God. Real. Right.

There are times when what is right or wrong seems so obvious that no explanation is necessary. Those times are misleading. The problem is not always that whether something appears to be right or wrong is inconsistent with the truth, though. Rather, the problem is always whether some explanation, aka justification, is still necessary.

That obviousness, that immediate sense that something is morally laudable, tolerable, or contemptible, can take different forms. But inevitably it collapses into some kind of moral intuitionism. Intuition is simply knowledge without justification. So moral intuition is an awareness of what is right or wrong prior to or separate from justification for the moral judgment in question. For an intuitionist like W.D. Ross, for instance, the awareness that a person ought to keep his obligations is prima facie right. Saying something is known prima facie or intuitively is a lot like saying some truth is self-evident. It really means nothing more than (more…)

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The storyteller is not Jesus, of course.
And when he heard that there were certain followers of Jesus living in a democratic republic who did not believe they should exercise their democratic prerogatives, he spoke this parable unto them, saying:

There was a certain king whose people suffered miserably under his reign, both directly from his own cruelty and indirectly from that of others in which he refused to intervene. Sadly, his son, heir to the throne, was no better.
But one day his son met (more…)

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Conservatives have a reputation for discounting the suffering of the needy and for legislating morality. But a swim just under the surface of that accusation reveals that the current is actually moving the other direction. Two strokes should make the point.

Stroke one: a fundamental of conservatism is confidence in the nature of free market economics. After all, anything other than free market force on an economy is actually an unjust intrusion on a system which presumes equality of opportunity for every actor, a basic value for conservatives. The critic asks, how does a free market feed the poor? The direct (but not complete) answer is that it simply doesn’t. The response to which is that the market, therefore, is morally insufficient, if not entirely vacuous, lacking compassionate intervention. (It is peripheral to this argument that hunger and poverty actually motivate productivity and that productivity benefits everyone in the system, including the poor.)

But nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, there is absolutely no reduction of the personal responsibility for benevolence in a free market economy. It is the presumption that benevolence must be the result of an artificial regulation on the market which conservatives reject, not benevolence itself.

And there’s the second stroke: making benevolence the concern of government instead of the concern of charitable organizations and morally responsible individuals is a terrible idea. What motivates it (the terrible idea) is the fear that people will fall through the cracks, and that even those who don’t fall through the cracks completely might be in significant misery before someone notices and gives them help. It’s a legitimate fear.

But in the free market, it is that suffering which motivates those who can to work out of their poverty toward a better future. And it is the aversion to the suffering of others and the fear that they will fall through the cracks which motivates individuals and local organizations to step in and help those in need who cannot work toward that better future. But it is necessarily organically motivated, not bureaucratically. To remove the risk and pain from the system removes the only thing that allows genuine altruism rather than artificial optimism to move the whole system. In other words, if it is moral to meet the needs (not just desires) of the needy, then it is the height of legislating morality to force everyone to meet the need through taxation, rather than to allow those who actually care to do something about it personally.

There are all kinds of practical reasons why it is better for the response to be motivated spiritually and engaged locally (which would also be a feature of the free market), but they are not the point here.

The gist of the issue is that a bureaucracy can enforce mandatory pain-amelioration to salve the public conscience and cover over the need, but it cannot tolerate a constant awareness of real needs and it cannot produce the legitimately helpful response to those needs which personal engagement brings. No. Only morally motivated agents acting either individually or freely in local organizations can do so. It is risky, messy, and in some ways painful (for everyone involved). But it is also both actually moral and actually compassionate. And it is, after all, always better to swim with the current than against it.

(Afterthought: By the way, the notion of compassionate conservatism meaning that conservatives ought to promote welfare-type issues along with conservative values is fundamentally flawed. Real conservatism condemns the legislated redistribution of wealth and promotes real compassion in the same stroke.)

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Today, March 31, is the day many people are observing “Red Envelope Day.” They will mail an empty red envelope to President Obama with these words: “This envelope represents one child who died in abortion. It is empty because that life was unable to offer anything to the world. Responsibility begins with conception.”
I have received quite a bit of correspondence about it from listeners and so have mentioned it a couple of times on air. Here is an e-mail I received from a listener in Fort Worth. I have not checked with the Star Telegram for their side of the story, but I suspect what this listener reports is accurate.

