The Problem with the Perfectionist Fallacy
When someone says that America is terrible, you should ask, "Compared to what?"
After the policeman Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all counts for the wrongful killing of George Floyd, one particularly self-styled progressive member of Congress said in an Instagram video regarding the verdict: “It's not justice because justice is George Floyd going home tonight to be with his family.”
That sterling assessment led people to wonder if any judge or jury has ever, in recorded history, achieved justice. What does it mean for a society’s lawmakers to redefine “justice” as the total prevention or undoing of crimes?
The Fallacy
You may have heard Voltaire’s line that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” That nugget of common sense points to a logical error called the “perfectionist fallacy,” or sometimes the “utopian fallacy” or even the “nirvana fallacy.”
You can define it like this: Any solution that does not achieve a perfect outcome should be rejected.
It can also be characterized as a type of false dilemma:
Either Policy X solves the problem perfectly OR Policy X is to be rejected.
Policy X does not solve the problem perfectly.
Therefore Policy X is to be rejected.
The problem, of course, is with the first premise. No policy is likely to solve a problem perfectly. Those aren’t the only two options.
The issue isn’t always a specific policy or solution. The same error is present in the form of unfair criticism of a person or group, the idea being that the person or group is terrible and should be condemned because of a track record that falls short of perfection. This is the most common version of the fallacy that we see today.
Down with All (Imperfect) Systems!
Once you’re aware of this fallacy, you can’t help seeing it everywhere today. Marx famously called for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists.” It has become a trademark of activists’ rallying cries to “dismantle” all of the systems and structures they believe are evil. These include but are not limited to:
Police - We should defund and/or abolish police because of a systemic problem of unjustifiable killings of unarmed black citizens.
Capitalism - A wide gap between rich & poor means a crisis of income inequality, due to the greed in the capitalist system which allows a few people to become exorbitantly wealthy. It should be replaced with a more equitable economic system.
Prisons - They fail to reform criminals, & some inmates are there on the basis of wrongful convictions. It’s part of a systemically corrupt justice system with disproportionate numbers of non-white inmates.
American history - It is a history of oppression; America was built on the backs of victims who were enslaved or whose land was stolen; the founders were part of an evil culture of colonialism and imperialism.
Western Civilization - A history of whiteness, with white values and white supremacy, colonizing other lands and imposing their ways.
Debating each one of these comprehensively would be a book-length exercise, but we can note the same bad habit of falling into the perfectionist fallacy in every case.
Compared to What?
In every evaluation of systems or traditions, like those above, we must ask: against what standard are we judging them? Do we expect perfection?
Would I expect, for example, no mistakes (or even willful misconduct) by any of the nearly million police officers serving in the U.S.? Do I expect free market capitalism to result in equal incomes & assets for all 330 million American citizens? Do I expect prisons to reform all inmates or to have perfectly equal racial & ethic distributions in their populations ? Do I expect a pristine history of sinlessness by the entirety of my ancestors and forbearers?
The questions are not meant to be insulting. Obviously we would expect none of these things. And yet the fallacy persists. Let’s examine each of the things criticized above.
Police - Is the entirety of law enforcement in the U.S. corrupt, shot through with racism? Before answering yes or no, let’s ask: compared to what?
If you’ve been to most places in the world, you know that the armed officials who enforce the laws tend to be corrupt. I’ve been to places where you carry “bribe money” for traffic cops every time you travel. The corruption is bulit-in and assumed. It’s a feature not a bug. Police in many countries can beat you in the street for nearly any reason; the citizen has little recourse.
The purported problems in American policing are themselves rooted to a large extent in propagandistic falsehoods. But if you think there’s too much brutality in American policing, just ask the citizens of: Egypt, Sudan, South Africa, Haiti, Russia, Mexico, Iran, Brazil or China, to mention only a few of those deemed among the worst.
Capitalism - Is it an unfair system that oppresses the majority with poverty? Compared to what alternative economic system?
Massive economies like those of the populous nations of the modern world are not easy to maintain. The consumer-based, private business driven, free market economy has had its problems, but it has also made the U.S. extremely prosperous overall. There is a reason the U.S. is the top destination for actual and would-be immigrants around the globe.
Extreme poverty has been an ugly reality of human existence going way back into history. Today it remains a cruel reality for millions across parts of South America, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Centralized economies based on Marxist principles have have routinely collapsed into unspeakable human suffering and atrocities.
The free market, for all its flaws, has created a thriving middle class in more than one nation. As the late Michael Novak famously wrote,
Of all the systems of political economy which have shaped our history, none has so revolutionized ordinary expectations of human life - lengthened the life span, made the elimination of poverty and famine thinkable, enlarged the range of human choice - as democratic capitalism.
