My Dream Candidate
In a recent column, I wrote about the fantasy presidential candidate of some conservatives — Dr. Ben Carson. In fairness, I must confess that I have a fantasy candidate of my own — one who has even less of a chance of becoming president than Carson. My guy died in 2002.
My fantasy candidate is Harvard political philosopher Robert Nozick, who was most famous for his work "Anarchy, State, and Utopia," published in 1974 and declared, by the Times Literary Supplement, to be one of the 100 most influential books since World War II.
Nozick, in that book, was responding to his philosopher colleague John Rawls, whose "A Theory of Justice" was seen to provide a philosophical justification for the welfare state. Nozick argued, "The state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection."
He became a hero to many on the political right for his views, but he was a hero to me for how he presented them. In Nozick's words, his book was not a "political tract" but an "exploration of issues."
He wrote: "One view about how to write a philosophy book holds that an author should ... present to the world a finished, complete, and elegant whole. This is not my view. At any rate, I believe that there also is a place and a function in our ongoing intellectual life for a less complete work, containing unfinished presentations, conjectures, open questions and problems, leads, side connections, as well as a main line of argument. There is room for words on subjects other than last words."
That got my attention — for both its substance and its style. But then Nozick went on to write a passage that sent me instantly off to find someone to read it to — and has stayed in my head for more than 30 years:
"One form of philosophical activity feels like pushing and shoving things to fit into some fixed perimeter of specified shape. All those things are lying out there, and they must be fit in. You push and shove the material into the rigid area getting it into the boundary on one side, and it bulges out on another. You run around and press in the protruding bulge, producing yet another in another place. So you push and shove and clip off corners from the things so they'll fit and you press in until finally almost everything sits unstably more or less in there; what doesn't gets heaved far away so that it won't be noticed. (Of course, it's not all that crude. There's also the coaxing and cajoling. And the body English.) Quickly, you find an angle from which it looks like an exact fit and take a snapshot; at a fast shutter speed before something else bulges out too noticeably. Then, back to the darkroom to touch up the rents, rips, and tears in the fabric of the perimeter. All that remains is to publish the photograph as a representation of exactly how things are, and to note how nothing fits properly into any other shape."
Nozick reflected: "Why do they strive to force everything into that one fixed perimeter? Why not another perimeter, or, more radically, why not leave things where they are? What does having everything within a perimeter do for us? Why do we want it so? (What does it shield us from?)"
It's not that Nozick wasn't passionate about his views; it's that he knew his knowledge was not complete. He did not see it as his job to settle everything. Nor was it his job to keep quiet if his views were only partly worked out. Instead, he offered it all up — "the doubts and worries and uncertainties as well as the beliefs, convictions, and arguments."
He acknowledged that his book was not a full treatment of the philosophical challenges he took on, so he wrote, "Perhaps this essay will stimulate others to help."
There is little for me to add to Nozick's views except to say that the focus of his brilliant lament applies more broadly than he said. Every trick of the philosopher's trade mocked by Nozick is practiced daily by politicians of every party — and with greater public harm. Every partisan has a story, and a storyline is the beginning of distortion.
If politicians could debate policy with all their "doubts and worries and uncertainties" in the hope that others would help, imagine the world we could have.
Maybe someday.
Tom Rosshirt was a national security speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a foreign affairs spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. Email him at tomrosshirt@gmail.com. To find out more about Tom Rosshirt and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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Sir;.. The mistake is to think of this society as a state, when the state is an abstraction of the government... tWhat ever the defense, the rich ignore the needs of the poor at their peril... If we think of ourselves as the nation we want to be then the welfare of all is the entire purpose, presented well in the preamble of the constitution...It is a bad sign for the rich and the government when people tend to see the government as bad, and as an abstraction when it should be their natural extension...
To say the state may not, is nonsense... States do what they wish so long as possible... States are founded on conflict, and when that conflict can no longer be carried on, people reform themselves on a voluntary basis, or divide in some crucial and usually violent fashion...Nation, on the other hand, have in all natural examples grown out of a common mother, so that all people are related...Nations are destroyed from the inside when they become raiding societies, and wealth becomes unequal, and the means of maintaining inequality...
The money economy destroys the honor society that binds people as a nation... And that word: Natal; which is the basis of so many of our words is also the cause of natural law, since it grew out of the Roman Law of Nations which for the first time in history brought up the equality of human beings in a legal sense because it treated all nations as equal...
