The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” But what did he know? Having one’s own facts is now thoroughly ensconced in American political dialogue. The melding of fact and opinion, in turn, leads to magical thinking in contemporary American politics.

More precisely, one possesses facts in common with those in his or her belief circle. Commentators, analysts, preachers, and movement leaders all subscribe to the same set of facts. The opinions of these thinkers are right on the money, so it is a pleasure to read and listen to them.

Psychologists and cognitive scientists may turn up their noses at this proclivity, which they term “confirmation bias.” They say that we seek out information that confirms our preconceptions, and interpret information in that light, as well. But our belief circle doesn’t discuss cognitive science and, in a democracy, why should the views of so-called experts have a privileged position, anyway?

There was a time when most people got their opinions, directly or indirectly, from a few elite newspapers and the then three TV networks. These high-toned papers enjoyed lucrative advertising revenues, and the networks saw prestigious news as a cheap way to burnish their public service credentials, which was crucial in protecting their government-derived monopolies. Their coverage never was quite as objective as purported, but they did make an effort to tell us what we needed to know.

Now news is a profit center, and the high-toned press features the potpourri of helpful features commonly known as “news you can use.” Cable news networks and other newer competitors, born in an era of competition and fewer scruples, feature calumny about the other political side, salacious gossip, and, often, stories that combine both. Such coverage is more entertaining, provocative, and lucrative, but it hardly is conducive to developing the informed citizenry upon which a republic is based.

These media outlets typically don’t distinguish between fact and opinion. Liberal commentators dread being outflanked on the left, and conservatives on the right. Given the role of the new and refurbished media in arousing primary voters, the most extreme views on an issue come to govern the respective political coalitions.

All of this sets the stage for magical thinking, which means the view that our beliefs and utterances establish objective facts in the world. One important example is global warming.

Does global climate change exist? Is climate affected by human activity? The answers to these questions would seem uniquely the province of physical science. Most scientists would answer them in the affirmative, although some dissent. Among political activists, however, conclusions about scientific fact seem almost completely correlated with their political views.

After a leading presidential hopeful recently stated that climate change is real, the most popular talk radio personality intoned “Bye, bye nomination.” Others have declared climate change a hoax. The result, ironically, is that government responses, starting to proliferate at the state and local levels, are based on extensive curtailment of liberty and micromanagement of the economy.

As might be expected, questions involving the softer social sciences invoke even more certitude. Centralized government planning mechanisms, we are told by many on the left, can reign in exponentially growing increases in the cost of health care while substantially increasing its quantity, and without reducing its quality. More government is better.

Correspondingly, some on the right preach that taxes must be reduced in every conceivable instance. Like the real estate agent whose bumper sticker “Now is the time to buy” always is in season, their mantra is that taxes must be cut in times of prosperity, recession, military exigency, and possible default on federal bond payments. As Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein has taken to arguing in The Wall Street Journal, government often pays off special interests in the form of custom-designed tax deductions rather than cash. Cutting these “tax expenditures” is better regarded as slashing spending, but absolutists declare them to be forbidden tax increases.

In my own writing on property law, I stress that a great advantage of the common law over legislation is that the common law is a slow accretion of precedent. Over hundreds of years, judges ruling in thousands of cases can approximate correct answers while accounting for changes in technology, informed public sentiment, and the waxing and waning of world affairs. Bold legislative strokes by transitory majorities, on the other hand, are apt to be evanescent and to reduce confidence in government.

While most people would say that we ought not to repose confidence in misguided government programs, we should not react with glee to the denigration of government as an institution. Each of us would find that there are some tasks for which its role is vital.

We know from experience the tragic results of Marxism’s magical thought that the State would wither away. The State will not wither away because some on the right devoutly would prefer it, either. But, just as we should not think that the State would wither away, we should not think it could continue to grow unchecked and still be our servant rather than our master. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

It is easy to emphasize one of Madison’s sentences and neglect the other, but he wrote both. In every generation, we must decide how the State might provide for our common needs within the framework of protecting our liberties. If there were an easy and perennial answer, we would have arrived at it a long time ago.

We are not angels, we all have our blind spots, selfish desires, and foibles. In the Declaration of Independence, the Framers acknowledged the importance of a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” Surely, those engaged in contemporary political debates should be similarly endowed with the modesty to have a decent respect for the views of fellow countrymen with whom they disagree.

Although impulses towards righteousness and narcissism bring their pleasures, blind absolutism and magical thought are not marks of responsible governance. Reasoned explanation and judicious compromise have their necessary place in maintaining a republican form of government.