In response to an interview question, Robert P. George previews the argument of his forthcoming book Conscience and Its Enemies:
Contemporary left liberals are hardly relativists! I often wish they were. They are moralists—moralists on a mission. The mission is to shape political and social life, and, to the extent possible, individual belief, in line with their passionately held moral convictions. One sees this everywhere, beginning with the war waged by the Obama administration on the Catholic Church—the largest and most important institution whose moral teachings stand in conflict with left liberal beliefs about the status of nascent human life, the nature and meaning of marriage, and religious liberty.
These are not people who deny that there are moral truths. On the contrary, these are people who affirm that there are moral truths and are so certain that they understand them correctly that they are willing to impose them on society. What are some of those “truths”? The absolute right to abortion. The right to conduct one’s sexual life however one pleases, so long as one refrains from obtaining sex by coercion or deception. The conviction that “marriage” is the union of two people (or more) without regard to gender. The idea that the state legitimately may and even should use its coercive powers to prohibit whatever counts in liberal ideology as a form of discrimination. The idea that anyone who disagrees with them about the things they most care about is a “bigot.” And on and on.
As for liberal claims that science is “on their side,” the aim of Conscience and Its Enemies is to show why that can only be regarded as laughable. Consider the unwillingness of so many liberals to face up to the undeniable fact that abortion takes the life of a living human being—a fact established not by theological reflection or religious authority but by modern human embryology and developmental biology.
The entirety of the interview can be read at the Intercollegiate Review‘s redesigned site.
February 5th, 2013 | 5:24 pm
Excellent commentary, and I’m happy to the idea that “Liberal” and “Leftist” are two different things. Leftism is totalitarianism, as most forms of Fascist regimes (Pol Pot, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, etc) have all stemmed from the political Left. Leftism I about control of the populace, and removing the indivuality of every person and denying their dignity/uniqueness for the collective good of the State. Liberalism, in the classical sense, believes in social justice, individual rights, capitalism, fairness, etc. Conserving these principles of Liberalism is what Conservatives believe!
February 5th, 2013 | 9:50 pm
Does this kind of argument help anyone?
So “science” demonstrates that abortion takes the life of a living human being? What was the scientific test that demonstrated this fact? What was the hypothesis? What was the control group? Where is the data, and the test for statistical significance? In which scholarly journals was this study published so that it might be reviewed and replicated by other scientists?
No, science demonstrates no such thing, because the meaning of “living human being” is not a scientific fact, but rather a matter of social convention called language.
Moreover, I suspect that there is widespread agreement about most of the biological facts regarding abortion. The disagreement arises regarding the value to attach to the facts. Values, like language, are not something that can be established by the scientific method.
We can – and do – disagree passionately about the importance to attach to these facts, and the words we use to characterize facts. But I hope and pray that I never dishonor the people I disagree with to the point that I intentionally mischaracterize a disagreement about language or values as a disagreement about scientific facts. When public discourse drops to the level that we’re no longer even trying to understand people with different points of view, what’s the point of continuing the dialogue?
February 6th, 2013 | 8:38 am
Ruben D Sanchez Jr – Point of information. Hitler and Mussolini were fascist, not ‘leftist’, and it’s very peculiar to characterize Franco as “leftist”.
February 6th, 2013 | 10:29 am
Does this kind of argument help anyone?
nobody.really,
I think this is yet another case of preaching to the converted. When trying to convince liberals to accept conservative arguments, do you really want to begin by telling them the liberal position is “laughable”? (Also, it is certainly possible to maintain that, say, an early embryo is a “human being” without being a person.)
It think David T. Koyzis had a much better approach in his post of January 28, in which he said:
If you think your opponents’ position is “laughable,” why take it seriously enough to write a whole book (Embryo: A Defense of Human Life) attempting to refute it?
February 6th, 2013 | 2:11 pm
Nobody really,
I think you’re missing the point, and accusing Prof. George of engaging in the sort of thinking he is pushing back against. It is common among liberals, particularly those of a secular bent, to assert that their views are grounded in reason while maintaining that the views of conservatives, particularly religious conservatives, are motivated by little more than a blind devotion to religion. Stop legislating your faith and morals and so on. For his part, Prof. George has been making rational cases for outlawing abortion, upholding the traditional view of marriage, and so on.
