George Will makes the conservative -- that is to say, reasoned, principled -- case against a John McCain presidency. It is a strong case. It resonates with me. I am troubled by many aspects of a potential McCain presidency. But there remain two conclusive reasons why voting for McCain is the right choice.
First, there's Sarah Palin. By choosing Palin, McCain has helped to commit the future of the Republican party to conservative quarters.
Second, there's Barack Obama. Obama is not merely liberal. He is for abortion on demand, he refuses to oppose infanticide, he promises to put liberal activists on the federal courts, he promises dramatically to expand costly federal entitlements, including health insurance, and has already demonstrated his fecklessness in foreign relations and policy.
I am not enthusiastic about a McCain presidency. But the Candidate of the Past must be stopped.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
The culture of death advances...
... and we in the West need a base from which to resist it. Baroness Warnock, an influential moral philosopher in the United Kingdom, has rightly provoked outrage over her suggestion that people suffering from dementia have a moral obligation to commit suicide. "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service." Of course, this claim entails the further conclusion that those demented patients who refuse to do their duty should be euthanised.
To this appalling and predictable moral claim, one would expect a devastating response from those in the UK who value human life. Instead, we get this:
Hunt's response is equally as troubling as Warnock's claim. According to Warnock we should protect the right of demented patients to live because they might enjoy a "good quality of life." On that reasoning, those patients who do not or cannot enjoy a good quality of life -- one imagines that this is a majority -- are perfectly legitimate targets for termination. So Hunt has not refuted Warnock's claim, he has merely reduced by a small fraction the pool of candidates for Warnock's proposed euthanasia program.
This is the bind in which hyper-secular Europe finds itself. Having rejected the natural law and adopted consequentialist moral reasoning, it has no ground on which to resist the culture of death. Mr. Hunt and others who care about the mentally infirm could learn a lot from reading this blog.
UPDATE: The American Thinker makes an interesting point. Is this where we're headed if we adopt socialized medicine?
To this appalling and predictable moral claim, one would expect a devastating response from those in the UK who value human life. Instead, we get this:
Neil Hunt, the chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, said: "I am shocked and amazed that Baroness Warnock could disregard the value of the lives of people with dementia so callously. With the right care, a person can have good quality of life very late in to dementia. To suggest that people with dementia shouldn't be entitled to that quality of life or that they should feel that they have some sort of duty to kill themselves is nothing short of barbaric."
Hunt's response is equally as troubling as Warnock's claim. According to Warnock we should protect the right of demented patients to live because they might enjoy a "good quality of life." On that reasoning, those patients who do not or cannot enjoy a good quality of life -- one imagines that this is a majority -- are perfectly legitimate targets for termination. So Hunt has not refuted Warnock's claim, he has merely reduced by a small fraction the pool of candidates for Warnock's proposed euthanasia program.
This is the bind in which hyper-secular Europe finds itself. Having rejected the natural law and adopted consequentialist moral reasoning, it has no ground on which to resist the culture of death. Mr. Hunt and others who care about the mentally infirm could learn a lot from reading this blog.
UPDATE: The American Thinker makes an interesting point. Is this where we're headed if we adopt socialized medicine?
Thursday, September 18, 2008
"I hate her."
Jay Nordlinger has some useful observations on the Left's pathological hatred -- yes, hatred -- of, and attempts to destroy, Sarah Palin. I share Nordlinger's physical revulsion at the recent behavior of the mainstream media and cultural elite. However, I think his anecdotal sample is slightly skewed by living in New York. Most Americans are not nearly so vile as the liberal elite.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
American values shifting left
I do not believe in fear-mongering. But these numbers do not bode well for our great nation.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
The case for human life -- civic evangelicalism, part 6
This is part 6 of an ongoing series. See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. In my last post in this series I made the case for basic goods. I argued that many of the things that people today pursue and choose (such as pleasure or happiness) are not things to be pursued at all but rather are mere by-products of other choices. They are, in other words, not human goods. Other things that people choose, such as money or power, are not intrinsically valuable goods, but are merely instrumentally valuable, and are therefore valuable if chosen for more fundamental ends, such as health, charity, or the common good.
