H. L. Mencken

The public wants to believe that the North Korean nuclear program is a puzzle to be solved by either the moral indignation of the socialist or the technical rationality of the conservative. This enthusiasm for categorization is precisely why the situation remains unsolved. The people of the United States, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that because they can label the phenomenon, they can therefore control it. They are wrong. The phenomenon is not a puzzle; it is a mirror, and the reflection is ugly because the face looking into it is ugly.

The socialist opponent, with a commendable if naive clarity, identifies the “deliberate, mechanical act of violence preparation.” He is correct that this is not weather. It is not a natural disaster, nor is it a misunderstanding. It is a choice. I concede this point. The state of North Korea is indeed dedicating its scarce resources to the production of instruments of mass death. The socialist’s diagnosis of the material conditions is accurate: the people are suffering so that the rulers may feel secure. This is the standard operating procedure of tyranny, and to call it anything else is to engage in the kind of diplomatic varnish that Mencken has spent a lifetime scraping off the walls of government.

However, the socialist’s error lies in his assumption that the West’s response is driven by a similar clarity. He treats the Western reaction as a failure of policy, when it is actually a failure of nerve. The West does not act because it is afraid to admit that its own democratic institutions are incapable of producing a decisive will. The socialist sees a moral failure; I see a bureaucratic paralysis. The “exponential rate” of enrichment is not merely a statement of intent by Kim Jong Un; it is a statement of incompetence by the leaders of London, Washington, and Seoul. They are not negotiating; they are stalling. They are buying time in which to pretend that the problem is being managed, when in fact it is being ignored.

The conservative opponent, meanwhile, offers us the “Rationalist error.” He argues that politics cannot be reduced to technical instructions, that it is governed by traditions and habits. This is a seductive argument, dressed in the tweed of academic respectability. It sounds profound. It is, however, largely nonsense. The conservative is correct that the laboratory does not map onto the world. But he is wrong to suggest that the alternative is “practical knowledge” derived from the “conversation of mankind.” What he calls practical knowledge is often merely prejudice, and what he calls tradition is often merely the inertia of the comfortable.

The conservative’s fear is that we will try to engineer a solution. But the reality is that we are not engineering anything. We are dithering. The “Rationalist” he despises is not the one making policy; he is the one who believes that policy exists. The actual policy is a void. The conservative’s appeal to “civil association” and “web of relationships” is a polite way of saying that the powerful are too cowardly to act. He mistakes the absence of action for wisdom. He calls it “practical knowledge”; I call it the Booboisie’s refusal to make a difficult choice.

Both opponents are trapped in the same democratic delusion: that the outcome is determined by the quality of the argument. The socialist believes that if we name the violence correctly, it will stop. The conservative believes that if we respect the complexity of tradition, we will avoid disaster. Both are wrong. The outcome is determined by the will to power, and the West has none.

The North Korean leader is not a rational actor in the conservative’s sense, nor is he a moral agent in the socialist’s sense. He is a demagogue who has discovered that the most effective way to rule a starving population is to threaten the world with annihilation. It works because the world is too polite to shoot him. The “strategic stability” the conservative fears is not a balance of power; it is a balance of cowardice. The “escalation” the socialist decries is not a natural phenomenon; it is a performance.

The public wants to believe that the experts are in charge. They are not. The experts are arguing about whether the car is moving too fast or whether the driver is respecting the traditions of the road. Meanwhile, the car is driving off a cliff. The socialist sees the cliff. The conservative sees the driver’s manners. I see the passengers, who are too busy arguing about the ethics of speed to notice that they are falling.

The actual beneficiary of this stalemate is not Kim Jong Un, though he profits. The actual beneficiary is the class of politicians and journalists who profit from the perpetual state of alarm. They need the hobgoblin to be imaginary, so that they can be the guardians against it. If the hobgoblin were real, they would have to act. If they acted, they might fail. So they prefer the hobgoblin to remain a metaphor.

