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by Dan Phillips | October 31st, 2006
By adopting the liberal rhetoric of rights and the individual, the pro-life movement has made a pact with the Devil.
During my years of reading paleoconservative books and magazines and visiting paleoconservative websites, it became obvious to me that paleocons are very critical of the modern pro-life movement. Since paleocons are almost universally pro-life, this criticism always baffled me. Because many paleocons “convert” to that orientation from more “mainstream” conservatism, as I did, I suspect I am not the only one who has been troubled by this. But as I have studied the paleoconservative perspective and begun to understand it, as it has become more second nature to me, I am now able to better appreciate the paleo criticism. Perhaps my intellectual journey can help enlighten others.
First, let me make it absolutely clear that I believe the pro-life movement has the noblest intentions of any movement in politics. Most interest groups, whether right or wrong, are ultimately in it for some sort of self-interest. Farmers lobby for continued and increased farm subsidies. Businesses lobby for favorable tax and regulatory policy. Pensioners lobby to maintain and increase benefits. But pro-life activists have no personal stake in saving the unborn. They are not in it for their own sake but for the sake of a voiceless other. Anti-religion (especially anti-Christian) bigots who claim pro-lifers are in it to “keep women down” or “cram their religion down other people’s throats” hardly merit a rebuttal. Even liberals who disagree should acknowledge the noble motives of pro-lifers.
(Now that I started off with high praise, you can hear the “but” coming.) But despite their high ideals and pure motives, the pro-lifers have really made very little political progress. On the one hand, they have done a very good job of getting “pro-life” politicians elected. They played a significant role in the 1994 “Republican Revolution” and in President Bush’s re-election in 2004. They have managed to keep the pro-life plank a part of the Republican Platform despite significant agitation from powerful and wealthy forces that would like to see it removed. It is generally assumed that serious Republican candidates for President must be at least nominally pro-life as a condition of entry. (We will see if Rudy Giuliani tests that assumption in 2008.) Candidates focused on reversing the GOP position on life, such as Arlen Specter, have faired very poorly.
On the other hand, despite the fact that pro-life forces are an integral part of the winning Republican coalition, they are clearly expected to keep a low public profile. The best illustration of this is the last two National Conventions where the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Colin Powell took center stage and prominent pro-lifers were persona non grata, at least in prime time.
In the key area of policy, what have all these years of hard political footwork accomplished? One of the few gains was the initial institution of Reagan’s Mexico City policy and its re-institution by Bush II after Clinton had overturned it. (For those unfamiliar with the policy, it barred taxpayer dollars from funding organizations that promote abortion overseas.) Another gain is the Partial Birth Abortion ban, which while well intentioned, will arguably not stop any abortion even if it passes muster with the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, the Crown Jewel for pro-life activists, is likely no closer to actually overturning Roe vs. Wade, thanks in part to Republican appointees like Kennedy and Souter. (If pro-lifers spent as much time and energy debunking the erroneous and malicious doctrine of judicial review as they do worrying about Supreme Court nominees — a worry that signals uncritical acceptance of and helps perpetuate that erroneous doctrine — then the GOP wouldn’t have the Supreme Court trump card to play every four years. But that is an argument for another day.)
Pro-life forces have made some gains outside the policy arena. The movement has contributed to the establishment of abortion alternative centers in many cities. It has made abortion less socially acceptable and has socially stigmatized clinics and doctors who provide abortions. The pro-choice advocates recognize this. Note the recent initiative of Ms. Magazine to encourage celebrities who have had an abortion to go public. The total number of abortions per year, while still staggering, is down. Some of the decrease is related to demographic factors, but some of the decrease is surely due to the increased unease with abortion that pro-life voices have fostered.
One obvious potential explanation for their minimal policy gains is that pro-life activists are employing an ineffective political strategy. This is one reason why paleocons are critical of the pro-lifers. Pro-lifers hitched their wagon to the modern, GOP-centric, “conservative movement,” that is hostile to paleoconservatism. In the minds of some paleocons, that makes the pro-lifers part of the problem, not part of the solution. I would not go that far. Despite the objection of some, the “Religious Right” and paleos are natural allies in the battle against modernism. However, it at least deserves consideration that the pro-life movement’s close ties to the “conservative movement” and hence the GOP has not served the cause well.
It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss potential alternative paleoconservative political strategies to limit abortions, but they would certainly involve more local and state level activism. The recently passed South Dakota abortion ban is a good example. As I alluded to above, relentlessly challenging the unconstitutional doctrine of judicial review is also a must.
However, the primary objection of the paleos to the pro-life movement (not the cause of life but the political movement, mind you) is philosophical, not practical. While paleos are often distinguished by their opposition to foreign intervention, immigration, and free trade, what really sets them apart from other conservatives is much deeper than just policy. They differ on significant underlying philosophical presumptions. One helpful way of looking at this difference is to ask where paleoconservatives draw the “it's all been down hill since then” or alternatively the “those were the good ol’ days” line in the historical sand. Paleos generally reject the Enlightenment in whole or in part. They reject Lockean “contract theory” and the concept of “natural rights” outright. Dr. Donald Livingston, Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, calls natural rights a “philosophical superstition.” According to Dr. Livingston:
It was to secure these rights that the modern state was invented in the first place, and it is impossible, especially for Americans, not to be seduced by the doctrine. But it is nonetheless a philosophical superstition.
