Mohammed ibn Scrooge: A Tale of Economic and Religious Liberty

 

One of the major distinctions between classical liberals and progressives is the question of whether there is a difference between civil and economic rights. Progressives going back to at least John Stuart Mill have argued that economic rights can be separated from the wider stream of civil rights. Because of this, it is possible to override claims about property if it benefits the wider public or even to deny that there is even such a thing as a right to property. On the other extreme, libertarians argue that there are only economic rights. Civil rights are only meaningful to the extent that they can be framed as economic rights. For example, freedom of speech really means that I have the right to own paper and a printing press, print books with them, and distribute them to the general public. To better understand this potential distinction between economic and civil rights, I have a thought experiment.

Mohammed ibn Scrooge is a pious Muslim who studies the Koran and the Hadith in a madrasa. The government comes to Ibn Scrooge and says: "It is not right that a man of your great intellect should waste his talents on something that does not serve the public interest. We wish to draft you into medical school." When Ibn Scrooge refuses the government’s generous offer of free medical school, they threaten him: "If you insist on being so selfish as to not work to solve the national healthcare crisis, we are going to tax you based on what you would have earned as a doctor. This will allow us to fund the healthcare system, which serves the public interest."

Driven to bankruptcy and despair, Ibn Scrooge comes to the realization that he finds no meaning anymore in Islam. Instead, he decides that what he really wants out of life is a giant money bin full of gold coins that he can jump into from a diving board and swim around in. Using his Ayn Rand hero-level genius, Ibn Scrooge invents a new light bulb, a cheap clean energy motor, and a superior form of steel. He also becomes the CEO of both a railroad and a copper mining company. As a hobby, he designs skyscrapers. After many years of great intellectual labor, Ibn Scrooge becomes the richest person in the world. Before Ibn Scrooge can fulfill his dream and dive into his gold, the Beagle Boys show up waving their IRS badges to inform him that having a money bin full of gold to swim in does not serve the public interest. It is much better to "tax" Ibn Scrooge of all his gold to fund the healthcare of millions of poor children. 

Having fended off the Beagle Boys' efforts to "tax" his money bin over many years, Ibn Scrooge finally takes his first dive into his money pool. After taking a few laps, he realizes that, despite his money bin, he feels rather empty. Thinking back to the religion of his youth and how much happier he was studying in a madrasa, Ibn Scrooge vows to Allah that he will use the gold in his money bin that he wasted his life gathering to fund madrasas across the country. Ibn Scrooge is about to open his first madrasa when the government announces that they are requisitioning the madrasa buildings as they would be better used as hospitals.   

I take it as a given that most of my readers believe that it is more important to improve the quality of healthcare in this country than to advance the study of the Koran and the Hadith. That being said, I also assume most of my readers have imbibed enough of the classical liberal spirit to side with Ibn Scrooge at least in the first and third cases. This is despite the fact that the government has a very plausible argument that its actions would lead to an objectively better world.

It should be clear that the concept of rights, whether they are economic or civil, is only meaningful if they are allowed to trump the public interest. One can always make a plausible argument that violating someone's liberty is in the public interest. Does anyone deny that the government could improve the quality of healthcare if they confiscated all religious buildings and drafted religious functionaries to become healthcare workers? Keep in mind that both the French and Russian Revolutionary governments point-blank confiscated church property in order to deal with their financial problems.  

The interesting question is why would more readers not be willing to defend Ibn Scrooge in the second case when he is motivated simply by the desire to swim in a money pool of his own gold? If you are not a Muslim then Ibn Scrooge's desire to get into Muslim heaven should not demand greater public respect than his desire for his money bin. If you do not believe in economic rights, then Ibn Scrooge's right to make economic decisions with his life in all three cases should not trump the public interest in healthcare. The fact that Ibn Scrooge is motivated by the teachings of Islam should be irrelevant as it is perfectly believable that the government really is motivated by a desire to expand healthcare and not any animosity towards Islam. 

It is important to recognize that there is always going to be someone out there, likely already holding a position of power who honestly believes that you are standing in the way of their "humanitarian" attempts to make a better world and that, therefore, the right, decent, and even loving thing to do is put you in prison, a slave labor camp or even execute you. The only thing that can stop that from happening is a belief in economic liberty. People have the right to make economic decisions regarding their personal lives, whether they are motivated by religion or narcissistic greed, even when that decision leads to an objectively worse outcome for society as a whole.  

From Conservatism to Libertarianism: My Personal Journey (Part III)

Part I, II.


In the previous posts, I described how my strong distaste for the Left led me to become a conservative and how my frustration with the Republican Party, particularly over Iraq, grew. So the me who was neither shocked nor horrified by Republican defeats in November 2006 (in contrast to my enthusiasm for Bush in 2004) was an independently minded Republican with a socially liberal streak. If you were paying attention to the last post, you might have noticed that I did not use the word "libertarian" and that was on purpose. When I began this blog in December 2006, I still did not identify myself as a libertarian. Going back over my early posts, you can see that I identified myself as "operating within the classical liberal tradition" and use the word "libertarian" to describe the position that the government should stay out of people's bedrooms. For me, classical liberalism meant J. S. Mill, specifically that people should be left to themselves to pursue their own understanding of the good life, in contrast to modern liberalism. (I was unaware at the time that Mill was actually more open to government intervention in the economy than would be implied by On Liberty.) I was already even ok with gay marriage as long as it was framed in terms of personal liberty and not group rights. That being said, I did not identify myself as a libertarian. The main reason for this was that I had almost no contact with libertarianism as a political movement or as an intellectual tradition. I still thought in terms of conservatism vs. liberalism. I criticized conservatism from within conservatism. I still hated the left as much as always and was not about to turn traitor.

I started identifying myself as a libertarian around 2008 during the presidential campaign. I still supported the late Sen. John McCain and did not vote for Ron Paul even during the primaries. I even attended a McCain rally in Columbus when he clinched the nomination. I identified as a libertarian conservative as a way of telling people on campus that while I did not support Obama, I did not agree with the Republican Party on social issues such as abortion. I was not one of those "close-minded" religious extremist Republicans. At this point, I still had little contact with libertarianism. My libertarianism was the product of my own thinking. But I decided that if I was going to be a libertarian, I might as well discover what libertarians actually say.

I started binge-watching Youtube clips of Milton Friedman in the summer of 2009. Friedman was a revelation to me as someone who was saying the kinds of things I had been thinking and being far more articulate about it than I ever could. At a practical level, I recognized in Friedman a roadmap for a compassionate conservatism that could expand the Republican base to include blacks and Hispanics. From Friedman, I quickly branched out to reading Hayek (I owe a debt of thanks to Simon Snowball for giving me a copy of the Constitution of Liberty and for alerting me to the existence of a something called Austrian economics), Ayn Rand, and Murry Rothbard. I attended my first IHS conference in the summer of 2011. IHS has remained my chief lifeline to libertarianism as a flesh and blood movement. People like Sarah Skwire, her husband Steve Horwitz, and Michael Munger have been models for me of how to be an intellectually serious and principled defender of liberty in all of its radicalness while keeping both feet planted in the real not yet converted to libertarianism world. As someone on the autism spectrum, that last part has proven critical.

One implication of my path to libertarianism was that, since I came to libertarianism largely through my own thinking and only discovered later that there existed people who thought like I did, I have not felt tied down by faction. For example, being an Objectivist or a Rothbardian was never what defined libertarianism for me as I did not become a libertarian through them. I could recognize some things of value in such groups and move on.

