What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

The Consent Idol

Personally, I find all the lawyerly attempts to rescue the idea that government authority is illegitimate unless it derives from consent rather precious.

First, it is the very nature of legitimate authority that the commands it issues are legitimate independent of the consent of those commanded. A command with morally binding authority isn't a call for volunteers. If we want to draw on how God has modeled the nature of authority, we can look to the fact that the ten commandments aren't ten suggestions. And the fact that the Israelites wanted a king (and God gave them what they wanted, good and hard) doesn't imply that governance under the Judges was illegitimate. (The incident may say something about the prudence of republican subsidiarity, or what today we might call federalism, though).

Second, however one wants to construe this incoherent principle (incoherent principles can be construed pretty much any way you want, which is part of why they find their way into the basis of legal arguments so often: if you can keep the incoherence from being obvious, you can make an argument for anything you like) -- however one wants to construe this incoherent principle, if (for example) the reign of St. Louis IX was "government by the consent of the governed" every bit as much as modern liberal regimes are, then the principle is vacuous.

Why such a vacuous principle should give the warm fuzzies to right-liberals is a bit of a mystery to me. Perhaps they feel that our own Republic must be illegitimate if this foundational Jeffersonian idea - the (incoherent) idea that government powers are unjust to the extent they do not derive from consent - is wrong. I have no idea why that should be the case, unless their notion of legitimate authority is that a present-day authority cannot be just unless the nation's founders were right about everything in their political theory.

So anyway, modern Catholic consent-idolaters can pick their poison: either your principle is so vacuous that it entails no constraints which are not already encompassed by the fact that government's just powers derive from the common good, or all those previous illiberal governments acknowledged as legitimate by saints and even run by saints were illegitimate.

With apologies to the Lost Boys, that's one thing I never could stomach about the Internet: all the damn lawyers.

Comments (44)

For the purpose of ideological correction, I paraphrase Zippy:

"With apologies to the Lost Boys, that's one thing I never could stomach about the Internet: all the damn Thomas-olators."

all the damn Thomas-olators

Because we know there are so many of them...oh wait.

"A command with morally binding authority isn't a call for volunteers. If we want to draw on how God has modeled the nature of authority, we can look to the fact that the ten commandments aren't ten suggestions. And the fact that the Israelites wanted a king (and God gave them what they wanted, good and hard) doesn't imply that governance under the Judges was illegitimate. (The incident may say something about the prudence of republican subsidiarity, or what today we might call federalism, though)."


As the last three chapters of the book of judges said:

"In those days, Israel had no king, everyone did as he saw fit."

The ravaging of the tribe of Benjamin in return for that horrific rape-murder their members encouraged and protected WAS enforced by a call(nay, DEMAND) for volunteers from all Israel. It was democratically APPROVED-but not democratically decided. The Ten Commandments are not given to idolaters, they must decide to follow them first. They are lost under evil kings and their people and rediscovered by good kinds like Josiah.

The gret misunderstanding seems to be in seeing democracy as a system to be implemented rather than a force to be channeled. Democracy, like evolution, is a force to be harnessed, not a fetish to be worshiped, and woe to those who assign transformative intelligence to either.

The commands of a legitimate authority are also legitimate independent of whether or not that authority has power to force. Mom and Dad are still Mom and Dad, despite the illegitimate attempts of the United States government to usurp them. I suspect the judges of Israel had little actual power, but the people knew obeying them meant peace- the alternative to courts is violence.

The U.S.G claims to derive its legitimacy from the Constitution, but they habitually violate that document. Indeed, one wonders at the value of the document at all, since it clearly cannot constrain any official from doing what is expressly forbidden.

Monarchs (and bishops) had clearly defined jurisdictions, both geographically and in purview. The progressive republic, severely ill with the disease of democracy, claims universal jurisdiction. They destroy the red-light district, only to relocate the whorehouse next door. They fight Islam, and then re-create it in Dearborn, Michigan. Then they deceive the next generation, for the ill effects of sin and error are now spread like leaven through all of society.

The U.S.G is bankrupt. The only sensible thing to do is put the whole nation into receivership, and make sure whatever assets are left get back to the people who they were taken from, rather than those nefarious enough to lend to politicians. I can hardly imagine most Americans consenting to this, as deceived as they are to the nature of things.

Where's the incoherence? Is it supposed to be in the fact that authority legitimated by popular consent coerces individual obedience without consent? If so, then that just shows your own misunderstanding. Consent of the governed is a legal fiction. It doesn't even supervene on individual consent to commands.

Lot's of folks have said that there's no such thing as consent of the governed, therefore it can't legitimate power. That's a reasonable argument, but it doesn't allege incoherence.

Or maybe you meant something totally different when you called it incoherent. Care to elaborate?

