By all rights and measures, Minnesota ought to be a perfect test case of whether it remains possible in this day and age to be a Democrat and also be pro-life in a meaningful and concrete way. After all, Minnesota (like Pennsylvania) is one of those few northern states in which a stalwart pro-life contingent has survived within the Democratic caucus (or what Minnesotans call the DFL or “Democratic-Farmer-Labor” Party). And, in Minnesota (as in so many other states), Democratic gains in last week’s election, including taking control of the state house of representatives (and increasing a majority in the state senate), came largely in more conservative/moderate suburban districts and often involved Democratic candidates who described themselves as pro-life. As one Democratic pollster described it, the new DFL faces in the legislature tend to be people who “ran away” from the official DFL platform.
So, if Minnesota is the harbinger of the future, how are things looking so far in terms of prospects for a pro-life revival within the Democratic Party?
Well, just one day after the election, the assistant leader of Democrats in the state senate, Senator Ann Rest, pronounced: “We have a pro-choice Senate now.” Then, in a clear dismissal of human life issues as being worthy of any attention in the legislature, Senator Rest asserted that “[n]ow we can concentrate on the issues that bring us together, not the ones that divide us.”
Then, just two days after the election, the DFL in both houses of the Minnesota legislature proceeded to disregard the new blood in the party from the suburbs and rural areas and elect as their new leaders two of the most liberal (and stridently pro-choice) politicians in the state, both from the DFL stronghold of Minneapolis. As Doug Grow of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a left-of-center columnist, described the new leaders: “These two live blocks apart in Minneapolis. In much of Minnesota, including metro suburbs, they represent two of the scariest words in politics: ‘Urban liberals.’”
Anyone concerned about the sanctity of human life should be praying that these are not the signs of what is to come and that pro-life Democrats in Minnesota will respond with some vigor to these early dismissals. But, for now, it appears that a Pro-Life DFL-er remains the Rodney Dangerfield of Minnesota politics, that is, he or she “just can’t get no respect.”
And, in the meantime, it appears that the only thing that may hold back the new DFL-majority legislature from eroding even those limited protections for unborn life allowed to states by our judicial overseers is Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty.
To be (hopefully) continued (and perhaps my friends who count themselves among the pro-life Democrats here and elsewhere will have more propitious news) . . .
Greg Sisk
True nerds like me will probably already have seen this in their daily e-mail from Oxford University Press with "Garner's Usage Tip of the Day" (to which you can subscribe at: http://www.us.oup.com/us/subscriptions/subscribe/?view=usa&view=usa ), but those of you who have lives might appreciate today's "Quotation of the Day":
"Now and then you may be tempted to write passionately for a great cause. You should resist the temptation. A few writers have managed great passion for great causes, but success is rare in passionate writing because so few writers control passion well. Passion becomes bombast if it is angry. It often becomes fulsome sentiment . . . . Few readers are convinced by superheated prose; they are more often embarrassed, and sometimes they are enraged." Richard Marius, A Writer's Companion 19 (1985).
That strikes me as probably true, but, boy, is that hard to remember when you're writing about convictions that stem from your deepest beliefs, isn't it?
Lisa
Larry Solum has posted his new article, Public Legal Reason. Here is the abstract:
This Essay deveopes an ideal of public legal reason—a normative theory of legal reasons that is appropriate for a society characterized by religious and moral pluralism. One of the implications of this theory is that normative theorizing about public and private law should eschew reliance on the deep premises of deontology or consequentialism and should instead rely on what I shall call public values—values that can be affirmed without relying on the deep and controversial premises of particular comprehensive moral doctrines.
The ideal of public legal reason is then applied to a particular question—whether welfarism (a particular form of normative law and economics) provides the sort of reasons that appropriate for legal practice. The answer to that question is no—to the extent that welfarism contends that the normative assessment of legal policies should rely exclusively on information about individual preferences, welfarism relies on deep and controversial premises of consequentialist moral theory that are fail the test of public reason. The Essay also investigates the thesis—advanced by Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell that any fairness principle (a nonwelfarist method of policy assessment) can violate weak Pareto (making everyone worse off). Whatever the implications of Kaplow and Shavell's argument, it does not show that welfarism can provide public legal reasons. The essay concludes that law's justifications should rely on normative principles that are accessible to reasonable citizens, whether they are theists or atheists, deontologists or consequentialists, moral philosophers or economists. Law's deliberations should be shallow and not deep. Law's reason should be public.
Rob
Monday, November 13, 2006
I count myself as an admirer of Richard John Neuhaus; even when I disagree with him, I find his analysis to be insightful and challenging. But his post on the gay identity angle of the Ted Haggard scandal leaves me perplexed. Neuhaus writes:
There was an op-ed in Wednesday’s New York Times asserting that 70 percent of Americans personally know someone who is gay. That seems statistically improbable. Somewhere between 2 and 4 percent of American males identify themselves as gay. (The figure is much lower for women.) Most of them are congregated in cities, and in those parts of cities known to be gay-friendly. Chelsea and the West Village, along with the Castro district of San Francisco and counterparts in other larger cities, are not America. Gays live in such places precisely because they are not America.