The socialist’s strength is his honesty about the violence. The conservative’s strength is his suspicion of technical fixes. But both lack the courage to name the thing accurately: the West is not failing to solve the problem; it is refusing to define it. It is treating a political crisis as a diplomatic one, and a diplomatic one as a moral one. It is a cascade of evasions.

The public’s enthusiasm for these debates is the problem. They want a debate. They do not want a solution. A solution would require them to accept that their leaders are either incompetent or corrupt. A debate allows them to believe that the leaders are merely complex. The Menckenian diagnosis is simple: the leaders are neither. They are merely afraid. And the public, in its infinite vanity, prefers to be afraid with them than to be safe without them.

The nuclear fuel facility is not a triumph of engineering, nor is it a tragedy of morality. It is a monument to the West’s inability to say no. It is a brick in the wall of our own irrelevance. And we are applauding it, because it gives us something to talk about.

Orwell-style

Here is what happened: a regime in Pyongyang announced it would build more weapons. Here is how it is being described: the libertarian calls it a “receipt” for Western dithering; the conservative calls it a failure of “Rationalist” technical thinking. The gap between these two descriptions and the actual conditions of the people involved is the subject of this analysis.

The libertarian opponent makes a point that is difficult to dismiss, and I will concede it immediately. He is correct that the public prefers the fiction of negotiation to the fact of domination. He is also correct that sanctions, as currently applied, often bite the poor while leaving the ruling class untouched. This is a fact I have observed in my own time, and it remains true. When a government imposes economic pressure on a nation, it is the miner, the farmer, and the factory worker who starve, not the general who signs the order. The libertarian’s anger at the hypocrisy of Western diplomacy is justified. He sees the lie in the official narrative that sanctions are a tool of justice rather than a tool of collective punishment. On this specific point, his diagnosis is accurate.

However, his conclusion - that this proves the failure of all institutional restraint and validates a worldview of pure power politics - is a leap that ignores the material reality of why those institutions exist. He treats the “men in suits” and the “men in uniforms” as interchangeable actors in a game where the only rule is blood. This is a cynical simplification. It assumes that because the current diplomatic machinery is broken, the concept of international law is a delusion. It is not a delusion; it is a fragile, often dishonest, but necessary barrier against the immediate resort to violence. To tear down the barrier because it is leaky is to invite the flood.

The conservative opponent offers a different error. He speaks of “Rationalist error” and “practical knowledge,” framing politics as a conversation of traditions and habits. This is elegant language, but it is empty. It is the language of the man who has never had to worry about whether his children will eat. He treats Kim Jong Un’s nuclear facility as a philosophical mistake, a failure to understand the “web of relationships.” This is absurd. Kim Jong Un is not making a philosophical error. He is acting with perfect rationality within the context of a totalitarian state that survives only through fear and external threat. The conservative’s “practical knowledge” is merely a polite way of saying that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. It is a defense of the status quo disguised as wisdom.

Both opponents are engaged in a language audit of their own making, but they are auditing the wrong text. They are auditing the behavior of statesmen, not the conditions of the stateless. The libertarian sees the failure of the West and concludes that power is the only truth. The conservative sees the complexity of power and concludes that tradition is the only guide. Neither looks at the person in the coal mine in Wigan, or the farmer in the North Korean countryside, or the soldier in the trenches.

The truth is simpler and less comfortable. The nuclear facility is not a “receipt” nor a “philosophical error.” It is a concrete object built by human hands, using resources extracted from the earth, to serve the purpose of keeping a dictator in power. The diplomatic language surrounding it - whether it is the libertarian’s “dithering” or the conservative’s “Rationalist error” - is designed to obscure this simple fact. It turns a political crime into a strategic puzzle.

I agree with the libertarian that the current system is dishonest. But I disagree that the solution is to abandon the pretense of law and morality. The solution is to make the law and morality honest. We must stop pretending that sanctions are anything other than collective punishment, and we must stop pretending that nuclear proliferation is a technical problem rather than a political one. The conservative’s appeal to “tradition” is a shield for the powerful. The libertarian’s appeal to “reality” is a shield for the cynical.

