Russia’s war against Ukraine illustrates the danger of excess attachment to abstract political goals, no matter how desirable we may consider them.
My first lesson about this danger came as an undergraduate at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Political science professor Theodore Shay claimed that Republicans could only win in liberal Portland if they could shut down all telephones there on election day.
Responsible Republicans would vote anyway, he assumed, but many Democrats would only turn out if someone phoned to remind them.
The Republican Party was different back then, and I had inherited enthusiastic support for it from my parents. I figured out an easy way to shut down Portland telephones for the day. (More recent telephone technology would probably prevent my scheme from working now, but I won’t disclose details in case it might still work.)
My enthusiasm evaporated, though, when I thought about the other things shutting down the telephone system would cause. Houses would burn down because no one could phone the fire department. People with medical emergencies would die because no one could call an ambulance.