If we have _some_ concept of tyranny, then I think we have _some_ concept of consent as important. I think its importance, however, ends up being a kind of all-else-being-equal thing. For example, we can imagine situations (though I think they are a little odd) in which an entire government or a very important ruler is set up without consent of the governed but is nonetheless legitimate. Perhaps one real-life historical situation would be the kingship of James II. The English were very unhappy about his kingship because he was Catholic and they feared would set up a Catholic dynasty. Nevertheless, he was legally the king. He hadn't seized power or anything. He'd just become king in the ordinary course of events, according to the ordinary customs of succession. If Charles II hadn't been an old lecher and had had some legitimate children by his wife, the whole situation wouldn't have arisen. In a sense, James II was king whether he wanted to be or not, and the fact that the people rejected him (William and Mary, Bloodless Revolution) was legally of highly dubious relevance.

Okay, fine, so this proves that consent of the governed is not strictly speaking a necessary condition for a government not to be a tyranny.

However, in the absence of these other circumstances (such as ordinary legal legitimacy or, in still rarer cases, the need for some sort of occupation by a foreign power to stop unjust aggression by a country), the absence of consent *as well* becomes particularly noticeable and is a crucial part of our understanding of tyranny. If Moe and his Boys simply set up a government that everybody hates *just because they want to be in charge*, the fact that everybody hates them and wishes they could get rid of them will be one of the most salient features of our argument for saying that Moe and the Boys are a tyranny rather than a legitimate government. It's the kind of thing that is hard to miss! And I don't think it can be simply replaced in our analysis of what's wrong with Moe's government by an explanation solely in terms of the common good that makes no reference to the fact that Moe seized power out of the blue and that everyone hates him and wishes they could get rid of him.

And I don't think it can be simply replaced in our analysis of what's wrong with Moe's government by an explanation solely in terms of the common good that makes no reference to the fact that Moe seized power out of the blue and that everyone hates him and wishes they could get rid of him.
In that case though Moe is just obviously acting for his own aggrandizement and not for the sake of the common good, it seems to me. In fact I think in most cases of seizing power in a way that foments violence and unrest - really any such case which does not involve a just war to stop an aggressor - it is going to be hard to justify as an action directed toward what is best for the common good.

So I disagree that the case can't be analyzed in terms of the common good and specifically without positively asserting that the illegitmacy of a particular government arises specifically from lack of consent of the governed.

Now certainly it is possible for a people to reject a legitimate ruler. In such a case what we have is like a runaway adolescent. The father of a runaway adolescent -qua- father has authority to act on behalf of the good of his sons. He may as a prudential matter decide that it is not best for little Johnny for the father to continue to assert his paternal authority, and instead may let Johnny run away and live with the swine until he hits bottom. This in no way implies that Johnny's lack of consent has rendered the father's authority illegitimate. Quite the contrary. Little Johnny sins in disobedience in that sort of case: it wouldn't be a moral wrong on Johnny's part to disobey if the moral legitimacy of his father's authority depended on Johnny's consent. The fact that immoral rebellion is possible, and that a prudent ruler may abdicate in the face of that rebellion for the sake of the common good, does not legitimize the rebellion nor does it imply that the legitimacy of the ruler's authority depended on the citizenry not rebelling.

The fact that sinful rebellion can give rise to a situation where a legitimate ruler can no longer rule - where the good and correct prudential choice is for him to step down - does not legitimize any doctrine of consent. That would be like legitimizing rape by suggesting that there are circumstances where, as a prudential matter, a woman should cease fighting her attacker.

The doctrine of consent - the doctrine that authority which does not derive from consent is, precisely because it does not so derive, illegitimate - is at best petulant adolescent rebellion enshrined as principle. At worst it is simply the Fall - Non serviam! - enshrined in politics.

In that case though Moe is just obviously acting for his own aggrandizement and not for the sake of the common good, it seems to me. In fact I think in most cases of seizing power in a way that foments violence and unrest - really any such case which does not involve a just war to stop an aggressor - it is going to be hard to justify as an action directed toward what is best for the common good.

But this can't be chiefly about motives. After all, someone elected President or someone who duly inherits the kingship might have equally bad motives--his own aggrandizement, for example--for wanting the position (and in the case of the presidency, these motives could be what caused him to run), but that doesn't make his government illegitimate in any technical sense of the term.

I would be inclined to say that even if Moe happens to make up some rather smart traffic laws or whatever, laws that do in fact work for the common good, it's still going to be a perfectly pertinent question to ask, "Who the heck are you and why should we listen to what you say?" And this because Moe has _neither_ some sort of general consent ("We started a new government and picked you for the head of it, Moe") _nor_ garden-variety legal legitimacy.

Well, if all the consent doctrine says is that an arbitrary person cannot become a legitimate government with legitimate authority on his own say-so, we are back to a concept that is vacuous.

