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Tag Archives: policy

Our Partisanship as a Moral Failing

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Politics

≈ Comments Off on Our Partisanship as a Moral Failing

Tags

American Government, American Politics, Charlie Rose, compromise, Congress, David Brooks, debate, Democrats, Government, interview, James Madison, Jon Meacham, Michael Beschloss, Moderation, policy, political philosophy, politics, Republicans

David Brooks 32

John Meacham: If our country itself is irreconcilably polarized, then in classic republican — lowercase “r” — thinking, that is going to be reflected in our political system.

David Brooks: I’m coming around to that view, which I was very resistant to over the last ten years. A lot of people have argued that [polarization] begins out in the country, not in Washington. I guess I more or less accept that now.

And I think it’s a moral failing that we all share. Which is that if you have a modest sense of your own rightness, and if you think that politics is generally a competition between half-truths, then you’re going to need the other people on the other side, and you’re going to value the similarity of taste. You know, you may disagree with a Republican, or disagree with a Democrat, but you’re still American and you still basically share the same culture. And you know your side is half wrong.

If you have that mentality that ‘Well, I’m probably half wrong; he’s probably half right,’ then it’s going to be a lot easier to come to an agreement. But if you have an egotistical attitude that ‘I’m 100% right and they’re 100% wrong,’ which is a moral failing — a failing of intellectual morality — then it’s very hard to come to an agreement.

And I do think that we’ve had a failure of modesty about our own rightness and wrongness. And I’m in the op-ed business, so believe me that people like me have contributed as much as anybody to this moral failure. But I think it has built up gradually and has become somewhat consuming.

__________

David Brooks and Jon Meacham, in conversation when Meacham subbed for Charlie Rose this summer.

More:

  • George Washington rips party politics
  • Mark Leibovich rips our cowardly political culture
  • Meacham and Brooks riff on Jefferson and Hamilton

John Meacham

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Vices Are Not Crimes

12 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Political Philosophy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

crimes, justice, Law, libertarianism, Lysander Spooner, policy, political philosophy, vice, Vices Are Not Crimes, virtue

Lysander Spooner

“If, then, it became so difficult, so nearly impossible, in most cases, to determine what is, and what is not, vice; and especially if it be so difficult, in nearly all cases, to determine where virtue ends, and vice begins; and if these questions, which no one can really and truly determine for anybody but himself, are not to be left free and open for experiment by all, each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being, to wit: his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge, and ascertain for himself, what is, to him, virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other words: what, on the whole, conduces to his happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to his unhappiness. If this great right is not to be left free and open to all, then each man’s whole right, as a reasoning human being, to ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ is denied him.

We all come into the world in ignorance of ourselves, and of everything around us. By a fundamental law of our natures we are all constantly impelled by the desire of happiness, and the fear of pain… No one of us, therefore, can learn this indispensable lesson of happiness and unhappiness, of virtue and vice, for another. Each must learn it for himself.”

__________

From sections V and VI of Lysander Spooner’s 1875 text Vices Are Not Crimes.

Thanks to my good friend C. for sending this text my way. C.’s unyielding libertarianism — or is it anarcho-capitalism? — has been refreshing to return home to, especially as I’ve left the warm centrist cocoon of Washington, D.C. George Orwell said that it is not what a person thinks that’s important, but rather how he thinks; and while I don’t subscribe to the what of C.’s arguments, I’m an unabashed fan of the how. It takes real intellectual will and moral independence to mount the case that the state itself — not just a party or faction — is illegitimate, but C. does this with total energy, seriousness and rigor.

I have different ideas on the matter, and try to play the part of the good sparring partner, but I like the breath of fresh air. The challenge to re-establish first principles is always worthwhile; to enjoy the dialectic of argument is amongst the most rewarding endeavors I know.

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