There exists a third category of objects of human choice, basic human goods. Basic goods are reasons for choice, pursuit, or action that are valuable in and of themselves. They include beauty, knowledge, religion, and marriage (more on which in a later post).
One of the basic human goods is human life. Human persons are valuable, and therefore are proper objects of choice and action, simply because they are human. For this reason, human beings ought never be instrumentalized -- that is, turned into mere means rather than chosen as ends in themselves -- as they are when they are aborted, destroyed in embryonic research, or made objects of sexual gratification.
Humans are inherently different from all other beings. G.K. Chesterton famously observed in his great book, The Everlasting Man,
The common answer to all of these questions, of course, is that humans are not merely different from the animals in degree, we are different in kind. We are wholly other. We are more than mere collections of matter, more than mere arrangements of chemicals, more even than sentient beings.
The implications of this fact are many and far-reaching in our contemporary culture. To instrumentalize a human person is to deny that person's dignity, his or her inherent moral worth. Slavery (and later, racial segregation) remains the most obvious example of instrumentalizing the human person. Slavery has long been abolished here in the United States (though it continues in many other places in the World, where Christian and natural law teachings are disregarded). Yet humans are routinely instrumentalized today in the United States. A few examples are obvious.
Abortion, embryo-destructive research, and infanticide all violate the inherent dignity of human persons. They turn nascent human persons, who if allowed to develop would become walking-around persons like you and I, into means rather than ends. Young humans become either obstacles to the mother's ostensible self-actualization or raw materials for research that some hope (in spite of all the contrary evidence) will rid adults of certain diseases.
Homosexual conduct, adultery, and other types of non-marital sex acts violate the inherent dignity of human persons. They turn humans into means rather than ends. Other people become means for satisfying sexual desires, and their intrinsic worth is thus denied.
Evangelicals ought to affirm the inherent dignity and worth of every human person. And on this we must not compromise. We should learn from the abolitionist and civil rights movements that compromise with the evil forces that denigrate human persons is the same as capitulation to them. Human life deserves a radical and robust defense. This much is clear. The only question is whether we have the will to make that defense.
There exists a third category of objects of human choice, basic human goods. Basic goods are reasons for choice, pursuit, or action that are valuable in and of themselves. They include beauty, knowledge, religion, and marriage (more on which in a later post).
One of the basic human goods is human life. Human persons are valuable, and therefore are proper objects of choice and action, simply because they are human. For this reason, human beings ought never be instrumentalized -- that is, turned into mere means rather than chosen as ends in themselves -- as they are when they are aborted, destroyed in embryonic research, or made objects of sexual gratification.
Humans are inherently different from all other beings. G.K. Chesterton famously observed in his great book, The Everlasting Man,
Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution. That he has a backbone or other other parts upon a similar pattern to birds and fishes is an obvious fact, whatever be the meaning of the fact. But if we attempt to regard him, as it were, as a quadruped standing on his hinds legs, we shall find what follows far more fantastic and subversive than if he were standing on his head.Why is murder considered gravely wrong, while animal meat consumption has been accepted by the vast majorities of every civilization from the dawn of time? Why do humans create art, music, and poetry? Why do we clothe ourselves? Why do we travel long distances merely to view a beach, a sunset, or a mountain range? Why do we experience longings for which no satisfaction can be found on Earth?
The common answer to all of these questions, of course, is that humans are not merely different from the animals in degree, we are different in kind. We are wholly other. We are more than mere collections of matter, more than mere arrangements of chemicals, more even than sentient beings.
The implications of this fact are many and far-reaching in our contemporary culture. To instrumentalize a human person is to deny that person's dignity, his or her inherent moral worth. Slavery (and later, racial segregation) remains the most obvious example of instrumentalizing the human person. Slavery has long been abolished here in the United States (though it continues in many other places in the World, where Christian and natural law teachings are disregarded). Yet humans are routinely instrumentalized today in the United States. A few examples are obvious.
