Western Civilization and Classical Economics: The Immorality of Austerity

Editor's NOTE:

I think this piece by professor Kozy is spot on although I disagree with his conclusion as follows:

"All the moral codes mentioned in this piece are Western in origin; yet none now plays a role in how the people of this civilization behave. When a civilization abandons its morality, no rationalization can be devised to justify its continued existence. It is likely that many reasons can be given for this abandonment, although I am convinced that one predominates—the expansion of law."

Professor Kozy should have argued that when a civilization abandons its morality, nothing but great suffering follows including eventual destruction of the civilization entirely. However, in the meantime, more and more draconian laws are required in order to prevent widespread illegal/immoral activity. The "expansion of law" is the necessary substitute for the self-control and virtuous behavior which once existed--the goal of morality writ large after all. The increasingly restrictive laws are the consequence of a loss of societal morality that is, morally illicit behavior in the aggregate not the cause of the abandonment of morality, as Professor Kozy argues.

I agree that when a civilization abandons morality its existence cannot be justified. This however is more a matter of the natural moral law than any premeditated notion/action of bringing the civilization to an end. Immoral societies are simply incapable of flourishing for any great length of time as they do not promote the "common good" but rather are directed at the enrichment of the few over the many. Under such a scenario there is no societal cohesiveness. The end result is that the society of necessity comes apart.

The situation in contemporary America is one in which traditional morality has been abandoned. What we are witnessing is the expected dissolution of the nation. The rate of destruction will likely increase as the total societal moral depravity increases.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert

By Prof. John Kozy

Global Research HERE...
December 12, 2010

Numerous critics of classical economics over the past two centuries have argued that it is immoral when judged by any of the recognized moral codes. Major aspects of it clearly violate the Golden Rule. It violates many, perhaps all, of the Ten Commandments. It conflicts with various teachings of Jesus. Aristotle's Ethics can be used to demonstrate its viciousness. It violates Kant's Categorical Imperative and Mill's Utilitarianism. Yet some of its proponents continue to argue that The Wealth of Nations is not inconsistent with moral principles. Clive Cook and Gavin Kennedy recently made such a claim, but what they cite as evidence doesn't withstand scrutiny.

First of all, they base the claim on Smith's earlier book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which he argues that conscience results from observing the condition of others, generating sympathy, which then serves as the basis of moral judgments.

Although I have no doubt that different communities view this book differently, the philosophical community has generally considered it sophomoric. In my decades as a professor of philosophy, not once did I see the book included in the standard philosophical curriculum. Most philosophy professors I knew had little knowledge of the book's existence. So even if someone could cogently argue that The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations are philosophically consistent, that argument would have little bearing on whether classical economics is moral.

Smith has never been recognized in philosophical circles as a major thinker. As a matter of fact, he's hardly recognized at all. And even some economists have noticed the sophomoric nature of his thinking. One highly respected, renowned economist, whose name I shall let the reader guess at, said this:

"His very limitation made for success. Had he been more brilliant, he would not have been taken so seriously. Had he dug more deeply, had he unearthed more recondite truth, had he used more difficult and ingenious methods, he would not have been understood. But he had no such ambitions; in fact he disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers. He led them on gently, encouraging them by trivialities and homely observations, making them feel comfortable all along."

Yet Kennedy lists the elements of morality that Smith included in The Wealth of Nations. "[Smith] was no libertarian. . . . His idea of 'natural liberty' was almost the opposite of what it is usually taken to mean (namely, 'do as you wish'). He was at pains in both books to emphasize the importance of self-control, of regard for the opinions of others, and of an expansive role of government in providing security, rule of law, and economic infrastructure. Way ahead of his time, he was even in favor of compulsory schooling." An interesting list, but not one that justifies the view that Smith's view of the economy is moral. A moralist would have expected to see something about poverty, hunger, and suffering, all of which are absent.

A serious, irrefutable proof of the immorality embodied in The Wealth of Nations and classical economics in general is easily devised.

Classical theorists like Smith aver that products derive their value from the labor that goes into producing them, and that labor, itself, is bought and sold. Wages, which are the price of labor, have a natural price which is the price needed to enable labor to subsist and to perpetuate itself without either increase or decrease. These dogmas are known as the labor theory of value and the subsistence theory of wages respectively. Some revealing implications can be derived from them. First notice this oddity: labor produces products and the amount of labor expended determines their value. But labor is paid not the value of the products it produces but merely a subsistence wage. I defy anyone, economist or not, to justify that principle on moral grounds. Can Cook or Kennedy find an application of sympathy in this principle?

Second, the subsistence theory of wages describes a condition similar to that used by animal husbands in dealing with livestock. Classical economics treats labor as animal husbandry treats cows. Can treating a fellow human being as a farm animal ever be morally justified? Where is sympathy found in this? Working people, labor, those who create all the culture's wealth, are nothing but farm, factory, and when necessary, cannon fodder.

