are beginning to show their internal contradictions, as many are pointing out. Before I add my two cents worth, it might be worth suggest that certain positive values may well be contradictory and irreconcilable. For example, our pledge of allegiance contains the words "with liberty and justice for all." If one's notion of "liberty" includes the freedom to discriminate against those I feel are repugnant or morally reprehensible, then it clearly bumps against "justice for all." If one's notion of "justice," that is, includes "fair and equal treatment," then the sense of moral outrage must be tempered by laws which would require us all to set aside our repugnance and provide equal access to, say, weddings and wedding cakes.
You probably jumped to the conclusion that I was thinking about "gay rights." Not so, I am thinking about the FLDS "prophet" who, in addition to his six other wives, wants to marry the 12 year old promised to him in a recent revelation. I want the "freedom to" discriminate against him. I don't want to set aside my repugnance and bake him a cake. So round we go round we go round. There are all sorts of ways to twist and turn the words, but ultimately one cannot achieve perfect liberty and perfect justice at the same time, in all cases, though both ultimately are laudable goals.
The Hegelian view of history, taken in its broad outlines, is mistaken -- that is to say, the thesis and antithesis do not necessarily lead to anything that might approach a grand synthesis. Moreover, though I have heard it said all too many times, I cannot "take the best of both" and seek compromise. If there are sincere believer in the revelations of the FLDS prophet -- and I have to acknowledge that there are sincere believers -- then there is little or nothing in their ideation or way of life that I can "take the best of," nowhere that I can find common ground for compromise, nor can we just "agree to disagree." We are talking about a girl the age of my grand daughter about to be married to a man my age. In the end, we must decide which value trumps the other, not always and forever, but in just this case, which answers the perennial question, "why can't we all just get along?" It's because I simply cannot overcome my repugnance at Warren Jeffs. If he is indeed speaking with god, as he claims -- and on what basis do I discount the "sincerity" of his claims? -- then frankly I cannot overcome my repugnance with his religion and his "right" to practice it unmolested. That just by way of example. We cannot escape the moral question, the decision between values, and it matters how we answer it.
Here, I want to say that "core conservatism," the belief that unrestrained capitalism will produce the greatest good, is itself something of a religion. It is, in other words, a tenant of "faith," and must be maintained despite all the evidence to the contrary. "Unrestrained capitalism" and the "invisible hand" cannot fail, we can only fail it by insufficient faith, insufficient trust in the "invisible hand," by falling prey to the "sins" of regulatory restrictions and taxes that we place upon it. If there is common ground between evangelical conservatism and capital conservatism, it is perhaps that both ultimately are based on tenants of faith. One can even conjoin the two tenants if one sees the hand of god in the invisible hand of unrestrained capitalism, and one need only think of Weber's "Die Protestantische Ethick und der Geist des Kapitalismus" for a more complete discussion. For a tenant of faith, evidence to the contrary must either be explained away, or bracketed in willful ignorance. If contradicted, the emotional volume turned up, as if to trumpet ever louder, with ever more foreboding conviction, will somehow make it truth.
complete tmr ....
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