We pause our current series on "The Mormons" to write briefly about a truth and a core principle based in religious thought, but bearing more directly on the political. It's time to make some quick notes on liberty.
The American founding fathers conceived that all men (and I will not hesitate to correct: all human beings) are created equal. When you consider the diversity of talents, abilities, height, weight, growth, intelligences (While there are obvious problems with Gardner's theory and taxonomy of "multiple intelligences" per this, it makes intuitive conceptual sense to use the concept as a tool as explained briefly here), socio-historical economic circumstances, etc. it's patently absurd to believe this equality is an equality of result, or even an equality of opportunity (since the very diversity of natures and contexts we're discussing here constrain the nature of each opportunity differently), but rather an equality of treatment before an authority. In other words, the true sense of human equality is that we are all moral agents: No matter to what degree our natures differentiate us, or to what degree our states attempt to take away from us the responsibilities of choosing things for ourselves, it is ultimately within the intelligence of every individual (except for the most severely handicapped among us) to distinguish between right and wrong, and then to choose the right with respect to a moral authority. I will have to take some time later to unpack some of the huge assumptions that support this claim, and even the huge question of God, or THE moral authority, but if you'll just take that for what truth you can see in it for now—the idea that humans are moral agents—then it should begin to make sense to what degree the condition of liberty to act upon this moral agency is both fundamental, and powerfully explanatory for the oft imputed "contradictions" in conservatism and capitalism. Thinking about the explanatory wing of this supposition, does it not stand to reason that if people are free to choose right from wrong (please don't confuse this with the right to determine morality—choosing right from wrong is code for choosing which one to act upon, not redefining one term or the other to match one's personal definition, sense of utility, or any other relative criteria—right and wrong are absolute in a sense I will also have to define in a later post—in other words moral agency does not imply or grant power to take on the role of moral authority for oneself) any given sample of members of a society in which institutions exist to guarantee that moral freedom would contain a number who would abuse the freedom? Crime, cruelty, intolerance, ignorance, evil are the result of wrong choices, inescapably including choices of what to believe. That extremes exist in the most morally free society on earth (the United States of America) should be evidence of the freedom in the society given the assumptions of moral agency and an underlying individual liberty.
The recent case of the Fort Dix wannabe terrorists with their Kosovar ethnic Albanian connection (Albanians having emigrated to the US en masse during the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, having lived in the States for enough years to really taste of the opportunities here) is an interesting case in point. They have been billed as "home-grown" terrorists, by media outlets that Rush Limbaugh has quite aptly dubbed "the drive-by media". Despite the ease of disputing the basic imputations of this billing (all of them were originally foreigners, many did not acquire citizenship, many were in the US illegally, and above all, all of them radically refused to integrate American culture and to allow any sense of group solidarity with the American people), even allowing the term "home-grown" to pass completely unchallenged, it would still make perfect sense that the prosperity that exists where everyone is free to choose the right, and such a large majority do (as evidenced by their prosperity—we can debate that too in a later post or in comments), that groups of those who choose evil beliefs and practices would rise up and seek to violently destroy the lives and property of "as many" (their words) agents of such freedom and prosperity (my term for members of the US military) as they could. Please note that although I most certainly could have delineated and demonstrated the evil beliefs and practices in religious terms, or in terms of their particular religion (although I refuse not to notice, as the drive-by media has, that the common link between the individuals in the group, and between many other groups who have previously carried out terrorist attacks on institutions of free societies and the symbols of those free societies, is that they are all Muslim), I have specifically chosen in this post not to do so, but rather simply to point out the moral implications of their (happily thwarted) actions, and the fact that their existence as moral agents choosing evil is fully predicted by the theory that this is a free society.
The American founding fathers conceived that all men (and I will not hesitate to correct: all human beings) are created equal. When you consider the diversity of talents, abilities, height, weight, growth, intelligences (While there are obvious problems with Gardner's theory and taxonomy of "multiple intelligences" per this, it makes intuitive conceptual sense to use the concept as a tool as explained briefly here), socio-historical economic circumstances, etc. it's patently absurd to believe this equality is an equality of result, or even an equality of opportunity (since the very diversity of natures and contexts we're discussing here constrain the nature of each opportunity differently), but rather an equality of treatment before an authority. In other words, the true sense of human equality is that we are all moral agents: No matter to what degree our natures differentiate us, or to what degree our states attempt to take away from us the responsibilities of choosing things for ourselves, it is ultimately within the intelligence of every individual (except for the most severely handicapped among us) to distinguish between right and wrong, and then to choose the right with respect to a moral authority. I will have to take some time later to unpack some of the huge assumptions that support this claim, and even the huge question of God, or THE moral authority, but if you'll just take that for what truth you can see in it for now—the idea that humans are moral agents—then it should begin to make sense to what degree the condition of liberty to act upon this moral agency is both fundamental, and powerfully explanatory for the oft imputed "contradictions" in conservatism and capitalism. Thinking about the explanatory wing of this supposition, does it not stand to reason that if people are free to choose right from wrong (please don't confuse this with the right to determine morality—choosing right from wrong is code for choosing which one to act upon, not redefining one term or the other to match one's personal definition, sense of utility, or any other relative criteria—right and wrong are absolute in a sense I will also have to define in a later post—in other words moral agency does not imply or grant power to take on the role of moral authority for oneself) any given sample of members of a society in which institutions exist to guarantee that moral freedom would contain a number who would abuse the freedom? Crime, cruelty, intolerance, ignorance, evil are the result of wrong choices, inescapably including choices of what to believe. That extremes exist in the most morally free society on earth (the United States of America) should be evidence of the freedom in the society given the assumptions of moral agency and an underlying individual liberty.
The recent case of the Fort Dix wannabe terrorists with their Kosovar ethnic Albanian connection (Albanians having emigrated to the US en masse during the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, having lived in the States for enough years to really taste of the opportunities here) is an interesting case in point. They have been billed as "home-grown" terrorists, by media outlets that Rush Limbaugh has quite aptly dubbed "the drive-by media". Despite the ease of disputing the basic imputations of this billing (all of them were originally foreigners, many did not acquire citizenship, many were in the US illegally, and above all, all of them radically refused to integrate American culture and to allow any sense of group solidarity with the American people), even allowing the term "home-grown" to pass completely unchallenged, it would still make perfect sense that the prosperity that exists where everyone is free to choose the right, and such a large majority do (as evidenced by their prosperity—we can debate that too in a later post or in comments), that groups of those who choose evil beliefs and practices would rise up and seek to violently destroy the lives and property of "as many" (their words) agents of such freedom and prosperity (my term for members of the US military) as they could. Please note that although I most certainly could have delineated and demonstrated the evil beliefs and practices in religious terms, or in terms of their particular religion (although I refuse not to notice, as the drive-by media has, that the common link between the individuals in the group, and between many other groups who have previously carried out terrorist attacks on institutions of free societies and the symbols of those free societies, is that they are all Muslim), I have specifically chosen in this post not to do so, but rather simply to point out the moral implications of their (happily thwarted) actions, and the fact that their existence as moral agents choosing evil is fully predicted by the theory that this is a free society.
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