The real issue is not whether Kim Jong Un is a “rational actor” or a “theatrical tyrant.” The real issue is that our political language has become so detached from material reality that we can debate the “Rationalist error” while ignoring the fact that the people of North Korea are being held hostage by their own government, and the people of the West are being lied to by their own. We need to translate the abstract nouns. “National security” means the safety of the ruling class. “Diplomatic engagement” means buying time. “Nuclear deterrence” means the threat of mutual destruction.

When we strip away the jargon, we are left with a simple choice: do we accept a world where power is the only currency, as the libertarian suggests? Or do we cling to the idea that there are rules, however imperfect, that protect the weak from the strong, as the conservative implies? I choose the latter, not because it is elegant, but because it is the only thing standing between us and the jungle. The libertarian is right that the current rules are broken. But breaking them further will not fix them. It will only make the violence more honest, and therefore more terrible.

The danger is not that we are too rational or too traditional. The danger is that we have stopped telling the truth about what is happening. We must start by admitting that the diplomatic game is rigged, and that the cost of this rigging is paid in human lives. Only then can we begin to change the game.

Oakeshott-style

The plan requires that the complex, tacit practice of statecraft be replaced by the explicit rule of ideological purity. But statecraft encodes a specific knowledge of contingency and nuance that no rule can capture, and the people who possess it - the diplomats, the historians, the practitioners of the art of the possible - were not consulted by those who would reduce the world to a binary of moral clarity.

I find myself in agreement with the libertarian interlocutor on one precise point: the public’s desire for a comforting delusion is indeed a barrier to understanding. We prefer the fiction of negotiation because it suggests that the world is legible, that men in suits can indeed talk down men in uniforms. This is a rationalist error, in the sense I have defined it: the belief that because a problem can be described in a textbook, it can be solved by applying the correct formula. The libertarian is correct to identify this as a failure of imagination, a refusal to accept the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be.

However, the libertarian’s diagnosis leads to a conclusion that is itself rationalist in its arrogance. To suggest that the only alternative to the “fiction of negotiation” is the “fact of domination” is to assume that politics is a contest of wills, a zero-sum game where one side must inevitably crush the other. This is the enterprise association view of politics: society as a vehicle for a specific end, in this case, the end of security through dominance. It ignores the civil association view, which sees politics not as the direction of society toward a goal, but as the maintenance of conditions within which individuals may pursue their own ends. The libertarian sees the failure of patience; I see the failure of understanding what patience is for. It is not for the sake of comfort, but for the sake of preserving the framework of civil life against the corrosive effects of ideological certainty.

The socialist interlocutor offers a more compelling critique of the language used by the establishment. He is right to point out that “strategic stability” is often a euphemism for a terrifying acceleration. To call a speeding car with its brakes cut “stable” because it is moving in a straight line is a vivid and accurate description of the current diplomatic posture. The socialist correctly identifies that the material conditions - the diversion of resources from food to missiles - are the real story, not the diplomatic varnish. This is a necessary corrective to the rationalist’s tendency to treat politics as a conversation among gentlemen, detached from the harsh realities of material existence.

Yet, the socialist’s framework also suffers from a rationalist impulse. He treats the proliferation of nuclear weapons as a “mechanical act of violence preparation,” a problem to be solved by addressing the “material conditions.” This assumes that if we change the inputs (the resources, the sanctions, the treaties), we can control the outputs (the peace, the security). This is the engineer’s view of politics. It ignores the fact that the institutions of the state, including the military-industrial complex and the diplomatic corps, are not machines to be fixed, but traditions to be navigated. The knowledge required to navigate these traditions is not technical; it is practical. It is the knowledge of how to manage uncertainty without pretending it does not exist.

The gap between the two opponents is not as wide as it appears. Both are rationalists. The libertarian believes that the rational actor will respond to force; the socialist believes that the rational actor will respond to material incentive. Both assume that the world is a system that can be managed if we only apply the correct theory. Both ignore the practical knowledge embedded in the institutions of statecraft, which is the knowledge of how to live with ambiguity.

