My title has the word 'liberalism' in scare quotes because I want to discuss the sort of liberalism that has grown scarier and scarier over the last several decades. I'm not talking about the liberalism of Locke and the American founding fathers, which stressed respect for natural rights and the consent of the governed as necessary conditions for a legitimate polity. I'm not talking about "classical" liberalism, which called for individual liberty, private property, and a free market as the best conditions for promoting the common weal. I'm not even talking about the liberalism of the early-20th-century "progressive" movement, of which New Deal liberalism was the direct heir and whose achievements, like those of prior liberalisms, have the overwhelming support of the American people. As Walter Russell Mead has argued, such liberalisms, while not reducible to each other, intersected in ways that together explain why each unfolded historically within something recognizable as an American moral consensus. That consensus was strong enough to constitute, in Robert Bellah's felicitous phrase, a kind of "civil religion." Requiring both the free exercise and the non-establishment of religion strictly speaking, the old consensus could itself be called 'liberal' in a broad and now-hoary sense. But since the 1970s, it's been unravelling along with the mainline Protestantism that had been its traditional custodian. The result is what I call The Thing that Used to Be Liberalism ('TUBL' for short; with thanks to Mark Shea, who likes referring to "The Thing that Used to Be Conservatism."). As I shall illustrate, TUBL is now out of control.
For that reason, the label 'liberalism', like 'feminism', has become a net political negative. Contemporary liberals and feminists accordingly prefer to eschew those labels in favor of 'progressive', sounding such rhetorically effective themes as "equal rights" and "fairness." And by its very nature, TUBL is hard to pin down philosophically. The main purpose of this post is to show how and explain why.
It is not news to conservatives that, on matters of domestic policy, today's "liberals" are actually authoritarian about everything except sex. On that score, they are as laissez-faire as can be. (E.g., it's become all but impossible to get them to see what's intrinsically wrong with incest and bestiality, apart from the "ick-factor" and the health risks involved. But hey, childbirth can be messy and dangerous too...) It's that discrepancy that's got out of control, and it's not so much liberal as hedonistic. Today's "liberals" want Nanny State to regulate every aspect of life except what goes on in our bedrooms, so that life is safe for the pursuit of a "happiness" understood as maximizing one's preferences consistently with others' maximizing theirs.
In such a scheme, complete sexual autonomy (within the bounds of a vaguely defined "mutual consent") is so important that marriage and family themselves are to be defined simply as what enough people want them to be. They can no longer be seen as having a form or nature prior to what civil law, as the expression of popular will, specifies. And now that all means of birth prevention are available to everybody, nobody should be expected to incur the natural consequence of ordinary intercourse or even cover the full cost of preventing it--unless, of course, one brings a child into the world anyhow, in which case one should be made to pay dearly, especially if one is the father, who might otherwise get off scot-free. But really, there's no reason why things should reach such a pass; if you're poor, they positively should not. Contraception, sterilization, and abortion are much cheaper than children, and if you're poor you'd better have recourse to them, because there's every reason to expect that you and your children, if any, will be net burdens to society (and to yourselves, for that matter). That expectation is not the only reason why "the right to choose" abortion is central to TUBL, but it is why the Obama Administration has decided to require, in the name of "women's health," religiously-sponsored institutions who object to contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs to utilize health-insurance policies covering such things at no charge to the user. Planned Parenthood--which, needless to say, does not help people plan how they will actually parent--is the very embodiment of this mentality. In the bedroom we should all pursue our own vision of happiness, if need be at others' expense; outside the bedroom a de facto utilitarian calculus, enforced by state policy, should govern moral decision-making quite generally.
Except when it shouldn't. I'm always amused when I hear Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton cite "universal values" against this-or-that foreign dictator. What makes them think that everybody ought to assign the same weight to certain values as they? The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Why is that more than a piece of paper whose appeal today is understandably weaker than when it was composed? The dignity of the human person? But where are we supposed to find a coherent and reasonable account of human dignity? In philosophy, a discipline whose practitioners cannot agree on whether it affords us knowledge of anything at all? In science, which is morally indifferent in itself? And if in religion, why should we find the deracinated, social-gospel Protestantism of Obama and Clinton more rationally cogent than other forms of religion?
Even John Rawls, whose work has dogged philosophy graduate students for several generations now, admitted late in life that his vision of the ideal polity logically depended on a "comprehensive world view" he could not justify by reason alone. Many writers have indeed argued that secular liberalism is just living off the moral capital of the Judaeo-Christian tradition it's largely repudiated. As a more honest and radical sort of liberal, the late Richard Rorty knew that and admitted it, while rejecting not only Christianity but the very notion of what he called "Truth-capital-T." All that the acolytes of TUBL seem sure of, beyond the paramount importance of sexual autonomy, is that being an accredited "victim" gives one a special moral claim on one's "oppressors," who in most narratives are white, male, and Christian--a class which, by definition, cannot be victimized, because it represents everything about the past that victims are, and the rest of us should be, rebelling against. But that stance is just self-deconstructed Judaeo-Christianity. I postpone exploration of how the sense of sexual entitlement relates to that of victim-entitlement.
