Tag Archives: politics

Let’s Have an Honest Debate About Abortion

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Image credit: John Hawkin’s Right Wing News.

Have you seen the image to the left on social media sites recently?

As an advocacy poster, it’s quite effective, isn’t it? It tugs at the heartstrings, it moves us to feel the best emotions we are capable of: care, sympathy, and protectiveness, as it portrays a tiny human life in a helpless position. It invites you to endorse its message by clicking on the image if you think it says something true, which it does. Abortion ends a life, and that life is human. At a glance, it makes a powerful case for the author’s position.

Now suppose we take another image

Image: http://www.anatomybox.com/parasitic-twin/

…and give it what appears to be nearly the same caption: ‘

‘Click if You Think Surgical Removal of Undeveloped Twin Ends Human Life.’

This phrase also contains at least some truth. Would it be effective in rallying people in protest against the surgery? The surgery could save the fully developed twin’s life, or at least give them some degree of freedom, opportunity, and good health not possible so long as the undeveloped twin remained attached.

At this point, on whatever side of the abortion-rights debate you are on, you’re probably already protesting against at least one of these. What point would you make, what argument would you use? ‘A fetus is not a human life yet!’? Or, ‘Abortion is not like surgery to remove a parasitic twin: one is meant to end a life, the other to save one!’? Or, ‘That makes no sense, to compare a beautiful human baby to an assemblage of non-functioning human parts!’? Or something else?

(Note: throughout this essay, I’ve decided not to use the terms commonly used by either side in this debate. They’re inaccurate, disparaging, and to my mind represent the dishonesty that pervades mainstream debate. ‘Pro-life’ implies that people who believe in abortion rights are against life generally; ‘pro-abortion’ implies that people think having an abortion is awesome and everyone should go get one recreationally, or as casually as a boob job; ‘pro-choice’ and ‘anti-choice’ imply that the other side thinks people should have no choices at all when it comes to reproduction. Instead of these terms, I’m using the purely descriptive terms ‘anti-abortion-rights’ and ‘pro-abortion-rights’.)

I’ll start by addressing the last of the objections listed above. While it’s true that the two captions imply a comparison between a fetus to a parasitic twin, they do so primarily in the sense that the subject of each shares this characteristic: they are both human life. They are both composed of active, functioning cells, they take in nutrients and excrete waste products, they do not decay. And if a biologist were to put their cells under a microscope, or a geneticist were to sequence their DNA, they would classify them as human and not as any other kind of living thing. Yet, as you undoubtedly realize, they are not alike in many other ways, especially this one: one is (presumably) developing in a manner that has the potential to become a fully functioning human individual; the other has no such potential.

But the human fetus, as well as the human embryo (yes, also human life) and the parasitic sometimes share other circumstances: in some cases, the fetus has some sort of abnormality that will prevent it from having the potential for consciousness or for living much time at all.  And sometimes, the presence of the fetus is deadly or potentially deadly to the mother, as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, or in cases such as that of the unfortunate Indian woman who died in labor in Ireland a few years ago. In such circumstances, the fetus or the embryo shares this relationship with the mother as the parasitic twin does to the developed one: the one depends for its life on the other, but is also the cause of the other’s debilitation or death.

The contrast between the two images and their captions reveal one of the main problems with the commonly used terms in the debate: the phrase ‘human life’ is used without specifying what’s really being talked about, a sort of  ‘bait-and-switch’ tactic, in which sometimes it means one thing, and sometimes another. Is what’s being talked about in both images ‘human life’? Yes. Are they both referring to the same sort of human life? No.

In the first case, it’s pretty clear that the author means ‘human person’ or at minimum, ‘potential human person’ when he says ‘human life’. This is not at all the same thing as what’s meant when applying the term ‘human life’ to the parasitic twin. The parasitic twin, in the case of the photo above, as well as in most other cases where that term is used, is a un- or mis-developed twin that, if all had gone well, would have been a separate, individually sustaining organism, but as it turned out, lacks the characteristics of what we would normally refer to as a human person. A human person, generally understood, has a brain capable not only of sustaining a body’s basic functions, but of having or achieving some level of consciousness, to even if only to sense its surroundings, feel pain, and have some sort of capacity for instinct or emotion; it also has a body at least mostly capable of sustaining that brain.

The term ‘human life’ is actually very broad category, which the author of first image ignored when creating it. This category contains all of the following: a harvested organ, arecently severed arm, skin tissue grown in a petri dish for reconstructive surgery, sperm, eggs, human cells, a zygote, a  blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus, and last but not least, human persons.

I recognize many believe the last five in the list belong in the same category, so let’s explore that idea, which, in my opinion, is the crux of the debate: What’s the difference between a human person and a human life, if there is any difference?

