Meeting friends and family is part of the universally recognized progression of any relationship, and so it was for me while dating a fellow law student in Washington, D.C. Beyond our common career path, we shared very little—I was a conservative, Republican Catholic from the Midwest and she a liberal, atheist Democrat from Massachusetts.
My girlfriend also happened to be a former Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, so every few months I tagged along for dinners, birthday parties and social events of the informal “El Sal. Peace Corps Crowd.” They were a well-educated, professional and civic-minded group of white, middle-class young adults. They pursued master’s degrees in international relations with third-world (or, as they corrected me, “developing world”) countries, worked in eco-conscious government agencies such as NOAA, or joined NGOs devoted to global female empowerment.
They were the vanguard foot soldiers of progressive liberalism.
I’d only met one friend-of-the-girlfriend prior to my first evening with the entire crew. She was charming, and found her calling in protecting women’s health by sending glass cooking pots to poor Central American villages in order to reduce open-fire food preparation. We pondered whether her desire for government-mandated price-capping, wage-setting and capital-regulation amounted to communism, and amicably agreed that she was not a militant “brown-shirt” communist, or even a full-blown “red” communist, but rather a befittingly “soft-pink” communist.
The first group dinner was predictably located in an ethnic restaurant in one of the more fashionably hip, socially dynamic quarters of the city. The atmosphere was jovial and the conversation freely swayed between friendly catch-up and political banter. It was early 2003, and I thought it wise to remain politely detached as they excoriated conservative policies, Republican rhetoric, and absolutely everything about George W. Bush. I’d struck up a nice conversation on nothing of significance with a quiet, reserved chap across the table.
Noticing that the newest addition to the group hadn’t yet jumped on the bandwagon to vent his political frustrations, the group enquired about my plans for the summer. I mentioned several possibilities, including a gig at the Department of Justice. “Oh my God,” someone exclaimed with a sympathetic look, “how are you going to like working for Ashcroft?”
I’d reached a fork in the road. Should I deflect with a bit of wry humor and clever evasion, steering the conversation along a less perilous route, or divulge some measure of personal conviction and let the storm clouds gather as they may? I’d already assessed the group’s disposition toward the Attorney General and his signature anti-American, “Big Brother,” rights-depleting PATRIOT Act. Receiving a permissive smile and resigned shrug from my girlfriend, I cheerfully replied, “I’m a conservative Catholic who volunteered for Bush’s campaign in Ohio. I co-founded the Federalist Society at our law school and write weekly newsletters for Catholic and pro-life organizations. It’d be an honor to work for Ashcroft and the Bush administration.”
Crickets were heard. Some tumbleweed drifted past. Somewhere in a distant apartment building a dream died.
Finally, out of the deafening silence, my soft-pink communist blurted out, “And how lucky you are to be at this table tonight!” The table burst into laughter, followed by a chorus of skeptical enquires as to whether I was serious. Most expressed their amused surprise, some offered apologies for any offense, and the quiet, reserved chap across the table crossed his arms and never spoke to me again.
Over the next few months, I often belatedly joined their conversations as a lone conservative voice. They’d find a topic of current interest, collectively assert the propriety and necessity of the liberal position, bemoan the vicious, intellectually bankrupt conservative position, and then, brows furrowed, squint their eyes in my direction. I thought it futile to attempt to convert them. My usefulness would instead be to challenge their assumptions and subconscious prejudices.
Two examples will serve to illustrate.
The first example: U.S.-patented retroviral drugs capable of offsetting AIDS and preventing mother-to-child transmissions were being copied by foreign pharmaceutical companies at a fraction of the selling price in America. Conservatives opposed the sale of these generic drugs in sub-Saharan Africa, which my companions found unfathomably despicable and indescribably corrupt. It went without saying that conservatives enthralled with “Big Pharma” were sacrificing poor Africans for million dollar bonuses for corporate executives.
Having affirmed the moral impoverishment of conservatives and corporations, they recalled that I was among them. Squinting, they said, “You agree with ‘them,’ don’t you?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“Why?” They asked with genuine bewilderment.
