A Very Tocquevillian Thought Today

I just had a wonderful thought about the role of government in our society. I know, you're thinking to yourself that a man who can have a wonderful thought about such a thing must be either exceedingly dull or perhaps somewhat odd, but follow me anyway. Since the election of our current President, government control of things has become a central topic of conversation. What should government control, and what should it not? To what extent should government be allowed to control these things and under what Constitutional doctrine? First let me start by stating that I don't tend to view the political spectrum about the Left/Right axis when talking about the scope and power of government. Instead, it's much more useful to view the spectrum which is itself perpendicular to that of the Left/Right; the Individualist/Collectivist spectrum. Let me further state that I tend to approach this spectrum from the Individualist end being that Liberty and the security thereof, I believe, are the highest Ideals to which a man and his government can aspire.

My wonderful thought is this: Government should be allowed to control only that which is uncontrollable by smaller units of society. For instance I cannot defend myself against the aggression of a foreign power, neither can my city, nor my county or state. In this case we cooperatively agree to bestow this monopoly upon the Federal government because it is the smallest unit that can accomplish the task. Likewise with the Space Program. There are perhaps a handful of other things which require a monopoly of control, but if we are to keep ourselves from drifting too close to the collectivist end of the spectrum where individual Liberty cannot be, I think you'll agree that there aren't that many more areas that require a Federal monopoly. Does the Federal government need to control education? It didn't until 1979 and people were very well educated up to that point by their local school boards.

Let's try some controversy: How about Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid? Health Care in general? Do these programs have to be administered by the Federal government? That they are administered so clearly creates a citizenry dependent upon the Federal government ahead of the State; a clear violation of the Constitution via the 10th amendment. A violation only if the State governments were singularly capable of running these programs. Is that the case? Could provisions for retirement be made and administered by the States alone? Why not? What would be the challenges? Are they insurmountable? What about Medicare? I am convinced that this program, more than any other, could become the miracle of our society if we would devolve it to the States.

What's happened is our laziness has caused us to only pursue these things at the Federal level because forging workable legislation to create and maintain them at lower levels of government might be messy. What we're left with instead is just a mess. Instead I believe what should happen is that the States together in Congress should formulate mandates instead of legislation for those things which are not best accomplished by the Federal government. Then they should leave it to the States to accomplish those things. Unfortunately for such a situation to become reality, the States, each as a whole, should be given the power to voice their concerns and opinions on behalf of themselves as States rather than an aggregate of citizens. We had that once. In fact it was written into the Constitution until the 17th Amendment wrote it out. That one act more than any other has insured that this country will not continue forever as a Republic. With it there is no longer a check against the central government overwhelming the States and turning them into merely administrative districts which are then powerless to hold back the centralisation of power in the only remaining legitimate government. Actually, since the Supreme Court is the only body that recognizes any of the States' sovereignty above that of the citizens, I think they may be all that stands between the Republic of the United States of America and the Democratic Bureaucracy of America!

Insight From Nov. 3rd

Adrian:

Arguing morality with an atheist; it's like arguing with a blind man that blue is good and yellow is bad.

Doug:

"Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt.""

-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) and advocate of Utilitarianism, perhaps the dominate normative ethical theory.

Adrian:

‎"Thou shalt not" implies that "thou shalt" anything else. To be only permitted to do that which is expressly permitable is an exceedingly restrictive, legalistic approach to life. The alternative frees us to act wither we will. Saying that a man can only walk on the sidewalk begs the question about walking in the grass. To say that man may only NOT walk in the road frees him to wander the forest path of his own volition.

Doug:

Plato would agree. And he predates Christ by about 400 years. Kant advocates for an objective good that has nothing to do with any theological commitments. Both of these are objective goods, that have nothing to do with any theological presuppositions.

Wilson:

As a non-Christian, I have to respectfully disagree with your argument. Obviously when one gets into specifics I have differing opinions, but overall I adhere to the same moral code laid out by Christians. What it all boils down to is being good to other people.

Adrian:

What then is the source of your moral code?