But economists will say that these aspects of classical economics are not paid much attention any more. Perhaps, but what economists pay attention to and what goes on in the economy are different things. The Wall Street Journal's report that 70 percent of people in North America live paycheck to paycheck demonstrates conclusively that the subsistence theory of wages is still being applied; our economists are just not honest enough to tell us about it.

If a subsistence wage is all that this economy pays working people, how would the culture determine how to treat those people not in the workforce—the aged, the infirm, and the handicapped, even the unemployed? Classical economics has no answer to this question because classical economics does not exist to provide for people generally. Classical economics divides the populace into two groups—capital and labor. Anyone not in one of these groups is somehow irrelevant, which explains why the President and other governmental officials always speak of the upper class and the middle class but never mention the lower class. Yet no one seems to notice that speaking of an upper and middle class without speaking of a lower class is meaningless.

The upshot is that if the dogmas of classical economics are applied consistently, there is no need for any people not capable of functioning in the workforce. So, in keeping with this implication, Andrew Mellon, President Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary recommended that Hoover fight the depression by ”liquidating the farmers, liquidating the workers, and driving down wages."

Of course, if this were openly advocated, the outrage would be uncontrollable and the system would be torn asunder. So this fact is obscured by the provision of "safety nets" that provide little safety, since what they are comprised of cannot exceed or even equal the subsistence wage. So Americans have social security which provides no security, unemployment compensation which is too meager to subsist on, welfare which is really illfare, and chancy access to healthcare at best. Yet those who promote this economy can, it seems, always find money to buttress business, create killing machines, and fight continual wars. What few seem to realize is that these consequences are logical implications of the dogmas of classical economics and come straight out of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Livestock, when unneeded, are routinely shipped to slaughter.

The United States and much of the so-called Western World are wallowing in widespread budgetary and sovereign debt crises, and the world's financial elite are forcing many European nations into severe austerity programs much to the chagrin of European peoples. Some of these nations have been referred to by the acronym PIGS, which is apt since pigs are a species of livestock. So what we have, of course, is swineherds sacrificing their livestock for the benefit of the international financial community which cares nothing for people or even the nations they reside in. These financiers validate Jefferson's view that merchants have no country. They also have no morality, not even a smidgen. Neither do the economists who promote this economy.

Signs that the American swineherds are preparing to abandon their own herd by imposing an austerity program on it are displayed in the report of Obama's Deficit Reduction Commission and the insistence of our Republican Congressmen that spending on "entitlements" either be reduced or paid for while spending on wars, foreign aid, and the military be allowed to continue and even increase without any provisions whatsoever for paying for them. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that warfare and foreign aid are necessary economic principals while the American people have fallen into that group of economically irrelevant people that those like Andrew Mellon would have the government liquidate. So the unemployed should be allowed to starve, and the ill should be allowed to perish—both of which principles are perfectly consistent with the "morality" of classical economics.

Yet the most difficult thing to understand is what the proponents of this economy believe the purpose of it all is. What is the goal of all of this destruction, suffering, and killing? Does it give them some kind of deranged pride? Does a banker really feel good when he is told his bank evicted hundreds of families in the past week? Does a general rejoice when he is told that dozens of the enemy and scores of his own troops have been killed in the battle just fought? Does a legislator drink a toast to progress when it is learned that hundreds of children in her/his district go to bead hungry each night? If so, what kind of human beings are they? If not, just what can they possibly be thinking?

All the moral codes mentioned in this piece are Western in origin; yet none now plays a role in how the people of this civilization behave. When a civilization abandons its morality, no rationalization can be devised to justify its continued existence. It is likely that many reasons can be given for this abandonment, although I am convinced that one predominates—the expansion of law. Law once governed various kinds of behavior. It has now encroached upon various kinds of speech and is even being applied to the realm of belief. If there is a single aspect of human life that is not now circumscribed by law, I do not know of it. So when someone is accused of having done something wrong, the reply offered usually is something like, "What was done complied with all legal requirements." But "right" has never been defined as "conforms to law," because thoughtful people have long noticed that the law itself can be a great crime, and that the worst criminals in a culture can be its lawgivers, as the people of Ireland, Portugal, France, Spain, Greece, and Great Britain are now finding out. Americans will soon find it out too.

The Collapse of Western Morality

By Paul Craig Roberts Global Research HERE...

September 23, 2010

Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse.

In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force, according to some historians, against the civilian German population than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israel’s genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they receive an American pay check.

I don’t mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is rising. Indeed, it is quite high, though still just below a majority.
And we have what appears to be a new thrill: American soldiers using the cover of war to murder civilians. Recently American troops were arrested for murdering Afghan civilians for fun and collecting trophies such as fingers and skulls.

