"If you're not first, you're last"

The National Government’s spending spree has people on the lookout for possible cuts to the budget. With the country waging two unpopular wars, military spending is an easy target. Yet President Obama’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, says it depends on what is being cut. He rejects the “across the board cuts” of the 70’s and 90’s in favor of targeted cuts. Like the budget in general, entitlements are becoming more and more a part of military spending. Michael Gerson writes:

"Some of America’s most expansive military commitments are not made in the Middle East but rather in the military’s health care, compensation and retirement systems. Health costs in the defense budget have risen from $19 billion in 2001 to more than $50 billion today. The military retirement system is appropriately generous. But the possibility of retiring at age 37 with full benefits — following 20 years of service — seems generous beyond normal bounds."

While entitlement spending could use some trimming, research and development do not. As Tony Stark reminds us, our military's success depends upon having the best combat systems, training, operations and maintenance in the world.

Just Be Natural...Or don't

In this debate on abortion Pro-Lifer Ross Douthat doesn’t want to invoke nature, much less natural law, in it. One can sympathize with his reluctance because he wants to rely on arguments which will persuade his opponent and it unlikely the Pro-Choicer here, Michelle Goldberg, would be interested in what is ‘natural.’

Yet Goldberg repeatedly uses the term “de-humanizing” in the video. What does she have in mind when using such a term? She says it is de-humanizing to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term and humane when freely done (or not done). The guiding principle here is Autonomy or the Free Individual.

Really, the woman’s nature (her babymaking equipment or her motherhood) are presenting obstacles to her freedom. The woman’s nature has to be conquered through technology (contraception, abortion) so she can truly be liberated.

We might ask the following questions to this Lockean account of human beings. Are our bodies simply extrinsic to our very selves? If ultimately we are free individuals and nothing more, does that mean masculinity and femininity are irrelevant to who we are as persons? Does this Autonomy worldview account for or capture our experience?

To return to Douthat, you can see his reluctance about bringing up nature in his answer why the mother should “put up with the burden of pregnancy.” He answers that she is “uniquely situated” i.e. she and no one else is in a position to protect the unborn. This seems like a more complicated way of invoking nature. The woman is the MOTHER of the unborn and thus has obligations to the unborn that no one else, save the father (another nature term), has.

Survivor: Ron Paul Edition

Presidential hopefuls in the Republican Party gathered together to debate the issues in South Carolina. Ron Paul drew the most attention for his provocative understanding of FREEDOM. His Libertarian view is the menu of choice should be expanded to include items like prostitution, cocaine, and heroin. The only limitation to freedom should be choices which directly (i.e. physically) harm others.

Michael Gerson correctly notes that Paul would be undeterred by data which shows areas which have decriminalized drugs has increased drug addiction rates. This is because of Paul’s modern, or libertarian, understanding of VIRTUE and VICE:

Quote 1: “How many people here would use heroin if it were legal? I bet nobody would.”

Quote 2: (He is making fun of an addict here) “Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don’t want to use heroin, so I need these laws.”

For Paul, in order for a person to be truly virtuous, he must do so to a heroic degree. If the Law “helps” him by eliminating temptations, then that doesn’t count as virtue. A virtuous person is one who lives in a dump but doesn't get dirty.

Gerson points out that this is a repeat of Herbert Spencer’s SOCIAL DARWINISM. Citizens compete, not cooperate, against one another in a game of 'Survival of the Fittest.' The Addict's inability to resist temptation does not garner the community's concern. It is simply every man for himself. A Public Philosophy of this kind would cultivate contempt, not compassion, towards the the weak in a society. A community of free individuals ultimately means the individuals are free from each other, which isn't much of a community at all.

"Meet his better half"

Peter Lawler explains that Tocqueville’s Democracy in America has two very different themes. Volume 1 is about the problem of ACTIVISM, especially the activism of Majority Faction. In this sense, it is similar to The Federalist Papers. Volume 2, however, is about the problem of APATHY. This is more an Anti-Federalist concern about the cultivation of civic virtue. Today, the greater danger is the latter, as the clip below suggests, which is why people are better served by reading the second half of the book.

Whose line is it anyway?

