Month: October 2005

Alexander Cockburn weighs in on the brouhaha in his usual iconoclastic fashion:

Every year or so, some right-winger in America lets fly in public with a ripe salvo of racism, and the liberal watchdogs come tearing out of their kennels, and the neighborhood echoes with the barks and shouts. The right-winger says he didn’t mean it, the president “distances himself,” and the liberals claim they’re shocked beyond all measure. Then, everyday life in racist America resumes its even course.

This past week it’s been the turn of that conservative public moraliser, William Bennett. He should have known better than to loose off a hypothetical on his radio show. Announce publicly that “if you wanted to reduce crime, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down,” and many Americans reckon that’s no hypothesis, that’s a plan waiting to happen.

Of course that’s what Bennett did say, and he should have known better. Americans mostly don’t understand hypotheses, any more than they feel at ease with irony. Particularly in the age of the Internet, literalism is the order of the day. Qualifications such as Bennett added (to the effect that this would be “an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do”) are useless.

The deeper irony here is that liberals have pondered longer and deeper than conservatives on how exactly to carry out Bennett’s hypothetical plan, either by sterilization or compulsory contraception.

Read the rest here.

Paul Cella has an article in the New Atlantis that tackles some of the issues that have been preoccupying us here over the past couple of days. (via The Japery)

This is one of the sillier things I’ve read in a while. From an op-ed published in the Inquirer this weekend:

Physician-assisted suicide is one of the religious right’s signature issues, used mainly as a wedge in the battle against abortion rights. It lets foes of abortion claim that their commitment to life is absolute and has nothing to do with women’s rights. The administration is quite willing to throw over Republican principles about federalism and individual freedom to appease the religious right.

Riiiiight. ‘Cause no one could possibly oppose assisted suicide in good faith. It’s all part of the right-wing conspiracy to enslave women (itself an interesting reading of what the debate over abortion is about). For what it’s worth, I’m sympathetic to the federalism argument in this case, but this is just dumb.

As long as I’m getting my anti-capitalist groove on, let me mention a couple of other problems where I think critics of capitalism and modernity make some good points. What I have in mind are the problems of consumerism and the drive for technological mastery. We might actually see them as two aspects of a single problem, but it’s still helpful to distinguish them.

Consumerism, as I understand it, is not simply the enjoyment of material things for their own sake. The material world is good, and we’re supposed to enjoy its blessings. There are obviously limits to how much we should consume, limits imposed by social and environmental constaints for instance, but there’s nothing wrong with consumption as such.

My hunch is that the root problem of consumerism is a spiritual one. It’s what happens when we treat the things we consume as objects utterly at our disposal. I think the Christian theological tradition would say that our proper attitude toward material creation is to receive it as a gift and with thanksgiving. But the consumerist attitude is similar to the attitude of the Israelites in the desert hoarding the manna that came from God. They wanted to have it at their disposal, rather than as a gift received anew each day. In a similar fashion, we want things in our possession, at our disposal, and under our control. We turn them into commodities.*

This may be one manifestation of what many think is the signature feature of modernity, namely, the drive for technological mastery. In the ancient and medieval world people generally saw themselves as inhabiting a cosmos with a fixed order to which they had to orient themselves in order to flourish. With the rise of modern science and technology, though, we came to realize that the world could be adjusted to our needs and desires. Not that people haven’t always sought to modify their environment, but the scientific method offered a new and powerful tool that increased this ability exponentially.**

The scientific revolution and the Enlightenment philosophy that accompanied it recast the understanding of human rationality in an instrumental and pragmatic mold. In the ancient and medieval understanding reason at its highest was our ability to contemplate the divinely established order of the universe. Now reason came to be understood as a tool for unlocking and controlling the course of nature, including human nature. One well-known side effect of this was to relegate morality to the airy realm of “values,” ultimately reducing it to mere subjective preference in many people’s minds.

With rationality understood in a primarily instrumental fashion and morals reduced to subjective preference a modern view of society and politics emerged which saw the politcal task as engineering an environment that allowed people to pursue their own preferences with a minimal number of hindrances. This was in sharp contrast to the older notion of the goal of politics as fostering a community of virtue. Liberal democratic societies pride themselves on being “neutral” between competing moral outlooks or “value judgments.”

While liberal democracy has many advantages over older forms of political society in terms of personal freedom, privacy, and autonomy, it has certain weaknesses that some think could be its undoing. The expansion of the freedom to “pursue happiness” was thought to require greater and greater levels of material prosperity and technological progress. After all, these things would result in expanding the range of choices available to the citizens of liberal societies.

This is where I think critics of liberalism have their strongest argument. Since liberal society is dedicated, in principle, to expanding the range of human choice and opportunity, it has no resources for establishing limits on economic growth and technological mastery. We see this all the time in our political debates; it is assumed, virtually across the political spectrum, that increasing economic growth should be at or very near the top of our list of national priorities. It is virtually impossible for anyone to make a cogent argument against deploying new technologies since the only language available is one of “rights,” “consent,” and the like. Without an orienting vision of the good liberalism seems to have a hard time drawing limits.

