Ayn Rand vs. Thomas Aquinas

Ayn Rand’s philosophy, known as “Objectivism,” elevates selfishness to the highest human virtue.  It celebrates individual liberty, “lassiez faire" capitalism and rejects all forms of government driven wealth redistribution

Paul Ryan used to hand out copies of “Atlas Shrugged,” Ms. Rand’s most famous novel, to all of his congressional staffers.  Moreover, his budget plan - a plan that Mitt Romney endorsed as “marvelous”- would slash social spending on the poor and elderly to an extent that Ms. Rand is likely to come out of the grave and kiss Paul Ryan on the mouth if it gets enacted.

But things appear to have changed recently.  Regarding his alleged devotion to Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan recently told the National Review that he rejects her philosophy.  “It's an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my world-view. If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand."

Oh Really?  Thomas Aquinas - the philosopher/theologian who famously insisted that:

“Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.”

Well what do you know.  Paul Ryan endorses socialism!  Now that’s news!

Joe Huster

"Stand Your Ground" Conservatives

One thing that puzzles me about Florida’s “stand your ground” law is that it was championed by “conservatives.”

For hundreds of years English common law (i.e., the organic body of law developed slowly, case by case, by English judges beginning around the eleventh century – and the law that formed the basis of our legal system), held that a person facing a threat inside his home could use deadly force to repel the attacker, but a person threatened outside of his home could not resort to deadly force without first attempting to retreat from the danger.

The rule, known as “castle law,” presumed that a person confronted inside his home (or castle) had no place to retreat to, and so had no duty to retreat. However, a person threatened in a public place might be able to retreat and, thus, to reduce violence and its associated harms, the law imposed a duty to retreat whenever possible.

Example: I’m in a bar and a guy comes up to me and says “I don’t like the cut of your jib. I’m going to beat your head in.” Castle law required those of us with bad jibs to exit the bar, if possible, until the authorities arrived. We could only resort to force if it became impossible to leave.
But Florida conservatives decided that castle law was wimpy and enacted a “stand your ground” law that allows people who “reasonably” feel threatened by another person in public to defend themselves without attempting to retreat. A person who defends himself under these circumstances in Florida is immunized from criminal or civil liability.

Why do I mention this? Because one of the central tenets of conservative thought has been that organic systems, developed over long periods of time, embody wisdom that progressive “reformers” easily overlook. Conservatives have long urged caution in making changes to social institutions and practices that have evolved organically. Look at the tenacity with which some conservatives have fought against changes to marriage law, and before that to racial roles, and before that to male/female roles.

What puzzles me is that “Florida conservatives” voted to ignore a common law rule that had been created and refined over hundreds of years of actual case experience, to give Floridians new “stand your ground” rights. Did it ever occur to them that there might be a reason for the castle law rule? Did they read any of the past cases? Did they consult the judges’reasons?

Did they forget they were conservatives?

Beats me. But I’m glad we still have a duty to retreat in Hawaii. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve got a bad jib and need to leave the bar.

Joe Huster

Coming Out

I haven't posted much in the last month, after staring a series on "rights."  I will get back to that topic and try to post more consistently.

However, I do wan't to post this note that I distributed to certain members of my church, so that everyone can know where I'm coming from on a couple of key issues facing us.  I hope you find it worthwhile

*****

Let me share a couple of thoughts

There are two distinct ways of approaching the scriptures as a resource for moral insight.   The first and most common method is to treat the scriptures as a “criterion” for moral truth.  A person who approaches the scriptures as a “criterion” for moral truth asks the following question when confronted with a moral issue - what do the scriptures teach about the subject?  For this person, the entire difficulty - if there is any - is in figuring out what the scriptures teach.  Once this person believes that she knows what the scripture teaches, she has no further need for moral reasoning; no need to ask “do the scriptures get it right?

The second method is to approach the scriptures as a “source” for moral insight, but not as a criterion for moral insight.  A person who approaches the scripture in this manner acknowledges that the scriptures contain moral insight, even profound insight, but does not assume scriptural inerrancy.  For this person, “thus says the lord” is not a convincing argument, particularly when what the “lord” seems to be saying is obviously wrong.

