Category: Political Matters

Natural Law Smackdown

Orthodox philosopher David Bentley Hart argues in First Things that the terms of the harmony between cosmic and moral order are not as precisely discernible as natural law thinkers imagine. Edward Feser promptly replies in a First Things blog:

Now I have nothing but respect for Prof. Hart and his work. But this latest article is not his finest hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, by my count he commits no fewer than five logical fallacies: equivocation, straw man, begging the question, non sequitur, and special pleading.

Because these two are philosophers, I probably couldn’t get away with saying “Hart has his own Wikipedia article and you don’t, Feser, so neener, neener, neener!” That would be, if not a fallacy strictly speaking, a shameless ad hominem.

In fact, I think Feser has the better overall argument, a conviction buttressed by his own blog’s engagement with Rod Dreher’s pre-Feser commendation of Hart’s position.

Feser:

As I noted in my response to Hart, what natural law theorists of either of the two main contemporary stripes (“old” and “new”) maintain is that there are objective moral truths that can be known through purely philosophical arguments, entirely apart from divine revelation, scriptural authority, or ecclesiastical diktat.  They do not deny that the philosophical arguments in question are controversial and sometimes difficult for the average person to understand.
In this respect, natural law arguments are no different from the arguments of Rawlsian liberals, utilitarians, libertarian economists, feminists, or what have you — all of which are, needless to say, also controversial and sometimes difficult for the average person to understand, but all of which also make no reference to revelation, scripture, etc.  And that is the point.  If these other arguments have a place in debates over public policy despite their controversial nature, then there are no grounds for excluding natural law arguments.  In particular, the moral conclusions the critics of natural law don’t like — concerning abortion, “same-sex marriage,” or whatever — cannot be excluded on the assumption that they have no justification other than an appeal to religious authority.  For that assumption is false.
Now Dreher is right to maintain that the specific philosophical theses that natural law theory rests on, however rationally defensible, are going to meet a great deal of resistance in a culture in which materialism, individualism, and allied doctrines are widely and lazily taken for granted.  That is one reason why, in my own work, I have emphasized that it is the entire set of false metaphysical assumptions (about causation, substance, essence, etc.) that have come to define modern thought that the defender of natural law (and of natural theology and traditional philosophical anthropology, for that matter) has to challenge.  There is no short cut.
But that entails only that the work of the natural law theorist is more difficult than it would have been in previous generations, not that it isn’t worth doing ….

Philopsophers, like bloggers, put their pants on one leg at a time, too (at least if they’re male philosophers), and Hart may be predisposed by his Orthodoxy to dismiss Thomistic natural law theory, Thomas Aquinas having post-dated the Great Schism (which could invite the “not invented here” response) and the scholastic mindset – in religion especially – being alien to the Orthodox mindset (which aversion runs deeper and is more ineffable).

But while I fear that some of the big cultural battles of The Culture Wars have been lost by my side (a fear Dreher shares and Hart reinforces), something in me can’t give up arguing for the older view anyway. Maybe it’s because I was dabbling in Natural Law arguments even when I was a Protestant, and tended to credit them as based on general revelation (roughly the basis of philosophy) rather than special revelation (roughly the basis of religion).

Dreher can’t give up arguing, either, even as though he says arguments don’t work. His, then, may be a more heroic posture than mine:

This is why I don’t have any faith in the natural-law-based arguments against same-sex marriage.  It’s not that I disagree with them necessarily; it’s that a) they are hard for ordinary people conditioned by our culture’s modes of thought to grasp, and b) partly because of this, they (understandably) prompt a, “So what?” response.

Feser is having none of it:

But suppose the liberals or secularists of generations past had taken a similar attitude.  Suppose that, in light of the conservative and religious sensibilities then prevalent, a liberal or secularist in 1970, 1980, or 1990 had written:
This is why I don’t have any faith in [feminist, Rawlsian, utilitarian, libertarian, or gay liberationist] arguments [in favor of abortion, acceptance of homosexuality, or] same-sex marriage.  It’s not that I disagree with them necessarily; it’s that a) they are hard for ordinary people conditioned by our culture’s modes of thought to grasp, and b) partly because of this, they (understandably) prompt a, “So what?” response.
Obviously, had such an attitude won the day and the liberal arguments in question not been relentlessly propagated by the intelligentsia — in academic journals, in the classroom, and in the simplified journalistic form that ultimately influences popular culture and electoral politics — then the sensibilities Dreher identifies would never have come into being in the first place.

So there’s no short cut, but the worthwhile work of the natural law theorist is more difficult than it would have been in previous generations.

Thanks, Coach. I needed that. Keep it up and you may get your own Wikipedia article.

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

John Huntsman leads the lemmings

I fear that John Huntsman may just be the first of many GOP Presidential hopefuls to endorse same-sex marriage.

The logic is simple: The game is over; defenders of traditional marriage have lost whether they know it or not. The GOP will become irrelevant it it doesn’t get on board with the Zeitgeist. The rest of Hunstman’s blather and cant can’t hide that calculating core.

