Mirror of Justice

Reinforcements for Manne

Mike Perry's colleague Bill Carney thought my critique of Henry Manne's position on Corporate Social Repsonsibility (CSR) was all wet. Here is his comment:

Sargent's quarrel with Manne's claim that CSR is pushed by enemies of

private enterprise is, apparently, that it's an attack on the messenger. He

has to ignore the public choice side of this phenomenon, which is often an

attempt by interest groups to capture benefits from corporations. I give

you organized labor's attack on Wal-Mart, which is only designed to raise

wages (the "living wage" campaign) and fringe benefit costs for Wal-Mart, to

make it easier for employers with higher cost union contracts to compete,

and raises the cost of goods for the poor (and everyone else). Others do

much the same thing. When Pacific Lumber was acquired by outsiders who were

expected to increase the harvest rate on old growth redwoods,

environmentalists attacked. Ultimately they achieved their goal not by

dissuading the new owners from cutting trees, but by getting the government

to buy the land from the new owners, who apparently didn't want to maintain

a scenic wilderness at private expense. It is, I think, in this sense that

Manne uses the word "socialist" -- to express the idea that forcing CSR on

corporations gives the "public" (more likely some interest group) a claim of

some kind of right to the corporation's property. I'm not sure we've

developed a term other than socialist to describe this.

The main attack on Manne's argument is that it's simplistic. Sargent then

goes on to concede that most CSR is done for profit-making motives, which

Manne has stated, I think. I'm not familiar with Catholic Social Thought on

the subject of the corporation, but to the extent that it goes beyond law

obedience and profit-maximizing, I'm on Manne's side. Any attempt to make

the corporation (read corporate management) accountable for something in

addition to profits dilutes the accountability of management, increases its

discretion, lowers profits, and increases the cost of capital for new and

existing enterprises. I wrote about this in the 1990 Cincinnati Law Review,

and I won't repeat the elaboration of those arguments here.

[Mark here] As you might expect, I'm not persuaded by this response. First, Carney does not address my criticism of Manne's tendentious assumption that anyone who buys into CSR despises capitalism and entrepreneurship in particular. Second, Carney points out that CSR arguments may be used by unions or other "interest groups" to capture benefits from corporations. Public choice analysis cuts both ways, however, as evidenced by the nonshareholder constituency statutes extracted from state legislatures by powerful local corporations to protect themselves from hostile takeovers. In other words, CSR can be used hypocritically by both sides. That does not mean, however, that the concept is nonsense; there is such a thing as the common good. Catholic social thought, of course, regards the ownership of private property as constrained by social obligations to an extent that Manne and Carney obviously would not accept. Third, my "concession" that much CSR activity represents an indirect way of maximizing profits does not mean that I buy into Manne's overall argument: a recognition that CSR is "good for business" opens up the possibility of dialogue between the private good and the common good that hardly seems to be countenanced by the Friedman/Manne hard line position. Third, Carney does not address my argument about how the minimalist law compliance approach actually may breed cynicism about law compliance and actually exacerbate illegal or antisocial behavior, and that this may be countered by a more positive approach to CSR. Finally, the Friedman/Manne/Carney view may not even be an accurate way of describing the way people running large corporations actually think about what they should be doing. Note the following observations in a new piece by Peter Haslam of Cambridge University:

doing business with purpose

With the death last week of the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, business lost one of its brightest and most influential gurus. His saying ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’ has become part of popular English usage, but in business circles his name is associated with another dictum: ‘The social responsibility of business is to maximise profits.’ This idea, which has been dubbed ‘shareholder value’, has helped to provoke a vigorous reaction in the form of the ‘corporate social responsibility’ movement, which insists that business has responsibilities not only to shareholders but to stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, society at large and the environment. Despite the obvious appeal of this argument, there are several reasons why Friedman’s point should not be too easily dismissed. After all, any good that business can do is dependent on it making a profit, and shareholder value obliges managers to put the interests of shareholders first rather than their own. Moreover, shareholder value is not so much the invention of business gurus as the product of our demands for the best return on our investments. Nonetheless, there is a serious problem with shareholder value, though it’s not one we might expect: it conflicts with the way most business people think. According to recent research, the great majority of CEOs believe that corporations should balance their obligations to shareholders with those to wider society. Only one in six, in fact, agrees with Friedman on this score. None of the most admired companies regards shareholder value as its main purpose; and, paradoxically, companies that do focus on shareholder value perform less well than those whose first priority is to serve their customers. What motivates most business people, evidently, is the sense that they’re providing something that people want or need. And will want or need again. And again. Business, it seems, is less about serving a remote share index than about creating and sustaining long-term relationships with people. Perhaps this reflects the nature of our universe: ultimately, true purpose and meaning are found not in the quantity of material returns but in the quality of relationships. Business shoots itself in both feet, therefore, if it makes maximising profit its chief objective. Not only does it damage its reputation by convincing the public that it’s up to no good, it also reduces its shareholder value – two outcomes that Friedman would have been keen to avoid. [Mark Again] I think these are very challenging arguments that "complexify" the question in a way that makes the lapidary Friedman/Manne position ultimately reductionist. --Mark

From Peter Nixon at dotCommonweal

Sign of the Times?

November 29, 2006, 6:44 pm

The Washington Post reports that for the second time in one year, the Christian Coalition has named a new a leader and then removed him before he took office:

The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of a nondenominational megachurch in Longwood, Fla., said he resigned as the coalition's incoming president because its board of directors disagreed with his plan to broaden the organization's agenda. In addition to opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Hunter, 58, wanted to take on such issues as poverty, global warming and HIV/AIDS.

