What I Really Think about Libertarianism

 

My libertarian friends may be surprised to hear this, but my respect for libertarianism has grown quite a lot since my introduction to Ricochet two years ago. Admittedly, my estimation at the time was pretty low. I had lots of libertarian undergraduates, and I also encountered a handful of professors and grad students with broadly libertarian views, so I was well familiar with that “I’m-conservative-but-not-a-moral-nag” snobbery. That bothered me only a little bit. My real reasons for dismissing libertarians were twofold.

First, libertarianism struck me as reactionary in broad sense. It presents itself as a universally applicable theory about the relationship between the individual to the state, but on that score, I found Ayn Rand far less insightful than Thomas Aquinas, Plato or Aristotle. Her influence, I saw, related to more idiosyncratic conditions of her time: the rise of the administrative state. That was, I supposed, a real problem in our time, but in historical terms it was still contingent; not every society has these same problems. As a political theory, then, it seemed to me that libertarianism drew unjustifiably broad principles on the basis of historically distinctive challenges.

Second, libertarianism seemed morally lazy to me. You can see this especially clearly when you watch undergraduates learning ethics. We spend a lot of time working through the ins and outs of an Aristotelian-type virtue ethics. That means we’re discussing lots of detailed questions about what the good life involves and what it takes for human beings to be excellent. Some of the students get into it. Others become irritated by all the nitty-gritty details and also by the general sense that a virtue-based ethics reaches into every nook and cranny of their lives. It has things to say about their dietary and sexual habits, what they read, what they watch on television, and what they do with their friends. Of course we’re only talking about ethics here and not politics; nobody’s suggesting that we hire virtue police to ensure that everyone behaves well. But even on that score, some people yearn to escape from all the complication, and to find some area of life where the only ethical mandate is, “do whatever you want just as long as you’re not bothering anybody.”

Then we get to modern moral philosophy, and you can watch the relief spreading over their faces. We knew it didn’t have to be that complicated! Being good can’t possibly require us to wrangle with all those messy details! This is the appeal of utilitarianism, for example. If you want to know what to do, just add up the relevant pleasures and pains associated with the various alternatives, and see what makes people happier. There’s no need for all this complicated stuff about virtues and human nature and detailed analyses of the common good. And on an individual level, the fact that an activity makes you happy is a good enough reason to do it, provided of course that it doesn’t make someone else sad.

Libertarianism is not explicitly an ethical theory, but for many it has a similar sort of appeal. It dispenses with troubling moral and political questions by pushing them all under the convenient heading of “not the state’s business.” Undergraduates love this. It gives them that air-clearing feeling that they’re craving after wandering through the intricacies of Aristotelian moral theory. It feels to them like that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and friends come out of the woods and look out over shining fields of poppies. Free at last!

Like the poppies, though, this shining simplicity is deceptive. One way to realize this is by reflecting on the complexity of the concept of “freedom”. From what do we need to be free? For what do we want to be free? When humans live together in society, one person’s exercise of freedom can obviously impinge on another’s in a wide variety of ways. My neighbor blasts his music at top volume, and I can’t sleep. Another family up the street starts feeding the squirrels and before I know it my porch pumpkins have fallen victim to the little monsters as well. Advertisers want to put up pornographic billboards, but then I’ll have to drive by them every time I grocery shop. My state legalizes pot, and now I don’t like going to the local park because I don’t want my kids running through clouds of sweet-smelling smoke.

Now, I said that my respect for libertarians has increased. That’s true. Some of them have arguments far more sophisticated I had encountered before, and some are extremely interested in promoting the good through private means. They persuaded me to take the problem of administrative bloat far more seriously. Their relentless focus on size-of-state questions has led them to some very astute insights on the nature of the technocratic state, and they make excellent watchdogs (or gadflies?) against the constant temptation to take advantage of administrative bloat. But in the end, I think my two original criticisms still stand. They’re enormously clever about suggesting ways for us to accomplish communal projects without the help of the state. That can be quite useful in its way. But they’re still elevating a theory of government beyond its contextual importance. And they still provide a large haven for the morally lazy at precisely the time when we need to be morally energetic.

Advances in science and technology have massively increased the state’s power to rule us in every minute detail of our lives. It’s also increased our ability to hector and impede one another. Advances in technology allow us to spy on one another every minute, to redistribute wealth on a massive scale without sending a tax collector door to door, and to manipulate life (plant, animal, human) on a very fundamental level. We’re wrestling now with new and sometimes terrifying questions about justice and obligation and what kind of society we want to build. Libertarianism seems like something of a haven in this storm, because its prescriptions seem so fundamental and principled, and because it doesn’t demand consensus on most of these challenging questions. It seems like a good out.

