How Government Created the Gay Marriage Controversy

There are many unrecognized implications of the June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing marriages between (among?) gay and lesbian (couples? groups?). I frame the ruling in those terms not to disparage loving relationships of any kind, but to raise a point lost in this ruling: essentially, the unintentional obliteration of "marriage" as a legal concept. Which is to me a good thing.

Like so many issues in which government (i.e., politics) is improperly involved -- education, agriculture, energy, housing, charity, etc., etc. -- the bitter, divisive social conflicts over "gay marriage" arise precisely from the very fact of government involvement in defining "marriage" in the first place. Why?

Because government -- that is, law -- is force and coercion. Government "solutions" to problems are inherently coercive impositions by some people (the politically dominant) on others (the politically subordinate). Such solutions never result in social harmony, peace, love, etc.; they only exacerbate social hostility, conflict, and division. They allow some people to "win," but only because they force others to "lose."

Force children to go to "public" (i.e., politically run) schools, and force taxpayers to pay for it? You will then pit taxpayers against each other over the content of that "education" (indoctrination), over schedules and hours, over homework, over grading systems, over teacher qualifications, over social engineering schemes (busing students all over the place to achieve racially integrated schools, etc.). over options for dissenters (home schooling, tax credits, vouchers, "magnet" schools, "charter" schools), over "reforms" (Common Core), over testing, etc. Everything concerning education becomes a political battleground...because of the conscription of children into politicized education, and the conscription of taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Put government into the agriculture business, or energy business, or auto business, or banking business, or ANY business, and what happens? You use force (the IRS extracting money from all taxpayers) to support crony businesses (e.g., politically connected ethanol agribusinesses, "green" windmill and solar panel manufacturers, GM and Chrysler, the big New York-based banks) over all their politiically unfavored competitors, who must fund, through taxes, their politically favored rivals.

Put government into the charity business -- all the programs of the welfare state -- and you undercut voluntary, private charity alternatives by sapping them of trillions of dollars of potential funds, which are taxed away from potential contributors. Simultaneously, you create what are called "moral hazards" by providing incentives for millions of people not to work or to solve their own problems, but instead to dump their endless claims of ailments, needs, wants, desires, whims ("Obamaphones"? Really?) onto their hard-working, taxpaying neighbors. Everyone resents this "spread the wealth around" process: those forced to foot the boundless bills, and those issuing endless demands of their "rights" -- i.e., their phony claims of "entitlements" against "society" (which means: their neighbors). In the redistributionist era -- as 19th century economist Frederic Bastiat famously put it -- "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."

All of this stems from trying to use government -- law, politics, force -- to solve essentially personal or social problems. Politics invariably creates "win-lose" relationships, in which some people benefit but only at the expense of others. For every political beneficiary, there are victims. For every political winner, there are losers.

Now, let's contrast this world of politics and the "public sector" with the world of economics and the "private sector."

Imagine a world in which education were entirely privatized -- in which schools were like grocery stores, auto dealerships, bookstores, or any other private companies. No parents would be forced to put their kids into a school system they didn't like, with teachers they didn't trust, with curricula they loathed -- or to pay taxes to support such private companies. Just as you don't have to subsidize your local bookstore, grocery, or Ford dealer, you wouldn't have to pay for somebody else's school. With all the money you saved in school taxes, you could afford to send your kids instead to one of many competing private schools, with teachers you preferred, teaching courses you decided were most beneficial to your kids' futures. Or, you could homeschool them, utilizing course material from a host of competing sources, including online offerings. You would have no reason or motive to fight with politicized school boards and teachers unions over content, schedules, social-engineering fads, or anything else -- because you wouldn't be forced to be involved with any educational company except the one you freely chose. Imagine: No more wars with your neighbors and fellow taxpayers over textbooks, the teaching of Common Core or evolution or liberal propaganda or conservative propaganda, over teacher salaries and hours, over school taxes, over whether the building ought to have a new gym. You get to pick an educational company for your kids from a host of competitors, just as you pick your own car, your own grocery store, or your own TV provider. Ultimately, just as with those other companies, marketplace competition would determine which educational companies and options succeed. And unlike today's subsidized, bloated public-school monstrosities, those that succeeded would be those that offered the best educational value.

Imagine a world in which government were banned from any involvement with business -- a separation of Economics and State, for the same reasons that we have a separation of Church and State. Imagine businesses having to survive on their own, demonstrating their value to willing, paying customers in a competitive marketplace -- and not by forcibly extracting subsidies from taxpayers, via their crony relationships with politicians and bureaucrats. Imagine how much money would remain in your pocket if we shut down the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development (just for starters), gave pink slips to their thousands of meddling bureaucrats, and sent them off to seek productive jobs in the private sector. Would you care if somebody started a windmill firm or a bank or an auto company...if you weren't forced to subsidize or patronize it? Would you feel hostility and hatred and anger if your associations with them were not compulsory?