The tradition of diplomacy, for all its failures, is not a “fiction.” It is a practical activity that has evolved over centuries to manage the inevitable conflicts between sovereign states. It is not a project to be completed, but a conversation to be continued. The recent developments in Pyongyang are not a “receipt” for decades of dithering, nor are they a “statement of intent” that can be countered by a change in material conditions. They are an intimation of the current state of the conversation. The question is not how to win the argument, but how to keep the conversation going without it collapsing into violence.

The rationalist politician, whether libertarian or socialist, wants to end the conversation. He wants to impose a solution. The practitioner of statecraft knows that there is no solution, only adjustments. The knowledge required to make these adjustments is not found in a textbook on international law or a manifesto on material conditions. It is found in the habits, responses, and judgments of those who have learned to work within the tradition of diplomacy. It is a knowledge that is tacit, embodied, and acquired through doing. It is the knowledge of how to say no without saying goodbye.

The plan to replace this practical knowledge with explicit rules - whether the rule of force or the rule of material determinism - is doomed to fail. Not because it is wrong, but because it is theory. And theory, when applied to practice without the benefit of practical knowledge, produces outcomes that theory cannot predict. The tradition suggests not a grand strategy, but a careful, incremental attention to what is before us. It suggests that we attend to the intimations of our own institutions, rather than imposing a system upon them. It suggests that we recognize the limits of our understanding, and act accordingly.

In the end, the debate is not about North Korea. It is about the nature of political activity itself. Is it a project to be managed, or a conversation to be participated in? The rationalist, in all his varieties, chooses the former. The practitioner, in all his modesty, chooses the latter. The consequences of this choice are not merely theoretical. They are the difference between a world that is managed and a world that is lived in.

H. L. Mencken

1. This exchange has clarified that the opposition does not believe in the competence of the common man; they merely believe in the necessity of his pacification. They are not defenders of democracy so much as its jailers, convinced that the populace is a volatile substance that must be kept in a dark room and fed only the blandest gruel to prevent it from exploding.

2. We disagree on the source of dignity: I hold that it arises from individual excellence and the rigorous pursuit of truth, however unpleasant, while they hold that it arises from the collective comfort of the mediocre and the suppression of any idea that might cause them to frown. They value the peace of the fool; I value the clarity of the master.

3. I would change my mind only if presented with evidence that the average voter, when stripped of the demagogue’s rhetoric and the preacher’s moral panic, consistently chooses policies that enhance his own long-term liberty rather than his immediate gratification. Until then, the record shows that the public prefers the master who promises to do its thinking for it.

4. My strongest claim is that political rhetoric is primarily a mechanism for concealing the transfer of power, a fact supported by the consistent gap between campaign promises and legislative reality; I am certain of this because the pattern is universal and unbroken. My weakest claim is that the press can ever be reformed to serve the public interest, a hope I harbor with less confidence because the newspaper is a business first and a civic institution never, and its owners are rarely saints.

Orwell-style

Here is what happened: we have spent several rounds trading abstractions. Here is how it is being described: a clash of ideologies. The gap between these two is the subject of this analysis.

1. This debate has clarified that the opposing positions are not merely different interpretations of data, but different definitions of truth itself. One side treats facts as malleable tools for political utility, while the other treats them as fixed constraints on action. I now see precisely how the refusal to name a thing by its proper name is not a stylistic choice, but a moral surrender.

2. We fundamentally disagree on whether the preservation of the cause justifies the corruption of the means. My opponents believe that a lie told for a good reason is a lesser evil than the truth that might harm the movement. I believe that the moment you lie to serve the cause, you have already destroyed the cause, because you have destroyed the only thing that makes the cause worth fighting for: the truth.

3. I would change my mind only if presented with concrete evidence that a specific lie, told by a specific person, produced a tangible improvement in the material conditions of the working class without creating a precedent for future dishonesty. Such evidence does not exist in the historical record, but if it did, I would have to admit that my rigid adherence to plain speech had blinded me to a rare, pragmatic exception. Until then, the correlation between euphemism and atrocity remains absolute.