It should come as no surprise, considering that I came to libertarianism while still a registered Republican, I was firmly in the minarchist camp. In fact, when I first encountered anarcho-capitalism through David Friedman, I was quite critical of it. Granted, my defense of government was firmly planted in pragmatism over principle. For example, I made a point of teaching my students that government was a magic wand that we used to call kidnappers policemen taking people to jail, something that could never seriously be defended unless we accepted that it was necessary for the well being of society that we all participate in such an immoral delusion.

What eventually turned me against even this moderate apology for government was my growing disenchantment with the American political system. As long as I could pretend that the Republican Party was serious about economic liberty and that everything else would pull itself together from there, I could hope that the Republican Party could fix America and that that the United States could still be considered a defender of liberty (even if an imperfect one). Once I lost faith in the Republican Party, it set off a domino effect in which I could no longer defend the United States government and modern states in general.

Even today, I am on the very moderate end of the anarchist spectrum. One could even argue that I remain a minarchist at heart. I still am, fundamentally, a Burkean conservative. I am not a revolutionary seeking perfect justice. The moment you make a claim on perfect justice, you hand a loaded gun to everyone out there to pursue their perfect justice, including those whose perfect justice requires your death. I am willing to accept that human institutions will always be marred by flaws and logical contradictions. The best we can do is make a good faith effort. If that means some government, so be it.

I acknowledge that I lack the moral authority to challenge governments rooted in some traditional authority, particularly if, like England and the United States, that authority itself is the classical liberal tradition. That being said, I feel no such bind when it comes to those governments premised on progressive notions of overturning tradition in the name of perfect justice. From this perspective, my anarchist attack on progressive government is simply the other side of my defense of traditional government. Edmund Burke himself famously defended the American revolutionaries as good Englishmen forced to defend English values against a monarch intent on changing the status quo. The Americans were not the real revolutionaries. They were forced to create a new system of government for themselves (that actually was not so different from what they previously had) because their opponents had embraced revolution first. (This argument is also crucial for how Burke understood the Glorious Revolution and why it was acceptable, unlike the French Revolution.)

While in principle I oppose government as an institution of violence, I accept, in practice, that we might not be able to do better than limited government. In pursuit of that goal, I embrace using the threat of anarchy as a weapon to threaten the political establishment. If this actually leads to the overthrow of government then so be it. In my heart, I have rejected the authority of government over myself and no longer see myself as morally bound to follow its laws. My obedience is merely that of a man with a gun to his head.

2018 in Reading

Here is a shoutout to some of my favorite books, whether on Judaism, history, education, or science fiction, that I read this past year. 

Judaism

Hasidism: A New History. Ed. David Biale.

This book reminds me of the famous H. H. Ben Sasson Jewish History as a large single volume with multiple people writing different parts that summarize where the scholarship stands at a particular moment. This is not an easy book, but, certainly, one that repays careful reading. On a personal note, my father's favorite shul, Emunas Yisroel, gets a paragraph as an example of how Hasidism can function without a formal rebbe. 

Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson by Elliot Wolfson. 

The book about Chabad messianism by a former professor of mine not named David Berger. Wolfson exemplifies an argument that figured prominently in my dissertation on Jewish messianism that, at the heart of rabbinic Judaism, there is a thin line between the spiritualization of messianism and its elimination. Reading Wolfson has helped me make sense of a line of Chabad apologetics I have run into in personal conversations in which the Rebbe was a successful messiah if we just properly understood what messianism is supposed to mean. 

Jewish Law as Rebellion: A Plea for Religious Authenticity and Halachic Courage by Nathan Lopes Cardozo.

This is one of those books designed to generate conversations/pick fights. One can make a fair case that Cardozo is a heretic from Orthodox Judaism in the sense that, even if his beliefs cannot be refuted merely by appealing to the source material, there is something about his thought that subtly undermines an aspect of Judaism that is necessary to its identity. Critical to Cardozo's claim to legitimacy is the assumption that there exists a constituency of halakhicly serious Jews who do not identify as Orthodox or at least might become serious if only they could be presented with a more flexible less morally tone-deaf version of halakha. I fall into the former category but have never gotten the sense that you could build a community around people like me. The Conservative movement is collapsing and I fail to see where there exists a market for a more traditional but still not conventionally Orthodox version of the movement. Perhaps things are different in Israel. 

American History

The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro.

I have read three of the four volumes. I still need to read the really big one on LBJ's years in the Senate. These books are the real-life version of the kind of politics you see in House of Cards. 

Much like Richard Rothstein’s Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Caro seems caught between his heart and his head. Both writers feel a compulsion to insist that the New Deal protected the common man from big business or blacks from segregationists. At the same time, the actual story they are telling is how New Deal politicians were corrupt and in bed with the worst sorts of business interests and segregationists.  

The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind - and Changed the History of Free Speech in America by Thomas Healey.

One of the challenges of history is to get your mind wrapped around the idea that people thought differently. Here, we have a critical part of the story of how the J. S. Mill understanding of free speech came to replace the more traditional one of William Blackstone, which only stopped the government from arresting people before they publicized an idea but not afterward. The Blackstone model while keen on protecting the people's ability to have the information needed to make use of their vote, did not value diversity or believe in social progress. The group in charge believes that they are right and oppresses their opponents. If a minority is willing to undergo martyrdom for their beliefs, maybe one day they will seize power and turn the tables on their oppressors. Ultimately there is no wider value system built around freedom of expression beyond the letter of the law. One advantage of this position is that it does not require you to rely on the intellectual honesty of your opponents that if you allow them to spread their ideas, they will allow you to do so in turn. In a world in which both the right and the left accuse the other of hypocrisy when it comes to free speech, it might make sense for both sides to drop Mill and replace him with the narrow legalism of Blackstone.  

Classical History

Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD by Peter Brown.

Here is another book that asks you to rethink terms you take for granted. In this case, wealth, poverty, and charity. Brown's larger project has been to map out a period of late antiquity from the fourth through sixth centuries in which Rome did not suddenly become Christian and come to a violent end leaving the Middle Ages to come out of the rubble. In this book, Brown charts how one goes from a pagan Roman understanding of wealth as something to be spent for the benefit of the city in order to gain honor to donating to the Church to earn a reward in heaven. This also involves the invention of the poor as a trans-urban class with their paradoxical states of blessedness and pity/contempt. Libertarians will find inspiration in considering how the modern welfare state, as the product of a post-Christian world, is the heir to this same paradox when confronting poverty. This book will also prove helpful to readers of Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois series trying to understand her argument that bourgeois values are a product of the eighteenth century as Brown offers us a distinctly pre-modern unbourgeois understanding of wealth. 

Spirituality

How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem by Rod Dreher.

In looking over the ruins of the conservative movement in the wake of Donald Trump, one needs to consider the failure of the conservative intellectual tradition that made this possible. In order to reconstitute such a tradition, conservatives will need to go back to educating a class of intellectuals from the foundation up. This means literature, which sets the agenda for the imagination. Dreher provides a good example of what it means to read literature from a religious perspective. In addition, we have a powerful memoir of a difficult and ultimately tragic family life. Dreher's family reminds me a lot of my own in that my parents and siblings have made different decisions in our lives and, no matter how much we love each other, it is the kind of love best conducted at a distance. In contemplating the challenge facing conservative intellectuals trying to affect the modern imagination, see also Alan Jacobs' Year of Our Lord 1943, which takes a critical look at the failed attempt by Christian thinkers such as C. S. Lewis to influence the course of post-war culture as it was being born.     

What I Believe by Leo Tolstoy.