"My position is, unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we're not carrying out the full message of Jesus," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. "They began to think this might threaten their base or evaporate some of their support, and they said they just couldn't go there."

by J. Peter Nixon

A bit more on "The Bishops and Human Sexuality"

I would like to thank Michael P. for drawing attention to the November 24^th lead editorial from the National Catholic Reporter. It appears that the authors of the editorial disagree with the bishops on several major issues, and they, the editorial authors, need more clarity.

However, the editorial also raises its own important questions that call for more clarity on the part of its authors.

For example, the editorial’s suggestion that various bishops’ statements “tend[] to reduce all of human love to the act of breeding.” I am not so sure that this is an accurate characterization of what the bishops have stated. The bishops, and others, have discussed many aspects of human love that do not imply acts of breeding. Moreover, like many other people, I love to read books; I love to listen to Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven; I love my family. But these acts of human love are not acts of breeding. Perhaps the editors could have been more precise, more clear, in the point they were trying to make.

But there are other elements of this editorial that also require more precision and greater clarity, and these get to the heart of what is likely the motivation for the editorial. When all is said and done, the authors of this editorial disagree with the teachings of the Church as taught by the bishops. Several times within their editorial, the authors refer to “science” and “human experience.” I, for one, would like to know what is the “science” upon which they rely to substantiate their disagreement with the bishops. Their assertion about and reliance on “science” stands in need of clarification.

But in the meantime, I will offer a thought on the allegation about “human experience.” “Human experience” and powerful political lobbying may lead to the decriminalization of certain actions in specified contexts. For example, abortion and adultery and other extra-marital sexual activity were once crimes; but now, in some instances at least, they are not. That does not mean that they are no longer sins. That is a matter for God, not “science” and not “human experience”, to decide. I think the editors who wrote this editorial could have been more clear on this point. Finally, I should comment on the editorial’s remark about the lives of the “faithful.” Each of us who considers one’s self as a member of the faithful is a sinner. But, as sinners, we have the ongoing ability to seek God’s forgiveness and to amend our lives and to sin no more, as the Church teaches us. This, too, is human experience, but it seems to be the type of human experience that does not merit comment in this editorial.   RJA sj

Casseroles and the opposite of subsidiarity

I am grateful to a student in my seminar for this example of what Catholic social doctrine discourages, viz., a state that, if I may paraphrase the recent encyclical, bureaucratizes (and thereby reduces) personal charity.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801583.html

In Fairfax County, Virginia, soup kitchens aren't what they used to be, because the county decided not to concede power it wrongly assumes is its own to concede or not.  The Christians in the county appear to be appropriately dismayed, but they remain unable legally to do what the Gospel invites. 

Bainbridge on faith-based investing

Steve B. writes:

Most mutual fund investors are familiar with the concept of socially responsible investing (a.k.a. values-based investing). A small chunk of that industry sector is comprised of faith-based investment funds, such as the Ave Maria funds that base their investment decisions on the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church. . . .

As an investor, I'm skeptical. . . .

As for whether persons of faith ought to suck it up and accept a lower rate of return in order to invest according to their beliefs and values, that's a post for another day.

Bishops & Democrats for Life on Amnesty and abortion

Here is a statement from the USCCB, joining Rep. Chris Smith (R) and Democrats for Life in urging Amnesty International not to squander its moral capital promoting an ersatz human right to abortion:

. . . The right to life itself is fundamental. It is the precondition of all other human rights, and its integrity depends on being acknowledged for every member of the human family regardless of race, age, gender, condition, or stage of development.

This principle is not particular to Catholic teaching. It is an insight of the natural law tradition of human rights, held in common by those of diverse religious backgrounds. Many of the great figures who advanced rights for the poor and marginalized also spoke out against abortion, including: Mohandas Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Fannie Lou Hamer, and most recently, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. We find it incomprehensible that these prophets of progress would now have to be seen as enemies of a "basic" human right.

[E]ndorsing abortion would deeply divide human rights advocates, jeopardize the collaboration between Amnesty and the Catholic bishops, and impair work for social justice both at home and overseas. . . .

"Atheist fandango"

Here is a characteristically witty report, courtesy of Professor Tom Smith, on the recent "San Diego atheist fandango":

don't see why a biologist or astronomer has any more claim to speak about religion than any other reasonably intelligent person.  It seems quite the same thing as the bad habit so many Americans have of turning to movie actors for their opinions about politics.  Yet the ability to appear sad (or intelligent) when one really isn't, is hardly a qualification for opining about how to fight nuclear proliferation.  What poor, deluded apes we are sometimes.  I remember watching with growing horror some TV show years ago where Patick Stewart (a.k.a. Jean-Luc Picard) ran around outdoors and enjoyed the wilderness, or something like that.  When choosing his own words, instead of saying "Make it so" with unquestionable authority, he appeared to be a man who had never had a deep thought, or unbanal sentiment, in his life.  He was also wearing a hair piece.  One more idol bit the dust. 

As long as scientists are in the mood for educating people, perhaps they could start with themselves.  Many of them appear to need a class in Philosophy 101.  Or maybe Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion.  They would no doubt emerge with their atheism intact, but they might at least learn that most of the questions they impale themselves upon are philosophical questions, such as, Is there a God?  Can we know if there is a God?  Could the universe possibly be infinitely old?  Or even, Is it a waste of time to even ask questions such as these?  You don't see many philosophy PhD's blundering into conferences on the Higgs boson (which I think they are still looking for, but I for one have faith that it is there), because philosophers rightly think they would look like idiots if they did.  Yet famous scientists can stand up and say that religion must be stamped out, replaced by science, and so on and on, and expect to be taken seriously.  Then there are all the other questions, ones of culture and history I suppose, having to do with whether one would even want to live in a society from which religion had been eradicated by "education".  While living under the Taliban or the Spanish Inquisition would have been a nightmare, living in a land where Science had finally taken Its throne does not sound like any bargain either.

