Rob links to what he characterizes as Stephen Webb's "bright-line definition of liberals": "You know you are a liberal if you think that the poor need money more than they need moral discipline." And, he suggests that this statement is "astounding" for what it reveals about conservatives.
It seems to me, reading Webb's entire post, that the line about "moral discipline" is not at all offered as a "bright-line definition" of liberals, but is instead a throw-away in a long-ish post about what Webb regards as an interesting phenomenon, namely, that because of the lingering view among academics and professionals that liberalism, unlike conservativism, is "cool," many academics and professionals with views that Webb thinks are "conservative" -- and he focuses not on views about the poor, but on views about academic politics and abortion -- nonetheless recoil in horror from the suggestion that they might be, or might be talking like, "conservatives."
Here is the paragraph from which the "moral discipline" bit is taken:
. . . I came of age in the sixties, since most of the sixties happened in the seventies. The earnest rejection of institutional authority in the sixties became, when mainstreamed, a cultural and moral mess in the seventies. It is one thing for a few alienated college students to read Norman O. Brown, but it is another thing for the middle class to embrace the liberating promise of promiscuity. In the nineties, the middle class recovered its senses, but the poor, who are always more vulnerable to the ravages of immorality, paid the price for the seventies slide into recklessness. You know you are a liberal if you think that the poor need money more than they need moral discipline.
Now, should we regard as "astounding" the claim that "the poor . . . are always more vulnerable to the ravages of immorality"? I guess I don't think it is so bizarre to note that those who are materially well-off are able, through wealth and connections, to protect themselves from many of the bad consequences of those those behaviors that Webb associates with Norman Brown and the seventies. Strictly speaking, Webb does not say that "liberals believe that poor people need money more than they need moral discipline," but that "if you believe that poor people need money more than liberal discipline, you are a liberal." Liberals and conservatives alike can agree -- as do Rob and I -- that the poor need money, and that we all need moral discipline. I am happy to join Rob in rejecting the "conservative" view -- the scare-quotes reflect my skepticism that Webb, or indeed many conservatives at all, actually hold this view -- that the poor are poor because they lack moral discipline and that this discipline is sufficient to escape or avoid poverty. (Though, again, it hardly seems strange to suggest that "moral discipline" -- along with functioning schools, a good job, affordable health care, etc. -- might be useful to someone struggling to escape poverty.)
I do not mean to be pedantic, but I do not think it is fair to frame Webb's claim as -- in one commenter's words -- "get a job, hippie!", or to say that it is the "sentiment of all conservatives towards those struggling just to survive" that "if you are poor, it's because you are lazy." Let's stipulate, for the sake of discussion, that the contemporary "conservative" political program emphasizes excessively the need of poor people for "moral discipline", at the expense of their need for money. Is it fair to say -- not as part of a "definition", but simply as an observation -- that the contemporary "liberal" political program makes the flip-side mistake?
Here is a long article from the New York Times, "Our Lady of Discord," about Tom Monaghan and some of the turmoil surrounding the planned Catholic community in Florida.
I am not sure if anyone's blogged it, but C. John Sommerville's essay, earlier this summer, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, called "The Exhaustion of Secularism," is well worth a read. George Marsden's excellent book, "The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship," features prominently. Here are Martin Marty's thoughts on the piece. And, here is a link to the book (available in September) from which it is taken.
MOJ-friend and philosopher Chris Eberle sends these thoughts, regarding the recent posts here on public reason, religion, Professor Stone, and Professor Leiter:
[Professor Leiter wrote]: "To put it (a bit too) crudely, reasons are 'public' largely in virtue of a head count, not in virtue of their having more robust epistemic foundations."
[C]onceptions of public reason vacillate between (what I call) populist and epistemic conceptions of public reason. Often the advocate of a given conception doesn't distinguish clearly between the populist versions (of Professor Leiter's "head count" variety) and the epistemic versions. And you can get a sense of that in his formulation: public reasons are those that are the "kinds of reasons acceptable to all reasonable people in a pluralistic society." Is "reasonable" an epistemic category? Is it a moral category of sorts: "be reasonable, you can't take the big slice and leave me the teensie one!"? What does "acceptable" mean? Presumably, not that a kind of reason is *in fact* endorsed by all the reasonable folks. Perhaps, it means that a kind of reason *would be* endorsed by the reasonable folks *if* they were adequately informed and suitably rational. (That's one prominent conception.) But in that case, we might be very far from a head count version, since this counterfactual conception of what makes for a public reason might be consistent with no actual citizens endorsing any of the kinds of reasons that would be endorsed by all the adequately informed and rational folks. Indeed, it might be (hard to tell) consistent with the view that religious reasons are public reasons, since we might all endorse religious reasons if we were adequately informed (and so knew that the Koran is God's inspired Word!)