Imagine a world in which you got to keep vastly more of your own money -- and thus have the means and choice to fund your own preferred charities and social causes -- rather than being forced, by law, to subsidize (say) Planned Parenthood abortions, AIDS research rather than (say) cancer or Alzheimer's research, political agitation by ACORN, the politicking of environmental activist groups, the healthcare of illegal aliens streaming across unguarded borders, "voter enrollment" of those same illegals, mosquito control in Africa, typhoon relief in Bangladesh, "public broadcasting" and opera houses for upper-middle-class patrons who could easily afford to pay for their own entertainment, and on and on and on, endlessly. Americans are the most generous people in the world. But they are tired of being played for suckers, forced to fund the politically connected champions of "good causes" who get favored treatment by their friends in court. Does that mutual fleecing further social harmony, peace, love, and mutual respect?

The governmental (political) realm, run by force and coercion and taking, necessarily creates "win-lose" relationships. The economic (private) realm, run by free choice and voluntary association and trade, necessarily creates "win-win" relationships. Yet for many generations, people have been conditioned to seek coercive, political "solutions" to every social problem or personal need -- coercive, political "solutions" that only breed mutual hostility, disharmony, and hatred.

The "gay marriage" controversy is but the latest example of how social disruption has been manufactured -- not solved -- by governmental (political) involvement. The entire controversy stems from the fact that government has been involved in defining what a "marriage" is. 

But why? Why is that necessary? And what have been the consequences?

Government, as our Founders proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, exists to "secure these rights" to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Period. Not to solve personal problems or social ills, but to protect individual rights. Not to take sides in disputes, but to be an impartial umpire.

Thus, there is a proper role for government (law) in recognizing and enforcing private contracts, and also in protecting individuals in relationships (spouses, children) from violations of their rights by other parties. But recognition and enforcement of private contracts, property arrangements, and the rights of spouses and children, do not require government (i.e., politicians and the force of law) to confer some kind of "legitimacy" on the ceremonial and symbolic aspects of a "marriage."

For all the reasons stated above, marriage should be privatized. A "marriage" should be defined and celebrated by the participants, according to whatever religious or philosophical values they ascribe to that state of long-term commitment. Politics should play no role in that determination whatsoever.

But ironically, the Supreme Court's ruling has -- unintentionally -- pointed us in that direction. Why?

Because (to paraphrase the classic line from the film "The Incredibles") if everything is a "marriage" under the law, then nothing is. The Court ruling and reasoning today opens the door not just to same-sex "marriages," but to polygamy, group marriages, and pretty much anything else. Who can now say that such arrangements are not "marriages," and on what grounds?

Liberals, wedded to governmental (read: coercive) "solutions" to all social problems, won't grasp any of this, sadly. They refuse to realize that their "solutions," rooted in seizing and wielding political power by themselves over others, cannot ever result in that woozy, utopian, John Lennon "Imagine" world of peace-and-love.

Liberals, above all, are complete captives to the zero-sum, class-and-racial warfare, tribal worldview: a social worldview of winners vs. losers, of powerful vs. powerless, of perpetual gang warfare in which each gang seeks power and advantage over its rivals. Economic ignoramuses -- who think every economic relationship is about some people taking from others -- liberals can't even conceive of peaceful, voluntary, trading relationships. They thus can only interpret free market capitalism through the distorting lens of "taking," of "exploitation."

Now, with this new Court decision, they will predictably try to use their new "marital rights" as a bludgeon against private individuals, businesses, and religious organizations that do not share their own elastic definition of "marriage." Rather than take this as an opportunity to celebrate live-and-let-live social arrangements, in which everyone can associate voluntarily as they choose, they will instead eagerly try to use the power of law to force and coerce any private, peaceful individuals who disagree with them to associate and deal with them -- to bake their wedding cakes, cater their weddings, provide venues for their ceremonies, even perform their ceremonies. Why? 

Because the main thing that "liberals" are "wedded" to is not some definition of marriage, but to their zero-sum, tribalist, coercive, us-vs.-them worldview. No, they don't really want peace and love and harmony: That's just their cover story.

They want power and control over others.

In short: Liberalism is sociopathy, masquerading as a political doctrine.

How "The Wizard of Oz" Refutes the Liberal Narrative

I have been pondering for several months how this classic childhood film presents a remarkable metaphor for the failure of the liberal/progressive/statist view of government. Consider the plot:

A group of humble individuals finds their lives disrupted by frightening events beyond their control. Their entire world is literally turned upside-down, and they find themselves in strange, scary new circumstances. Now, they fear they are out of control of their lives, and they are terribly anxious about their future.

