For instance, I may choose not to drive a car, or purchase gasoline – but I may not choose not to pay my taxes, which are used to build and maintain our roads. (This is not an argument for privatizing roads, just an example of choice vs. force.). The principal is simple: If I am unable to simply say one word, “No” – then I am being forced to act, forced to work, forced to serve someone else with my mind.

A common criticism of this discussion is that it is too abstract or, for instance “doesn’t feature a single word about policy.” I would simply argue that a philosophical understanding of why government exists, how it functions, and what its role should be is far more essential than any policy discussion. In fact – it must pre-empt policy discussions. Policy is decided long after people have already made assumptions about what government can and should do.

Many people have written about the proper role of government in the past, but sadly, their ideas are substituted in favor of chatter about this or that policy. For the person who perhaps hasn’t taken a moment to think about the core issue, “What is the role of Government,” allow me to present two arguments about the proper, and improper use of force (Government being an institution of force).

The following is an excerpt from John Galt’s speech toward the end of Atlas Shrugged. It highlights some important points about the use of force that must be considered when talking about government functions, since (in America at least), Government is the only institution granted the monopoly use of force. This is a bit of a mild spoiler if you have not read the book – so if that is the case, you may wish to come back to this after reading the book. The video clip is just an excerpt, so be certain to skip to the text below. I have added emphasis.

“Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate-do you hear me? no man may start-the use of physical force against others.

“To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force-him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.

“Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason-as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no ‘right’ to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.

“To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument-is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment: you threaten him with death if he does. You place him into a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life-and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.

“Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: ‘Your money or your life,’ or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: ‘Your children’s education or your life,’ the meaning of that ultimatum is: ‘Your mind or your life’-and neither is possible to man without the other.

“If there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is the more contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of others or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to force his mind. That is the moral absolute one does not leave open to debate. I do not grant the terms of reason to men who propose to deprive me of reason. I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think. I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer’s wish to kill me. When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him-by force.

“It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own. He uses force to seize a value; I use it only to destroy destruction. A holdup man seeks to gain wealth by killing me; I do not grow richer by killing a holdup man. I seek no values by means of evil, nor do I surrender my values to evil.

“In the name of all the producers who had kept you alive and received your death ultimatums in payment, I now answer you with a single ultimatum of our own: Our work or your guns. You can choose either; you can’t have both. We do not initiate the use of force against others or submit to force at their hands. If you desire ever again to live in an industrial society, it Will be on our moral terms. Our terms and our motive power are the antithesis of yours. You have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringing death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer him life as his reward for accepting ours.”

“This is John Galt speaking.” – Atlus Shrugged

Frederick Bastiat also illuminated this idea much earlier in The Law:

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

Clearly, Force in itself, is not an evil thing, just as guns in themselves, are not evil. However – applying force against an individual’s will is a violation of that individual’s basic human right to liberty. As Rand’s fictional character John Galt put it, to force someone to substitute their own will for yours or another’s, is to deprive that person of choice, or the proper use of their mind.

This brings us back to the core question: What is the proper role of Government? Or in other words – how can the collective force be used, in a manner than does not violate the rights of individuals? This question can be applied to all manner of topics: From National Defense, to Education, to Universal Health-care – the first question, the question that is more fundamental to every situation is – does this policy fall within the bounds of the proper application of force. How are we to determine this? Bastiat again helps with this quandary:

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

As soon as government breaks out of its proper boundaries (its limits, which I believe were the very purpose of our Constitution), each individual’s mind is in grave danger. No – this isn’t some “black helicopters and tin-foil hats” nonsense, but you simply have to apply what you know about human nature, and add in the power of coercive force without proper function or limit. The bigger and more centralized a government program becomes, the greater number of individual wills are overrun by the relatively tiny will of the elected body. This is exactly the reason that conservatives favor smaller, more local initiatives (if they favor them at all). Programs and policies that claim to represent everyone, more accurately represent no-one. The closer a representative is to the people whom they represent (and the fewer people they represent), the more likely that their choices will align with the wills of the represented.

This is also the reason conservatives reject socialism and other collectivist philosophies. Not only do these philosophies have a history of mass atrocity, at their very core, they fundamentally act against the individual. Given human nature’s fatal tendency to dominate (by force) other human beings – it is easy to see the dangers of setting up systems which encourage and enable this ability.

Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.

But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.

