Entitlement and tyranny
More on Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal and consensus, agreement, universalism, and how to think and argue about them. I basically agree with it, but there are places where I think it could use some expansion, or some further stipulation, or both. I think there are some lurking unacknowledged tensions; once they’re pointed out all will go swimmingly. Page 260:
I don’t think I’m asking for all that much in the way of intellectual conformity, consensus, or (gasp) tyranny. The version of universalism I’m proposing does suggest that it might be good and useful to say, “No matter how or what you think, you fellow human, you are entitled to food and shelter and health care and education and political representation.” You can be a Christian Scientist, a secular-humanist professor, or an avant-garde poet/sculptor/dancer, and we can let all those language games flourish. But underlying that commitment to parlogy and dissensus, let’s imagine provisional agreement about human entitlements…
Yes, let’s, but there’s a problem there, an unacknowledged tension. It’s helpful of Michael to have placed the Christian Scientist so close to health care in that passage, because that’s the tension. We can say “No matter what you think, you are entitled to health care,” because that doesn’t amount to forcing health care on the reluctant Christian Scientist. But what about the Christian Scientist’s minor daughter? That’s where the tension bites. We can tell the Christian Scientist “you are entitled to health care” without being coercive, but we can’t tell the Christian Scientist “your daughter is entitled to health care” without being at least potentially coercive. The Christian Scientist, if she is a dedicated Christian Scientist, won’t want her daughter to get health care as commonly understood – she will in fact want precisely to deny her daughter the entitlement to health care that we have in mind when we talk about entitlements to health care. And that’s a problem. That’s the problem.
Because of course it applies to a lot of cases. Not just the Christian Scientist who doesn’t want her daughter to be entitled to health care, but also the parents who don’t want their daughters to be entitled to education, the parents who don’t want their daughters to be entitled to freedom, the parents who don’t want their daughters to have the right of refusal in marriage, and so on. It also applies to men who don’t want their wives to have various entitlements; it applies to men who don’t want their wives, daughters, sisters, mothers to have any entitlements. It applies to people who have power over intimates and dependents, because such people generally do have both de facto and de jure power to deny entitlements to said intimates and dependents, a power which it can be anything from difficult to impossible to interfere with, especially without coercion – without what the people in question would indeed see as tyranny. That’s the problem. That’s the problem and it means that saying “No matter what you think, you are entitled to [various things]” won’t untie this knot between universalism and difference.
It’s a knot that keeps turning up in the newspapers day after day. It turns up in the father who wouldn’t let his daughter have surgery to drain an abscess in her head because ‘traditional healers’ advised him not to. It turns up in a new domestic violence law in India:
Every six hours, a young married woman is burned, beaten to death or driven to commit suicide, officials say. Overall, a crime against women is committed every three minutes in India, according to India’s National Crime Records Bureau. Despite the scale of the problem, there had been no specific legislation to deal with actual abuse or the threat of abuse at home.
Again, this is coercion – depending on which person we’re talking to. If we’re talking to women, we’re saying “No matter what you think, you are entitled not to be subject to violence.” But if we’re talking to men, we’re not saying anything parallel, we’re saying something opposite – we’re saying “No matter what you think, you are not entitled to subject your wife to violence.” And Michael says so very clearly on p. 254 – a student asks if we can’t just say denying education is wrong, and the answer is yes, it’s just that it’s not helpful to say it in a foundationalist way. All this boils down to, I think, is perhaps a small disagreement about how much we’re asking for in the way of intellectual conformity, consensus, or (gasp) tyranny. I don’t think we’re asking for too much, certainly, and I think we’re asking for it on good grounds, but I also think that some of the people we’re asking it of are indeed going to think it’s tyranny.
Which is why, alas, liberation never comes without pain — there are just too many people with a vested interest in holding others down. “Oh, why can’t we all just be nice?” won’t cut it.
Unfortunately, as we are all discovering, riding in on tanks yelling “Democracy!” doesn’t help much either.
No, usually not. The coercion I have in mind is domestic, not international. International coercion is a whole nother story. We can’t rule out tanks completely, but they need a LOT of consensus first. More than they had this time.
“ Not just the Christian Scientist who doesn’t want her daughter to be entitled to health care, but also the parents who don’t want their daughters to be entitled to education, the parents who don’t want their daughters to be entitled to freedom…
Comments from a postmodern secular traditionalist:
– entitlement to health care? No problem, take the kid away.
– entitlement to education? What kind of education? The ten commandments included?
– entitlement to freedom? What on earth is freedom?
Freedom to have sexual intercourse at the age of 12? 13? 14?
Freedom to smoke tobacco or cannabis at the age of 10?
Freedom to join the Humanist Society at the age of 12 although the parents are devout Christians?
Freedom to opt for Sunday School at the age of 12 although the parents are ‘devout’ atheists?