If you think of Tolstoy as simply a writer of long melodramas involving Russian aristocrats, welcome to the other later and highly subversive Tolstoy. Here is the Christian Tolstoy at war with all Churches, particularly the Russian Orthodox one. If you have trouble understanding how serious spirituality will inevitably threaten any religious establishment, here is a good place to begin. What I found particularly intriguing about Tolstoy is his brutal consistency as a pacifist. He recognizes that pacifism will not end oppression nor lead to peace on this Earth. On the contrary, as a Christian, Tolstoy embraces martyrdom as the endpoint of his pacifism. Furthermore, Tolstoy is an anarchist and does not dance around the fact that, forget about the military, no true Christian can allow themselves to serve on the police, in the legal system, or hold any political office.  

Education (Politics)

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff.

For fans of Jordan Peterson and the whole school of "owning the libs," here is a better alternative. This is a book that could have simply been a polemic against Social Justice Warriors and probably would have sold more copies if it did. Haidt and Lukianoff, perhaps because they are not creatures of the right nor are they trying to ingratiate themselves with the right by offering it a pat on the back, are able to implicitly attack the campus left by avoiding the trap of left vs. right. This may not sell books but, in the long run, this is how you reach out beyond your echo chamber and influence people.

In a similar vein, I recommend Sen. Ben Sasse’s Vanishing American Adult and Them, which deal with the failure of modern American education to create proper pathways to adulthood and how this has contributed to our current politicized discourse. In examining the origins of this politicization Yuval Levin’s Fractured Republic points to the fact that both the right and the left show a certain nostalgia for mid-20^th century America. He argues that the social revolutions of the period such as the civil rights movement and the counter-culture were made possible because they were working off of the strong social cohesion of the 1950s. In essence, both liberals and conservatives want to go back to a part of the 50s while ignoring an essential aspect of what made that culture possible. All of this literature owes a debt to Robert Nisbet’s Quest for Community, which argues that Enlightenment relativism has cut off the very branch that it relies on to make itself possible.  

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan.

One of the frustrating things about trying to make the case for not sending my kids to school is that defenders of conventional education operate as if the burden of proof is not completely on them. Instead, they turn around and make unicorn arguments premised on assuming that schools actually do what they are supposed to. I am then challenged to explain how my admittedly flawed alternatives can possibly compete with their ideal system. The key to reading Caplan is to not whether you find his figures convincing. Rather, it is to recognize that it is even possible to seriously question the value of conventional schooling. The moment you find Caplan even vaguely plausible then a crushing moral burden has been placed on defenders of education. Either they produce evidence to justify spending billions on education (the kind of evidence that would convince people to throw similar kinds of money on pharmaceuticals) or they must step aside and allow for the separation of education and state.   

Autism

Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith Sheffer. 

Some of you may have noticed that I have stopped referring to myself as an Asperger. In recent years, the reputation of Dr. Hans Asperger has taken a downturn as more information has surfaced indicating that he was a Nazi collaborator. Sheffer offers another nail in the coffin for anyone still wanting to hold on to the belief that Asperger was a humanitarian physician trying to protect special needs children from being murdered. Beyond the question of Asperger's clear guilt, the book illuminates a certain conservative collectivist mindset that valued being amiable with the status quo as a critical part of social intelligence and ultimately of one's value as a human being. Such a perspective made it frighteningly easy for people who were not Nazis to become full collaborators and wash their hands of the affair afterward. 

Science Fiction

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson.

In a break from the dense worldbuilding of the Cosmere, Sanderson tries his hand at a fairly conventional YA novel essentially featuring a Katniss Everdeen as a fighter pilot. This is a book that was predictable and should have been lame were it not for the fact that Sanderson is a master subtle dash of humor writer, something that is easy to lose sight of in the shadow of his world-building. Jerkface could have easily been a straw-man villain but he is actually kind of sweet even if it is still fun to hate him. Keep an eye out for the computer M-Bot, who snuck up on me as my favorite character largely because he is an autistic type character who is allowed his "humanity." 

Star Wars: Lost Stars by Claudia Gray.

I believe that the Force, with its struggle between the light and dark side, is essential to Star Wars. One of my concerns with Last Jedi was that it tried to refashion Star Wars without Jedi and Sith. That being said, this book, like Rogue One, did a magnificent job even though it is also guilty of trying to get away from the Force. I guess it is possible for a Star Wars book to be good without necessarily being a good Star Wars book. That being said, it is great to see the original trilogy from the perspective of "regular" people on the ground. Also, Gray deserves credit for what she has added to the Star Wars universe in that she has effectively written an apology for the average imperial soldier. The two main characters are teenagers who want to get off their home planet and make something of themselves while improving the galaxy along the way. So they end up in the Imperial Academy and become imperial pilots. If a few imperial bad apples commit war crimes, that does not make the Rebellion innocent, particularly as the Rebellion does not offer a clear way forward as an alternative to the Empire. In the end, one of the characters defects to the Rebellion but that comes across as a personal decision that does not lessen our sympathy for the one who stays with the Empire. 

From Conservatism to Libertarianism: My Personal Journey (Part I)

While there can be left and right-libertarians, most libertarians lean conservative as exemplified by the Republican strategy, previously discussed. Libertarians pay a price for this as it boxes us in. This is particularly problematic in a two-party system like the United States where the Libertarian Party has proven itself unable to get passed the Republican charge that they only serve to throw elections to the Democrats. The reverse side of this argument is that liberals charge us with being crypto-conservatives, attempting to smuggle in conservatism, Trojan Horse style, in a way that might sound acceptable to a liberal audience. For example, this idea is at the core of Nancy MacLean’s attempt to connect James Buchanan and the Koch brothers to segregationists.  

Before we can consider solutions to get us out of this political box, it is important to understand why most libertarians lean conservative. I suspect that many libertarians started off as conservatives, who then turned to libertarianism less because they stopped believing in conservatism but because they came to the recognition that, in the normal course of events, conservatism was unlikely to win culturally and, without that, all political victories would prove short-term and ultimately hollow. I certainly fit into this category and I am curious as to how common my experience is. Granted that some of the particulars are going to be more relevant to American Orthodox Jews growing up in the 1990s and coming of age with 9/11. Note that what I am about to say is my attempt to describe my political beliefs as a teenager and not what I currently believe. If you have not changed your mind about a few things since you were a teenager then I suggest that you have not been thinking very hard. 

As with most Orthodox Jews, my politics was heavily influenced by events in Israel. For me, this meant a growing anger as Oslo failed, oddly enough, less against the Arabs but against the left as a whole. Liberals like Bill Clinton and Yitzhak Rabin had deliberately betrayed us, getting people killed, in order so that they could claim a moral high ground for themselves as “peacemakers” while denigrating those of us who actually cared about human life as racists and haters. I am ashamed to admit it, but my twelve-year old self was actually happy when he heard that Rabin was assassinated. (I was at Shalos Seudos at Keser Torah in Pittsburgh at the time.) I thought the man got what he deserved.

The other issue I cared about as an Orthodox kid was public schooling. Liberals made my parents pay for public schools designed to preach leftism as well as pay my religious schooling, leading to our financial struggles. Liberals did not really care about tolerating the non-rich who followed alternative lifestyles. On the contrary, they sought to bankrupt anyone who did not follow their line. These two issues primed me to be open to right-wing talk radio.  

Ironically enough, you can blame Al Franken for my discovery of Rush Limbaugh. I read Franken’s Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and thought that he was being so over the top that I should find out about this Limbaugh person for myself so I read two of Limbaugh’s books, The Way Things Ought to Be and See I Told You So. This led me to occasionally listen to his show during lunch and on Fridays while preparing for Shabbos. I was never any kind of three hours a day listener but I found Limbaugh to be amusing in short doses.