Abortion, embryo-destructive research, and infanticide all violate the inherent dignity of human persons. They turn nascent human persons, who if allowed to develop would become walking-around persons like you and I, into means rather than ends. Young humans become either obstacles to the mother's ostensible self-actualization or raw materials for research that some hope (in spite of all the contrary evidence) will rid adults of certain diseases.
Homosexual conduct, adultery, and other types of non-marital sex acts violate the inherent dignity of human persons. They turn humans into means rather than ends. Other people become means for satisfying sexual desires, and their intrinsic worth is thus denied.
Evangelicals ought to affirm the inherent dignity and worth of every human person. And on this we must not compromise. We should learn from the abolitionist and civil rights movements that compromise with the evil forces that denigrate human persons is the same as capitulation to them. Human life deserves a radical and robust defense. This much is clear. The only question is whether we have the will to make that defense.
Oh, for a George Marshall
What is it about serving at the State Department that turns gifted, once-sensible individuals into shills for failed, liberal dogmatics?
Thursday, September 11, 2008
A depressing record for liberals
It must be depressing to be a liberal these days. Democrats are losing the presidential election after liberals succeeded in placing the two most liberal members of the Senate on the ticket. Liberals are (finally) losing the culture wars, with public opinion turning slowly but decisively in favor of protecting the lives of the unborn, embracing theistic convictions and the natural law, and defending conjugal marriage. And the United State is winning the War in Iraq, which liberals have tried so hard to forfeit.
Liberals have been trying to encourage each other as the political and cultural landscape has suddenly and unexpectedly grown dark for them. A liberal colleague of mine called my attention to this Bob Herbert op-ed in the (where else?) New York Times. In it, Herbert, trying his best to buck up his leftist cohorts, argues, "Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today."
It's an interesting argument. The problem is that it's manifestly untrue. We certainly have liberals to thank for the civil rights movement. To their shame, conservatives sat that one out. But the rest of the supposed achievements of the Left, which Herbert trumpets, simply aren't that impressive. The verdict is very much still out on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, all of which could be bankrupt within a generation. Unfettered welfare was a disaster, and was reformed (and saved) by a conservative Congress and a moderate President. And it is absurd to credit libs with improving the lot of women in America. The feminist movement since ca. 1945 has had the opposite effect with its emphasis on sexual liberation, which frees men from the obligations of marriage. Furthermore, libs gave us abortion, the great moral evil of our time, and capitulated to Communism and Islamic fascism. Overall, not a very good record.
Indeed, liberals can rightly claim credit for only two major achievements in American history: the Bill of Rights and the civil rights movement. At every other pivotal moment in American history -- Dred Scott; the Civil War; the credit crises of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries; World War II; the Cold War; the culture wars of the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first centuries; the fight against Islamic facism -- liberals have been on the wrong side of history.
The Bill of Rights and the civil rights movement are certainly not insignificant achievements. Both were significant and just causes. However, liberals have managed even to botch these attainments. They have placed activist judges and justices on the courts of our land who have read into the Bill of Rights a tyranny of relativism. The Bill of Rights now contains within its penumbral emanations inviolable rights to obtain abortion on demand, engage in homosexual sodomy, and consume sexual obscenity, among other rights.
And liberals have in the last thirty years manages to despoil even the civil rights movement, arguably the high point of American liberalism. They have rejected the natural law principles on which the movement was founded and replaced them with identity politics, grievance-mongering, affirmative action, a commitment to sexual licentiousness, and a program of affirmative action, all of which harm those whom the civil rights movement was designed to assist.
Herbert protests too much. It must truly be depressing to be a liberal these days.
Liberals have been trying to encourage each other as the political and cultural landscape has suddenly and unexpectedly grown dark for them. A liberal colleague of mine called my attention to this Bob Herbert op-ed in the (where else?) New York Times. In it, Herbert, trying his best to buck up his leftist cohorts, argues, "Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today."
