Stipulate that such a phenomenon as “homophobia” exists, that there are people who have an irrational and exaggerated fear of homosexuals, to such an extent that we might describe them as suffering from a mental illness. Absent a case-by-case examination of individuals, an analysis of the behaviors and attitudes that constitute “homophobia,” and evidence that this phenomenon causes harm to society, the term is merely an epithet, with no meaningful definition. Continue reading Shame in a Shameless Culture →
Sure, the right will rend their garments over the Laffer curve and supply-side economics, but there’s a much simpler argument hiding behind the line graphs.
It goes like this: We earned this money. We deserve it. It is therefore immoral to take it from us.
Boiled down to two words, this is called ‘private property’.
The standard liberal response is to quibble over who deserves what. Does a single mother who works three jobs just to make the rent and keep her kids clothed deserve more or less material wealth than the overworked corporate lawyer who’s barely seen his downtown Manhattan studio in the past week? What about the linebacker who is paid millions of dollars to be in peak physical condition all the time and perform under immense emotional and physical pressure? Does he deserve all of his income more than the recently laid off factory worker deserves his unemployment benefits?
In other words, the liberal is comfortable poking into all private property, even without indication of lawbreaking. The liberal with the vestage of morality may prefer to exercise this sort of control by means of the state (protecting his own privacy en passant, no doubt) but the threat to private property is iminent in any case.
The problem with questions like this is that they put far more moral weight on the word “deserve” than its shaky frame can support. This becomes clear once you ask why a billionaire does or does not deserve a tax cut. He does deserve it because he’s a diligent, hard worker. He doesn’t deserve it because his money came to him in large part thanks to a combination of luck and privilege.
Do you perceive the tie between “is” and “deserve” there, Ned? One would think that liberality would be about non-judgmental approaches. The billionaire can slaughter his unborn children and engage in unnatural sex, but there are no moral lines crossed until the bank account becomes too large?
So the question of “deserves” comes down to whether the money came to the billionaire by way of arbitrary factors or as a result of his own efforts and character. And implicit in the argument is the understanding that the difference between these two categories is somehow intelligible, even quantifiable.
No, it really comes down to whether you have a legal system, and can prove in court that the legal system has been abused, i.e. the wealth was acquired illegally. Other than that, Ned, you’re Making Stuff Up.
But that’s silly. As the political philosopher John Rawls famously pointed out, factors that we associate with character — such as intelligence and a diligent work ethic — are no less morally arbitrary than factors like inherited wealth or membership in a privileged identity group. If Jane deserves more money than her co-worker Bob because she is naturally smarter and harder working than him, what did she do to deserve her greater intelligence? What about the solid work ethic her parents instilled in her? Did she, at the exact moment of her birth, already deserve better parents than Bob?
The only thing this debate about who deserves what really tells us is that very few people are willing to admit just how insubstantial and malleable our innate character really is. When you control for environmental, genetic, social, historical, and biological factors, what differentiates my own distinguishing features from Charles Manson’s — or, for that matter, Obama’s, Palin’s, Lincoln’s or yours — is either imperceptible or completely nonexistent. And if that’s the case, I don’t see how you can argue that either of us deserve more or less than any of those people.
So, Equality of Opportunity, too, is meaningless. All that matters is Equality of Condition?
What this suggests to me is that the only way you can coherently argue that a person inherently deserves a certain level of privilege or material comfort is to also argue that all persons deserve it, by virtue of their personhood. We already have language to describe these things that all persons innately deserve: we call them rights.
I will speak to you a great truth, Ned: nobody owes you jack.
Beyond rights is where the language of “deserving” falls apart as a morally relevant factor. There are, of course, other morally relevant factors: ownership comes to mind, but nearly everyone, when pressed, will admit that ownership doesn’t carry a great deal of moral weight. (Example: If I need to steal your expensive racing kayak to row out to sea and rescue a drowning child, are you really going to argue that I was behaving badly?) Mostly it falls back to a question of economics: how to balance the state’s ability to provide needed services for all citizens, including its most needy, while preserving a capitalist system which rewards achievement, and therefore (one would hope) innovation, productivity and excellence.
Ned, let me help you with a question: What is your unit of analysis? You’re head seems lodged in a certain sunless location next to Rousseau. You have 23 chromosomes. Half your information came from daddy, half from momma. Zip, zero, zilch, none of that information came from The State. The “state’s ability to provide needed services for all citizens” is convenient hooey for you and your ilk, Ned. Individuals tolerate the construct known as The State to varying degrees, and through various means.
The moral case for tax cuts is that honest people don’t spend money they lack.
Ned, your failure to even raise this as an argument speaks volumes.
No Sheeples Here offers a palate cleansing selection of Gipper and W to help the reader recover:
It’s hard to tell whether to be cheered or saddened. Rev. Jackson, at least as credible as Paul Krugman on economics, in Detroit declared depression:
“The middle class is under attack,” Jackson told the Free Press on Wednesday. “Detroit, Michigan is ground zero.”
Compared with unemployment and foreclosure rates nationwide, Detroit has been the hardest hit urban area in the country, according to Jackson. He is urging government officials and business leaders to reinvest in the city.
“This is a depression, not a recession when you have 30 to 40% of residents in poverty,” Jackson said in reference to new census data reported Wednesday. “This is a state of emergency.”
You know what would cheer Jesse up? Seeing his son swearing into the Senate. If Illinois doesn’t deliver, Junior can just stand at the door and offer his Blagojevich impersonation. More or less the same.