Admittedly, young people in college, or at least in most colleges, do know personally people who are gay; and some of them they count as friends. Most campuses have special-interest LGBT groups, and students are indoctrinated in gay ideology under the rubric of opposing “homophobia.” At one Ivy League college, faculty members told me over dinner that one-third of the male students were at least “experimenting” with homosexuality. Among the women, there were also a large number of “LUGS” (Lesbian Until Graduation). Whether such developments will significantly increase the percentage of adults identifying themselves as gay or lesbian will, I suppose, be discovered in due course. Apart from an intuition for the natural built into human beings, there are all kinds of incentives and pressures militating against such a significant increase.
What most Americans know about being gay is distinctively unattractive and, in their view, morally repugnant. Gay advocates deceive themselves in thinking that the more people know about homosexuality the more they will approve of it.
First, as J. Peter Nixon remarked over at Commonweal, I'm curious why the West Village, Chelsea, and the Castro District are "not America?" Putting that aside, though, the suggestion that gays are some sort of cultural oddity on display only in places where the gay lifestyle is most exuberantly celebrated is to dismiss the sociological reality that many gays have integrated into the mainstream. I have never lived in any of the "gay-friendly" neighborhoods identified by Neuhaus. But I have become friends with gays and lesbians while living in Boston, Chicago, New York, and Denver. In Minneapolis, I live in a neighborhood crawling with minivans, lemonade stands, soccer moms, and several gay couples whose kids participate in the life of the neighborhood as fully as anyone else. To suggest that gays' wider acceptance in society is a direct result of being "indoctrinated" in college is to promote a caricature not only of college, but also of gays' evolving relationships with the surrounding society.
What exactly is Fr. Neuhaus hoping to accomplish with this sort of argument? More importantly, if a gay person reads his post, what conclusions will that person be justified in drawing about the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Rob
A few days ago, commenting on a Time magazine story, "God or Country?", I said I was "sad" "to learn that, among Catholics, nearly two-thirds of those polled said they are 'Americans first' (and not 'Catholics first')." In response, MOJ-friend and philosopher John O'Callaghan writes:
I am confused by . . . your recent post. You make a very good point in the body of the post about Church and state. But then your sadness confuses me because the ambiguity of it against the background of your point. Are you sad because those two-thirds should have said "Catholic first?" Or are you said because they didn't realize the silliness of the question?
. . . A judgment of first on these matters seems to require a common category. "Who came in first" requires at least tacit reference to a category that admits of ranking in terms of first, second, third, etc. Are we talking about a footrace, or a national championship football season? Did Rick come in first or the Fighting Irish? How answer such a question?
Now even when talking only about political regimes, the question seems to make little sense. Are you a citizen of South Bend first, or a citizen of the United States. Since we are dealing with nested political categories, and not a common one here, it would be a mistake to accept the coherence of the question.
But then when we turn to the question of the Church or the political community first, we don't even have a common category at any level, or so it seems to me, unless it is a most general level of "community," which doesn't admit of sufficient specificity to know how to answer the question. Are you a father first, a team member, a fan, a Catholic, or a citizen? If the Church is a political community like a nation state, then I suppose the question might be coherent. Or if the nation state is a church then I suppose the question might be coherent. But what if, as I think is the case, the Church is not a nation state and the nation state is not a Church? Isn't the question incoherent? And wouldn't we be better served by educating members of the nation state and members of the Church on just why it is incoherent?
Michael S. asks whether Catholic thought requires us to favor some form of affordable universal health care. The answer to that question is a resounding yes.
At Villanova's Fourth Annual Symposium on Catholic Social Thought and the Law (which focused this year on the Preferential Option for the Poor) and again at a faculty colliquium at U. St. Thomas a few weeks ago, I presented a paper entitled: "Poor Coverage": The Preferential Option for the Poor and Access to Health Care. In it I argue that Catholic social thought demands that we think about access to health care as a basic human right and that providing all citizens with access to health care must be viewed as a collective responsibility. In Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII identified health care as among the basic rights that flow from the dignity of the human person. Pope John Paul II similarly included a right to sufficient health care as among the human rights endorsed by the Church. The American bishops have also spoke of access to adequate health care as a basic right necessary for human beings to relaize the fullness of their dignity.
As Michael observes, the rub is always how do we get there. My paper also looks at several approaches to health care reform in terms of thier adherence to the principles Catholic social thought. The paper, which will be published in the Villanova Journal of Catholic Social Thought, will be posted at the sidebar below my name (hopefully today or tomorrow).
The contours of a new law school seminar are beginning to take shape in my mind: "The Religious Liberty Jurisprudence of 20th Century Popular Musicians." One class will be devoted to the existential underpinnings of secularism, via John Lennon; another on the public accessibility of blasphemy as sanctionable conduct, via Madonna; another on the modern misunderstanding of authentic love, via a comparative study of Deus Caritas Est and the lyrics of leading 1980s hair bands; one on the powerful allure of evil as an inspirational worldview, via AC/DC; one on the problem human suffering poses for societies that take religion seriously, via XTC; one on the feasibility of solidarity as a legal principle in light of the Incarnation, via Joan Osborne; and with today's news comes the perfect content for a concluding class devoted to the uniquely insightful contributions to the modern understanding of religious liberty offered by Sir Elton John.
Rob