The reason is this. Whatever they might be, natural rights are universal and apply to all men. Further, they are known by reason, independent of any inherited moral tradition . . . It follows, therefore, that the doctrine of natural rights must be in a condition of permanent hostility to all inherited moral traditions. Any such tradition, no matter how noble the goods of excellence cultivated in it, can always be seen as violating someone’s natural rights under some interpretation or another.
So according to the paleoconservative critique, there is no end to the havoc that can be wrought on traditional society by advocates attempting to secure their natural rights, in this case a woman’s “right” to an abortion.
In this light it is easy to see the philosophical problem that paleos have with the pro-life movement as it is currently constituted. The movement is rhetorically based almost entirely upon the claim of a natural right to life and the related claim of the “personhood” of the unborn child. But the problem is that the pro-choice side is based equally entirely on a competing claim of a natural right to “choice,” or a natural right of a woman to “control her own body,” or a natural right to “privacy,” or whatever.
Few Americans, paleo or otherwise, would object in the abstract to all of these rights claims. People born or unborn being allowed to live is generally (war, capital cases) not objectionable, nor is the right to choose your cell phone plan, or the right of a woman to control her own body regarding whether to take an aspirin. But the rights must always have a context and a background and hence are neither "natural" nor "universal."
With the current abortion debate, it comes down to which rights claim takes precedence. As the debate is framed today, we essentially have two Enlightenment liberals arguing about the priority of each other's rights claim.
For the pro-lifer the right to life of the unborn child is more important even though they will concede a circumscribed right to choose. For the pro-choice advocate, the right of the expectant mother to choose takes precedence even though they would certainly concede a right to life of a healthy infant, a child, or an adult. In fact, they often accuse pro-lifers of forgetting about the child after he is born. This they do in service of their liberal aim of securing some natural right to healthcare, affordable daycare, adequate housing, etc., for the child. (Do you see the unlimited possibility for mischief here?)
Is it any wonder given the nature of the debate that pro-life forces have made little headway? Both sides are arguing natural rights claims hung on thin air, as is always the case with rights claims disconnected from the historical circumstances from which the right arose.
At this point pro-lifers might object that they hang their right to life claim not on thin air but on God as expressed in, for example, one of America’s organic documents, the Declaration of Independence. Putting aside for the moment the debate over how corrupted the Declaration was by Enlightenment sympathies and idiom, this is a start. It is certainly an improvement over grounding your rights claims on human reason as the French did in their Revolution shortly after our Declaration. However, if you are going to invoke God, in this context the God of Christianity, then why not just invoke His prohibition against murder or His command to care for your family? Many well-meaning but misguided pro-life advocates intentionally steer clear of religious and theological arguments in favor of purely philosophical or scientific (establishing personhood) arguments. Perhaps they think it sells better. Perhaps they are right. But it is no coincidence that the vast majority of pro-life activists are very religious and few arrive at their conviction based solely on philosophy.
Paleocons believe the debate should focus on obligations and virtue. As Dr. Livingston laments, ". . . public moral discourse today is the discourse of rights and seldom ever the discourse of virtue.” The primary justification for objecting to abortion is then not that the unborn baby has a right to life, but that parents have an affirmative obligation to their own children which would, of course, include not killing them."
As I alluded to above, what is really the difference between claiming a child has a right to life and stating it is wrong to murder? None really. So why burden the argument by invoking an inherently liberal concept of rights?
Not only is it wrong to murder, it is particularly wrong to kill your own child. This is intuitive. Only the most rigorous universalist would dispute it. In fact, one appeal of the paleo position is that it is intuitive and conforms to common sense, whereas Enlightenment views require elaborate theorizing. Paleos believe the Enlightenment and the concept of universal rights that it engendered was a revolt against the received wisdom of the ages. An essential part of every civilized society is an expectation of certain behavior (i.e. mothers care for their babies) and prohibitions against others (i.e. incest). As Dr. Thomas Fleming pointed out in the Politics of Human Nature, different cultures have produced various forms of family association, but the one universal element of every human society is the mother/child bond. Outside the context of abortion, no one generally disputes this.
Almost everyone recognizes that people have a greater obligation to those closest to them, especially family. For example, we recognize that it is worse for an ungrateful son to strike his father than it is for him to strike a stranger. Parents have a greater obligation to provide food, clothing, shelter, and education for their own child than for the child of a stranger.
In some cases the law can enforce this obligation. Parents are not at liberty to just abandon or “take care of” their “unwanted” or “inconvenient” child. The father can be held financially liable for his child if paternity is established. Parents are required to meet the basic needs of their child lest they be charged with neglect. In the eyes of the law and in the estimation of society, this parent/child bond and obligation is NOT VOLUNTARY. It is a duty. So in the case of abortion, on what grounds does this bond and obligation become a matter of choice when the child is in the womb?