Some might say it’s the possession of a soul that makes a person, a person. The term ‘soul’ is a nebulous one, generally a religious term referring to a supernatural, life-giving, consciousness-generating substance or principle that inhabits or in some way is enjoined with a human body. It’s also often used euphemistically to refer to consciousness itself, or rationality, or the feeling, emotional, instinctive part of a person. Yet for the purposes of law in a secular, religiously diverse society, we can’t rely on a concept such as ‘soul’ to decide the issue, not only because its existence can’t be proven empirically, but because not everyone is religious. But even if everyone, or most people, were religious, the fact that every religion, and each adherent of each religion, have different ideas about what the soul is and how and when it’s united with the body, renders it too nebulous an idea to derive law and policy from. For example, some believe that the soul enters the body at conception, while others believe it enters later, when the first breath is taken, when ‘quickening’ occurs, or when the brain is developed enough to attain consciousness. No, we must look to nature to inform the law in this matter, which most anti-abortion-rights activists now do.

Is it having unique DNA which makes a human life a person? I hear this argument used most frequently now that the basic science of genetics has become widely known. In my opinion, it’s the strongest argument used against abortion rights, since it’s the least nebulous, and based on strong empirical evidence. It does, in fact, support the idea of the individuality of a human in its earliest stages of life. If an embryo or a fetus is genetically distinct from the mother, aren’t we morally required to consider it a separate human being, and thus, it’s own person?

Yet the more we know about the biology of reproduction, we discover many facts that may undermine this argument. For one, embryos can split and produce twins, separately developing organisms that are genetically identical. Since genetic distinctness is what makes a life unique, should we think of them collectively as somehow one being, at least until later in life when they develop differentiating traits? A little less widely known: two (or more) fertilized eggs sometimes merge and develop as one organism, called a chimera. Genetically, the living product of this process looks like two individuals, with some cells, parts, or organs of the body possessing one set of chromosomes, and others another, yet it functions as a complete, individual organism. So is it two persons, or one, and if one, did one die, did one somehow ‘kill’ the other? And often, as an embryo develops, some cells separate and live on their own for awhile without developing into anything, though they have the capability to become another embryo; if that doesn’t happen, they die off. Was that individual human life a person yet? Many  zygotes never implant and begin development at all, and many embryos and fetuses (estimated as one-third to one-half) never develop to viability; instead, they die off and are absorbed into the mother’s body, or delivered stillborn. Should we be mourning the deaths (and unconscious cannibalism) of massive numbers of people, though such failed attempts at life are a routine feature of human development? The more we learn about reproduction, the more we find out it’s a messy business, full of false starts, blurry divisions, and multiples that become singulars and vice versa. Genetic uniqueness may not be enough, then, on its own, to demonstrate personhood, though it may be an important factor.

Perhaps it’s the potentiality of personhood that demands we should treat a developing human life as already a person. That positions seems a bit shakier: it creates an even larger number of problems when we consider how and why we should treat ‘potential’ things as real things, that do not admit of clear-cut or satisfactory answers. Should male ejaculate be zealously guarded as potential human life as well, and should we be dismayed by ‘nocturnal emissions’ or the removal of a testicle due to cancer? Should women live their entire lives ‘on eggshells’, avoiding all possible dangers to the point of not pursuing their pleasures or interests, as if they were already pregnant, given that they’re carrying all the eggs (potential offspring) she will ever produce inside her ovaries? Is it wrong for people to not be  trying to reproduce at any given moment, given that if a woman’s monthly cycle goes by without a pregnancy, an eggs and sperm die and are wasted? And why should we treat potentiality the same as actuality in reproduction if not in other areas of life? I think it’s difficult, if not impossible, to answer these questions in a way that supports the position that potential personhood is equal to actual personhood; in fact, I think it’s easy to find that most of the logical conclusions of this idea turn out to be ridiculous. If there is a good argument for it, I would be curious to hear it.

To move this debate forward, let’s go ahead Andy grant the idea of embryonic and fetal personhood here, so we can move on and consider the next big question: is it ever permissible not only to destroy non-person human life (such as discarding spare organs, destroying tumors, and excising parasitic twins), but to destroy the lives of human persons?

Most people, I think, would say yes, even if rarely. For example, take self-defense. In defense of one’s own life, or in defense of another innocent person’s life, most would agree that one would be justified in stopping an immediate threat, even if that could only be accomplished by using deadly force. Many others believe it’s permissible for soldiers to kill enemy combatants in a just war, or even if it’s unclear it’s a just war, so long as they don’t target civilians. Others believe it’s justified to take human life if they’re a real but perhaps not an immediate threat, such as assassinating the murderous Hitler or Saddam Hussein. Some would even say it’s permissible in some cases of euthanasia, such as the following: the doctor who painlessly puts to death his terminally ill patients before the approaching Nazis, known for their brutality and torturous human experimentation, can reach them; the slave mother who kills her infant daughter, conceived in rape, so that she will not have to endure the same life of rape, pain, and misery that her mother did; the terminally ill patient who chooses to die rather than endure pain, debilitation, or the knowledge that their family would be impoverished by medical bills. Many believe more mundane cases of euthanasia are okay too, such as ‘pulling the plug’ on a patient who’s entirely dead except for life processes maintained only with machines. A few would even say it’s okay to sacrifice the innocent life of another to save many, as in the famous thought experiment in which you push a very large man over a bridge to stop a runaway trolley, knowing you’ll save several other people further down the track, yet knowing you’ll kill him in the process.

