Independence Is Not Paradise
Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Jul 7 2010, 06:41 AM in Political
The desire of a young adult to live free of their parents says something of liberty. At some point, the security of reliable provision begins to pale in comparison to the allure of freedom. The ability to personalize a home, keep chosen hours, and freely associate with others is deemed worth the cost of independent living.
Most parents encourage this transition because it is the culmination of their parental responsibility. The ultimate goal of childbearing is raising productive contributors to society.
I find it strange, given this universal graduation to independence, that many among us turn back to the teat. Neighbor becomes mother under the welfare state. It is a process of regression, paradoxically labeled progressive, which reattaches the umbilical and suckles us back to infancy. Of course, no one wants to admit dependence. Instead, it is characterized as entitlement, and falsely conflated with liberty.
Such was the case last month when St. Cloud high school teacher Eric Austin responded to a campaign blog post on the subject of liberty. Norann Dillon, the Republican endorsed candidate for Minnesota state senate in SD43, had characterized liberty as “your RIGHT to make decisions – independently – for yourself and your family.” She relayed concerns from voters in her district in the wake of “bailouts, stimulus packages, and a massively intrusive health care bill.”
To this, Austin cried humbug:
As a teacher of a course on United States Government, Austin ought to be familiar with the distinction between liberty and provision. Setting aside his faulty economic premise, there is no “liberty not to live through another Great Depression.” Liberty is assured by prohibition of encroachment, not provision of sustenance. At one point, when he presumably moved from the care of his guardians to the rigors of personal responsibility, Austin understood this distinction and opted for freedom over dependence.
The characterization of liberty as freedom from want, perhaps only mimicked by Austin, does not comply with any actual definition. It contradicts our aforementioned common experience. No one leaves home with “the liberty not to live through” foreclosure, eviction, arrest, termination of employment, repossession, or any other hardship. Liberty provides opportunity, not outcomes.
There is no libertarian paradise. Liberty is “a tempestuous sea” which takes us farther than “the calm of despotism.” It is not for the timid, as Jefferson noted, for it comes with no guarantees. Aspirations toward Utopia are the conceit of the progressive. Liberty provides nothing for free.
The Last Bastion of the Pro-Choice Position
Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Jun 19 2010, 09:46 AM in Political
NewsRealBlog recently hosted a series of articles revisiting the well-tread abortion debate. Given the fact all participants were credentialed conservatives, the nature of argument was quite unique. The question was not so much whether abortion is wrong, but how much it actually matters in the real world. Surely, in the current political environment, social issues have taken a back-burner to what may seem more fundamental concerns – growth of government, fiscal disaster, and loss of liberty.
However, the root philosophical point underlying those concerns is the same underlying abortion. Of what value is an individual human being? How ought we compare the value of one to another? Abortion is an issue which draws out heartfelt answers to these questions.
The good news is that most people seem to answer those questions correctly. An individual human being is invaluable. Each human being ought to be considered equal. This consensus between pro-life and pro-choice leads inevitably to a final attempt at rationalization. The unborn are not human. If possessed of the slightest decency, this is the only argument the abortionist has.
Consider this exchange with a pro-choice commenter:
There is a difference between a probability and an actuality.
A possible, or probable person is not the same as an actual person.
The pro-life position does not dispute that. It simply identifies conception as the moment there is an actual person. Sperm and eggs separately, on the other hand, would represent the possibility or probability of a person.
A zygote is a potential person.
One can only assert otherwise if one believes in the immortal soul and agrees with the Pope that the soul enters the flesh at the moment of conception. That standard asserts that the soul (which we can neither observe nor measure) is the defining characteristic of a person. By that standard it is reasonable to assert that a zygote is a person.
Nobody who doesn’t hold those beliefs can reasonably agree to the notion that a zygote is an actual person. It would make no sense.