Citizens United v. FEC might be the most controversial ruling from the Supreme Court in the last couple of years. The decision struck down a provision in McCain Feingold Act which forbade corporate broadcasts. The Majority ruling was that it violated the 1^st amendment’s protection of free speech.

Modern Liberals claim corporations do not have a free speech right because it is an individual, not collective, right. Conservatives mistakenly claim that it is the other way around.

If this disagreement sounds familiar, that is because it is a rehashing of the 2^nd amendment debate; except this time, the two have switched sides. In that debate, Conservatives claimed the right to bear arms is an individual, not collective, right. Modern Liberals believed it was a collective right i.e. state militias have gun rights.

Here is a syllogism I would pose to Modern Liberals in regards to Corporations having free speech rights:

Major Premise: Corporations do NOT have a free speech right

Minor Premise: New Organizations, like NY Times and the Wall Street Journal, are Corporations.

Conclusion: News Organizations do NOT have a free speech right.

Is there an error in this reasoning? If so, is it the major or minor premise? Or is there an unstated premise which is missing? Or does the conclusion not follow?

The language of the First Amendment protects a “free press” which is presumably a business. If the Press has free speech rights, then it appears free speech can be a collective right.

The Pretenders

Politics Departments were transformed into Political Science Departments in the hopes of being taken more seriously. Sophisticated Americans today know that real knowledge is only acquired in the “hard” sciences like biology, physics, and chemistry. Reading and debating the arguments posed in Plato’s Republic and The Federalist Papers is replaced with analyzing charts and graphs derived from polling data.

This isn’t to say the ancients didn’t appreciate math. Plato had written above his academy’s doors: “Let no one unversed in geometry enter here” Plato believed the rigorous thinking required in geometry would lead to clear ideas when it came to philosophy. Yet he did not think, like Descartes would later, that philosophy should be based upon the model of geometry.

Pope Benedict, in his Regensberg Address, spoke about how professors from all the different disciplines used to gather together in a public setting to discuss some issue.

This is not done anymore due to the hyper-specialization required in the Academy. Academics do not have the broad interests which would make such a conversation possible.

It would behoove politics students to study fields within the natural sciences and discuss hot button issues with science majors which concern both groups e.g. stem-cell research, whether ID should be taught in public schools, etc. That would benefit politics students more than pretending to be something they are not.

Don't count on it

*Plot spoilers below

The Coen Brothers latest film has generated a lot of discussion about its meaning. Some see it as religious, others as ‘flirting with nihilism’, and yet another as religious nihilism-whatever that means.

The heroine of the story, Mattie Ross opens the film with the following line: “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.” The Postmodernist Stanley Fish explains how this can be read in two different ways: “But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious.”

He continues to explain that the latter reading is the correct one: “A third sentence, left out of the film but implied by its dramaturgy, tells us that the latter reading is the right one: “You cannot earn that [grace] or deserve it.” ….You can’t add up a person’s deeds — so many good one and so many bad ones — and on the basis of the column totals put him on the grace-receiving side (you can’t earn it); and you can’t reason from what happens to someone to how he stands in God’s eyes (you can’t deserve it).”

This sits nicely with a postmodern view of the world in which the cosmos displays no observable pattern. But it also is an expression of Calvinist theology: God picks the winners and losers in this life independent of our merits. Max Weber believed this theology was the underlying cause of the Protestant Work Ethic. Since there was no discernible pattern of who was and was not saved, Protestants unconsciously worked hard to prove to themselves that God had blessed/saved them. The fruits of their labor were the evidence that they were the elect.

This same dynamic is at work in the film. Mattie wants to see her father avenged. The killer has escaped and no one is lifting a finger about it. The opening shot gives us the first half of a Scripture verse: Proverbs 28:1: "The wicked flee when none pursueth . . ."

Mattie has to take the matter into her own hands. The 2^nd half of the Scripture verse, which the Coens leave out, reads ". . . but the righteous are as bold as a lion."

She could leave the matter to God, but there is no guarantee that divine rewards and punishments correspond to a rational pattern. Mattie calls this a “hard doctrine” in the novel which the film is based upon.

Mattie undergoes the most severe trials, and ultimately loses an arm, in her quest to achieve justice. A Theology which was developed in order to prioritize the Divine will over the Human will ends up encouraging human willfulness. Ironic, indeed.