“I hate Africans and want more of them to die.”
The second example: NGOs sought government funds to send free rice to Africa to feed starving populations. Conservative groups opposed the delivery, which my companions found unfathomably despicable and indescribably corrupt. It went without saying that conservatives devoid of conscience were sacrificing poor Africans rather than devoting one-millionth of a penny in precious tax revenue.
Reaffirming the moral impoverishment of conservatives and corporations, they recalled that I was among them. Squinting, they queried with a smile, “You agree with ‘them,’ don’t you?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“Why?” They asked with genuine bewilderment.
“I hate Africans and want more of them to die.”
Both times, the group sighed heavily and smiled lightly at my ridiculous, faux confession. Moments passed as they searched for the proper response. Someone finally remarked in a resigned voice, “That’s not what you really think, Justin.”
“Of course not!” I replied. “But it’s exactly what you secretly believe that everyone who disagrees with you really believes, isn’t it?” They stammered, offered a few half-heated objections and—with a slight hint of shame—admitted it was probably what they thought, since they couldn’t find any other explanation.
“But,” I pressed, “do you believe that I think that?”
As they’d gotten to know me, they concluded that they didn’t believe so. Recognizing their internal bias led us to the cusp of a true ideological breakthrough.
The first time, I explained that by allowing foreigners to copy (that is, steal) and mass-produce patented HIV vaccines would bankrupt companies. It’s preposterous to assume that companies would continue investing in HIV/AIDS research if prevented from recouping their research and development costs. Medicine is a business, requiring capital and skill. If companies were faced with insolvency, innovation, even if successful, would come to a screeching halt. While the liberal policy might save more Africans in the short term, it would hurt far more in the long term. It’s a question of giving a man a fish, or teaching a man to fish.
The second time, I explained that flooding African markets with free rice would irreparably disrupt the only fledgling economic enterprise existing in most African countries, agriculture. Starvation in Africa is not due to a mere shortage of food, but rather poverty and administrative corruption. To correct this disastrous legacy, sustainable economic development is essential—a goal eviscerated by sweeping away Africa’s sole economic activity.
Charitable giving to Africa should bolster indigenous economic prosperity, rather than destroying it in its infancy. While the liberal policy might save more Africans in the short term, it would hurt far more in the long term. As before, it’s a question of giving a man a fish, or teaching a man to fish.
That didn’t persuade them. They reverted to general and elusive arguments about corporate welfare, social inequality and the oppressive legacy of colonialism. They posited that the socio-economic conditions that, perhaps, vindicated my opinion were the result of larger socio-economic paradigms for which conservatives are to blame.
So be it. Our conversations did, however, allow my logical explanations to shift my company to a far more receptive posture than I had found them. We even found ourselves able to address fairly the fundamental issue of underlying intentions and motivations.
The reason I oppose free food and cheap medicine is not concealed racism, nationalism, or bigotry. Neither is it due to suppressed desires, (trans)gender confusion, or trauma during my infancy. And it’s not because I’m bitter, clingy, or antipathetic. It’s not due to any inferior quality of my politics, religion, or soul. It’s simply that I am convinced the liberal proposition will help less and hurt more than alternative, conservative policies.
Political confrontations don’t, by and large, involve clear contests between pure good and pure evil. On the whole, both sides, even in the most heated debates, believe their end is good, and don’t proceed with evil intent or malice. Politics requires rational, moral, and informed decisions, but prejudiced presumptions of concealed malevolence in political adversaries cripples communication and excludes meaningful debate.
A majority of white citizens voting for a black president, for example, might be interpreted as an indication of evaporating racial animosity. Yet every instance of opposition to President Obama’s policies has been attributed by ideologues to insidious racial hatred. Partisans have fallen over themselves to slander the Tea Party movements as racist. Failing to find evidence of racism, they’ve resorted to logical absurdities. Consider Paul Butler’s self-fulfilling delusion in the New York Times: “This is how educated right-wing people talk about race in the age of Obama—by not talking about it.”