But ultimately, that’s just a dodge. Small-state principles can’t save us from working through these issues. Suppose we could achieve political victory on a “morality-free” limited-government platform, legalizing drugs and prostitution and abandoning any efforts to recognize traditional marriage or protect the unborn. None of that would deconstruct the technocratic state. Meanwhile, social breakdown would continue apace, and eventually (probably rather soon) people would cry out for government to step up its efforts to save them from themselves. We’d end up with more statism than ever. But actually, I’m not even very worried about that, because I don’t think such a platform has any chance of winning the country back in any case. If we want to win America back, we have to show real insight into the problems they’re actually facing right now. Americans think that the GOP has failed to understand or “care about” them, and to some extent they’re right. We haven’t given them any good answers to the deep social and spiritual problems that have arisen in our modernist, technocratic, democratic state.

We need to return to core principles, but not Ayn Rand’s. She doesn’t have the insights we need at this juncture. Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas all reflected on a much more sophisticated level on the relationship between humans and their neighbors and their communities and the state. That is the level of complex, careful analysis that we need to diagnose and respond to these intense challenges. And insofar as I’m hard on libertarians, it’s not because I think they have nothing useful to contribute to this effort. They do have things to contribute. But often I see conservatism’s relentless focus on small-state advocacy as something of an obstacle to the kind of conversations we really need to be having right now. That’s not because I doubt that we need to shrink the state. It’s because I don’t think we can do it without answering the bigger questions about human excellence and human community, family, life, and the complex relationship between political freedom and virtue. And regrettably, libertarians frequently use their small-state principles as a kind of excuse to avoid those conversations.

Mike H asked yesterday: what do social conservatives want? I would answer: human excellence, happiness, virtue and a thriving society. Those are my highest goals. And while I do have some interest in the thriving of the state, that’s only about the eighth or ninth question on my list of concerns. 

Published in General
Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 303 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    Tuck: The biggest problem is that Americans’ don’t believe the Republican party is the party of small government.  The Bushes killed that idea.

     Wow, I just realized it’s been 26 years since there’s been a non-Bush Republican President.

    • #271
  2. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    Tuck:

    Merina Smith: Abstract principles such as “smaller government” don’t win elections, even though people generally agree with the idea.

    Rachel Lu: But, present evidence is, most people aren’t too worried about those things.

    You must be using the Aristotelian definition of “most”…

    Majorities in U.S. View Gov’t as Too Intrusive and Powerful: Independents largely side with Republicans in denouncing big government

    In U.S., 65% Dissatisfied With How Gov’t System Works: Republicans and independents most likely to be dissatisfied

    Record High in U.S. Say Big Government Greatest Threat: Now 72% say it is greater threat than big business or big labor

    You’ll notice those are massive majorities. Reagan managed to campaign on a small-government platform and won big. Merina saying it can’t be done is very counter-factual.

    The biggest problem is that Americans’ don’t believe the Republican party is the party of small government. The Bushes killed that idea.

     It is worth noting as well that Republicans hold almost 60% of the governorships in the country.  The message is fine.  But as I said, we need the right candidate.

    • #272
  3. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    KC Mulville:

    I’m not the least bit surprised, by the way, that a discussion on how libertarians handle the concept of moral values should eventually get around (after 250 comments or so) to focusing on the basis of moral values themselves … rather than swapping political suspicions between SoCons and libertarians.

    Maybe Socrates was on to something …

    Rachel writes posts that are pretty obviously designed to provoke libertarians into defending their positions.  And we tend to defend our positions based on moral principles.  So, yep.

    • #273
  4. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    Tom Meyer, Ed.:

    One possible way to look at this is that there are three competing conjectures:

    1. That morality is revealed;
    2. That morality is discovered; and
    3. That morality is created.

    The latter may start in a similar position (e.g., they favor some degree of experimentation and tend to be skeptical of traditional religious claims) but they diverge quickly in practice. For all the former two start in different places, they arrive at similar conclusions.

     Tom, did you really mean “diverge”?  It seems to me that all three camps reach similar conclusions.

    • #274
  5. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    genferei:

    Rachel Lu: What’s wrong with the Tea Party message? Well, start here: America hates the Tea Party. Their popular appeal is through the floor.

