Still No Sign Of Land

Yes, I know I said just this past Sunday that I loathe commenting on social issues these days, yet here I am again. C'est la guerre.

The WNBA thing recalls, for quite obvious reasons, questions of women's rights. But see here: if you don't know what a woman is, how can you speak of women's rights? All talk of women's rights is only just so much nonsense, complete and utter nonsense in fact, if you don't or can't know what a woman is. 

Human rights presume human beings. Property rights presume property. It would be indelibly and profoundly stupid, indeed incomprehensible, to argue for property rights if no such things as property or ownership existed and could be defined in language understandable by all. Likewise, if you don't know what a woman is, what are you arguing for? What rights can possibly exist within the indefinite?

If you don't know what a woman is you cannot speak of women's rights, precisely because such things do not exist if there aren't women. Responding, as many of our progressive friends do, that a woman is whatever she says she is, is not an answer. It's begging the question and, quite frankly, cannot produce intelligent conversation. It's deflection, a shallow debater's trick to stymie any useful conclusion. Tell me what a woman is and then we can speak of her rights. Until then, you're just wasting your breath and my time.

The Housing Market

My mailman was kind enough to deliver to me the latest bit of drivel from my local Congressional representative, who proclaimed within it that safe and affordable housing is a right. I am not enlightened.

The trouble with rights is that they imply obligations. If you have a right to something, who is obliged to fill that right? After all, if a certain nondescript fellow (whom we'll call Cloyce just to give him a name) has a right to a safe and affordable house, well, mine is safe and affordable. Do I have to give it to Cloyce?

Oh, don't be silly, Marty. Of course not.

Well, okay, then, how about the heavy machinists and the carpenters and the electricians and the heating and plumbing contractors who actually build homes? Do they have to build Cloyce a home for free? And do the folks who make the materials which go into home building have to supply the lumber and wire and ductwork and lighting gratis as well?

Come on, Marty, of course not.

Well, then, who does have come up with the house? Who owes Cloyce a safe, affordable home, since it's his right ? Who must deliver on that right? Don't say the government, because that's just a longhand way of saying me, and we've already established I don't owe Cloyce a home.

And that's the trouble when you begin bandying about rights. If you aren't ready and willing to talk rationally about obligations as well, Congressional representative, you're just blowing smoke. 

Popes, People, and Pets

I really don't know what to make of Pope Francis. Bluntly said, and Heaven help me if I'm wrong, I've found myself wondering whether he is an anti-Pope of some sort, given his apparent blind eye toward critical issues and events within the Church and seeming anathema over certain traditions. Then he says something which is actually bold and forceful, and is unfairly maligned. He says something which is exactly the sort of thing one should expect that the leader of the Catholic Church might say, and gets lambasted for it.

Stripped of the overwrought emotion which the Holy Father's critics have aimed at him, all Pope Francis effectively said the other day (you can read his actual words here: Pope and pets ) was that when people in a legitimate position to have children choose to raise or rescue animals in place of having or adopting human children, they are selfish. He asserted this on the very reasonable ground that human beings are more important than animals, that people simply are on a higher moral plane than other creatures on Earth. Our obligations toward our fellow human beings are naturally more demanding on us than our obligations towards mere animals.

I don't see a thing in the world wrong with such an attitude. Of all the criticisms I've heard lobbed at him over his remarks, he didn't at all condemn those who, through no fault of their own, couldn't have children. He didn't say there weren't legitimate psychological, physical, medical, economic or other reasons not to have kids. He didn't say people were wrong to be single by choice (or certainly by circumstance). He didn't say it was wrong to have pets, or that animals should be treated poorly. He simply said that if you're in a reasonable position to support kids you should, up to and including adoption, and that thus choosing to have pets instead of children wrongly puts animals above people. Simple as that. It's a valid point to make, and based on what Catholic teaching has held for centuries.

If you don't agree with him, fine, don't agree with him. But he expressed a perfectly true sentiment which ought not shock anyone: people are more important than animals, and deserve greater care and consideration than they do.  Real, and even potential, children, merit it. Using that guide, the Pope merely asserts that pets and other animals should never be put before or in place of kids in the grand scheme of things.

And you know what? He's right.

Your rights and my rights

I'm becoming more libertarian as I get older, although I doubt I can ever be fully libertarian: the individual is no more the arbiter of rights than the state. Our rights come from a higher power than ourselves, Lansing or Washington or the European Union or anybody. Further, our true rights are absolute against outside forces: I have the right to life until natural death unless I myself abrogate it of my own volition. If I'm trying to kill you you thus have a right to kill me, if that's what it takes to stop me. 