Actually, I'm not sure that is vacuous. Here's why: Because an arbitrary person could in fact take over a country. Or at least people will often claim that another person has arbitrarily taken over their country. This is what the Welsh claimed regarding Edward I in the late 1200's, for example. Naturally, Edward disagreed. Attempts to discover whether this has in fact happened seem to me to presuppose the idea that consent is important at some level. For example, it is considered to undermine the Welsh claim if we discover that their Prince, Llewellyn, had sworn fealty to Edward and later broke that oath. Back on the other side, it undermines the relevance of that point if we are told that L. swore fealty only under duress or only with qualifications or conditions which Edward did not respect. And so on and so forth. Llewellyn is considered a representative of the Welsh people, and the very attempt to discover whether or not he really _agreed_ to be governed by Edward in the way that Edward wanted to govern is pertinent to deciding whether in the end Edward was a tyrant when he swept over Wales, killed Llewellyn and his brother, and carved up Wales into English shires.

It seems that our attempts to discover such things when evaluating various claims of historical wrongs show our acknowledgement of the importance of consent.

Good comment, Lydia.

In the compact theory of government, the great act of consent was an antecedent decision to step out of the ol' state o' nature into civil society. We all consented to replace violence and anarchy with settled law. Our Founding documents grant a qualified majority the power to legislate this settled law.

I've made many critiques of the state-of-nature abstraction over the years, and need not recapitulate them here. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that analysis of the switch from pre-political to political man does warrant some care and attention. A lot of interesting questions remain, despite natural science's considerable revision of the early modern state-of-nature thinkers. For instance, was Hobbes right that most men choose civil association out of fear and anxiety? Or might there something to the possibility that fellowship and shared purpose provided the spring of civil association?

Put other way, consider a street kid in any major city in America: his domestic life a wreck, he wanders and judges by his own lights. He sees quickly that on the streets humiliation, dispossession and death await the man alone. He must sign on with the nearest gang, and do it fast. Then and only then may he hope for some liberty of personal activity.

The state-of-nature, in a sense, is in every big city in this country: it's there, just a few wrong turns from the baseball stadium, or just a few blocks from the central business district. And Hobbes is as relevant as ever for millions of Americans. The very security of life and limbs hinges on which gang gains these Americans' consent and fellowship.

Also, if consent in the loftier, Jeffersonian sense is thrown away as a possible tool in understanding what mankind is and what the destiny of civil society is, do we not gravely risk surrendering to the common reductionism: the will of the sovereign is law; no law can restrain the sovereign, for his will is law? The gang is legitimate precisely because it gained enough consenters (or covenanters) from among the smart and the strong to rule. Leviathan.

The point isn't that "an arbitrary person cannot become a legitimate government on nothing but his own say so" is vacuous. That is an obviously true and very general statement which doesn't rely on any notion of consent. If the consent doctrine means something that is obviously true and has nothing to do with consent, then the consent doctrine is vacuous.

As to agreements between legitimate rulers, I don't have some general theory of when they are binding and when they aren't binding, and it seems to me that I don't need to advance any grand theories of politics in order to make the observation that consent theories are either incoherent hokum (if we take them seriously) or vacuous (if we try to wedge them into distinct issues in order to save them as something respectable people can still believe in using consent-language).

I certainly agree that what I would accept is a very watered-down notion of the importance of consent of the governed. A die-hard "consent of the governed" person wouldn't be happy. It seems plausible to me (I've given some examples on Tony's thread) that there are various routes to legitimacy in a government of which some sort of general will/general consent is but one. However, I think consent of the governed has the important place in people's minds that it does have partly because it is such an important ingredient in our analysis and understanding of tyranny and because its absence is so strikingly noticeable in cases that we do want to designate as tyranny--totalitarian governments, unjust takeovers, and the like. This means that it cannot simply be dismissed or reductionistically made to disappear.

I think consent of the governed has the important place in people's minds that it does have partly because it is such an important ingredient in our analysis and understanding of tyranny and because its absence is so strikingly noticeable in cases that we do want to designate as tyranny--totalitarian governments, unjust takeovers, and the like. This means that it cannot simply be dismissed or reductionistically made to disappear.

I'm sure all sorts of people can come up with all sorts of meanings to attach to all sorts of words. But as long as a person unequivocally rejects the proposition that a government's powers are inherently unjust to the extent they do not derive from the consent of the governed, he isn't arguing with me, at least in principle.

As with "equal rights", though, I would suggest that using such pieties as slogans representing things to which we cleave is imprudent. People in general are going to interpret the slogans to mean what they expect them to mean; and what people expect "the just powers of government derive from the consent of the governed" to mean is that government powers which do not derive from consent are illegitimate. They generally don't mean things like if the king was under duress when he signed the treaty, the treaty may not be legitimate. So if you mean the latter, say the latter.

The problem with the state of nature is that it never existed. The first societies were clans or tribes of people all related by blood, and it's pretty easy to see how there was no 'before' this.

Consent of the governed is trivially true in one sense, that governments that want to last for any time will not rule arbitrarily. The current horrible American ruling establishment has the general consent of the people, despite the common complaints. Likewise, the Mexican government has the general consent of its people. Governments normally arise from a people, rather than being laid down on top of them.