What’s striking is how very anti-Christian this attitude is. In the Christian mythos pride, human beings’ quest to transcend their creaturely limits and “play God,” is the essence of sin. And the opposite of sin is faith, or trusting that God, in his loving providence, will care for us, and, therefore, we don’t need to try and run the world and engineer every outcome.

Here, almost at random, is a passage from Gerhard Forde’s Where God Meets Man that speaks to this:

Man’s relationship to God in paradise was comprehended entirely by faith. That is to say that even in paradise man lived from day to day by trusting God. He “knew” God, to be sure, but only as a creature knows his creator. He did not know God in any more immediate or direct sense. The “image of God,” Luther says, so far as we can now reconstruct it, consisted not in some spiritual faculty now lost, but rather in the fact that man, like God, lived in peace in his kingdom. In other words, when man lives by faith and trust in God, when he takes care of his “kingdom” as he is supposed to (has dominion over it) he is at peace. And in this very peace he images God. Just as God rules over, loves, and cares for his kingdom, so man is to have dominon over, love, and care for the kingdom God has given him. In that way he lives in the image of God–at peace with his maker, with himself and with his world. He lives “down to earth.”

As a creature man is to live, therefore, solely by faith. He is to trust God for the final outcome of things. He lives day by day, awaiting each day the new revelation of God’s will, not knowing necessarily how it will all end. He simply trusts God perfectly. That is his righteousness. He lives by faith, without fear, without anxiety. Luther surmised that had man remained in this state of “perfect righteousness and faith” God would at the end, have translated him to a new and perhaps immortal state. In other words, Adam did not possess inherently some kind of automatic immortality but would rather have had to await a further and final act of divine goodness. Man was to live by faith alone. (p. 54-5)

If we lived by faith in the way Forde describes, if we really trusted in God, would we feel the same need to possess things as commodities and to dominate our environement, each other and ourselves through techniques of technological mastery? Do we need a faith like this to avoid overruning important limits, limits that the ethos of liberalism seems incapable of providing?

This isn’t to say that we should, or even can, return to some pre-modern consciousness that sees the order of nature as unalterable. Technology and capitalism have brought undeniable benefits that no one in their right mind would want to surrender. And some critiques of capitalism do fall prey to a romantic technophobia. But we do, it seems to me, need some way of making communal judgments about how far is too far in the realms of consumerism and technology. Can we discover something like that while still preserving the acheivements of liberalism and liberal institutions?
———————————————————————–
*I’ve been influenced here by the thought of Albert Borgmann. See his Power Failure and Crossing the Postmodern Divide.
**See Murray Jardine’s The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society

I finally got around to reading this fairly lengthy piece on the Darfur situation from this month’s First Things. The author, Allen Hertzke, criticizes religious human rights activists for not bringing the same zeal and attention to bear on Darfur that they brought to the persecution of Christians (and animists) in southern Sudan. He also makes the case that there’s a lot that can be done short of military intervention to alleviate the situation.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my economic philosophy. Not that I really have anything so grand, mind you, but certain quizzes notwithstanding, I don’t really think I adhere to what we would call economic conservatism.

As I see it, is that concentrations of economic power and the accompanying inequality they foster are genuine problems. Conservatives and libertarians are much too sanguine about the distribution of wealth in societies like ours in my opinion. On the other hand, too much of progressivism and liberalism lends itself to a certain kind of centralized nanny statism.

So, is it possible to curtail concentrations of economic power without concentrating a dangerous amount of power in the state in the process? Apart from the inherent problems of a powerful state, there is the familiar problem of “regulatory capture,” i.e. when the economic interests that are supposedly being regulated end up gaining influence over the agencies that are supposed to be regulating them.

One of my favorite social critics is the late Christopher Lasch. In his book The True and Only Heaven he criticized the prevalent ideology of “progress” – the assumption that more and more people would enjoy a greater measure of prosperity. This ideology has right- and left-wing variants, depending on whether the unfettered market or centralized social engineering is seen as the vehicle for social progress. Lasch thought that, if nothing else, ecological constraints had falsified the ideology of progress. In addition, the capitalism championed by the Right destabilized and eroded communities, while the government paternalism of the Left threatened to make ordinary people wards of the state with their lives being planned by a bevy of bureaucratic “experts.”

Instead Lasch favored what he called “populism.” But this was more of an ideal than a worked out economic or political program. Lasch’s populism valorizes what he considered to be lower-middle-class or “petit bourgeois” values of local community, solidarity, dedication to craft, loyalty and self-denial. In essence, it is an ethic of limits that doesn’t expect ever-expanding wealth and opportunity, but finds satisfaction in concrete attachments to family, neighborhood, honest work, and civic participation.

