My wife and I will have lunch at Chick-fil-A today. It’s not an uncommon experience in our family, since our son works there. (For the record, he and his sister are on a mission trip this week, working with immigrant kids, so they won’t be joining us. Also, for the record, my son is a Boy Scout, so he’s about as politically incorrect as it’s possible for a teenager to be.)
But I’m not writing this to announce our family’s fast food preferences or habits. Rather, I’m writing to suggest something about the limits of markets, disagreeing ever so slightly and subtly with my friend Jordan Ballor. Here’s what he says:
One of the great virtues of the free market system is that the customers get to decide what they value and why….
So if you don’t care one way or another about this issue, or don’t care about your service provider’s position (or lack thereof) and are “hungry for a chicken sandwich,” you, like Parler, will “eat at Chick-fil-A.” Such action just tells us that you don’t care to consider such things in making your decision to engage in a particular economic exchange.
But that doesn’t mean it is inherently wrong, or worse, indicative of an unchristian worldview, to take into account such things if you are moved by conscience to do so. This is, after all, why many people are motivated to buy fair trade or organic goods, or take into account any other number of subjective considerations in their valuation of a good or service. This is the same motive that is behind much of the impetus to pursue socially responsible investing (SRI).
In Jordan’s view, the free market enables consumers to base their preferences on whatever considerations they wish, to value what they wish to value in whichever way they wish to value it. If I wish to express my political or cultural support for my son’s employer, not just my appreciation of its product, I can do so.
Fair enough. But it seems to me that those who laid the intellectual and theoretical foundations for free markets imagined that they were taking some of the venom out of the political arena, replacing political passions with economic interests. The former, they thought, were all too often nonnegotiable; the latter always had a price.
But our experience, born of the wealth created by these markets, is that we have the luxury of embodying even political preferences in our market behavior. To some degree, at least, politics recolonizes the marketplace. The bold promise of the classical liberals to distinguish between politics and markets, between private and public, might have to give way to the older understanding, articulated in the first instance by Aristotle, that suggested that oikonomike (household management) isn’t just about wealth and acquisition, but also about virtue and character, something it shares with political life.
Now, I don’t want to go as far as Aristotle does down this path, because I do wish to place limits on the character-forming activities of government, leaving room (above all) for civil society and the churches that are among its most important institutions. But I do wish to stop short of embracing the original overweening promise of free market liberalism. We not wired to make the nice distinctions they expected. And that’s a good thing, because we’re not supposed to be able to put a price on everything.
August 1st, 2012 | 11:20 am
Hmm. I’m not sure we disagree (you do say “slightly and subtly”). I should clarify that my observations about the “freedom to choose” of the consumer/customer do not assume some kind of atomistic or asocial formation of the individual.
Perhaps you could clarify the “original overweening promise of free market liberalism.” Was it that political disagreements would be moderated, if not erased, by the reality of mutually beneficial exchange? Free trade to end all wars?
I think you are right; we don’t have to go quite that far down that path to recognize there is some extent to which this is true; we don’t need to do a background check on everyone we interact with, commercially or otherwise. And neither do we need to deny that stewardship “isn’t just about wealth and acquisition, but also about virtue and character, something it shares with political life.” Do you think, by the by, that many of the classical liberals of the 19th c. would disagree about that connection between virtue, politics, and economics? I certainly don’t.
What’s left unsaid in my brief piece is that just any old subjective evaluation of something isn’t sufficient. The difficulty comes in at the level of virtue and character formation. Our subjective valuation should correspond to objective values. But that’s yet another reason, I think, not to go as far as Merritt and Parler seem to want to (perhaps with the secularized vision of the “original and overweening promise of the free market”) that politics and economics are separable in any radical way from ethics.
August 1st, 2012 | 11:27 am
O.K., so, properly understood, we agree. I’ll “buy” that.
August 1st, 2012 | 11:35 am
I should note that I’m also concerned about the moral precisionism that attends to much of the opposite view, e.g., that morally we are required to patronize a certain establishment or type of product, or morally prohibited from doing so. There are examples where this is true, of course, but in many cases it is not true that there is only one morally acceptable option. In this regard, I suppose what I’m advocating for is a rehabilitation of the category of moral “permissibility” along with obligation and prohibition, along the lines of what Paul Ramsey has argued. So as with many things there are extremes to avoid: radical secularizing and ethical absolutizing of economic transactions.
