David McElroy

Ingrained and unquestioned beliefs lead us to do stupid and self-destructive things all the time, but our minds are frequently so strongly on auto-pilot that we don’t even realize the contradictions. That’s what I’m seeing from many people in their reactions to the assassination of Anwar al-Aulaqi.

Are you familiar with the concept of cognitive dissonance? It’s an idea in psychology that says when we’re confronted with two contradictory pieces of information or beliefs, our minds experience some discomfort, so the mind is forced to ignore one or the other of the contradictory pieces — in order to make the psychological pain go away. (That’s an oversimplification, but it’s good enough for our purposes.)

After I wrote Saturday about the case of al-Aulaqi, I experienced some of that cognitive dissonance from one of my Facebook friends. Or, rather, someone who was a Facebook friend until she got so angry about my view that she defriended me, but not before demonstrating the bizarre nature of contradictory thinking about al-Aulaqi and blind support of government on certain subjects. Her initial exposition of her position started with simply, “Whatever….He was a traitor!!”

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If you haven’t yet seen John Stossel’s show from this week, please check out this six-minute video clip in which Michael Strong and his wife, Magatte Wade, discuss the basic idea behind free cities. Stossel’s show on Fox Business Channel this week was called “If Libertarians Were in Charge” and discusses various ways in which freedom would affect how we live. (You can see other clips from the show at the link, but the one I most want you to watch is the one about free cities right here.) In particular, Strong and Wade suggest that Native Americans and Africans could reduce or eliminate poverty if they would turn to freedom and away from stifling regulation.

I have no sympathy for Anwar al-Aulaqi. From all appearances, this native of New Mexico was a bad guy who was involved in trying to recruit fellow Americans to carry out criminal acts inside the United States. But we’re supposed to be a nation of laws. The U.S. government proved that isn’t the case when it assassinated him this week.

After Barack Obama ordered him killed, government spin masters have gone into overdrive to justify it. Before he was murdered, he was just a radical cleric working to recruit others. Now that he’s dead — and government officials need to justify it — he’s being referred to as the “chief of external operations” for al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. Whoever made that up deserves some sort of prize for spin.

Most politicians were busy praising the Obama administration for al-Aulaqi’s death Friday, because it’s the popular position to take. In quote after quote from politicians talking about how it was a big step forward in the “war on terror,” nobody mentioned the simple and obvious point that the man was a U.S. citizen, deserving of the protections of our laws and Constitution — even though he’s turned against the country.

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