Conceptions of public reason typically begin by sounding so very commonsensical and then, under pressure of the very pluralism to which they in some sense respond, get very complicated, as their advocates have to make use of all kinds of epistemic epicycles and counter-factual deferents to make them "work." I try to lay this out systematically, and in gory detail, in the end of my book, which contains a chapter on the populist and a chapter on the epistemic conceptions of public reason.
Last December, I posted about what I then predicted would be a fascinating book, "Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment," by James Gaines. Well, I just got home from a week's trip to Alaska, during which I (finally) finished the book. I was right! Few books are perfect (I think Gaines is not precise enough when pushing the "faith v. reason" thing), but I still give it two thumbs up. Here's a bit, from the last chapter:
The modern world is a creature of both the Enlightenment and Romanticism but completely the offspring of neither. . . . [T]he tension continues between reason and faith, ratio and sensus, Frederick and Bach. In this struggle, Frederick usually seems to have the upper hand. The world of the early twenty-first century has no trouble knowing Frederick: that mocking, not-really-self-effacing skepticism, the head-fake toward principle during the headlong rush toward the glamour of deeds. His mask and his loneliness are all too familiar. Bach is more of a stranger, a refugee from "God's time" displaced to a world where religion can be limited to a building and a day of the week, or dispensed with altogether. . . .
The beauty of music, of course, what sets is apart from virtually every other human endeavor, is that it does not need the language of ideas; it requires no explanation and offers none, as much as it may say. Perhaps that is why music coming from a world where the invisible was palpable, where great cosmic forces played their part everywhere and every day, could so deeply move audiences so far from Bach's time. . . . Bach's music makes no argument that the world is more than a ticking clock, yet leaves no doubt of it.
Apparently, the City Council of Chicago has passed an ordinance that makes Chicago the largest city in the United States to impose special wage and fringe benefit requirements for "big box" retailers. Gary Becker has an interesting post on the matter, here.
A few days ago -- I have been vacationing in Alaska -- Professor Brian Leiter posted a long discussion of the some bloggers' responses to Professor Stone's post, "Religious Rights and Wrongs", about President Bush's stem-cell veto. My Prawfsblawg co-blogger Paul Horwitz and I (link) were among those to whom Professor Leiter responded. I agree with Michael P. that the Leiter post is well worth reading, though I think othershere at MOJ have highlighted some weaknesses or gaps in it.
Responding to my post, Professor Leiter writes:
"Public reasons" are, by hypothesis here, reasons that may properly ground legislation and exercises of state power. The argument that religious reasons are not "public reasons" isn't that they lack a certain kind of foundation that genuine "public reasons" have . . . ; the argument is that they aren't public, i.e., that they aren't the kinds of reasons acceptable to all reasonable people in a pluralistic society. Many "public reasons" in this sense may lack foundations of one kind or another, but that has no bearing on their public status. To put it (a bit too) crudely, reasons are "public" largely in virtue of a head count, not in virtue of their having more robust epistemic foundations. So, contra Professor Garnett, it is not apparent that the the foundations of the beliefs or reasons in question are at issue here.
It sounds to me (and, of course, I could be misunderstanding) that Professor Leiter is not ruling out the possibility that "public reasons" could have "religious" foundations (or, foundations that would widely be regarded as "religious"), or lack "robust epistemic foundations," so long as they were, in fact, widely accepted. Or, would Professor Leiter's view be that "religious" reasons simply are not -- cannot be -- "acceptable to all reasonable people in a pluralistic society," because, in such a society, "reasonable" people do not regard regard "religious" reasons as "acceptable"? Or, is it that a reason that is widely accepted by otherwise "reasonable" people is not, precisely for that reason, "religious"?
In addition, I am afraid it is still not clear to me what, exactly, are the markers of "religious" motivations and reasons. "The Bible says so" and "God told me last night" seem to be easy candidates. But what if my motivation for supporting Policy X is that I believe that Policy X will better secure and respect, say, the dignity and authentic flourishing of human beings? So phrased, this motivation would not, I suspect, be regarded by Professors Stone and Leiter as "religious." But why not? What if, behind this stated motivation, is a view that, really, the reason why "the dignity and authentic flourishing of human beings" is anything other than a fairy-tale construct is because human beings are made and loved by God?
If you have not been on the First Things blog lately, you might want to check it out. Among other things, there is an interesting conversation going on about just-war theory.
Flannery O'Connor died 42 years ago today. Amy Welborn has a post with lots of good links, etc. If you have not read her short stories, or the collection of her letters ("Habit of Being"), you're missing out.
I've been off-line for several days, but very much enjoyed checking in today and reading all the great posts on the estate tax, moral anthropology, religion and public reasons, and evangelicals' politics. Great stuff!
I'm in Anchorage, Alaska (where I grew up), with my 5 year old son, attending my 20th high-school reunion. It's been great seeing old friends, and Anchorage is a beautiful town. I did have a "went back to Ohio, but my city was gone" moment, though, when I drove by one of the houses I used to live in, and found that one of my former neighbors had bought it and torn it down. I'm sure there's a Catholic legal theory / new urbanism angle to my grief . . .