This revelation came on the heels of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s alleged leak of a US Army video of US soldiers in helicopters and their controllers thousands of miles away having fun with joy sticks murdering members of the press and Afghan civilians. Manning is cursed with a moral conscience that has been discarded by his government and his military, and Manning has been arrested for obeying the law and reporting a war crime to the American people.

US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning’s execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to report an American war crime.

In other words, to obey the law constitutes “treason to America.”

US Rep. Rogers said that America’s wars are being undermined by “a culture of disclosure” and that this “serious and growing problem” could only be stopped by the execution of Manning. If Rep. Rogers is representative of Michigan, then Michigan is a state that we don’t need.

The US government, a font of imperial hubris, does not believe that any act it commits, no matter how vile, can possibly be a war crime. One million dead Iraqis, a ruined country, and four million displaced Iraqis are all justified, because the “threatened” US Superpower had to protect itself from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that the US government knew for a fact were not in Iraq and could not have been a threat to the US if they were in Iraq.

When other countries attempt to enforce the international laws that the Americans established in order to execute Germans defeated in World War II, the US government goes to work and blocks the attempt. A year ago on October 8, the Spanish Senate, obeying its American master, limited Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction in order to sink a legitimate war crimes case brought against George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Tony Blair,and Gordon Brown.

The West includes Israel, and there the horror stories are 60 years long. Moreover, if you mention any of them you are declared to be an anti-semite. I only mention them in order to prove that I am not anti-American, anti-British, and anti-NATO, but am simply against war crimes. It was the distinguished Zionist Jewish Judge, Goldstone, who produced the UN report indicating that Israel committed war crimes when it attacked the civilian population and civilian infrastructure of Gaza. For his efforts, Israel declared the Zionist Goldstone to be “a self-hating Jew,” and the US Congress, on instruction from the Israel Lobby, voted to disregard the Goldstone Report to the UN.

As the Israeli official said, we are only doing to the Palestinians what the Americans did to the American Indians.

The Israeli army uses female soldiers to sit before video screens and to fire by remote control machine guns from towers to murder Palestinians who come to tend their fields within 1500 meters of the inclosed perimeter of Ghetto Gaza. There is no indication that these Israeli women are bothered by gunning down young children and old people who come to tend to their fields.

If the crimes were limited to war and the theft of lands, perhaps we could say it is a case of jingoism sidetracking traditional morality, otherwise still in effect.

Alas, the collapse of morality is too widespread. Some sports teams now have a win-at-all-cost attitude that involves plans to injure the star players of the opposing teams. To avoid all these controversies, let’s go to Formula One racing where 200 mph speeds are routine.

Prior to 1988, 22 years ago, track deaths were due to driver error, car failure, and poorly designed tracks compromised with safety hazards. World Champion Jackie Stewart did much to improve the safety of tracks, both for drivers and spectators. But in 1988 everything changed. Top driver Ayrton Senna nudged another top driver Alain Prost toward a pit wall at 190 mph. According to AutoWeek (August 30, 2010), nothing like this had been seen before. “Officials did not punish Senna’s move that day in Portugal, and so a significant shift in racing began.” What the great racing driver Stirling Moss called “dirty driving” became the norm.

Nigel Roebuck in AutoWeek reports that in 1996 World Champion Damon Hill said that Senna’s win-at-all-cost tactic “was responsible for fundamental change in the ethics of the sport.” Drivers began using “terrorist tactics on the track.” Damon Hill said that “the views that I’d gleaned from being around my dad [twice world champion Graham Hill] and people like him, I soon had to abandon,” because you realized that no penalty was forthcoming against the guy who tried to kill you in order that he could win.

When asked about the ethics of modern Formula One racing, American World Champion Phil Hill said: “Doing that sort of stuff in my day was just unthinkable. For one thing, we believed certain tactics were unacceptable.”

In today’s Western moral climate, driving another talented driver into the wall at 200 mph is just part of winning. Michael Schumacher, born in January 1969, is a seven times World Champion, an unequaled record. On August 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, AutoWeek Reports that Schumacher tried to drive his former Ferrari teammate, Rubens Barrichello, into the wall at 200 mph speeds.

Confronted with his attempted act of murder, Schumacher said: “This is Formula One. Everyone knows I don’t give presents.”

Neither does the US government, nor state and local governments, nor the UK government, nor the EU.
The deformation of the police, which many Americans, in their untutored existence as naive believers in “law and order,” still think are “on their side,” has taken on new dimensions with the police militarized to fight “terrorists” and “domestic extremists.”  (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)

The police have been off the leash since the civilian police boards were nixed by the conservatives. Kids as young as 6 years old have been handcuffed and carted off to jail for school infractions that may or may not have occurred. So have moms with a car full of children see, for example, THIS...

Anyone who googles videos of US police gratuitous brutality will call up tens of thousands of examples, and this is after laws that make filming police brutality a felony. A year or two ago such a search would call up hundreds of thousands of videos.