I confess that I am FIRMLY in the latter camp.  All of us are on some issues.  All of us know that the scripture’s endorsement of slavery, or God’s alleged command to Saul to kill every man, woman, child and animal in an act of war, do not provide sound moral guidance.  We instinctively acknowledge that additional explanation is needed to mitigate the message of these passages.  That is because, taken at face value, the wrongfulness of their moral advice is impossible to deny.

However, on most moral issues, the vast majority of our fellow believers stick with the first approach.  It is simpler, works fairly well on a wide range of conduct, and wards off a lot of unnecessary doubt.

Why don’t I take that approach?  The short answer is, “I can’t.”   I’ve developed an unshakable conviction that the level of justification one has for believing a proposition is directly proportional to one's willingness to subject that proposition to genuine scrutiny - and that goes for scriptural propositions as well.  The only way to know if the moral guidance provided by the scriptures is sound is to test that guidance against our most defensible moral convictions.

But to do this, I have to be willing to entertain the possibility that the scripture’s guidance, or at least our current understanding of it, is wrong.  If I am unwilling to entertain the possibility that a particular scriptural claim is false, no matter how false it looks (either on its face or after critical scrutiny), then I am unwilling to subject that claim to genuine scrutiny and, thus, have no reason for believing it to be true. I am simply assuming it to be true and sticking to my guns, evidence or arguments be damned.

But hey, I can do that with any proposition - Barak Obama is a Kenyan socialist and closet Muslim!  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

Now, I whole-heartedly believe that the scriptures are divinely inspired and provide tremendously important insight into the human condition - including human morality.  But I don’t believe that because someone told me it was true, or because I am supposed to believe it as part of a creed.  I believe it because I have studied and reflected on the scriptures, and listened to other people’s reflections, and have encountered many of those insights myself.  In this respect I am a very traditional Christian.

However, my inability - or unwillingness as many would describe it - to accept scriptural teaching that appears to be wrong, makes me a pretty scary dude to many of my fellow believers.  I understand that and accept the consequences.  But I do believe that my approach is best and intend to stick with it.  I really have no other choice.

Which brings me to the issue of homosexuality.  The Apostle Paul specifically denounced homosexual activity several times - I think it is foolish to deny that.  Moreover, I grew up in about as homophobic an environment as one can imagine.  As a young Christian at the age of twenty, I was categorically convinced that homosexuality was sinful and felt as “icky” about it as I could.

However, in my mid-twenties, I began to study philosophy - moral philosophy in particular.  Anyone trained in moral philosophy learns, by deeply ingrained habit, to do one very sensible thing - to demand that their beliefs be justified by reasons.  By the mid 1990’s, I was in graduate school and Christians were becoming very concerned about homosexuality.  So it was inevitable that I would eventually ask myself, “What reasons do I have for thinking that homosexuality is immoral?”

I thought about this question for several years - read many articles discussing the subject from a moral perspective, talked to many people - and I eventually reached the following conclusion: I had no good reason to think homosexuality was immoral.  I had originally accepted that view because the bible endorsed it and I felt “icky” about gayness.  But I realized that this was an inadequate foundation for my belief and I eventually abandoned it.

By the way, the “ick” feeling eventually ebbed as I got to know gay people.  So much for it being a natural warning implanted in me by the almighty.

My best moral analysis is that “being gay” is morally neutral - it is a harmless variation on a dominant natural theme (heterosexual attraction) akin in significance to being left-handed.  I don’t know what causes this variation, or for how many it is the result of a fixable problem.  I do know that approximately 11 million people in our country (a population equal to the State of Ohio ) find themselves sexually and romantically attracted to members of the same sex and that, for them, their orientation is inalterable.

As a Christian, I am very concerned about the well-being of these 11 million people.  I don’t see how denying gays the opportunity to participate in our most important social institution (marriage) helps non-gays or the institution of marriage itself.  In fact, their exclusion threatens the perceived legitimacy of marriage as a practice for an increasingly large number of people.   Moreover, I certainly see the numerous ways in which the exclusion harms, marginalizes, and stigmatizes gay people.  I see this and wonder, “How can we continue to treat Gays in this manner and claim to love them.”  What good reason do we have for imposing so much harm and disability on gays, simply because they are sexually attracted to members of their own sex?

None whatsoever, as far as I can see.

Joe H.

What is a Right?