One victim of the disaster seeks a return to her normal world. Another believes he hasn't the courage to meet the fearful challenges ahead. A third fears he lacks compassion and dedication. Yet another wonders whether he has the brains to survive on his own.

From a bunch of "little people," they are told about a wondrous far-off city, where a great and powerful wizard will provide them everything they seek and need -- merely by magical decree. Desperate, they embark upon a difficult pilgrimage to that city of power and favors, which is topped by a towering monument. There, acting like craven beggars, they visit and supplicate themselves before the all-powerful wizard, pleading for his aid. And he promises to fulfill their heart's desires.

But there is a catch. The supplicants are told that first they must pay a price for his help: They must agree to go out and do the wizard's bidding, undergoing a host of ordeals on his behalf. The price of his help is servility. Intimidated, they agree to do so. They perform the tasks he has ordered, suffering terribly, but mastering every challenge along the way. 

At last, they return in triumph and insist that the wizard keep his end of the bargain. But he balks and refuses, accusing them of insolence and improper deference to one of his exalted station.

Suddenly, an innocent young pup pulls back the curtain. The Great and Powerful Wizard is revealed to be nothing more than a pathetic old con man: an incompetent fake, who had achieved his power and status over the little people only through his ability to spin glowing Narratives that promised them whatever they wanted . . . and told them whatever they wanted to hear.

In the end, the adventurers come to a shocking realization. Each discovers that, all along, he or she already possessed all the brains, heart, and courage to live happy lives, to produce whatever they needed, and to accomplish great things. They learn that, all along, they could have stood self-reliantly on their own, solving their individual problems creatively and productively, without paying endless tribute to, or accepting endless abuse from, any fraudulent, conniving, self-appointed "wizards" living parasitical lives of luxury in some distant center of power . . . .

 
All right, folks: Having now revealed "The Wizard of Oz" as a highly subversive Narrative of individualism, one that brilliantly mocks and fatally skewers the "progressive" Narrative, I wonder how long it will be before the Regime tries to ban it?

A Manifesto for "Coercive Paternalism"

"You're too stupid to know what's best for you. I'm from the government; I know better; and I'm here to straighten you out...for your own good."

Insulting, eh? The essence of everything we, as Americans hate, right?

Well, comes now a $95 tome titled--are you ready?--Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism.  

No, I am not making this up. 

The book's product description on Amazon notes that, in America,

to respect autonomy is often understood to be the chief way to bear witness to the intrinsic value of persons. In this book, Sarah Conly rejects the idea of autonomy as inviolable.... Thus in many cases it would advance our ["our"?] goals more effectively if government were to prevent us ["us"?] from acting in accordance with our ["our"?] decisions. Her argument challenges widely held views of moral agency, democratic values and the public/private distinction.

Quoth the author from her own faculty page listing:

I argue that autonomy, or the freedom to act in accordance with your ["your"?] own decisions, is overrated—that the common high evaluation of the importance of autonomy is based on a belief that we [including her?] are much more rational than we actually are. We now have lots of evidence from psychology and behavioral economics that we [her too?] are often very bad at choosing effective means to our ends. In such cases, we [her too?] need the help of others—and in particular, of government regulation—to keep us [ditto] from going wrong.

This apology for naked totalitarianism was written by one Sarah Conly, an assistant professor of (what else?) philosophy at Bowdoin College--at least nominally an American institution of Higher Learning. A wet dream for dictatorially minded "progressives," her book naturally earned the honor of publication by the Cambridge University Press, and spotlight review treatment in the New York Review of Books--the reviewer being none other than Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama's very own former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Prof. Sunstein, it should be noted, is author of his own nanny-state tribute to technocratic governmental manipulation of the citizenry: NUDGE: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Sayeth Sunstein, on his own book's Amazon product page: "We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gentling nudging them in directions that will make their lives better." 

Why, how kind and thoughtful of him!

Of course, those writing and enforcing government regulations (and books like these) are NEVER part of the "we" who are irrational, the "we" who are making so many "wrong" choices. Oh no: The progressive nanny statists are always the epitome of uber-rationality, higher education, dazzling expertise, superior taste, and sound judgment in all things. Yes, what a wonderful utopia we would inhabit...if only us rubes would surrender to them our damned autonomy. Who needs that Bill of Rights with such technocrats to (their words) "coerce" and "nudge" us?

When I say that the ultimate objective of "progressives" is to impose totalitarian control over every aspect of our lives--that they are motivated by an unquenchable lust for unlimited power--some of you undoubtedly think I'm wildly exaggerating. 

But how, then, to deny their own words, as they spell it out so clearly and ominously?