It's an interesting argument. The problem is that it's manifestly untrue. We certainly have liberals to thank for the civil rights movement. To their shame, conservatives sat that one out. But the rest of the supposed achievements of the Left, which Herbert trumpets, simply aren't that impressive. The verdict is very much still out on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, all of which could be bankrupt within a generation. Unfettered welfare was a disaster, and was reformed (and saved) by a conservative Congress and a moderate President. And it is absurd to credit libs with improving the lot of women in America. The feminist movement since ca. 1945 has had the opposite effect with its emphasis on sexual liberation, which frees men from the obligations of marriage. Furthermore, libs gave us abortion, the great moral evil of our time, and capitulated to Communism and Islamic fascism. Overall, not a very good record.
Indeed, liberals can rightly claim credit for only two major achievements in American history: the Bill of Rights and the civil rights movement. At every other pivotal moment in American history -- Dred Scott; the Civil War; the credit crises of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries; World War II; the Cold War; the culture wars of the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first centuries; the fight against Islamic facism -- liberals have been on the wrong side of history.
The Bill of Rights and the civil rights movement are certainly not insignificant achievements. Both were significant and just causes. However, liberals have managed even to botch these attainments. They have placed activist judges and justices on the courts of our land who have read into the Bill of Rights a tyranny of relativism. The Bill of Rights now contains within its penumbral emanations inviolable rights to obtain abortion on demand, engage in homosexual sodomy, and consume sexual obscenity, among other rights.
And liberals have in the last thirty years manages to despoil even the civil rights movement, arguably the high point of American liberalism. They have rejected the natural law principles on which the movement was founded and replaced them with identity politics, grievance-mongering, affirmative action, a commitment to sexual licentiousness, and a program of affirmative action, all of which harm those whom the civil rights movement was designed to assist.
Herbert protests too much. It must truly be depressing to be a liberal these days.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
True American femininity
Sarah Palin has inspired and awakened an enormous and politically influential, if often quiet, demographic: mothers. To observe that the liberals don't understand this group is to miss the significance of liberals' self-deception. As one Palin supporter put it, with considerable understatement, feminist groups such as NOW do "not represent me." And in Sarah Palin these women (including my own wife) have found more than a representative, they have found someone with whom they identify.
A colleague recently remarked to me that his wife detests politics. She never engages her acquaintances in political debate, never even shares her political views. When she recently expressed her antipathy to politics on her personal blog, several of her friends, all mothers, freely confessed their own disaffection with politics. And yet, my colleague informed me, all of these women go to the polls every four years and vote Republican. And this year, they are excited about doing so, because the Republican ticket contains one of their own.
If liberals are still wondering what's the matter with Kansas, they might ask the average American woman, who, as the Palin supporter stated, "are raising our families, who work if we have to, but love our country and our families first."
A colleague recently remarked to me that his wife detests politics. She never engages her acquaintances in political debate, never even shares her political views. When she recently expressed her antipathy to politics on her personal blog, several of her friends, all mothers, freely confessed their own disaffection with politics. And yet, my colleague informed me, all of these women go to the polls every four years and vote Republican. And this year, they are excited about doing so, because the Republican ticket contains one of their own.
If liberals are still wondering what's the matter with Kansas, they might ask the average American woman, who, as the Palin supporter stated, "are raising our families, who work if we have to, but love our country and our families first."
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Obama and slavery
The inimitable Gerry Bradley puts Obama's moral self-deception into its proper historical framework. Obama's accommodation on abortion bears a striking resemblance to the apologies made 150 years ago for slavery. That is surely an uncomfortable fact for Obama, who identifies himself with the grievance politics of Black America, but it is undeniably a fact, nonetheless.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Perfect timing; Divine Providence
After watching Palin's speech last night, I remarked to a friend this morning that she is no Lady Thatcher, but that Obama and Biden must have been peeing their pants. My friend retorted, "She's no Thatcher yet."
That is Sarah Palin's "x" appeal among conservatives: she has extraordinary potential. Her potential is unrealized, but she has potential nonetheless. As Rudy Guliani put it, she is the future of the Republican party, and the future looks pretty good. In this respect, she resembles the Democrats' nominee for President, Barack Obama. Of course, the resemblance ends there.
