my posts "Inescapable Logic", "My Vision of Government" and "My Vision of Government Part II" make clear, I am as ideological as they come. I even took apart most pragmatic fallacies in "The Shortcomings of Pragmatism" and "Pragmatism Revisited". No, what I am criticizing here is not any "excessive ideology", what I am criticizing is an ideology which professes one goal yet pursues another.

Look at the examples above. The smoking example seems inconsistent because the proponents claim they want to protect non-smokers while their first desire is to punish smokers. The mortgage example is not so much because of a conflict of goals, but because of an insistence on an economic theory at odds with reality. And the final example is a combination of the two. It is both a belief at odds with reality, concerning the risk of the terrorists and the abilities of our criminal justice system, as well as a public profession, that they care about terrorists' rights, at odds with the reality, that they hope to use the terrorist to tear down the previous administration.

But in every case it is not an excess of ideology but a conflict which is to blame. Either a conflict between belief and reality, or a conflict between real and professed beliefs. And it is that conflict which is to blame.

So, please, do not come away from this post believing in "pragmatism", but with a dedication to embracing only those ideologies which are both consistent with the facts, and internally consistent, that the professed beliefs are the same as the goals toward which its actions are directed.

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* It is not exactly comparable, but another great example of choking on a gnat but swallowing a camel is to be found in the laws concerning the stadia in Baltimore. Both are open air stadia, but smoking is prohibited. I suppose this could be accepted, were it not for the fact that both have an elevated highway running along two sides, with a garbage incinerator just a short distance downwind. I know second hand smoke is supposedly incredibly dangerous, but can anyone seriously argue it is more dangerous than burning garbage? (If nothing else, don't the cigarette butts in the burning garbage make it just as dangerous as second hand smoke?)