“I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but by it I see everything else.” -C.S. Lewis

This statement is true for any other belief system. Before you can proclaim anything to be good, you must presuppose that the thing possesses a qualitative nature to begin with, that the nature of those qualities can be identified or equated with goodness, itself a virtue of completely unidentifiable origin; unidentifiable from a deterministic standpoint anyway. What I'm saying is that to believe in good or bad, right or wrong, you're believing in something that is necessarily transcendent to our capacity to understand the world as animal creatures. The breadth of the thoughts we have, the depth and color of the feelings we feel, the pain and ecstasy infused in the passions we hold cannot be adequately explained by any system of understanding that does not include transcendency. Nothing about dominating another human being in a physical contest should make me yearn to roar victorious. Nothing about suffering the agony of the crag should make me want to write a song about the ascent. Nothing about a sunset should make me want to paint a picture. In fact, nothing outside of instinct should make me want anything apart from food, sex, and warmth.

The incorporation of belief into a person's spectrum of understanding is the light Mr. Lewis was referring to that allows us to discern the qualities of reality rather than merely the quantities. One could record tomes describing in precise quantitative measures the exact composition of the world's greatest painting and never produce a sigh; the wavelengths and meter of the world's greatest drama and never produce a tear. Without belief there is a wide swath of human experience that is inaccessible to understanding. To actually suffer from this condition would be to lobotomize your own humanity. However, most folks go on living these experiences without seeking to understand them; yet they are able to have them. They can't help it. They're human.

Really my atheist isn't blind, he just doesn't want to open his eyes.

Doug:

I understand Dr. Lewis to be saying that he sees the world through the eye of Christianity. That is not a bad thing at all, in fact it can be a rather good thing. However, it is not the only good thing. Mill would advocate on behalf of an objective good which all peoples could adhere, that is, the greatest good (measured by well-being) for the greatest number of people. And Kant would say the only good is a good will, which is measured by conformity to the categorical imperative. And Plato would point to his Form of the Good, against which all other good things participate. So to say that Lewis's good is the only good seems short sighted, given the company he has with competing conceptions of good.

Adrian:

An objective good? To that I can only ask for dry water!

I never said that it was the only good, just that to author good is beyond the prerogative of man, and that to perceive its being requires an understanding of that which is beyond the physical. Whatever that is has been left to our own discernment.

Doug:

So you agree that good does not have to be defined in terms of Christianity, as in your first post?

Adrian:

I never said that it did in my first post. You made that assumption.

Doug:

Arguing morality with an atheist; it's like arguing with a blind man that blue is good and yellow is bad. You were not refering to some sort of God, presumably the Christian God, since you then quote Lewis?

Adrian:

Your presumption. I like Lewis' statement. It's very visual and illustrative like the way I think, but its Christian-ness was not why I chose it.

I believe that good is authored by God. I believe that we've been granted the ability to make up our own minds about God. I think that's what He meant by the "...created in His own image..." part. I don't think it's acceptable for me to impune another man for not believing in God or for believing in some other god. He's exercising his "god-ness" in doing so. I can not agree with him, and I can try to convince him otherwise, but I don't have the right to pass judgement on his decision. I believe that this man may perceive goodness by virtue of his humanity, but like I said, I believe that God authored goodness and that certain things don't hold that quality.

Doug:

That sounds like a statement of faith, then, and not a statement of reason. I'm not necessarily denegrating faith, other than as reletively weak evidence for any substantive claim about the nature of the world. Does objective good exist? Some, like Plato, Kant, Moore, and others have said so, and the best support I can give for it is that if it isn't objective, then it must be subjective, and if that is the case, one conception of the good is as good as any other. Therefore, your claim that those denying God have no access to an understanding of morality cannot be true. It is only one of a number of concepts of the good, and most of them make moral claims.

Adrian:

I'm saying precisely that all good is subjective, hence the dry water. However, it is not subject to our own judgment. It's subject to its author's judgement. That certain words appear on the page, unchangeable, for me to read doesn't change the fact that their arrangement was chosen to fit the author's pleasure.

Why is charity good? Nothing in nature informs me that charity is good, yet people perceive that it is. There's no reason why charity should be good or bad. There's no reason we can determine anyway. I don't think it's possible for man to determine the reason for goodness. Many of man's greatest minds, some of whom you've mentioned, have crashed their ship upon that rock, yet the rock remains. Nobody can figure a reason for good yet everybody feels it.

Ultimately, that I lay out my clothes at night is a statement of faith. That we assume the universe will continue to work in the manner which we have always perceived it is a statement of faith. That you, Doug, are an independent being capable of receiving this correspondence rather than just a figment of my imagination is a statement of faith. For us to presume that reason alone will produce understanding is another way of lobotomizing our humanity. You may focus on developing the greatest understanding that reason can provide, but to rely on reason alone is, to me, to admit at the outset that you are satisfied with not knowing.