Palin might turn out to be a big flop. She might never realize her potential. But right now, in the infancy of her career on the national political stage, potential is all that is expected of her. Contrast that expectation with the one now sitting upon Obama's shoulders. When he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention his potential was enough to satisfy. That was four years ago. Obama has not been running for president forever, it just seems like it.
Which begs the question: did Barack Obama peak too early? Or, put differently, did the Democrats tap him too late, after it had become painfully obvious that his potential was all puff and dander, completely devoid of substance? What might have happened had John Kerry tapped the Obama well in '04? Might Kerry be running for a second term as President today?
Thankfully, we'll never know. Which makes me believe that God still cares about America after all, and has great plans for her. Only Divine Providence could have arranged this chance for a conservative resurgence in spite of strong anti-Republican sentiment and the apparent inevitability of Barack Obama's coronation.
That is Sarah Palin's "x" appeal among conservatives: she has extraordinary potential. Her potential is unrealized, but she has potential nonetheless. As Rudy Guliani put it, she is the future of the Republican party, and the future looks pretty good. In this respect, she resembles the Democrats' nominee for President, Barack Obama. Of course, the resemblance ends there.
Palin might turn out to be a big flop. She might never realize her potential. But right now, in the infancy of her career on the national political stage, potential is all that is expected of her. Contrast that expectation with the one now sitting upon Obama's shoulders. When he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention his potential was enough to satisfy. That was four years ago. Obama has not been running for president forever, it just seems like it.
Which begs the question: did Barack Obama peak too early? Or, put differently, did the Democrats tap him too late, after it had become painfully obvious that his potential was all puff and dander, completely devoid of substance? What might have happened had John Kerry tapped the Obama well in '04? Might Kerry be running for a second term as President today?
Thankfully, we'll never know. Which makes me believe that God still cares about America after all, and has great plans for her. Only Divine Providence could have arranged this chance for a conservative resurgence in spite of strong anti-Republican sentiment and the apparent inevitability of Barack Obama's coronation.
Monday, September 1, 2008
The choice is hers
One of the many lies that pro-abortionists shamelessly perpetuate is that pro-life politicians are trying to take choice away from women. Mark Hemingway today catches Matt Yglesias peddling this prevarication.
Putting aside the obvious fallacies in Yglesias' reasoning -- women choose whether or not to have sex (unless raped), they can choose to put a child up for adoption -- there inheres in this claim a more subtle and foundational deceit. Abortion prohibitions would not eradicate choice about abortion any more than other homicide prohibitions take away choice about other forms of homicide. That homicide is a crime does not prevent many people from choosing to kill other human beings.
Of course, a criminal prohibition against abortion would place the compulsion of the state on the side of innocent human life. And that compulsion would, no doubt, directly inform the choice of would-be aborters. But what's wrong with that? Yglesias and other libs are simply wrong about their claim that conservatives devalue human agency. Indeed, one of the most important reasons to restrict abortion is to encourage women to maintain their character and to avoid an action that would harm their integrity.
Furthermore, many abortion restrictions fall far short of compulsion by threat of criminal punishment. Informed consent requirements, cooling off periods, paternal consent demands, and similar regulations would go a long way toward encouraging women to save the lives of their unborn children.
Liberals, who claim to care about the autonomy of pregnant women, would do well to consider their moral and physical well-being. Pro-life conservatives demonstrate true concern for the health and integrity of women's choices.
Putting aside the obvious fallacies in Yglesias' reasoning -- women choose whether or not to have sex (unless raped), they can choose to put a child up for adoption -- there inheres in this claim a more subtle and foundational deceit. Abortion prohibitions would not eradicate choice about abortion any more than other homicide prohibitions take away choice about other forms of homicide. That homicide is a crime does not prevent many people from choosing to kill other human beings.
Of course, a criminal prohibition against abortion would place the compulsion of the state on the side of innocent human life. And that compulsion would, no doubt, directly inform the choice of would-be aborters. But what's wrong with that? Yglesias and other libs are simply wrong about their claim that conservatives devalue human agency. Indeed, one of the most important reasons to restrict abortion is to encourage women to maintain their character and to avoid an action that would harm their integrity.