COMMONWEAL
December 1, 2006
 
Stay the Course?
The Editors

---

Meeting last month in Baltimore, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a number of statements, including guidelines for the pastoral care of “persons with a homosexual inclination” and an instruction-titled “Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper”-on who should or shouldn’t receive Communion.

Overshadowed in the media reaction to the guidelines and the bishops’ “hard saying” about Communion was Bishop William S. Skylstad’s “Call for Dialogue and Action on Responsible Transition in Iraq.” Skylstad is president of the USCCB and his statement on the war has much to recommend it. Dismissing the idea that there are only two options in Iraq, either “cut and run” or “stay the course,” Skylstad pleads for a “collaborative dialogue that honestly assesses the situation, acknowledges past difficulties and miscalculations, recognizes and builds on positive advances.”

These are sensible recommendations, necessary steps in bringing about a responsible resolution to a tragic and untenable situation. The USCCB would do well to adopt just as sensible a policy in confronting the laity’s doubts about church teaching on the meaning of human sexuality. For instance, 95 percent of married Catholics do not find the teaching on contraception persuasive. And how do the bishops respond? “Stay the course or get out of the Communion line” might be a rough paraphrase of the USCCB statements. Homosexuality is not a sin, write the bishops further, but engaging in homosexual acts is. Increasingly, Catholics find this distinction hard to square with what they know about homosexual persons. The bishops’ response? “Stay the course or get out of the Communion line.”

It is especially disappointing that before issuing their statements, the bishops didn’t bother to listen in any systematic way to either homosexual or married Catholics. If one’s syllogisms are all in order, why bother talking with people who possess such “inclinations,” or who have tried to reconcile the church’s teachings with actual marital life? Instead, the bishops stumbled on the brilliant strategy of reminding the faithful that in the church’s view, resorting to contraception and engaging in homosexual acts are equally “disordered.” Evidently, the bishops believe that equating homosexual acts with a sexual “sin” committed by 95 percent of married Catholics makes their pastoral guidelines “welcoming” to homosexual persons.

Echoing John Paul II’s idiosyncratic “theology of the body,” the USCCB’s statement on “Married Love and the Gift of Life” argues that the use of contraception introduces “a false note” into the spousal sexual relationship. By such acts, the bishops explain, you begin to make yourself “into the kind of person who lies.” When fertility is “suppressed”-rather than merely outwitted through the diagnostic calculations of Natural Family Planning (NFP)-the sexual act becomes “something less powerful and intimate, something more ‘casual.’” Married Catholics may be surprised to learn they are inveterate liars obsessed with having “casual” sex. What is not surprising is how unconvincing the argument for NFP remains. Why is it morally permissible to avoid pregnancy by using NFP, but “disordered” and an “intrinsic evil” to act on the same intention using a different contraceptive method? When the bishops can explain that, perhaps Catholics will resume listening to what they have to say about marital love.

Some outspoken conservative Catholics argue that it was the failure of the bishops to strongly affirm Humanae vitae, and not the teaching itself, that explains the encyclical’s rejection by the laity. Will the condemnation of contraception now be vigorously preached from the pulpit? If so, the effect may be the opposite of what is hoped for. Telling married Catholics that their sexual lives are seriously “disordered” will likely only increase their doubts about the church’s understanding of sexuality, while strengthening the growing moral solidarity felt between heterosexual and homosexual Catholics. Ironically, perhaps that is what the Holy Spirit has been up to at the USCCB. As the saying goes, God writes straight with crooked lines.

The point is that when “stay the course” and “cut and run” are the only alternatives in the battle over human sexuality, too many Catholics will opt for the latter. Just as Iraq requires, in Bishop Skylstad’s formulation, an honest collaborative dialogue-one that “assesses the situation, acknowledges past difficulties and miscalculations...and builds on positive advances”-so too is such a dialogue desperately needed between the laity and the bishops concerning the church’s teachings on sexual morality. The current situation, to adapt Skylstad’s words again, is indeed “taking a terrible toll,” and “moral urgency, substantive dialogue, and new directions” must be found. While “stay the course” is not an option, “cut and run” cannot become the default position. What Catholicism has to teach us about the meaning of sexuality should not be reduced to NFP.

Robert Miller, the Pope, and economic growth

Professor Robert Miller has some thoughts here, at the First Things blog, in response to Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks on global development:

Speaking about the many people in the world who go hungry, Pope Benedict XVI says that we need “to eliminate the structural causes linked to the system of government of the world economy, which allocates the greater part of the planet’s resources to a minority of the population.” (See the ZENIT Daily Dispatch for November 12, 2006.)

In focusing on the allocation of goods, however, Benedict misdiagnoses the problem, which really concerns economic growth. Like most non-economists, he speaks as if the world’s stock of goods and services were fixed, the only issue being how properly to distribute them. In fact, the total amount of goods and services in the world has been increasing very rapidly for a long time. . . .