4. My strongest claim is that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and I hold this with near-total confidence because the evidence is visible in every official statement from every government in the last century. My weakest claim is that clear language alone can prevent political decay, for I know that men can be honest and still be cruel, or honest and still be wrong about the mechanics of society. Language is a necessary condition for decency, but it is not a sufficient one.

Oakeshott-style

1. The debate has clarified that the opposing position is not merely a difference of opinion regarding policy outcomes, but a fundamental category error regarding the nature of political activity. It treats governance as a technical problem solvable by the application of explicit rules, thereby ignoring the tacit, practical knowledge that sustains civil association. I now see more clearly how the rationalist impulse seeks to replace the conversation of mankind with a monologue of management.

2. We disagree on whether politics is an enterprise association directed toward a specific substantive end, or a civil association that maintains the conditions for individuals to pursue their own ends. For my opponents, the value lies in the achievement of a predetermined goal; for me, the value lies in the integrity of the framework within which choices are made. They prize the destination; I prize the manner of travel.

3. My mind would change only if it could be demonstrated that practical knowledge - the unarticulated wisdom of practice - can be fully codified into technical instructions without loss of efficacy or meaning. If a reform could be shown to succeed precisely because it stripped away tradition and relied solely on explicit, teachable rules, my skepticism would be misplaced. Until then, the gap between theory and practice remains the decisive factor.

4. My strongest claim is that rationalist politics inevitably fails because it underestimates the complexity of practical knowledge; I am confident in this because history consistently shows that abstract programmes produce unintended consequences when applied to concrete situations. My weakest claim is the precise delineation of where civil association ends and enterprise association begins, as the two often bleed into one another in practice, making the boundary porous and difficult to defend with absolute precision.

The Verdict

Where They Agree

All three debaters explicitly reject the official framing of the situation as a manageable “non-proliferation concern” to be handled through established diplomatic channels. Mencken sees this language as a comforting delusion masking institutional incompetence; Orwell sees it as a cowardly euphemism obscuring a crime; Oakeshott sees it as a Rationalist error that misunderstands the practical, traditional nature of statecraft. This shared rejection is significant because it means, despite their profound differences, none of them believe the problem can be solved within the current framework of international institutions and diplomatic dialogue. The shared, unstated premise is that the entire apparatus of modern statecraft - the UN, sanctions regimes, and diplomatic corps - is fundamentally broken or dishonest in its approach to this crisis. They would likely disagree on why it is broken, but they are unified in the belief that it is.

they agree that the North Korean regime’s actions are, in their own terms, rational. Mencken argues Kim Jong Un is a cold calculator acting on a survivalist ledger. Orwell concedes the regime is acting with “perfect rationality within the context of a totalitarian state.” Oakeshott, while critiquing the action as a “Rationalist error,” does not claim it is irrational, only that it misunderstands the nature of political power. The shared acknowledgement is that Pyongyang’s escalation is a strategically logical move from its own standpoint, not mere madness or irrationality. This agreement drains the debate of any simplistic “madman theory” and forces the disagreement onto the terrain of how to respond to a rational, if monstrous, adversary.

Where They Fundamentally Disagree

The nature of political reality and the utility of power. The empirical question is whether the international system is ultimately governed by raw power dynamics or by a fragile but real web of norms, traditions, and laws. The normative question is what should be the guiding principle of statecraft: the explicit pursuit of national interest through strength, the pursuit of a moral order through material equality, or the maintenance of a traditional framework for civil association. Mencken’s steelmanned position is that power is the only true currency; any appeal to law or morality is a performative lie that weakens the West against adversaries who understand this reality. Orwell’s steelmanned position is that while the current system is dishonest, the concept of rules and morality is the only barrier against a complete descent into a jungle where the weak are mercilessly exploited; the goal is not to abandon rules but to make them honest. Oakeshott’s steelmanned position is that both are forms of Rationalism; reality is found in the tacit, practical knowledge embedded in traditions of statecraft, which are neither purely about power nor about moral absolutes but about maintaining the conditions for civil coexistence.