Given, then, that most people think it’s at least sometimes permissible, or even right, to end the lives of human persons in some circumstances, are similar arguments applicable to cases of abortion? Let’s return to the case of the Indian Hindu woman who died in the Irish hospital. If we grant that the lives of two persons were at stake, we are left with the fact that we’re mourning the death of two people, where it might have been only one. In the case of women (and all to often, young girls) who find themselves in a situation where the offspring they’re carrying threatens their lives, would self-defense arguments apply? After all, most of us don’t think that the right of self-defense only applies when the threatener is consciously aware of being a threat: they could be innocent of wrongdoing but still justifiably ‘neutralized’, whether the threat is from someone who is operating in a state of brain damage, insanity, extreme immaturity, or in the case of a fetus, incapababilty of conscious thought.

At this point, we’ve considered many of the key arguments in favor of the anti-abortion-rights position, and raised objections. Let me pause here and critique what I think are problematic arguments commonly made by pro-abortion-rights advocates, a good one and, I think, a silly one:

Let’s start with the stupid one, to get it out of the way: ‘If you’re against abortion, don’t have one, but don’t take away a person’s right to choose.’ If you present say this (with bumper stickers or otherwise) to one who believes that human lives are human persons from the very earliest stages of development, you’re making a statement analogous to this one: ‘If you’re against murder, don’t commit one, but don’t take away a person’s right to choose,’ or, ‘If you’re against child molestation, don’t do it, but don’t take away a person’s right to choose.’ How silly, if not horrifying, do those last two sound? If no one buys the latter arguments, no one should buy the first, whatever side of the debate you’re on. I beg everyone who uses this slogan to please stop, it sounds as thoughtless as it is.

The better one, called the bodily rights argument, holds that a woman’s self-determination, her ability and her right to control her own life and her own destiny, depends on her right not to nurture another body inside of her own against her will. While on the face of it, it sounds compelling, but I must admit: I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it for the same reasons I don’t think it’s permissible to withhold care from any person who depends on you for survival. Human beings are social creatures and all of our lives depend on one another to some degree, especially the lives of children, the disabled, and the very elderly, who are entirely dependent on others. All humans use their own body, in one way or another, to nurture  other lives: it’s a central feature of the human condition. I think it’s a case of special pleading (a logical fallacy) to think we can ‘force’ parents to feed and shelter their offspring using their body only when their offspring are outside the body, and not in all other cases in which they’re entirely dependent. If the argument claims that our independence and integrity is dependent on our not having to nurture others, this makes our responsibility to our children merely a matter of the child’s location, and of which resources we feel like sharing at the time, which seems arbitrary. Unless you almost literally want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, this argument weakens upon examination, at least when used on its own. Human persons are their bodies, and are morally connected and responsible to one another, required to nurture their children, or they’re not. The argument as to whether or not embryos and fetuses are persons, that they have become children who we’re morally and legally obligated to nurture, is a separate one.

Whether or not we’ve made up our minds as to what makes a human life a human person, there are several positions we can take. Here are some:

One: we should refrain from purposefully ending human lives in general. And we probably take this position because we agree with one or more of these propositions, with or without qualifiers: all human life is precious, fragile, and should be intrinsically important to us as a social species dependent on one another for survival. We should protect and nurture all human life insofar as we are able, since, from its earliest stages, it has the potential to develop into a an interesting, unique, and valuable individual, and it’s this potential that makes human life worth protecting and nurturing; when we make exceptions and habituate ourselves to ending human life in its earliest stages, we can become ‘hardened’, over time, a little less disposed to treating human life, in all its forms, as if it’s valuable. This is by no means an exhaustive list, there are many more such propositions in favor of an anti-abortion-rights position. And some of the arguments that support these positions are not only compelling, but true.

Two: we should be circumspect about ending human life while recognizing that nurturing, protecting, and sometimes saving the lives of human persons sometimes necessitates ending human lives that are not persons, and sometimes, if rarely, ending lives of other human persons. We should be honest about the real difficulties and dangers of preserving the lives and liberties of human persons in a world where pregnancy, disease, and other people can threaten the health, life, and liberty of women or their other children, especially in parts of the world where women traditionally have little or no rights of control over their own bodies, and where child poverty, even starvation, is common because birth rates outstrip accessible resources. Even if we have not yet, as a society or as a species, clearly identified the criteria for what makes a human life a human person, we should make the best laws we can based on all of the best information we have, not based on a narrow ideology, and to always make it our concern to err in favor of preserving the lives of persons.

Three: we should not worry too much about whether or not the lives we take are those of human persons, so long as the difficult circumstances we are faced with give us compelling reasons to take those lives, that when we do so we endeavor to minimize suffering, and we have good reasons to put the interests of certain lives first: those of sentient, conscious beings; of members of species in danger of extinction; of members of communities other than our own who presents a danger to us.

This list is not exhaustive, of course there are many more. My own position is closest to the second of these.

However we all disagree on the matter, we must make it our priority to conduct the debate in the most honest way possible. First of all, it’s because we realize that the complexity of the matter make it often extremely difficult to discover what’s the right thing to do given the circumstances. But mostly, it’s because only an honest debate will bring the true facts of the matter, and the actual issues we face, out into the open. Only then do we have any hope of actually resolving this important moral and legal problem. Whatever side of the debate we’re on, human lives, and human happiness, are at stake.