Furthermore, many abortion restrictions fall far short of compulsion by threat of criminal punishment. Informed consent requirements, cooling off periods, paternal consent demands, and similar regulations would go a long way toward encouraging women to save the lives of their unborn children.
Liberals, who claim to care about the autonomy of pregnant women, would do well to consider their moral and physical well-being. Pro-life conservatives demonstrate true concern for the health and integrity of women's choices.
Friday, August 29, 2008
POTUS campaign trivia
How about this for curious: On the two tickets are represented the first state, and the 48th, 49th, and 50th. Not a good year for states added in the 19th century, apparently.
Palin for Veep
The Corner is abuzz about the Palin pick. With good reason. Almost no one saw it coming.
The best aspect of this pick might just be Palin's perfect positioning to make inroads into the culture of abortion. Consider this analysis:
UPDATE: I just watched her speech. Just when you think her moral authority cannot possibly be any stronger, she discloses that she has a son serving in Iraq.
I hope the McCain campaign did its due diligence. This is almost too good to be true. As long as she doesn't have any dark skeletons in her closet, she's going to make Slow Joe Biden look like a used car salesman.
The best aspect of this pick might just be Palin's perfect positioning to make inroads into the culture of abortion. Consider this analysis:
For now, let's just give McCain credit for going for the Democratic Party's solar plexus. He picked a woman when his competitor couldn't. He picked a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome baby to run with him against a man who, as Jonah points out, couldn't bring himself to protect babies who survive abortion.All of that matters. A lot. We could be witnessing the high-water mark of the pro-abortion movement. Imagine the damage that a pro-life, female Vice President can do to the abortion rights crowd. Imagine the immensity of her bully pulpit. Add the fact that she kept a child with Down Sydrome and her moral authority on this issue seems insuperable.
UPDATE: I just watched her speech. Just when you think her moral authority cannot possibly be any stronger, she discloses that she has a son serving in Iraq.
I hope the McCain campaign did its due diligence. This is almost too good to be true. As long as she doesn't have any dark skeletons in her closet, she's going to make Slow Joe Biden look like a used car salesman.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
More on Democrats' antipathy to free speech
Powerline has the latest in a "series of near-daily 'Democrats vs. Free Speech' stories." Stanley Kurtz has now crossed the Dems' hawse with his inquiries into Obama's connections to the terrorist Bill Ayers. According to Politico, the Obama campaign responded with an effort to disrupt Kurtz's appearance on a Chicago radio program.
UPDATE: Guy Benson has a first-hand account.
The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station's telephone number and the show's extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he's a conservative, which isn't in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.Clearly, this issue touches a nerve in the Obama campain.
"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups."
It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies," it continues.
UPDATE: Guy Benson has a first-hand account.
More on health care
A liberal colleague of mine, who identifies himself as an evangelical but stands squarely outside 2000 years of Christian tradition on matters of legal and political philosophy, is fond of the Wallisian argument that Christian moral teaching demands single-payer health care. Christians have a moral obligation, he thinks, to employ the state to ensure that disparities in health care are eradicated.
The flaws in this argument are too many to count. But it is important to respond to this sort of nonsense because many liberal Christians, eager for an excuse to vote for Barack Obama, are buying it.
First, this consequentialist account of political engagement simply does not hang together. It is entirely inconsistent with 2000 years of orthodox Christian teaching on jurisprudence and poltical philosophy. The Church has always taught a moral philosophy that is deontological and emphasizes the importance of the Eschaton values -- virtue, the Good -- relative to things of lesser and merely temporal importance, such as human conditions. In short, these Christian consequentialitsts stand squarely outside of orthodox Christianity. Perhaps that is not troubling to so-called "progressive Christians," but it should at least cause them to pause.