Dr Creamer,
I tried to run an ad last week to announce Red Envelope Day and gave address and what to write on the back “This envelope represents one child who died because of an abortion. It is empty because the life that was taken is now unable to be a part of our world”.
I checked daily and the ad never ran. Today I was told that it was “not appropriate” (after they took my money and sent me verification that ad was acceptable via online info).
Please reply. I may miss part of your show today. Your show is awesome and I wish I could get the word out better to others to tune in because there are “scarey” times ahead.
God bless you and your work,
Deborah from Fort Worth

If the media don’t like it, there must be something right about it.

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Previous posts have explained why so many people find it difficult to believe in free will. Other prior posts explain that although it may be difficult, it is important to do so. This post continues that theme.
2.2.2 Real justice requires freedom regarding both behavior and character.
The fact that this moral problem for determinism (that determinism implies moral nihilism) is intrinsic to it is also evident from the nature of moral absolutes. If a person’s choices are determined then it becomes impossible to distinguish what is essential about that person’s identity from what is accidental. Either every accident would be a part of essence, or every presumed essence would actually be nothing more than an accident.
But in a world where every characteristic and behavior is necessary rather than (more…)

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It is staggering to me just how blithely even intelligent and respectable commentators have slipped into critiquing a woman’s willingness to have eight children. Mike Huckabee’s comments on Fox News’ Red Eye last night are a good example of the hopefully innocent confusion going on. To paraphrase, Huckabee argued that if the mother were on government welfare then there was a serious problem. NBC’s Today Show provided an example of the more likely (more…)

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Yesterday I commented on the radio about President Obama’s decision to reverse the Mexico City Policy. That policy, an executive order instituted first by President Reagan, then again by President G.W. Bush, prevented federal international aid money from being used to promote abortion. My only mistake (in this particular context, at least!) was commenting on the executive order prematurely. Since his (more…)

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This post is practical in nature. It is based on observation, not necessity. And its point is not that pacifism is wrong (although it is), but that pacifism’s critique of just violence is based on a confused response to emotion.
The international pressure on Israel to move toward a cease-fire with Hamas is a good example of a basic confusion which promotes pacifism over real peace. One of the reasons pacifists mis-characterize all violence as wrong—or as anti-Christian—is related to the reason much violence is wrong. That is, the empathy and altruism built into humanity produce uncomfortable emotions and a corresponding awareness of guilt when a person behaves cruelly. By human (and Humean) nature, people who experience the emotion (empathetic pain or grief) associate it with (more…)

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“Our Mutual Joy” is the title of an article by Lisa Miller in the Newsweek issue of December 15, 2008. The subtitle is:

Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.

The article is so poorly done that it is difficult to begin a critique. In terms of argumentation, the structure of the argument is invalid and the content of it is fallacious. Here is a smattering of a response: anything more would slide into a never-ending project of correction. (The difficulty of critiquing this article is the same as the one professors face when handed a paper which is unreadable. To begin marking that kind of paper is to commit more time to correction than was committed to writing it in the first place!)
Here’s the opening sentence:

Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their (more…)

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The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, has been arrested by the FBI for selling the influence of his office. The most interesting part of the legal claim against him is that he intended to profit from his power in naming the U.S. Senator to replace Barak Obama.
But the legalities are not as important as the ethics involved. Blagojevich’s accused failure is just another example of how conflicts of interest dominate public office. Ethically significant conflicts of interest are explained in detail here. The basic issue is that whenever a person’s self-interest (particularly in the areas of power defined by money and sex) contradicts his entrusted interest in others, there can be no confidence in that person’s ability to act morally. They may or may not actually do something wrong, but the conflict is sufficient to remove confidence either way. So, Blagojevich could argue that his appointment would be the same with or without the money or opportunities, but the unethical conflict is still present, and precludes confidence in him. Such conflicts are known as influence peddling, and are universally condemned and contemptible, although they are ubiquitous in the U.S. Congress—a complaint for another day.
Unfortunately, Illinois has been so long besieged by such conflicts of interest that even Louisiana (with its Huey Long legacy) looks pristine in comparison. One of the great things about real democracy is that it requires civil servants at the head of government rather than rulers. Altruism is rightly expected of civil servants—an expectation apparent in the title itself. Egoism might not be predictably all-consuming in rulers, but is certainly expected. When those who govern think of their actions as ruling rather than serving, warning flags should rise. Where is Illinois in the spectrum? Suffice it as an example here to say that one of Governor Blagojevich’s declared reasons to run for office was to counter the corruption of his predecessor, Governor George Ryan, currently in prison.
Not to worry, though, for those of us outside Illinois. After all, there is no one with deep roots in Illinois politics and a tendency toward government control on the national level…. Is there?

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