Morning, visionaries
Jon also inquires: “Perhaps we could agree that equal opportunity to access social goods is a fundamental principle of this society . . .”
This sounds grand as a slogan. But is a private club, members only, a social good? Is a restaurant owner’s desire to manage a place that maintains a certain tone a social good? Or is the only social good the commodity sold? Is freedom of association a social good? All these questions, and many more like them, show that we cannot use terms like “social good” without assuming a standard. And what is that standard? And if equal opportunity to access these social goods is going to be enforced by The Law, then why is the worldview that views one thing as a social good, and denies that another thing is, to be imposed on the rest of us?
In response to Tom, I want to argue that with regard to true civil rights, justice should be blind to the status of that individual. But there is a difference between the right of habeus corpus, which I believe should apply to all of us, tall, short, heterosexual, homosexual, female, male, black, white, etc., and the “right” to affordable housing. In the latter case, the right can only be granted if someone else’s rights (in this case, to his own money) is infringed. True civil rights restrict the government, not the citizens.
Do you want me to sign something that says the burden of proof in a homosexual’s criminal trial should be identical to the burden of proof in a heterosexual’s trial? Like a shot, sign me up. Do you want me to say that a little old lady renting out her duplex apartment next door should be coerced in renting to a man and woman living together, as they used to say, without benefit of clergy? I’m not going to do it — because you can only give to the couple what you have taken from the little old lady. Did I mention she was in her eighties?
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.