That aside, the assumption on which the argument is predicated -- that the justness or morality of a policy is determined by its consequences (the "moral goal," to borrow your oxymoron) -- is anything but self-evident, and liberal Christians have not bothered to demonstrate it. I would love to know they plan to get around the incommensurability problem, which in the last 50 years has caused consequentialist philosophers the world over to abandon consequentialism as untenable. So far, they aren't saying.
As a prudential and factual matter, their claims are simply wrong. "Progressive" -- statist and collectivist -- proposals have never, anywhere, at any time reduced disparity in healthcare (is it disparity to which they object or inadequacy?), reduced waste, or made anyone more healthy. Health care rationing in Canada is now so extreme that doctors are actually dropping patients from their practice lists. I suppose in that sense, Canada's statist system has reduced disparity: everyone is equally unable to obtain adequate health care.
An old joke about the Soviet economy went like this. After ordering his car at a local dealership, a customer inquired when it might be available to pick up. The dealer told him, "You can come by to get it on February 3, two years from now." The customer replied, "I can't. The plumber's coming that day."There's a reason why that joke is funny. It was true.
Indeed, most (though certainly not all) of the failures of the current health insurance system are due to too much state intervention and not enough freedom of market. If insurers were freed from disparate and restrictive state regulatory schemes, a national market would naturally emerge, increasing access and reducing costs.
The tradeoff would be that less affluent people would end up with "Wal-Mart" plans and more affluent people would end up with "Brooks Brothers" plans. In the minds of conservatives, that would be a good thing. Better a Wal-Mart plan than no plan at all. But liberals care more about disparity than about access, so they prefer a single-payer system that rations a smaller quantum of health care on more equal terms.
McCain's plan is, in the minds of conservatives, superior to the statist solution Obama offers for all of these reasons.
The flaws in this argument are too many to count. But it is important to respond to this sort of nonsense because many liberal Christians, eager for an excuse to vote for Barack Obama, are buying it.
First, this consequentialist account of political engagement simply does not hang together. It is entirely inconsistent with 2000 years of orthodox Christian teaching on jurisprudence and poltical philosophy. The Church has always taught a moral philosophy that is deontological and emphasizes the importance of the Eschaton values -- virtue, the Good -- relative to things of lesser and merely temporal importance, such as human conditions. In short, these Christian consequentialitsts stand squarely outside of orthodox Christianity. Perhaps that is not troubling to so-called "progressive Christians," but it should at least cause them to pause.
That aside, the assumption on which the argument is predicated -- that the justness or morality of a policy is determined by its consequences (the "moral goal," to borrow your oxymoron) -- is anything but self-evident, and liberal Christians have not bothered to demonstrate it. I would love to know they plan to get around the incommensurability problem, which in the last 50 years has caused consequentialist philosophers the world over to abandon consequentialism as untenable. So far, they aren't saying.
As a prudential and factual matter, their claims are simply wrong. "Progressive" -- statist and collectivist -- proposals have never, anywhere, at any time reduced disparity in healthcare (is it disparity to which they object or inadequacy?), reduced waste, or made anyone more healthy. Health care rationing in Canada is now so extreme that doctors are actually dropping patients from their practice lists. I suppose in that sense, Canada's statist system has reduced disparity: everyone is equally unable to obtain adequate health care.
An old joke about the Soviet economy went like this. After ordering his car at a local dealership, a customer inquired when it might be available to pick up. The dealer told him, "You can come by to get it on February 3, two years from now." The customer replied, "I can't. The plumber's coming that day."There's a reason why that joke is funny. It was true.
Indeed, most (though certainly not all) of the failures of the current health insurance system are due to too much state intervention and not enough freedom of market. If insurers were freed from disparate and restrictive state regulatory schemes, a national market would naturally emerge, increasing access and reducing costs.
The tradeoff would be that less affluent people would end up with "Wal-Mart" plans and more affluent people would end up with "Brooks Brothers" plans. In the minds of conservatives, that would be a good thing. Better a Wal-Mart plan than no plan at all. But liberals care more about disparity than about access, so they prefer a single-payer system that rations a smaller quantum of health care on more equal terms.
McCain's plan is, in the minds of conservatives, superior to the statist solution Obama offers for all of these reasons.
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