Forget religion. Evoking faith is an attempt to impose subjectivity upon the pro-life position. There is nothing mystical about the belief life begins at conception. As you observe, the DNA pattern is in place. This is the defining characteristic of an organism. Aside from combination of DNA into a new organism (i.e. conception) at what point can it be rationally said a human being is a human being? Your axiomatic assertion that a zygote is not a person is not sufficient. Identify what event or combination of circumstances makes one a human being.
By this standard you don’t have an actual person until after birth, when a baby draws it’s first breath.
Since we recognize that human life is the ultimate primary value, one wishes, naturally I think, to avoid anything that even gives the appearance of infanticide. Hence I think that for abortion related decisions one wants to calibrate the bar somewhere before having a full fledged self-supporting actual person on hand.
My own take on the matter is that one should follow the standards of nature. There is a point in pregnancy (don’t ask me, I don’t know the biology) when it becomes possible for a baby to survive a premature birth under natural conditions. I think it is reasonable to say that before that point the question of an actual rather than a possible person is meaningless. After that point we are talking about probabilities of a person that tread too closely to reality to be harmonious with civilized values.
What one wants to do is to avoid sacrificing one actual person for another — unless that sacrifice is fully voluntary.
This is also where the rubber hits the road morally on an important question. What happens if you know that the process of giving birth would kill the mother? Do you abort? Up until when? Can a woman abort to save her own life in the first week? The first month? The first 6 months? How about the day before delivery?
My view of the matter is that any person may VOLUNTARILY sacrifice their own life to save the life of anybody else anytime they wish. But nobody can force a person to INVOLUNTARILY sacrifice their life for anybody anytime for any reason.
As it happens, an unborn, which is to say potential/probable person, does not yet have the consciousness to make decisions. So the categories of voluntary and involuntary don’t apply.
My view is that in [extremes] it is inhuman not to allow a woman to save her own life. In non-emergency situations I think the natural premature birth standard should apply.
Please do not interpret this as meaning that I like the idea of abortion. I find it rather revolting. What is more, I have witnessed the destructive effects of abortion on the emotional lives of women and on relationships many times. I know several women who bear deep and painful emotional/mental scars decades after having aborted a pregnancy. It’s not nice stuff.
But one cannot force one person to sacrifice their life for the life of another.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
The horrific dichotomy which emerges when an unborn child threatens the life of its mother is beside the point. Such cases constitute a negligible minority of abortions. The overwhelming majority are nothing more than parents dispensing with responsibility. It would be unjust for me to murder my wife to terminate marriage, or murder my 16-month-old to save money. I see no distinction between those crimes and abortion as birth control.
Speaking of my son, he is not “self-sustaining.” I understand you mean not connected to the mother. However, that seems a meaningless distinction when you consider the role of the umbilical remains throughout childhood.
Were my son to be abandoned, the “standards of nature” would do him in as neatly as a chick fell from its nest. His mother and I have a responsibility to sustain him. If that is our responsibility now, how was it not our responsibility while he was in the womb? How was being inside his mother, connected by a literal umbilical, effectively different than being outside connected by obligation? If he was somehow imposing upon his mother in the womb, how is he not imposing now? I assure you, the effort, focus, and treasure required to sustain him is far greater now than it was before he was born.
I am sure you are sincere about finding abortion revolting. I am also sure you are motivated by a desire to justly weigh contradictory interests. In your effort to do so, it seems you have contrived a definition of personhood distinct from human life. Though undoubtedly not your intent, this exercise opens the door to devaluing life at any stage for any reason.
I share the following not to equate you with the sentiment or its originator, but to illustrate my point. Regarding the humanity of the Jew, Joseph Goebbels once said, “Certainly the Jew is also a Man, but the Flea is also an Animal.” Once we accept that personhood is somehow distinct from being human, we weaken our own claim to humanity.
To answer your disclaimer, please do not take me as one who feels any abortion is first degree murder. I merely object to the characterization of the unborn as less deserving of life.
It would help, I think if you supplied your own answer to that as well.