Ordinary Philosophy and its Traveling Philosophy / History of Ideas series is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Please offer your support today!

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Sources and inspiration:

“Chimera” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)

“Ensoulment” http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoulment

“Jury Cites Poor Care in Death of Woman Denied Abortion”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/world/europe/jury-cites-poor-medical-care-in-death-of-indian-woman-in-ireland.html?_r=0

“The Twin Inside Me” (documentary) http://www.ovguide.com/tv_episode/extraordinary-people-season-4-episode-5-the-twin-inside-me-609631# (I watched this documentary several years ago, where I first learned of the phenomenon of chimerism)

“The Twin Within the Twin” (documentary) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUrIQiqeTv0 (I watched this documentary several years ago as well)

O.P. Recommends: Jefferson on Redistribution by Clay Jenkinson

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Thomas Jefferson by Charles Bird King, 1836, after Gilbert Stuart, at the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery, 2016 Amy Cools

Thomas Jefferson by Charles Bird King, 1836, after Gilbert Stuart, at the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery

A favorite podcast of mine is the Thomas Jefferson Hour, in which a TJ scholar and historical character actor named Clay Jenkinson holds weekly interviews and discusssions first in the character of Jefferson, then as himself as a scholar on T.J. and as a thinker in his own right. If you’re interested in American history, political philosophy, contemporary politics, and so on, you might really like this show. It’s not just about T.J. himself, but touches on all matter of topics since he lived such a long and influential life and remains such a controversial, brilliant, maddeningly inconsistent, and complex historical figure.

I found the episode on redistribution particularly interesting. Not only is it so relevant to today, but it reveals how Thomas Jefferson, in little-known and rarely cited letters to James Madison, revisits many of his own views in the light of the horrors he witnessed at the onset of the French Revolution.

Listen. You will like it.

Me and the Pope Against Tea Partiers and Conservatives and Even So Many Catholics! What’s Going On?

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I’ve been finding it a bit strange and somewhat funny that for some time now, I’ve been finding myself, a ‘heathen’, ideologically aligned with Pope Francis I, and in opposition to many political and moral views of the larger number of my Catholic and Christian family and friends.

Especially when it comes to topics regarding public life: caring for the poor and needy, materialism, Tea-Party-brand political views, and so forth.

With Pope Francis, I share the general view that preserving the life of and caring for the wellbeing of other people is not something we engage in only privately, individually, or if our religion happens to say so, or if we feel like it at the time, but is a moral imperative for human societies and nations as a whole. I also agree that hyper-individualist ideology is bankrupt, is not only contrary to the best in human nature but an illusion: we are, in reality, intimately tied together, in thought, in action, and in fate.

That being said, I do part ways with the Pope in crucial ways: consider this is a teaser for my next essay. Stay tuned!

A Bit About Who I Am, and Why I Bother With All This Musing and Writing Stuff

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I’ve long been obsessed with ideas and arguments, why people do and say the things they do, why people believe what they do, and so forth., as I’ve already discussed in an earlier piece. This curiosity and drive to understand, at least a little, the workings of the universe outside my own mind has not diminished over the years in the slightest. So a few years ago, when the job market dried up, my business partially failed, and my artistic pursuits provided me with much satisfaction but little income, I decided to more fully immerse myself in one of my greatest loves, philosophy, by going back to college.

It was a dream of mine that I had never seriously pursued in my early youth, though I eagerly attended junior college as soon as I was able. In my family, the goal of pursuing higher education was not discussed much. Most of my closest relatives are honest, hardworking people, generally blue-collar, hand-on work, and that was for the most part true of myself too, though I worked more in customer service jobs that had some sort of idealist or artistic element. I also have a strong affinity for blue-collar work, and really enjoyed the physically labrious aspects of my long-time intermittent job at a salvage yard.

Many of my relatives were and are suspicious of much of higher education too, seeing it as an array of dangerous temptations away from a life immersed in a particularly conservative brand of religious faith. Also, as a woman, higher education was less of a priority in my family. I felt it was always implied, but rarely said outright, that a good girl got married and stayed at home, perhaps after a stint at junior college, even a bachelor’s degree maybe, before settling in to homemaking while still young enough to make lots of babies. That’s it, unless I wanted to become a nun. All that sounds like a lovely, happy, fulfilling life for many, and I am fortunate to be a fond and proud auntie and cousin many, many times over precisely because so many women in my family find this lifestyle right for them. But never felt right for me, and over the years, I felt annoyed and a little resentful that other options were never discussed or encouraged, and that I never had a mentor intellectually. But I also realize that I may very well be unfair in this assessment. For one thing, my dad and other close family members never resented my constantly badgering them with questions and were always willing to answer them fully, and one of my dear uncles and I regularly engage in honest, no-holds-barred. lengthy debate and discussion to this day, and I thank him for that. It was also really entirely up to me to stop gadding around and instead of gleefully following my whims, to focus on the goal of completing a degree, applying the creativity I applied to other pursuits to the task of fundraising for school.