Freedom – the ultimate weasel word.
Freedom to have sexual intercourse at the age of 12? 13? 14?
Freedom to smoke tobacco or cannabis at the age of 10?
No, and no. Any more than the freedom to commit armed robbery or arson in her majesty’s shipyards. Law of the land. Relatively secular and doing it’s sorry best.
Freedom to join the Humanist Society at the age of 12 although the parents are devout Christians?
Freedom to opt for Sunday School at the age of 12 although the parents are ‘devout’ atheists?
No problem.
– entitlement to education? What kind of education? The ten commandments included?
It would be insanely irresponsible to try to educate a child without making them aware of the key texts. But presented as a text, not a Truth.
entitlement to freedom? What on earth is freedom?
Dunno, mate. Think it’s more than a weasel word. I’ll get back to you if I find the answer.
Cathal Copeland: “Freedom – the ultimate weasel word.”
This is a bit of a silly comment, really. No-one has, or can expect, absolute freedom to do anything.
OB used the term in a quite specific (although unstated) context: that in certain cultures sons, wrongly, have considerably more freedom than daughters. The context is evident from the fact that OB said “daughters” instead of “children”.
I don’t think it was such a silly comment, though of course some of the examples were so extreme as to make it seem so.
The issue of parental responsibility is really, really complex. Parents do have the responsibility to make choices on behalf of their children – both moral and legal responsibility. With regard to medical care, surely a parent must make the choices for a young child when choices need to be made? (Someone must – and if not the parent, then who?)
OB’s right – the tension is real, and it is very, very hard to resolve.
Or is it? How would people here resolve that tension?
Don writes:
It would be insanely irresponsible to try to educate a child without making them aware of the key texts [of the bible]. But presented as a text, not a Truth.
Does that mean you would criminalise the teaching of religious doctrine to under-age children (as though it were some form of child abuse or child neglect or equivalent to refusing to allow one’s child to benefit from a blood transfusion), e.g. by banning private-sector ‘faith’ schools, and even by prohibiting parents from indoctrinating their children in the privacy of their homes?
If yes to both, how would you go about implementing the ban on intrafamiliar child indoctrination?
Can’t you see what I mean by ‘freedom’ being the ultimate weasel-word? It can be interpreted as the freedom of the ‘progressive’ secular state to emancipate under-age children from the unfreedom imposed upon them by their reactionary and repressive parents.
In other words, the freedom to criminalise parents for failing to respect the right of the child to be brought up as a secular humanist.
Or the freedom to use italics in ways that make everything you say come across to me with the inflections and voice of Tony Blair… :)
Keith,
You point that OB states that in certain cultures sons, wrongly, have considerably more freedom than daughters. The context is evident from the fact that OB said “daughters” instead of “children”.
Here again: what is meant by ‘considerably more freedom’? [sophist mode on] How do you measure sons’ freedom as opposed to daughters’ freedom? Daughters in almost all cultures have the ‘freedom’ to avoid military service and the risk of death or maiming in action. Forced marriage often imposes as much constraint on the man as on the woman. [sophist mode off]
The problem with such natural-language terms as ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ etc. (as Ophelia herself as properly pointed out) is that they can be interpreted in so many ways and used as knock-down arguments. There is indeed a ‘dialectical penumbra’ (to use Georgescu-Roegen’s phrase) between such terms and their opposites.
Perhaps you are right in saying that freedom is not the ‘ultimate’ weasel word. But it is certainly often used as though it were.
[P.S. Actually Ophelia was mistaken as regards the ‘culture’ of Christian Scientists – AFAIK they are equal-opportunity blood transfusion deniers]
Outeast, LOL — and I’m still chuckling, honest!
Actually, the prize-winner on the italics front is probably J. Habermas, not Tony Jesus Christ Blair.
He’s virtually written whole books in italics.
Implicit in much of the conversation about family rights and responsibilities is the idea that children somehow belong to parents or that wives belong to husbands. I think this, the idea that we might be the most important arbiter of what is good or bad for another human being, is the real problem. It replaces the ‘tyranny’ of universal liberal values with the tyranny of one, or a small number, of all too fallible human beings.
‘Does that mean you would criminalise the teaching of religious doctrine to under-age children…?’
I’d distinguish it from education, deny it state funding, and expect it to be open to public scrutiny. In extreme cases (teaching that it is god’s will that x or y group should be villified or killed) I’d welcome state intervention.
‘ …prohibiting parents from indoctrinating their children in the privacy of their homes?’
Indocrination instead of education or as well as? Parental indoctrination could range from modeling good table manners through to neo-nazi brainwashing of children into rabid hate. At what point it becomes child abuse is open to debate, but yes, in some instances that’s what it is.
“At what point it becomes child abuse is open to debate”
Making them watch The X Factor ?
