The Little Red Blog

Wednesday with Pascal: SCOTUS to Democracy, "Drop Dead!"

{The country seems to be in, or at least approaching, a 'state of exception,' and yesterday's Supreme Court ruling which granted our President plenipotentiary powers--i.e., put him or her above the law--has only made the situation worse. Pascal the existential Russian blue cat is so exercised about this (and it is not easy to get a cat to exercise) that he requested permission to post his usual Wednesday op-ed a day early; I have granted the request but kept ‘Wednesday’ in the title even though today is Tuesday.}

“Well, when the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” (Richard Nixon)

“The powers of the President will not be questioned.” (Stephen Miller)

“I have the Article Two privilege to do whatever I want.” (Donald Trump)

There is no need for me to comment on the latest ruling issued by the Supreme Court. I am but an existential Russian blue cat, whereas the greatest legal minds of our day have already weighed in with their, um, weighty opinions, which have ranged from (MSNBC) “WTF?” to (Fox News) “All hail the once and future king!” Some spoke of death squads and others of the death of democracy. Not a few hailed the ruling as “brilliant,” while one commentator opined that it represented “the unsouling of America,” despite the fact that “unsouling” is not a word or that nations have no souls (“souls,” whether individual or national, do not exist, but that is an issue for another time).

Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, SCOTUS today came out in favor of “bold and decisive action” (as opposed to “wise and thoughtful action”) on the part of our Chief Executive. Such action would undoubtedly be hindered by the possibility of legal repercussions; the President might hesitate to order the torture of suspected terrorists or to intimidate a state elections official into “finding” a certain number of votes. Just imagine, in the absence of absolute immunity, trying to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue!

Both Left and Right routinely complain, of course, when unelected judges rule against them, but their dismay is expressed in very different tones. On the Right, the usual outcry is for “Second Amendment remedies” and/or for civil war; on the Left, the lesson to be drawn is, to paraphrase Rachel Maddow, that Americans need to be very careful never to elect a sociopath for President.   

Arguendo, as my good friend the Professor would say, the Court’s decision changes nothing. The American people—with their innate common sense, their basic decency, and their grasp of the salient facts—will return President Biden to office, where he can rest in peace continue his stalwart Presidency for another four years while the Grim Reaper Kamala Harris hovers anxiously over his shoulder.

I am not usually disposed to look for, much less to find, silver linings, but the good news here is that President Biden is now free to declare martial law, to cancel the November election, and to authorize Seal Team Six to conduct operations on American soil. We will have SCOTUS to thank when the tanks roll into Mar-a-Lago!

Don't blame me for this.
It was my cat's idea.

 

Veiled Ignorance

Writing at Aeon, the philosopher and legal scholar Colin Bradley makes the case that liberalism and capitalism are strange bedfellows at best:

A contradiction seems to lie at the heart of liberalism. On the one hand, the promise of a liberal society is of a society of equals – of people who are equally entitled and empowered to make decisions about their own lives, and who are equal participants in the collective governance of that society. Liberalism professes to achieve this by protecting liberties. Some of these are personal liberties. I get to decide how to style my hair, which religion to profess, what I say or don’t say, which groups I join, and what I do with my own property. Some of these liberties are political: I should have the same chance as anyone else to influence the direction of our society and government by voting, joining political parties, marching and demonstrating, standing for office, writing op-eds, or organizing support for causes or candidates.

On the other hand, liberalism is usually uttered in the same breath as capitalism. Capitalism is a social system characterized by the fact that private persons (or legal entities like corporations) own the means of production. Combined with liberalism’s protection of rights and liberties, this means that, just as I get to decide what to do with what I own (a 2004 Hyundai with a busted A/C unit and squeaky wheel bearings), so did the legal entity US Steel get to decide what to do with what it owned: the Youngstown Works. ¹

Liberalism’s apparent commitment to capitalism threatens to prevent it from delivering on all that it promises. To see this, it is important to remember that formal political processes do not exhaust the way our society governs itself. One of the main tasks for a society is to organize economic production. We humans are a species that makes stuff. We make tools, dwellings, food, art, culture, more little humans, and much else. Moreover, we usually do this together, as a joint activity. Such cooperative production inevitably produces a division of labor: some hunt while others gather; some fish while others sow; some design artificial intelligence while others squeegee windows at the stop light.

