At its highest levels, political life today is an attempt to reach heaven through purely human means—that is, to construct Babel. That attempt is partly motivated by institutional interests, but at bottom has to do with basic understandings of man and the world.
The modern emphasis on technology, and its success in generating wealth and power, has given rise to an extensive and ever more closely coordinated society that emphasizes formal expertise, bureaucratic procedures, and fine-grained global markets. Everything can now be administered, bought, and sold, and studied by social scientists.
The smooth functioning of that society requires a scheme to determine what lines of thought and action are legitimate and rational. It is not necessary for the scheme to be clearly stated, adequate to reality, or even altogether coherent. But it must lend itself to the way the system works, and must seem simply rational, so as to exclude alternatives. And it must be easily transmissible, usable by properly trained people from almost any background, and generally coherent with regard to the questions it treats as legitimate.
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