I have a list of twenty two blogs I try to scan daily, but the demands of writing my own blog, of trying to get a distance-based academy organized, working a daily job, and attending AA meetings and doing AA service work does not give me much time for the other blogs. I have to pick and choose. Some days I find nothing worthwhile; other days, like today, I found something I like--the blog that teaches me something.
It was on the Acton Institute Power Blog, named after Lord Acton who "made the history of liberty his life's work; indeed, he considered political liberty the essential condition and guardian of religious liberty."
What was it I learned? That Catholics have used the common good "as an excuse for more government involvement in peoples’ lives and the installing of socialistic, 'spread the wealth' programs."Dr. William Luckey
I dashed off a comment at the end of his blog. In the "Academy Blogger" I have debated the issue of "altruism" as being (originally) the Catholic version of the "eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity." [emphasis added] see "altruism" http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html
The common good is therefor altruistic, requiring a lowestcommon denominator of the ego, common from one man to the next, a place where one must relegate his/her ego in order to eradicate self-interest, rational though it may be, or not; and where the common good is attained by devoting one's self selflessly--as if that is not an incomprehensible contradiction--in an act of totally "eradicating" the self.
This is most certainly not the same as what our Founders meant by the "general Welfare," when they wrote that phrase in the Constitution; it is the opposite. The "general Welfare" is the protection of the sovereignty of the individual, sovereignty composed of all the powers not delegated to nor prohibited to the Federal government or the governments of the "several States." Whatever is left over, (and almost everything was "left over" until the administration of FDR's "New Deal",) is necessary for the operation of a free individual.
The "general Welfare" is justice in the political arena, which includes economics. The "common good" has become the language used to hide the injustice of imposed altruism.
Anything imposed against what is just, is coercion; anything imposed to insure justice, is not coerced. Each of these ideas is what it is by definition. You could turn each statement around and make the same arguments: Coercion is that which is unjustly imposed; coercion is not that which is justly imposed.
What is justly imposed must, by the same definition, take only as little from an individual's sovereignty as is needed for the "common sovereignty," i.e., government instituted of, by, and for the governed themselves.
It is true that there must be coerced "common good" among people who are not willing to abnegate their egos to society. The best of the recent examples of an uncoerced person was Mother Theresa, who we now know abnegated her ego to the will of a God who she thought, for twelve years, had deserted her. That, aside from the willingness of Jesus to be crucified for all others in the human race, is as altruistic as one can be and not be coerced.
But going that distance is much more than Dr. Luckey is talking about. "This [coerced] version of the common good is the foundation for some people’s idea of distributive justice, but actually it is based on the 'Robin Hood fallacy' of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor." [emphasis added]
What is distributive justice? "[T]he first relatively simple principle of distributive justice examined is strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members of society."[emphasis added] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [see also No Justice in "Luck Egalitarianism" ]
How does Dr. Luckey know it is the Robin Hood syndrome? Merely "by reading Aristotle and St. Thomas. Both of those great thinkers say that government must rule for the common good, but both of them oppose 'common good' to the 'particular' or 'private' good. . . nowhere in Aristotle or St. Thomas does it say that the common good is the exclusive or even main province of the government. They merely give a negative prohibition that the state cannot make laws which are good for only one segment of society." [emphasis added]
One segment of society is exactly what distributive justice is about: the use of coercion to force altruism on those who have, for the benefit of those who have not.
Ayn Rand made an unwitting error in her Playboy interview of 1964. But her error was in not being able to see the future, and the rise of a popular Marxist like Barak Obama.
"Collectivism," she said, "as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead."
But in the very next breath she was absolutely correct, and she is still correct to this day; "But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism," she continued, "have not yet been discovered."
Forty-eight years later, her second statement is still correct, and that is why collectivism was allowed to remain alive: the world has still not "discovered" the nature and the source of capital.
I heard of a type of collectivist which is new to me, the ""luck egalitarian" [which is the belief that] people with greater-than-average talents and abilities should not in justice receive more wealth and income than others, even if their work is more productive and valuable than their less-fortunately-endowed coworkers. People do not deserve the abilities by which they surpass others..." Ludwig von Mises Institute Daily
In justice people do not deserve the abilities by which they surpass others! That is mind-numbing, to thing that someone can believe it. How is it that such educated people can believe that "luck egalitarianism" is justice? Who is to decide which part of one's ability is "luck" and which parts have to do with education and "practicing till you get to Carnegie Hall"? And will luck and talent become things that are taxed?