This obligation extends beyond first-degree relatives. If both parents pass away, the aunts, uncles, and grandparents have a greater obligation to then care for the orphaned children than does a stranger or more realistically, the State. Furthermore, this obligation exists even if the timing is bad or the circumstances or means of the family member are not optimal. The law may not be able to force this relationship, although it is generally the default chain of guardianship, but society does, or at least should, condemn the family members who refuse to step up, if physically and mentally able, because it might interfere with their plans or careers or lifestyles. Again, this familial obligation is not voluntary. It is a moral responsibility. In the case of abortion, we are asking less of the parents of an unborn child than we are of the extended family of an orphan. On what grounds?
Even this is probably too legalistic and reductionistic a view. Society has special contempt for the father or mother who kills his or her own children. Witness the media circus surrounding the Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, and Scott Peterson cases. More recently the Melinda and Trenton Duckett case captured the nation’s attention. People intuitively recognize that the bond between parent and child and child and parent is not just a bond of duty and obligation. It is an emotional attachment of love. That is why we are so disgusted by cases of filicide.
The mother and father have an emotional bond with the “wanted” and “planned” unborn child. Note the grief that usually accompanies a miscarriage. But we are supposed to expect less of the parents if the child is “unwanted” or “unplanned?” Not too long ago, if an “unplanned” pregnancy happened out of wedlock, the father was expected to “do the right thing” and make an “honest woman” out of the expectant mother. If the father was reluctant a shotgun often persuaded him. Notice how the language, “do the right thing” and “honest woman,” reflects the culturally established expected course of action.
Given the fondness with which modern American society greets talk of rights and the hostility with which it views obligations that impose on the individual, the pro-life movement could plead that it is strategically wiser to argue rights. That despite the few real policy gains the movement has managed, it would be worse off if it adopted the paleoconservative line of argument and abandoned rights talk.
Perhaps this is true. But it is also clear that the Enlightenment-inspired modern theory of rights and its focus on the atomistic individual has greatly contributed to creating a culture that is hostile to the traditional view of the family and the community in the first place. It is only in an individual-obsessed culture where the idea of an “unwanted” and “inconvenient” child (a counterintuitive idea if you really think about it) could arise and flourish.
By adopting the liberal rhetoric of rights and the individual, the pro-life movement has made a pact with the Devil. A more genuinely conservative and traditional view of society, the result of which would be a greater respect for the natural bonds and obligations of family, can best be fostered by abandoning liberal rhetoric, no matter how appealing to moderns, and embracing with paleoconservatives a more thorough rejection of modernism.
Devout Catholics and Evangelical and Reformed Protestants, who make up the vast majority of pro-life foot soldiers, have rejected modernist moral relativism to a much greater degree than the rest of the culture. That is why they are so despised by the Left. Now it is time they re-examine their commitment to modernist philosophical presuppositions as well.
I should say an atrophy of language-skills is one, if not *the* major factor in the warping of conservativism and of society writ large.
"…the pro-life movement could plead that it is strategically wiser to argue rights."
The Pro-Life movement will never achieve anything if it accedes to remaining servile to liberal ideology. If it were to come to "rights", I would rather they use a "states'-rights" argument than a "human-rights" argument.
My main problem with the Pro-Life Movement– though I did go to the Right-to-Life Roe v. Wade march last year, and hope to go this year– is that like so many people they attach themselves to one particular issue and act as if it exists in sole isolation.
I don't just mean that Right-to-Lifers are happy for us to all become serfs of the welfare/warfare state so long as a "pro-life" politician is elected (although in my experience most of them are), but rather the foolish attitude that you can cure a disease by attacking its symptoms.
The problem is not Planned Parenthood, or the "Dems", or the "Libs". The problem is that the American collective psyche is sicker than a dog slurping up its own vomit.
Comment by J.D. | October 31, 2006
It is high irony that a person who describes himself as "paleo" conservative would seemingly reject the Declaration of Independence as having been polluted by the enlightenment. If the Declaration and the Constitution as originally intended by the Founders are not fundamentally paleo, then the author will have to explain to me what paleo is.
The appeal to rights as bestowed by our Creator is the basic understanding of the nature of the universe, the bedrock, fully-reduced foundation of existence. There can be no more basic (paleo, if you will) understanding of the meaning of life.
It is not automatically individualistic to presume the inherent rights of every man. The choices one makes in exercising liberty is entirely a separate topic. In fact, most forms of individual expression redound to the benefit of others. The transcendent moral code governs what is appropriate and what is harmful.
For example, the baker sells bread for a profit. Though he understands altruism, the benefits brought to his fellow man is not the baker's motivation. He knows that if he makes good bread at a fair price, he will make a lot of profit.
The baker will spend some of his profits on the products and services he needs, but again, he does not do so for altruistic reasons. He does not make purchases so that others will benefit. He is self-interested, but his self-interest has positive effects. However, he must be governed by a moral understanding of rights in order to behave this way.