I fear we are about to get caught up in a tangle of words. Person, human being, organism, animal, and so forth. That will inevitably lead to nothing but confusion or even trivialization.
I also have a hunch that some of our differences lie in that area.
I will leave you with this much however. You said “
Speaking of my son, he is not “self-sustaining.” I understand you mean not connected to the mother. However, that seems a meaningless distinction when you consider the role of the umbilical remains throughout childhood.“.
Well if you know that I mean “connected to the mother” why do you divert the focus to childhood dependence? I am specifically talking about whether or not an organism can or can not survive outside the body of another. That’s a yes/no binary sort of difference.
It is anything but a meaningless distinction. A three month old embryo will simply die if it’s mother dies. Nature offers no alternative. A three month old baby will not die when it’s mother dies. It will perish eventually if nobody cares for it. But it’s mother’s death is not a guarantee of death for the baby. (Damn this stuff gets to sounding grim).
This is what I am referring to when I use the phrase “free-standing” or “self-sustaining” and the like.
If I diverted the focus, it was back to the matter at hand. The issue is identity. What is a fetus, zygote, or fertilized egg, if not human. Viability is a matter of development. Development is not the issue. There are developmental differences between a newborn and a six-month-old. Yet, surely none would argue a newborn is somehow less human.
My answer to what makes a human being a human being is quite simple. Once an egg has been fertilized, it is a human being. There is no other event which changes it from one organism to another. What happens from there is a matter of development, not identity.
The distinction between an embryo which could not live outside its mother and a viable fetus is likewise developmental. It says nothing of whether the embryo is human.
I guess my diversion is an attempt to understand how you arrive at your distinction. If it has nothing to do with the function of dependence, what else could it be?
Perhaps there is a justification for viability as a measure of humanity. To date, I have not been presented with one.
Was Apology For “Get Out Of Palestine” Genuine?
Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Jun 8 2010, 04:56 PM in Political
As the eldest child, and the only boy, I was often called upon to apologize to my sisters. Whether I was pulling their hair, breaking their toys, or insulting their character, our mother would often demand a punitive apology. The regret I expressed at such moments was not for any harm I caused, but for having been caught.
Once, when I was in the sixth grade, I was horsing around with my youngest sister near several sheets of propped up drywall. I carelessly knocked over the stack, causing an avalanche which my sister barely escaped. My mother came unhinged, insisting my actions could have killed my sister.
I replayed the moment in my head, imagining heavy sheets of drywall piling atop my sister’s body, shattering bones, crushing the life from her. The thought was terrifying, and I realized it would have been my fault. Imagining such a scene caused me to not only regret my reckless behavior, but choose to be less reckless in the future. When I apologized, it was from the heart.
When one is truly sorry for something, it is evident in both the content and delivery of their apology. The truly repentant recognize what they did wrong and pledge restraint in the future. Conversely, lame and insincere apologies are made reluctantly, under coercion, and often deflect blame.
Journalist Helen Thomas, long regarded as the “dean” of the White House press corp, resigned in disgrace Monday amid controversy surrounding remarks made at the White House’s official celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. A reporter from a Jewish online news service asked Thomas for a comment on Israel.
Asked where Jews should go, Thomas answered, “They should go home, to Poland, Germany…”
Watch the video.
In the midst of overwhelming backlash, Thomas issued a statement on Friday:
It is difficult to accept this apology as genuine. Thomas’s former off-the-cuff comment was clearly indicative of her true “heart-felt belief.” When offered the opportunity to qualify the remark, Thomas only specified her call for Israel’s dissolution. The content of her apology cannot be reconciled with the record. For the apology to have merit, Thomas must refute the comment which necessitated it, not merely express regret.
As things stand, Thomas cannot rightly claim to value “mutual respect and tolerance” while calling for Jews to return to lands where they were horrifically persecuted. Strictly speaking, tolerance involves coexistence, not exile. Thomas’s view of tolerance is apparently deference to the demands of Palestinian Arabs over the sovereignty of Israel.