    Gallup Tea Party

     Seems to me that 24% is pretty substantial for a voting bloc.  Blacks are 12% and they get a lot of what they want.  The NRA is much smaller and yet the second amendment has been finally re-established as an individual right (actually, no thanks to the NRA).  I think 24% is pretty darned good.

    • #275
  6. Tuck Inactive
    Tuck
    @Tuck

    Rachel Lu: The Wilson administration? Wilson was the worst kind of liberal progressive. He surely didn’t understand virtue in the least.

     This is exactly the problem with your lack of understanding about modern Liberalism, and where it went wrong.  You’re unwittingly making the same arguments that Wilson made.  That’s what many of us find so alarming about your position.

    From GG’s link: “Wilson saw politics as a divine vocation–to be a statesman was an expression of Christian service, he believed, a use of power for the sake of principles or moral goals. Wilson saw the “key to success in politics” as “the pursuit of Perfection through hard work and the fulfillment of ideals.” Politics would allow him to spread spiritual enlightenment to the American people.”

    Or this: “The social reform ethos of turn-of-the-century Progressivism and Wilsonian foreign policy was self-consciously intended to restore the national virtue that the materialistic degeneracy of late nineteenth-century American had tainted.”

    Or here:

    “John Maynard Keynes, the world renowned economist, who remarked upon meeting President Wilson at the 1919 Paris Peace Summit, “thought Wilson’s thinking about the world and international affairs did not rest upon a secular ideology or definition of national interest. It lay instead in his personal religious faith, a faith so absolute that it determined not only what he thought, but more importantly how he thought” (Magee, 2008). Many scholars have argued it was the gospel so taught to Wilson from his father and mother that led him to the ideas of developing a new world order based on the concepts of Moralism and collective security. Author Arthur Link feels it is was Wilson’s religious upbringing that guided his foreign policy views, “ This idealism meant for him to subordination of immediate goals and material interests to superior ethical standards and the exaltation of moral and spiritual purposes” (Link, 1957).”

    What you’re proposing to fight Progressivism with, is Progressivism.  No thanks.  Republicans have been trying that experiment for 100 years: it’s a failure.

    • #276
  7. Tom Meyer Member
    Tom Meyer
    @tommeyer

    Larry3435:  Tom, did you really mean “diverge”?  It seems to me that all three camps reach similar conclusions.

     Nope.  I meant that the latter two become more dissimilar the closer you look.  The idea that morality is “created” usually leads to relativism; the idea that it’s “discovered” means its objective.

    • #277
  8. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Tom Meyer, Ed.:

    One possible way to look at this is that there are three competing conjectures:

    1. That morality is revealed;
    2. That morality is discovered; and
    3. That morality is created.

    The latter may start in a similar position (e.g., they favor some degree of experimentation and tend to be skeptical of traditional religious claims) but they diverge quickly in practice. For all the former two start in different places, they arrive at similar conclusions.

    I am not sure how dissimilar revealed and discovered morality are, actually.

    After all, religious revelation, if you believe it to be a genuine phenomenon, is a discovery of sorts.

    If you consider communion with God to be an ordinary part of human experience, what humans discover during that communion is what God reveals to them.

    • #278
  9. Tom Meyer Member
    Tom Meyer
    @tommeyer

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake: I am not sure how dissimilar revealed and discovered morality are, actually. After all, religious revelation, if you believe it to be a genuine phenomenon, is a discovery of sorts.

    I’m not sure we’re disagreeing.  Again, I think they sound very different in theory, but operate very similarly in theory.

    • #279
  10. Tuck Inactive
    Tuck
    @Tuck

    Here’s my Occam’s Razor theory of morality:

    Moral behavior is that behavior to which we hope others will subject us.

    Thus we hope others will not subject us to murder, theft, or rape.  We reward good behavior by positive reinforcement: calling it “good” or “moral”, and including such people in our society.

    See the rise and fall of chivalry for how this worked in practice.

    • #280
  11. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Tom Meyer, Ed.:

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake: I am not sure how dissimilar revealed and discovered morality are, actually. After all, religious revelation, if you believe it to be a genuine phenomenon, is a discovery of sorts.

    I’m not sure we’re disagreeing. Again, I think they sound very different in theory, but operate very similarly in theory.

    I’m just observing that it might make sense to collapse the three categories (revealed, discovered, created) into two (discovered and created), with “revealed” being a special instance of “discovered” (unless, of course, you believe any revealed insight into human morality are deliberate human creations, in which case they’d go under the heading “created”).