It is impossible to understand conservativism apart from "certain unalienable rights" as bestowed by our Creator. Even our concepts of virtue, compassion, mercy, and peace flow from our rights.
Rights, properly understood, are in actuality the manifestation of each person's innate value and worth. This is a gift from our Creator. It allows us to organize our society and culture in a way that bring out the potential for each member.
Comment by Mountain Man | October 31, 2006
"The appeal to rights as bestowed by our Creator is the basic understanding of the nature of the universe, the bedrock, fully-reduced foundation of existence. There can be no more basic (paleo, if you will) understanding of the meaning of life."
Of course "paleo", like many other words, might mean different things to people. The overwhelming majority of paleos I have encountered tend to see paleoconservativism as a committment to Western Civilization as exemplified by Greece, Rome, and Christendom.
I am fairly certain that you will find no reference to "rights" in the Scriptures, nor in any Christian theology prior to the Enlightenment.
As for the ancient pagans, they were more interested in talking about virtue than rights.
"Even our understanding of virtue, compassion, mercy, and peace flow from our rights."
So I show mercy to my enemy or compassion to the poor because they are *entitled* to my mercy or compassion, as a right?
This may be an understanding, but it is not a Christian one. None of us is entitled to anything, least of all Charity.
Comment by J.D. | October 31, 2006
JD, thanks for your thoughtful comments. I actually wasn't talking about Scripture or Christianity, but since you said that Scripture is silent on rights, please allow me to present contrary information.
When Paul's jailers came to release him in Acts 16:37, Paul appealed to his rights as a Roman Citizen: "They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out."
If you want to do a fascinating biblical word study, look up "birthright," "inheritance," "firstborn,", and "heritage." There is a powerful spiritual understanding available to us in terms of sonship. As Christians, we are grafted in to God's family and made eligible for an inheritance as sons of the Father.
Consider also the status of Israel as the nation of promise. Then read the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25, how Esau despised his birthright as the eldest son. Continue in Genesis 27, where the result is that Esau is denied a blessing. Lastly, check out Obadiah 1:17-18.
As a final note, I did not suggest that anyone was entitled to anything by virtue of rights. Charity is wholly in the realm of the compassionate heart as it responds to the Creator's prompting. It cannot be demanded, for it would cease to be charity. This is the root of the problem of government welfare. Rights cannot cost someone else.
What I was really saying is, because of the value imputed to us by the Creator, we in turn also value what the Creator has done in our fellow man. it is not because our fellow man is entitled, but because we understand the grandeur of the Creator as expressed in mankind and act in accordance to this.
Comment by Mountain Man | November 1, 2006
Thanks for the top cover J. D.
Mountain Man,
I didn't say we don't have rights. What I said is the doctrine of "natural rights" is inherently liberal and extremely problematic. Americans have certain rights (habeas corpus, keep and bear arms, freedom of the press, etc.), but we have those because they have been established by and grow out of our history. We are a Western Country, a Christian Country, a predominantly (at least historically) Anglo and Anglo-Celtic country. We have the Magna Carta, the Common Law, the Rights of Englishmen, etc. With "natural rights," meaning rights that are inherent and apply equally to all men, how do you determine what they are? Is there a natural right to affordable housing, health care, paid vacation etc? The Soviet Constitution said so. Like I said, there is no end to the mischief that can be caused by this doctrine. Right-to-lifers who appeal to this doctrine are playing with fire.
Re. the Declaration, I intentionally wrote "putting aside" the debate because the article was running long and it was beyond the scope of the article. But since you brought it up, clearly the Declaration was "tainted" by Enlightenment and Lockean idiom. This gets to the larger issue of the nature of the American founding. Was it inherently liberal or were there sufficient redeeming conservative elements? I actually come down on the side that there were significant (not just sufficient) redeeming conservative elements. Not all paleos agree, but I will let them speak for themselves. Clearly there were liberal elements. We were rejecting the King obviously and were advocating a limited amount of popular sovereignty. The Declaration was appealing to unalienable rights. But as I said, at least the Declaration anchored those rights in God and not man's reason, although you have to admit that it would have been nice if they had actually written God instead of the more generic Creator. It has been suggested by some, and I tend to agree, that the Declaration was written as much to curry favor with French intellectuals as it was for the King or for the people. We obviously needed France’s help in the Revolution. Also, Jefferson’s unorthodox Deism was the exception among the Founders. Most were orthodox (small o) Christians as far as we know and attended orthodox religious denominations. Some such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry were very devout and highly motivated by their Faith. But the primary reason that the American founding was conservative in nature is that the average man on the street was highly orthodox in their religious beliefs. Even those that didn’t practice or were personally skeptical understood that orthodoxy was the accepted standard. (You still see this dynamic in the South.) Unlike the French who later rebelled against Church and Crown, American was not rebelling against Church. In fact, we are a historically devout people. (Many Catholic (and some Anglican) paleos add the fact the America is predominantly Protestant to the case that the Founding was essentially liberal, but I am not Catholic so I don’t agree. Again, I will let them speak for themselves.)