The irony that he is pointing out is that many on the left, those who consider themselves brave followers of science, either are unaware of–or flat out won’t accept–that embryology textbooks
do state that fertilization marks the beginning of a new human being. Prof. George acknowledges at great length that the question of what value we give to that new human being is not something that we can settle scientifically. Personhood and the rights that go along with it cannot be established in a lab and so forth. That is why he spends a considerable amount of time on the metaphysical aspects of these debates. But the point he is making is that there are liberals who even deny what is laid out in embryology textbooks:
See Will Saletan in his review of Prof. George and Prof. Tollefson’s book Embryo: A Defense of Human Life:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/223640/embryonic-debate/robert-p-george
It is laughable, and arrogant, for one side of the debate to act as if they are always on the side of reason and science while the other side is simply motivated by blind faith. And not just because it isn’t true.
David,
Same thing to you. Prof. George isn’t saying that liberal positions on cultural issues are laughable. He is saying that the liberal…
February 6th, 2013 | 7:41 pm
Tim,
If we have to divide the world into liberals and conservatives (in reality, I think we should avoid that as much as possible), what I find fascinating is how totally convinced each group is that it is clearly, obviously, objectively, and self-evidently right, and those who don’t agree are either willfully and maliciously disagreeing due to some secret ulterior motive, or in denial because their unconscious is protecting them from what would be too painful, demanding, or frightening.
How do we explain it when people disagree with us? Here is a great TED Talk (there are some very good ones). It is worth watching the whole thing, but the part I always refer to starts at 9:50 and runs to about 11:20.
Another good part of the talk is when she asks people how it feels to be wrong. They answer: terrible, embarrassing, etc. And she says those are good answers, but they are answers to a different question. They’re answers to what it feels like to discover you are wrong. She says that being wrong feels exactly like being right.
I think that for the most part, people don’t reason things out and get convinced by compelling arguments. If they did, it would be a remarkable coincidence that knowing what a person thought about abortion would give you a good chance of predicting what they thought about climate change or the minimum wage.
February 7th, 2013 | 12:41 am
Of course the book is laughable for the simple reason that liberals do not care what Robert P. George thinks about much of anything. In the final analysis liberalism is about power. And if they have to power to force their views it does not matter what the arguments against them are.
And power recognizes no rules.
February 7th, 2013 | 10:22 am
If many on the left are unaware of, or flat out won’t accept, that embryology textbooks do state that fertilization marks the beginning of a new human being, it shouldn’t be too hard to provide citations, right? Specifically, citations to people denying the embryology — a matter of science – and not people merely people arguing over the usage of the label “human being.”
A brief check to the linked text, a review of a book review, is illustrative. The author begins by acknowledging that the initial reviewer, Wiliam Saletan, “is a deservedly respected bioethics journalist,” but then concludes “Saletan’s denial that human embryos are human beings in the embryonic stage of development cannot be sustained in light of the scientific facts.” Does the author mean to say that Saletan is ignorant of the science involved? Or merely that Saletan has different values than the author, and uses the term “human being” differently than…
February 7th, 2013 | 10:48 am
I think it is important to point out that just because someone is a moral relativist does not mean that he or she cannot have strongly held moral values. A moral relativist believes that any society can create and enforce whatever moral laws it needs to function and survive. So if some people feel the need for a right to abortion, pornography, divorce, contraception, same sex marriage, etc. in order to pursue life and happiness as they see it, without the inconvenience and unpleasantness of having to deal with criticism and restrictions from those who disagree with them, then they also believe it is their right to silence their critics by any means necessary to achieve their goals.
A nation that no longer respects Divine Law nor Natural Law is a nation in which there is no basis for any consensus as to what constitutes a good life or a good person. So it is that in a relativistic society there is no basis for any agreement between left and right, progressive and conservative, or secular and religious. There is only power politics and the principle that in a relativistic society might makes right.
This is what Pope Benedict meant by the “dictatorship of relativism”.
February 7th, 2013 | 2:19 pm
From most prof choice argument’s I’ve read and listened to, they’re not arguing over whether a fetus is a human life, but whether a fetus has an absolute right to make use of a woman’s body.
February 8th, 2013 | 9:43 am
It was Michel Foucault, I believe, who pointed out that the objective features of a phenomenon so little constrain the ways it is classified and theorized that these features can be disregarded in trying to understand why a particular classification system or scientific theory has been adopted.
February 12th, 2013 | 12:35 pm
Michael PS – And Foucault vastly overstepped there. See, e.g. Linnaeus. He invented the “kingdom, phyla, genus, species, etc.” classification scheme for living things, and tried to do the same thing for minerals. But minerals don’t form from copy-with-modification, and a ‘nested hierarchy’ just didn’t work and never caught on.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:17 am
This is the primary definition of human being:
noun
1.
any individual of the genus Homo, especially a member of the species Homo sapiens.
A living thing either conforms to this definition or does not. Just thought I’d point that out.
Most of us, I’ll wager, encounter the argument in more informal settings which are unfortunately not as conducive to citation (“my friend’s mother-in-law blah blah blah…”).
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