In today’s Journal, Donald Luskin defends Atlas Shrugged as “a plea for the most fundamental American ideal—the inalienable rights of the individual.”

Where does one start? What are “rights” in a universe where there is no morality other than what can be derived from the value one places on one’s own life, and no metaphysics other than materialism plus some more or less trivial residuum to allow for sense perception and volition? If rights are not correlative to duties that transcend our will – and on Rand’s view it is a matter of first principles that there are no duties transcending the will – then what are they? And how can they possibly be “inalienable” if one is morally subject to no will above one’s own?

The original idea behind the phrase “inalienable rights” was that rights are inalienable because they are correlative to duties and responsibilities that exist objectively and transcend the will, and that we are therefore not allowed to shirk. You are not allowed to consent to dictatorial government even if you want to, because that’s inconsistent with your fulfillment of the transcendent duties that you are under, and that are partially constitutive of who you are as a person. This was a point of central importance – for some purposes it was the point of central importance – in the political philosophies behind the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution, from which the phrase “inalienable rights” historically sprang. The argument on the other side (at least among social contract theorists) was that you consent to the king’s absolute authority when you participate in civil society. The word “inalienable” was inserted to deny this, and the only possible justification for it is the existence of transcendent duties.

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In our second On the Square piece today, Alma Acevedo asks: To whom is Richard Dawkins grateful when he expresses “an abstract gratitude that I am alive to appreciate these wonders, when I look down a microscope it’s the same feeling, I am grateful to be alive to appreciate these wonders”?

Unlike “being comfortable,” which requires the preposition with (as in “I feel comfortable with these shoes”), if any, “being grateful” calls for a to another person. Gratitude is not a self-enclosed or self-sufficient feeling but a human person’s response to another person or persons—whether human or divine—for benefits, gifts, or favors received from them, such as the gratitude due to caring parents, loving friends, and dedicated teachers or mentors. As Kant succinctly observes, “The duty of gratitude consists in honoring a person because of a benefit he has rendered us” (italics added). When gratitude is due to a country, an organization (e.g., a school, a hospital, a shelter), or some other collective, it is owed to them as communities of human persons, not as impersonal institutions.

This morning On The Square Russ Saltzman plans ahead for the sermon he will have to give on January 29, 2012. The text will be Mark 1:21–28, the story of the unclean spirit whom Jesus commands to leave the man it has possessed:

With umpteen years of ordination behind me I should have said something about it on 10.333 occasions by my count. I dipped into my dead sermon file and no, I have never preached on it. When that passage arrived apparently I always opted for the second reading, something in First Corinthians about poor deluded fools worried over eating meat first sacrificed to idols, or the first reading from Deuteronomy promising a prophet like Moses. And I know why. I think these accounts of demons and unclean spirits are just too un-modern for contemporary Christians.

Who could listen with a straight face, or preach with one? I am bothered saying it, but my reaction, I know, is a hangover from my atheist rationalist period. But still even now as a believer, well, possession, really?

Instead of engaging with the text of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput’s recent remarks at Notre Dame, Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter has attacked Chaput for saying that it might sometimes be necessary to deny communion to abortion-supporting politicians. Winters claims such a stance makes no sense because, “There are many reasons why someone might not support a certain piece of legislation that would restrict or criminalize abortion.”

But what about cases in which the politician’s reasons for opposing pro-life laws are well known? This is precisely the case with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi has explicitly endorsed a “right to choose” and elsewhere offered as her reason that, “women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.” Pelosi’s votes in favor of abortion are not a matter of prudence. They are a matter of principle—deliberate, dogged, and unashamed.

There are arguments for a stance like Pelosi’s, but we should not pretend that any of them are Catholic. As Pelosi’s own pastor, Archbishop George H. Niederauer, wrote in a response to her public statements, “It is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel—racism, infidelity, abortion, theft.”

Some fear that prudential considerations (which are necessary for any principled politics) are increasingly invoked as an excuse for infidelity rather than used as a tool for faithful citizenship, and Winters’ dubious use of prudence is not likely to reassure them. But all this is somewhat beside the point, for the reality today is that many of our self-identified Catholic politicians feel no need to work against life under cover of insincerely invoked prudential grounds. Instead, they support abortion rights on principle and in the open.

It’s also worth noting that Winters misreported the actual event. In the original news report Winters cites, we are informed that Chaput was asked “why there is so much disunity among Catholics on the question of Catholics in political life standing clearly with the church on major moral issues such as abortion.” Winters rewrites the exchange so that denial of communion is introduced as the subject of a controversial question. Chaput is now “asked why Catholics were so divided over the issue of whether or not to deny communion to pro-choice politicians.” This small error is simply the first false brushstroke in Winters’ portrait of a man embattled and alone.

Winters concludes with a transparent attempt to drive a wedge between Chaput and his fellow bishops. He claims that Chaput has called them “cowards” because they fear driving Catholic politicians out of the political life. But Chaput said no such thing, nor is there is anything cowardly in the desire to ensure a vigorous Catholic voice in the public square. On the contrary, it is a goal that Chaput himself has, I would submit, consistently and even courageously sought to advance.

Wilfred McClay on the relationship between our souls and our built environments:

Even with all our prosperity and freedom, there is much that is amiss in the ways we live today—not only in our individual lives, but in the larger patterns of habitation that we have devised for ourselves. The built environment matters, not only for our bodies but for our souls, and the souls of our brothers and sisters and neighbors.

Somehow we all know this to be the case. And yet Christians, as Christians, seem to have had very little that is useful or insightful to say about these matters. This represents a serious failure on our part. It means we have fallen short in the fundamental Christian responsibility to attend to the careful and reverent stewardship of creation. It may mean that in our zeal to speak of final things we have forgotten first things—and one of the first things to know about Christianity is that it is an incarnational faith which celebrates the goodness of the created order, in which God became man, in which the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, in which the promised vision of the end of time is not a world of disembodied spirits, but of the flesh, resurrected and perfected. If you fully take in that thought, you will soon realize that, whatever else it may be, the physical world cannot be thought of as a mere moral obstacle course that we run on the way to eternity.

Even without such religious assumptions in our minds, we should be able to see that there are, as we say these days, feedback effects of our physical environments, ways in which the rooms and corridors and buildings and streets and landscapes and skyscapes through which we move have their effects upon us, and end up influencing us, often in very profound ways. Hence the choices we make about the places where we choose to situate ourselves—keeping always in mind that there are many things that we cannot choose about our lives—are of great moment.

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Understanding Congress’s solution to the federal deficit problem, says Philip Greenspun, is easier to understand if we divide everything by 100 million:

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

To this useful analogy I would add one additional data point: The family’s credit card debt is currently $142,786. If they were to spend every penny that made each year toward their credit cards it would take 6 and half years to pay off their debt.

(Via: Boing Boing)

Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at C.U.N.Y., explains why he thinks quantum physics affects the debate about free will and determinism.

One of the problems I have with such physics-based explanations is that they do not address how the human will relates to physical matter. Without addressing that connection, the theory only touches on the question if we assume that the human will is reducible to matter (e.g., the brain). What do you think? How useful are such explanations?