It is thus true, as Benedict says, that the greater part of the planet’s resources is enjoyed by a minority of the population, but this is because the greater part of those resources is produced by that same minority of the population. The world economy is not rigged in favor of the rich nations. South Korea did not get rich, and Zimbabwe did not stay poor, because the captains of industry and the Wall Street bankers met in a smoke-filled room and decided that they loved South Korea but hated Zimbabwe. The South Koreans got rich because they earned their riches and continue to do so, year in and year out. Zimbabweans are poor because they produce little—and less now than twenty years ago. People who produce wealth naturally think they are entitled to keep most of it for themselves and their children. I don’t dispute that such people ought to give away more of what they have, but we should be clear that they have this wealth in the first place because they are producing it themselves, not wrongfully taking it away from others.

When some people are producing a tremendous amount of wealth and others are producing little, it is fine, as a stopgap measure, to tell those producing much that they should share what they produce with those producing little. The immediate needs of the poor must be met. But any permanent solution to the problem requires that those producing little start producing more. The conditions needed to generate sustained economic growth are well known: political stability, transparent and just government, respect for the rule of law, strong property rights, free trade, free flows of capital, disciplined monetary policy, and an educated and hard-working population. Most people in the poor nations are willing to work hard, but the other conditions for economic growth rarely obtain in such nations. This is the fault, primarily, of their leaders—sometimes, it is true, aided and abetted by the governments of developed countries—who have largely prevented the emergence of the other factors needed for sustained growth. The tyranny of Zimbabwe’s Mugabe is a particularly spectacular example, but the conditions for economic growth are fragile, and pathological political, legal and economic regimes nowhere near as bad as his are quite sufficient to stifle economic growth.

In our fallen condition, such problems may be intractable. After all, we have it on good authority that we shall always have the poor with us. Still, we have to try to help when we can, and doing so begins with understanding clearly why the poor nations are poor. The problem is one of production, not distribution. Pretending otherwise only makes the problem harder to solve by obscuring its true nature.

Balkin's two abortion rights

In this post, and in this article, Professor Jack Balkin proposes and fleshes out the argument that we should think in terms of two abortion rights, not one:

The first right to abortion is a woman's right not to be forced by the state to bear children at risk to her life or health. The second right is a woman's right not to be forced by the state to become a mother and thus to take on the responsibilities of parenthood, which, in our society are far more burdensome for women than for men. Although the first right to abortion continues throughout pregnancy, the second right need not. It only requires that women have a reasonable time to decide whether or not to become mothers and a fair and realistic opportunity to make that choice. . . .

The state's interest in protecting unborn life is most compelling in the later stages of pregnancy. But letting states vindicate this interest when it is strongest is not necessarily inconsistent with the second right to abortion. When a woman's health and life are not at risk, the second right requires that women have a right to a fair and realistic opportunity to choose whether or not to become a mother, and in most cases this choice can usually be made in the earlier stages of a pregnancy. . . .

There's a lot more (about, among other things, the "discourse shaping" character of his approach).  Take a look.  For my own part, two quick thoughts:  First, it seems that Balkin's handling of the "first" abortion right does not say enough about what he means by "health."  Does he mean to say -- and, his discussion of self-defense might suggest that he does -- that the first abortion right is not timebound because women always have a right not to be forced to bear children at the risk to her life or physical health?  Or, would he incorporate into his first right the much more expansive understanding of "health" that seems to be at work in the Court's cases?

Second, I wonder if the discussion, or the analysis, change if, instead of asking when the interest of the state in protecting fetal life justifies limiting the exercise of the "second" abortion right, we ask instead about the point at which the moral claims of the unborn child -- his or her own moral claims, and not just the interests of the "state" -- justify such limits?

"Christianism" and Christian Democracy

In recent months, Andrew Sullivan has been flogging to death his favorite new epithet, "Christianist."  Here is an interesting post, from The American Scene, on "Christianism" and Christian Democracy.  (The latter movement / tradition was discussed on MOJ recently, here and here.)

"Putting Parents First"

In this Weekly Standard essay, "Putting Parents First," Yuval Levin outlines a "new domestic policy approach for conservatives": 

American conservatives have worked politically in recent decades to advance two sets of goods: the family and the market. They have advocated traditional values that sustain cultural vitality, and economic freedom that brings material prosperity. These two sets of ideals are mutually reinforcing to an extent. The market relies on a stable and orderly society made possible by sturdy families and strong social institutions; and freedom from unduly coercive authority is an essential prerequisite for making moral choices.

But markets and families are also in tension with one another. The market values risk-taking and creative destruction that can be very bad for family life, and rewards the lowest common cultural denominator in ways that can undermine traditional morality. Traditional values, on the other hand, discourage the spirit of competition and self-interested ambition essential for free markets to work, and their adherents sometimes seek to enforce codes of conduct that constrain individual freedom. The libertarian and the traditionalist are not natural allies. . .

The tension between family and market is a source of unease for American families, and has often been a source of friction in the conservative movement. But the present moment offers an opportunity to turn that tension into a font of energy for conservatives, and to turn the conservative movement into the long-term home of the parenting class.

In this effort, there is a role for government. The conservative insight that government power is inherently corrosive of the roots of self reliance must not be forgotten, and surely remains true. But it must also not be turned into a case against all uses of public policy for public ends. Some balance must be found, so that limited government can be turned to positive purposes, and there is no better way to seek that balance than keeping in mind the two competing but complementary goals of strong families and free markets, while also keeping in mind the interests of the parenting class. Looking toward the 2008 election and beyond, conservatives confront a tremendous opportunity, if we are ready to seize it.

The distinction between loving and killing

Yesterday on the First Things blog Wesley Smith posted a striking comparison of two ways of looking at the life of a child with Down Syndrome -- that of an actual parent loving such a child (Simon Barnes, chief sports writer for the London Times) and that of Peter Singer.  Smith closes his remarks with the powerful claim that, "The choice we make about these contrasting paths will determine whether we remain a moral society committed to the pursuit of universal human rights."