Bryan Caplan argues that leftists are anti-market and rightists hate the left and this was certainly true of me. What attracted me to Limbaugh was not his advocacy of markets. In fact, at this point in my life, I was actually attracted to Marxism. Part of it was being able to stick the word “bourgeoise” into every conversation but there was also this sense of being part of a revolution. Granted, my version of the workers of the world overthrowing the bourgeois (don't you just love saying that word) capitalists tended to be more bottom-up with the party creating a counter-economic system rendering the seizure of government irrelevant. Also, my version of the party would be animated by the “social justice” side of the Old Testament. In fact, I used Isaiah 11:4 as my yearbook quote. 

    

I cannot recall hearing from Limbaugh much in the way of any kind of principled defense of markets beyond saying that liberal plans for expanding government were bad. The closest he came to d’Anconia’s money speech was offering listeners a money clip to remind them that it is their money and they are allowed to keep it. The essence of the Limbaugh narrative was that we could stick it to those mean liberals (like Franken), who wanted to order us around and would hypocritically call us greedy bigots if we objected. What was critical here was a feeling that, by tuning in, one was taking part in an unfolding revolution. Limbaugh implicitly promised us that very soon the liberals, with their bankrupt ideology, would collapse and we would take back America.

It was through Rush Limbaugh that I discovered the person, who most influenced my conservative self, Sean Hannity. I first heard Hannity when he subbed for Limbaugh during the 2000 Republican primaries. (I remember this because I was a strong supporter of the late Sen. John McCain, who Hannity was quite critical of.) Once he got his own show, I took to listening to him on a regular basis. This may sound funny today but I will contend that Hannity, at that time, was a much more moderate figure than he is today. In fact, what attracted me to Hannity over Limbaugh was the relative lack of personal ego and hate. Limbaugh was all about himself taking on the liberal media. Hannity was about how we could join together to defeat the liberals and build a better America.

Into the mix of talk-radio, my high school self also encountered J. S. Mill’s On Liberty. Mill enchanted me with a dream of tolerance that people could be left to pursue their own good in their own way. For me, this had nothing to do with the left nor did it contradict my conservatism. It was the left who was trying to interfere with my life. One effect of Mill on my thinking was that by the time I was in college, even as I still identified as a conservative, I came to support the legalization of drugs and prostitution. Since these issues were so outside the political mainstream of either party, it had little effect on my larger political narrative. We conservatives were so going to succeed at spiritually reforming this country that we would not even need such petty laws anymore.   

Does Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Believe in Free Speech?

If you were to ask me why I am proud to be an American it is because the United States Constitution takes a clear principled stand in favor of free speech as an absolute right. (It should be noted that the fact that I call myself an American should be understood merely as an expression of geography and the influence of an intellectual tradition and not as a pledge of allegiance or the recognition of the authority of the Federal Government.) While most civilized people pay lip service to free speech, even in the West, there are few true believers. In fact, it is becoming popular to brazenly declare that free speech is a problem that needs to be reigned in. 

 

(Start at 2:50)

The reason why there is such a large gap between protestations of free speech and its practice is that free speech is one of those things that by its very nature demands extremes. Free speech is the mirror of being pregnant; you can't be a little bit for free speech. Unless you go all the way, you are not a supporter at all. The reason for this is that free speech is only meaningful if you are willing to defend the rights of your opponents. The only speech worth protecting is the speech that offends and is a threat to public order. What does it mean to defend inoffensive speech? Most claim they support free speech, but that is merely cover for the defense of their right to speech. When it comes to their opponents, they can always find some excuse to say that it is a threat. (This is very easy if you do not draw a line between physical and psychological harm as everything is psychologically harmful to someone. ) 

This brings me to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. In reading his new book, Lessons in Leadership, containing thoughts on leadership based on the weekly Torah reading, I found a disturbing comment on free speech. In addressing the issue of cyberbullying and the unfortunate suicide of Hannah Smith, Sacks notes:

The story of Hannah Smith is a tragic reminder of how right the sages were to reject the idea that "words can never harm me," and insist to the contrary that evil speech kills. Free speech is not speech that costs nothing. It is speech that respects the freedom and dignity of others. Forget this and free speech becomes very expensive indeed. 

I actually agree with the first and third parts of what Sacks says. I do believe in a concept of loshon harah, evil speech, and support the use of religious and social means to suppress it. Furthermore, as a free-speech radical, I am very conscious of the incredible price of free speech. One of the benefits that J. S. Mill's On Liberty had on my political thinking was that it killed any naive thoughts that free speech would be anything other than radicals offending public sensibilities. The alternatives, though, are worse and, in the long run, society should emerge from the incredible damage done to it stronger than ever. Perhaps, I am reading too much into this, but free speech specifically has political connotations. Sacks certainly cannot play innocent here in a world in which even most people in the West are now supporting government regulation of speech to stop cyberbullying. In essence, Sacks, like most conservative opponents of liberty, makes the jump from saying that something is harmful in a very real sense to saying that government, with its monopoly on violence, should step in and stop this evil. 

Being a patriot means "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." As Israelis are now once again tragically learning on a daily basis, having a country means people dying for it and having to go out and kill other people, who want to take it from you. Anything less and you will not have a country. Similarly, free speech also requires blood. As distasteful as it sounds, I am willing to sacrifice Hannah Smith on the altar of free speech. It is not that I take her death lightly, quite the contrary, it tears at my consciousness. The alternative, though, of not having a meaningful protection of free speech is simply unthinkable.        

Academia as a Bulwark Against Conservatism (Part II)

(Part I)

Now if society, in order to function, needs to be a fundamentally "conservative" one, where everyone accepts certain rules already in place, it is also important that this established status quo be regularly challenged by a "liberal" force. This allows for progress and for society to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. Following J. S. Mill, I believe a healthy society functions as a dialectic between conservative and liberal forces, where the liberal advocates for change and the conservative defends the status quo, resulting in society slowly changing as it adopts the stronger liberal points while maintaining its fundamental integrity. This is a reforming society as opposed to a revolutionary one.

The chief value of a university is that it serves as this liberal force in society. Professors, whether they are actually smarter than others, are people of the mind and as such are naturally well suited to thinking outside of societal conventions and asking whether certain things are truly necessary or even consistent with the higher values that the outside society holds for itself. University students are no longer children but are still without the cares and responsibilities of adults. This puts them in an ideal situation to experiment with different lifestyles and values. Left to themselves neither the professor nor their students have any direct influence over the larger society, but this is also part of their value.

The university thus serves as a giant lab experiment, run by the professors. Students come out of high school and for four years are allowed the privilege of entering a sort of "black box" in which they can do and be whatever they want (barring causing direct physical harm to others), with no fear of future consequences. One suspects that most people will simply use this freedom for a rumspringa of sex, drugs, and alcohol. And there is value even to this as it might give cause to think about issues of sexuality, gender, and the pursuit of happiness. Hopefully, at least some students, though, will embrace this process as an intellectual journey and make their way to the classrooms of their professors, in both body and mind, where they might pursue some of these larger questions in a more vigorous and systematic fashion. After four years they reenter general society no longer children, but as adults, with what they learned, both inside and outside the classroom, and will be free to apply this knowledge as either liberals or conservatives as they take part in the larger societal discourse. 