In one of the most recent of the numerous daily acts of gratuitous police abuse of citizens, an 84-year-old man had his neck broken because he objected to a night time towing of his car. The goon cop body-slammed the 84-year old and broke his neck. The Orlando, Florida, police department says that the old man was a “threat” to the well-armed much younger police goon, because the old man clenched his fist.

Americans will be the first people sent straight to Hell while thinking that they are the salt of the earth. The Americans have even devised a title for themselves to rival that of the Israelis’ self-designation as “God’s Chosen People.” The Americans call themselves “the indispensable people.”

The Problem with Gay “Marriage” Bans

Editorial Comment by Dr. J. P. Hubert

The ruling yesterday by Judge Vaughn Walker in which he overturned California’s Proposition 8 banning homosexual “Marriage” is but another in the long line of those being issued by an American Judicial system steeped in Legal Positivism (Pragmatism). As I wrote several years ago for the Intellectual Conservative, December 2005 in “The ‘Fruits’ of Legal Positivism: Utilitarianism in Action”:

“For over 60 years, the United States Supreme Court has progressively departed from what was primarily a Natural Law based understanding of its role in constitutional interpretation…That construct utilized the constitution as written, relying on the so-called original intent or a strict constructionist interpretation as a template upon which the tenets of the Natural Law were traced. For almost 100 years, the USSC has embraced Legal Positivism, in which no immutable moral principles are recognized, including the first and second principles of the Natural Law (do good/ avoid evil and treat your neighbor fairly).

…The only unifying principle allowed to permeate legal positivism is personal autonomy or choice, itself an expression of ‘survival of the fittest’ (read selfishness) which has become the new judicial rallying cry. Thus it follows that virtually any new social/cultural experiment can be codified into law by the Supreme Court even if such a law could never be passed by the representatives of the people who still adhere largely to the principles of the Natural Law and the Judeo-Christian Ethic (e.g. Proposition 8 banning homosexual “marriage”). Why? Because the court is simply not restrained or controlled by the observance of any moral absolutes.

…Legal Positivism or pragmatism -- developed by Oliver Wendell Holmes and those who followed… is based entirely on a Secularist worldview in which the controlling moral philosophy is utilitarian… American Jurisprudence is now held hostage to an alien judicial philosophy based not on the Natural Law or the Judeo-Christian ethic, but rather on the post-Enlightenment philosophies of Mill, Hume, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes and Darwin.

Legal Positivism reduced to the lowest common denominator is the application of Darwinian Natural Selection (survival of the fittest) to a constantly changing moral code based on personal preference or “choice” in the realm of the civil law. Under this rubric, moral absolutes do not really exist, since morality in general is determined by what is socially acceptable at a given period of time in history…

…it is assumed that if Congress passes a law, the USSC has the right to determine whether it is constitutional and morally permissible, as if the two were synonymous. It is simply presumed a priori that nothing which the court could declare constitutional for whatever reason could ever be immoral, despite obvious examples to the contrary. The entire process becomes an exercise in debate over second order questions without any first order foundation. Put differently, there is no transcendent -- in the metaphysical sense -- referent by which the moral licitness of a given law can be compared. Laws become whatever society at a given point in history wants them to be. The function of the Supreme Court then becomes one of “divining” what Americans presently think, feel or want, what common assumptions they have become accustomed to making and so on. Then a majority of Justices create a way or tactic -- whether logically coherent or not - -to justify the conclusion which they have already made. In the process, to a greater or lesser degree they attempt to demonstrate how the Constitution actually contains the warrant for their findings.

…the moral licitness of any law is a totally separate question from whether it is constitutional; irrespective of whether it is or is not consistent with “original constitutional intent.” The original intent of a given law may always have been morally illicit from the perspective of the Natural Law, the Judeo-Christian Ethic, and the common morality. It may even have been immoral by virtue of any other applicable moral philosophy -- even utilitarianism. For example, slavery was arguably immoral by the Natural Law/Judeo-Christian Ethic, but yet was not originally considered unconstitutional. It is difficult today for most people to believe that African-Americans were once considered property. Slavery was codified in law, however, because even from the beginning of the American experiment, the civil law was not based entirely on the Natural Law. Utilitarian moral thinking began very early to insinuate its way from the Continent into the colonial experience.