The nature of the American Founding is a complicated and endlessly interesting subject. I think it deserves an article all its own.
I’m not sure that the baker example is on point. I generally agree with you on that, but I will point out that the belief that you can not get past the inherent self-interest of man (this is the mistake the Communist made) is based on the Christian idea that man’s nature is inherently flawed/fallen. Self-interest is not necessarily a bad thing, but on point, not too long ago self-interest would have also automatically implied the interest of the family. It is the modern focus on the atomistic individual deracinated from his family, community, culture, etc. that I am decrying.
“The appeal to rights as bestowed by our Creator is the basic understanding of the nature of the universe, the bedrock, fully-reduced foundation of existence. There can be no more basic (paleo, if you will) understanding of the meaning of life.”
With all due respect, this is theologically flawed. The primary purpose of man is to worship and serve God. To boil that down to personal rights is to take the focus off God and place it on man.
Comment by Dan Phillips | November 1, 2006
I have a response to JD pending in the queue, I think.
Dan, thanks for your response. My response was not intended as a theological discussion in the Chrsitian sense. I think we were talking about paleo conservatism.
I don't think I was talking about natural rights, either. I was talking about an American paleo document called the Declaration of Independence, which describes our existence in plain yet sublime terms. It is odd to me to hear a self-described conservative pooh-pooh the central document upon which this nation was founded.
I brought the baker in to describe for us that the recognition of the inherent dignity of man as designed by the Creator. Society cannot function without regard for the value of others. This manifests in a way that governs relationships, commerce, and of course, our relationship to government. If man does not have inherent dignity, as expressed by the Declaration, there is no need to regard others as possessing any value.
There is a difference between "the meaning of life" and the "purpose of man." My thesis is that the inherent value the Creator places on man expresses itself through certain unalienable rights. As I said above, what a person does with that liberty is a separate issue.
I think it is ridiculous to suggest that there is a right to healthcare or affordable housing in this context. Unalienable rights do not require someone else to pay in order for them to be exercised. The expression of unalienable rights is low impact and requires nothing of our fellow men.
The line of thinking you express seems to indicate that you have been polluted in regard to unalienable rights vs. constructed rights, that is, rights that are pulled out of thin air by judicial fiat.
Comment by Mountain Man | November 1, 2006
Mountain Man,
You are making my argument for me. Paul appealed to his rights as a "Roman Citizen." That is precisely my point. He did not appeal to his rights as a citizen of the world or a member of the human race or even as a Child of God.
"If you want to do a fascinating biblical word study, look up “birthright,” “inheritance,” “firstborn,”, and “heritage.” There is a powerful spiritual understanding available to us in terms of sonship. As Christians, we are grafted into God’s family and made eligible for an inheritance as sons of the Father."
Again you are making my point for me. The primacy/importance of the family is a given in the Bible. That that relationship is natural and inherent is what I am arguing. With abortion, why are we not revolted not only because a baby is being killed but because a baby is being killed by its own mother?
Comment by Dan Phillips | November 2, 2006
Dan,
You said, "I am fairly certain that you will find no reference to “rights” in the Scriptures…" and I provided you one. Do you want to move the goal posts again?
Comment by Mountain Man | November 2, 2006
Also, this so-called "natural" procession of inheritance rights was violated in the case of Jacob
and Esau. An interesting dimension in this story is the rights that Esau traded so that God's purposes would be worked out. These rights, like today's rights, are ennumerated by authoritive documents for the purpose of defining the relationships in society.
I think you are forcing your perspective on the Scriptures. As I review the Bible I see a lot regarding the treatment of aliens and neighbors and aliens as well as laws governing family relationships. Many laws had a secular purpose, some had a spiritual significance, but all established the boundaries in interpersonal relationships that we now call rights.
I think you are a little premature in your assessment that I am proving your case, sir.
Comment by Mountain Man | November 2, 2006
Dr. Jackson
I'm glad you piped in. I have been working on this article for a while, but one of the reasons I decided to submit it to IC is because I thought this perspective was sorely needed after I read your and Dr. Carmine's debate on the existence of a universal moral code. While my article does not specifically address a universal moral code, your debate with Dr. Carmine is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when I said that the current debate boils down to “two Enlightenment liberals” arguing with each other. Esp. Dr. Carmine who invoked the idea of a “contract” when discussing the parent/child relationship. The parent child bond is akin to a contract? Yeah right. If that is not an example of abstract theorizing disconnected from reality, I don’t know what is.
Paleos believe that part of the problem with modernity is that it suffers from an excess of elaborate theorizing. That is why conservatives look to tradition, history, culture, etc. for our guide. Perhaps all those old folks were on to something before a bunch of smarty pants philosophizers came along telling them how they were doing everything wrong, how their society was unjust, etc.
I have no objection to the concept of natural law natural such as two of the issues that I referred to, the mother child relationship and the incest taboo. But as a Christian I believe the natural law is limited. Due to the fallen nature of man, some law comes to us via revelation. Keep the Sabbath Holy, for example.
