I rather hope Ron Paul becomes the Republican presidential candidate in the next election. It's true that I agree with some of what he says, some of it quite strongly and it's true that I disagree as well and just as passionately, but if he is Barack Obama's challenger, the nature and tone of the debates and the wider campaign will have to address some fundamental assumptions that always are ignored. One of the many fundamentals that separate the left from the new right is the ranking of rights in our society. Paul asserts what most of his party would rather hide beneath heaps of polemical hyperbole: Property rights are the basis of freedom and being thus fundamental, must not be abridged for the common good.
I'm one of those people, you see, who thinks all ethics, or at least all ethical judgements are situational and that what we like to call fundamentals is an abstract construct, a bit like Euclidean geometry, which is immune from other, perhaps decisive factors. Parallel lines do indeed intersect in a universe with curvature and morally clear decisions become less clear when they have to cope with the purpose of morality and ethics.
Speaking to Chris Matthews last week, Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) declared that he would not have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- not because he's a racist, and to be sure he says he would have desegregated government institutions like schools, but because the rights of property owners are fundamental to our basic freedoms; freedoms that our constitution implies, are rights inherently and independently fundamental as they stand. Is he insisting that those with no property have fewer or no rights? That's up to him to clarify and I expect he would like the oportunity.
“I believe that property rights should be protected,”says the man from Texas. Who would disagree when that's presented in the abstract? But life isn't an abstract thing and may I defend building a nuclear waste dump next to Manhattan because of that declared axiom? Are property rights part of a constellation of rights all designed by humans to make human life free of certain abuses? Are rights, like Newton's laws, fundamental or descriptive? If they are things invented by the people and for the people, to what purpose were they invented; to protect the one against the many or the many against the one or both? Do they apply equally at all points on the long curve or are only around the middle where we experience things?
I'm sure Paul would have to admit with liberals, that there are limits to "fundamental" rights, but just what those are and for what reason those limits are put there needs to be dragged out of the cave and into the light. Do rights exist for the benefit of people and if so does the right of one man always trump the right of every man? Are we here for the law or is the law here for us? Do the rights of all really flow from the rights of an individual or are individual rights sometimes an impediment? If there is an impediment to that road to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, must 300 million of us endure it so that the abstract right of one may be protected? Yes, that's extreme, but as with Newton's laws, it's the extremes that absolutes are shown not to be so. In short, can Libertarian theory produce a country that any of us will want to live in - in whole or in part?
(Of course if I were to debate him, I would, in my quasi-deconstructionist way ask him what he means by property and whether that question isn't more fundamental because without asking that, defending property rights can defend slavery or rape and some slightly worse things.)
We need to talk about it. We've been stuck at this point for too long. These concerns aren't new and they aren't going away and we all need to rethink our opinions at a fundamental level as a regular practice. I think Paul and Obama are both well qualified to do it and will do it -- and if we have to endure another hysterical fugue about flag pins and death panels and birth certificates and Communism aimed at the stupidest elements of the population; lies and slander and tactical statements of opinion that a moment may reverse - - well let's just say that the civil war doesn't need to be fought this way again.
Ron Paul's Latest Government Bugaboo - Mississippi Flood Control:
ReplyDeleteRon Paul: “FEMA is more or less in charge ... OK, down the Mississippi and flood this city, or down here and flood some innocent farmers. I mean, this is the kind of dilemma that wouldn't happen in a society that didn't expect the government to solve our problems.”
TMP: “FEMA is not in charge of the levees along the Mississippi. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is. But Paul is right that without flood control, officials wouldn't have to wrestle the dilemmas they now face … The last great Mississippi flood to occur before the federal government instituted a flood control program happened in 1927 -- it claimed 200 lives, displaced 600,000 people and cost $1.5 billion in today's dollars. It was followed shortly thereafter by the Flood Control Act of 1928.”
Of course, every goat knows about the innocence of farmers, and everyone knows that the citizens of Baton Rouge and New Orleans don’t vote for Ron Paul. As they say deep in the heartless of Texas: “Let ‘em drown”.
In response to the above and to some comments received on other blogs: I don't support Paul for President. I support him for the Republican nomination because I think the problem with a government organized along Libertarian lines: a government that doesn't try to fix problems, that doesn't try to be a government, will become readily and perhaps finally apparent. I don't think it's what the voters want, which is affluence and security.
ReplyDeleteRepublican candidates have been successful it keeping the arguments abstract but narrow. Paul seems far more honest about what he would like to see happen and he represents the real 'philosophical' nucleus of the Republican party.
Oh I do love it when I get to actually use a tiny bit of the knowledge that I have attained pursuing the Bachelor's Degree that I may never use other than in commenting on 'blogs!
ReplyDeleteThe discussion of property rights have been ongoing since the Liberals and Conservatives parted ways and Conservatives believe in the right as a fundamental one. Liberals not AS much. However, the choice was made to include 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' in the Declaration of Independence instead of property.
It was considered a fundamental right by those who wrote the document, but NOT fundamental enough to include. And there is nothing in the Constitution that says it is either.. as I am certain that you know!
It would be nice to watch my President debate someone with a brain who wasn't 15 minutes from the grave... but I would like an Obama re-election please!
LLL,
ReplyDeleteYes, I was going to mention the Life, Liberty and Property thing, but I forgot. Thanks. Property rights are fundamental, but not exclusively so but that's not apparent until we see private property rights used as a hammer of oppression.
And yes, that's what I mean all along. A debate with Paul would be a debate. A debate with McPalin. . . Well, words fail me there.
As I said, here and elsewhere, the discussion has been at a level of abstraction where a host of crackpot ideas sound good. It's time to discuss just how a government of no government would deal with a catastrophe, whether sudden like a flood, or slow like a Depression. How it would deal with abuses of property rights or even admit to them. The only reason to keep it focused on 'principle' is to avoid the test of reality.
All,
ReplyDeleteRon Paul’s straightforwardness is valuable. The lowdown on libertarianism: its insistence on people’s right to be free from untoward pressure and interference (from any quarter, but most of all from government) is excellent, but making such insistence dependent on capitalism is delusional. There’s no such thing as a perfect human social or political system. They’re all flawed in one way or another and need occasional adjustment.
Capt. Fogg's remark: “Parallel lines do indeed intersect in a universe with curvature and morally clear decisions become less clear when they have to cope with the purpose of morality and ethics.”
I think this is true – and not in the sense that amounts to sloshy anything-goes relativism: we can consider categorical imperatives, moral formulations as a priori synthetic judgments that don’t admit of exceptions to the rule: we must do our duty and honor the “ought” and all that German stuff, but in my view, there is always a situational element to be factored in. The basest form of relativism asserts that we need not bother with firm notions about right and wrong, that essentially one decision is as good as another based on naked self-interest. What I find undeniable is that a decision must be made, the rule must be instantiated (or competing rules must be sorted out) by someone in the complex here and now – that is what is "situational" about morality. Rigid notions about moral duty lead to chaos, and there’s no perfect user’s manual for life.
Dino in 2012.
ReplyDeleteWhy thank you, Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteBut I suppose the fact of my having been born on the supercontinent Gondwanaland would really give the birthers something to complain about.