Some of you may find this ironic, but the man who opened my eyes to this use of the university was Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, who used to serve as the Orthodox rabbi at Harvard. According to Rabbi Klapper, his service to the wider Orthodox Jewish community was that he was running an experiment in finding different halachically feasible ways to allow Orthodoxy o adapt to changes in societal norms, particularly in the role of women. Harvard is not an established Orthodox Jewish community with set norms. The students come from other communities and in a few years will leave for other communities. In the meantime, under Rabbi Klapper's guidance, they are free to experiment with different ways of doing things to see how it plays out with no real consequences to fear. As they leave to become leading members of other communities, they will take what they have learned and be able to make suggestions as to how best to apply these ideas.

It should be stressed, though, that in order for this experiment to work it requires a radical disjunction between the university and the rest of society. The value of the professor is precisely in that he is cut off from the rest of society, living in a world of theory without the power or inclination to change society. This "innocence" gives the university its moral authority and protects it from outside influence. The moment universities become engines for particular movements it becomes part of society. This means that there is no reason for anyone to respect what goes on inside the university as the source for refined theoretical thought, outside of the inevitable prejudices of the societal discourse, to give it the protection that is the logical consequence of this purity. If the university can be used to serve one faction of society then why should the opposition not, in perfectly good conscience, attempt to subvert the university and turn it to its cause?

In many respects, my ideal university has much in common with the world of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which deals with a future alternative universe in which the philosophers are placed in medieval-style monasteries. Because these philosophers can have no direct influence on the larger society they are free to pursue their work without threats of violence or interference.

(To be continued ...)

In Support of Public Schools Teaching Intelligent Design and Other Nonsense II

Baruch Pelta has responded to my earlier post. I think it is important to note that he is unwilling to openly come out and support the legitimacy of public schools; essentially he is "agnostic" in regards to this issue. He does raise two arguments. One, allowing the teaching of creationism and intelligent design would violate the separation of Church and State. Two, it is possible to make a distinction between religion and other ideas as demonstrated by the fact that we have a separation of Church and State. Finally, Baruch asks that I define what I mean by "liberty."

If we are going to have public schools, I do not object to these schools teaching children, as a historical fact, that Jesus is their Savior as long as this directive does not come from the government itself and no public funds are specifically earmarked for this purpose. The reason for this is rooted in how, as a libertarian, I understand the role of government. Government only has a legitimate interest in protecting people from direct physical harm. A teacher, even one working in a government funded school, standing up and trying to convince students to accept Jesus causes no physical harm. Therefore it is of no interest to the government. (If the teacher were to hand out bonus points to those who accepted Jesus then that would be a different matter.) The fact that non-Christian students might be uncomfortable in such a situation and feel left out is irrelevant. This is what it means to live in a free society. You open yourself up to every manner of non-physical torment and you must learn to live with that and accept that the government cannot in any way be used to help you in this matter.

As to the issue of Church and State, it is important to keep in mind that it is not a legitimate legal concept, but a letter from Thomas Jefferson wrongfully brought into play in the twentieth century. Regardless of that matter, I understand the Constitution's establishment clause to apply to all ideas. Outside of a belief in the legitimacy of the legal system itself, the government has no businesses declaring any idea to be true or false. This goes for Jesus dying for the sins of the world, evolution and the Holocaust. I am even willing to go so far as to argue against tolerance education. The government may tell white supremacists that they need to follow the law and not murder blacks and Jews, but the government has no business telling these people that they should support a multicultural society as something positive.

As to the definition of liberty and how it might apply to children; I understand liberty as the ability to pursue your own good in your own way as long as you do not cause direct physical harm to others. As J. S. Mill pointed out, this concept does not apply to children as they are deemed as lacking the mental capacity to engage in the give and take of ideas. Children are placed under the control of guardians who therefore also take up the liberty that the child would have exercised if it were an adult. The only limit on this is that the guardian cannot cause direct physical harm to the child. That would bring the attention of the government which would have the right to step in and remove the child and place it in an environment where it would be less likely to suffer direct physical harm. (Think of the libertarian government as a deadly trip-wire alarm system. As long as no one is being physically harmed, the government is silent to the extent that you should not even realize that it is there. The moment that someone steps on the wire and causes direct physical harm to someone else, all of a sudden the government springs into existence and takes out the offender, with physical violence if necessary.) Part of the social contract we sign is that we allow people to come to harm through their ideas. This includes their children, whom they have the right to raise according to these ideas. If someone thinks that sweatshops or even brothels are good places for a child to receive an education then so be it.

This might sound funny coming from an Asperger, but I see Baruch as suffering from a lack of a theory of mind. (See Neurotypical Mental and Emotional Handicaps.) This goes back to our original discussion about parents raising their children. At a physiological level, Baruch simply does not get that there are other people out there who believe differently from him and are equally convinced of their beliefs as he is. Baruch thinks that it is so obvious that he is right that if he repeats his arguments or has the government step in and support him as being right, those other people will eventually come to their senses; Christians, Haredim, and white supremacists will suddenly realize that they are superstitious intolerant bigots, apologize to Baruch for being such naughty children and go home. Of course when those people follow this same line of thinking and try to use government to support their ideas against Baruch then that is them being intolerant and trying to impose their values. In the real world there are true and false beliefs (gravity being a good example) and those beliefs have consequences. In the politics of a free society there is no true and false. There are just people's opinions and a system designed so that these differing opinions do not turn into people killing each other over them.

On a final note, let me give a shout out to Baruch Spinoza, a fellow opponent of public schools, who has joined in on the debate.

In Support of Public Schools Teaching Intelligent Design and Other Nonsense

The debate with Baruch Pelta seems to have fizzled out, though I think for all the right reasons. We agree, in practice, on too many things and neither of us is interested in throwing around ad hominem polemics in an attempt to manufacture a disagreement. We have, though, continued to talk in private and what we found is that my pursuit of orthodox libertarian politics may, in fact, be a far more effective generator of disagreement than any defense of the Orthodox Jewish religion. This is particularly the case when it comes to public schools and the teaching of intelligent design.

Both Baruch and I support evolution and oppose intelligent design theory. That being said Baruch adopts a traditional liberal approach and supports the existence of public schools as instruments of teaching "objective facts." He draws a line between evolution, to be enshrined as objective fact, and intelligent design, which can be dismissed as mere religion. From this perspective attempts to teach evolution in public schools, even in the face of opposing parents, are a defense of the public good while attempts to teach intelligent design, even when backed by parents and local school boards, are attacks on the freedom of religion.

As a libertarian, I oppose the existence of government-funded public schools. As J. S. Mill understood, any attempt to bring government into education, by definition, means one group trying to impose their values on others. The teaching of evolution is a good example of this. While I accept the theory of evolution and desire that my children study it as part of the private education I hope to one day purchase for them, that is simply my opinion. I recognize that there are other people who do not accept evolution and do not want it taught to their children. In a free society, I must accept the fact that their views, no matter how based in ignorance, are of equal value to mine. Because of this, I have no right to make any attempt to use government (by definition a coercive act) to advance my views, no matter how right I think I am and how good my intentions are.

To justify the teaching of evolution, its supporters need to resort to an arbitrary distinction between religion and other opinions, with one being given special protections and allowed to be forced upon children as fact. Not only that, but the government is deemed capable of deciding what counts as science and what is a religion. This is sophistry, in which facts are simply those things one agrees with and religion is that which one opposes. Thus the very concept of freedom of thought is rendered meaningless.

