Category Archives: ethics

Entitlement

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On a recent broadcast, Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly asked whether the United States was becoming a nation whose population demanded entitlement—”Are we a welfare nation?” [and select the Talking Points Memos tab, then the Talking Points: 2/14|Are we a welfare nation? link.]

Then comes an article in The Weekly Standard by Heather Mac Donald titled “Affirmative Disaster.”  Here Ms Donald describes a rigorously executed bit of research conducted at Duke University that indicates that students granted admission to Duke according to racial preference criteria rather than academic performance don’t fare as well as classmates who didn’t get an affirmative action boost, but were admitted instead on the basis of academic performance.

What’s interesting here, though, is the hue and cry raised over the paper.  Despite the rigor with which the research was carried out, the authors were decried, not so much for being outright racist—not in this day and age—but for “re-opening old racial wounds.”  A senior research scholar (Donald’s term, not mine), Tim Tyson, wrote an op-ed that insisted the paper was a “political tract disguised as scholarly inquiry,” and that it was a “crusade to reduce the numbers of black students at elite institutions.”

Others of the school’s leadership were just, plain squishy.  Provost Peter Lange bleated

We understand how the conclusions of the research paper can be interpreted in ways that reinforce negative stereotypes.

And then

At the same time, our goal of academic success for all should not inhibit research and discussion to clarify important issues of academic choice and achievement.

None of the criticism (I hesitate to call them critiques) addressed the research itself, just the implications for the efficacy of affirmative action programs and their fairness to the minorities victimizedsupported by them.

Donald concludes

[U]ntil it becomes possible to discuss the effects of preferences without being accused of racial animus, it may be impossible to dislodge academic affirmative action, no matter how discredited its purported justifications.

Or, don’t you dare interfere with our affirmative action programs.  We deserve them.

I conclude that the answer to O’Reilly’s question is, “Apparently yes.”

Is College for Everyone?

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Michelle Singletary of The Washington Post asks whether higher education is a right or a privilege.  She doesn’t, though, answer the prior question of the purpose of going to college, and who should benefit from that.  Nor does she address the related question of why college is so expensive in the first place.

She cites some student debt statistics as part of the foundation of her question:

Among borrowers, the average debt for recipients of bachelor’s degrees increased 36 percent, from $17,075 in 1996 to $23,287 in 2008. But that average borrowing figure masks the pain felt by many students and graduates. We know many are strapped with an oppressive amount of debt that requires them to stretch payments out for 20 to 30 years.

She misses the context, though.  That debt is the debt on a new car, with the duration of a home mortgage.  Moreover, that home mortgage is an order of magnitude larger.  She asserts the pain of the student debt, but she offers no substantiation of it.  Certainly, money spent on the student debt is money not available to spend on other things—that new car, or the mortgage, perhaps.  But then, for those who understand the finite nature of the supply of money in an individual’s pocketbook, such tradeoffs are commonplace, and well planned for.  There is that cost of college driving those loans, though….

In the general-public poll, 75 percent of respondents said college is just too expensive. Among respondents 18 to 34 who did not have a bachelor’s degree and aren’t enrolled in school, 48 percent said they couldn’t afford a college education.

Then she turns to her confused purpose of college, buried in her question of who should foot the bill.

So if it’s in the best interest of the country to educate people so they can qualify for better-paying jobs, who should foot the college bill?

Is that, in fact, the purpose of the education—to make money, and not more broadly to learn to be more effective in a competitive, modern world?  If it is to increase one’s personal income (no mean goal in itself), then Ms Singletary has answered her own question: the one who will obtain that better-paying job is the one who should pay for the education that leads to it.  Indeed, if the purpose is that other one, still it’s the one being educated that benefits (albeit society also gains—but then so does society gain from the higher paying job), and so it is that one who should pay.

But there is that high cost….

Then she sets up her conflation:

If going to college is a right and vital to our nation’s economic standing, then government will have to do more to make it affordable for all.

The premise of a right is entirely separate to the premise of being vital to national economic standing.  But where is this right supported in our founding documents?  Our several States have laws mandating presence in schools until a certain age, generally 16 years old.  Our Declaration of Independence acknowledges the inalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  John Adams explained that Happiness:

All men are born free and independent, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

Nothing in any of that about a right to a “higher education” in particular.  Certainly, in a modern world, such an education can prove highly useful, but utility does not define, or create, “right.”