Rights also imply duties. If you're going to argue, oh, um, say, that people have a right to health care the proper first question is, who has the responsibility to deliver it? If you answer society or government, what you're really saying is me. At that point I have the right to ask why am I responsible for your health care? I'm not responsible for getting your food, clothes, or housing. What makes your health care (and I could add many other things to this question, such as education) my job?

Further questions include, what is health care? Is abortion or a sex change procedure health care? Should people who don't believe in the propriety of such things be made to pay for them? Morally, absolutely not.

A very interesting article on these and other issues related to the supposed health care right can be found here: Is Health Care a Right?

The article does allow that true health care, health care truly necessary for people to live rightly, is important, because of course it is. I will even argue that we do indeed as individuals have a moral obligation to help those in any kind of real need to obtain proper health care (among other things). As such, I believe that demanding society or government fund certain admitted needs amounts to passing the buck and neglecting your own duty towards others. God, if you care to be seriously religious about it, tells you to help your fellow man, not make someone else see to it. Any way you slice it, once you start saying that such and such admitted need is a right, you are in a quagmire with no easy escape outside of violating the true rights of others.

You may fairly ask, Marty, who is responsible for health care then? Well, the same person primarily responsible for your food, housing, clothing, education, and myriad other things.

You.

Even Men can Understand Women's Rights!

It is often heard, from women who support birth control, that they don't see where a celibate clergyman ought to be judge to the issue because they can't really understand woman's rights. Yet those same women won't denounce a celibate clergyman who agrees with them on the grounds they're men.

Similarly, they say that men shouldn't legislate about banning abortion, because they can't really understand what that might mean to women. But they don't hold the same point with male lawmakers who vote for abortion rights, even though they presumably can't understand woman's needs either. Indeed, whenever a man supports a so-called woman's right in a way which women (or, should we say, liberal women) like, he is not condemned. But why should male affirmation mean any more than male denial if men cannot possibly understand a woman's position?

Two things come up here. One is that it is arrogant to assert that men cannot understand a woman's rights merely because they're men. Women sure don't mind respecting a man's opinion if it coincides with theirs; dismissing male opinion as automatically wrongheaded if it disagrees with a woman's is, simply, hubris.

Two, it is more likely that someone not directly involved in an issue would be more readily impartial than someone who wants a certain outcome. We have umpires and referees in sports precisely because, although they may not be the actual players, they are expected and indeed are more likely to be impartial than the players. An umpire says safe or out independent of the player, who would more likely rule his own way given the chance.

This isn't to say that all umpires are right and all players wrong each and every time. But it is to say that objective right is something anyone can grasp if they want it. Whether the rule maker or opinion giver is male or female means nothing to right and wrong about anyone or anything.

Whither Equality?

We are in this world almost daily deluged with calls for equality. It all sounds so good, and everyone seems to want it. But there's only one problem with it.

We are not, any of us, really equal.

This is not to say that we are not political equals. Yet even that phrase leaves a bit of uncertainty: we are only equal because my vote should count as much as yours. That doesn't strike us as equality. It strikes us as justice.

In the same manner, as we have employed this tactic when talking about freedom, education, peace, and so forth, so too do we find that we must apply it to any calls for equality. We need to ask what the supporters of equality really mean. Because any absolute and final equality of circumstances must actually be something which applies only in very, very few cases. Take equal pay for equal work, for example. Notice that we are asking a question whose answer only applies to very strict and definite circumstances. A woman cancer doctor, 50 years old, with 20 years of practice, who graduated from the same schools with the same grades as a complimentary male cancer specialist in the same place of work, and with the same proficiency of work, should get the same pay. No rational mind would argue otherwise. But the case is so limited that only one answer is truly right anyway.

As to the other facet of the argument, well, calls for equality must ring hollow because, again, we are not equal. A brain surgeon isn't equal to a plumber, no matter how much more we want the latter when the faucet breaks or the basement floods, and no matter which is male or female. As a matter of decency, we should not automatically look well on the surgeon nor ill on the plumber. But yet again, that's a point about justice, not equality.

We could refine the case further, but we trust the point is made. When we are demanding equality we are often (if not in fact always) demanding justice. We are asking that we be treated rightly and properly in light of the circumstances which surround us. We are not asking for equality. We are asking for justice.

So, and we are sure many people may have grown tired of us asking yet we must, when you demand equality, do you really want that? If so, how? Why? For we need to remember that the only sure way to make folks equal is downward, to the where no one is above the lowest common denominator.

That the average person means equality in the sense of true justice we don't doubt. Still, it is when we use terms wrongly that we have the greatest troubles. It is then when the radical fringe of any given group may take the day. Yet when we clarify our thoughts, when we strive to end misunderstanding by calling things what they are, then, indeed, justice wins out. Isn't that what we really want?