“open to debate”: code for “hornets’ nest”.
Whenever I see a qualification like that I feel this overwhelming urge to cry out “well, your principle doesn’t solve anything, does it?”
In ‘reasonable doubt’ we have a good approximate standard for where to draw the line on whjat could otherwise be a slippery slope in the burden of proof – one which can then be tested in the courts on an ad-hoc basis. From a pragmatic point of view we need something at least as applicable for principles to do with rights, entitlements, freedoms etc.
As yet, the closest I’ve seen is ‘the rights of one citizen end where those of the next begin’, but that’s desperately inadequate.
“well, your principle doesn’t solve anything, does it?”
I wasn’t so optimistic as to think it would.
Outeast
“Thus there is this difficult grey area where even a parent who is attempting to behave in a true parental fashion is harming the child, and this is where some of the worst problems are found.”
Precisely my point, and that is why I think the ‘tyranny’ of universal liberal values should trump the individual parent’s belief about what is best, and anyway “in a true parental fashion” is question begging” unless there are universal parenting values.
And before anyone corrects me, I know there is a sense in which “universal liberal values” is oxymoronic; but there are liberal values which are overwhelmingly prevalent amongst educated people and it seems to me that they should be regarded as universal. Call me a liberal hegemonist if you like.
MikeS, you write:
“but there are liberal values which are overwhelmingly prevalent amongst educated people and it seems to me that they should be regarded as universal.
OK, say somebody is pretty well educated but believes that women’s primary adult role is the reproduction and maintenance of offspring and that his/her children should be duly instructed as to this role.
Is that permissible in your enlightened secular dictatorship?
Or would you argue that to hold that belief is, by definition, something an educated person cannot possibly do?
Re: pictures
I believe that’s called “hotlinking” and means you’re parasiting off the source host. Big no-no.
Re: main discussion
‘”in a true parental fashion” is question begging” unless there are universal parenting values’…
So is any reference to universal values of any kind – including your ‘universal liberal values’, which covers a huge morass of often-contradictory values (hence, for example, the lack of liberal consensus on the issue pof the veil).
Additionally, I defined ‘true parental fashion’ in terms of wardship (doing what is in the child’s best interests): yes, that’s tricky since parents will disagree on what that means (which was my point) but I meant it as a simple label to distinguish it from parental behaviours which are not motivated by the child’s interest (such as at least some forced marriages).
What I’m asking for, though, is a PRACTICAL way to weigh up the balance of rights when those conflict – ‘in the child’s best interests’ is inadequate, for example, since a religious person (or adjudicator for that matter) might consider a child’s spiritual health (say) to trump physical needs – which is the judgement call our CS parent is making.
“As yet, the closest I’ve seen is ‘the rights of one citizen end where those of the next begin’, but that’s desperately inadequate.”
Maybe adequate(r) if these two freedoms are qualified with ‘to’ and ‘from’?
OB,
One facility people really do need is the ‘Preview’ option. Any hope of getting some computer anorak to oblige? With ‘Preview’ you can at least easily tidy up any mess you made in the text box (e.g. typos).
Apart from that B&W is perfect.
No. The only computer anorak is very busy, and hates N&C anyway.
Just don’t use html. Use caps or asterisks if you want to be emphatic.
‘OB used the term in a quite specific (although unstated) context: that in certain cultures sons, wrongly, have considerably more freedom than daughters. The context is evident from the fact that OB said “daughters” instead of “children”.’
Thank you, Keith, that’s exactly it. Even to the fact that I almost did state it, thought about stating it, in order to clarify, but didn’t because I was short on time.
And ‘daughters’ includes grown daughters, adult daughters – there are people (lots of them) who think even adult daughters shouldn’t have freedom. (I also thought about taking the time to specify what I meant by ‘freedom’ a little, but again didn’t because short on said time. But regular readers have some idea what I mean by it – sometimes I write with the background knowledge that regular readers have some background knowledge of what I mean by various concepts.)
“The example if the Christian Scientist, though, is pertinent because the CS parent is acting out of the same desire as that which motivates a ‘better’ parent – his/her motivation is to do the best thing possible for the child.”
Just so. Which is why US courts have tied themselves in knots over this subject for years; it’s also (I think) part of the background for why Congress passed the ‘Religious Freedom Restoration’ Act. The main trigger was the Smith decision, which was about ceremonial use of peyote, but the background was wider than that.
“OK, say somebody is pretty well educated but believes that women’s primary adult role is the reproduction and maintenance of offspring and that his/her children should be duly instructed as to this role.
Is that permissible in your enlightened secular dictatorship?”
No, because ‘women’ should be treated as autonomous agents and their primary adult role is nobody’s business but their own; and yes, that is one of my ‘universal’ liberal values.