August 1st, 2012 | 11:37 am
The problem with “Chick-fil-A appreciation” is it seems to have gone beyond supporting Chick-fil-A’s First Amendment right to be treated fairly by politicians no matter how strongly the politicians disagree with the company’s owners’ political and religious beliefs, and instead become an endorsement of the owner’s politically and religiously conservative stance (and monetary contributions). I might have been willing to patronize Chick-fil-A today to express support for their First Amendment rights (and also to express my belief that this whole controversy is overblown and perhaps even silly). But if patronizing Chick-fil-A is taken to mean opposition to gay rights and same-sex marriage, then I’m not interested.
Instead of concentrating on what unites us—belief in First Amendment rights, and perhaps appreciation of a good chicken sandwich and waffle fries (never having eaten there, I don’t know), we now have to concentrate on what divides us. We are already far to polarized in our politics. Why should we want to be polarized over fast-food restaurants?
August 1st, 2012 | 12:32 pm
The debate was polarized, this is merely a push-back. It is designed to counter the a promised sit-in/kiss-in at Chick-Fil-A restaraunts by gay activists set for Friday.
This is a silly kind of politics and yes, it does irk that we might eat in a fast food place just to show that support for Christian values is not dead in America. Silly, but I know dozens of people eating some meal at Chick-Fil-A today, some for the first time. I hope this does that business good.
August 1st, 2012 | 12:33 pm
[...] Appreciating Chick-fil-A; Or, When Politics Recolonizes the Market – Joseph Knippenberg, First Things/First Thoughts [...]
August 1st, 2012 | 12:38 pm
“We are already far[too] polarized in our politics. Why should we want to be polarized over fast-food restaurants?”
Consensus is not an inherent good. Of course it has long been a left-wing tactic to hide behind consensus as a way to bludgeon anyone who opposes their agenda as “divisive” or “hateful”.
The left picked the fight. There would be no Chick-fil-a appreciation Day without the previous calls to boycott.
It seems to me that this is not only about freedom of speech (as you say) but also about freedom of association. Like minded people should be free to congregate together, which presupposes, that not everyone is of like mind. “Consensus” is therefore a shibboleth, meant to disguise/delegitimize the fact that to paraphrase MacIntyre “we are the inheritors…of rival and contending traditions”.
August 1st, 2012 | 12:48 pm
What I find most interesting about the Chick-Fil-A imbroglio is its connection with liberalism, mostly obviously in the appeals of so many participants in the debate to their favorite amendments to the US Constitution (esp. the 1st and the 14th).
Within the debate is a group divided on the question of SSM and divided over support of Dan Cathy but united by common appeals to the need for everyone to live together, to keep the Great American Project going, etc. etc.. This I take to be the hallmark of SSM moderates (although I acknowledge this may be a rather idiosyncratic usage of the term). For example, this is what I think unites David Nickol and Rod Dreher.
But in connecting this moderate position to liberalism, I wonder if it sees liberalism as:
1. the most just political order; or
2. a modus vivendi, a means to secure the goods of peace and social order but one in which the question of justice is irrelevant?
Am I being asked to “get along,” even if only at the end of the day and the end of the argument, because the American Experiment is the most just political order known to mankind? Or because it is a prudent thing to do for the time being?
August 1st, 2012 | 2:12 pm
The important issue right now, as I see it, is the First Amendment issue of companies being free to support religious or political positions without politicians who disagree with those positions using their offices either to help or harm the businesses. I see that the Speaker of the New York City Council has just done a very stupid thing:
She is not only wrong here, but possibly out of her mind.
I think everyone, right or left, should be able to agree that this kind of thing is simply wrong. What if she runs for mayor and loses to someone who opposes same-sex marriage? Will the mayor then have the right to discriminate against all the gay-friendly businesses in the city? Will they block deliveries from Amazon.com?
Remember, this is a fight that Chick-fil-A clearly didn’t want to have. Here’s their statement from Facebook that went up soon after the controversy started:
They did not invent, nor does it appear that they are encouraging, Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.
I suppose I would have to agree that the gay-rights side started the whole fiasco, and some are behaving very badly. Chick-fil-A tried to tamp things down, but politicians pandering to gays and gay rights organizations fanned the flames, and then Huckabee fanned them further.
August 1st, 2012 | 3:38 pm
Boycotts as a form of political action have a long history, long pre-dating the Irish Land League’s action against the eponymous Irish land agent.