Re. language: language and words do matter. Not only is discussion of who is and is not a conservative not “meaningless bilge” it is essential. If a bunch of liberals have hijacked the “conservative movement” and started calling themselves and their program conservative, then setting the record strait is an essential precondition to reclaiming the authentic brand that has been hijacked. (And I am not just referring to neoconservatism per se. I am also referring to the whole post-War modern conservative movement that in the name of practicality and electability sacrificed all principle and became social democracy light.)
As far as tactics, I take it you believe that attaching the moral issues specifically to Christianity instead of to a more broadly understood universal moral code was a mistake. I would actually argue exactly the opposite. The problem is that traditional Christianity has been emasculated by its acquiescence to a more politically correct religious pluralism. (Religious pluralism is a liberal concept, by the way.) Liberalism is everywhere and always the enemy of traditional Christianity and traditional society in general. The two can not be reconciled, or perhaps it would be more accurate to state they can only be reconciled in a limited way.
Comment by Dan Phillips | November 2, 2006
Mountain Man,
Actually J.D. said that.
Comment by Dan Phillips | November 2, 2006
Step back for a moment and think about the following, in relation to understanding the fundamental truth of a matter:
1. People create language, which they use to describe the world and themselves in it.
2. Eventually, they use the language they created to categorize and classify things according to some initial criteria they themselves developed.
3. This criteria is used to judge any subsequent analysis/classification in terms of how closely it conforms to a given “fundamental truth” as defined in #2.
4. “Truth” therefore becomes a simple calculation: how closely do all subsequent analysis and classifications conform to this initial man-made classification/analysis?
This is why people spend endless hours debating who and who isn’t a paleo-conservative, or a “true conservative”, or whether the Declaration of Independence was tainted by impure thoughts, or other similar meaningless bilge. I say meaningless, because it ties back to what man himself has decided a “fundamental truth” is, not what, objectively, that “fundamental truth” might actually be.
Discovering “truth” isn’t a strategic political debate, or a debate about semantics, or a debate about different theologies or secular philosophies. In fact, it requires us to look beyond man-made classifications when arguing whether Action “A” is proper/moral/correct — or “true”.
So I have a simple question. I don’t care whether the answer puts me into a Liberal, Conservative (Paleo or otherwise), Nihilist, Atavist, Anarcho-Syndicalist, Communist, or “name-your-classification” category, because the Truth is the Truth independent of whatever categories or classification systems man creates.
If, as a general principle, “The primary purpose of man is to worship and serve God”, then just how does aborting a developing human child serve this purpose?
If we start with this question and work from there to find the answer, it won’t make any difference what one self-identified philosophical camp thinks about the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, or whether the answer follows a particular strain of Conservative thought. These are side issues that can help focus the debate — but they aren’t the debate.
So in the end, who cares whether the doctrine of “natural rights” is inherently liberal and extremely problematic. Just tell me why God thinks it’s okay, or even advisable, to worship Him by terminating a healthy, developing baby when the life of the mother isn’t at stake?
As a side note, regarding the strategy and tactics discussion of Dr. Phillip’s essay concerning the “minimal policy gains” of the pro-life movement, I dealt with this at length in my essay “What kind of car would Jesus drive to take his girlfriend to an abortion clinic?” It is a question of strategy and tactics, but not necessarily the way Dr. Phillips framed the debate. Briefly —
What has allowed elective abortion to supplant slavery as a national indignation is a combination of the factors I addressed above — self-interest, rationalization, hidden agendas — but something else too. Those who took the “moral high ground” in sparking this debate had their own set of vested interests and hidden agendas. Beginning with prayer in public schools and other public institutions, they took key provisions of the Declaration of Independence and substituted their own religious preferences for “God” so that paying homage to “Jesus,” not following a God-given moral code, became the focus of their efforts.
Because of this approach, moral Relativists were able to seize the debate and frame their core issues in a deceitful way. Since Religion A claims to speak for God, and the Constitution forbids the state to establish an official religion, then both Religion A and the God it speaks for must be completely removed from the secular world. This logic prevailed because the Constitution is not the Declaration of Independence, and drawing inspiration and support from God is not the same thing as making laws that reflect God’s rules as expressed by a particular religion. It didn’t matter if what Christians believed perfectly matched 95% of the beliefs of every other religion. The Constitution, though inspired by God-given rights, was still man’s law. And man’s law did not permit the establishment of an official state religion.
By hijacking God and linking Him to a battle to promote their values, not only did the Christian community lose their fight, it allowed the notion of “God” — the basis for their claim — to be wiped out with it. This then led to an even more determined fight to infuse “politics with religion.” Relativists became even more relative to prevent their opponent’s success, and as the Relativists carried the fight to its relativistic extreme, atrocities like abortion on demand became the law of the land.
This, ultimately, explains why a concept like abortion could take hold and flourish in a society that condemns human right abuses, and even passes laws against cruelty to animals, but it will allow a healthy 20-year old developing child to be killed without the same level of due process it demands for suspected mass murders and captured terrorists.