In any case, lust and sentimentality are not enough to explain what's going on here. Consider the following two, rather typical examples of TUBL thought.
Last fall, when the HHS contraception mandate for health insurers was drafted, Francis Beckwith argued that President Obama had thereby abandoned the liberalism he had embraced in speeches given in 2006 and 2009. Thus:
What one finds in these speeches are prescriptions for public discourse derived from a widely held understanding of liberalism that is often and correctly attributed to the late Harvard philosopher John Rawls. What the president is saying is that if you want to restrict another’s fundamental liberty based on reasons that those coerced would be reasonable in rejecting, your coercion is unjustified, even if it is not unreasonable for you to embrace those reasons for yourself.
That sounded reasonable enough at Notre Dame, when the President accepted his honorary JD by gamely defending the "pro-choice" position in essentially Rawlsian terms. But the new mandate abandons Rawlsian liberalism by defining 'religious organization', for purposes of granting "religious exemptions" from the rule, as follows:
(1) The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the organization. (2) The organization primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the organization. (3) The organization serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the organization.So, according to the U. S. government, a Catholic hospital, university, or charitable organization that believes its purpose is to actualize the moral commandments of Christ, to love its pre- and post-natal Catholic and non-Catholic neighbors as it loves itself, and to do so by welcoming with open arms all in need of its services, has ceased to be Catholic. The absurdity of this is palpable.
But here's the kicker. Not only does that absurdity, just by being absurd, abandon Obama's earlier espousal of Rawlsian liberalism; it contradicts his own current, stated understanding of the mission of religion in society! Recounting Obama's message at the National Prayer Breakfast not ten days ago, Charles Krauthammer points out: "To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through [HHS Secretary Kathleen] Sebelius, tells the faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not religion at all."
Is such obvious inconsistency a sign of insincerity? Many would presume as much. But I think it more likely that Obama just doesn't see the inconsistency. Why not? Because he's "in the grip of a theory": TUBL. Thus one should not impose on people what they could reasonably reject, unless what's at issue is sexual autonomy, which is not just eminently reasonable but also, on utilitarian grounds, important enough to warrant full subsidy. If the religiously retrograde don't see that, then their "conscience" is so irrational as to be unworthy of consideration, save when giving lip service to it is politically unavoidable. Those in the grip of TUBL see nothing untoward about pretending to be Rawlsian when it suits them and dropping the pretense when it no longer suits them. Nothing must be allowed to get in the way of sexual autonomy.
Among so many I could pick, another example of TUBL run amok was brought to my attention by Paul Cella.
In his new book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 - 2010, Charles Murray makes the following observation:
Data can bear on policy issues, but many of our opinions about policy are grounded on premises about the nature of human life and human society that are beyond the reach of data. Try to think of any new data that would change your position on abortion, the death penalty, legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage or the inheritance tax. If you cannot, you are not necessarily being unreasonable.
To be sure, Murray is not in the grip of TUBL. And by 'data', he seems to mean the results of scientific research. If so, I should think that new data could be quite relevant to the questions whether marijuana should be legalized and when the death penalty could be justified. But no amount of new data would change my mind about abortion and same-sex marriage. New data cannot affect the questions whether the fetus qualifies as a person and whether same-sex "marriage" qualifies as marriage. Both are essentially philosophical and theological questions for which the pertinent empirical data are already to hand.
But last week, a correspondent for The Economist who signs him- or herself as 'W.W.' blogged thus about the Murray passage:
I found this exceedingly odd. I can easily imagine what evidence would cause me to change my position on any of these issues....Abortion is far and away the hardest one. I favour legal abortion. I don't think embryos or fetuses are persons, and I don't think it's wrong to kill them. I also don't think infants are persons, but I do think laws that prohibit infanticide are wise. Birth is a metaphysically arbitrary line, but it's a supremely salient socio-psychological one. A general abhorrence of the taking of human life is something any healthy culture will inculcate in its members. It's easier to cultivate the appropriate moral sentiments within a society that has adopted the convention of conferring robust moral rights on infants upon birth than it would be in a society that had adopted the convention of conferring the same rights on children only after they've reached some significant developmental milestone, such as the onset of intelligible speech. The latter society, I suspect, would tend to be more generally cruel and less humane. This is just an empirical hunch, though I feel fairly confident about it. But I could be wrong. And I could be wrong in the other direction as well. If it were shown that societies which ban abortion, or which ban abortion beyond a certain point, exceed societies which don't ban abortion in cultivating a "culture of life", which pays off in terms of greater general humanity and diminished cruelty, I would seriously weigh this moral benefit against the moral cost of reducing women's control over their bodies. Also, if it were shown that abortion tended to damage women's mental and physical health more than forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, I would tend to look more favourably on restrictions on abortion, especially for minors. [Emphasis added]
Now at first I found that passage as "exceedingly odd" as WW finds Murray's. WW never tells us why he doesn't think either fetuses or infants are "persons," but there's nothing to suggest that he finds the very concept of personhood open to revision by new scientific research. Whatever his concept--and I have a fairly good suspicion as to what it is--it's a philosophical one that's "underdetermined" by the data, which only matter for helping determine which entities actually fall under the concept. (I wouldn't be surprised if WW thinks, with Peter Singer, that adult dolphins make it while human babies don't.)