    Anyhow, it’s a minor quibble. Even discovery and creation can be hard to tell apart in practice. I just wonder whether there’s anything special about revelation that makes it neither discovery nor creation (and being a theist, I naturally think of revelation as discovery).

    • #281
  12. Owen Findy Inactive
    Owen Findy
    @OwenFindy

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake: After all, religious revelation, if you believe it to be a genuine phenomenon, is a discovery of sorts.

    Absolutely, if one does.  Since I don’t, e.g., I can’t honestly consider the phenomenon of divine revelation any kind of discovery.  Tom’s list looks pretty close to a mathematical partition (into 3 disjoint subsets).

    • #282
  13. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Owen Findy:

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake: After all, religious revelation, if you believe it to be a genuine phenomenon, is a discovery of sorts.

    Absolutely, if one does. Since I don’t, e.g., I can’t honestly consider the phenomenon of divine revelation any kind of discovery.

    But since you don’t believe religious experience to be a genuine phenomenon, wouldn’t you categorize revealed morality as a form of created morality?

    Tom’s list looks pretty close to a mathematical partition (into 3 disjoint subsets).

    It would be nice if it were so. I don’t think the boundaries are clear enough to yield something nearly disjoint, though.

    Setting revealed morality aside (since it’s either discovered or created, depending on how you look at it), the processes of discovery and creation are too intertwined to make a clear separation between the two. Doing science is discovery, but it feels so much like creativity that it’s hard to say creativity isn’t involved. Likewise, composing music is called creative, but feels so much like discovery that it’s hard to say discovery isn’t involved.

    The categories are useful, in other words, but not, I think, nearly disjoint.

    • #283
  14. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    anonymous:

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake: Doing science is discovery, but it feels so much like creativity that it’s hard to say creativity isn’t involved. Likewise, composing music is called creative, but feels so much like discovery that it’s hard to say discovery isn’t involved.

    And mathematicians differ on whether they are creating new abstract objects by manipulating symbols or discovering things which are “out there” which would be discovered eventually by alien mathematicians with nothing in common with human biology, evolutionary history, or intellectual and cultural heritage. The mathematicians I’ve known mostly come down on the side of discovery, and I wonder whether even some of the most ardent advocates of social construction don’t find Platonist thoughts creeping in late at night.

    If someone as low down on the mathematical pecking order as I am is allowed to have an opinion, I say it’s both.

    We humans have to respond to the world “out there” in order to survive. It’d be rather weird if none of our creative acts reflected what was really “out there”.

    • #284
  15. Gödel's Ghost Inactive
    Gödel's Ghost
    @GreatGhostofGodel

    anonymous:

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake: Doing science is discovery, but it feels so much like creativity that it’s hard to say creativity isn’t involved. Likewise, composing music is called creative, but feels so much like discovery that it’s hard to say discovery isn’t involved.

    And mathematicians differ on whether they are creating new abstract objects by manipulating symbols or discovering things which are “out there” which would be discovered eventually by alien mathematicians with nothing in common with human biology, evolutionary history, or intellectual and cultural heritage. The mathematicians I’ve known mostly come down on the side of discovery, and I wonder whether even some of the most ardent advocates of social construction don’t find Platonist thoughts creeping in late at night.

     There’s a charming comment by Guy Steele, whose name I’m guessing you’re familiar with, in the foreword to “Scheme and the Art of Programming,” IIRC, that goes like this:

    “When Gerry Sussman and I invented, or should I say discovered, Scheme…”

    At first I thought Dr. Steele was merely being modest. But the more I thought about it, the less I believed that’s the case, and the more I believed he was simply being literal. Scheme is deliberately based on the lambda calculus. The lambda calculus, the SK combinator calculus, and the Universal Turing Machine are the three great foundational computing systems, all proven equivalent and able to compute anything that can be computed. So I now think Dr. Steele meant:

    “When Gerry Sussman and I figured out how to present the lambda calculus as a usable programming language without mutilating it beyond recognition…”

    I also don’t doubt that Dr. Steele is convinced that any intelligence with any, e.g. interstellar travel capability would “have” the lambda calculus, because it is foundational and two other systems are provably equivalent to it. As Alan Kay said about John McCarthy’s original LISP manual’s exposition of APPLY and EVAL, it’s the Maxwell’s equations of programming!