Ah, but the trick in that question is that it’s about how children should be educated about the way women should be treated, not about how women should be treated. It’s a second-order question about people we generally don’t treat as autonomous agents, which is exactly where this knot is. It’s the same knot as the one in Michael’s imagined conversation with the Christian Scientist. Telling an adult CS ‘you’re entitled whether you believe it or not’ is easy enough; it’s telling an adult CS what her children are entitled to that’s tricky, and difficult, and full of snares for the unwary.
OB, the ‘No’ is to the second order question, and whilst getting it accepted may be tricky, arguing for it from a liberal hegemonist perspective is not.
MikeS, you write that (in your enlightened secular society) you would criminalize parents who teach their children that women’s primary role is the reproduction and maintenance of offspring.
How would you go about enforcing compliance?
By prohibiting private schooling? By prohibiting home schooling? By installing surveillance cameras in all households? By forced adoption of all children whose parents refuse to comply? By imposing fines on parents? By sentencing such parents to imprisonment? By appointing a Great Inquisitor?
I’m afraid you sound like the kind of secular humanist who would drive agnostics like myself into the arms of old-time religion.
You make the Harlot of Rome seem like tolerance incarnate. Have you really thought about the potentially disastrous consequences of imposing your ‘universal liberal values’?
P.S. OB — thanks for the stuff about second order questions, clear thinking always appreciated.
It has to be said that, on the other side, science has been a huge source of imposing traumatic and hideous injuries on children too – with their parent’s consent and blessing. One has merely to think of lobotomies past, the history of sexual “therapies” for such scientific ailments as masturbation, homosexuality and the like.
I think it is important to say that liberty in the private zone doesn’t exclude the fact that people hurt each other in that zone, and that to stop that hurting, private persuasion, not the force of the state, is necessary. If Christian scientists always denied their kids medical treatment, O.B., you’d have much more of a case – but in fact I think fundamentalist C.S. here is much rarer. In my own personal experience, my grandparents were devout Christian Scientists, but they didn’t deny their kids medical treatment – rather, they simply didn’t consult the church about it. They did it behind their own backs, so to speak. Religion, fortunately, is full of loop holes – in fact, it is an education in inconsistency. Hence, it is much more liveable than its fundamentalist image.
The slow, cumbersome work of moral suasion in the private, non-state sphere is the most powerful tool of enlightenment and freedom. Using the state as an all purpose tool to interfere in people’s lives is not only inefficient, but an extremely counter-indicated tool for any atheist or agnostic, since, at no point in the past in the U.S., at least, and at no point in the foreseeable future, is the majority of the population going to be anything but slightly to very religious. Which will be reflected in the state’s actions. Dreaming that the American government will ever, say, abolish religious education is dreaming indeed. Maybe on some Counter-Earth.
Cathal,
I have more in common with your ideas than with many other commenters on these threads, but I feel alienated when you write “How would you go about enforcing compliance?”
Surely the point is to enable human beings to reach their own accommodation with reality, not to enforce it. The hegemony I advocate is societal and cultural and will take many years and much effort by many voices if it is to come about. I do not wish to impose, I wish to convince – as do you.
MikeS, perhaps I misinterpreted you – but what you wrote made it look as though you were advocating not only persuasion but also coercion. If all you mean is that you think it a good thing to persuade parents to educate their children in tune with your liberal, universalist values – that’s fine, carry on persuading!
The problem is that some secular humanists seem to consider any form of religious indoctrination of under-age children to be on a par with child abuse and hence argue that it should be treated in the same way – i.e. criminalised. My impression was that you belonged to the category. I’m glad I was mistaken.
“and that to stop that hurting, private persuasion, not the force of the state, is necessary. If Christian scientists always denied their kids medical treatment, O.B., you’d have much more of a case”
More of a case for what, roger? I didn’t say a word about force rather than persuasion. On the contrary – I pointed out the difficulty, even of persuasion. That’s because I think it’s fraught with difficulty.
“but in fact I think fundamentalist C.S. here is much rarer.”
But I stipulated that. Notice I said ‘we can’t tell the Christian Scientist “your daughter is entitled to health care” without being at least potentially coercive’ – emphasis added. It’s ‘potentially’ only because not all CSs will object. I stipulated ‘The Christian Scientist, if she is a dedicated Christian Scientist’ – by which I meant, obviously enough, ‘if she is the kind of CS who doesn’t go behind her own back.’
The whole of your last para, about the superiority of persuasion over using the state to interfere, is thrown away on me, since I wasn’t making an argument for state intervention, I was pointing out that even persuasion can be (or seem) potentially coercive to, for instance, CS parents. In short, you’re pounding on an open door.
On the other hand it remains true that the state does sometimes in fact intervene when children are denied medical treatment on religious grounds – with a lot of hand-wringing on all sides.