When societies industrialize, achieving economies of scale and the capacity to purchase cutting-edge technologies needed for profitable production becomes extremely expensive. So expensive, in fact, that it is possible only for a relatively small number of people or entities to do it. This leads not just to a division of labor, but to a class-stratified society. Some people – capitalists – own the materials or technologies that produce society’s wealth, while other people – workers – have to work for the capitalists in exchange for a wage. In such a class-stratified society, capitalists not only make the important investment decisions that guide society’s overall direction, but they are also effectively private dictators telling their workers what to do, when to do it, what to wear, when to pee, and what to post online. Given liberalism’s defense of the capitalists’ rights to do all this, it is hard to see how liberalism might reliably achieve its goal of bringing about a society of equals in which we all have a share in our collective governance. Hence the contradiction at its heart.

Bradley goes on to invoke the ideas of philosopher John Rawls, best known for his book A Theory of Justice and for proposing a ‘thought experiment’ in which the governing rules of a social order are established from behind “a veil of ignorance” so that those making the rules have no way of knowing what their place or status will be in that social order. ² In other words, what if slave owners, in drawing up a constitution, had to consider the possibility that they themselves might be among the enslaved in the new society? Under those circumstances, might they add a provision outlawing slavery? ³

While Bradley acknowledges the objection that “abstract political philosophizing is perhaps interesting, but ultimately useless,” he nonetheless insists we find a use for it. We must change the current economic order, he says, or admit that liberalism has failed.

I suspect that the latter outcome is more likely—but I could be wrong, especially with this veil of ignorance over my eyes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

What can we learn from John Rawls’s critique of capitalism? | Aeon Essays

¹ Bradley had begun his essay by reviewing “a fiercely contested lawsuit in 1979-80 filed by 3,500 steelworkers laid off by United States Steel Corporation’s Youngstown Works plant – part of a wave of closures across what we now call the Rust Belt. The lawsuit was an avowedly desperate effort to compel US Steel to sell the company either to the city or else to the workers who, hopefully with federal loans, would continue to operate the plant and keep sending paychecks to the thousands of families depending on them.” Naturally, the lawsuit failed, because corporations are people, too.

² One could argue (but why would one bother?) that the current Republican Party operates from behind a veil of ignorance; and please do not get me started on Fox News.

³ The answer, of course, is, "No, because men of property and social stature are incapable of imagining their position to be otherwise. God, after all, has ordained their eminence." 

Saturday Lecture: Power, Privilege, and Lies

{Reinhold Niebuhr was perhaps the most influential American theologian of the twentieth century. Originally associated with the ideological Left, Niebuhr over the years moved to the center; he became famous for what was called his 'Christian realism,' exemplified below. Because of his opposition to Communism, American conservatives attempted to claim Niebuhr as one of their own; to do so, of course, they had to ignore almost everything he wrote or said.}

Reinhold Niebuhr (from Moral Man and Immoral Society):

An irrational society accepts injustice because it does not analyze the pretensions made by the powerful and privileged groups of society. Even that portion of society which suffers most from injustice may hold in reverence the power responsible for it.

For instance, the laissez faire economic theory is maintained in an industrial era through the ignorant belief that the general welfare is best served by placing the least possible political restraints upon economic activity. The history of the past one hundred years is a refutation of the theory; but it is still maintained, or is dying a too lingering death, particularly in nations as politically incompetent as our own. Its survival is due to the ignorance of those who suffer injustice from the application of this theory to modern industrial life but fail to attribute their difficulties to the social anarchy and political irresponsibility which the theory sanctions. Their ignorance permits the beneficiaries of the present anarchic industrial system to make dishonest use of the waning prestige of laissez faire economics.

Robert Briffault makes a convincing analysis: ‘No resistance to power is possible while the sanctioning lies which justify that power are accepted as valid. Before any injustice, any abuse or oppression can be resisted, the lie upon which it is founded must be unmasked and clearly recognized for what it is.’

When power is robbed of the shining armor of political, moral, and philosophical theories by which it defends itself, it will fight on without armor; but it will be more vulnerable, and the strength of its enemies is increased.

When economic power desires to be left alone it uses the philosophy of laissez faire to discourage political restraint upon economic freedom. When it wants to make use of the police power of the state to subdue rebellions, it justifies the use of political coercion and the resulting suppression of liberties by insisting that peace is more precious than freedom, and that its only desire is social peace. A rational analysis of social facts easily punctures this pretension also. It proves that the police power of the state is usually used prematurely, before an effort has been made to eliminate the causes of discontent, and that it therefore tends to perpetuate injustice and the consequent social disaffections.

Men will not cease to be dishonest merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their own deceptions. Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it. They will use whatever means are most convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise.

_________________________________

Reinhold Niebuhr - Wikipedia