And that's true of the US government as well. Despite the foolishness of American Exceptionalism, we really are like any other country in most respects. The American Revolution took place because Britain was really far away, we had been more or less independent of it for a couple of centuries, and when they tried to change that we didn't like it much. That's about it, and all the rest was just rationalization of the deed.

Also, talking about tyranny is funny...we fought a war to escape one tyranny, but who wouldn't take ol Mad King George these days? Beats King Obama by a mile.

Also, if consent in the loftier, Jeffersonian sense is thrown away as a possible tool in understanding what mankind is and what the destiny of civil society is, do we not gravely risk surrendering to the common reductionism: the will of the sovereign is law; no law can restrain the sovereign, for his will is law?
I think the opposite is the case: as long as we cling to the fiction that a government's legitimacy can be taken away by removing consent, we distort our conception of what government is for. Government exists to protect and advance the common good; these other incoherent theories cover that up and put a cloak of legitimacy around all manner of atrocity.

Didn't Burke argue something along these lines in the Reflections? That if the revolutionists believed that only government by consent of the governed was valid, then all her previous governments were in fact tyrannical, irrespective of how "benign" they appeared?

Burke gave the definition of Jacobinism as the principle "that all government, not being a democracy, is a usurpation."

Matt -- I think close approximates of the state of nature can indeed be discovered all over the world today, mostly in gritty urban centers. It is not primitive because cellphones and TVs are fairly abundant. But the security of the rule of law is mostly absent, and folks face Hobbesian conditions all the time.

as long as we cling to the fiction that a government's legitimacy can be taken away by removing consent

Zippy -- I don't think the compact theorists would argue that the original compact can be so easily abrogated. Lincoln spoke often of the consent of the government as the spring of legitimate government, but he even more famously denied the right of secession. The consent given to the Union could not be legally withdrawn by the states (save perhaps by recourse to the natural right of revolution).

I think close approximates of the state of nature can indeed be discovered all over the world today, mostly in gritty urban centers.
My sense of cosmic irony is tingling.
As with "equal rights", though, I would suggest that using such pieties as slogans representing things to which we cleave is imprudent. People in general are going to interpret the slogans to mean what they expect them to mean; and what people expect "the just powers of government derive from the consent of the governed" to mean is that government powers which do not derive from consent are illegitimate. They generally don't mean things like if the king was under duress when he signed the treaty, the treaty may not be legitimate. So if you mean the latter, say the latter.

But Zippy, you go a good deal farther than saying that it's imprudent to use "equal rights." You think it imprudent to use *any cognate* of the term "equal" in a positive sense! That's a pretty big lopping of our powers of vocabulary. And the same with an acknowledgement of the importance of consent in expressing indignation about tyranny, usurpation, or totalitarianism.

The loony left has done a lot of stupid things with "justice" and "peace" as well, but I wouldn't propose that we simply try to do without those terms and substitute only highly, highly concrete prescriptions. There are, of course, cases (usually when they are being used by the loony left) when I think more specificity is needed. But there are also times when it's not only legitimate but important to be able to talk about justice without having to go some kind of re-stating route. I think that to do so and to say that we must always do so is to encourage nominalism about some pretty important concepts, as though we aren't permitted to say anything of a higher-order nature about what these various instances have in common.

I brought up the point about the prince, duress, and an oath of fealty to make a point about the importance of consent in evaluating whether a country's takeover of another country is tyrannical. My point had to do with the role of the prince as the representative of his country and of his oaths as representing the relationship of his country and his countrymen to another country. It simply doesn't get at this just to say, "If the king was under duress when he signed the treaty, the treaty may not be legitimate." We must be allowed to notice what specific instances point to.

Paul, I'm intrigued by your picture of the terrible conditions of the inner city as representing a state of nature. I mean, obviously, the young people in those situations must know that robbing the local grocery store is "against the law"--referring to a law that exists over and above the "state of nature" in their neighborhood. They know that _if_ they get caught by the police doing x they may be tried and go to jail. How does this modify the picture of them as existing in a "state of nature," and how, conversely, does the concern that they are living in a "state of nature" affect the "oughts" of their own situation? For example, are they in that case more or less free to ignore the laws of the state which seem to them ridiculous or silly? Are they responsible only to whatever gleams of the natural law they retain individually? Could it be legitimate for them to join gangs if they convinced themselves that the gangs they are joining "fight only in self-defense" (even if this is quite untrue)?

...either your principle is so vacuous that it entails no constraints which are not already encompassed by the fact that government's just powers derive from the common good...

If those powers derive from the common good, why is consent from the common people entirely irrelevant? There is an assumption in your argument that most people don't know the common good or they do know and actively oppose it, that the common good can only be imposed by a Platonic guardian class. Further, what is the mechanism by which a government not based on consent should have its arbitrary or detrimental practices overruled?