Education, not confrontation, is the way to expose the relativist thinking that goes against the common moral code to rationalize abortion. We need to return the definition of “harm” to a practical level that is universally true in every example. This means defining harm in a way that does not allow Relativist distractions to confuse preferences, opinions, or desires with other examples of true harm. If the example we give is indeed universally true, then working backwards we can re-engage a debate that falsely labels a developing fetus as anything other than an innocent human being.
For abortion, the fight begins by validating whether the Declaration of Independence ‘got it right’ when attributing its underlying morality to God, instead of man. The answer to this question carries great implications for not only America, but for all societies under every conceivable social, political, economic or religious system.
Answering it will also bring out the true nature of Islamo-fascism. Where abortionists draw their justification from man-made laws, not a God-based morality, Islamo-fascists accept the fact that God created a common moral code, but claim to have the exclusive right to interpret and enforce it.
The reason that Islamo-fascists view themselves as the ultimate arbiter of morality is obvious. What is less obvious is the insidious way replacing God with man-made “Rights” brings us to the same outcome. Instead of blowing up a school bus full of children and killing them all at once, abortion kills these innocent human beings one-by-one.
Phillip Ellis Jackson, Ph.D.
Comment by Phillip Ellis Jackson | November 2, 2006
Dan –
When I said I didn’t care if I was called a Liberal, that was a rhetorical statement!
In all seriousness, I agree that words do matter insofar as they are used to communicate specific ideas. However what I find distracting is the co-mingling of man-made “truths” with objective Truths.
It is okay to debate whether an idea or concept fits into a particular political/philosophical tradition. This, though, has nothing to do with whether or not an objective Truth has been identified. Take the issue of slavery. You can be completely logical and 100% consistent in your reasoning as Aristotle was, but if you base your analysis on the belief that there are only 4 basic elements (earth, water, air, and fire), and see that family bloodlines are important because most people live and die within miles of where they were born (unless off on a military expedition), then your “logical conclusions” about the natural state of human slavery are flawed. You haven’t discovered an objective Truth. You’ve simply made sense of the world as best you can given your flawed understanding of it.
I’ve never been a fan of pure philosophy for this reason. It’s an exercise in mental masturbation, because it presumes that there is something objectively correct about what, in fact, are nothing more than human assumptions about reality. So what if the Declaration of Independence draws from Tradition A or Philosophy B? The key issue is, are Rights it talks about bestowed by God, or by man? That’s the fundamental question. Everything else is a side issue.
For example, if I answer that Rights are bestowed by God, and you or someone else says that makes me an “enlightened liberal”, so what? Because I’ve been tagged with that when I think I’m actually a traditional Conservative, does it mean that I have to now adopt other “enlightened liberal” philosophies to be consistent, or reject this notion because it may not precisely fit with the definition of a paleo-conservative (as some racist pseudo-intellectual defined it after selectively pulling out bits and pieces of Aristotelian logic?)
Have a look at the trilogy of essays I wrote a while ago dealing with Racism on the Right. Please know that I’m not applying any of this to you, but paleo-conservatism, as defined and allegedly practiced by these self-anointed Defenders of the Faith, is little more than thinly disguised racism. You said that “Paleos believe that part of the problem with modernity is that it suffers from an excess of elaborate theorizing.” I completely agree. The paleos who expressed themselves in the previous essays I spoke of reject any notion of intellectual debate. They couldn’t form a coherent, non-racist-driven thought in their heads to save their life. They use the mantle of past philosophers and pseudo science to justify an undisguised racism. Have a look at one of their websites http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/?p=1090 where they commented on this debate. The Vanguard slogan, by the way, is “No Jews. Just Right.”
Again, please understand that I am not automatically disparaging you or anyone else who may identify with what is presumed to be “paleo-conservative” philosophy. But understand that the practical application of this so-called philosophy is a thinly masked effort to justify racism under the guise of “true conservative thought”. And people who take the bait and argue whether the Declaration of Independence, etc, is tainted by improper philosophical thought fall into the trap of assuming that if a philosophy can be shown to be “pure”, it is “true”, and if it is “tainted”, it must be “flawed”.
This is why I intuitively reject attempts to categorize people based on some purist notion of political philosophy. I routinely employ the term “Liberal” not to relate back to a coherent set of ideas (in fact, there aren’t any modern day Liberal philosophies — just emotions), but as a shorthand way to describe people I just wrote about in my “Random Thoughts” and “Loony Liberal Chronicles” essays. It’s their actions and conclusions about policy options that characterize them, not whether they invoke Locke, or Weaver, or Aristotle, or any other political philosopher or philosophy.
I’d rather look at the ideas that are being debated and apply them to a philosophical or strategic discussion that focuses on the substance of what is being proposed, not its relationship to other philosophical arguments. This means looking first and foremost at what is “True”, and then seeing how closely other philosophies come to expressing or protecting that Truth.