Ms Singletary constructs a straw man alternative to this “right:”

If it’s a privilege, only the nation’s wealthiest families will one day be able to send their children to college.

But this straw man compounds its irrelevance by proceeding from the false premise that college must be as expensive as it is today.

What drives expense, though is not the demand for seats in college classrooms so much as it is two other things.  One is the rampant federal subsidies for students to go to college—all those student loan guarantees, all those grants and grants-in-aid, and so on—and all those financial incentives from the federal government to the colleges themselves to boost enrollment.

The other thing that drives demand is itself two-fold.  One of these is all those rampant federal subsidies for the students.  The other is the stigma that lack of a college degree means the person who doesn’t have one is somehow lacking, somehow less than his high school classmate who graduated from college.  It’s the pressure applied to everyone that they must go to college, whether it’s useful or not to a particular individual.

This brings me to a third question that must be answered before we can begin a discussion of right vs privilege for getting that higher education: who, in fact, should go to college?

Consider, for just one example, the trades—everything from a highly-skilled machinist, to an auto mechanic, to a plumber or electrician to—on and on.  Are the people who work in the trades not as valuable in our work force as the folks who work in the financial industry, or for the defense contractor, or  in IT—not in terms of money, but in terms of the health of our economy?  If you question the actual value of their work, try to repair your own car, or wire your own house.

What’s the value of a college education to these folks?  Must they incur the cost of those student loans, or the cost of four years of tuition and books out of their own pockets, to learn their trades and then go to work?  Plainly not.

Misleading Campaign for the Contraceptive Mandate

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Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Barbara Boxer, and Patty Murray (D; NH, CA, and WA, respectively) have an Op-Ed piece in The Wall Street Journal that contributes to the disinformation being spread about concerning this diktat.

They begin with their opening premise:

…the Obama administration changed the law to require private health plans to provide preventive services including breast exams, HIV screening and contraception for free.

They actually think no one is paying for this mandate?  They actually think no tax increases, no insurance premium increases, no reductions in services or policy option flexibility will result from this?  No, they don’t think that: these are grown, adult human beings, of far above average intelligence.  Of course they know better.

They go on:

…the real forces behind [an alleged campaign to deny this “benefit” to women]…are trying to force their politics on women’s personal health-care decisions.

Of course, this mandate in no way seeks to impose government’s politics to override the fundamental teachings of a broad reach of religions and religious institutions.  Nosirreebob.

And

Contraception was included as a required preventive service on the recommendation of the independent, nonprofit Institute of Medicine and other medical experts because it is essential to the health of women and families.

Aside from the fact that, as feminists used to protest—correctly—pregnancy isn’t a disease, pregnancy prevention (and cancelation) mechanisms are widely available already.  Not overriding religious teachings, not canceling religious tenets, in no way impacts this.

And

Those now attacking the new health-coverage requirement claim it is an assault on religious liberty, but the opposite is true.  Religious freedom means that Catholic women who want to follow their church’s doctrine can do so, avoiding the use of contraception in any form.

It also means that religious institutions—including “institutions that have historic religious ties but also have a broader mission, such as hospitals and universities”—do not have to cast aside their fundamental beliefs, do not have to submit to a government order to ignore those teachings.  Catholic—and other—women still can exercise their religious freedom.  And they still have access to contraception and abortions absent this government intrusion.

The good Senators’ disingenuous claim to the contrary, this mandate has nothing to do with women’s health, except in the most peripheral, side effect way.  It is exactly an assault on religious liberty, it is a deliberate reach for political power and an assertion of government’s authority over what will be permitted to be taught by religious institutions and what teachings will be permitted to be obeyed by related institutions.  This is an attempt to bring down Jefferson’s wall of separation between Church & State, and nothing else.

Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D, WI) makes this plain.  She has said that the church

…can’t impose its religious views on people and whether they can have health care.

However, it’s the government that’s imposing its religious view: religions must act contrary to their fundamental tenets because Government requires it.  Moreover, “the church” certainly can impose its religious views.  It’s what a church is.  It’s God’s Word—regardless of the religion at hand—that’s being taught.  The question of individual conscience, as the Catholic Church (for instance) teaches, is still a matter among the individual, the church, and God—government is, in no way, permitted to interfere here.

Yet government is doing everything it can to interfere.

The Constitution: Who Needs It?

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Certainly not our Progressive Supreme Court Justices.  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg doesn’t even think our Constitution is a worthy for others drafting a new one:

I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.