What's more, who gives anyone the right to make the jurisprudent decision as to what is luck, what is talent, what is skill, what is derived from years of practice and learning? People with "natural" talents are usually children such as Michael Jackson at age 8, or Celine Dion at age 14; actors like Neil Patrick Harris; or sports whizzes like Michael Phelps who, at the age of 18, swam his way to eight medals (six of them gold) at the summer Olympics in Athens.
Can you or I do what those kids do? Can you or I do what David Gordon praises author G.A. Cohen for being able to do?
"Cohen's attitude toward [John] Rawls," writes Gordon, about Cohen's book Rescuing Justice and Equality, "[ ] is a major work, the product of a philosophical intelligence of great depth and power. Few if any contemporary thinkers can match Cohen in his ability to grasp what is at stake in an argument and to raise devastating objections."
Cohen is the luck egalitarian in this case. I don't know for certain, but I rather doubt he was a "born philosopher" with all the skills he now seems to have. Yet, he is more successful at what he does than many non-fiction writers, and he is taken seriously. His books sell well, considering the subject matter. Is he going to give all his excessive profits to charity, or perhaps split it with other authors who are not as talented and lucky as he is? And does he attribute his own talent to luck?
As for his book itself, from what is Cohen rescuing justice and equality? He is rescuing them from what he believes are "the false views of John Rawls [in his] famous difference principle [which] allows inequalities that justice properly excludes."
Rawls book "A Theory of Justice" is concerned with distributive justice, i.e., "what is just or right with respect to the allocation of goods in a society."
It is amazing how twisted philosophy can become when a bad idea such as the justice of the allocation of goods is accepted as a proper and sound premise of political science; the twist becomes complete when someone who accepts its premise but not its conclusion then argues against it, compounding the original epistemological mistake.
(It is a proper and sound subject of both epistemology and metaphysics; objectively both disciplines would reject the premise and it would not become a proper and sound subject of political philosophy--except in rejection.)
The only just allocation of goods in a society is to those who have properly, naturally, ethically earned it, and properly does not include having political clout to shut out those who have no such clout; but it certainly does include the talent and luck of people who use talent and luck to their advantage.
It is a travesty of justice to argue that talent and luck are undeserved, especially when the unit of measurement is the lack of talent and luck of others. The common denominator would change by the minute, everytime someone new deomonstrated his growing talent or everytime someone got lucky. It would change everytime someone's luck went from great from zero, and everytime someone's talent failed him.
But as sure as the sun rises tomorrow, someone, perhaps even during the redistributive Obama Presidency, will at least suggest that excessive talent and luck be taxed.
Obama’s Road to Damascus
There is a saying regarding presidential administrations that “personnel is policy.” It’s for this reason that presidential staff and other appointments are watched so closely by political pundits and analysts.
President-elect Obama’s selection of Robert Malley is the kind of appointment that is very, very revealing – and, unfortunately, very troubling. However, it’s not particularly surprising to those of us who researched Obama’s record.
History will record that Barack Obama’s first act of diplomacy as America’s president-elect took place two days after his election victory, when he dispatched his senior foreign-policy adviser, Robert Malley, to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—to outline for them the forthcoming administration’s Mideast policy vis-à-vis those nations.
A Harvard-trained lawyer and Rhodes Scholar, Robert Malley is no newcomer to the Obama team. In 2007, Obama selected him as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign. At the time, Malley was (and still is today) the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the International Crisis Group (ICG), which receives funding from the Open Society Institute of George Soros (who, incidentally, serves on the ICG Executive Committee).
Robert Malley was raised in France. His lineage is noteworthy. His father, Simon Malley (1923-2006), was a key figure in the Egyptian Communist Party. A passionate hater of Israel, the elder Malley was a close friend and confidante of the late PLO terrorist Yasser Arafat...
In a July 2001 op-ed which Malley penned for the New York Times, he alleged that Israeli—not Palestinian—inflexibility had caused the previous year’s Camp David peace talks (brokered by Bill Clinton) to fall apart. This was one of several controversial articles Malley has written—some he co-authored with Hussein Agha, a former adviser to Arafat—blaming Israel and exonerating Arafat (the most prolific Jew-killer since Adolph Hitler) for the failure of the peace process.
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