The primary victim of the current state of affairs. The empirical question is who bears the brunt of the status quo: is it the citizens of liberal democracies whose security is undermined, the global poor who suffer under sanctions and repression, or the stability of the international order itself? The normative question is whose suffering should be prioritized in our moral and political calculus. Mencken focuses on the citizen of a Western democracy whose leaders are too cowardly to act decisively, weakening their security and credibility. Orwell focuses relentlessly on the material conditions of the oppressed, whether the North Korean peasant starving under the regime or the worker elsewhere suffering under sanctions; the state’s violence is a crime against them. Oakeshott’s focus is on the health of the political tradition itself; the victim is the nuanced, practical knowledge of statecraft that is being eroded by both the brutal honesty of the libertarian and the moralizing engine of the socialist.

Hidden Assumptions

• H. L. Mencken: Assumes that a decisive, unambiguous projection of Western power would be more effective in curbing North Korean ambitions than the current policy of diplomacy and sanctions. This is contestable; a show of force could instead reinforce the regime’s siege mentality, justify further militarization to its population, and provoke a dangerous escalation that current policy, however ineffective, has so far avoided.
• H. L. Mencken: Assumes that the public’s desire for diplomatic solutions is a form of cowardice or naivete rather than a rational aversion to the catastrophic human cost of war. If false, his entire critique of democratic paralysis collapses into a mere preference for aggression over the public’s preference for peace.
• Orwell-style: Assumes that clear, honest language is a sufficient tool to dismantle political oppression and that corrupted language is a primary cause of political decay. This is contestable; while language shapes reality, Orwell may over-index on its power relative to material interests, institutional inertia, and pure coercion, which can persist even under the glare of plain speech.
• Orwell-style: Assumes that the primary function of international sanctions is to punish and that they cannot be refined to better target elites. If they could be effectively targeted, his argument that they are merely collective punishment would weaken, forcing a reconsideration of their potential utility.
• Oakeshott-style: Assumes that the “traditional” knowledge of statecraft and diplomacy is ultimately preservative and operates as a net good, providing a bulwark against chaos. This is contestable; this same traditional knowledge has often upheld unjust orders, suppressed necessary change, and failed to prevent catastrophe, suggesting it may be merely conservative rather than wise.
• Oakeshott-style: Assumes that the current diplomatic tradition is capable of adapting to and containing a threat as explicit and untraditional as North Korea’s nuclear enterprise association. If the tradition is too brittle or slow, his prescription amounts to hoping the problem will conform to his preferred mode of engagement.

Confidence vs Evidence

• H. L. Mencken: Claim that the public prefers the comfort of delusion to difficult truths - based on a sweeping, unverifiable generalization about mass psychology rather than specific evidence. This is a core tenet of his worldview presented as an uncontestable fact.
• Orwell-style: Claim that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful - supported by historical observation rather than a falsifiable claim. While powerfully argued, it functions as an axiomatic belief within his framework, making it difficult to evidence in a way that would satisfy an empiricist.
• Oakeshott-style: Claim that Rationalist politics inevitably fails - supported by a selective reading of history that emphasizes failed grand schemes while potentially overlooking instances where explicit, theory-driven reforms succeeded. His confidence rests on a philosophical premise about the nature of knowledge that is itself contested.

What This Means For You

When reading about this topic, be most suspicious of any analysis that fails to separate what is a question of facts from what is a question of values. Demand that coverage specify the exact empirical claims being made - for instance, about the effectiveness of sanctions or the timeline of weapons development - and treat with caution any piece that presents a value judgment about power or morality as if it were a simple fact. Your view on this issue will likely be determined less by the news and more by which of the three underlying beliefs you find most compelling: that politics is about power, justice, or tradition. To evaluate the empirical claims, demand to see the data on the specific allocation of resources within North Korea - exactly what social and economic programs are being defunded to pay for this exponential nuclear expansion. This is the material reality that cuts through all three frames.