But even odder than such inadvertence is how WW simply takes for granted a particular view about the nature and basis of moral obligation. He thinks, e.g., that "society" can and should have essentially utilitarian reasons for having "adopted the convention of conferring robust moral rights on infants," who cannot be thought merit such rights by nature. But on WW's own showing, such reasons could conceivably be overturned by new data suggesting, somehow, that we'd all be better off for dropping that convention. Yet the question what counts as "better" cannot be answered, even in principle, by citing anything we should value as distinct from what we actually do value. What's better is simply what's apt to yield what "society" wants. But there's no transcendent criterion for assessing what society--ours or any other--wants. Ultimately, moral reasoning consists in discovering and prescribing the policies likeliest to yield what we want. "Ought" is always hypothetical, never categorical. And so, as Hume put it, reason is and ought to be "the slave of the passions."
The question for the WWs of the world is this: Are there, or are there not, "data" that could determine whether that's the correct view of moral obligation? WW doesn't seem to have considered the question, but those in the grip of TUBL would reject it. It's supposed to be self-evident that freely pursuing the maximization of preferences--whatever they are--is the best we can do, and there can be no obligation higher than, or inconsistent with, the best we can do. Such is the ideal of the radical autonomy of the imperial self. The only admissible limits on such autonomy are those which are necessary in practice for collective preference-maximization. Those turn out to be considerable, of course, which is why TUBL is rather authoritarian. Except about sex.
What makes TUBL so hard to pin down is that it combines sexual libertinism, which is distinctly not Judaeo-Christian, with a statism that's supposedly required for helping the unfortunate. As deconstructed Judaeo-Christianity, the latter requires a discipline and moral earnestness that are otherwise undermined by sexual libertinism and the calculus of preference-maximization generally. Since that combination is ultimately unsustainable, both theoretically and practically, the most fervent prescription of TUBL is to help the poor and the otherwise disadvantaged get rid of themselves by every means of birth prevention. Any amount of philosophical incoherence is accepted for the sake of implementing that prescription. We're only seeing the earliest stages.
Cross-posted at Sacramentum Vitae
Comments (51)
I believe Will Wilkinson is a libertarian.
Posted by al | February 13, 2012 12:40 AM
If he is, then he's even more muddled than I thought, The reasoning of his I've quoted is pure TUBL.
Posted by Michael Liccione | February 13, 2012 1:27 AM
TUBL can also be described as a "civil religion", or maybe, loosely, as a "secular religion". Its quasi-theological and hidden moral assumptions are revealed in Michael Liccione's observations and analysis.
Kenneth Minogue (in The Liberal Mind) claims that the essence of modern liberalism is found in a disposition to relieve "suffering situations". The woes of any class of individuals is, for liberals, a political problem; it's goodwill turned doctrinaire.
Posted by Alex | February 13, 2012 3:54 AM
He is, and he's a good reason why mainstream libertarianism is no longer relevant. Mainstream libertarianism is more obsessed with hiring cheap illegal immigrant labor, drugs and prostitution than how to build a sustainable society with liberty safely maximized.
The hardest thing for me as a Christian is meeting people like this and not wishing that as a matter of cosmic justice they'd meet a thug who would regard their life in the same terms.
Posted by Mike T | February 13, 2012 7:13 AM
"The woes of any class of individuals is, for liberals, a political problem; it's goodwill turned doctrinaire."
Yes, that, combined with a sort of meddlesome do-goodism; it's Yankee Puritanism shed of its religious element.
Posted by Nice Marmot | February 13, 2012 7:45 AM
Good post, Mike. In my article on the Naked Public Square for the Christendom Review, I contemplated as one version of the Naked Public Square thesis the proposition that the only reasons that can or should be given for or against some public policy are utilitarian reasons, that this _defines_ "justifying the policy by reason." I think many in the grip of TUBL either adopt this position consistently or else adopt it when it suits them. Their commitment to, say, proportional representation for victim groups is not well-justified by utilitarian reasons but rather treated as an absolute, but anything they disagree with (say, conservative opposition to homosexual "marriage") is met with a stern demand that it be justified in purely utilitarian terms.
Posted by Lydia | February 13, 2012 8:45 AM
As a southerner with strong Anglican sympathies, I think one of the greatest mistakes in Christian history was not having the royal navy sink every ship containing the puritan refugees from England after their failed commonwealth was toppled.