    • #285
  16. Owen Findy Inactive
    Owen Findy
    @OwenFindy

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake: But since you don’t believe religious experience to be a genuine phenomenon, wouldn’t you categorize revealed morality as a form of created morality?

    I guess you’re right, but then “created” would seem to need two types:  maybe “unconscious” and “conscious”, or “unknowing” and “knowing”, or “intuitive” and “discursive”.  The first would be from the mind of a believer (this could be some modern believer or, e.g., the person who was inspired to have written the Ten Commandments) who believed that the moral precept that they perceived to have spontaneously popped into their heads was from God, but, in reality, was produced unconsciously in their mind; the second would be deliberately and consciously constructed by, say, a philosopher of ethics.

    • #286
  17. Owen Findy Inactive
    Owen Findy
    @OwenFindy

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake: Setting revealed morality aside (since it’s either discovered or created, depending on how you look at it), the processes of discovery and creation are too intertwined to make a clear separation between the two. Doing science is discovery, but it feels so much like creativity that it’s hard to say creativity isn’t involved. Likewise, composing music is called creative, but feels so much like discovery that it’s hard to say discovery isn’t involved. The categories are useful, in other words, but not, I think, nearly disjoint.

    I’d have to agree with you here, as well.

    • #287
  18. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Revealed v. discovered v. created … 

    I had one course specifically on the philosophy of mathematics, and several courses that touched on it (because I’m a big fan of WVO Quine). Our current discussions about the reality of morals remind me of the debate about the reality of numbers, and that course in philosophy of mathematics … and for some reason, my head is beginning to hurt.

    For anyone interested in philosophy of math ….

    • #288
  19. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    I guess I sort of understand the idea of revealed morality or discovered morality, if the morality is being revealed by the one true God, or the discovery is of the one true morality that exists independent of men.  But where are all those other “revealed” moralities and “discovered” moralities coming from?  How do you “discover” something that doesn’t actually exist?  Who is “revealing” morality if the God being worshiped is a false and non-existent God?

    • #289
  20. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Larry3435:

    …or the discovery is of the one true morality that exists independent of men.

    Suppose there were such a thing as discovering insights into the moral nature of humanity. Would that count as discovered morality?

    It wouldn’t have to be independent of humans, since it would be a property of human nature. But couldn’t it be called something we discover about human nature?

    • #290
  21. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake:

    Larry3435:

    …or the discovery is of the one true morality that exists independent of men.

    Suppose there were such a thing as discovering insights into the moral nature of humanity. Would that count as discovered morality?

    It wouldn’t have to be independent of humans, since it would be a property of human nature. But couldn’t it be called something we discover about human nature?

    That, I think, makes perfect sense.  But since humans are not all the same, there would be some natural variability there.  I don’t think that is what these “objective morality” folks are getting at.  They want something that is just “out there,” eternal and unchanging, to escape that dreaded “moral relativism.”

    • #291
  22. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    Larry3435: #256 “So what makes the objective law “objective” is that it is consistent over time and across cultures? Does that mean that things that I consider to be immoral, but which have a long tradition in many cultures throughout history, are not objectively immoral?” 

    You are doing the straw man arguments again.  State what you want differently.  For instance, lets pick an item: slavery.  Slavery has come in different flavors in different eras, but it is in the Christian West that a stand was taken.  The British decided to outlaw slavery under the effort made by Wilberforce which took him several decades to get through parliament.  Once that happened the magnificent British Navy was dispatched to ports known to handle the slave trade and make an offer: End slavery or else.

    In the US it took a civil war and the deaths of about a half million Americans to bring legal slavery to an end.

    Why so long?  For most people, loyalty and the recognition of humanity ended with the clan, the tribe, the nation.  Others were outside the people and had correspondingly less rights if any.

    • #292
  23. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    Larry3435: #256 “Does that mean that things that I consider to be immoral, but which have a long tradition in many cultures throughout history, are not objectively immoral? Things like torture, slavery, polygamy, child marriage, the death penalty, wars of conquest, treating women as property, human sacrifice, etc.?”

    There are moral considerations which properly belong to the individual; then there are moral considerations which belong to the ruler or to elected officials who carry the brunt of those decisions.  Slavery in this country, which pre-dated our existence, is one such consideration.

    If you were the president and knew that someone had info on a nuke buried in a major US city, would you torture that individual into providing that info?

    Polygamy has a history which started long before you had any moral qualms about it. Was it the result of a shortage of men?  No idea.  Is it outlawed in all civilizations? Nope.  

    Some crimes are worthy of death as the only proper response to the crime.