To look at your society as a state misses the point that the government should promote and improve upon the natural relationships between people... We can invest the state with all our power if we see fit; but we cannot give it a lick of common sense where the people have none...To say that the state may not do, when the nation certainly would do because the nation sees the value of the long term relationship, and its reliance upon shared resources, and equality, economic and political- shows the relative power of the concepts.....
The question should never become how to achieve economic equality because that means- inequality of rights has resulted in economic injustice and inequality, so that the task is double, of changing the rules of the state so that rights are equal, and of making certain that resources are shared...
Regardless of what Mr. Nozik thought; we own this state, and our ownership is the basis of our claim to entitlements... As a practical matter, it does not matter whether all the land is in all the hands, or if all of it is in the hands of a few... Where ever it may be, it must support the government and the people... This is certainly most painlessly done where the people are in possession of the commonwealth, but don't let anyone shit you about ownership and wealth... What people get with property is nothing free and clear; and the state, and the people hold the ultimate title to it... The more the commonwealth is in few and private hands the more it must bear taxation, for its defense, and for the care of the poor...Property ownership gives more rights in this society, but the fact is, that we own the property, all the realestate, and what is sold, is rights in it...
Sir;... There is simply no other way of talking about societies than as closed systems... We know better, of course, that American capitalism even before our revolution depended upon international trade, especially the triangle trade in slaves, sugar, and rum... Today we import capital, export capital, export and import products, export and import workers... If there are no fixed parameters, no true inside or outside to our society, how difficult does it then become to change this society in a meaningful way especially when as a moral issue and a legal issue little control is given the government over the affairs of the economy... The presumption is that when everything works it is because of the economy, and when nothing works it is the fault of the government...This presumption is naive at best, and dead wrong always...
So; if as a practical matter, when we talk of capitalism we are alway talking of international capitalism, the idea of parameters is foolish... Just as when, under pressure, the intermarried nobility of Europe were called on for aid, and did aid each other where possible against revolution, we can expect the international rich to defend the poverty of Americans, and to defend the wealth of America where it is possible...From our perspective, the very capital we have exported that makes us poor, and then makes us broke through the defense of that which benefits us not in the least may make revolution possible... There is no good argument for an economy that does not work except in the guns of our military that we have so often pointed at the world... If they decide to point those weapons at us, and tell us to make the economy work, or die; what shall we do???
Still from a sociological perspective, and from the anthropological perspective what societies may do and shall do is entirely in their own interest to decide, and if that decision is being made by people outside of the group, things are not turning out well... And from our prespective of a people robbed of our inalienable commonwealth, those who done it have no sympathy, no nationality, and look at us a animals to be used or destroyed.. The natural moral bonds that stand in the way of exploitation of brother by brother are missing; and the moral restraint we feel toward such exploiters is false and dangerous...People will kill a fly or mosquito making a feast of their blood, but they will not make a law against those who make a national and international practice of bleeding them...
My point is that the man who was your hero may stand well with people, he is a mole hill you want to make a mountain out of... His vision was not great, and the breadth of his knowledge was narrow...A narrow view of problems makes a reformer, but it takes an historical and anthropolical encyclopedic sort of knowledge, along with philosophical insight to make revolutionaries; but it takes much more than that to make revolutions... If the government will not take care of the poor as even Rome did with her citizens, the people will have to take back the government, and the economy and the whole of the commonwealth...
I believe that quote about philosophy that you include was written by Nietzsche, or about him; and it is true, that most philosophies have been presented as a system...Where then does he come by his assertion if not by some grand vision, of what the state may do with their coercive power??? The people can do almost anything they set their mind to, and when survival makes revolution necessary, what the people do in their own defense is the law, and it is certainly possible because they do it... Any other thought on the matter is simply naive...
To consider the state as an abstraction is nonsense when the abstraction of it is the means of considering its reality...The state as a form, an idea, an abstraction, tells us little about our reality which is after all a human reality that does not bear abstraction... States are designed to maintain into perpetuity a forced inequality of economic and political power; but as with law in general, it is the people's consent and will that gives power to the state in reality... When it becomes clear, as it has, that the state is not working in the best interest of the people, they withdraw their consent, even if, as now they pledge their loyalty to the constitution that is the abstraction of our state...
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sat Apr 6, 2013 8:00 AM
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