Posted by Mike T | February 13, 2012 9:23 AM
Not feeling very Calvinist today, eh Mike T? ;-)
Posted by Michael Liccione | February 13, 2012 12:26 PM
I repented of my Calvinism when I realized that it was a form of Protestant Gnosticism.
Posted by Mike T | February 13, 2012 12:54 PM
Glad to hear that. In fact, I'm sure I'd be interested in discussing your theological journey with you, if there were a convenient forum for doing so. You can always find me on Facebook or Google+.
Posted by Michael Liccione | February 13, 2012 1:48 PM
E.g., it's become all but impossible to get them to see what's intrinsically wrong with incest and bestiality...
Wrong. Bestiality precludes mutual consent by an adult. Most kinds of incest also preclude mutual adult consent, and those few that don't are given more leniency as a matter of historical fact. They both typically involve an abuse of power and/or trust.
But where are we supposed to find a coherent and reasonable account of human dignity?
Not in the Old Testament, that's for sure. Parts of the moral teaching in the New Testament. You are being a little vain by assuming liberalism only comes from Christian roots. I think Buddhism has more interesting comparisons to current aspects of liberalism, especially its primary concern with sentient suffering.
Posted by Step2 | February 13, 2012 6:13 PM
Step2, even if that were true of the adult version, (and you would have a tough time establishing it), that doesn't establish whether the dis-function in abuse / trust provides a net negative outcome in terms of maximizing preferences.
Although there are some liberals who are liberals in the old sense and who are fairly consistent about it, the class is small and shrinking. The liberals I run into are almost vehemently INconsistent, demanding absolute adherence to the gospel of sexual libertinism even if that runs roughshod over other liberal standard-bearers. If they were right about what constitutes "right" in terms of "a society that has adopted the convention of conferring robust moral rights ", then they would have no basis for pushing the gay agenda, our society already adopted the convention of conferring robust exclusive moral rights on heterosexual marriage. They are just convulsively anti-consistent about this stuff.
Posted by Tony | February 13, 2012 10:37 PM
Step2, I'm not sure that saying that bestiality or incest are wrong because they don't involve consent is the same thing as seeing them as intrinsically wrong.
For instance, if there were a brother and a sister who didn't grow up together, and didn't know they were brother and sister, and fell in love, etc., I presume you wouldn't see anything intrinsically wrong with what they're doing? Similarly, although animals cannot give their consent to, well, anything, there are certain kinds of activities that they clearly enjoy; for instance, my cats clearly enjoy being pet by me. Rather than get into the gory details, I assume you see where I'm going with this?
The moral of the story is: you think that disregarding consent is what's intrinsically wrong, not certain kinds of sex-acts. Or did I miss something?
Posted by Bobcat | February 13, 2012 10:43 PM
Step2: "Bestiality precludes mutual consent by an adult."
That's also true of eating an animal. So, this is a brief for vegetarianism?
After all, I didn't ask the cow for her consent before I ate that hamburger the other night.
Posted by Thomas Aquinas | February 13, 2012 10:54 PM
Mr. Liccione,
Your definition of liberalism seems very similar to James Kalb's.
I've heard contemporary liberalism described as "pornography of compassion."
Posted by Bruce | February 14, 2012 7:44 AM
"The liberals I run into are almost vehemently INconsistent, demanding absolute adherence to the gospel of sexual libertinism even if that runs roughshod over other liberal standard-bearers."
A point made by such writers as Christopher Lasch, who himself was a liberal, and by Wendell Berry, who's more difficult to classify. In fact, Berry's case is a telling one: libs love when he talks about conservation, industrial agriculture, corporate abuses and such. But when he gets onto love, sex and marriage, not so much. By compartmentalizing these things (which Berry, rightly, refuses to do) liberals fool themselves into thinking they can ignore such critics.
Posted by Nice Marmot | February 14, 2012 7:59 AM
And here is one of the interesting ironies of liberalism. Liberals justify more regulations on how and when one can have sex than conservatives do. Conservatives tend to say that if you're going to have it outside of marriage, and no outright coercion is involved, keep the state out. Liberals, on the other hand (even if Step2 isn't one of them), tend to support outlawing sexual advances by people in positions of power against those in lower social positions around them.
Posted by Mike T | February 14, 2012 9:35 AM
Bobcat:
Even if Step2 is wrong about whether he/she counts these things as intrinsically wrong, it might be dialectically sufficient to count these things as wrong.