    Since the US does not wage wars of conquest, this would seem to be another straw man argument.

    If abortion is human sacrifice, then I would agree with you.

    • #293
  24. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    Larry3435

    The last item in the original response to you noted that the moral law existed and that it was contravened (broken).  We know about murder yet we murder.  We know about the marriage covenant yet we commit adultery.  We know about property rights but we steal.  

    The problem is not the moral law, it is us.  The moral law does not break itself, it is we who break it.  One might merely look in a mirror and ask one’s self if one has ever hurt someone who 1) did not deserve it; or b) responded in kind (an eye for an eye) but much beyond what the original offense was about.

    If like me you are ashamed of some of what you have done, then somewhere between your conscience and the moral law you are aware that you are wrong.

    More, you are also aware that you cannot go backward and undo the evil that you did.  At best you can apologize and make restitution, which does not undo what was done but does put one in the position of admitting one’s fault.

    Admitting one’s faults is a step in the right direction.

    • #294
  25. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    @ Donald Todd #298-300,

    Wow, it took you a lot of words to not answer my question.  I asked about your assertion that objective morality can be determined because it has been universally followed across time and cultures.

    So once I again I ask, since slavery was widely considered both moral and lawful through most human history, does that mean that you believe that slavery is not a violation of the objective moral law?

    Telling me that a lot of people fought against slavery in the 19th century is hardly an answer.

    • #295
  26. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    Donald Todd:

    If you were the president and knew that someone had info on a nuke buried in a major US city, would you torture that individual into providing that info?

    Of course.  But then, I’m not the one who is claiming there is an objective moral law.  And the issue is not whether we sometimes break the moral law.  The issue is how we recognize the moral law.  I think it is you who is carting a wheelbarrow full of strawmen here.

    Let’s be clear where we are here.  I asked how you “objectivists” determine the moral law.  You answered:  “The moral law is expressed in many cultures in many lands which have little to no contact with one another over the various eras on this planet.”  I am challenging you to defend your answer.  Because by your test, slavery, polygamy, human sacrifice, and the other things I mentioned, are not immoral.  By my test, they are immoral and always have been, even when they were widely accepted.  But we’re talking about your test here.

    • #296
  27. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    Larry3435:

    “@ Donald Todd #298-300,

    Wow, it took you a lot of words to not answer my question. I asked about your assertion that objective morality can be determined because it has been universally followed across time and cultures.

    So once I again I ask, since slavery was widely considered both moral and lawful through most human history, does that mean that you believe that slavery is not a violation of the objective moral law?

    Telling me that a lot of people fought against slavery in the 19th century is hardly an answer.”

    Do I think slavery is acceptable vis-a-vis the moral law?  No.

    • #297
  28. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    Larry3435 re #302  “By my test, they are immoral and always have been, even when they were widely accepted. But we’re talking about your test here.”

    No.  We are responding to your initial assertion.  You have determined that you are the arbiter of what is right and wrong.  There are things you are against.  We are also responding to something else you have decided.  You have decided to pit yourself against history, with its flaws, rather than doing a self examination.  That is you are thinking like a liberal, picking targets.

    • #298
  29. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    Larry3435 re #302 “By my test, they are immoral and always have been, even when they were widely accepted. But we’re talking about your test here.”

    No. We are responding to your initial assertion. You have determined that you are the arbiter of what is right and wrong. There are things you are against. We are also responding to something else you have decided. You have decided to pit yourself against history, with its flaws, rather than doing a self examination. That is you are thinking like a liberal, picking targets.

    • #299
  30. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    Donald Todd:

    Larry3435 re #302 ”By my test, they are immoral and always have been, even when they were widely accepted. But we’re talking about your test here.”

    No. We are responding to your initial assertion. You have determined that you are the arbiter of what is right and wrong. There are things you are against. We are also responding to something else you have decided. You have decided to pit yourself against history, with its flaws, rather than doing a self examination. That is you are thinking like a liberal, picking targets.

     If you don’t want to defend your assertion, I won’t bother asking you to do it again.  It is you who said history is the proof of objective morality.  And where the history includes things like slavery, yes I am glad to pit myself against it.

    Also, I am a liberal, in the classical meaning of the word.  But I imagine what you really meant to call me was a Leftist Utopian Socialist – i.e., the people who have misappropriated the word “liberal.”  An accusation which is, not to put to fine a point on it, incredibly stupid.  Sorry for any CoC violation there.

    • #300
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.