I’ve long since departed D.C., but still find that the first hurdle in most discussions of a political slant consists of asking my adversaries, “But do you believe that I think that?” A mutual concession of good intentions is an essential platform for meaningful dialogue.
Justin Paulette is an attorney specializing in international and constitutional law. He covers politics at the Ashbrook Center's No Left Turns and is currently writing a book, Obama Abroad: The Foreign Policy of Hope and Change.
Comments:
I never looked at him the same way again.
As a "Consistent Life Catholic" previously active in Democratic Party politics, I have found myself on both sides of liberal/conservative debates, and this has led me to some conclusions about the general tenor of partisan and ideological debate, particularly in the U.S. Partisan and ideological groups have a vested interest in making our debates as acrimonious as possible. The typical approach of any group, including the political parties, of gaining money and attention is to paint itself and its embattled followers as being on the side of the angels and to demonize the opposition. In the cases of FOX and MSNBC that is how they attract viewers and advertising money. We conduct our debates mostly in terms of our conclusions and not in terms of the deep premises underlying those conclusions. To the extent that we discuss our premises we do so in a way as to assume that "ours" is the obvious, natural and right one and "theirs" are at best delusional and at worst evil. All sides play this game. The expression of shock and amazement at what "they" have come up with now is part of the stock in trade of politicians of both major parties and of both Bill O'Reilly at Fox and of Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. We are all disingenuous.
I have had the types of conversations that you describe here, Justin, both with people with whom I agree on particular issues and those with whom I disagree. I know what it is like to be the lone representative of a particular position in a group.
The kind of conversations you describe can take place at the personal level among people who have learned to know and trust one another. On a more formal level, there have been some mediated "common ground" discussions by activists of the opposing sides on abortion during which in a private setting, and over time, the members of both sides slowly let down their arms and find themselves able to reach agreements not on their fundamental differences but on the manner in which they conduct the debate as they come to see the sincerity and humanity of their opponents.
What I have said here has been abstract, and I am running out of time, but you raise something important here. It is very hard for most of us to step outside of what I refer to as the noise machine.
I want to raise a couple of challenges, though, based on your description of your conversations. Since I pretty much agree with you on the rice issue I will set that aside. But, in your description of the conversations you make the people you are speaking with sound sincere but incoherent and as if you have thought through your positions, but not they have not.
In your description of your position on the pharmaceutical companies, though, you reveal some premises about the nature of pharmaceutical companies as pure free enterprise entities which I find questionable. Did anyone think to challenge you on the issues of pharmaceutical company dependence on federally funded basic research or on that of the duration and value of drug company patents? Those are at least debatable points. Would you be willing to concede that? And, would you be willing to debate the validity of premises behind the rhetoric of John Ashcroft's Justice Department in regards to terrorism and immigration, among other issues?
Thank you for this interesting and thoughtful post.
Concerning the discusion of pharmaceutical, I will add you your good points, a question about the validity of intelectual property "rights"? Can ideas be actually owned like concrete objects? If not, as I think, isnt intelectual property rights a priviledge granted by the state to pharmaceutical and other forms of big buisness?
And for what it's worth, it's a two-way loathing, in much of my experience. Ideological Conservatives can be just as convinced of their own rectitude, and just as contemptuous of the foolishness and wickedness of their opponents, as what you describe here.
In our day (and, honestly, for some time now), politics has arrogated to itself something very like Ultimate Significance - and thus, over questions like Feeding the Hungry in Developing Nations, it isn't merely disagreement over policy - something more like Salvation is at stake. . .
Before convicting Big Pharma, or any other big or small business, of the crime of trying to make a profit, (including protecting intellectual property), consider that profits are of the same kind as the wages or salary that you yourself earn for your contribution to the economic system.
Profits are the wages of a critically-necessary economic input called "enterprise." This is the process of organizing an attempt to satisfy a need by providing something that has value to the buyer, and doing it in such a way as to prompt the choice for your product or service instead of another alternative. It involves communicating the ideas persuasively, so as to attract capital--becuase it requires up-front money. It also requires the stomach to take risks, sometimes big risks. Enterprise is complex and intangible. Very few of us have the skills or temperament to do it well. For these reasons, it is not well-understood, and many overlook its role in our economic success. As a result, it is easy for them to become persuaded that the wages of enterprise, ie profits, are somehow acquired without merit.