Doug:

Wait, if good is dependent on the author's judgement, doesn't that realize that good is subjective, since there are so many ideas of the good, and that your original premise is flawed?

Adrian:

I said that good was subjective, and that the author is transcendent. My original premise was that, without belief, there is a quality of reality that is wholly inaccessible; like the concept of color to a blind man. Not only is it inaccessible, it's un-understandable.

Two seeing people may argue the merits of the colors blue and yellow. A whole host of cultural, religious, historical, and philosophical perspectives may be brought to bear by either man to justify his opinion, but...and don't miss this...neither man can deny that blue is blue and yellow is yellow. Not only can they not deny this intrinsic quality, our perception of this quality is dependent upon the light that illuminates it. Its color cannot be seen without the light, and the color which it displays is one part of that greater shining light.

Now a blind man who can sufficiently convince another man that, because of his insightful blindness, the color of the thing matters not to the reality of what that thing really is can begin to make the argument that blue is not blue and yellow is not yellow. For him these qualities are irrelevant. He perceives what is for him the whole of the reality of the thing, and the claims of others to an imperceptible quality are superfluous. For him if blue is blue is no different than if blue is yellow. It doesn't effect his perception of the thing. Yet to those who can perceive, his blue that is yellow is completely incredulous. For him to continue to assert that blue is yellow in the company of sighted people requires that he continually petition on behalf of his assertion against the clear understanding of his fellows, and that his fellows individually cede the point that color does not matter thus diminishing their own perception. If enough cede to this diminished understanding, the color of things, while still present in the eyes of the sighted, becomes irrelevant. The color of things becomes incidental and unimportant. "The blue sky may as well be yellow, it just happens to be blue...whatever." This becomes the corporate reality, and people who adhere to the idea that color is an intrinsic and important quality of things are either mocked or marginalized for their belief in what is clearly, to the masses anyway, a random phenomenon.

So it is with all human activity. All actions have a moral quality: blue or yellow, good or bad, righteous or sinful, karmicly positive or karmicly negative, etc. For men to be convinced that this quality doesn't exist, opens the door for good being bad and bad being good as well as fueling the contempt for and marginalization of those who adhere to the understanding of morality; objective for us, subjective for God.

(I realize now having made that last statement that you and I have been engaging each other in different conversations)

Doug:

The problem I have with your original statement is that you, on a faith premise seem to privilege one understanding of good, and it happens to be the one you adhere to (I think). That seems to privilege your understanding of transcendence, if you want to go that route. Plato would also understand a good based on a transcendent understanding, but quite different from the one advanced by Christians. G.E. Moore advances a transcendent good, but claims that it is roots lie in human relationships. So, again, I wonder what privileges your particular understanding of transcendent, or what amounts to the same question that Wilson asked.

Adrian:

That's what I meant when I said that we're having two different conversations. The difference between the basis for my understanding of transcendence and somebody else's conception of transcendence is not what I'm talking about. That we have a conception of transcendence where other profess not to is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the source of the light from which believers see an aspect of reality. I'm talking about the idea that believers SEE at all, where an atheist cannot or will not, and the implications of this blindness.

Doug:

But then you still have the problem with why the atheist's conception of morality is lacking or missing, as your statement implies, because you privilege your perception over theirs.

Adrian:

I'm asserting that morality is inherently a transcendent quality, that its very existence is dependent upon deity just as color is dependent upon a source of light. An object in the absence of light has no color. It may have the potential for color, but until illuminated cannot be said to possess color. It can be touched, tasted, smelled, and even heard, but it cannot be seen. There is a potential quality possessed by the thing that cannot be perceived in the absence of light.

Our atheist would seem to fit the syllogism left unstated: The nature of all morality is fundamentally transcendent; Atheism denies the existence of transcendency, therefore an atheist cannot determine the nature of morality. That an atheist perceives morality is, I think, indicative of his own transcendence, though he chooses to ignore it. So my initial statement would seem to be flawed. The atheist is not a blind man, rather he's a seeing man who is unable to define color, though he sees it. By denying that a source of light defines an object's color, yet being able to see the color, he's left with two possible conclusions: That the color intrinsic to a thing emanates from the thing itself (Animism), or that the color of a thing is a product of his own mind and therefore not intrinsic to the thing and not necessarily of the same color to anybody else (Relativism).