I have yet to meet anyone seriously willing to defend public schools as in keeping with the maintenance of free thought. What I usually get it is this defiant attitude of "public schools are here to stay and I should get with reality." As if pragmatism could ever excuse a fundamentally unjust system. So here it is; if we are going to have public schools, and it looks like we are going to be stuck with them for the near future, this is what you will need in order to minimize government infringement on personal liberties. If the government is going to decide that education is an arena worthy of its interest then the government must be prevented from putting a meaningful definition on the term. The government can give money for "education" and it will be left to parents and school boards to decide what "education" means and spend the money accordingly. If they decide that science education means intelligent design or even creationism that should be their right. To be clear, white supremacist parents should also be left to decide that holocaust denial is a form of history and use government money to teach that.

Under such circumstances, giving over a meaningful education is likely to be a problem. This is a price I am willing to pay. It is the price that every supporter of freedom agrees to pay; believing in freedom means that allowing people to pursue their own misguided and destructive beliefs, no matter how horrific the consequences, is better than employing the slightest bit of coercion. Of course, as a supporter of freedom, I am also an optimist and believe that, in the long run, getting government less involved with education will mean more good teachers giving over a meaningful education to outweigh the intelligent designers, the creationists and even the holocaust deniers.

My Feminist Response to the Haredi Marriage Crisis

With all of my opposition to modern feminism, it is easy to lose track of the fact that I am a feminist if of a nineteenth-century John Stuart Mill School. I believe that human beings can better themselves through reason, as they pursue their own good in their own way. It helps if they are left to themselves and are not shackled by tyrannical governments and societies. Since women make up a little more than fifty percent of the human race, this applies to women as well. Women need to be brought in as equal partners in society and government and this can most effectively be done through education and suffrage. I do not recognize the concept of "women's rights," only human rights. Also, since I deal with rights solely within the context of protection from direct physical harm, I have no interest in waging war against "patriarchy" or deconstructing "male" modes of thinking. Feminists would be correct in criticizing me for employing a distinctively Enlightenment/male discourse and attempting to shove women into it, thus making it impossible for women to ever truly be "equal" in its most extreme sense. I do not care; what I offer is a logically consistent system and if women do not wish to take it they are free to try their luck with traditional patriarchy.

My nineteenth-century feminism was awakened by a recent article I saw on the Haredi website Cross Currents, "Avoiding Corruption in Shidduchim," by Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum, which attacked the current manifestation of marriage dowries within the Haredi world. Rabbi Rosenblum argues that the practice of insisting that the prospective in-laws of Haredi men be expected to support their future sons-law while they sit and study in order to gain their daughters a respectable match creates its own back-door materialism, as marrying the girl from the wealthiest possible family becomes a status symbol. I thought it was a very good article. That being said, I was struck by the fact that the article and subsequent comments all focused on the boys vs. in-laws dynamics. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that there are young women involved here, being asked to make life-altering decisions in support of a system that relegates them to if not second class status then at least to secondary roles. So I put up the following comment:

Something should be said here about the situation of women. I think that it is interesting that women remain passive figures even at your hands, Rabbi Rosenblum. I was just talking to a married a Haredi woman about her decision to become a speech therapist and asked her what her goals were in growing up. She responded that her goal in life was "to be a Mommy." A very wonderful girl, but there are lots of people who want to be mommies and many who might even make good mommies. Why should any bochur [young man] take someone simply because they will make a good mommy, unless this woman can support him by becoming a speech therapist or has a father who can support him? Change has to start with women valuing themselves as individuals, beings with unique talents who cannot simply be replaced like a spare part.

You can say that I was channeling Mary Wollstonecraft in seeing women's equality as starting with women taking control over their lives. To be fair, there is even here a bit of the modern feminist in that I am asking a modern question; what does it mean when one party is the activist initiator and the other remains passive to be acted upon? One can also pick up from my comment that, however I may like individual Haredi women as people, I have little respect for them as beings capable and deserving of the sort respect and equal treatment that the Haredi world is not giving them.

Cross Currents took down my comment. I guess suggesting that women need to come forth as individuals in control of their own lives is too radical for some people. I can get used to the idea. Mothers lock up your daughters for I am coming with my radical feminist doctrines. I offer them the chance to be people and even to be respected for it.

Young Earth Creationists Want Your History Textbooks Too

Historian Russell Shorto has a long article in the New York Times magazine about school board debates as to how to teach the issue of the religious intentions of the founding fathers. Did the founding fathers wish this to be a "Christian country?" Shorto is one of the leading historians today in understanding the complex role of religion in the scientific revolution and the rise of modernity. I would have liked to have seen more of him explaining to readers why this issue defies simple ideological verdicts of yes America was founded as a Christian nation or no it was not. Instead, Shorto focuses on the Texas school board and its leading conservative, Dan McLeroy. McLeroy wishes to make sure that children learn about how Ronald Reagan restored national confidence, Phyllis Schlafly, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the NRA. He is also a young-Earth creationist, who believes that the Bible is the ultimate source of our legal principles. (Why can't young Earthers just stick to destroying science and leave history alone?)

Those of my readers not from the State of Texas might think to breathe a sigh of relief; McLeroy is not on your State's school board so he does not affect you. Here is the problem, the major textbook publishing companies, for a variety of reasons, take their cues from the Texas school system. They will publish their history textbooks with Texas in mind and these textbooks are then used throughout the country, including a school near you. Let us be very clear. McLeroy, through his power of blackmail, has control over what sort of history your children will be learning and he is not just out to try to teach creationism to your children; he is also trying to teach a Christian apologist narrative. Imagine if Artscroll and Rabbi Berel Wein were being put in charge of writing history textbooks. Do you believe that McLeroy cares about a historical method or any critical analysis of history?

As a Libertarian and a follower of J. S. Mill, this is a good example of why I do not support government-funded public schools. I ask all of you, dear readers, who believe in government-controlled public schools, how can you trust the government to not abuse this power to ideologically indoctrinate your children? Would you trust the government to run the media? Government-controlled public education means that people like McLeroy will have control over your children and there is nothing you can do about it. I have every intention of making sure that no young-Earth creationists have any influence in the education of my children by sending any future children of mine to a carefully picked private school. (If need be, I will homeschool my children myself.) Every parent in this country deserves this opportunity and should not be forced into the hands of McLeroy simply because they cannot afford to pay twice over for their children's education.

As a history teacher, this is a good example of why I refuse to use official textbooks. I know that any official textbook has been held hostage to the interests of non-historians, out simply to score ideology points. Thus it is hopelessly tainted. I will stick to history books written by historians and answerable only to historians.

A Religious Defense of a Secular State Not Enforcing Biblical Punishment: My Response to Dr. Lively II

We have a second exchange of more series emails between Dr. Scott Lively and me. Dr. Lively continues his challenge to my commitment to biblical law in that I seem to be willing to let certain verses in Leviticus slide when they do not suit my liberal beliefs. There is a certain irony to this in that, as the Orthodox Jew, I take all of Leviticus very seriously, including the passages that deal with pork. I counter by using Augustine's model of two cities to formulate a religious argument for a secular state.


Mr. Chinn,


Regarding Igra's take on Shaw, I was quite clear that I don't know enough about the subject to hold a firm opinion.  It is fair to assume that you have not read the book or investigated its claims in which case it is unfair if not unscholarly to dismiss them out-of-hand.  Regarding Igra himself, if you are basing your opinion of him on Germany's National Vice, I can assure you that I have independently validated most of his assertions using mainstream sources of the period and overtly "gay" sources.  He was sensationalistic in style, but not factually wrong on most points. 

Regarding your claim to be a classic liberal, I must disagree.  Your correspondence leans much closer to the snide arrogance of the New Left than the dignified civility of classic liberalism.  