The premise may be true. Rod Dreher thinks it is (here, here and here). I tend to think it is, too, though part of me wants to risk a glorious death in the battle anyway (metaphorically speaking). The real difference, though, may be that I don’t care about the GOP as an institution any more, while Dreher shows signs that he does care despite denying it.

One hopeful sign is that some supporters of same-sex marriage are beginning to admit that there’s nothing bigoted about opposing it if one still holds that marriage is the union of a man and a woman in a bond oriented toward procreation and formation of a biological family. The bad news is that that the admission has the whiff of a victor’s magnanimous throw-away line, and that almost nobody, including Republicans who have ritually opposed SSM, seems actually to hold that view any more.

I’ve started assembling a list of consequences and implications of the competing view of marriage – that it is only the contractual expression of a couple’s love and commitment to each other – and I may post it only so that when sanity returns, my posterity can point with pride and say “great-great-grandpa got it.”

This assumes, of course that people will still know and care, or will once again at least want to know and begin caring, about their ancestors. For all I know, my great-great-grandchildren will be conceived and gestated in a laboratory, with anonymous sperm and ovum donors, to serve as a prop for a same-sex pair of Society for Creative Anachronism members who want to create the simulacrum of an historic family.

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Impeach Judge Polster

News from last week:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio announced that on Friday 16 defendants were sentenced on hate crime charges growing out of a series of assaults on members of a rival Amish group in which the victims’  hair or beards were cut. (See prior posting.) As reported by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Bergholz Amish bishop Samuel Mullet received a 15 year sentence. Other defendants received sentences ranging from 7 years to just over one year. In imposing the sentences, federal district judge Dan Aaron Polster told the defendants:

Each and every one of you did more than terrorize, traumatize and disfigure the victims. You trampled on the Constitution.

(Religion Clause; emphasis added)

First, let me preemptively deny what a casual reader might suspect:

  • I’m not saying that bishop Samuel Mullet isn’t the mastermind of the attacks on completing Amish groups.
  • I’m not denying that the attacks were meant to humiliate, intimidate and to deprive the victims of an outward sign of their religious identity.
  • I’m not saying that the “beard trimmings” and “haircuts” were not motivated by hatred for the competing Amish.
  • I’m not saying that bishop Mullet’s group isn’t a cult or that he isn’t dangerous.
  • I’m not saying that unauthorized beard trimmings and haircuts shouldn’t be a crime or that they’re not crimes. They certainly are a form of criminal battery.
  • I’m not saying that 15 years is too long a sentence.

I now am saying that not one of the Defendants “trampled on the Constitution.”I am saying that the federal judge who said they did  sounds like a constitutional ignoramus or a motor-mouth, both of which disqualify him for a federal judgeship in my opinion. (I’m probably in a minority. In a world of Judge Judies, we seemingly want our judges to be tart-tongued purveyors of black-robed bread and circuses.)

The Constitution limits government. Got that?

As my constitutional law professor, the late Patrick Baude put it, “If the Pope of Rome, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and the Rev. Billy Graham got together and engineered the assassination of the President because of some common religious animus, they would not thereby violate the Constitution.” The first amendment has no application whatever to what any church, priest, pastor, curate, or other officer of a religious society may do.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ….

The Constitution limits government.

There are too may people already who fancy that a Church or pastor can violate the “separation of Church and state.” We don’t need Federal Judges pouring gasoline on that fire.

Federal prosecutors argued that bishop Mullet should get a life sentence. I already hinted elsewhere that a law whereby a man might be imprisoned for life for unauthorized beard trimmings and haircuts if motivated by “hate” is a tool I don’t want government to have. But the prosecutors’ Happy Dance Press Release was a model of sobriety compared the judge’s sloppy extemporizing.

As long as I’m shooting off my mouth, let me add that we muddle matters when we pass federal laws like the “Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act” (under which bishop Mullet was convicted) and call them “civil rights” laws. This summary, which illustrates the muddle, is mistaken – although it’s sharper than most people’s minds seem to be:

Civil liberties are protections against government actions. For example, the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees citizens the right to practice whatever religion they please. Government, then, cannot interfere in an individual’s freedom of worship. Amendment I gives the individual “liberty” from the actions of the government.

Civil rights, in contrast, refer to positive actions of government should take to create equal conditions for all Americans. The term “civil rights” is often associated with the protection of minority groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics, and women. The government counterbalances the “majority rule” tendency in a democracy that often finds minorities outvoted.

I dissent. “Civil liberties” and “civil rights” are substantially synonymous. I wouldn’t object if someone wanted to say that civil liberties keep the government caged and off our turf, and that civil rights have to do with things we may demand from government – if that list includes only things that are the government’s to give in the first place, such as the franchise, due process, jury trials and the like. But government these days has taken to putting its thumb on the scale balancing the rights of citizens among themselves and calling that “civil rights.” That’s wrong.

The quest for equal conditions for all Americans, insofar as it results in countermanding majority decisions that do not infringe civil liberties or civil rights, is a form of tyranny as it deprives the majority of its right to self-governance. Insofar as it burdens other citizens with obligations to be nice to people they may find odious, or to do business with those they might wish to shun, it is potentially a form of tyranny, and needs very substantial justification.