But in fact, that is far from the case. Social justice requires that the "work" of entrepreneurs be rewarded with profits, insofar as their work actually does deliver value to their customers. To confiscate profits, or simply allow the stealing of intellectual property on which future profits might be made, is purely and simply: stealing.
Our Founding Fathers recognized all this and wisely put into the very Constitution provisions for protection of intellectual property. That's where our patent office was "invented." You could look it up.
Back to Big Pharma: I am the beneficiary of their intellectual property rights, and I would bet you are too. In my case, I've got a rare endocrine disorder which is not directly life-threatening but puts stress on my body such that I sincerely believe my life would be shortened by 10 years or more without treatment. But two daily doses by nasal spray and I live normally, thanks to a very nifty bit of chemical "magic" devised by researchers at, I think, the French company Rhone-Poulenc. There is no doubt at all that the years of research, testing, FDA approval, and process development needed to bring my drug to market would never have been done if their discoveries could have simply been stolen once they were demonstrated as successful.
By the way, I was never directly involved in the pharma industry. But I suggest to you, read a patent sometime. You will see that intellectual property is something more than just an "idea." Before a patent is issued, the inventor must present credible research results which prove his idea. That's a whole different ball game, requiring prodigious amounts of money, effort and patience.
Like so many things in life, the patenting process is far from perfect. However, the fundamental principles behind it are sound, based on principles of justice, and contribute mightily to the Common Good.
All property rights except the right to strictly portable property require the defense of the state and therefore the state has some degree of say in what is to be defined as property right. It is a libertarian illusion that the state is separate from property rights. A farmer cannot even own his plot of ground without a state if only enough of a state to gather a posse capable of shooing away would-be raiders(very much a consideration when agriculture was founded and still one in some places today. Complex commerce is even more so. A band of hardy vikings capable of defending their own property can sail from town to town, trading. But massive amounts of capital cannot be generated without the ability to have abstract concepts regarded as property and guarded as such by a highly organized state. The internet you are using required a group of investors to infest in it, confident that they would not be deprived of their profits.
Furthermore, calling such things a "privilege granted by the state" is unhistorical. The modern liberal state(as opposed to a mere feudal system) had it's beginning partly in the liberal tradition but partly in the desire of merchants to secure their abstract property(like loans and shares in a joint-stock company) which was a concept they invented for their own convenience. In a sense ruling was a privilege granted by property owners specifically to defend such property rights(like intellectual property) that they could not possibly defend with their own swords. This was surely the case in Italian city-states, but to a degree it was also the case in the modified feudal system which persisted until recently. The King of England was King of England, and not merely Senior Warlord, because the middle class and the monarchy made a tacit alliance on that basis.
Intellectual property rights are not a "privilege granted by the state" as if the state simply dreamed them up. While states have always existed-in the sense of the local chieftain at least-states as we know them today are intimately bound to the concept of abstract property and indeed are in essence a form of abstract property(if you like the Federal Government is a corporation with 300,000,000 shares and 300,000,000 stock holders). Intellectual property is not an invention of the state; the state was built to protect intellectual property(among other things).
It seems to me that your answer to me is divided in 3 aspects:
1. Defending the right of people and companies for making profits.
2. Defending the existence of intelectual property rights from an historical perspective (mainly, US history).
3. Trying to prove that intelectual property rights "benefit all of us".
Regarding 1, I am not sure where I said people or companies don´t have a right to make profits. What I said is that I question the philosophical foundation of intelectual property rights (and yes, the right to earn profits from such concept).
Concerning 2, I am not an expert on american constitutional history, but I fail to see in what part of the U.S constitution intelectual property is granted as right. But even if that was the case, it will be irrelevant for the discusion (at least you pretend to use an argument of authority, and ignore that the founding fathers granted other "rights" that were not such at all, say, as the right to own slaves).
