As I wrote some seven ago in The American Interest, the integrity of government statistics is one of the essential foundations of democratic modernity. Systematically collected and disseminated government data — on inflation, employment, trade, demographics, weather, crime, pollution, traffic, poverty, disease, vaccination rates, etc. — provides the epistemic foundation on which citizens can scale their local experiences into a shared sense of national reality.
— provides the epistemic foundation on which citizens can scale their local experiences into a shared sense of national reality. Without this statistical scaffolding, politics collapses into pure narrative contestation, where truth is whatever serves the factional purpose of the moment. In liberal democracies, this trust in neutral data is not an incidental feature; it is a core political virtue, one that separates deliberation from demagoguery.
In liberal democracies, this trust in neutral data is not an incidental feature; it is a core political virtue, one that separates deliberation from demagoguery.