May 23, 2003
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The tribute that vice pays to virtue (Daniel Davies, 5/21/2003)[T]he single most sensible thing said in political philosophy in the twentieth century was JK Galbraith's aphorism that the quest of conservative thought throughout the ages has been "the search for a higher moral justification for selfishness". Some rightwingers are not hypocrites because they admit that their basic moral principle is "what I have, I keep". Some rightwingers are hypocrites because they pretend that "what I have, I keep" is always and everywhere the best way to express a general unparticularised love for all sentient things.... [A]t base, the test of someone's politics is simple; if their political aim is to advance all of humanity, they're on our side, while if they have an overriding constraint that the current owners of property must always be satisfied first, they're playing for the opposition.
We don't normally comment on other bloggers, but this got my dander up, and offers a good opportunity to make an observation.
About a week ago I posted on Locke's relevance today, particularly as a counter to modern liberals such as John Rawls. Of Rawls I wrote:
Rawls assumes that people behind this veil of ignorance will choose something resembling contemporary liberalism. (I suspect, BTW, that Rawls's whole construct was motivated by a common 1970s slander of conservatives: Rawls supposes that the only reason people would choose something other than liberalism is selfishness, and if you take away their knowledge of how to be selfish effectively, then they will a fortiori choose liberalism as their politics.)
Mr. Davies regurgitates John Kenneth Galbraith's version of that "1970s slander." Old malice never dies; it only fades away, over the course of generations.
But let's take a serious look at selfishness as a driver of politic views. Mr. Davies's notion that mere respect for private property is proof of selfishness we can reject out of hand: his position would condemn, for instance, all Jews and Christians who hold as their ideal of justice Micah's vision of a time when, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks ... Every man shall sit under his own vine or under his own fig tree, undisturbed." [Micah 4: 3-4] The nerve of those people, wanting to have their own vines and trees!
What is a more reasonable indicator of selfishness? Now, it is impossible to look inside another's heart and observe his motives directly. ("I, the LORD, alone probe the mind and test the heart," Jeremiah 17:10.) But we can look at actions and choices, and judge: do this person's decisions bring benefits to himself and harm to others, or do they benefit others as much as himself? A person whose choices systematically bring material goods to himself at the expense of others is more likely to be selfish than a person whose choices systematically deliver material goods to others.
Now, the American political process is a social bargaining game in which all citizens participate. In deciding which politicians to support, and which legislation, participants have to weigh their own preferences for the good of others and the good of themselves, and decide who will best satisfy their preferences. With the American system of checks and balances, supermajorities are usually required to act, so legislative outcomes will probably incorporate the views of most citizens. Thus, it is natural to assume that actual political outcomes are a rough average over the preferences of all American citizens.
For simplicity, let's model the American two-party system as consisting of only two types of citizen, the representative Democrat and the representative Republican. Suppose that one of these types consists entirely of selfish materialists, whose over-riding political goal is to maximize their own wealth without regard to the wealth of members of the opposite party. And suppose that the other type consists of public-minded people who want the best for everyone, and count others' welfare equally with their own. What would we expect the outcome of the political process to look like?
Well, as legislative outcomes are a simple average over these two types, and bargaining leads to a welfare maximum, we'd expect the outcome to be a redistribution of wealth from the public-minded to the selfish. After all, the public-minded are indifferent to seeing their own wealth redistributed to others, while the selfish are eager to receive.
Now let's look at contemporary America and class the major government disbursements by the predominant party affiliation of the beneficiaries. Outside of national defense, foreign affairs, transportation, and payments for the elderly (Social Security and Medicare) -- which benefit all citizens roughly equally -- the largest buckets of government spending are these:
- Welfare for the poor and disabled: Democrats.
- Spending for scientific/medical/academic research and for higher education tuition subsidies: Democrats.
- Spending for K-12 public education: Democrats.
- Government employee salaries: Democrats.
- Farm subsidies: bipartisan, but where subsidies are highest -- e.g. North Dakota, where 85% of farm income comes from government spending -- farmers are strongly Democratic; where subsidies are lowest farmers are strongly Republican.
Looking at the payers, it's hard to know which party's members pay more in taxes, but the wealthier tend to be more Republican, and we know the tax code is progressive. So Republicans may pay more in taxes, or it may be fairly even, but it's unlikely Democrats pay more.
Comparing our result -- Democrats generally benefit materially from politics, Republicans generally lose -- to our model suggests that in America it is the Democrats who are selfish, and the Republicans who are public-spirited and concerned for the welfare of others.
Now I happen to think that this generalization is true. I have often heard Democrats assert a sense of entitlement to profit from government redistribution -- not just poor Democrats either, but wealthy university professors. I have never heard Republicans assert that there ought to be a net flow of money from Democrats to Republicans. Can one imagine the outcry if a Republican politician were to argue that the flow of transfer payments should be reversed, and Democrats should pay roughly $500 billion a year net to Republicans?
What is, in fact, the conservative attitude? Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." Though this is often quoted by Democrats in favor of higher taxes, it is really the foundation of conservatives' attitude to politics. Conservatives see the social bargain as a trade of taxes for civilization -- civilization meaning basic protection of life, liberty, and property against enemies foreign and domestic. We value civilization so highly that we feel we get a good bargain if we lose 30% or 40% of our income and receive nothing in return except civilization. The chief goods conservatives expect from government are national security, efficient policing, the rule of law, and above all, the preservation of freedom. And though all of these might be had for 10% of our income in a perfect world, we will willingly pay 40% in order to buy the loyalty of the selfish to these goods.
But Democrats no longer seem to understand that this is the conservative attitude. The reason the Clinton administration drew animosity from many conservatives is not because its policies were radical -- they weren't; to conservatives, many of the policies of the Clinton administration, from NAFTA to welfare reform to telecom reform, compare favorably to the domestic policies of the two Bush administrations. But Clinton's willingness to lie under oath after signing the law that made his testimony mandatory, his willingness to launch surprise attacks against Americans suspected of minor crimes leading to the deaths of dozens of women and children from poison gas at Waco, his use of the IRS to conduct repeated audits of conservative groups, his cavalier attitude to national security, and his demonization of opponents, suggested that the Democrats were no longer willing to honor what Republicans understood to be the social contract. Democrats apparently wanted to continue taking 30% of the Republican incomes for themselves, but were no longer willing to give civilization -- the rule of law, civil courtesy, liberty and constrained government power -- in return. Conservatives felt they were no longer equals making a social contract, but serfs being exploited. And thus Clinton was despised.
Conservatives are willing to pay an extravagant price for a good -- civilization and liberty -- that benefits all. To be called "selfish" for this, is to be insulted. Democrats ought to cease making this charge. As I've argued, the objective evidence is against it.
One last bit of friendly advice, particularly relevant in this age of filibusters of judges. Democrats should recognize that we do have a social contract, and that if they do not honor their part of it, they cannot expect to continue receiving transfers of Republican wealth. Greater civility and charity, respect for the equal political rights of conservatives, and respect for conservatives' specific desires for lawfulness and limited government powers, would be in the Democrats' enlightened self-interest. Conservatives are now watching to see if Democrats are wise enough not to fritter away a good deal -- or if they are merely blindly selfish.