LEFT LINGUISTIFICATION:

The anti-liberal (Joshua Glenn, 1/4/2004, Boston Globe)

IDEAS: You disagree with the proposition that all human beings have an equal moral status, and so possess the same fundamental rights. But what about the practical argument that a world with equal human rights is a less dangerous one?

[John] KEKES [outspoken conservative professor of philosophy at the State University of New York, Albany]: People may have equal moral status at birth, but what they do when they come to maturity clearly affects that status. War, torture, oppression, discrimination, poverty, terrorism, and the drug trade are widespread in the world, and the only way to stop evil activities is to curtail the rights of evildoers. No one can reasonably believe that murderers and their victims, or terrorists and their hostages, have the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

IDEAS: Many liberal theorists would argue that evil activities are a result, not a cause, of social injustice -- so social justice ought to be a top priority.

KEKES: The belief that social justice is the most important political value is dangerous because its single-minded pursuit often makes it incompatible with the pursuit of other values -- freedom, prosperity, order, security, criminal justice, and so forth -- that are just as important. It is a dangerous mistake to privilege equality at the expense of everything else.

The Absurdity of Egalitarianism: an excerpt from The Illusions of Egalitarianism (John Kekes, 1/26/04, Front Page)

Suppose that egalitarianism is seen for what it is: an absurd attempt to deny in the name of justice that people should be held responsible for their actions and treated as they deserve based on their merits or demerits. A nagging doubt remains. It is undeniable that there are in our society innocent victims of misfortune and injustice. Their inequality is not their fault, they are not responsible for it, and they do not deserve to be in a position of inequality. The emotional appeal of egalitarianism is that it recognizes the plight of these people and proposes ways of helping them. Counting on the compassion of decent people, egalitarians then charge their society with injustice for ignoring the suffering of innocent victims.

There are several things that need to be said in response to this frequently heard charge. First, anyone committed to justice will want people to have what they deserve and not to have what they do not deserve. Innocent victims do not deserve to suffer, yet they do. A decent society should do what it can to alleviate their suffering. But this has nothing to do with equality or egalitarianism. What is objectionable is not that some people have less than others. It is not unjust that millionaires have less than billionaires. What is objectionable is that some people, through no fault of their own, lack the basic necessities of nutrition, health care, education, housing, and so forth. They are our fellow citizens, and because of that we feel compassion for their plight.   

Second, the plight of innocent victims who lack the basic necessities is not ignored. On the contrary, they are being helped by their fellow citizens who are taxpayers. Take a family of four with an annual income of $70,000. They are likely to pay about $25,000 in federal, state, property, and school taxes. Approximately 60 percent of the federal and state budget is spent on social programs. Thus roughly 60 percent of the family’s annual taxes, that is, $15,000, is spent on social programs. The family, therefore, contributes over 20 percent of their income, more than one dollar out every five, to helping others, including the innocent victims. This is more than enough to acquit them of the charge of shamefully ignoring the plight of their fellow citizens that egalitarians baselessly level against them.

Third, the relentless egalitarian propaganda eagerly parroted by the media would have us believe that our society is guilty of dooming people to a life of poverty. What this ignores is the unprecedented success of our society in having less than 13 percent of the population live below a very generously defined poverty level and 87 percent above it. The typical ratio in past societies is closer to the reverse. It is a cause for celebration, not condemnation, that for the first time in history a very large segment of the population has escaped poverty. If egalitarians had a historical perspective, they would be in favor of the political and economic system that has made this possible, rather than advocating absurd policies that undermine it.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Left ideology is that they've redefined the word "justice" so that it no longer means that you get what you deserve based on your own merits but instead that everyone is entitled to the same regardless of merit.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 26, 2004 3:21 PM