Finally, about 3, I am not sure that innovation (scientific or otherwise) depends on granting inventors or researchers the rights over the ideas or intelectual information they produce. But even if that was the case, I disregard that consequencialist argument, since in ethics I am a consequencialist at all.
Jason:
As a libertarian and follower of natural law , I believe rights exist even if the state grants them or not. That means also "rights" that do not deserve to be called that way, do not exist regardless if the state defends em or not too. That is the case with intelectual property rights (which is not the same than all other forms of property rights). That is why I call intelectual property rights a "priviledge" and not "rights". I may be wrong of course, but at least I think you deserve to know from where I am coming from in this whole discusion.
Sorry, I mean I am NOT a consequencialist at all.
Enough mercy and caring - would amounts for reserach expense go down ..even making many medicines unneeded ..
The donation of The Green Bay Packers a while ago for the Rwandan missions may be a timely lesson !
2. at prices charged to europeans and americans, western pharmaceutical companies would sell very little inventory in the developing world. total annual lost sales due to reverse engineering of medications is estimated to be $3 billion (according to the international federation of pharmaceutical manufacturer's association, 2000). this amount is less than half of roche's annual R/D budget alone. and roche is only one company among many.
3. western companies often already discount drug prices in africa by 80%.
4. while reverse engineering is stealing, i wonder if "double effect" could be invoked -- one may foresee stealing but not intend it in order to achieve a good greater than the evil performed. a biotech version of robin hood, if you will....
5. regarding certain life-sustaining drugs, on the balance of justice are people's lives v. people's intellectual property. i think human lives always outweigh property.
6. the claim that reverse engineering results in "innovation coming to a screeching halt" is simply empirically false.
7. regarding rice, why the false dichotomy between giving rice to feed the dying and helping poorer nations develop sustainable agricultural practices? why not give the man a fish AND teach him how to fish at the same time, especially if he's dying of malnutrition?
1. You're right, you did not directly say that companies don't have rights to profits. However, the question of whether someone has a right to steal companies' profitable intellectual property is closely tied to what one's understanding of profits and their function in the economic system would be. My experience is that those who believe it OK to steal intellectual property, or otherwise to steal from companies what is rightly theirs, do not understand the critical need to protect companies' profit-making potential.
2. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution extends power to Congress "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Establishes (or you might say protects) the rights to patents and copyrights.
3. Innovation and invention may sometimes happen without an economic incentive. Human beings are, after all, highly curious people and derive pleasure and satisfaction just from understanding and manipulating the natural world. However, economically-important innovations which require prior investment in lab and equipment, to say nothing of the investment in people and their education, really are too rare to even matter. Take the example I offered, of specialized drug development--it's unthinkable that such a development would occur outside of a system which protected the inventor's potential for profiting from it--including protecting his invention from being raided.
To bring it closer to home--Sergio, what do you do for a living? How about working for free? There are poor people among us who would benefit from that. Knowing this is true, can you really keep demanding to be paid? When you're willing to work for free, then I'll be disposed to take seriously the suggestion that innovation will occur in the absence of property rights.
For what it's worth, I would have been a Rockefeller Republican 35 years ago (I'm a business-owning capitalist and not ashamed of it). Today, the landscape has shifted so much that that I'm left more or less a centrist Democrat by default today, though neither party thrills me. If the Economist had a party, I'd vote for it.
Every realm of human endeavour is structured by an irreducible duality. Morality is concerned with good and evil, aesthetics with the beautiful and the ugly, and economics with the profitable and the unprofitable. In politics, the core distinction is between friend and enemy. The political comes into being when groups are placed in a relation of enmity, where each comes to perceive the other as an irreconcilable adversary to be fought and, if possible, defeated. Such relations exhibit an existential logic, which overrides the motives, which may have brought groups to this point. Each group now faces an opponent, and must take account of that fact: “every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms itself into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friends and enemies.” The political consists not in war or armed conflict as such, but, precisely, in the relation of enmity: not competition but confrontation.