As practised by private individuals or groups, it is difficult to see how anyone, in a free society can object to them
Whether public officials can retain the impartiality demanded of them in their official capacity, whilst lending their support to them in their individual capacity is very questionable.
August 1st, 2012 | 3:40 pm
Dan Cathy’s beliefs about marriage are hardly peculiar—why even President Obama shared them until a few minutes ago. I am surprised the Democratic mayor of Washington, DC didn’t try to run the previously incorrect and unevolved president out of town when he had the chance. The mayor has picked up the mandatory pitch fork and is leading his villagers against Chick Fil A franchises in his city.
August 1st, 2012 | 4:09 pm
In my view, the most pernicious aspect of Quinn’s statement (which it shares with those of most if not all the other state officials who have jumped into this fight) is her persistent usage of the term “we,” “us” and “our”. She is claiming to define, even to embody, the beliefs and values of millions of people based on nothing but sheer assertion.
Clearly if only implicitly, those who disagree with Quinn are not part of “we” and “us”, i.e. they are not true New Yorkers. Quinn et al. are not far from channeling the spirit of anti-German ideologues during WWI or of Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, defining marriage traditionalists as the ‘enemy within’. The case of Mark Regnerus at the University of Texas is ominous in this regard. SSM proponents have already extracted the required condemnation of Regnerus from the journal which published his work in the first place, and the University continues its own “audit”. When is the show trial scheduled?
It sure seems that Rod Dreher is right: “Christians [and other traditionalists], these cities don’t want you”.
August 1st, 2012 | 11:46 pm
Or because it is a prudent thing to do for the time being?
I think liberals have figured out – belatedly – that they run the risk of losing their biggest weapon.
It is essential to their political cause that they keep the framing as persecuted gays vs. malicious, bigoted gay-haters. The minute it starts being framed as an equal “zero sum” equation, the gay rights activists lose, because they don’t want “equality”, they want dominance.
They are reaching the point where they have to be careful not to overplay their hand (if they haven’t already). In the uncommitted middle, sympathy for gays could easily turn to sympathy for Christians, if it becomes visible that the Christians aren’t the ones doing the bullying.
Nearest family member living in Chik-fil-A territory tells me “meant to go today but drive-through line was insanely long – all day long”.
August 1st, 2012 | 11:49 pm
NYC is a place where we celebrate diversity.
Except, apparently, they’re not diverse enough to tolerate the presence of evangelical Christianity.
August 2nd, 2012 | 9:51 am
Except, apparently, they’re not diverse enough to tolerate the presence of evangelical Christianity.
Blake,
Christine Quinn is not New York. Mayor Bloomberg strongly disagreed with her:
The New York Times criticized Christine Quinn in an editorial:
Pleased don’t engage in stereotypes or sweeping generalizations. New York City is one of the most economically, religiously, ethnically, racially, and politically diverse cities in the world.
August 2nd, 2012 | 11:35 am
Blake,
Christine Quinn is not New York.
Is it not true that Chik-fil-A is being kicked off New York college campuses?
August 2nd, 2012 | 12:17 pm
Clearly Nanny Bloomberg has probably been too busy monitoring soda sizes and lecturing new mothers on the merits of breast feeding to put his (always moist) finger to the wind and get himself on the right side of history here. Expect a retraction, or at the very least a windy “clarification” to issue from his press office, very soon.
August 2nd, 2012 | 3:11 pm
Is it not true that Chik-fil-A is being kicked off New York college campuses?
Blake,
I can answer that with a definite no, because there are no campuses involved. There is only one Chick-fil-A in the state of New York, and it’s on the NYU campus. There was a move by students earlier this year (before this current controversy) to have it removed, and NYU decided to keep it. They will look at the issue again when school opens in the fall, and if NYU decides to remove it, it will be gone, and if they decide to keep it, it will stay. I would not want to make any bets either way.
August 2nd, 2012 | 3:24 pm
david c.,
Whatever feelings of contempt you may have for Mayor Bloomberg are irrelevant. As to having his finger to the wind, the soda ban is quite unpopular here. Only a bit more than a third of the people support it, and even some of those don’t believe it will actually do any good. I personally don’t support it. It is a pretty silly idea, but Bloomberg is by no means a silly man. And whether you like him or not, he has taken the right position on Chick-fil-A, even thought there is a huge gay community in New York City, some of whom might have been pleased to see him demagogue the issue like Rahm Emmauneul or Christine Quinn.
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