Lasch’s vision combined a desire for a certain level of economic egalitarianism with a distrust of the state and a commitment to what we might call “traditional values.” But it’s not entirely clear that such a state of affairs is possible (assuming that it’s desirable). Is it possible to ensure a measure of economic independence for working people without an expansive welfare state? Is it, as some have suggested, that it’s the state that makes the concentration of wealth possible through the various subsidies and supports it provides to big business? Is a kind of Jeffersonian agrarianism/populism feasible in the 21st century, or is that just nostalgia?

Salon has an interview with Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. Cizik is on a mission to convert evangelicals to what he calls “creation care” – an environmentally-friendly agenda that takes seriously issues like global warming.

I admit I’m sort of ambivalent about this kind of thing. On the one hand, it’s good to see evangelicals moving beyond a narrow identification with the Republican Party and toward a greater degree of political independence. And most of what Cizik suggests seems sensible to me.

He wants

Christians to shape their personal lives in creation-friendly ways by practicing effective recycling, conserving resources, and experiencing the joy of contact with nature. We urge government to encourage fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, encourage sustainable use of natural resources, and provide for the proper care of wildlife and their natural habitats. There are still plenty who wonder, does advocating this agenda mean we have to become liberal weirdoes? And I say to them, certainly not. It’s in the scripture. Read the Bible.

On the other hand, I’m not sure what I think about having every political issue under the sun couched in religious terms. Cizik talks openly about the “sinfulness” of despoiling the earth and how he had a “conversion experience” which convinced him that global warming is “a phenomenon of truly biblical proportions.” My worry about this is that when you treat a position on a particular political issue as the fruit of religious illumination you risk closing the door to reason and compromise. It’s easy to slide from “The Bible tells us to care for the environment/the poor/the unborn/etc.” to “The Bible tells us to support this particular program or bill or politician.” This can give an absolutist cast to political positions that they don’t merit.

After last year’s election the response of some parts of what we can call the “Religious Left” has been to try to beat the Religious Right at their own game by insisting that their preferred policies are the ones really mandated by the Bible. But the Bible, it seems to me, doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t provide us with a political platform any any straightforward way. And to insist that it does risks further dividing Christians.

I’ve turned on the Blogger feature that requires commenters to type in a displayed line of characters before submitting their comments. Recently I’ve started getting a lot of comment spam, so hopefully that’ll help stem the tide. Folks should still be able to make anonymous comments if they wish.

An op-ed from Marilyn Golden, a disability rights activist:

Today the Assembly Judiciary Committee begins hearings on AB 654, which would legalize assisted suicide in California. There is a widespread public perception that those opposed to legalization are religious conservatives, and the logical position for a liberal is in support.

But the coalition that’s formed to oppose the bill, Californians Against Assisted Suicide (http://www.ca-aas.com/) shows a diversity of political opinion that may be surprising to those who have not looked closely at the issue. In opposition are numerous disability rights organizations, generally seen as liberal-leaning; the Southern California Cancer Pain Initiative, a group associated with the American Cancer Society; the American Medical Association and the California Medical Association; and the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, which does anti-poverty work in poor communities. Catholic organizations are in the mix, but no one could consider this a coalition of religious conservatives. They represent many groups coming together across the political spectrum. Why?

Perhaps the most significant reason is the deadly mix between assisted suicide and profit-driven managed health care. Again and again, health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and managed care bureaucracies have overruled physicians’ treatment decisions, sometimes hastening patients’ deaths. The cost of the lethal medication generally used for assisted suicide is about $35 to $50, far cheaper than the cost of treatment for most long-term medical conditions. The incentive to save money by denying treatment already poses a significant danger. This danger would be far greater if assisted suicide is legal.

Though the bill would prohibit insurance companies from coercing patients, direct coercion is not necessary. If patients with limited finances are denied other treatment options, they are, in effect, being steered toward assisted death. It is no coincidence that the author of Oregon’s assisted suicide law, Barbara Coombs Lee, was an HMO executive when she drafted it.

More here. (via Godspy)

On the Miers nomination:

The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They’re in uproar over Ms. Miers, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question.

Here are some maybes. Maybe the president has simply concluded he has no more elections to face and no longer needs his own troops to wage the ground war and contribute money. Maybe with no more elections to face he’s indulging a desire to show them who’s boss. Maybe he has concluded he has a deep and unwavering strain of support within the party that, come what may, will stick with him no matter what. Maybe he isn’t all that conservative a fellow, or at least all that conservative in the old, usual ways, and has been waiting for someone to notice. Maybe he has decided the era of hoping for small government is over. Maybe he is a big-government Republican who has a shrewder and more deeply informed sense of the right than his father did, but who ultimately sees the right not as a thing he is of but a thing he must appease, defy, please or manipulate. Maybe after five years he is fully revealing himself. Maybe he is unveiling a new path that he has not fully articulated–he’ll call the shots from his gut and leave the commentary to the eggheads. Maybe he’s totally blowing it with his base, and in so doing endangering the present meaning and future prospects of his party.