The Constitution limits government. Including courts. Even if the courts are motivated by a desire for greater equality than the constitution requires.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

The French way with words

The local paper Tuesday picked up a Fort Wayne News Sentinel column that made an interesting point about the Culture Wars.

The author, a “conservative with strong libertarian leanings — or a libertarian with strong conservative underpinnings,” noted that despite the rumored moratorium on social issues, he’s not feeling the love as he sees movement on:

• Women in combat.
• Gays in the Boy Scouts.
• Gun control.
• Immigration reform.
• Guaranteed sports access for the handicapped.

That would not be my list. Others would be. But the the author’s point is valid:

But it annoys me no end that most of the commentariat on one side feel perfectly free to browbeat the other side about polluting the body politic with divisive wedge issues — shut up about abortion and traditional marriage! — to the point where even some conservatives cave.

Oh, yes, let’s have a moratorium on social issues, urged then-Gov. Mitch Daniels. At the same time, they go about merrily pursuing their own wedge issues. And they feel absolutely no shame about it. Why should they, when they hardly ever get called on it?

This takes me back to one of my favorite remarks on the bigotry of the bien pensants:

One suspects that the bashing of the religious right amounts to little more than that right-thinking people find the religious right distasteful.  The logic is “We are good, true and beautiful.  But we find you repulsive.  Therefore there must be something very wrong with you.”  The reasoning is impeccable given the first premise, but perhaps the first premise is false.    The French have a witticism: “Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l’attaque, il se defend.”  (This animal is very wicked; when you attack it, it defends itself.)  The religious right did not start the fight.  For more than a quarter century, elite, privileged, sophisticated, and “right-thinking” Americans have exhibited contempt for some fundamental values, and have exhibited even greater contempt for the religious traditionalists who hold them.

David Carlin, Right Thinking About the Religious Right, First Things, November 1994.

1994. Note that. It reminds me of another French saying: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Becoming Magnetic

Rod Dreher, with the excuse of a David Brooks column to frame the question, returns to one of his perennial Front Porchy type themes: the importance of place. I didn’t read it initially, probably because of the uninspired title: The Geographical Aristocracy Of Meritocracy.

The basic question is “why do young people flee their hometowns, and why do the educated elite among them congregate in a just a few magnet places?” If you immediately answer “Well, duh! Their hometowns are boring while San Francisco is exciting,” then you’re part of (what I think is) a problem. Why should people want excitement above anything else?

Richard Florida has made a career of valorizing of this phenomenon, and telling places in flyover country how they, too, can become magnetic. I’ve always taken him with a grain of salt, not because I doubt that certain creative things may multiply exponentially when a bunch of highly-educated and energetic people cluster in a place, but because

  • I’m cursed with an awareness that exponentially multiplying certain creative things may not be the only thing, or even in the top ten most important things, we should want to do.
  • It has the whiff of opportunism about it: find some troubling thing that’s happening and the people who profit from it may be willing to pay big bucks for you to explain why it’s really wonderful and only a fuddy-duddy could disagree.

Dreher offers an alternate good, that of roots, fully aware of the complications of realizing it in many cases. 

In ages past, the smart kid from a small town may have returned to his hometown and opened a business, or a law or medical practice, and so on. He would have put his talents to use building up his community, not as an act of charity, but because it wouldn’t have occurred to him to do anything but that — or if it had, there were powerful cultural forces pushing against it …

The point here, though, is that nobody these days feels an obligation to anything larger than their own ambition and desire — and that has real-world consequences for places you can find on the map. We are all implicated in this. If you are living in one of these towns, and you are raising your kids with the expectation that they will leave, and should want to leave for the sake of their career, you’re implicated in it too.

On a personal note, I don’t know if I’d have ended up back in my hometown had I not become concerned about whether greening america in the mountains of Arizona was a good long-term plan for a man who wanted a family, and thus decided to return to school to become an attorney, at which profession I’d shown some aptitude and knew reasonably well from having grown up in an attorney’s home. Having done that, and joined my father’s law firm, I’ve probably made significantly more money as an attorney because my hometown’s economic devolopment mucky-mucks have paid guys like Richard Florida, including the guru himself, to come give us some larnin’ on how to be more magnetic.

As a consequence (or maybe just coincidentally, driven by a the presence of a prominent Big Ten-or-however-many-it’s-up-to-now University) we have a downtown that’s relatively teeming with college-age and young adults, a lively arts scene for a city our size, and other features that make it a pretty exciting and remunerative place to live. A single cineplex where a drive-in theater used to be has more movie screens than all surrounding counties combined.  Our Big-Box Stores have replaced all the boring little mom-and-pop shops for those hick counties, too. Our legislators work together effectively across party lines in the state capital. And we’re the envy, along with Bloomington and Indianapolis, of the rest of the state, which I’m told calls us “the Golden Triangle.”

In other words, we’ve won the meritocratic geographic lottery and become aristocratic. Ain’t life great?! C’mon up and over, Indiana. To hell with your boring little hometowns!

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.