What if, for example, Liccione had written "On that score, they are as laissez-faire as can be. (E.g., it's become all but impossible to get them to see what's wrong with incest and bestiality, apart from the "ick-factor" and the health risks involved. But hey, childbirth can be messy and dangerous too...)"? I suspect that 'intrinsic' is doing no work for Liccione -- functioning as a kind of rhetorical intensifier. In fact: if Liccione's goal is to illustrate the claim that the Libs are "as laissez-faire as can be" about this stuff, then he would do well not focus on whether the Libs think these things are wrong in some qualified way (i.e. necessarily), but, rather, on whether the Libs think these things are wrong full stop. If the Libs thought that x was actually wrong -- although not under every conceivable situation -- then they are not "as laissez-faire as possible". In order to count as "as laissez-faire as possible" about the moral status of x, you'd have to think that x is not wrong.
...but then it ain't so clear that Liccione has spoken truly.
Posted by Alex H | February 14, 2012 12:50 PM
Well, no. I mean if we're talking about something that people _should_ be able to see is bad in all circumstances, something really, really bad, then it's already exceedingly laissez-faire to start saying, "Well, it's all right in some circumstances." Think pedophilia here. I would have no trouble with excoriating as "as laissez-faire as possible" someone who defended that as being okay in some circumstances. Some kind of wishy-washy, "Hey, infanticide is imprudent" response still gets thrown on the "incredibly permissive" side of the ledger.
Posted by Lydia | February 14, 2012 1:07 PM
Lydia:
I agree that if the Libs claim only that x is imprudent, then they fall on the permissive side of things. I take it that "permitted" should be understood in this context as "morally permitted". Accordingly, since something can be imprudent but morally permissible, to claim that something is imprudent is to not claim that it is impermissible.
...not that this addresses the issue: How permissive is someone who thinks that every actual case of x-ing is morally wrong, but also thinks that in exotic regions of modal space x-ing could be permissible. [Someone like this might wonder what attitude we ought to take about Mr. Spock's parents -- one of whom was human and one of whom was vulcan. Supposing it to be consensual, loving, marital, and fruitful, was their union morally wrong?]
Posted by Alex H | February 14, 2012 1:59 PM
Er, Spock's parents were both sentient, rational, and physiologically human-type beings, capable of conceiving viable and fertile offspring by way of ordinary human-type sexual intercourse. (By current biological definitions, surprisingly enough, that means they aren't even different species!) Neither was a "beast."
Posted by Lydia | February 14, 2012 3:27 PM
Bruce:
Until now, I'd never heard of Kalb or his book, which I've just found on Amazon. Thank you for alerting me to it. It's now on my Wish List along with hundreds of other books.
Best,
Mike
Posted by Michael Liccione | February 14, 2012 3:35 PM
Alex H:
I take it your criticism is this: If "liberals" count incest and/or bestiality as wrong for whatever reason(s), then they are not "as laissez-faire as can be," even if they deny that such practices are intrinsically wrong. If that is your criticism, I find it weak.
In my post I noted two problems "liberals" have with incest and bestiality: the ick-factor, and the health risks. The former is morally insignificant in itself, inasmuch as one could distinguish the ick-factor from a mere matter of taste only if one already considers such practices wrong for other, morally significant reasons. The health risks, as you recognize, are considerations of prudence. Yet you yourself seem to hold that what's merely imprudent is "morally permissible." And so, one problem "liberals" have with such practices is morally insignificant, and the other leaves "liberals" seeing them as morally permissible, even if imprudent.
A laissez-faire stance about sexuality is not one that approves each and every sexual act. Rather, such a stance holds that there are no inviolable moral boundaries that are specific to sexuality. Thus, a laissez-faire liberal can hold that some sexual acts are imprudent--e.g. "unprotected" sex. She can hold that some sexual acts are objectionable for some further reason, other than what makes them sexual--e.g, that they're violent. But "liberals" as such hold that there's no sexual act that's intrinsically wrong by virtue of the sort of sexual act it is. That's all I meant, but I didn't think that needed to be discussed in the context of a parenthetical remark.
Posted by Michael Liccione | February 14, 2012 3:57 PM
The moral of the story is: you think that disregarding consent is what's intrinsically wrong, not certain kinds of sex-acts. Or did I miss something?
Bobcat, let me reverse that question for you: Are there are any kinds of sex acts that are moral without mutual adult consent? I'm assuming you can think of some, otherwise your question doesn't make any sense to me. That standard winds up making certain kinds of sex acts intrinsically wrong by logical necessity, so contra Michael it does morally prohibit some kinds of sex acts.
Posted by Step2 | February 14, 2012 7:07 PM
Great blog. Why haven't I heard of you guys before? I found you when I googled "Dark Triad game" btw- lol.
Posted by Flavia | February 14, 2012 7:07 PM
Step2:
You wrote:
I shall just offer anew what I said to Alex H:
Posted by Michael Liccione | February 14, 2012 10:15 PM
Michael,
You can deny that there is such a thing as logic, you can deny that certain kinds of sex acts are logically precluded from mutual adult consent, or you can deny that mutual adult consent is an inviolable moral boundary specific to sexuality – perhaps by giving an example of moral sex that doesn’t require it. Good luck with any of those arguments.