But why not keep all this to myself? Why have I taken this previously mostly internal process and dumping it out into the world? (With the full realization that few, at this point, even read this stuff.) I’ve often gotten the sense that philosophers, amateur and professional, are usually irritating to most other people besides fellow philosophers, and even these pick on each other at least as often as they engage in fruitful debate. (At least, it appears so from the public discourse, but my evidence for this is merely anecdotal.) But I think that this sense of philosophy being this annoying form of snobbery is based only on the archness with which some philosophers deliver their musings, and on a particular perception of what philosophy is. Many professional philosophers display a seemingly protectionist attitude toward their craft, preferring to share their ideas mostly or only with other professionals in highly arcane language. (Arcane: mysterious, secret. Arcane language: jargon) I actually think that this largely closed-off, rarified realm of philosophy is invaluable: it’s a place where ideas can be invented and pursued as far as they can go, by a community entirely devoted to this task. The untold riches that have emerged from this level of discourse is wonderful astounding. I just wish I and most of the public had the ability to fully understand and appreciate it, and the bit I’ve had the good fortune to experience left me amazed and entranced, and humbled.

But I also think that everyone, or almost everyone, engages in philosophical thinking of one sort or another, hence my blog’s byline. We not only react in moral matters but often make some sort of attempt to justify them to others. We all seek to describe or define, at times, the essential nature of reality. When it comes to aesthetics, to visual art and music and literature, we try to add a description of the idea(s) or driving force behind them, placing them within a context, rarely letting works of art speak entirely for themselves. Every one of us who has engaged in conscious reflection on anything has done some philosophy.

When it comes to writing and applying this sort of thinking, curiously enough, I’m almost entirely drawn to most areas of philosophy except philosophy of art. It seems kind of weird for a person who’s always been immersed in the arts, who has been drawing, sewing, sculpting, and so forth, and who loves music, for a lifetime. I think it’s because I do happen to be the sort of artist who likes to let my art speak for itself, and if I try to politicize or contextualize it, than it loses its immediacy and power for me. I’d rather let others do that, to read into my artwork whatever they’re compelled to read into it, or to discover some truths about me that I can’t since I lack the objectivity. But philosophy of science and of law, political and metaphysical, and most of all, moral philosophy… those I just can’t get enough of. And as I touched on in the aforementioned piece I wrote a month or so ago, I’ve been thinking on these things outside of academia for so long that I’m still far more comfortable doing philosophy in laypersons’ terms. But I still need that sharing and expressing of ideas without which a fuller understanding is impossible.

So I keep thinking about how the universe works, based on the information I receive about what’s going on in the world, and keeping writing about the process of figuring it out because it’s fascinating to me for its own sake. But not only that. I really feel a sense of deepest connection to the human family in its entirely, and feel a deep sense of responsibility towards it and gratitude to it. For me, that means I don’t feel satisfied simply by expressing my instinctive reactions to the occurrences and ideas I encounter in the world, such as simple anger, or disgust, or joy, or love. That’s because I don’t feel an isolated individual whose thoughts, feelings, and actions are as worthwhile or interesting on their own as they are within the larger realm of shared human experience.

For example, the blaming, the finger-pointing, the shaming I see going on in the public sphere over political matters seems like a giant room with a lot of people screaming and no one listening, because too many people forget that their ideological opponents are people with needs and interests and beliefs too. I feel the need to explore and explain what’s behind all this as well as expressing righteous approval or indignation because I feel that the screaming is not only not accomplishing anything, it’s just not that interesting, and reveals little about the world besides a very narrow set of facts about human psychology. I think that when we remember to sit back and reflect on why we feel and believe as we do, and patiently explain ourselves in an honest manner, with a generous spirit of always assuming the best of motives in your ideological opponent, it’s only then that we are justified in our beliefs, and have earned the right to feel that we are, indeed, in the right. But of course, this must always be provisional, because as it so happens, so one has all the needed information at any one time to know everything about everything. We must always be ready to acknowledge when we’ve been wrong, and always be ready to learn.

I look forward to what I will continue to learn from all of you out there, and always welcome your thoughts and your honest debate!

Equal Opportunity Vs. Equal Outcome

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How many pundits and political candidates have you heard express this sentiment over the years: ‘I believe in equality of opportunity, not of outcome!’?

But wait a minute! If the outcome is usually or always unequal, where’s the evidence that the opportunity is equal?

Saying that a society should worry only about opportunity but not outcome sounds a lot like a scientist wanting to proclaim a theory true without wanting to worry about the findings of experiments that seek to prove it.

What do you think?