A genuine apology would have been significantly different, detailing how her comment was wrong. It is not enough to regret an incident. Surely, any criminal caught red-handed regrets their action. A true apology involves repentance, recognition of an action as wrong, and commitment to improved behavior.
From Thomas, we get a statement of regret and a resignation under tremendous pressure. It seems more likely she feels wronged than in the wrong.
Beck vs. Greer: The Common Good
Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Jun 3 2010, 06:47 AM in Political
In our political discourse, there are many words and phrases which mean entirely different things to different people. Justice, charity, and “the common good” come to mind. When Glenn Beck began warning people to run from houses of worships which preach “social justice” earlier this year, many critics took it as a stand against charity. Variations of “how could you be against ‘social justice?” reverberated throughout the media.
Perhaps the most prominent response came from Simon Greer of Jewish Funds for Justice. In a Washington Post op-ed, Greer took issue with Beck’s charge to “make sure your church puts God first and politics and government last.” Amidst a theological case for government helping the needy, Greer concluded, “to put God first is to put humankind first, and to put humankind first is to put the common good first.”
Beck rejected that notion on his radio show, calling Greer’s piece “exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany.” Beck explained that atrocities like the Holocaust were excused by apologists appealing to “the common good.”
Wednesday, Greer fired back, arguing “the common good” is a founding principle of American government:
Greer clearly sees this quote as a grand “gotcha” moment. To those of us who understand what Adams meant (because we’ve considered more than one sentence), it demonstrates only a semantic disparity inhibiting productive discourse.
In Greer’s defense, Beck did a fairly poor job of making his point when he deemed “the common good” a precursor to death camps. Beck’s generalization was sweeping, making his own producer wince. Stu Burguiere argued not everyone who evokes “the common good” does so with nefarious motives, and urged Beck to qualify the statement further.
That said, Greer’s interpretation of “the common good” does have nefarious application, even if Greer does not intend it so. The reason is simple. Government, as George Washington told us, is force. When we speak of utilizing government to affect “the common good,” we are speaking of using force. It is therefore incumbent upon us to strictly define what “the common good” is, lest we use force arbitrarily. This is where Adams differs from Greer. The latter, as judged from his writings, views “the common good” as provision for the largest number. Adams view of “the common good” was upholding the integrity of individuals’ natural rights. That is a significant distinction.
Even the quote Greer cited makes this case. Adams tells us government is “not for [the] profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.” In other words, government may not be rightly used to benefit a select group at the expense of another. This would preclude the redistributive taxation implied in the “social and economic justice” Greer advocates.
Beck’s point, though poorly made in a moment of exuberance, is a crucial one. When it comes to government, there is no “common good” which minimizes or sacrifices the individual. The only common good which government affects is liberty, freedom from arbitrary or despotic control. Sacrifice and charity are individual acts, the virtue of which are wholly undone when coerced.
Celebrities To The Rescue!
Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Jun 2 2010, 06:34 AM in Society and Culture
Upon learning that federal officials have solicited help from Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron to brainstorm solutions for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I was reminded of the closing track from William Shatner’s under-appreciated 2004 spoken word album Has Been.
So naturally there’s folks who think I must know what to know
But just because you’ve seen me on your TV
Doesn’t mean I’m any more enlightened than you
And while there’s a part of me
In that guy you’ve seen
Up there on that screen
I am so much more
And I wish I knew the things you think I do
I would change this world for sure
But I eat and sleep and breathe and bleed and feel
Sorry to disappoint you
But I’m real
I’d love to help the world and all its problems
But I’m an entertainer, and that’s all
So the next time there’s an asteroid or a natural disaster
I’m flattered that you thought of me
But I’m not the one to call
It is unfortunate Cameron does not share Shatner’s apparent humility. Neither does Scarlett Johansson or Ryan Reynolds.