We are left to believe, according to the tenets of legal positivism, that during the period in question, slavery was permissible and constitutional because it was commonly accepted, economically based and people were accustomed to it. At a later date, the “situation” changed and a different set of assumptions obtained. It also means that if in the future it becomes expedient for slavery to once again exist, the Supreme Court could again reverse itself and legalize slavery based on race, religion, class or any other criterion thought to be of utility. The reason this is so is that there are no absolute moral proscriptions which undergird the civil law according to the rubrics of legal positivism…

…It is simply moronic to believe that constitutional law exists without a pre-philosophy, a set of fundamental assumptions or overarching principle(s). Every discipline has a set of so-called pre-philosophical assumptions, also known as first-order philosophical questions/presumptions. For example, the question of what the law is in a metaphysical sense actually involves a first order philosophical question and is not a legal question at all. Every Senator who serves as an interlocutor on the Judiciary Committee and each USSC nominee who appears in the confirmation process have a “pre-philosophy” with regard to what the civil law should be grounded in, as well as a specific judicial/constitutional philosophy (e.g. original intent vs: an evolving constitutional standard). It unfortunately has become acceptable to simply deny this (as Judge John Roberts did at his confirmation hearing), as if the Supreme Court is able to divine the proper ruling virtually out of “thin air” without regard to first principles.

Social Darwinism Replaces Transcendent Truths

What we have done then as a culture over the past half century is to codify in the civil law, a legal system which is not only productive of illogical and contradictory rulings, but one which is totally arbitrary and grounded in the principles of social Darwinism rather than immutable truths. Decades ago it was incumbent upon those who understood -- that the USSC was attempting to radically alter the moral philosophical basis which had been foundational to the U.S. constitutional system -- to rise up and object in the strongest terms rather than remaining mute by “playing the game.” Had this been done in the mid-twentieth century, the present deceptive system for confirming a Supreme Court Justice would not exist. The result of failing to do so has meant that the entire process is now nothing more than a pretense in which interested candidates must either actively or passively agree to be involved in evil as a means to the potentially good end of being placed on the Supreme Court, the very definition of Utilitarianism. Such a circumstance is incompatible with the truth that should be at the foundational center of justice and is not simply a matter of the Supreme Court legislating from the bench. Legislating by the rule of the majority in a way which is contrary to the Natural Law is also immoral. Rather than fairness, consistency and equality before the law, the present system is capricious and inherently unjust. It typifies a “might makes right” mentality achieved either through a tyranny of the majority at the ballot box, the appellate court or Supreme Court level as demonstrated in 5-4 decisions. Truth is the very last thing which is served under such a system and once truth is sacrificed at the alter of expediency, justice is vacated as well.

With respect to the USSC, the issue is not judicial activism alone (the court usurping the role of the legislature), nor is it a failure to adhere to stare decisis, original intent or a Strict Constructionist methodology. It is the failure of both the legislative and the judicial branches (but especially the USSC) to adhere to the immutable principles of the Natural Law as codified in the Judeo-Christian Ethic. Until this issue can be discussed vis-a-vis the foundational philosophical problem that it is; rather than the straw man indictment which labels it “a private or deeply held religious belief,” our laws will remain unjust and no one in America will be safe from tyranny. The fact that our laws are no longer based on the common morality which flows from the Natural Law as historically contained in the Judeo-Christian ethic [and later common law] is ultimately a philosophical not fundamentally religious problem. Once this is widely recognized we can then make progress in reforming the U. S. Supreme Court, something all true conservatives should be interested in.” read original article HERE…

No Agreement on Right and Wrong:

A ban such as California's Proposition 8 on homosexual “marriage” presupposes of course that the question is a judicial or elective one rather than foundationally a moral philosophical one. Even more fundamentally; by what set of criteria are Americans to judge the moral licitness of issues of public policy? In contemporary America there are none. In fact there is absolutely no agreement at all among the ruling class in the United States about what is morally right or wrong. These kinds of questions are simply never addressed. With the elite's use of the Hegelian dialectic in which the populace is being force-fed a lethal dose of right/left diatribes by the corporate fawning media, there would be too much polarization for there ever to be agreement on societal moral (immutable) norms.

Human Nature is Fixed:

Rather than utilizing a natural law based paradigm in which human anthropology is assumed to be fixed and in which the “ought” (of moral philosophical questions) becomes necessarily circumscribed by the “is” of human nature, legal pragmatism assumes that human nature is elastic, that there are no immutable moral norms and that moral questions are really not moral in any actual sense at all. This is the sine-qua-non of utilitarian legal pragmatism. From the perspective of legal pragmatism, the first order question of how one determines right or wrong is simply irrelevant. Most Americans would be surprised to find out that while they must live as if there were fixed moral norms the legislature and the judiciary do not.

According to the Utilitarian calculus undergirding the legal pragmatism currently in vogue, the judiciary and the legislative avenues exist to normalize/sanction whatever behavior is desired by a suitably powerful subset of the populace. At the present time, it is popular to normalize personal behaviors which are contrary to the natural moral law only because a powerful vocal minority of Americans wishes that to be the case. Under this rubric questions of right and wrong reduce to the vocalized desires of politically powerful interest groups which of course change from time to time and place to place.