Regarding your claim to be a faithful Orthodox Jew, I believe my Orthodox friends would disagree.  By the standard you have articulated G-d Himself should be considered a "homophobe" for singling out the Sodomites of Canaan for special punishment not meted out to any other group.   In my observation, the Orthodox position acknowledges Scripture's repeated characterization of this lifestyle as an abomination, whereas your uninformed position, obviously influenced by popular culture, minimizes what G-d specially emphasized.  As for my specialization in this field of study, you should know from my writings that I oppose all forms of sex outside of marriage equally, but I focus on homosexuality because it is the only form with a global advocacy movement demanding political power and control for its practitioners.    
Regarding Uganda, my advice to the Ugandan Parliament was to go pro-active in support of marriage and the natural family to inoculate the population against promiscuity in all of its forms, and regarding homosexuality specifically I urged an emphasis on therapy, not punishment.  I did not advocate for the death penalty, nor did any of my teachings provide a reasonable rationalization for it.  The "gay" and leftist press are misrepresenting the facts for political advantage as they always do.  As for Proposition 8, your investment in its importance as a bulwark against "gay" power shows a gross misreading of the state of the culture.  Prop 8 will not stop their agenda, even if it is upheld by the 9th Circuit (a highly unlikely event in any case -- I have personally argued a pro-family case before this court and learned just how fully it is committed to the "gay" cause).  Absent a dramatic political shift of national power into the hands of people who believe like I do, you will suffer persecution for your view that homosexuality is a sin, as will I to a likely much greater extent. 
It seems rather odd that you can foresee the real possibility of persecution from them for your tepid opposition, while at the same time arguing that they do not represent a serious threat to society. That's a rather bizarre disconnect, don't you think?  They're seeking fascistic control over the speech of others but they're not really dangerous?  Sort of reminiscent of the attitude of the German Jews in the 20s, isn't it?  You really should read The Pink Swastika. 
Regarding your claim to be consistent in your principles, I don't know enough about you to say.  I suspect, however, based on our short exchange, the degree to which your ideas accommodate the politically correct sensibilities of the day (despite your claim to orthodoxy), and the "show-offish" way you've treated me on your blog that you are not. Nevertheless, as a Christian I am willing, within reason, to tolerate both your erroneous views and your demeaning tone to show you that I care about you as a person. 
I do happen to agree with some of what you wrote in your next-to-last paragraph, which I concede does reflect a more classic liberal perspective.  I also believe in freedom of choice (within reason) and would be happy to tolerate a "gay" subculture so long as it does not work to mainstream itself at the expense of family-centered society.  I also support religious freedom, but only as the concept was known by the Founders i.e. tolerance for all who acknowledge the existence of G-d.  Inclusion of atheism as a "religion" toward which government must be neutral is a 20th century concept that breaks the entire model.  Scott Lively


My Response:

Dr. Lively,

You are correct in assuming that I have not done a thorough scholarly investigation of Ingra's work nor of the claim that George Bernard Shaw wrote the Protocols. He may very well have had some evidence up his sleeve that I am unaware of. There are lots of claims that I have not given serious consideration to. For example, that it was a body double of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated and that Caesar and Cleopatra fled to the new world where they met up with the ten lost tribes and founded a race of uber-Indians, whose history was written on gold tablets buried in a hill in upstate New York. I may very well be the victim of an Augustian conspiracy to cover up this truth. The historical method upon which I rest my sanity requires that I dismiss any person making such claims as insane and be willing to sign them over to a padded cell and a lifetime supply of happy pills.

The Old Testament outlines a set of personal practices and a theocratic form of government designed to foster a community of people who keep God's law. The God of the Old Testament has 365 prohibitions, one of which happens to be against homosexuality. This biblical theocracy has many rules with extreme punishments for those who violate them. A priest who violates the most minor rule of the Temple cult is guilty of blasphemy. In a theocracy, blasphemy is, by definition, treason against the state and therefore possibly subject to the death penalty. Similarly, sexuality is a type of religious ritual subject to "Temple cult" stringencies. As such someone who goes outside the transcribed forms of sexuality, regardless of whether there is anything bad per se about this action, commits an act of blasphemy and therefore is potentially subject to the death penalty. Just as it is logically conceivable that God would have commanded us to sacrifice a cow for the paschal lamb, God could have also decided to permit us to engage in homosexual relations. In the universe we live in we testify to following God's command in our sexual activity by engaging in heterosexual sex within marriage and refraining from homosexual sex. (Whether homosexuality goes against "nature" or not is irrelevant.)

We do not live under a biblical theocracy and therefore lack the ability to punish people for violating biblical prohibitions, whether it is eating pork chops or homosexual sex. Personally, I think it is a good thing that we are not living under a theocracy and I have no intention, in practice, of trying to bring one about. On the contrary, I seek to live under a government that is completely "secular." By this I mean a government that does nothing to promote or prohibit any religious activity and devotes itself solely to protecting people from direct physical harm. We must recognize that, to go back to the Augustinian political model that is at the foundation of much of my thought, we live in a "fallen" world. As the Old Testament provides ample testimony for, people as a whole are not capable of living up to God's law. Furthermore, I would be hard-pressed to find "men of God" whom I would trust to tend his flock. All the people that I might conceivably trust would laugh at me and tell me to stop bothering them if I ever asked them to step up to the task. This leaves us with limiting the political state to building the earthly city. A properly functioning earthly city would create a large supply of virtuous and rational citizens. It is from this group of citizens that we can hope to recruit a flock of citizens for the heavenly city.
I am glad you are consistent about opposing all forms of extra-marital sex. Would you not agree that any church or synagogue that chooses to wink and nod at the transgressions of heterosexual teenagers should be consistent and look the other way at what the committed homosexual couple may or may not be doing in the privacy of their own home? We should not have a "forgive me father, I slept with my girlfriend this week again."

As of now the government of Uganda engages in coercive behavior to stop people from engaging in homosexual activity and is posed to implement even greater levels of coercion. Even to force homosexuals to undergo therapy would be physical coercion. It should be noted that I understand physical coercion fairly narrowly. For example, I would have no problem if a public school teacher put up a cross in her classroom and told her students about accepting Jesus as her personal savior over vacation.

I certainly do not see Proposition 8 as a cure-all. I do believe though that if we cannot win even on this issue then we are in serious trouble. While I believe that the modern left fully intends to persecute people like you and eventually maybe even me and do not trust them, I do not trust people like you to allow people like me to openly live our non-Jesus lifestyles and negatively influence society. My money is on trying to create a strong political center of classical liberals whose religious values support a secular government; this is what Izgad is all about. We offer a consistent set of principles that will allow our entire political spectrum to live together in peace.

To be clear, I do not view homosexuals even proactive ones as a threat. I see arrayed before me the full might of the modern left, who have destroyed the concept of rights and have reduced it to political spoils for chosen useful groups. In essence, they are armed with a checkbook full of blank checks for persecution. Homosexual activists are simply a group that has managed to end up as one of the privileged groups. It could just have easily been Mormon polygamists as the privileged group and homosexuals having their children snatched by government agents. (I do fear a right-wing theocracy, but I believe that the left is culturally in a better position to stop this than the right is for the reverse. As such I see the left as the more immediate threat.)