Posted by Step2 | February 15, 2012 6:27 AM
"Good luck with any of those arguments."
Take your seats, folks. This ought to be good!
Posted by Nice Marmot | February 15, 2012 7:19 AM
I deny that "mutual adult consent is an inviolable moral boundary specific to sexuality." For instance, It's a morally necessary condition for a binding contract. I could cite other examples, but all I need is one.
Posted by Michael Liccione | February 15, 2012 7:44 AM
"your definition of liberalism seems very similar to James Kalb's"
Patrick Deneen is also a good read on this subject.
Posted by Nice Marmot | February 15, 2012 9:35 AM
Michael,
How does non-consensual or non-adult sex escape being a type of sex act? You can't really be so stubborn you refuse to grant that those types of sex are in fact types of sex. When I say it is an "inviolable moral boundary specific to sexuality", I'm clearly referring to the context of sexual acts, that doesn't suppose the standard is exclusive to sexual acts. Surely you don't hold other moral standards to be exclusively limited to only one context. I'm certainly not making the extravagant and false claim that mutual adult consent is an inviolable moral boundary in every context.
Posted by Step2 | February 15, 2012 10:19 AM
That depends on what you mean by consent. Liberals typically don't believe a drunk woman can consent. I don't share that view. I think any woman who consents to have sex while drunk of her own volition has implicitly accepted the consequences of any decision she makes while intoxicated.
But then I don't believe freely chosen intoxication or abusing people who have chosen that should be illegal.
This is an example of where you find it "common sense" that it should be one way, and another simply doesn't share that impulse. There is no objective truth about how precise consent can be defined. It's purely a matter of opinion on this point.
Posted by Mike T | February 15, 2012 10:22 AM
Step 2 wrote,
"Bobcat, let me reverse that question for you: Are there are any kinds of sex acts that are moral without mutual adult consent? I'm assuming you can think of some, otherwise your question doesn't make any sense to me. That standard winds up making certain kinds of sex acts intrinsically wrong by logical necessity, so contra Michael it does morally prohibit some kinds of sex acts."
I think my question makes sense. Let me put it like this:
"x is conditionally wrong" means that under certain conditions, x is wrong, but under other conditions, x is permissible.
"x is intrinsically wrong" means that x is always wrong.
If you say that sex act S is wrong if it doesn't have consent, but permissible if it does have consent, then you're saying x is conditionally wrong.
As for my view, I think whenever you violate someone's consent for a sexual act, you've done something wrong. But I don't think that's the only way for you do something wrong vis-a-vis sex. Consequently, I think violating someone's consent vis-a-vis sex is a sufficient condition for a sex act's being wrong, but not a necessary one.
You seem to be saying that if I take violating consent to be a sufficient condition of a sex act's being wrong, then I'm committed to the view that there are some cases where violating someone's consent is morally ok. I don't see why I need to say that.
I know I'm not going to convince you -- no one ever convinces anyone of anything -- but I at least hope you can see why it's reasonable for me to take the position I take, and not meaningless.
Posted by Bobcat | February 15, 2012 11:08 AM
Oops. I wrote:
"If you say that sex act S is wrong if it doesn't have consent, but permissible if it does have consent, then you're saying x is conditionally wrong."
I meant to write:
"If you say that sex act S is wrong if it doesn't have consent, but permissible if it does have consent, then you're saying S is conditionally wrong"
Posted by Bobcat | February 15, 2012 11:09 AM
Alex H,
"they are as laissez-faire as can be"
I didn't take the "can" in this case to be the can of logical or metaphysical possibility. I took it to be "they are very laissez-faire about sex".
When you start talking about intrinsic wrongness, though, then it seems to me that you've left common parlance and are starting to talk about the nature of something. I think Step 2's response to me confirms this is what he meant.
Posted by Bobcat | February 15, 2012 11:12 AM
"Rather, such a stance holds that there are no inviolable moral boundaries that are specific to sexuality."
Agreed. In Practical Ethics, Peter Singer states, "...sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations of honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by sex."
Posted by Kurt | February 15, 2012 12:12 PM
Step2:
In the comment just above, Kurt supplies an important bit of evidence for my claim that, for those in the grip of TUBL, "there are no inviolable moral boundaries specific to sexuality." It's not hard to find such evidence out there. But first you have to understand the claim it's evidence for. I don't think you have.
Posted by Michael Liccione | February 15, 2012 12:34 PM
As for my view, I think whenever you violate someone's consent for a sexual act, you've done something wrong. But I don't think that's the only way for you do something wrong vis-a-vis sex. Consequently, I think violating someone's consent vis-a-vis sex is a sufficient condition for a sex act's being wrong, but not a necessary one.
You say a lack of consent is a sufficient condition to be wrong, but not necessarily so. Shouldn't you be able to provide a conditional example of how a moral sex act can occur without it? Otherwise I don't see what is conditional about it, it is a necessary requirement.