To use a current example, I think the Tea Party's insistence that raising the debt ceiling be exclusively tied to deep entitlement cuts is harmful to the public good and economically uninformed (assuming they are willing to raise the ceiling at all), what I don't think is that it is unjust or illegal. They have every right to hold the markets hostage, break their oath to honor the validity of the public debt, and appease their donors if they want to, and then the citizens have every right to throw the clowns out of office. So I would say my primary argument for consent is that it allows for consequentialism.

You think it imprudent to use *any cognate* of the term "equal" in a positive sense!

That doesn't sound like a fair paraphrase of what I've actually said in context, to me. In your post on the subject you used "equal rights" and "equality" interchangeably, e.g.:

Now, in this post I'd like to talk a bit about equality. The question is this: Should we say that there is no notion of "equal rights" that can or should be thought of as an important principle?
I think we should say that: that every concept of "equal rights" is one of vacuous, nominalistic, or self-contradictory.

Of course it is certainly possible that something I said somewhere when extracted from the context of a long discussion might be taken in a way that doesn't reflect my intended meaning when I said it. And there are use-cases for the term "equality" separate from "rights" which I believe to be imprudent. But I also expressly disavowed, on several occasions, the notion that the term has no legitimate use whatsoever, and even that it pertains sometimes to justice (as in economic exchange, for example).

The loony left has done a lot of stupid things with "justice" and "peace" as well, but I wouldn't propose that we simply try to do without those terms and substitute only highly, highly concrete prescriptions.
I agree. But in the case of "equal rights" and "government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed", there is no legitimate non-nominalist non-vacuous meaning at all. That is to say, the common meanings across the board are wrong, and perniciously evil and deceptive, across the political spectrum, and have been, in saecula saeculorum.

Lydia wrote:

Okay, fine, so this proves that consent of the governed is not strictly speaking a necessary condition for a government not to be a tyranny.

The flip-side of this is also true. A government can have the consent of the governed and be a tyranny. There is an obvious 20th Century example of a mad, mass-murdering, dictator, who plunged the world into war, who had nevertheless been elected into office and enjoyed a very high level of public approval until surprisingly late in his disastrous time in power. He is hardly the only example either.

The discussion between Lydia and zippy above points back to the very beginning of Western thought on the subject of politics. The word "tyrant" originally meant someone who had usurped office - regardless of whether he governed justly or unjustly. It evolved by the time of Aristotle to have the meaning of an unjust ruler. When Aristotle is distinguishing between the just and unjust versions of the simple constitutions (rule of the one, few, and many) he used "tyrant" to refer to the unjust opposite of a "king".

I have the same problems with the compact theory of government and the notion of "consent of the governed" that have been raised above, and have argued against both in about five or six essays at my own blog. We would not wish to apply the idea of legitimacy derived from the consent of the governed to any other form of authority than civil. Parents are obviously not elected by their children nor do they generally hold plebiscites on the handling of household affairs. God, judging from the Book of Job, is less than impressed with people who offer their suggestions to Him as to how He should run the universe. Then there is ecclesiastical authority. While voting has been one of a number of methods used for selecting people for ecclesiastical offices since the establishment of the order of deacons in Acts 6, for 1500 years it was virtually undisputed that the legitimacy of ecclesiastical authority is derived from ordination in Apostolic succession.

As a Canadian, I don't have the problem of reconciling my thoughts on this matter with my country's founding political mythology. My country is a parliamentary monarchy and I do not wish to see it changed into a republic in the modern sense of the term. If I had to argue for the legitimacy of a republican government however, I would argue on the grounds of delegated authority rather than consent of the governed. Fathers possess authority over their families by nature, they delegate that authority to their representatives in the government of civil society. "Consent of the governed" sounds too much to me like a child saying "who are you to tell me what to do. I'm the boss of me".

There is an obvious 20th Century example of a mad, mass-murdering, dictator, who plunged the world into war, who had nevertheless been elected into office and enjoyed a very high level of public approval until surprisingly late in his disastrous time in power. He is hardly the only example either.

Actually, not to start a digression, but I used to think this was true, and it turns out not to be true. The actual power that Hitler obtained required an enormous amount of bullying beyond election. In particular, he had to bully a particular government official (I forget his name and the details just now) to stand aside and give Hitler some large amount of power to which he had not originally been elected.

Of course, if some huge majority of the German people just loved Hitler and really gave him all his power, we might understandably say that the whole German people were mad and mass-murdering (except for the children or something like that) and that he was a tyrant not over them but only over the other countries he conquered with their hearty approval. Whether that's true or not is an historical question, but it wd. seem like an understandable way to use the word "tyrant" _if_ it were true.

Zippy, I was thinking of these things that you said:

There are many ways of expressing any truth (moral or otherwise). Some ways of expressing a given truth are wiser than others, depending on context. That it is possible to express something true in a certain way does not mean that it is wise to express it in that certain way.