In my last post, I described the rights-based theory of (economic) justice, and its defense of lassie faire capitalism, as resting on the following two premises:

(1) Justice exists so long as no individual’s rights are violated; and

(2) In a market system free of coercion and fraud, no individual’s rights are violated.

In order to evaluate these premises - to see if they are true - we need to know what a "right" is. One of the first things any philosophy student learns is that we often deploy familiar concepts that we think we understand, but which we have no real understanding of at all. The concept of a "right" is a very good example. We often know what rights we have, but we don’t know what a right is.

That changes right now!

The best definition of a right that I have encountered was developed by the Philosopher Lawrence Becker, who proposed:

"A right is the state of affairs that exists when one 'entity' (the right(s) holder) has a claim on an act or a forbearance from another entity (the right(s) regarder) in the sense that, should the claim be exercised and the act or the forbearance be withheld, it would be justifiable, other things being equal, to use coercive measures to extract either the performance owed, or compensation in lieu of the performance."

Consider the classic example of a criminal defendant’s "right to counsel." In this example, the suspect is the right(s) holder and the state is the right(s) regarder. Under our federal constitution, any criminal defendant (i.e., anyone charged with a crime that could result in her loss of liberty) has a claim against the state to allow her access to legal counsel. Not only that, but in cases where the defendant cannot afford private counsel, she has a claim against the state to provide her with legal counsel at the state’s expense. If the state fails or refuses, the defendant has a remedy against the state - she cannot be criminally convicted. That is the "coercive measure" used to enforce the defendant’s right to counsel.

This is just one example, but it illustrates the basic elements of a rights claim. An entity, be it a person, organization or governmental entity, has a "right" only if it has a legitimate (i.e., morally defensible) claim against another entity. To be a right, the claim must create a duty either that the right(s) regarding entity do something for the right(s) holder or refrain from doing something to the right(s) holder. The claim must also be important enough that we deem it legitimate to resort to coercion against the right(s) regarder in the event that it fails or refuses to perform its duty.

Now that we have a working definition of a "right," the next step is determining how to evaluate rights claims. After all, many people claim to have rights that they don’t really have. On the libertarian argument, individuals have two rights - the right to be free from coercion and the right not to be defrauded. That is the essence of the explicit premise stated in proposition (2). What is not explicitly stated, but is of crucial importance, is the implied premise that individuals have no other rights pertaining to economic transactions. That is the unstated (but presupposed) presmise in proposition (2).

In my next two posts I will outline Professor Becker’s criteria for evaluating the legitimacy of rights claims and, then, apply that criteria to the libertarian premises.

See you soon.

Joe Huster

“Other People’s Money”

I’ve been listening to the Republican Presidential candidates invoke the phrase “other people’s money” as an indirect attack on social spending.  The idea is that food stamp programs, welfare assistance programs, medical assistance programs, and the like are theft.  They involve the government taking resources (by threat of force) from successful people and giving it to other, generally undeserving, people.

On second thought, that sounds more like "robbery" than simple "theft," but I digress.

For rhetorical and psychological effect, the undeserving recipients are usually depicted as dark skinned - or “blah” people if you trust former Senator Rick Santorum.  But that (false) claim is ancillary to the logic of their main argument.  Their basic point is that whatever you acquire within a free market system, using your own talents, skills, resources, and so forth, is yours, provided that you did not engage in coercion or fraud when acquiring it.  Taxing high earners to provide resources for the less fortunate is theft, pure and simple.

Republicans also argue that social spending is counter-productive because it creates dependency and other moral hazards.  But when push comes to shove – i.e., when it can be demonstrably demonstrated that social spending has a positive effect on the needy and/or everyone else, “theft” is the fall back argument.

The “social spending is theft” conclusion rests on the libertarian premise that, absent coercion or fraud, individuals have an absolute property right to everything they acquire within a voluntary market system.  Of course, most libertarians concede that some government spending via coercive taxation is permissible.  But only spending for things that are necessary for a market economy –infrastructure and defense are good examples.  Spending to improve the lives and opportunities of the needy, or their children, is theft.  Such spending is, in the words of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum, the government forcefully taking “other people’s money” and giving to someone else.