Because I can't figure out how to link directly to Smith's comments (and because they are so wonderful) I'm pasting them below.  I also encourage you to read Barnes' whole article.

November 28, 2006

Wesley J. Smith writes:

Like Fr. Neuhaus, I too was taken with the article “I’m Not a Saint, Just a Parent” by Simon Barnes in the Times of London. It recalled to my mind a speech I gave several years ago to a medical school in which I urged the students to always look at their patients through the lens of universal moral equality.

After the speech, an earnest young man approached me. “I am a genetic counselor,” he said. “What am I supposed to do when I meet with a woman carrying a baby with Down syndrome? I mean, I have to counsel her.” I suggested that perhaps he could bring in parents who have actually lived the experience of parenting a child with Down to keep the “counseling” from becoming a one-way street.

Barnes’ loving tribute to parenting a Down child is precisely the kind of input that I had hoped the earnest young genetic counselor could provide to his clients. Five-year-old Eddie has Down syndrome, and Barnes reports that he “is not to be pitied” for having to father a disabled child “but to be envied.”

Here are three key paragraphs from Barnes piece:

By the way, I hope you are not too squeamish. This piece is not going to pull any punches. If you find the idea of love uncomfortable or sentimental or best-not-talked-about or existing only in the midst of a passionate love affair, then you will find problems with what I am writing. I am writing of love not as a matter of grand passions, or as high-falutin’ idealism, or as religion. I am writing about love as the stuff that makes the processes of human life happen: the love that moves the sun and other stars, which is also the love that makes the toast and other snacks. Love is the most humdrum thing in life, the only thing that matters, the thing that is forever beyond the reach of human imagination. . . .

What is it like to have Down’s [sic] syndrome? How terrible is it? Is it terrible at all? It depends, I suppose, on how well loved you are. Like most other conditions of life. Would I want Eddie changed? It’s a silly question but it gets to the heart of the matter. Of course you’d want certain physical things changed: the narrow tubes that lead to breathing problems, for example. But that’s not the same as “changed,” is it? If you are a parent, would you like the essential nature of your child changed? If you were told that pressing a button would turn him into an infant Mozart or Einstein or van Gogh, would you press it? Or would you refuse because you love the person who is there and real, not some hypothetical other?

I can’t say I’m glad that Eddie has Down’s syndrome, or that I would wish him to suffer in order to charm me and fill me with giggles. But no, I don’t want his essential nature changed. Good God, what a thought. It would be as much a denial of myself as a denial of my son. What’s the good of him, then? Buggered if I know. The never-disputed terribleness of Down’s syndrome is used as one of the great justifications for abortion: abortion has to exist so that we don’t people the world with monsters. I am not here to talk about abortion—but I am here to tell you that Down’s syndrome is not an insupportable horror for either the sufferer or the parents. I’ll go further: human beings are not better off without Down’s syndrome.

By contrast, let us now consider Peter Singer’s harshly sterile views about the options parents should have if faced with a Down baby. One acceptable answer, Singer asserts in Rethinking Life and Death, is establishing the right of parents to have their unwanted Down child killed if they would prefer not to raise a disabled child:

To have a child with Down syndrome is to have a different experience from having a normal child. It can still be a warm and loving experience, but we must have lowered expectations of our child’s abilities. We cannot expect a child with Down syndrome to play the guitar, to develop an appreciation of science fiction, to learn a foreign language, to chat with us about the latest Woody Allen movie, or to be a respectable athlete, basketballer or tennis player. Even when an adult, a person with Down syndrome may not be able to live independently. . . . For some parents, none of this matters. They find bringing up a child with Down syndrome a rewarding experience in a thousand different ways. But for other parents, it is devastating.

Both for the sake of “our children,” then, and our own sake, we may not want a child to start on life’s uncertain voyage if the prospects are clouded. When this can be known at a very early stage of the voyage we may still have a chance to make a fresh start. This means detaching ourselves from the infant who has been born, cutting ourselves free before the ties that have already begun to bind us to our child have become irresistible. Instead of going forward and putting all our efforts into making the best of the situation, we can still say no, and start again from the beginning.

What a stark difference between the attitudes of these two men toward the weakest and most vulnerable among us, a difference that can be described literally as the distinction between loving and killing. And indeed, for those familiar with Singer’s writing, it is striking how often he writes of satisfying personal desires and how rarely he writes of sacrifice and love. Which, when you think about it, provides vivid clarity about the stakes we face in the ongoing contest for societal dominance between the sanctity/equality of life ethic and Singer’s proposed “quality of life” ethic: The former opens the door to the potential for unconditional love, while the latter presumes the power to coolly dismiss some of us from life based on defective workmanship. The choice we make about these contrasting paths will determine whether we remain a moral society committed to the pursuit of universal human rights.

Lisa

Finnis on Public Reason

John Finnis has posted his new paper, Religion and State: Some Main Issues and Sources.  Here is the abstract:

Public reason's default position is not atheism or agnosticism about the dependence of everything on a transcendent Creator. On the contrary, there is good reason to judge that there is such a transcendent cause, capable of communicating with intelligent creatures, that one of the world's religions may be essentially true and others substantially truer than atheism, and that there is a human or natural right to immunity from coercion in religious inquiry, belief (or unbelief, precisely as such), and practice so far as is compatible with public order, that is with the rights of others, public peace and public morality. Contrary to the arguments of legal theorists such as Dworkin, Eisgruber and Sager, and the "mystery" passage in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the right to religious freedom should not be regarded as a mere instance of a general right to choose one's lifestyle and ethical beliefs or passionate choices. At the same time, any religious beliefs or practices which deny or overlook that right to religious liberty, and which encourage or license intimidation in relation to religious belief or in the name of religion, are not immune from coercive defensive measures where necessary for the protection of the rights of others or of the other aspects of public order. Such measures discriminate amongst religions justifiably.