My argument that conservatives should not express moral truths in the language of equality and rights is a prudential argument; an argument which applies to our particular place and time, right now in this moment of history in America. They shouldn't do it because doing so is stupid, self-defeating, and destructive; not because it is analytically impossible to say anything true using that kind of language. Any moral truth which can be expressed or labeled in the language of equality (or "equal rights") can also be expressed in some other language which does not use the term "equality" or its immediate cognates. That's what we ought to do, because using the language of political freedom and equality just adds more fuel to the fire.

We were also discussing the proposition that God loves all men equally. (Notice that this does not involve the phrase "equal rights.")

I said that if I were to say that, I would mean "something about God's not treating one man merely as a means to an end for another man." You replied,

And I would suggest that in that usage, the term "equally" is redundant. You never treat someone you love merely as a means to an end for someone else.

I guess in that sense perhaps the Chicken is right that "love" might also be misunderstood. On the other hand, while it is perfectly possible to express the fact that God loves all persons without using the term "equal" or any cognate of equal, it is not possible to express it without using the term "love" or some cognate of love.

There was also this (in response to my post, which was called "I believe in equality (sort of)"):

And notice - the post demonstrates this nicely - that when you get down to brass tacks and particulars, you can assert the things you would like "equality" (as authoritative political principle) to assert without ever using the term. I think you should. Once you get specific enough to start attaching coherent meaning to the label, the label itself becomes superfluous. So by using it at all, what you are accomplishing is to validate it as an abstraction inclusive of all of its wrong uses.

Articulation of right principles does not require the term "equality". It is possible, but unwise in my view, to use it to express a moral truth.


You know, Christ's Kingdom is one of total consent, for only those who willingly consent to be ruled by him can ever enter into it.

Lydia, I agree that there is not complete lawlessness. The police can still bring force to bear sufficient to effect order for a time. Criminals are still apprehended, courts still function, more or less. An armed citizen, with the skill and dispatch to use force in defense if necessary, could probably make it through the 'hood unscathed on foot.

But the average unarmed civilian, as Buckley used to say when he ran for mayor of NYC, could not cross through his city at night without losing at least his wallet and maybe his life.

So these are pretty good approximations of Hobbesian anarcho-tyranny, especially for the countless children who are essentially left to fend for themselves in it.

Lydia:

In the first quote, I expressed in a parenthetical that I was using "equality" and "equal rights" to refer to the same thing, so I don't know what the objection is there. I don't know if that quote is in your "I believe in equality" post; but in any case in your post you explicitly say that by "equality" you mean some understanding of equal rights as a positive thing politically. You go on to construct a nominalistic list of things historically attached to the term (no formal aristocracy, etc.) while disclaiming it as a non-nominalistic general principle. I don't think it is wise to do that for reasons already stated.

In the second, I pointed out that in the phrase "God loves all men equally" the "equally" is superfluous. I pointed that out because as far as I can tell it is true.

In the third quote, I am again expressly talking about authoritative political principles.

One things I don't say in those quotes is that "... it [is] imprudent to use *any cognate* of the term "equal" in a positive sense!"

I do think that we should completely disavaow the term "equal rights": it should be unequivocally shunned, and recognized as something which corrupts thought in most people who say it and virtually all who hear it. I also think we should only use the term "equal" as a positive thing in political discourse when it is essential to what we are saying, in part precisely because when we say "equal" in politics people always hear "equal rights". I'm willing to entertain that there might be some instances where using the term "equal" by itself in political discourse (other than expressing mathematical results or whatever) might be helpful; but in all the years I've debated the issue nobody has come up with an actual one, a real instance of such a use, which did not seem to me to be superfluous. Much like the "equally" in "God loves all men equally".

Catholics like to use the term "equal dignity". I think that is because the term is used to express a genuine truth - that all human beings have dignity -qua- human so there are certain things we ought never do to them, and a certain respect we are morally required to extend to them -qua- human - in a language which soothes the modern ear with the term "equality". I'd just as soon say "every person has human dignity" though, since - as with the "God loves all men" example - the term "equal" is, as near as I can tell, superfluous.

So we should shun "equal rights" as a political principle, and we should be very careful not to use the term "equal" when it is unnecessary precisely because doing feeds the modern "equal rights" mythology, if nothing else by fostering a climate which is not hostile to the (ultimately incoherent) idea of "equal rights" as a political principle.

I think it is misleading to use the term "doctrine" in reference to consent of the governed. It is a mistake to think of the concept of consent of the governed as if consent only referred to some sort of positive approval. I think it just a fact that all governments rely on the consent of those they govern in one way or another.

Even tyrants know there are limits to what people will endure, and the successful ones foster group hatreds to keep people fighting amongst themselves. Now we might see little consent from the outside, but successful tyrants know how to keep a balance of benefits, terror, or something such that the in-groups consent to whatever benefits there are, while the out-groups would rather consent to the status quo however reluctantly than risk something worse. But it all revolves around consent just the same. The question is not whether consent is involved to a high degree, it is, but whether the citizens are sufficiently motivated or able to oppose that with which they disagree. Now a prison-state such as North Korea or some horrible example is such an extreme that I don't even know how to analyze it. Perhaps extremes aren't the best way to theorize.

