Posted on 08/21/2007 11:41:49 AM PDT by DesScorp
I just recently caught up with the exchange on conservatism and the culture wars between Brink Lindsey and Ramesh Ponnuru, in which Lindsey exhorts conservatives to give up any further efforts in the culture war, which he deems finished. And I also heard some of a Cato Institute talk that featured Lindsey and David Brooks, who agrees with Lindsey on this point. I agree with Peter Wood who commented on PBC that if the culture war is over, efforts to reform the university are pointless, and we obviously don't think such efforts are pointless or we wouldn't be here at PBC. Neither would the Manhattan Institute have initiated its Minding the Campus feature. Neither would Regnery be issuing its politically incorrect guides to various subjects. And so forth.
I also think that Lindsey's view of modern life as the “exuberantly pluralistic pursuit of personal fulfillment through an ever-expanding division of labor” is utterly soulless.
Also, Lindsey made some remarks in his part of the exchange, that the Right should be embarrassed about previous racism, sexism, and prudery. I don't have the exchange in front of me now, but I think that's close to what he said. In the National Review I read as a teenager, edited by William Buckley, I don't recall any of that. I recall its being sound, elegant, rational, cultured, with high intellectual standards. Lindsey should be prevailed upon to give specific examples of what he means by the sins of the Right in these areas.
(Excerpt) Read more at phibetacons.nationalreview.com ...
“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”
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The terrible thing about our situation today is that we are restricted in our ability to do what we ought (for example it is difficult to organize and speak out during elections because of campaign finance regulations). Meanwhile the rights to do what we ought not are aggressively protected and expanded (for example the right to publish and promote pornography). Another example, spanking a child can lead to the state siezing custody from caring parents while the “right” of homosexuals to adopt or act as foster parents is expanded. Another, we cannot teach children in state funded schools about the Bible from a Christian perspective but we must teach children about homosexual sex from a secularist perspective.
I still care about the culture. I just don't think government is the mechanism to achieve results in matters of morality and culture. Just as I care about poverty, and want to help people, but feel that government run poverty programs do more harm than good to the poor.
Morality is something that comes from within. If we make laws that reflect our moral imperatives, beyond the obvious "you can't hurt or kill other people" laws, we just throw obstacles in people's way, without doing anything to change their minds. And, as is often true of big-daddy government, people count on the laws to protect them, and don't protect themselves.
I remember going to the Grand Canyon about thirty years ago. You could walk right up to the edge and look over, but people generally stood back and were careful. I went to the same spot last year, and there was a rail at the edge. People were walking right up the rail and leaning over. One guy stepped over and leaned out to get a picture straight down. People counted on the rail to protect them, and stopped using their own common sense.
I could not write a worse definition of freedom. I am not at all surprised to find that JPII wrote that, since he is the guy who gets to define what it is we ought to do.
I am surprised to find you making logic errors like you just did.
Any totalitarian could make that statement, it's just of question of what we "ought" to do. This is kind of thinking that burns heretics who won't recant, starves kulaks who won't abandon bourgeois thinking or upper middle peasants who don't embrace Mao-tse Tung Thought.
see ... the thing is Pope JP II was not a Founding Father of this Country ... so I'll stick with TJ when discussing contitutional principles... as this country was not founded as a Theocracy...
You can say that again, and it applies to more than the libertarians' treatment in the Republican party. I've come to believe that the Democrats, although more evil, are more honest than the Republican party. The Democrats tell you from in front most of the things they plan to do to you, if elected; the Republicans lie to your face and screw you after they get your vote.
There it is!
I prefer... Freedom consists of having the right to do what we like. Wisdom consists of liking to do what we ought.
Yep.
Modern liberals, who are really leftists, wants to run your life, universal heath care, education, welfare state, etc.
The libertarians I’m talking about don’t want to run other people’s lives, they don’t want a welfare state, their motivation for libertarianism stems from wants to do bad things without consequence. Hence they are pro-choice, their number one issue is legalizing drugs, etc.
I happen to agree philosophically with the libertarians that drugs probably should not be banned by govt. But I rarely bringing it up in discussions because it ranks pretty low on my list of what’s the major problems in American society.
But some libertarians whats to bring up the drug issue the very first thing, all the time, which tells me a lot about them that this is what they consider the most pressing issue. And pardon the generalization, it is usually because they want to use drugs.
The gov. can't help but legislate morality there is no way around it.
That being the case your argument collapses.
“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”
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I could not write a worse definition of freedom. I am not at all surprised to find that JPII wrote that, since he is the guy who gets to define what it is we ought to do.
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Look again at the definition. Where is there any force from the state or the church in it at all? It is a basic Christian concept that you are a slave to sin. You are in thrall to your own base nature without renewal in Christ. What you want to do is often wrong, sinful, self-destructive, enslaving.
And what "error of logic" might that be? My point is that, even though I may own something, this doesn't give me an unlimited right or liberty to use it in a way that brings harm to another person's life or property. In fact, this is the basis for the arbitrative role of government in the commonwealth that Locke himself went on about.
By extension, just because I own my body doesn't give me the right to use it in a way that harms or has the likely potential to harm another person. That's what the principle of "self-control" is all about, which libertarians have such a hard time with. If a person won't exercise self-control, then for the protection of the liberties of other individual citizens, that person's behaviour must be constrained in the specific instances of their harmful activities.
So no, just because you own your body, this doesn't give you an unlimited freedom to do whatever you want with it.
There is no such thing as morally-neutral laws. Every law reflects some kind of morality; it is just a question of whose morality the law promotes. And this is also true of court decisions. Therefore, when the Supreme Court overturned all state laws banning abortion, those justices imposed their own morality upon everyone else. And they deprived the citizens of all fifty states from deciding for themselves whether or not abortion should be legal.
Frankly, I don’t understand why libertarians support abortion. Abortion is the deliberate taking of human life. In every abortion someone dies. Both the state and federal governments have a legitimate interest in protecting human life and, therefore, they should prohibit abortion. Criminalizing abortion would not prevent people from living their own lives. Unless, of course, one believes that an individual’s “right” to sex is more important than any responsibility he or she has to the new life which that person’s actions have brought into being.
I consider myself a little-l libertarian, with Jefferson and Madison as my model statesmen.
I am, however, staunchly pro-life, as I see a human, no matter what stage he is in or location, as deserving to have his rights to life, liberty, and property protected.
That's because society itself has a vested interest in preventing individuals from acting in a way which harms other individual members of society, and the stability of our commonwealth as a whole.
The problem with this is that "harm" is defined so broadly as to permit any manner of government intervention in private affairs. Free men ought be able to make choices in their lives that you or I wouldn't make, or the government would prefer we don't make.
Liberals make the same claim you do, they just have slightly different targets - that guns are inherently harmful to a civil society, etc.
We must limit the government's regulatory power to what causes others actual physical or financial harm, not mere offense or distaste.
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