Draft – Gun Control Debate in America: Some Double Standards From the Right and From the Left

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In the heated debate over gun control, with extremist rhetoric proliferating from those on the liberal left and those on the conservative right, I’m finding that many from each of these two sides hold inconsistent views. (The libertarian arguments on this matter are more consistent, but aside from their devotion to liberty, incorporate some of the worst ideas from both sides, in my view.) To paraphrase the main points of each sides’ position:

From the right: A society is engaged in an moral endeavor when it governs itself, and as the arbiter of social rights and responsibilities, social institutions such as the government, the family, and the native religion(s), are an inherently moral institutions. Morality involves the shared code of behavior that every individual is required to follow. The distinction between ‘morals legislation’ and other laws is, therefore, meaningless, since morality is involved in everything we do. As a member of society, just as in a family, each individual has certain rights and responsibilities. Therefore, it is right and just that the laws enforce and support our moral code, and prohibit those actions which would threaten the survival of our social institutions, be it the family or the state. At the same time, each individual has a personal dignity and inherent worth which must also be protected from harm and from the encroachments of others. For example, it’s right that that law punishes rapists, murderers, child abusers, and thieves, since it is the proper role of law to discourage individuals from transgressing the moral order which is essential for familial and societal cohesiveness. The law also should punish these transgressors since they trample on individual liberties, such as rights to life, personal property, and freedom of speech and belief. Since human beings are fallible and prone to error, our social institutions

But it’s not enough that the law should just prohibit us from doing certain things. Besides imposing punishments on immoral behavior, the law should enforce certain duties, certain moral obligations, we should fulfill in order to deserve and enjoy the benefits of living in a society. For example, the law should require everyone to contribute to the overall welfare by paying taxes, to pay for such essential public goods such as  infrastructure, defense, and some additional degree of support and protection of the most vulnerable members of society, such as children, the disabled, the elderly, and the very poor. It also includes such reasonable obligations as registering ownership of our motor vehicles, obeying traffic laws, and purchasing auto insurance. These legal obligations should not only enforce the moral duty of citizens to fairly contribute to society, they should also enforce some degree of taking responsibility for some of the costs and and hazards we may potentially impose on others in the course of enjoying out personal liberties. For example, driving a motor vehicle is widely considered a personal choice, but it can easily result in harm to others if not enjoyed wisely. Without such legal requirements listed above, for example, a careless or drunk driver could run down and kill or maim innocent bystanders without fear of suffering any consequences. A road full of vehicles driven without traffic laws would result in severe traffic jams, severely impeding each individual’s liberty to travel, let alone the innumerable deadly crashes that would result.

A certain amount of prudent regulation, therefore, is actually necessary for protecting liberties. After all, when an individual exercises their liberty to fire a gun, they can potentially nullify every single liberty of another with a single shot. When the American Constitution says ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…’ this does not mean that each and every action which could be categorized as speech cannot be limited or regulated if the speech of one can substantially infringe on the liberties of others. For example, Bradley Manning’s right to free speech and Julian Assange’s freedom of the press should be curtailed if their speech substantially threatens the security of other Americans. Therefore, regardless of the literal wording of the First Amendment, there can and should be laws abridging the freedoms of speech and of the press. We recognize that at least some of the Founding Fathers recognized this. For example, President John Adams championed the Alien and Sedition Acts which made it a crime to criticize the government, just a few years after he participated in the formulation of the Constitution.

From the left: Society and its governing institutions are constrained by morality, as is true for the conservative view; the government should never engage in immoral actions, such as infringing on essential liberties of citizens, engage in exploitative and unjust warfare, or be complicit in oppression anywhere in the world. Individuals also have public responsibilities, just as in the conservative view, such as paying taxes and obeying wise regulation. However, it is not the role of government to decide on intimate matters of personal liberty and expression of personality, since such governments have historically oppressed and even killed entire populations of people, such as religious and ethnic minorities, women, and political and other dissenters. Rather, it’s the role of government to protect the life, health, and liberty of individuals from the encroachment of others, such as powerful exploitative monetary interests or religious or ideological orthodoxy. Therefore, government should regulate commerce, since shortsighted financial interests of some can and often do harm the public as a whole, such as environmental polluters and makers of dangerous auto vehicles. But, the government should not not engage in ‘morals legislation’, since this infringes on the rights of individuals to control their own bodies and minds.

Where the right is inconsistent: So American conservatives, like other conservatives throughout the world, agree with the basic principles of political thinker Edmund Burke, who held that a society is a natural, organic institution (rather than a rationally constructed artificial entity), whose traditions must be respected and whose citizens are properly bound by moral duties and prohibitions. Yet, somehow, so many American conservatives argue as if all of these principles evaporate in the matter of gun control. In other parts of the world, the arguments for gun control often come from conservatives, who take the view that morality is the business of society, and people should not have the right to just run around doing whatever they want when and if it’s clear that what they want to do results in a moral wrong. For example, Australia adopted stricter gun control laws following the horrific massacre at Port Arthur, Tasmania, in the mid-nineties, and the arguments in favor of these new restrictions were traditionally conservative ones: the individual has moral responsibilities to society as well as morally determined limits to their behavior. Freedom does not mean people can just do whatever they want and have whatever they want: a responsible, moral member of society expects that some smaller liberties can and should be limited if such limitations lead to an overall more morally sound, liberty-enhancing society. The evidence shows that when weapons proliferate among a population, more people tend to die violent deaths, while populations that are less heavily armed tend to have low homicide rates. For example, consider the low homicide rates in Japan or Great Britain, where private gun ownership rates are also low, compared with the high gun ownership and violent death rates in the United States. Consider also the high death toll of mass attacks in the US, where mentally unhinged people easily possessed themselves of guns capable of killing many people within seconds, compared with mass attacks in China where it’s very difficult to obtain a gun, so the total of deaths and injuries inflicted with far less lethal weapons is a fraction of the US totals. Even if individual gun owners are responsible, the argument goes, it is their moral obligation to give up the particular liberty of owning certain weapons since the proliferation of such weapons undermines the security and stability of society as a whole. Many American conservatives say that individuals owning such weapons should actually make society safer, but this theory is simply not borne out by the evidence. In a morally good society, the right to one’s life is considered prior to and more precious than the right to own property, so the prevention of the moral evil of homicide takes precedence over personal desires to possess powerful weapons.