Now I suppose a cynic could call our way of believing in a more, shall we say, enlightened form of consent is a "doctrine," but I think it is just an acknowledgement of the common-sense understanding I outlined above applied to citizens with more knowledge, judgement, and wisdom. One of the reasons would be, as Mamet said, they know that there is no secret knowledge of governance.

As with all topics here, the debates always are between the realists and the anti-realists of a type. Those who think our major ideas are reified, if you will, theoretically, and those who think they our major ideas are features of the world that we merely theorize about in varying degrees.

Hobbes didn't base his theory on the premise that a state of nature actually existed. I think he even wrote that there might never have been such a thing. So that point is irrelevant.

Lydia, as I vaguely remember - OK, I just checked Google - your argument contrasts with your earlier argument about tyranny and consent, especially with the Hitler thing now. I objected to calling gay "marriage" tyrannical if the people consent to it and even will it. You replied, "When a law tries to force people to use an extremely important term in a wildly different way from the way it has been used by custom throughout human history, such a law is tyrannical pretty much by definition." I'm not complaining, because I pretty much agree with what you're saying now. While consent doesn't logically exclude tyranny or vice versa, it's often a good indicator.

If those powers derive from the common good, why is consent from the common people entirely irrelevant?
You can have any color model T you want, as long as it is black. And government powers are illegitimate based on witheld consent only and precisely to the extent that witheld consent supervenes over the common good.

IOW, if consent is witheld precislely because of an immoral tyranny opposed to the common good, then consent and legitimacy correspond. If consent is witheld for reasons opposed to the common good, then government's authority is just despite the withheld consent.

In still other words: it is possible for the ruler to oppose the common good, in which case he is a tyrant. And it is possible for the masses to oppose the common good, in which case they are a wicked and rebellious people. In neither case is legitimacy of government authority derived from what the ruler wills or what the people wills, though. They either conform their will to the good, or they are in the wrong.

One things I don't say in those quotes is that "... it [is] imprudent to use *any cognate* of the term "equal" in a positive sense!"

Ok, but I recall when you said: Any moral truth which can be expressed or labeled in the language of equality (or "equal rights") can also be expressed in some other language which does not use the term "equality" or its immediate cognates.

And if this is true you've never said how you'd express to little Susie why she should share her jelly beans with her brother, or why I should follow the Golden Rule?

I pointed out that in the phrase "God loves all men equally" the "equally" is superfluous. I pointed that out because as far as I can tell it is true.

I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the most portentous of presumptions. . . . men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man:—SUCH men, with their “equality before God,” have hitherto swayed the destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European of the present day. --Freddy Nietzsche

Maybe your should take some of your own advice by confronting your Niezchean inner-child, and strangling the little bastard?

Ok, but I recall when you said: Any moral truth which can be expressed or labeled in the language of equality (or "equal rights") can also be expressed in some other language which does not use the term "equality" or its immediate cognates.
That's right. My parenthetical makes it explicit that when I speak of the "language of equality" I am - following Lydia's use of language in these threads by the way, including right there in her main "I believe in equality" post - speaking of equal rights.

For those who can read, at any rate, and for those polite enough to ask if it is unclear (since my writing doubtless is often unclear). Adolescents who couldn't accurately paraphrase Barney the Dinosaur but think they are God's gift to political discourse don't generally get much of my time and attention though.

Actually, in the comments thread on that post what I said was that I would hesitate to use the whole phrase "equal rights" and in fact think that specific phrase confusing but believe that "equality under the law" is useful and not confusing. I hadn't realized that the main post was unclear on that specific point.

But at the risk of offending, Zippy, I have to say that it doesn't seem to me there is a great deal of difference between, "No one should use 'equality' or any of its cognates in a positive way in political discourse" and

I'm willing to entertain that there might be some instances where using the term "equal" by itself in political discourse (other than expressing mathematical results or whatever) might be helpful; but in all the years I've debated the issue nobody has come up with an actual one, a real instance of such a use, which did not seem to me to be superfluous.

[snip]

So we should shun "equal rights" as a political principle, and we should be very careful not to use the term "equal" when it is unnecessary precisely because doing feeds the modern "equal rights" mythology, if nothing else by fostering a climate which is not hostile to the (ultimately incoherent) idea of "equal rights" as a political principle.

So we shouldn't use cognates of "equal" in political discourse "when it is unnecessary," and, on your view, it always seems in fact to be unnecessary! In fact, you don't know of any cases where it's necessary.

I certainly did not and do not mean to misrepresent your position, honest. But it was very much this kind of position that we can (very probably) always find some way to get around using "equal" positively and should do so if at all possible that I had in mind in my comment in this thread.