I agree with your statement that a sex act can be wrong for additional contingent reasons, but when talking about intrinsically wrong that means it is always wrong. Which is why I keep asking for an example of how mutual adult consent is "only" conditional, and MikeT obliged me.
I think any woman who consents to have sex while drunk of her own volition has implicitly accepted the consequences of any decision she makes while intoxicated.
We could create a new category called impaired consent, but I do think a person in that state of mind is usually able to give consent so long as they aren't hallucinating and are able to navigate. Intoxication makes people much more open to suggestion, so to that extent I consider a man plying a women with drink to be exploiting her trust and thereby doing something wrong, unless she tells him right up front she wants to get wasted.
But first you have to understand the claim it's evidence for. I don't think you have.
Yeah, you've got me all figured out. I understand that you have you own language where "types of sex" can only refer to the particular things that you want them to, and moral standards that logically require that some sex acts are always wrong and bother to explain why are a laissez-faire stance.
Posted by Step2 | February 15, 2012 1:23 PM
To your credit, you are far more practical than most liberals on this. You would quite literally have people calling for you to be castrated if you made that statement on a major feminist blog.
Posted by Mike T | February 15, 2012 1:45 PM
Step2: sorry to barge in on the discussion, but it seems there is a misunderstanding in terminology. I think that when Bobcat uses the terms sufficient and necessary, he does so in the mathematical/logical sense. In this sense, the lack of mutual consent makes a sex act wrong, meaning it is a sufficient condition, but a sex act can be wrong even if there is mutual consent, meaning the lack of consent is not a necessary condition to the wrongness of the act.
I hope this answers your question about moral sex without consent.
Posted by Jane | February 15, 2012 4:42 PM
Right Jane. Definite confusion about the terms. Michael and Bobcat are pointing out that under some (eg traditional, or even merely classical liberal) positions, a sex act can be wrong because it lacks consent by one of the parties (wrong in such a sense that you don't have to take into account any other particulars of the act because it is always wrong), AND it can be wrong (in the same sense of being wrong without having to descend into all the picky little particulars of the act because that type is always wrong) because it has other types of problems with it: for instance, adultery. They can agree that it is ALWAYS and NECESSARILY the case that sex acts without consent are wrong acts, and that it is ALWAYS and NECESSARILY the case that adultery is wrong, but the "necessity" is a different angle of necessary than that which Bobcat was using in saying lack of consent is not a "necessary condition" of immoral sex acts. If there are other conditions - besides lack of consent - under which sex acts are always wrong, then a wrong sex act is not necessarily wrong because of lack of consent. Lack of consent necessarily implies a wrong sex act, but "wrong sex act" does not necessarily imply (in the reverse direction) lack of consent.
But in TUBL thinking, (at least typically), lack of consent appears to be THE ONLY basis upon which to say a sex act is wrong (in that sense that it is always and everywhere wrong without worrying about all the particulars of the act). If this is correct, then, it WOULD be the case that "lack of consent" implies wrong (always) sex act, AND that "(always) wrong sex act" implies lack of consent.
So, is adultery wrong? Yes, of course it is. TUBL is wrong.
Posted by Tony | February 15, 2012 5:18 PM
A difficulty for conservatives is to discredit the ubiquitous supposition that TUBL sentiments are shared by almost all right-thinking people.
The modern version of liberalism being discussed isn't intrinsically malevolent. It does have lots of sinister effects that social conservatives, defenders of Christian truth, and perhaps erudite moral reasoners, deplore and want to reverse. But liberals aren't attempting to govern the world on wicked principles. They want to do right.
The moral sensibility which characterises TUBL seems inevitable in societies that have capitulated to the temptations of 'rampant democracy'.
Posted by Alex | February 16, 2012 4:01 AM
A good piece posted today by Patrick Deneen, with some resonances with Mike's post:
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/02/religious-liberty/
Deneen currently teaches politics at Georgetown but is moving to Notre Dame soon.
Posted by NIce Marmot | February 16, 2012 5:27 PM
Jane and Tony, I think you are both misunderstanding my objection. What you are both implying is that I believe mutual adult consent makes a sex act intrinsically good. That is not at all what this argument is about. It is about whether or not liberals have an inviolable moral standard in the context of sexual activity. There can always be other reasons that an action is wrong, even if it is not intrinsically wrong.
Lack of consent necessarily implies a wrong sex act, but "wrong sex act" does not necessarily imply (in the reverse direction) lack of consent.
Okay, so what? Are you going to claim that "wrong sex act" can be reversed to come up with a complete explanation for every instance? In other words, when someone says that bestiality is intrinsically wrong, do you jump to the conclusion that every wrong sex act is bestiality? Of course not, that would be ridiculous.