What to make of this?  Well, for starters, the libertarian premise itself rests on an even deeper premise.  That deeper premise is that a voluntary free market system that effectively protects participants from fraud or coercion is just.  Put another way, for libertarians, there are only two prerequisites for a just social system – the absence of coercion and fraud.

This is known as a “rights” based theory of justice.  The idea is that (1) justice exists so long as no individual’s rights are violated; and (2) in a market system free of coercion and fraud, no individual’s rights are violated.  This means that any pattern of holdings emerging from transactions conducted within a voluntary market system free of coercion and fraud are just.

And, if I hold what I hold justly, I have a property right to my holdings.  No one, including the government, may seize my holdings by force, even if the purpose for such seizure is benevolent and wise (which it probably isn’t anyway).

In coming posts, I will examine this deeper premise.  I will argue that it is a theory of justice that most people, when they give the matter adequate thought, will reject.  I will also attempt to describe the best competing alternative to the rights based theory of justice – a theory developed by the late John Rawls known as “justice as fairness.”

However, in what remains of this post, I want to illustrate why all of us should be highly suspicious of the rights based theory of justice without recourse to a complicated moral argument – I want to do this with a story.

I have friends (a married couple) who adopted a baby girl.  Baby girl was born severely premature due to her birth mother’s drug use.  Baby girl required several weeks of intensive hospital care just to keep her alive – but keep her alive it did!  Baby girl is now a healthy young girl who can expect to live a long productive life and provide joy and love to her adopted family for many years to come.

Great story huh?  But who paid for the several weeks of intensive hospital care?  I don’t know what the final hospital bill was, but I recently racked up a $30,000.00 medical bill for a four-day stay in the hospital for a ruptured appendix.  I’m sure her bill was substantially larger – several hundred thousand dollars at a minimum.  I know her birth mother didn’t pay for the care – she had zero financial resources.  I also know that her adoptive parents didn’t pay for the care – her adoption was not finalized until after the hospitalization, so she was not covered by her adoptive parents’ medical insurance.

The corporation that owned the hospital might have paid for the care, but that is unlikely.  Any medical corporation that routinely gave away its care would become bankrupt in short order.  Nor am I aware of any charity stepping in to ease the burden.

The fact is none of these parties paid for her care.  Her care was almost certainly paid for with “other people’s money.”

Imagine that!  Our government seized “other peoples' money” and gave it to Baby girl to save her life.  And she wasn’t even a “blah” person.

Oh my God!  Call the Republicans immediately!  Let’s have another debate!

Joe H.

Good! Fast! Cheap!

I went to the dry cleaners today and noticed a sign above the counter that read “Caesars’ Dry Cleaning – Good! Fast! Cheap!

“So” I thought, “Caesars has transcended the iron law of production which holds you can only have two out of three.” That is:

You can get things that are high quality, quickly, but they will be expensive;

You can get things that are high quality, inexpensively, but it will take a long time; And

You can get things quickly and inexpensively, but they won’t be very good.

Apparently this applies to everything but dry cleaning!

Joe H.

The Battle of the Bulge

I really liked this article depicting Christian holdouts on the "homosexuality is sin" posture to the Japanese soldiers in the Philippine jungles who continued fighting World War II long after it had ended - refusing to believe the war had ended despite repeated attempts to contact them via dropped leaflets and radio broadcasts.


Unfortunately, I don't think it is the most accurate analogy for our current situation. I agree that the "Christianity is sin" faction is doomed - just as the Japanese were doomed to inevitable defeat after the battle of Midway. But the Battle of Midway did not end the war with Japan - nor is the battle for the soul of Christianity on the gay issue over.

I think a better analogy is the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans were doomed once they lost the Battle of Stalingrad. But they didn't seem to realize it. The D-day invasion hastened the date of their ultimate demise, but they still didn't realize they were doomed. The Battle of the Bulge was Germany's final major counter-offensive - they realized they were doomed only after it failed.
I think the "homosexuality is sin" faction is in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge. Things are getting desperate, but they've still got some fight left in them.
By way of illustration, someone recently “outed” me as a supporter of gay love/marriage before our congregation. After the service, several attendees discretely approached me and quietly told me that "I was not alone." It is true that Christians are changing their minds. The hardliners are losing. But they still have enough power to keep most Christian gay love supporters in the closet.
Joe H.