Dumb Democrat Week continues as we highlight Rick Boucher, the Virginia Democrat who voted for cap-and-trade.
Incumbent Problem #1: Boucher represents an Appalachian region of rural southwest Virginia where coal mining is a vital industry and thousands of local jobs would be lost if cap-and-trade becomes law.
Incumbent Problem #3: The 9th District went 59% for John McCain and Obama loves him some Rick Boucher:
A couple of guys I know are working for the campaign of state Sen. Morgan Griffith, the Republican challenger in the 9th District, and I hope to get down there to cover the campaign on the ground soon. But before you hit my tip jar, hit Griffith’s first, OK? He looks like a winner.
Put the godforsaken letter up on eBay, with the proceeds going to some suitable charity. Then look at Brown campaign and say “Is that all ya got? ‘Cause I can go all day.”
And speaking of the humor, why isn’t anyone delivering Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, for that old-time Governor Jerry Brown feeling?
Oh, why not?
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals, it’s okay
So let’s get dressed and dance away the night
Stacy will be apoplectic over this post, no doubt.
Victor Davis Hanson has one of his excellent ruminations (RTWT) over at Pajamas Media, and poses a question:
4. The Plutocratic Party?
I cannot fathom how the Democratic Party became run by those who live lives nothing remotely similar to what they profess. Yes, I know the Roosevelt-Kennedy tradition of limousine liberals, but today’s chasm between word and deed is stunning—and never remarked on. Are we to believe that prep-schooled and Ivy Leagued, millionaire Barack Obama is the blue-collar face of the Democratic Party, while one of twelve children John Boehner is some sort of J.P. Morgan insider rich man? No wonder that Obama must fake his cadences, bowl, and try to eat cabbage instead of arugula.
The Al Gore, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros phenomenon is baffling. The best I can make of it goes something like this. Once someone makes enough money truly to be exempt from worries over taxation (but even Kerry proved that $1 billion dollars does not quite end the impulse to dodge sales taxes), or is deeply burrowed within government so that almost everything is free or subsidized, then some sort of human desire to help the “other” kicks in as a sort of penance for the enjoyment of privilege.
What did Gore say last weekend? (emphasis mine):
[Jim Moran is] a very, very respected voice on issues from the environment and energy, to civil rights and equal justice for all Americans. And of course, that’s core to who we are as Americans. And each successive generation has its own new challenges to expand the tremendous dream and vision that led to the founding of this country in the first place. Jim has been true to the American spirit all the way along the line.
The Progressive belief system, per the advertising slogans, seems a modern attempt to unify the State with some fuzzy pseudo-Christian, Socialized belief system. The notion that the several States retain any rights, and the Constitution was a means of delegating limited powers to a Federal government is nothing but a speed bump along the road to creating a shiny future.
Liberty is an absolute. You can argue well that the 15th Amendment put the teeth in the Constitutional guarantee. Fine. But how, exactly, have the decadence of newly discovered ‘rights’ from the bench, and multi-ream colostomy bags of legislation extended the absolute of liberty in any way?
Past the advertising slogans like the one Al Gore spouted for his little pack of robots in Northern Virginia comes the question: does the man subscribe to that tripe? When not in front of the ‘bots, but rather chillin’ with the beautiful people in Davos, does he really sound like that?
I don’t think so either. So then, why all the recreational hypocrisy? My answer is that it’s a natural outgrowth of having allowed a Ruling Class to grow. Capitol Hill, like any compost heap, requires regular turning, and for the same reason. The random collection of intellectual mushrooms currently unafraid to announce they are our leaders are there Because We’ve Permitted It.
Thus, we’ve 33 days to convince people to load-shed these idiots.
Next Spring, after the new Congress is sworn in, we’ll get into the details of just how bare the pantry is. I assume an order of magnitude worse than currently discussed, just as a going-in position. Then we’ll begin to get a real idea of just what an execrable pack of (perhaps well-intentioned) swine all of these Progressives have proven.
Via Insty, here is a better historical overview. This article is valuable for its global scope and historical depth. A subsequent article, I think, should talk about how central banking has been the leaven of Socialism, until now, when it is so globally inflated as to be unaffordable, and how technology like Al Gore’s Internet has allowed the people to rise instead.
Rarely have I ever disagreed with Ann Coulter, but her pronouncement that Patty Murray is “the stupidest person in America” was simply wrong. Of course, the stupidest person in America is a Democrat but, contra Coulter, it’s not the buffoonish senator from Washington state.
No, even the astonishing stupidity of Patty Murray is no match for Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the Democrat who represents southern Arizona’s 7th District.
Remember how that murder sparked a demand for SB 1070, the Arizona legislation that authorized police to inquire about the immigration status of criminal suspects?
OK, if you remember all that, then you remember that the usual suspects of open-borders radicalism protested against SB 1070 and demanded boycotts of Arizona over the law. What you may not have noticed, or perhaps have forgotten, is that the 7th District Democrat called for an economic boycott of his own state:
Arizona’s own Democrat Rep. Raul Grijalva . . . urged civic, religious, and political groups to take their convention dollars elsewhere. “Do not do business with this state,” Grijalva told open-borders zealots bent on punishing law-abiding citizens to “send a message.”
The tragedy of Tyler Clementi’s suicide has drawn much commentary. We are not surprised that Pam Spaulding seizes the opportunity to lecture us about “homophobia” — the scare-quotes necessitated, as I always note, by the pseudo-diagnostic nature of the term.