The American conservative stance against gun control but in favor of proscriptions against birth control and abortion, therefore, is incomprehensible to liberals, who rightly point out that if the right to life and the primacy of the procreative role of sex are greater than all other considerations, then the ‘pro-life’ movement should be at the forefront of the gun control effort, as it is for conservatives in other countries. Yet, the rhetoric of the conservative gun rights movement in the United States centers on a particular reading of the text of the 2nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution and an emphasis on property rights; the pro-life arguments are out the window for conservatives on this one. Therefore, American liberals consider the conservative gun rights position at best inconsistent, and at worst, hypocritical.

Where the left is inconsistent: The liberal left in America, however, does not consider it the primary role of a society and its governing institutions to promote and enforce personal morality. Rather, society’s role towards in the life of individuals is to protect them from harm from one another, and to ensure that each individual enjoys the same opportunities as any other to accomplish their goals and live a satisfying and meaningful life. Yet, arguments against so-called ‘morals legislation’ and arguments in favor of laws that prevent harm and promote equality are all based on moral considerations: that harm is worse than non-harm, that individual liberty is better than oppression, that human rights are sacred and that trespassing on them is wrong. There is no societal rule or proscription that is not derived from one moral precept or another: a human society is an inherently moral endeavor. When American liberals argue for laws that limit gun control but against laws that regulate other activities, such as abortion or sexual behavior, on the grounds that the government’s only task is to prevent harm, the arguments are often so inconsistent on that it’s no wonder that conservatives, in turn, consider liberal arguments to be inconsistent and hypocritical.

Where does the confusion originate? While American conservative arguments are generally based on a foundationalist moral system, which holds that all of morality is derived from a single founding principle (for example, Aristotle’s function-based system, or the divine command theory espoused by evangelicals), American liberal arguments seem to hold that, while the law is based on the foundationalist ethic of utilitarianism, personal behavior is governed by a pluralist moral system, which can differ from society to society. The various and often conflicting values we hold, such as liberty, compassion, beneficence, and so forth, must be weighed and balanced against one another in each matter under consideration. The law and issues of personal morality, then, should be determined separately, because utilitarian considerations are more readily determined and amenable to democratic consensus and evidence than value considerations. For example, it’s easier to find and present evidence regarding rates of gun ownership and crime statistics, and argue that high homicide and suicide rates    by gun reveal that the current system in the United States results in more harm than systems in other countries, or vice versa, than to demonstrate clearly that the value of liberty is more important than the value of safety, or vice versa.

I agree overall with the liberal position that the law should be utilitarian, and that moral pluralism seems to be a fact of human nature: I think that there is more evidence that morality is in fact based on a pluralism of values, and that a utilitarian ethic has done more to inform laws that promote human flourishing than laws based on other moral systems. Yet, American liberals so often argue as if their positions are only about harm and fairness, as Jonathan Haidt points out, when really there is and should be a more rich moral system that informs them (I think that Haidt has too simplistic a view of liberal morality, though I agree with his assessment of most mainstream liberal arguments, taken at face value). It seems to me that the choice of utilitarianism as the dominant theory in law formulation is a moral choice, based on the higher valuation of liberty over obedience, individual freedom from harm over social convenience or enrichment, knowledge over ‘blissful ignorance’ (soon to come: my critique of ‘innocence’ as a prized value), etc. The distinction between the harm/fairness basis of legal utilitarianism and the pluralistic basis of personal morality is, then, an artificial one, and American liberals would be well served to take the moral high ground, proudly trumpeting their commitment to moral excellence and responsibility rather than trying to hide it under the relatively dry and uninspiring rhetoric of mere consent and fairness.

 

Libertarianism and Me

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You may perceive in my recent essays and remarks a tendency to argue against libertarian positions. If you’ve known me very long, this may surprise you, since I’ve long taken libertarian arguments very seriously. I’m sympathetic to the libertarian instinct because I share many aspects of it in my personality: I’m very independent, have always liked to go my own way and do my own thing. (To a fault: if something’s popular, if everyone who’s hip is wearing it, listening to it, eating it, etc, I have a strong instinct to immediately run off and do the opposite, since cliques, to me, since childhood, have represented oppressive communities that, in their own way, demand deference to their codes, behaviors, and aesthetics just as thoroughly as the dogmatic and hierarchical religious community I was brought up in. My libertarian instincts are so strong, in fact, they tend run amok, and I have to chase them down to rein them in constantly! Pesky things!)