I might look at the constitution of South Africa.  That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary.

The South African constitution is interesting for how it treats individual rights and Justice Ginsburg’s independent judiciary.  There’s this on rights [emphasis added]:

When interpreting the Bill of Rights, a court, tribunal or forum must promote the values that underlie an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom; must consider international law; and may consider foreign law.

Their Constitution notes this in its Preamble:

We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic

It wasn’t even adopted directly by the people, as ours was, just by their government.

Their Constitution notes this about their Bill of Rights [emphasis added]:

7. Rights.-
( 1) This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom.
…
(3) The rights in the Bill of Rights are subject to the limitations contained or referred to in section 36, or elsewhere in the Bill

Here is what Section 36 says about limiting those “Rights.

36. Limitation of rights.-
(1) The rights in the Bill of Rights may be limited only in terms of law of general application to the extent that the limitation is reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom, taking into account all relevant factors, including-
(a) the nature of the right;
(b) the importance of the purpose of the limitation;
(c) the nature and extent of the limitation;
(d) the relation between the limitation and its purpose; and
(e) less restrictive means to achieve the purpose.
(2) Except as provided in subsection (1) or in any other provision of the Constitution, no law may limit any right entrenched in the Bill of Rights.

The Government gave, the Government hath taken away.

I won’t go into the vasty enumeration of “fundamental” rights (34 pages worth!), that is an enshrinement of “rights” that are the fallout of individual decisions made under our Creator-given and inalienable ones.

Now here is Justice Ginsberg’s “independent” judiciary

(4) Only the Constitutional Court may-
(6) decide on the constitutionality of any amendment to the Constitution:

And this [emphasis added]

173. Inherent power.-
The Constitutional Court, Supreme Court of Appeal and High Courts have the inherent power to protect and regulate their own process, and to develop the common law, taking into account the interests of justice….

This isn’t “independent.”  This is superior, the final despot.  The people aren’t to be allowed to decide for themselves what their Constitution will say.  Ultimately, the people’s representatives will not be permitted to make the law in their name—the courts’ common law will overwhelm.

This is what a Progressive Justice of the Supreme Court thinks is a superior constitution.

Full Credit

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In MSNBC’s pre-Super Bowl interview with President Obama, Matt Lauer had this exchange with him.

Lauer: Three years ago we sat for this interview on Super Bowl Sunday; you had been President for just 10 days, and we talked about the state of the economy, which was in dire straits, and you said this to me, quote, If I don’t have this done in three years, then it’s going to be a one-term proposition.  You got good news on Friday in terms of jobs, the unemployment rate went down to 8.3%.  But I think if you go out on the street, you ask Americans “is the recovery done?” Overwhelmingly they will tell you it is not.  So do you deserve a second term?

Obama: I deserve a second term, but we’re not done.

There’s also this from Obama’s State Department concerning the nearly year-long situation in Syria [emphasis added]:

“We’re going to work with countries around the world to call out those who are still sending him weapons, and expose that,” [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland said. The [contact group of countries] will look at helping Syria “plot a way forward and also to do what we can about the humanitarian situation.”

Still, she recognized the limitations of that strategy.

“It’s frankly not clear how much we’re going to be able to do, but we want to help.“

And that makes it all better.  We’re just trying to help.  We deserve a prize for effort.

Here are a couple of results from this Progressive focus on credit for “trying really hard” as opposed to actual results.  The outcomes indicate both their out of touch-ness and their lack of understanding of what’s important and where true value lies.  Obama speaking, again:

I think what Americans want to hear more than anything else is, “How are you going to help me right now.  If they’re hearing a persuasive argument about how we’re gonna recreate a solid path for middle-class success in this country then I think I’ll win….”

and

What’s frustrated people is that I have not been able to force Congress to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008.

The fact is, we aren’t asking, “How are you going to help me right now?”  We don’t want to hear “how you’re going to create anything for a particular class;” though we do notice that you’re only concerned about the middle class, to the exclusion of Lauer’s “underclass.”

We are asking, “When are you going to get out of our way so we can go back to helping ourselves and helping each other?”  We are asking, “How is your government going to get out of our way so all Americans can be successful–middle class, poor, and rich alike?”  We don’t care—in fact, we’re overjoyed—that you “haven’t been able to force the people’s representatives to roll over and be your lapdog.”

But Progressive self-esteem is so important.