(A hat tip to my friend Bob Hessen for calling my attention to this, and you also might give Ann Althouse's brief blog about it a look.)

A Meditation on the "Progressive" Narrative

In the wake of the Supreme Court's late-March 2012 hearing on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, many liberals responded with shock and anger to the sharp, skeptical questions that justices asked the government's lawyers.

But why? Why did so many liberal/progressive scholars and media denizens arrogantly assume that ObamaCare would be ratified by the Supreme Court in a "slam dunk"? Why were they so stunned to hear potent counter-arguments emerging from the justices? One commentator offers this:

What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives [emphasis added]—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. "The results," he writes in the May issue of Reason, "were clear and consistent." Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. "Liberals," he reports, "were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as 'very liberal.'"

The article is well worth reading in its entirety, because it shows how liberals view everything through the filter of politics--and now assume, based on their political Narrative, that the Supreme Court's opposition to the individual mandate is nothing more than "partisan politics." In fact, though, that charge is nothing more than psychological projection. Commenting on this reaction by the left, some have opined that liberals just don't seem wedded to simple logic. That is true, but it doesn't go far enough in explaining the liberal mindset.

As subjectivists, liberals do not believe in the objective reality that is the basis of logic. To subjectivists, logic (like everything else) is merely an arbitrary social convention. That same subjectivism is the root of their multiculturalism (no culture or society is better than any other), of their moral relativism (there's no objective basis for ethics, so "do your own thing"), and, in this instance, of their doctrine of "the living Constitution" (a document that is as elastic and flexible as their own whims).

But if everything is mere subjective opinion, and opinions clash, then logical persuasion is without merit as a means of resolving disputes -- and the only thing left that can decide disputes is force. Hence, the liberals' view that everything in society consists of "conflicts of interest" and "power relationships"; hence, their quest for unlimited power to dominate, rule, and control others; and hence, their efforts to transform everything that we are, have, or do into a political issue: into a matter to be decided by wielding coercive political power over others.

But why should they, the liberals, be the ones wielding that power?

That's where their "Narrative" comes in. The liberal Narrative is rooted not in the logical, but the psychological. In their morality play, they have cast themselves as "progressives" -- as the smartest, most educated, most culturally sophisticated, most sensitive, most enlightened people on the planet, in contrast with the vast, crude masses of rubes, idiots, bigots, and know-nothings (i.e., the rest of us). The liberals' motive in holding and advancing this Narrative is the indispensable role that it plays in inflating their egos and self-regard. In their self-flattering psychodrama, they cast themselves as the Ruling Class, the social elite that -- by virtue of intellectual, moral, and esthetic superiority -- is entitled to lord it over their inferiors (i.e., the rest of society).

If you want a clear glimpse of the self-congratulatory "progressive" worldview, try to dig up a copy of the old H.G. Wells film "Things to Come." Wells was a socialist, and in his dystopian, sci-fi fantasy, he imagined a benevolent technocratic elite taking over a world that had descended into tribes of savages. Now, there's a lot I like about the film on a metaphysical level: Its no-limits view of human potential reminded me of "Star Trek" ("to boldly go where no man has gone before"). But its view of society is unadulterated "progressive" arrogance: A small, educated in-group of sophisticated geniuses takes total political power, becoming a new Ruling Class to civilize the savage masses...for their own good.

That's the essence of the liberal/progressive Narrative. And philosophical subjectivism allows them to use any means they wish to achieve that total power over the rest of us "savages."

If you now take all of this and apply it to the ObamaCare debate before the Supreme Court, you'll understand at once what was going on, and why the left is so shocked and indignant over the skeptical questioning by the justices. Their legal subjectivism was being challenged, at root. The justices were asking them what "limiting principle" existed upon the power they wish to assume over private economic relationships, and they couldn't answer because they don't have one, or believe that one should exist. Their arguments were transparent sophistry, attempts to provide legalistic excuses to grant them UNlimited power over the lives of the savages. That they should be required to justify this quest clashed with their entire Narrative, and the subjectivism that rationalizes it.

And so how do they respond? Only as they can, through their Narrative filter: Since to them, everything is a "political power relationship," they could only besmirch the alleged political motives of the skeptical justices as being "partisan" and "pro-Republican." This, to the liberal, is a necessary substitute for an argument based on the merits -- on facts and logic -- because the latter don't count in their subjective universe, except as tools of political manipulation.

There are broader, pessimistic conclusions to be drawn here, for example, about the possibility of persuading people wedded to the progressive/subjective Narrative, or about how we ought to engage and fight them. I've argued in my previous essay here on "The Narratives That Guide Our Lives" that the best approach is to advance a compelling counter-narrative. But what that is, and how it might be advanced, are topics for future development and discussion.