What About the Common Good?:

The argument which appears to have won the day is that it is unfair or unjust for some persons to be able to derive the benefits of the married state and not others simply because of their personal sexual habits/preferences. It is not enough that individuals are allowed to behave in virtually any way they desire in the privacy of their own homes even if doing so is contrary to the natural moral law--which is nevertheless legal. No consideration has been given to the ways in which the common good of society will or will not be affected by the broad legalization of gay “marriage.” Advocates cite the short-term absence of social problems since gay marriages were first allowed in California as if long-term follow-up data is unnecessary in adequately evaluating the results.

What are the Goods of Marriage?:

No discussion has ensued regarding what the "goods" of marriage actually are--the primary purpose of which is the producing and rearing of children--or the sociological data which establishes that children are best raised in 2 heterosexual parent families. Obviously the fact that the US allows divorce on demand suggests that the primary purpose of marriage was not considered in fashioning contemporary divorce laws. For similar reasons, there is a movement to normalize childhood adoption by homosexual couples and single adults. This is in contradistinction to the fact that society has a vested interest in ensuring that the common good is enhanced.

What is in a Word?/Utopian Disreality:

Homosexual "marriage" and adoption is inherently incapable of contributing to the common good as that term has been traditionally used due to the incompatibility (lack of complementarity) which exists in the human nature's of same-sex couples. While various legal "arrangements" can be entered into by same-sex couples as they admittedly are by heterosexuals who contract civil (non-covenant) marriages, they can never be marriages in the traditional (where marriage symbolizes the coming together of male and female to produce another, the triad of which represents an image of the Sacred Trinity) sense where anatomic, physiologic and genetic factors are prerequisites. To arbitrarily define them as such in the law is to deny the very nature of what it means to be human, male and female. This reality will seem harsh to many but epistemologically it is undeniable.

Advocates of same-sex "marriage" if honest will be forced to admit that they desire to engage in such "arrangements" despite the inherent dis-reality involved. Doing so is to engage in positing a false reality, a utopian metaphysical unreality if you will, a worldview based not on the truth of what is but on the falsehood of what is not. In that regard the USSC (e.g. Justice Kennedy) has written essentially that each citizen is entitled to establish their own reality as if a human being has the power to determine metaphysical truths anymore than those of a physical nature as determined by universal physical laws. No one would posit the latter, but the former is currently being advanced by the USSC. The fact that Justice Kennedy was not harangued by the academic establishment for positing such an irrational concept should suffice to document that legal pragmatism has overtaken the US judiciary at least at the level of the USSC.

The American judiciary utilizing the theory of legal pragmatism is engaged in making legal what is proscribed by the natural moral law in so doing hoping to alter the “common morality” in such a way as to baptize it as if its advocates embraced the natural moral law and the notion of immutable moral norms which they of course do not. This is hypocrisy of the first order (first deny the natural moral law and once the civil law is changed behave as if it exists since whatever is legal is assumed to be moral).

What is the Ultimate Limit?:

Why should anyone believe that homosexual “marriage” is any more acceptable than any other currently illegal and immoral practice such as polygamy, pedophilia, pederasty, bestiality? Surely there are a not negligible number of individuals who desire to partake in these activities based on the crime statistics which are available--and with the marked deterioration in moral climate in the West there are likely to be more not less as time marches on. All of these practices however are contrary to the natural moral law as is homosexual practice and
homosexual “marriage.” Can we not assume that an equally powerful subset of our population will eventually advocate for the changing of these laws as well, and on what basis could it be denied if individuals came forward who wished to engage in these activities, label them marriage and derive marital benefits. According to the judicial theory of legal pragmatism any of these are worthy of being made legal for the exact same reasons being utilized to justify gay “marriage.”

The reality is that Americans simply refuse to engage in a debate about how to determine right and wrong. The unstated reality is that if a practice or behavior can be made legal, it is immaterial whether it violates the natural moral law or the wishes and belief structure of a majority of citizens. All that matters is that the special interest group who desires the change is satisfied. We prefer to settle all such issues by making laws which either allow or disallow certain practices based upon the exercise of raw political power alone. This is a formula for endless discord and polarization as nothing is ever definitively settled. It is nothing more that “might makes right” a form of judicially insured tyranny.

California’s Proposition 8 is an attempt to solve what is ultimately a moral philosophical problem through the use of the ballot box and the courts. The current trajectory is that homosexual marriage will eventually be legalized in all 50 states and codified in federal law. Given that the judiciary has embraced legal pragmatism, no other outcome is logically possible and therin lies the problem for opponents of gay "marriage." Americans wishing to prevent it will need to wage the battle where it actually belongs on the level of morality, a return to natural law based jurisprudence and not the law as understood through the prism of legal pragmatism. Unfortunately, that ground was surrendered long ago.

Fascist Police State Fills Vaccuum Created by Destruction of Traditional Morality

For much of the past 60 years (dating to the formation of the CIA in the wake of WWII), the US National Security State has conducted an extra-constitutional assault on our Representative Democratic Republic. No doubt the Founder's would no longer recognize the fledgling nation they started.