You say that you are willing to tolerate a gay subculture as long as it does not challenge mainstream culture. Part of tolerance is the willingness to allow groups you dislike to compete in the public arena and even win. For example, I oppose Israel's anti-missionary laws. Christians should be allowed to travel to Israel and try to convince people to believe in Jesus to their heart's content. Similarly, I support homosexuals not only being allowed to practice their chosen lifestyles with other consenting adults, but they should be allowed to take part in the public sphere and make their case to society at large. I have no problem with gay pride parades as long as they do not violate any local profanity laws. Gay advocacy groups are fine. I do not object to anyone making the case to me or my adult children that homosexuality should not be considered a sin or even that sodomy is a pleasurable activity that I should try some time. (Yes I believe in the right to offer people drugs.)

As I often point out to people, the Enlightenment model of tolerance was tolerance for all people who belonged to an established faith community or believed in a supreme being. I follow John Stuart Mill and offer tolerance for everyone as long as they can live within the law and not cause any physical harm. I am willing to give individual atheists the benefit of the doubt and assume they are moral individuals, even if I have my doubts about the ability of an atheist society to remain moral. There is also the experience of Orthodox Jews in Germany in the 19^th century. German law insisted that everyone belong to established religious communities. This was a problem for the Orthodox who desired to break away from the Reform. In the 1870s the law was changed to allow secularists to not belong to any community. This created the channel for the Orthodox to also gain the right to dissent.

Sincerely,
Benzion N. Chinn

Mental Capacity and Autism Rights

I would like to clarify an issue from my earlier post on autism rights. I argued that the concept of rights, by definition would only apply to those on the higher end of the autism spectrum:

Any discussion of rights, by definition, only applies to people who have reached a certain base-line of intellectual self-sufficiency. So autism rights, by definition, only apply to autistics on the higher end of the spectrum. If you are capable of reading this piece and understand what I am saying then you can rest assure that you pass the threshold. A completely different discourse would be needed for those on the lower end of the spectrum, one based on care and charity.

This statement has caused offense to a number of people and I apologize for that. Part of the problem is that I am proceeding from a very different understanding of rights which causes me to use the word “right” in a different fashion from that of other people. Most people, coming from the perspective of modern liberalism, use rights in a very open-ended fashion. Rights are supposed to make someone human, they are meant to grant people meaning in their lives and solve their problems. For example, if homosexuals find themselves unable to marry their partners they are being robbed of some right. Or if blacks are unable to advance in the same proportion as other groups it must be because some right has been violated.

For me, rights are something more specific. When I think of rights I think of life, liberty, and property. An extension of these rights, and a necessary protection for them, is the ability to take part in government. By this I mean the right to engage in such actions as running for political office, voting in elections, taking part in the justice system by serving on a jury, and serving in the military. To safeguard all of these things we possess civil rights as weapons in our arsenal. There are two particularly important ones that should be mentioned. First, there is our freedom of speech, which protects us on a day-to-day basis. Second, of greater importance though more for extreme situations, there is the right to bear arms. Private citizens have the constitutional right to possess the sort of firearms necessary to wage, if need be, an armed insurrection against the government.

The right to life belongs to all human beings no matter their mental capability. This right, while important, is, for the most part, outside of our political discourse. I have not heard anyone suggest that people on the autism spectrum be put into cattle cars and shipped off to gas chambers. Furthermore, this right is passive; it does not allow you to engage in anything proactive. Other people are not allowed to murder autistics, but what can autistics do?

There is the issue of the long-term elimination of autistics in the event that a genetic test can be designed for fetuses. For those who view rights as something that belongs to groups, this becomes a right to life issue. I view rights as something that belongs to individuals and I believe that fetuses do not count as human beings, certainly for the purpose of having rights. Because of this, I recognize that we do not have any means, through the government, to stop mothers from aborting autistic fetuses. All we can do is wage a social campaign to convince people to not abort autistic fetuses. I have a friend who point-blank told me that she would abort a child that she knew was going to be autistic. She would not object to having an Asperger child like me, but she grew up with a traditionally autistic sister and she would not wish to go through that experience as a parent. I can challenge this friend whether she can say she really loves her sister; if she really loved her sister she would rather have gone through all the difficulties she had than not have had the sister at all. I suspect this will be a losing battle and we may, as tragic as it may be, see the elimination of autism. I support personal autonomy and I am willing to fall on my sword to protect this ideal; this is what it means to be an idealist.

Moving away from the right to life, we are left with the rights of liberty, property, participation in government, and civil rights. In a sense, liberty is passive; you are protected from being wrongfully imprisoned. That being said it also includes the active right to make decisions in one’s life, to pursue one’s own good in one’s own way as long as one does not interfere with the liberties of others. The moment you bring active rights into play you have to consider who has the mental capacity to pursue such rights. J. S. Mill said point-blank, at the beginning of On Liberty, that nothing he was about to say was meant to apply to children, the mentally handicapped, and, for argument's sake, savages living outside of civilization. 

When I was a child, as much as I thought it was unjust, my parents ran right over my “rights” to not bathe, stay home from school, stay up beyond their arbitrary bedtime and not eat my vegetables. They even spanked me and put me in time out without the benefit of a trial by my peers. (While this may sound childish, I was the sort of child with the political awareness to try for such a constitutional approach.) So should autistics have the liberty to make personal decisions in their lives like whether they should be institutionalized, allowed to live at home or by themselves? My answer is that it depends on the ability of the individual autistic. I am an adult and I have the mental ability to understand and make decisions regarding my liberty and others can understand what these decisions are. As such, I should have the right to exercise these liberties and my decisions about my personal liberties should be respected. If my parents wished to commit me to an institution or force me to come home and the government went along with this it would be a wrongful violation of my liberty. My parents would not be able to use the argument that I am an Asperger since that is a legitimate mode of thinking; nor could they argue that I do not eat enough vegetables, go to bed at an early enough hour or use language that they did not approve of as these would also be legitimate lifestyle choices. Now there are people on the autistic spectrum, even many adults, who are not capable of making such decisions. Such people cannot in any meaningful sense be said to possess liberty and should be left to the care of their legal guardians.

The same applies to the higher rights such as participation in government and civil liberties. All of these things, as active liberties, require that an individual has the mental capacity to make a meaningful decision. It is not even enough that a person says the words, there has to be some sort of intent behind them. Furthermore, those intentions must, by some means, be able to be communicated to society at large. A person who cannot do this is doomed to being a ward of society, without the ability to take on the role of full citizens.

A useful example is that of the deaf. Today it would sound completely ludicrous to say that a deaf person cannot be a CEO of a company, and serve in the military. (There may be restrictions about on the deaf serving though I doubt they would stand up against a determined lobbying effort particularly if resources were offered to get around the disability.) Who would object to a deaf person becoming the president of the United States? That being said, in the nineteenth century there were few resources available for deaf people and society lacked the ability to effectively educate them. For all intents and purposes, this doomed the deaf to a lifetime of being wards of society, of little use to anyone, and unable to take on the role of active citizens with all the rights that it entails. Now, because of advances in technology and in education, the deaf are capable, just like everyone else, of being active citizens and society has been blessed with this beautiful new deaf culture arising in its midst.

I see the same thing for the autistic community. Right now, there are many autistics, particularly at the "higher end of the spectrum," perfectly capable of being fully active citizens. It is important that such people be supported and that they are allowed to fully take advantage of their rights to make personal decisions, to handle property, to take an active role in government, and to use their civil liberties. That being said, there are many on the autism spectrum, particularly on the "lower end of the spectrum," who do not have this ability. For such people, it is meaningless to talk about them having rights. This is not to say that they should be thrown to the wolves or refused medical care. They are wards of society and must be cared for as such. I hope that with further improvements in technology and education we will find more and more people on the autism spectrum with the ability to take on the role of citizens and will no longer be wards of society. This will make for a stronger and more vibrant autistic community and will benefit society at large.