Some believe in the possibility of neutral rules that can mediate between conflicting positions, but to Schmitt there is no such neutrality, since any rule – even an ostensibly fair one – is the result of a victory of one political faction over another. Some claim to believe in pluralism, but Schmitt believed that pluralism is an illusion because no real state would ever allow other forces to contest its power.
The aim of political discourse is to discredit, displace, and neutralize an opponent, to destroy a competing ideology, and to reduce its adherents to political impotence.
It is a commonplace of the Civilians, going back to the Classical Roman jurists that, whilst possession is a fact, ownership is a right and, therefore a creation of law.
Mirabeau put this very well, when he said:
“Property is a social creation. The laws not only protect and maintain property; they bring it into being; they determine its scope and the extent that it occupies in the rights of the citizens.”
Now, all personal rights or jura crediti are incorporeal: the right to the payment of a debt, the performance of a contract &c; so, too, are many real rights, such as praedial servitudes, like rights of way, watercourse, rights of support from adjacent buildings, rights to light &c, or personal servitudes, such as usufruct. So, too, are powers, such as the power of testation. That some of them are rights over corporeal things does not change their character, for in an assignation of them, there can be no actual tradition of a thing.
Intellectual property rights seem to fit seamlessly into this structure.
1. Well, your experience does not apply to me. I did not directly, as you acknowledged, nor indirectly claimed or suggested companies or individuals have a not a right to profit. I claimed that I do not see intelectual property as a right, and thus I fail to see why anybody should get profit FROM in that particular way. That is very different that nobody can get profit in OTHER ways (like selling concrete objects, derived from their labor or derived from rent etc...).
2. Ok, you have a point. Yet still, as I said, I am disputing more than the legal status of intelectual property in the U.S. I am disputing if it is philosophically sound as a concept.
3. Well the problem is that innovation happened during most human history without intelectual property laws, and that even, it is not even clear if intelectual prperty law actually for an enviroment for innovation to flourish, more than a true free market.
I will summarize my argument against intelectual property:
1. Intelectual property demands the unaceptable concept that ideas can be owned, and people coudl get a rent from them for its claimed ownership.
2. Intelectual property requires an invasion on real property (for example, if i have a CD with music, it implies that music industry can control what I do with that CD, etc...).
3. There is no evidence that intelectual property fosters innovation or is crucial for it, as its defenders usually claim.
4. There is no evidence either that the benefits outweight the costs in an society with intelectual property rights. See this essay on the issue for example:
http://mises.org/daily/1763
Michael PS:
Never read Carl Schmidt, but hearing his conception of politics is no surprise why he was considered the nazi jurist by excelence.
I seem to remember someone saying that we should think of enemies differently, but I just can’t seem to remember who that was. And I seem to remember a bunch of guys who thought that government could only serve the people if created limits on government power, but I can’t remember their names either.
Well yes natural rights do exist whether the state grants them or not. My point was that intellectual property rights are to be classed along with the right of incorporation and other conveniences of contract law. They were developed from the customs of merchants and enforced by the state when they already existed. If you look in the wikipedia you will find them mentioned in the Talmud which was among other things a book of jurisprudence written by people with little representation in the government.
Property rights are to some degree contingent on local conditions and the agreement of the locals. The right of property may be a natural right but what constitutes' property varies. A hunter-gatherer might consider his only property to be his personal tools and weapons, a herdsman would regard his animals as his property(or as his tribe's collective property). A farmer must regard land as his property as agriculture requires land ownership. And a mercantile society must have abstract property. Money is abstract property, a contract stating that the goods in a warehouse belong to so and so are abstract. Shares in a corporation are abstract. And patents and copyrights are abstract rights.
The modern state is either a direct adaptation of the Italian style mercantile state or(in the case of Britain) an adaptation of a feudal state to the needs of a mercantile society. In either case, abstract property was created by agreement by the possessors first, and backed by the state second. Property rights in the abstract may be natural rights, but in the concrete they are dependent on what is regarded as property which in turn is dependent on the nature of a society. My point is that to say that intellectual property rights were granted as a privilege by the state is inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say that judging intellectual property rights was a responsibility placed on the state by those who already agreed that it was a legitimate right.
