High on Habermas (for Ryan)

If you can converse, you can think. If you can think, you can question, imagine, critique, contextualize. If you can critique, you can critique your critique; if you can contextualize, you can contextualize the context from which you previously contextualized. To do these things is to experience and participate in the infinite and the universal. This is the basis for freedom.

Chardonnay-swilling elites

-----Original Message-----
From: Edeudo ------
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 10:42 AM
Subject: Democrat or Republican?

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so
many others her age she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat and was
for distribution of all wealth. She felt deeply ashamed that her father was a
rather staunch Republican which she expressed openly. One day she was
challenging her father on his beliefs and his opposition to higher taxes on the
rich & more welfare programs. In the middle of her heart felt diatribe based
upon the lectures she had from her far left professors at her school, he stopped
her and asked her point blank, how she was doing in school. She answered rather
haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to
maintain. That she had to study all the time, never had time to go out and party
like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend and didn't
really have many college friends because of spending all her time studying. That
she was taking a more difficult curriculum. Her father listened and then asked,
"How is your friend Mary." She replied, "Mary is barely getting by," she
continued, "all she has is barely a 2.0 GPA" adding, "and all she takes are easy
classes and she never studies." But to explain further she continued
emotionally, "But Mary is so very popular on campus, college for her is a blast,
she goes to all the parties all the time and very often doesn't even show up for
classes because she is too hung over." Her father then asked his daughter, "Why
don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your 4.0 GPA
and give it to her friend who only had a 2.0." He continued, "That way you will
both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair equal distribution of
GPA." The daughter visibly shocked by the fathers suggestion angrily fired back,
"That wouldn't be fair! I worked really hard for mine, I did without and Mary
has done little or nothing, she played while I worked real hard!" The father
slowly smiled and said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

The subject line of Eduedo's email is misleading: even "two"-party American discourse, as homogenous as it is, shows more understanding of the basic elements of social contracts than does this fatuous "joke."

Distribution and merit are not, nor have ever been, mutually exclusive. In simple terms, this merely reflects the fact that all social contracts involve compromise. The question isn't whether we do or don't compromise or redistribute; that's a naïve question based on a premise which is both false and impossible in any society. ("Society," as it happens, comes from the Latin "socius," -- companion -- which those of you who speak a Romance language will know means, literally, "share bread.") Questions that are *not* literal nonsense include what we distribute, how much we distribute and how we do it. The public services from which Eduedo and the rest of us benefit -- the very fact that we're able to enjoy living in a civilized society at all -- ARE "redistribution." We did nothing to merit the fact that people wealthier than we are subsidize our life -- i.e. are paying more than their share for our police protection, fire, legal system, schools, potable water, &c. The rule of law is the American way, and anyone who thinks it's free hasn't given it a moment's thought. Does anyone really think that the freedom we enjoy is free of cost? Is it really so hard to understand that there are differences between private and public wants and rights? Don't they teach these things in high-school civics classes anymore? Perhaps the fact that the United States has one of the lowest tax burdens of any western nation is having an adverse effect on the quality of our public educational system. That's a shame, since any democracy is only as good as its electorate.

The most pernicious thing about the know-nothing pseudo-libertarianism of Eduedo's joke is that it disguises the redistribution that always already takes place. The false notion that redistribution is optional is the self-delusion that produces bad social policy: indirect, dishonest, inefficient redistribution. It's why we implement indirect taxes -- like lotteries, which are wasteful, regressive and addictive. It's why we run up personal and national debt. It's why we lie to ourselves in countless ways through politicians -- whom, lying to ourselves again, we blame for our dishonesty. Bad government is nothing but the accurate representation of the electorate's own ignorance and cowardice.

But social policies that are based on and that promote dishonesty and self-delusion aren't just bad (inefficient) government; they're contrary to the principles upon which not only ours but every civilized society is founded. Note that the above paragraphs address redistribution only in terms of self-interest: i.e., the extent to which we benefit from the social contract. In addition to this, obviously, there's the possibility -- these days, so frail -- that there might even be situations in which we have a moral obligation to share. We certainly teach our children that they have such obligations. To the extent that there are ever such obligations -- and there might not be, but if there are -- then the "rejection" of the social contract wouldn't simply be self-delusion, which is merely self-destructive, but cupidity, which is destructive to both self *and* others and which, for two thousand years in western ethics and religion, has been seen as the number-one sin ("Radix malorum est cupiditas").

Alas: in these postmodern times, it's very fashionable to be self-indulgent, irresponsible and morally relativistic, and it's seen as terribly conservative to speak publicly about things like honesty, gratitude, responsibility and morality. But if you find yourself sympathetic to such fusty old notions, I'd say: welcome to civilized society.