Posted by Step2 | February 16, 2012 6:53 PM
Right, because I believe there are several different bases upon which a sex act can be an inherently disordered act: lack of consent, intentionally contraceptive, with a person not your spouse, etc. But the vast majority of the TUBL crowd disagree with me on all 3 of these, and probably a majority also disagree that bestiality is intrinsically wrong as well. What's left for them to think makes a sex act wrong always and everywhere?
Posted by Tony | February 16, 2012 10:07 PM
It doesn't matter how many bases you have. I was talking about the absurdity of holding any standard where you say, as you did, "X type of sex is necessarily wrong, therefore every wrong sex act implies X." For multiple bases simply change it to "Types X,Y,Z of sex are necessarily wrong, therefore every wrong sex act implies X,Y,or Z." I'll provide an example with the standards you gave - A heterosexual married couple engaging in consensual coitus without contraception, but one of them is secretly an intravenous drug user and has exposed themselves to all sorts of disease. It would be immoral for that spouse to engage in sex, even though it would be in every other way permissible.
Posted by Step2 | February 16, 2012 11:14 PM
A fine article about Liberalism (from Locke onwards) is currently at Crisis website by Patrick Deneen.
He write
Liberalism was fundamentally animated by a deep philosophical and theological objection to Catholicism
Famously in his “Letter Concerning Toleration,” John Locke refused to extend toleration practically to only one faith – Catholicism. His claim was that toleration could not be extended to any faith that acknowledged a “foreign potentate,” which, for all practical purposes, meant the Pope. But, it requires a peculiar set of assumptions to conclude that the Pope is a “foreign potentate”
Also
Catholics begin with a fundamentally different understanding of the human person than liberalism. We are not by nature “free and independent”; we are, rather, members of the Body of Christ. In the natural law understanding, we are by nature “political and social animals
And
The law does not simply seek to regulate and prevent bodies from committing harm; rather, the law necessarily derives from, and seeks to advance, a positive vision of human good and human flourishing.
While
Liberalism holds at its core that humans are by nature free, autonomous and independent, bound only by positive law that seeks to regulate physical behavior that results in physical harm to others (and, increasingly, selves). Liberal people should not be bound by any limitation upon their natural freedom that does not cause harm (mainly physical harm) to another human; otherwise, the State should be indifferent (“neutral”) to any claims regarding the nature of the “the Good.”
Posted by Gian | February 17, 2012 5:04 AM
Step2, I'm sorry, but apparently there is still some confusion about the uses of "necessary". Tony, as far as I can tell, never asserted "X type of sex is necessarily wrong, therefore every wrong sex act implies X". Or X,Y,Z.
What he said was that in the liberal (tubl) position, lack of mutual consent is a necessary condition to an act's wrongness, meaning that if an act is considered wrong in this context, it implies that mutual consent is lacking.
When one says "X sex act is necessarily wrong", that is the mundane meaning of necessarily, ie, always, with no exceptions, etc.
Posted by Jane | February 17, 2012 7:47 AM
Step2, why are you changing the type of wrongness in the middle? That's not what I was doing - I made a point of making sure that in each case, the type of wrongness involved is the wrongness of "always and everywhere" because it is inherently wrong. Your example just skips outside of that category, it is wrong but ONLY on account of the particulars that take it outside of "always and everywhere" wrong.
It is a matter of logical necessity that:
If types X, Y, and Z constitute the entirety of the types of sex acts that are always and everywhere (i.e. inherently) wrong; and
If Act A is a sex act that is inherently wrong; then
Act A is one of either X, Y, or Z.
I was relying on the second premise talking about the SAME SORT of wrongness as the first premise. Yes?
If TUBL-believers think only non-consensual sex acts constitute the body of sex acts that are inherently wrong, then telling one of these TUBL believers that Act A is an inherently wrong sex act conveys, to him, that it must have been non-consensual. But that impression he gets relies on his presumption of what constitutes the body of inherently wrong sex acts.
Posted by Tony | February 17, 2012 10:34 AM
In this sense, the lack of mutual consent makes a sex act wrong, meaning it is a sufficient condition, but a sex act can be wrong even if there is mutual consent, meaning the lack of consent is not a necessary condition to the wrongness of the act.
That is just another way of saying that consent is not intrinsically good, which I've already granted. To be clear about my own meaning, an inviolable moral boundary is a distinct, willed action that is never permissible. It has nothing, literally nothing, to do with saying a particular act is positively moral, it is only a determinate of immorality.
If it helps, think of it in terms of set theory. Intrinsically wrong sex acts are subsets of the total set of wrong sex acts. The total set does not necessarily imply any particular subset, but every subset falls within the total set.
Posted by Step2 | February 19, 2012 12:49 PM
It could be argued Conservatism is out of control. Take Santorum, pro-torture, and pro-murder, ( he wished it had been the US that had murdered the Iranian scientist). Santorum also represents what is wrong with greedy Conservatives, adding pork to bills to benefit himself. Santorum is the perfect example of conservatism out of control.
Posted by Russell | February 22, 2012 8:59 AM