This is of course a simplistic description of a complex process but I think it is more accurate, because saying that it is a privilege granted by the state implies that the state thought it up itself(which is difficult to imagine of a feudal state) and bestowed it as a boon to passive participants(and thinking of the Medieval middle class as passive isn't that easy either). Intellectual property rights came about because they were useful and the state adapted to them.
An intriguing article, especially for a former Peace Corps Volunteer like me. I am supposed to fall into the liberal camp as a result of my two tours in the Peace Corps in Africa, my grass-roots medical work with poor campesinos in Mexico, my experience on a joint US-Soviet team doing reconstruction after an earthquake in Armenia, and so forth. But, if I want, I can produce impeccable redneck credentials as the former president of a Junior NRA gun club when I was in high school and my military service as a B-52 crewman. I just don't seem to fit into the neat liberal/conservative boxes you present above.
It struck me, while reading your piece, that the Peace Corps liberals you portray are indistinguishable from one another. You could hang them all out on a line. No individual personalities emerge in the slightest way. I never knew a Peace Corps group quite like this. They seem to function simply as foils for you. Remember, in your future writing, that there's a difference between characterization and caricature.
But I couldn't help wondering if this group was really so obtuse that, when you mentioned that you would be honored to serve under John Ashcroft, not one of them thought to ask the obvious question: As a red-blooded American conservative, how could you justify Ashcroft's promotion of Total Information Awareness--the plan to construct a vast network of satellites and supercomputers that would harvest private information on every American: credit card records, private emails, health records, social networking, phone records, library reading habits, and much more, with no search warrant necessary, looking for suspicious patterns? The computer algorithms, of course, would decide just which Americans were behaving suspiciouly, reading disapproved books, and so on, and God help the citizen who was mistakenly "flagged". I would think any authentic conservative's blood would run cold at the notion, but Ashcroft was an enthusiatic booster of the plan.
And yet, nary a peep as to how they challenged your own assumptions and subconsious prejudices. I can't imagine that they didn't, assuming you were open to such challenges. Addressing that would have allowed you to make the core of your argument all the more convincing. Instead you merely make of yourself a harbringer of truth to those who are merely interested in making little more than general and elusive arguments.
Neee-Var!!
Zeees are eee-vil Leftist-Lee-bah-row Fashist Scum Pigs who vill just as soon murder Rush Limbo and Sarah Pellin as eat tofu burgers.
Dey must be eleee-men-nated!!
I largely agree with your historical account of the development of the Law Merchant (Lex Mercatoria), but I feel there is one important factor you overlook.
The mass of mercantile usages were harmonized and elaborated, given a coherent structure and theoretical justification in the studies and lecture theatres of Bologna and Paris by the Professors of the Civil Law. It was the revival of the study of Roman Law, by men like Accursius and Bartolus and the presence of university-trained advocates, bailiffs and seneschals that transformed the law administered in municipal and feudal courts. The law of advanced commercial societies, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, was made available, to deal with new questions, unanticipated in the local customary laws.
If Anglo-American law is largely judge-made law, then the Civil Law of Europe is professor-made law and nowhere more so than in the Lex Mercatoria. It was incorporated bodily into English Law by Lord Mansfield and thence passed to the then American colonies.
Its intellectual roots are to be sought in the writings of the Roman jurists and it exhibits, as I said earlier, a seamless harmony with the law of ownership, possession and obligation that underlies the whole tradition of Western law.
Whether or not, a good article and very reflective. People decry the rancor of today's political debate, and I think you have touched very close to the heart of the problem. Good for you for not being rancorous, for staying in the discussion, and for stating the case with humor, logic and equanimity.
Pearls before the swine, however, it would seem. On the other hand, I venture to guess that some of them, when realizing one day the empty promises of the good-intentioned crowd and of collectivist solutions to everything, will remember that nice young Catholic conservative who actually made sense, if anyone was listening.