Yet, as I’ve studied and closely examined my positions and beliefs, I’ve found that many of those arguments I took seriously and even espoused, such as the position that morality is a personal matter and not a societal or governmental one, or that individual considerations are separate from and always take precedence over the desires and needs of the many, are flawed or entirely incorrect. My recent tendency to argue against libertarianism, then, is not based on a desire to pick on this philosophical and political viewpoint, or that I think it’s worse than all others. Rather, I’m sharing with you aspects of my own journey, and where I am so far when it comes to my endeavor of seriously considering each philosophical school and each argument, on its own merits, before I accept it, discard it, or keep in in mind for future consideration if I don’t have enough information on hand to make a sound judgement.

So there you go. I’m very fond of you libertarians in many ways, and agree with you more in instinct and sympathy than I do in logic. It’s a mark of my affection and respect that I wrangle, so often, with your arguments.

IRS Targets Conservative Groups

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This story is deeply disturbing to me. 

When any concerned citizens, be it individuals or groups, from Communists to Tea Party subscribers, are harassed or silenced, the people are cheated out of hearing arguments that enrich their understanding of the world and of what moves people to think and act as they do. 


A most invaluable lesson instilled in me, informally through listening to political and philosophical discussions around the dinner table, and more formally in my education in philosophy, is how invaluable it is to always learn the arguments presented in a positive and sympathetic manner, no matter how alien to your own, so that you come away understanding the actual arguments, not some amalgam or distortion infused with your own prejudices. In this way, the position you reach on the matter is likely to be informed, and honest.

Why I Am No Longer Convinced by Libertarian Economic Arguments

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140f6-the2bliberal2bdeviseth2bliberal2bthingsTo live a full, happy, and purposeful life, a person must be free to express their personality and to further their own interests; to love, speak, sing, fight, have relationships, make art, argue, have sex, see the world, make children, to live and die where, how, and when they please. The richness, complexity, and variety of the human experience is something to be treasured, admired, marveled at, and loved, to anyone who is humanistic, who values their own integrity as an individual and that of others as well. So, to suppress or make laws against any of these expressions of human nature could be viewed as an intolerable oppression, only justified if necessary to protect the freedom of one person from the excesses or oppression of another. People’s freedom should be limited, then, minimally and with great care.

Because I believe in these things, I was attracted for awhile by free market arguments regarding the justice of regulating how people can spend and use their money and property. The main argument goes like this: just as a person should be free to live their lives as they see fit, so they should be able to do whatever they like with their own body and their own property which, by extension, includes their money. This seemed, on the face of it, a fair and reasonable assumption. However, upon inquiry, I discovered so many questionable, harmful, and downright awful consequences of an unfettered free market, that I wondered if I had made a mistake. I found that I had.

Actions that are expressions of personality are not the same sort of thing as spending money. Money does not talk: it buys. Things that one does with wealth, from consuming to spending to hoarding it, impact others in a way that most other personal decisions do not. The personal use of money can be likened to the use of a tool, something like driving a car or shooting a gun. While money can be very useful and very conducive to more fully enjoying one’s liberty, its misuse can, and often does, collide with and limit the freedoms of others once the collective effects of spending decisions affect the wider community. Our short-term decisions on how money is spent, based on our own narrow interests, have an effect on others’ lives in ways that even the most experienced economists still poorly understand and have great difficulty predicting.

So, while immediate economic decisions are in our control, such deciding whether to buy a particular television or brand of food, the flow of money in the economy at large is not. The economy, on this scale, is more comparable to the weather: if we were somehow able to tinker with it like we can the economy, by making a few clouds appear here, redirecting all the wind and rain to one spot over there, or artificially creating some entirely new weather phenomena, we could, in theory, help more crops grow or prevent floods. We could also step back and let the weather freely wreak help or havoc as it will: we could tear down all dams and dykes, stop building storm drains and tornado shelters, stop irrigating fields. Mistakes of over-manipulation and under-regulation can lead to catastrophic effects in the economy as well. Consider the spike in food prices that led to a steep rise in prices, the weakening of economies throughout the world, and mass starvation in the poorest countries in the late twenty-oughts. This was caused by market speculation at a time when the food supply was stable and sufficient to feed everyone, but weakened regulation of the financial market led many to gamble on exotic new financial products. Consider also the high poverty levels and extreme disparity and hoarding of wealth by a few in less regulated economies and in countries with weak or corrupt governments.

So, my mistake was conflating freedom and the vibrant expression of personality with the use of money. The use of money can further these, but it is not necessary to liberty. As light behaves as both a particle and a wave, so we see how money in the marketplace functions both as a tool and a force of nature. In an individual life, it can do so much: obtain food, drink, shelter, those necessary and beautiful things for a full and satisfying life. On a large scale, it can drive innovation, obtain ever higher standards of living for communities, foster the arts, and so much more. But, its large and small scale misuse and misregulation can also have a devastating impact, as we have seen time and time again throughout history. It seems clear, then, that there are times that the free market should be allowed free reign to do its work to improve our lives. It is also clear that careful regulation and public control of money through representative government is necessary to curb our excesses, correct imbalances, and use it to further the interests of society as a whole rather than particular individuals or groups when it’s necessary to achieve a great public good. Throughout history until today, individual greed and short-sighted self-interest ruin so many lives that a market, run well, might have improved. Therefore, we need to place reasonable limits our use of money if we do, in fact, value our own and each others’ liberty.

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