Just Say ‘No’

G overnor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania seems to have worked out what ought to have been entirely obvious to everyone lo these many years: That the easiest way to defeat the silliest people within our society is simply to tell them “No.” Having learned that the Biden administration intended to remove a statue of William Penn from Philadelphia’s Welcome Park, Governor Shapiro contacted the president and told him that this was a remarkably bad idea. In consequence, the plans were changed. Easy, huh?

In parenting, showing up is half the game. In politics, saying “No” fulfills the same role. At present, certain people seem determined to impose their terrible ideas on American society at breakneck pace, in the hope that everyone else will be overwhelmed into submission. When one says “No,” one thwarts this approach at the outset. Going forward, more politicians ought to try it.

I have been something of a broken record on this over the last decade, and I intend to remain so for the foreseeable future. In a free country such as ours, there is a great deal to be said for open debate, detailed inquiry, and protracted disputation, but, when dealing with the truly ridiculous, there is also much to be said for the simple “No.” “No” takes the air out of the room. “No” sets preposterous claims in their proper context. “No” inverts the burden, sending it from the defense back to the offense, where it belongs. Above all else, “No” exposes aggressors who do not have a second act.

The dirty little secret undergirding wokeness is that its practitioners have nothing but indignation in their corner. They begin with shouting and screaming and the calling of names, and they end with those devices, too. As such, they thrive on the weakness or indecision of their adversaries. “Maybe,” “perhaps,” “possibly” — such words all let the wolf in by the window. “No,” by happy contrast, represents a brick wall. Does that sound simplistic? Good, it’s supposed to, for, ultimately, our choice is between saying “No” or getting “Yes” — even if that “Yes” takes many steps to reach. Christopher Hitchens liked to say that claims that are asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, too. A corollary might be that claims that are self-evidently stupid ought to be summarily dismissed as such — especially when they are being offered up as an alternative to the status quo. Together, “No” and “I don’t care” provide one hell of a one-two punch.

From there, the politics will follow. Nobody really likes this stuff; it is the preserve of a tiny, insulated elite. One could spend years trawling the highways and byways of Pennsylvania and find literally nobody who wanted to cancel William Penn. As an act of trend-bucking within his political clique, Josh Shapiro’s move was admirable. As a decision rendered within the confines of quotidian American politics, it was entirely uncontroversial. Removing statues of William Penn from public parks is an idea that belongs with painting all stray cats purple or declaring trees to be traitors or demanding that men can have babies. It is a stupid, fringe, pointless position, peddled by the terminally dull. The correct response to it is not, “That’s interesting” or “I can see your case” or “I’m sorry that you’re upset,” but “No, no, and no again.” Build that, and the voters will come.

Which is all another way of saying that Josh Shapiro has hit upon the radical idea of representing the voters of his state as they actually exist, rather than as they are supposed to exist in the minds of bored sociology students. Calvin Coolidge famously proposed that “it is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones,” and the same thing holds true of demands. The vast majority of the demands that are made of political leaders ought to be met either with silence or with a curt “No” — not only because most of those demands are frivolous, but because demurring to them creates more space for the things that actually need to be done. Far too much of our contemporary politics consists of the frenzied discussion of distracting nonsense. We would be better off if more of our contemporary politicians were to embrace the healing power of “No.”