re Dan’s post to the effect that making the wrong argument to the right effect can be a problem, let’s don’t forget that we can point that out to lots of people:
Instead, he argues from organizational self-interest — never mind if it is right or wrong, the policy puts Scouting Inc. in a tough position, so best to abandon it. Duty to God and country? To heck with that — management always has its own priorities.
Depending on your point of view, Gates is either doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason or doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
(source: Gates, Gays, and the Boy Scouts)
I’ll have more to say about Dan’s latest once I’ve finished marking up Oceana by Harrington.
Peter, I’ll look forward to your thoughts on my post. Just to guide our conversation a bit, I’ll note that my concern is not that we’re making the wrong argument, but that we’re trying to defend the wrong thing. For example, we shouldn’t be trying to defend religious liberty because it is religious, we should be defending it because it is liberty.
If we defend religion, as opposed to liberty, we agree that the State has the authority to regulate our lives with respect to the particulars we are addressing, and argue only that there is something about religion that is so important it ought to enjoy an exemption from the rule. Consequently, we agree that our “liberty” is something that the State has the authority to grant or deny, and the decision on which it will be depends entirely on our ability to make out a persuasive case for our religious activity.
But that’s not liberty at all. Even if we win the argument, we haven’t secured liberty. We’ve won a license to engage in the behavior for which we contended – a license that can rightfully be revoked should the State change its mind about the value of our behavior.
That, I think, is the significance of what Hannan was pointing out. And he could have, with equal accuracy, looked to Locke for the principle that the State is subservient to the populace, not vice versa. A free people, a people with liberty, creates the State as its servant, not its master. And as a created thing, the State has only that authority the people lend it – authority that must exist first in the person as an individual. Everything else is tyranny.
I just lost a whole morning’s work on this due to a glitch when swapping from my mechanic’s wireless network to a Denny’s. Frustrating, not least because I do not have enough laptop battery left to reconstruct it, now. Perhaps tonight, instead. Apologies. PGE
Hey, thanks. Yes, I have been regretting the phrase since I wrote it. To be slightly more clear, in terms that sort out for me, I understood you to be saying that we should argue “I should be permitted to [X]” based on the principle “because everyone should be permitted to [X]” rather than “because I have a religious obligation to [X].” I will argue that we should use both forms of argument, as appropriate–for both pragmatic and principled reasons. I find your (apparent) civil libertarian preference is understandable, though. It would be mine, too, had I not decided that this was a mistaken principle–and that as a matter of pragmatics it was pretty much “to take arms against a sea of troubles” in hopes that one might, merely “by opposing, end them.”