Coverage of a Tragic Death: Reporting or Advocacy?

An MoJ reader notes that the story of Carmen Bojorge (which I posted earlier) has appeared in many other news venues.  Given the lack of  clear evidence of a direct connection between the abortion ban and the woman's death, he wonders "if it is more about some pro-abortion groups faxing out press statements and getting the media outlets to bite."  Be sure to check out The Revealer's critique of the Washington Post's article on her death.

GOSH!!!

And I thought "Napoleon Dynamite" was about the age-old question: "Do chickens have large talons?"

The Anthropological Claims of Napoleon Dynamite

Over at Touchstone, Michael Bailey explores the deeper meaning of the wildly popular movie, Napoleon Dynamite, calling it a "humorous but touching critique of the inevitable loneliness and meaninglessness of individualism when it is stripped of the context of genuine community. Its message is consistent with a Christian moral anthropology, that human beings are not intended to 'fly solo,' but made to live in a community marked by the vulnerability and sacrifice of love."

Nicaragua's Abortion Ban

The Boston Globe reports on Nicaragua's no-exceptions abortion ban:

[18 year-old Carmen] Bojorge was awaiting her second child when she and her 5-month-old fetus died this month in a public hospital in Managua. Bojorge's family says they took her to a hospital when she complained of limb pains and weakness. When her condition worsened, doctors say they determined her fetus was dead, but Bojorge went into shock before they could save her.

"Now there is a dead woman, an orphaned son, a destroyed family, and this will not be the only case," prosecutor Débora Grandison told the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario. Grandison said outlawing therapeutic abortions was "condemning women to death."

The mother of the deceased teen doesn't understand the logic behind the law . If the doctors realized that fetal distress was putting the mother in danger, said Rosa Argentina Rodríguez Bojorge, "They could've at least saved my daughter so she could take care of her other child."

If negligence is proved, the Bojorge case "is a big warning that doctors are going to interpret the wording of the law very literally," said Azahalea Solís Román, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in Nicaragua. The center will appeal to the Nicaraguan human rights council and the Supreme Court, arguing that the law violates a women's right to life.

Wilfredo Navarro, a national assemblyman who supported the ban, accused abortion activists and doctors of fueling an unwarranted scare as part of a campaign to overturn the law. "There's no going back. If doctors are going to kill babies, they can only do it outside of Nicaragua," he said.

Jean Raber has more thoughts on the case over at Commonweal.

No "Nativity" at Chicago Christmas Festival

By DON BABWIN
The Associated Press
Monday, November 27, 2006; 11:24 PM

CHICAGO -- A public Christmas festival is no place for the Christmas story, the city says. Officials have asked organizers of a downtown Christmas festival, the German Christkindlmarket, to reconsider using a movie studio as a sponsor because it is worried ads for its film "The Nativity Story" might offend non-Christians.

New Line Cinema, which said it was dropped, had planned to play a loop of the new film on televisions at the event. The decision had both the studio and a prominent Christian group shaking their heads.

"The last time I checked, the first six letters of Christmas still spell out Christ," said Paul Braoudakis, spokesman for the Barrington, Ill.-based Willow Creek Association, a group of more than 11,000 churches of various denominations. "It's tantamount to celebrating Lincoln's birthday without talking about Abraham Lincoln." ...

Forum 18

MoJ readers might be interested in Forum 18, a Christian website based in Norway and devoted to publicizing breaches of religious freedom around the world.  (The name comes from Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)

Weigel on the Pope's Turkey visit

A good piece, in Newsweek, on -- among other things -- religious freedom in Turkey:

. . .  Although the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople does not exercise the jurisdictional and doctrinal authority in world Orthodoxy that the papacy exercises in world Catholicism, it does enjoy a historic status as "first among equals" in Orthodoxy, plays an important role in coordinating Orthodox affairs globally and is regarded as the spiritual center of global Orthodoxy by Orthodox believers. Yet it is Turkish law, not the canons of the Orthodox Church, that determines who is eligible to be elected ecumenical patriarch, and Turkish law limits the pool of possible candidates to Turkish citizens living in Turkey. As a recent memorandum from the Ecumenical Patriarchate put it, "the result of these restrictions is that in the not so distant future the Ecumenical Patriarchate may not be able to elect a Patriarch."

The Turkish government closed the patriarchate's seminary, the Theological School of Halki, in 1971, and has refused, despite numerous requests, to reopen it.

Turkey will not grant the Ecumenical Patriarchate legal "personality," in defiance of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, which defined the legal position of minorities in Turkey; this refusal to deal with the patriarchate as a legal "person" (as churches are regarded throughout the West) is, according to the patriarchate memo, "a major source of many other problems." For to deny that the patriarchate is a legal entity with certain rights, an entity that can work with the Turkish government within the framework of the law, means that all issues between the patriarchate and the state become political issues, subject to political pressures and counterpressures—especially problematic, since less than one tenth of 1 percent of the Turkish population is Orthodox. . . .

No Christian community in the West would tolerate such conditions, which involve violations of basic human rights. If Turkey is to be the model of a modern Islamic society, it must remove restrictions on the exercise of some of the most fundamental aspects of religious freedom: the freedom of religious communities to educate their people, perform works of charity and choose their leaders according to their own theological self-understanding. Might Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to Turkey focus the world's attention on the stranglehold the Turkish state attempts to exercise on Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and his people, such that that stranglehold begins to ease? If the 79-year-old pontiff managed that, Christian unity and the dialogue between the West and Islam would both be advanced.

Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite

If you are going to be around South Bend this weekend, don't miss the Center for Ethics & Culture's Fall Conference, "Modernity:  Yearning for the Infinite."  (For that matter, get to South Bend for it!)  Here is the conference schedule. 

A few (very few) highlights:  Professor Alasdair MacIntyre is deliving the conference keynote on Thursday night.  Note also that Steve Smith -- whose recent book, Law's Quandary -- has been discussed here often is delivering a paper on Friday morning.  Richard Stith is presenting "Realists, Madmen, and the Death of Law" on Saturday.  And, MOJ's own Rob Vischer is presenting "Rescuing the Relational Dimension of Conscience" on Friday afternoon.  And so much more . . .

Friedman's greatest legacy

Mark makes the strong case here that the anti-corporate-social-responsibility argument should not be our focus as we remember Milton Friedman's contributions.  What about school choice?  Check out this op-ed, "Friedman's Greatest Legacy," here.

Levinson on Religion and Politics

Sandy Levinson has this post, "Religion and Politics," over at Balkinization.  Commenting on the role played by religious faith -- and, more specifically, by churches -- in the civil-rights movement, Levinson writes:

Political liberals and secularists, like myself, have to wrestle with the meaning of this aspect of the Civil Rights Movement. Because of the "culture wars" . . . , many, perhaps most, political liberal-secularists have been busy denouncing the role played by religion in American politics. But consider that the Catholic Bishops, who have, from my perspective, unfortunately concentrated their energies on the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, have also engaged in eloquent criticism of American actions in the Iraq War, and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops is among the most important groups that still support the idea of a vigorous welfare state. One could obviously present other examples, including the attempts of Jim Wallis and others to present a more politically progressive version of Evangelical politics.

This is not a question of learning to talk about "values" or professing one's own religiosity. I remain a thoroughly secular Jew, with the operative word, when all is said and done, being the adjective. Rather, it is how "we" who have no religious "faith" manifest our respect for and make alliances with those who do have very deep religious commitments and are, as with King, quite literally willing to put their lives on the line in behalf of the most fundamental values of instantiating "equal concern and respect" even for those who pick up our garbage.

The Bishops and Human Sexuality

[The U.S. Catholic bishops were gathered in Baltimore earlier this month.  They issued some documents.  Here are some passages from the lead editorial in the November 24th issue of the National Catholic Reporter:]

Let’s consider for starters the document on contraception. A lot of the U.S. bishops today might say there are a lot of bad, or at least ignorant, Catholics out there, Catholics influenced by the contraceptive culture, for instance, who no longer know good from evil.

Maybe they’re right. More likely, though, it’s because the teaching makes little sense, doesn’t match the experience of lay Catholics and tends to reduce all of human love to the act of breeding.

In short, the bishops aren’t terribly persuasive or clear when they talk about sex, and they tend to want to talk about sex a lot. To be sure, they say lots of lovely and lofty things about marital love, about how it completes people and cooperates with God’s plan and fills married lives with joy and happiness. You can want not to have children, say the bishops, you just can’t do anything “unnatural” about it. It’s a strange concept, like not wanting to die of heart disease while not doing anything “unnatural” about it.

They make the point that if every time a married couple makes love they are not open to having children, then they’re not giving “all” of themselves to each other. If you use birth control, say the bishops, and every single act is not open to having children, then “being responsible about sex simply means limiting its consequences -- avoiding disease and using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy.” Whew! So that’s it, eh?

It’s either be open to having kids or married sex is no more significant than an encounter with a prostitute. Such a view of marriage and sexuality and sexual intimacy can only have been written by people straining mightily to fit the mysteries, fullness and candidly human pleasure of sex into a schema that violently divides the human person into unrecognizable parts. There’s a reason 96 percent of Catholics have ignored the birth control teaching for decades. We doubt the new document will significantly change that percentage.

So it is with gays. Here again, church authorities try to fit together two wildly diverging themes. They go something like this: Homosexuals are “objectively disordered” (that’s about as bad as it humanly gets, in our understanding of things), but we love them and want them to be members of our community.

Only this time out, the bishops are not using the term homosexual “orientation” (a definite position) but homosexual “inclination” (a liking for something or a tendency toward). Sly, no? The inference to be drawn, we presume, is that someone inclined one way can just incline another way, whereas someone with an orientation is pretty much stuck there.

That science and human experience generally say otherwise is of little concern, apparently, though the bishops were clear they weren’t suggesting that homosexuals are required to change. This time, too, the bishops, while acknowledging that those with homosexual tendencies should seek supportive friendships, advise homosexuals to be quiet about their inclinations in church. “For some persons, revealing their homosexual tendencies to certain close friends, family members, a spiritual director, confessor, or members of a church support group may provide some spiritual and emotional help and aid them in their growth in Christian life. In the context of parish life, however, general public self-disclosures are not helpful and should not be encouraged.”

The next paragraph in the document, by the way, begins, “Sad to say, there are many persons with a homosexual inclination who feel alienated from the church.” You can’t make this stuff up.

It is difficult to figure out how to approach these documents. They are products of some realm so removed from the real lives of the faithful one has to wonder why any group of busy men administering a church would bother. They ignore science, human experience and the groups they attempt to characterize. The documents are not only embarrassing but insulting and degrading to those the bishops are charged to lead. The saddest thing is that the valuable insights the bishops have into the deficiencies and influences of the wider culture get buried.