This is why the abortion debate is so screwed up in this country. Abortion opponents suffer from the past actions of well-meaning Christian activists whose actions gave abortion proponents the opening they needed to get rid of any moral constraints on political actions. The “liberalism” of the so-called mainstream Christian community you spoke about today is not a product of political philosophy. It’s part of a secular interest the Catholic Church has in becoming “more relevant” to the world today to keep from losing parishioners. Instead of becoming more relevant by doing the hard thing — i.e. avoiding mixing religious beliefs with universal moral beliefs (the two often coincide, but are not synonymous: praising Jesus is not the same thing as praising God), and stressing aspects of human behavior that lead to productive lives, they took the cheap way out. They got rid of organs and Latin and introduced guitars and English into the service … as if this means something important. These were stupid tactics designed to address a fundamental problem. It speaks volumes about the inanity of Church leaders, but contributes nothing to a debate about proper religious or political philosophy.
Conversely, since there is a universal moral code that can’t be argued away, abortion proponents must play with the language to define a 19 week 6 day old developing baby as a tissue mass, while accepting that a 20 week old bay is a proto-human, and not bestowing full humanity on the object in question until the umbilical cord is severed. More bilge disguised as rational thought.
I’d also suggest that “natural law” has nothing to do with religion. Keeping the Sabbath, for example, is not part of the universal moral code or any natural law. I haven’t been to Church in 30 years except to get married, see someone get married, or see someone get buried. Yet I am adamantly anti-abortion. John Kerry goes to Church every Sunday, and he thinks killing unborn babies is just fine. Do you know what this tells us about Jackson and Kerry in relation to who is better attuned to the “natural law”? Absolutely nothing. But it does speak volumes about who is better attuned to the universal moral code handed down by God.
All of this is a long way of saying that words do matter. But the words should be used to get to the objective Truth of a matter (as I’m trying to do here), rather than content ourselves with analyzing whether Thought A fits Tradition X, and therefore can be called “Y” instead of a spin-off of “Z” — as if any of this really matters.
Regards,
Phil
Comment by Phillip Ellis Jackson | November 2, 2006
Society has taught you to think this way, and you have obeyed.
For all the ways to think, this is what you have carefully chosen.
And there's nothing wrong with that, up front.
"Almost everyone recognizes that people have a greater obligation to those closest to them…" Culturally based assumption number one.
"An essential part of every civilized society is an expectation of certain behavior…" Culturally based assumption number two.
"…the one universal element of every human society is the mother/child bond…no one generally disputes this." Culturally based assumption number three.
Please recognize that the human-populated world is an old place; many ideas and held beliefs have come and gone… Long before you and I existed, there were many others, and their ways of living were not the same. They were not more right or more wrong. Each of us is responsible for ourselves. We must carefully guard our tongues.
It never fails to amaze me that people are confident enough in their beliefs to justify assumptions such as these. Has it never occurred to them that perhaps it is inherently wrong to think that they are justified as such? Especially for the Christian or similar belief-holder, shouldn't they say that they are only justified if it is God Who justifies them? In the Bible it warns against judgement of any kind, for that is the judgement you shall receive… Apparently no one takes this to heart, because we do so when we make such assumptions. I fear for us all.
Love,
Eli
Comment by skyride | November 2, 2006
Dr. Jackson,
I suggest you read the Wikipedia entry on paleoconservatism. It has been updated recently and is quite good. Esp. the top half which is the most recently updated part I believe. I would be interested in what part of it you object to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoconservative
Vanguard is not paleo. They are white nationalist.
Eli,
I suspect paleos recognize that most assumptions are culturally based more so than most. That is why they reject universalistic schemes. But please point out to me any society that does not have expected behaviors and any society that does not recognize the mother child bond.
Comment by Dan Phillips | November 3, 2006
All of this debate about abortion tells me one thing: if you have to justify it (anything), you know it's wrong.
Dr. Jackson: You said, "…the Truth is the Truth independent of whatever categories or classification systems man creates." This in effect says Truth is external to man. However, a great number have fallen for the Great Lie that "what's true for you is not necessarily true for me." Such a claim is so mind-numbingly stupid that it is mystifying how anyone with a functioning brain could fall for it even for a moment.
Keep up the good work.
Comment by sedonaman | November 3, 2006
Dan:
All this reinforces my point. There is endless, and ultimately meaningless debate about what constitutes paleo vs. any other flavor of Conservatism, or any political philosophy for that matter. The people who posted on Vanguard and American Renaissance and other self-proclaimed paleo sites are the same racists (the actual same people) who spouted their bilge in my previous posts defending their positions as "true conservative", true "paleo" thought, etc.
I find this debate meaningless, particularly when the people making the claims insist that they represent a "pure" philosophy untainted by other impure thoughts. What I'd rather focus on is the practical policy implications of their actions. If their frame of reference is race or "noble blood" first and foremost, then they're racists regrdless of what they call themselves, or how "pure" their philosophical reasoning is.
Yes, every society has these behaviors. Elevating them to a philosophy discussion only distorts what they are.
Comment by Phillip Ellis Jackson | November 3, 2006