I hadn't realized that the main post was unclear on that specific point.
What does it tell us that even Lydia McGrew, of all people, unconsciously uses "equality" and "equal rights" interchangeably?

I mean that as a compliment, by the way, not as snark. I can't think of anyone I know, or even know of, who is more careful with language, more meticulous in thought, than you, Lydia. Not myself, not any of the present or previous contributors, nobody.

If the most meticulous person with language and epistemology on earth, as far as I know, unconsciously uses the terms "equal" and "equal rights" interchangeably; and if "equal rights" is something that needs to be disavowed for all the reasons discussed ad nauseum; well, what does that say about the wisdom of our use of positive equality-speak in general?

Well, compliments accepted and all that, but what I _thought_ I was doing in the main post there was saying, "Is there any sense in which 'equal rights' might mean something legitimate?" and then going on to say that "equality under the law" is a good concept that _some people_ (not, that is, necessarily me) might mean by "equal rights" and that it would be a good thing to encourage _those people_ to clarify what they mean and to narrow down on the concept of "equality under the law" and abjure the other things (e.g., feminism, for example) that they might understandably be taken to mean by "equal rights." Apparently just my asking the initial question rendered the rest of the post unclear as to whether _I_ would use the very phrase "equal rights" or think it wise to do so, but that did get clarified in the comments thread. I don't think there was actually anything unconscious that went on there, just apparently an unclarity in writing.

A compliment? Nah, zippy seems pretty smarmy to me since he compliments you for the purpose of trying to show himself right. Yuck. The truth is that core things are difficult to talk about without "unclarity." Truth, beauty, justice, fairness, equality, etc. We are usually imprecise in words because we're talking about what we know primarily by intuition. That's just the way it is.

Now, Mark, I resent that on Zippy's behalf. Seriously. Zippy is never smarmy. He's an absolutely straight shooter. And I thank him for his kind words.

I just, being the proud person that I am, want to maintain my reputation for being conscious of what I'm saying. I chose my words carefully all through that post. It simply never occurred to me that someone would think that I was advocating using the exact phrase "equal rights" as opposed to saying that "equality under the law" is something that those who _do_ use the phrase might mean by it and should be encouraged to focus on (while ditching other things they might mean). That's why I never thought of myself as changing position or saying something that contradicted the main post when, in the comments thread, I expressed reservations about myself using the phrase "equal rights" and said I would instead advocate using "equality under the law."

Sorry Zippy and Lydia. I dashed that off and realized later how much of a jerk I was for saying it. My apologies for saying such an ill-considered and rude thing.

Zippy's back?!? Well, it's about time!

Greetings to him (and to all) from Rome (the Aventine hill, to be precise).

Iffy internet connection. More later, I hope.

Thank you Steve, I hope you are having a wonderful trip.

Re: all those previous governments, including ones headed by saints:

Sure, they were illegitimate. What of it?

This fact doesn't, of course, indicate that those saints were guilty of some moral failing. They did the best they knew. In a sense, their governments were the closest thing to legitimate governance yet invented in a world whose ignorance of the intrinsic dignity of human persons was still in the earliest stages of being gradually enlightened by the presence of the Body of Christ in the world.

But governance made licit by consent was simply not understood; the legacy of god-kings ruling autocratically was too pervasive in the world. Doctrine develops, of course (one can't stop people deriving true conclusions from true premises), but it develops over time, not instantaneously. To ask the Saint Louis, crusader and king, to invent mechanisms of democratic governance in pursuit of a more legitimate way to claim authority would be like asking husbands of the era to invent modern obstetrics in pursuit of a more reliable way of having children.

All authority comes from God. That authority is conferred to individuals by virtue of their intrinsic human dignity (and within families, to the father and mother). God gives persons free will and just authority to exercise free will within the confines of the Moral Law.

Now, if individuals delegate some of the authority they received from God to their employees (the government) then those employees (the Congress, the President) have legitimate authority within the confines of whatever was delegated.

If they withhold the delegation of a particular authority to those employees, then UNLESS THOSE EMPLOYEES OBTAIN THAT AUTHORITY FROM GOD BY AN ALTERNATE PATH, those employees lack that authority, and any attempt to exercise it anyway is an usurpation. This is logically necessary because all just authority comes from God; if you haven't gotten it from God, you haven't got it.

Now we know of certain figures such as Saul and David who really and truly did obtain governing authority from God by a route other than the consent of their subjects. That's God's prerogative, should He wish to exercise His authority that way.

But to say that any random warlord in history who conquers a territory has proven, by his doing so, that God has delegated ruling authority to him is to say that the Soviets obtained divine right rulership in Russia because their revolution succeeded. Which is nonsense.

So, apart from certain prophetically authenticated instances of real, legitimate, divine right rulership in Scripture, the only remaining path to just authority from God for a given employee of the People, is by delegation from his employers.

That's the deal.

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.