Prisons - Are they cruel dungeons of oppression with disproportionately non-white victims? Again, to what other method or system of dealing with convicted criminals shall we compare our own?
America’s incarceration rate is high, and non-white inmates are over-represented measured against population. But the missing number is always crime rates. If those are similarly disproportional, then the incarceration rate disparity is a moot point.
Most people agree that reform in this area is always needed. It shouldn’t sit well with anyone that we have so many people locked up. Many administrations make efforts at prison reform of one kind or another, as Trump’s administration did in 2018 with the “First Step Act.”
This is a long way from dismantling the system, tearing down all jails and prisons, or something similarly drastic. Yes, in a perfect world, no prisons would exist. In the real world, they are an unfortunate necessity.
American history - Is it a terrible story of injustices? Compared to what other history of what other people or nation?
The primary issue here is slavery and the period following it. Americans know the shameful details well. We also know about wars with natives, along with failures to honor treaties, the ravages of European diseases, and other lowlights.
Compared to a true utopia, it’s egregiously horrible. But what about compared to the histories of all other nations? If we examine history “warts and all,” then we don’t neglect the “warts,” but nor do we fail to put them in perspective of the “all.”
Slavery was not unique to America. It was more the rule than the exception. It was practiced on every continent through all the ages. Africans enslaved fellow Africans. Arabs came into Africa and took out slaves for centuries before Europeans came to the continent. North African Muslim pirates raided Iceland, Ireland & other islands, carrying many white Europeans into bondage. Slavery was practiced in the Americas prior to European contact - see the history of the Aztecs for the most brutal episodes. Most Africans carried to the New World went to places other than North America (the majority to Brazil). Some Native Americans owned slaves. Some freed blacks bought and owned slaves.
The modern slave trade was ended by British and American Christian activists after decades of intense campaigns and pressure. Arabs continued their own land-route slave trade from Africa for many years thereafter. Some American founders were decidedly abolitionist; the Virginians (like Washington & Jefferson) who inherited land with slaves, still disliked it and wanted to see a day when it could be ended. This is why the principles of its ultimate undoing were embedded in the founding documents.
And slavery is as real today as ever. It is estimated that more slaves exist in the world today (many of whom are from Africa) than were taken in all of the years of the infamous Trans-Atlantic trade. For more details, you can listen to the lengthy audio of Thomas Sowell’s great chapter on the subject.
Western Civilization - Is the whole thing an oppressive tradition and culture of colonialism and white supremacy? If so, compared to what major tradition of civilization? Which one is better?
Many traditions of the peoples of the world are on a smaller scale - they are tribal. Histories like those of the Western world, China and India are histories of large civilizations stretching back to antiquity.
Western Civilization would be summarized by the Hebrews, Greeks & Romans, then Christianity, centered mostly in Europe but partly in the Byzantine East. It’s the early universities, the Middle Ages (which added Islamic empires in the West), great architecture, progress in sciences and technology, a Renaissance in the arts, Shakespeare, an Enlightenment in philosophy, the printing press, a Reformation of spiritual and theological focus, modern medicine, exploration of the world, an Industrial Revolution, parliamentary democracy, free markets, trial by jury, ideas of human rights, etc.
But what about the many faults of this tradition over the years? What about wars, “Crusades,” witch-burnings, the Inquisition, colonizing of other lands, slave trading, and other sins of record?
It is true that a perfect civilization would have none of those awful things in its past. If only such a civilization existed. As it is, any study of other civilizations, or even tribal histories, reveals the same human failings: wars, episodes of brutality, rebellions, empire-building, conquests and colonization of neighbors, slavery, and so on. India has had its caste system for thousands of years.
It turns out that none of the negative things in Western history are unique to the West. What does quality as unique are notions of equality under the law, the use of the legal system to bring about the end of slavery, diplomacy instead of war, emphasis on literacy, representative democracy, astounding advances in the sciences and technology, libraries of great literature, and singular worldview features owing to Christian theology.
And to be clear, Western Civilization is not a “white” thing, since it has included multiple people groups and languages from the ancient Mesopotamian region, North Africa, the Middle East, Greek mainland and islands, parts of Northern India, vast Russia, culling together slavs, Franks, Arabs, Turks, and others, then extending across the globe. Western tradition belongs just as much to the millions of people on other continents today (like across Central and South America) who are part of it as to anyone whose skin tone more closely resembles the Saxons of fifteen centuries ago.
Bottom line, everyone who is short-sighted and historically naïve enough to curse and repudiate Western Civilization does so while taking for granted all of the unearned gifts of that civilization that were bequeathed to him or her.
The world is imperfect, “fallen” to use Biblical language. Every “system” will need reforming over time. Any system that gets bad enough may need to be replaced entirely. But if your standard is perfection, and everything short of that has to burn, then you will soon die along with everyone else in the world-wide fires you set.