Recall that George Washington warned the young nation against maintaining a standing army. Dwight Eisenhower warned about the growing threat of the military industrial complex (MIC). John F. Kennedy spoke about the power of secret societies. To all of that must in the wake of 9/11 be added the corporate owned virtually monopolistic main stream media and the ever growing massive intelligence apparatus. The entire amalgam is now colloquially known as the MIMIC (media, intelligence, military industrial complex).

In a myriad of ways, the US is being not so slowly transformed into a fascist police state--the natural outgrowth in a sense of the almost total destruction of traditional morality. As the moral conscience of the nation is destroyed ever more repressive laws must be enacted to control the actions of the populace. In a moral vaccuum, there can never be enough police or laws to serve as a substitute for each person's individual moral restraint.

As many have observed, the Obama administration has continued along the same tragectory as that of the Bush 8 year Presidency only at a faster pace--creating new powers and interpretations of existing statutes. Note that American citizens can now be terminated (read killed) on suspicion of being a "terrorist" threat to "national security" by order of the President without judicial review. This power to eliminate Americans is now exercisable by Presidential fiat within the borders of the United States. For more see THIS... and THIS...

Obama Set to Reverse Bush’s Stem-Cell Restrictions

By DAVID STOUT and GARDINER HARRIS
The New York Times
Published: March 6, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama will announce Monday that he is reversing Bush administration limits on federal financing for embryonic stem cell research as part of a pledge to separate science and politics, White House officials said Friday.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama spoke out in favor of stem cell research, so his intention to undo the curbs put in place by President George W. Bush is not surprising. But the decision is nonetheless of great interest, involving a long-controversial intersection of science and personal moral beliefs.

The officials said that advocates of unfettered stem cell research, as well as about 30 Democratic and Republican lawmakers who support it, had been invited to a White House ceremony scheduled for 11:45 a.m. Eastern time, when Mr. Obama is expected to make an announcement.

One person familiar with planning for the event said the president would also speak about a general return to “sound science” in his administration, as a fulfillment of his campaign promise to draw a demarcation line between politics and science. The Bush administration was often accused of trying to shade, or even suppress, the findings of government scientists on climate change, sex education, contraceptives and other issues, as well as stem cells.

Mr. Obama’s announcement is not likely to lead to any immediate change in government policy, since it may take many months for the National Institutes of Health to develop new guidelines for research.

Still, research advocates are expected to push for the process to go as quickly as possible to ensure that universities have time to submit grant proposals that can be reviewed and accepted before September 2010, when the health institutes must commit the last of the $10.4 billion given to the N.I.H. as part of the economic stimulus program.

Because embryonic stem cells are capable of developing into any type of cell in the body, many scientists believe that they may one day be able to provide tissues to replace worn-out organs or non-functioning cells and, thus, offer powerful new treatments for diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and other ailments. Some researchers say the stem cells may even be used someday to treat catastrophic injuries like damage to the spinal cord.

But many people have a moral problem with embryonic stem cell research because creation of the cells entails destruction of human embryos. For that reason, Mr. Bush ordered in August 2001 that federal research be limited to lines of cells that were already in existence, since the embryo destruction for those had already taken place.

The main suspense about what Mr. Obama would do centered on whether he would seek to undo the Bush-era restrictions through legislation or by executive order. The event set for Monday indicates that he might have decided on the latter course, although one person expected to attend the announcement said he understood that the president might also seek to involve Congress.

Advocates of stem cell research have been hoping for an order lifting all restrictions and allowing scientists and ethicists at the N.I.H., not the White House, to make decisions related to stem cell research.

One prominent advocate of stem cell research is Larry Soler, executive vice president for government relations and operations at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Mr. Soler said in a telephone interview Friday that he was sure that Mr. Obama would indeed signal a return to an era of “scientists making scientific decisions.”

Discussions about stem cell research have often been deeply personal as well as scientific. Advocates of unrestricted research note that the cells are typically obtained from embryos that have been abandoned by couples seeking in-vitro fertilization and that the embryos would be discarded anyway.

But many of those opposed to the research say the embryos are nothing less than tiny human beings, with souls, and that destroying them is akin to murder. They argue that research on embryos that would be thrown out is a slippery moral slope to be avoided by a decent society.

Critics of embryonic stem cell research also argue that scientists can use different types of stem cells, like those found in amniotic fluid or the placenta. But supporters of using embryonic cells say those are by far the most promising.

No matter what is announced Monday, the debate over embryonic stem cell research will not subside. That was clear from the reaction unleashed Friday.

“It must be Friday night because word leaks of yet another deadly executive order by President Obama,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, calling Mr. Obama’s intention “a slap in the face to Americans who believe in the dignity of all human life.”