The Catholic Vote

Sightings  11/27/06

The Catholic Vote
-- Martin E. Marty

"God Gap Narrows as Democrats Take Majority of Catholic Vote" is Joe Feuerherd's headline in the liberal National Catholic Reporter (November 17).  "Republican hopes that socially conservative church-going Catholics would help forestall an electoral catastrophe in the 2006 midterm elections were not simply dashed.  They were obliterated, a real thumping."  The NCR editors had had little to cheer about on the Catholic vote front in recent years.  They and we had been told by many pundits that Roman Catholics were securely relocating themselves as blocs or in slots that would help make up a permanent Republican hegemony.

Now, however, "The Public Shakes Things Up."  This is the headline for the post-election column by editor Tom Roberts.  Blaming or crediting the war in Iraq most of all for the change, he pointed to the victory of progressive Kathleen Sebelius for governor in "redder than red" Kansas, among many other indicators.  He reported that Republican strategists had "hoped the so-called God gap" would continue to work in their favor.  But in exit polls, for whatever they're worth, 55 percent of Catholics said they voted Democratic.  Reliable analyst John Green, who watches these things for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, observed: "More telling ... is that white Catholics -- considered the most swinging of swing voters -- gave a majority (50 percent) of their vote to Democratic candidates" -- a surprise.

Malfeasance, the Foley-Haggard-Katrina cluster of events, and issues of corruption and competence (more than philosophy and theology) were major determinants.  Opposition to abortion and gay marriage always galvanizes many, but this time not enough.  Referendums on such issues offered mixed news.  Green noted that if those two issues were not still prominent, ever more Catholics and Evangelicals would fold into the Democratic Party.  "Catholics care more about right and wrong than right and left," said Alexia Kelly of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.  Jeff Carr of the evangelical Sojourners group said that the "big losers" were "the secular left and the religious right."

The postscript editorial page in NCR judged the whole election "A Move Away from Extremism."  "The unilateral projection of U.S. power abroad and a domestic program that put individualism in hyper mode, and wrapped it all in a religiosity owing to the most extreme and conservative brand of Christianity" did not hold the place it had for several years.

While the returns gave liberal Catholics an occasion to cheer, the public at large may well welcome the shifting attitudes within the Catholic fold.  It is possible to make too much of one election as a turning point, but among other things it did lead editorialists to pay attention to more kinds of religious voters than those in the Christian Right, which they had seen as almost all-powerful.

Week after week we keep noting James Madison's observation that the security of rights in a republic depends on the diversity of interests, sects, and the like.  We can be sure that those weary of polarization will be working to energize the non-extremists, whose commitments are yet hard to assess.

----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Why do good--or even what you really want to do--when you can do well? Don't be stupid!

New York Times
November 27, 2006

Very Rich Are Leaving the Merely Rich Behind
By LOUIS UCHITELLE   

A decade into the practice of medicine, still striving to become “a well regarded physician-scientist,” Robert H. Glassman concluded that he was not making enough money. So he answered an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine from a business consulting firm hiring doctors.

And today, after moving on to Wall Street as an adviser on medical investments, he is a multimillionaire.

Such routes to great wealth were just opening up to physicians when Dr. Glassman was in school, graduating from Harvard College in 1983 and Harvard Medical School four years later. Hoping to achieve breakthroughs in curing cancer, his specialty, he plunged into research, even dreaming of a Nobel Prize, until Wall Street reordered his life.

Just how far he had come from a doctor’s traditional upper-middle-class expectations struck home at the 20th reunion of his college class. By then he was working for Merrill Lynch and soon would become a managing director of health care investment banking.

“There were doctors at the reunion — very, very smart people,” Dr. Glassman recalled in a recent interview. “They went to the top programs, they remained true to their ethics and really had very pure goals. And then they went to the 20th-year reunion and saw that somebody else who was 10 times less smart was making much more money.”

[Read the whole article.  Click here.]

To Hell With the Minimum Wage!

Richard Posner and Gary Becker attack the Democrats' plan to raise the minimum wage, here.

I wonder what Steve Bainbridge, Mark Sargent, and others--especially MOJ-readers who, unlike me, are economically literate--have to say.

Oh Manne!

When I saw the op ed by Henry Manne below, I thought Rick had stumbled on something that Henry Manne wrote in 1976, not 2006. To my surprise, it was an op ed he had published very recently. Manne, the former dean at George Mason, is one of the founders of the law and economics movement, and was particularly influential in its application to corporate law. He was particularly disdainful of the notion of corporate social responsibility, which had only just begun to make a splash in the '70s. He elaborated Milton Friedman's old saw that the corporation's social responsibility was to make a profit. His new op ed shows that he is at least consistent. But that's about the best thing I can say it.

Where to begin? Let's start with his claim that the idea of "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) is being pushed by those "who do not like or appreciate the genius of corporate success stories." Apparently all of us who think that the idea has some traction are lefty ex-hippies who hate anyone who knows how to make an honest buck by starting a business. To be sure, there are plenty of reflexively anti-business lefties; probably about as many as there are reflexively pro-business rightwingers. But there are plenty of people like yours truly, who have spent plenty of time on corporate boards and representing entrepreneurs (and probably more then Dean Manne), who find his (and Friedman's) approach to CSR reductionist and, at least, incomplete. Manne's canard, which is one also used often by Michael Novak, is a way of (inaccurately) attacking the messenger rather than the message.

Another reason I thought this was an old piece was his claim that all this CSR stuff was the "essence of socialism". Is "socialism" still a dirty word?  Are there still "socialists" around? I know there are still "socialist" parties a