-Frederick Bastiat, The Fatal Tendency of Mankind -The Law

Back to the concept that conservatives being “short on policy.” There are people who believe that if only the “right policy” (the right application of force) were implemented, then everyone would benefit. This sounds like a nobel idea (and is classic among collectivists), but the ends do not justify the means. You cannot confiscate work, to encourage work. You cannot enslave, to set free. This is contradictory. Historian and Communist Howard Zinn penned the popular “A people’s History of the United States” (though I take huge issue with his use of Presentism) which catalogs the suffering and horrors of underdogs and people trampled by force throughout history. And yet – all the while, he supported the idea that “the right government” could wield force, or if “the right people” controlled the levers of power, it would benefit “the people.” Zinn spent his life demonstrating the destruction that the use of force wreaked on people, and yet never arrived at the idea that force cannot be initiated against the unwilling, even if done with noble intentions.

And this truth is the core of my argument. Firstly, I reject the group classification of “the people.” There is no such thing. There exist only totally unique individual human persons. Therefore, there is no way for any policy to be “right” for each individual person. Economist Thomas Sowell put it this way: “The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.” To take this question away from a person, and hand it a third party, is to remove the choice from the person with the best knowledge to make it. I think each person needs to decide what is best for themselves, their family, their children, etc. Not some elected group of “experts” claiming to act in the individual’s best interest.

This is why true conservatives advocate ideas that increase liberty. We don’t believe that if we only had “the right government,” or the “right policy” every societal ill could be corrected. We believe that each human being is an individual person, and thus do not address nameless, faceless groups, and classes of people. We do not create political mascots out of groups, such as “the rich,” “the middle class,” or “the poor” so that we can pit them against one another. Nor do we have the audacity to proclaim ourselves so above society that we can fix their problems with our magical policies, if they would only surrender us the power.

By advocating more liberty, given the dismal history of the human condition, conservatives are the true progressives. Liberty is the only situation where each individual is truly a person, capable of making the maximum amount of choice about their own life. With Liberty, the individual has rights and is not demanded by threat of imprisonment or death to surrender his mind, his choices, or his work to the will of another. A free man offers the product of his choices (or his mind) in exchange for something else of value. He determines what he judges to be a fair trade – not a third party. He offers true charity out of his own desire to help another person, not by edict imposed from the desires of a politician. He is not forced to work for someone else, neither does he force another to work for his benefit. In doing so – his rights do not necessitate the destruction or sacrifice of anyone else’s. The choices in his mind, do not command the minds of others.

Thus, the proper and only role of government is to protect human rights, or men’s minds from being violated by force.

“…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Let us stop proposing policies which are destructive to this end. Let us not regress into soft-despotism and servitude. Let us progress, as a nation, with ideas that free individual’s minds.

I have only a couple quick thoughts on this video.

First, Prager mentions ‘Inalienable’ Rights – when the Declaration of Independence actually declares ‘Unalienable’ Rights. Today, these terms are often used interchangeably, but there is a subtle important difference which I wrote about before. This is a minor difference for sure, but I think it is still a useful one to understand.

Also, while some Atheists may take serious issue with value #2, I think there exist reasonable philosophical systems for non-God based values (such as Ayn Rand’s Objectivism) that may support the idea of ‘Unalienable’ Rights. I don’t have the time (or the desire, frankly) to write a thorough discussion on that topic here. At the very least we can say that, in America, it is the Atheist’s Unalienable Right not to believe in a God based system. That right is inherent and essential (incapable of being given up, or taken), and must be protected and defended in just the same way as, say, my own Christian belief system.

Other than that, I think Prager does a nice job outlaying some of the basic American values. Hopefully, his future videos will be as informative and positive as this.

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

-Barack Obama

My sister sent me this great quote (she originally sent it without identifying who said it, which was a good way to challenge my thinking on the thoughts presented, rather than the speaker. Big props for this! Coincidentally, this is why I refer to Obama as, ‘the speaker,’ below.), and it has inspired a rather lengthy discussion between us on some of the pitfalls that happen when religious or moral imperatives and politics intertwine.

Before I say anything, ‘intertwined,’ must be defined as I am using it here. I do not mean when people allow religious convictions to inform their decisions on political matters. Being a Christian myself, I certainly hold many philosophical beliefs that are based on a Christian view of existence. What I  mean by the phrase, ‘intertwined,’ is when a certain political opinion is discussed or argued only from a religious imperative. Here would be a Christian example:

“I support policy X, because the Bible says X.”

So with that definition in mind, here are some of my thoughts on this topic as I mulled over the quote above (this is slightly edited for clarity and relevance.):

===
I think the speaker is mostly correct here – though, there are many aspects to this idea that I think need to be expanded.

For one thing – as the speaker starts out, I would argue (and this might just be a minor point of linguistics) that it isn’t necessarily Democracy that depends on this view, but Liberty in general – and religious liberty to be specific. In fact – this very issue of freedom of religion, may be one of the reasons that America is not a strict democracy (based on the will of the majority of the people), and rather a constitutional democratic-republic (“the very definition of a republic is ‘an empire of laws, and not of men.’” -John Adams).

Other than that though – I think the point the speaker is making is a valid one. Like I said above though, there are many things to consider when discussing this topic. For instance – this problem seems mostly leveled at the ‘Religious Right’ (I use quotes because I think this label makes a one-size-fits-all boogy-man out of the ‘religious right’ and is unhelpful and unfair to rational people of faith). In other words, ultra-conservative people who base political decisions solely on ‘Because the Bible says…’. I don’t deny that these people exist, and I think that this mentality, as the speaker suggests, is dangerous, and I would add, politically immature. Moral and religious imperatives negate argument, discussion, and disagreement. You aren’t just wrong if you disagree, you are evil. This is completely destructive to our political discourse in America.

In a way – I think that this view (along with Islamism and 9/11) has spawned a lot of the reactionary New Atheist stuff. They see one ultimate result of the religious imperative: death for those who disagree. On some level, I can actually relate and respect someone like Christopher Hitchens who views that type of religion as a threat, as it is a threat to liberty – but unfortunately, I feel Hitchens paints with too broad a brush, seeing all religion as a threat.

I agree with the speaker that people of religious faith must present their arguments upon the idea of compromise, common reality, and religious freedom. Many people argue that America’s philosophy of government was founded on a judeo-christian world view, and I agree. But ‘world view‘ (or metaphysic), is not the same thing as religion. I am actually thankful that Jefferson and Franklin were Deists – because they clearly understood that a free and civil society required freedom of religion, and not adherence to one particular faith.

In fact – I think that most religious people should take their cue from the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson introduces the argument – then says “To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world,” and presents a long list of grievances that any rational person of any belief could attest to. Though he appeals to a higher power (endowed, by their creator, with certain unalienable Rights, etc…), nowhere does he say, simply, “because God said…”

In my view, Religious people must make their arguments based on “a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind,” as well as facts and evidence (more props to John Adams ;). I think that if they did this, people in opposition wouldn’t feel so threatened and be so vocal about, “separation of church and state.”

With all that in mind, I don’t think this problem is something unique to conservative evangelicals or the ‘religious right’, though it is usually talked about this way. In my opinion, this is because the loudest voices, are always the most radical – and thus – get the most attention. You hear about abortion and gay rights all the time, but consider that many issues, whether left or right, are presented with a similar religious, or moral imperative.

As I mentioned above, the reason the moral imperative is used is to negate argument and discussion. I recently got an email about how I should sign a petition for socialized health care, which was explained because it’s something Jesus would be for. How could I possibly be a “good person” (whatever that means) and oppose something Jesus was supposedly for? Also – note how I’m now arguing against Jesus, not a socialized medical policy.

Just like the speaker said, basing our public policy on uncompromising religious and moral imperatives is ridiculous. The greatest thing I love about America is the diversity of it’s peoples, beliefs, cultures – and yet the unity we share in freedom.

The destructive forces are not those with whom we personally disagree, but those, either left or right, who don’t allow space for disagreement.

John Adams has another great quote concerning this:

“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.”

A mature political argument must take this idea into account. If we, as people of faith, argue politics, “because God says…” we are arguing in the exact same spirit as the radical jihad: against religious freedom.

On the other hand, If we believe our God is rational (In fact – I believe, as C.S. Lewis did, that God is the supreme rational being, from whom we get our ability to reason- therefore, I don’t simply believe God arbitrarily “pick things as sin” without a logical reason), then there should exist reasonable non-religious methods to form arguments.

==end original thoughts==

So the point is not that Religion and Politics are totally incompatible. Rather, it is about the way some people use religion, or moral imperatives to relate political issues. When I wrote about abortion, (All Conservatives are Actually Pro-Choice), I didn’t need to point to specific Biblical scripture to make my argument. Rather, I tried to present a rational case for my point of view with, “a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind.” Perhaps I failed to do this, but this was how I attempted to frame my argument.

Expanding beyond Religion

Few things blind human beings to the actual consequences of what they are doing like a heady feeling of self-righteousness during a crusade to smite the wicked and rescue the downtrodden.

- Thomas Sowell

As I mentioned in the thoughts above, Religion isn’t the only realm from which we get destructive  uncompromising moral imperatives. Here is a great example:

“I believe this legislation has the moral significance equivalent to that of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and the Marshall Plan of the late 1940s.”

And just what issue is so significant that it is being compared to civil rights here? This was a quote from Al Gore on climate change Cap & Trade legislation.

So what exactly does climate change legislation aimed at setting a cap on company’s “greenhouse gas emissions,” have to do with civil rights? Nothing, of course. Nothing besides subtly equating anyone who doesn’t think Cap and Trade is a prudent course of action – as possibly immoral or opposed to civil rights.

It isn’t possible to have a realistic, rational, or fair discussion of climate change or any related legislation when one side talks about it in terms of ‘moral significance’ and ‘civil rights’. As soon as the moral imperative is introduced, reasonable discussions and arguments are over.

This brings us to the idea of the ‘Shibboleth‘:

The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan opposite Ephraim. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead would say to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?”

If he said, “No,” then they would say to him, “Say now, ‘Shibboleth.’” But he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. Thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim.

-Judges 12:5-6

Again, Thomas Sowell explains this concept far more eloquently than I could (emphasis mine):

…shibboleths explain a lot about what is said and done in politics today.

Back in Biblical times, the word “shibboleth” was used as a password, because people from one side could say it easily and their enemies couldn’t. It identified who you were and which side you were on.

Today, many things that are said and done in our political life serve that same purpose — and often make no sense otherwise. When people say that they are for “diversity” or gun control or campaign finance reform, they are declaring themselves to be on one side in the political wars. In their own eyes, their position on such issues identify them as one of the good, caring and compassionate people.

What political shibboleths do is transform questions about facts, causation and evidence into questions about personal identity and moral worth. Shibboleths are also a great labor-saving device. You don’t need to find out what the actual consequences of affirmative action have been if being for “diversity” serves the purpose of identifying you as one of those good people who care about racial justice and the advancement of the disadvantaged.

You don’t have to find out what actually happens when there are more relaxed or more stringent gun control laws, if you only need to show that you are on the side of the angels. How many lives have actually been lost under one policy versus the other is a factual question whose answer you need not bother learning.

Mere facts cannot compete with shibboleths when it comes to making people feel good. Moreover, shibboleths keep off the agenda the painful question of how dangerous it is to have policies which impact millions of human beings without a thorough knowledge of the hard facts needed to understand just what that impact has actually been. Shibboleths are the life blood of the media. Stories which seem to support the side of the angels are trumpeted from coast to coast, while stories which support the other side are either downplayed or ignored altogether.

For example, vicious crimes committed by white people against black people are big news because these stories fit the shibboleths which establish the moral identity of the journalists who tell these stories. Vicious crimes committed by blacks against whites are not big news because these stories undermine the shibboleths — or, as it is phrased, “feed stereotypes.” Ditto with stories about the homeless, homosexuals and others favored by current shibboleths.

Shibboleths are dangerous, not only because they mobilize political support for policies that most of the supporters have not thought through, but also because these badges of identity make it harder to reverse those policies when they turn out to be disastrous. When admitting a mistake means renouncing one’s identity as one of “us” and lining up with a demonized “them,” do not expect as many people to do it as if all that was involved was the question whether policy A produces better results than policy B.

Those who strain for moral equivalence — itself one of the shibboleths of our time — may assume that shibboleths are part of all political or ideological positions. But, for at least two centuries, shibboleths have been at the heart of the ideology of the left, whether moderate left or radical left.

Assumptions of being more concerned, caring and compassionate than their opponents can be found on the left from Godwin and Condorcet in the 18th century to a whole galaxy of liberal-left journalists, academics, organizations and movements today. But there were no such assumptions in the writings of Adam Smith in the 18th century or in those of Milton Friedman today. It was enough for them to say that their opponents were mistaken and their policies harmful — and why.

What we need are more factual arguments and counter-arguments. With shibboleths, we are flying blind into the future, through mountains of hard facts that are being ignored when they contradict the vision that gives many people their sense of self-worth.

Whether you see yourself as politically right, left, or center – religious or non-religious – it is important, as we move forward as a country, to stop framing our arguments inside religious/moral imperatives and or shibboleths. These destroy rational discussions on political ideas and programs because they eliminate the ability of either party to disagree. Even worse – rather than simply viewing the opposition as incorrect, they are viewed as evil.