But the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation praised the president’s plan.

“By removing politics from science,” said Peter T. Wilderotter, the organization’s president and chief executive, “President Obama has freed researchers to explore these remarkable stem cells, learn from them and possibly develop effective therapies using them.”

The actor Christopher Reeve died in 2004, nine years after being injured in a horseback riding accident. His wife died in 2006. “The Reeves’ belief in the promise of stem cell research is a part of their lasting legacy,” Mr. Wilderotter said.

Among the lawmakers reportedly invited to the White House on Monday are Senators Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, all Republicans; Senators Dianne Feinstein of California, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, all Democrats.

NOTE:

Two glaring problems inherent in the human embryonic stem cell debate are made evident in the above article. First, is the question of what moral philosophy should be operative/normative in considering the ethical question involved (Utilitarianism vs: Traditional Aristotelian/Thomistic moral philosophy) and second whether it is morally licit to destroy (kill) human embryos for any purpose.

Currently, the procuring of human embryonic stem cells (ESC's) requires the destruction of human embryos. Human embryos are in fact biologically/ontologically entirely human from the moment of conception/fertilization at which time DNA from paternal and maternal gametes are combined and reshuffled. Once in existence, these entities are in every relevant sense--nascent human beings--irrespective of how they came into being or where they are located. They are completely innocent from a moral perspective.

In traditional moral philosophy it is always and everywhere wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being (as is done routinely in "harvesting" embryonic stem cells from human embryos). All such embryonic human beings are killed in the process of removing the highly sought-after embryonic stem cells. Therefore, as presently performed--yet from a traditional (golden-rule ethic) moral philosophical perspective, embryonic stem cell research is immoral as is all human destructive embryo research (DER). As such, only if the stem cells could be removed without harm to the embryo and if doing so directly benefited the embryo itself would such manipulations be morally licit.

Since in the United States and Western culture in general, rank Utilitarianism is the reigning (unethical) moral construct, embryonic stem cell research has been embraced by most scientists involved and many interested advocates. President Obama has embraced Utilitarianism as his operative (immoral/amoral) philosophy and thus is prepared to federally fund embryonic stem cell research. It is unclear whether this will involve utilizing (killing embryos in order to obtain their embryonic stem cells) only those embryos already in existence (e.g. those currently cryopreserved in fertility clinics) or whether he also envisions federally funding the wholesale creation of embryos from which embryonic stem cells will be liberally "harvested." This practice is currently legal albeit completely privately financed. The change which President Obama may be advocating is to make federal funds available for this purpose as well. We must wait to see what the details of his policy will be. Only time will tell.

Just as it is immoral (from a traditional moral perspective) to kill human embryos in order to obtain their embryonic stem cells, it is also immoral to artificially create human embryos for that purpose (in fact it is immoral to create them for any purpose such as in IVF although that involves a different moral calculus). Not only should there be a ban on human destructive embryo research (DER) from the perspective of federal funding but it should be made illegal entirely meaning that private entities would also be prohibited from doing so. As a society we must either always and everywhere protect innocent human life or admit that in the United States, some human beings--the most innocent among us--lack the right to life and can be sacrificed for the sake of expediency--a rank utilitarian calculus that. To do otherwise is to be intellectually inconsistent and morally bankrupt.

As I have demonstrated elsewhere, Utilitarianism is a completely inadequate (and often immoral) construct by which to analyze complex ethical problems. It is frequently productive of an ad-hoc/self-serving result which is incompatible with the common good. It is not surprising that those who embrace a Utilitarian ethic would support destructive embryo research (DER).

Many who support DER (such as the referenced individuals quoted in the above article including spokespersons for the White House) engage in sophistry by which they attempt to eliminate all ethical considerations from scientific research by incorrectly conflating the "political" with the ethical. While it is admirable in some circumstances to remove political considerations from scientific investigation, it is never morally licit to eliminate ethical considerations from scientific research. History is replete (e.g. Nuremberg tribunals on human experimentation and US military experiments on syphilitic black males) with examples of what occurs when that is allowed to happen.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert

NEO-MODERNISM: The Scourge of Western Culture

Neomodernism (in non-Theological terms) is characterized by a total repudiation of the perennial wisdom (wisdom of the ages).

In its "modern" form, neo-modernism reduces to "there is no God", in its post-modern form; "there is no truth." The later formulation is self-referentially absurd meaning it is self-contradictory. The former is demonstrably false on the basis of both deductive and inductive reasoning.

Many important advances have been made since the Enlightenment in both Science and Technology. Unfortunately, in the realms of Philosophy and Theology, much which was once known to advanced civilization has been lost through a variety of reductionist philosophical systems including scientism, utilitarianism, empiricism, idealism, panentheism (finite godism) and the like.

Neomodernist thinking has been particularly destructive to the so-called traditional morality (golden rule ethic) best exemplified by the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis.