I posted a while back on Facebook about Todd Akin’s statements on abortion and rape, but the subject is worth returning to this morning.
Among the post-mortems is the proposition that extreme anti-abortion sentiments cost the Republicans two Senate seats that were theirs to win, and that the Republicans will have to have better discipline about expressing such sentiments in the future.
This is no doubt true as a reading of what happened in those races, but it’s a serious mistake to act as if Akin, Mourdock and others on the right expressing the view that rape doesn’t cause pregnancies, or that pregnancies following rapes are the will of God, and other variations thereof are just being indiscreet, stupid or unbalanced. Or that they are just an idiosyncratic and extreme fringe of the argument against abortion rights. What they say about rape and pregnancy is a an almost necessary outcome of the baseline case against choice. They cannot get away from these sentiments without conceding on the fundamentals of their beliefs. The proposition that rape by definition cannot make a woman pregnant, and the even uglier inference hidden inside of that, that a pregnant woman wasn’t raped, is a desperate and conscious attempt to get out of the trap they’ve made for themselves, not a product of incapacity or derangement.
The trap is this: if you concede that it is legitimate for a woman to choose in the aftermath of a rape to terminate a pregnancy because that pregnancy extends the trauma and violation of the attack, you concede that women are entitled to the control of their own bodies, minds and lives including pregnancy. Game over. Because there’s no way to firewall off rape as so utterly unlike all the other circumstances in which a woman might decide that she cannot carry a pregnancy to term, all the other feelings of trauma or violation or risk or burden or incapacity or fraility or self-protection or need or planning or autonomy. You concede that it’s a woman’s prerogative in one case, you are open to many others, if not all others–and you are conceding the inflexible declaration that an embryo is a fully human subject with full human rights. (Because no one anywhere would argue that anyone is personally entitled to kill a fully human subject just to manage our own autonomy and emotional wholeness, or to bring closure to trauma.)
Don’t expect people like Todd Akin to get away from their views on rape and abortion. They can’t get away until they adopt a far less absolutist view of the underlying principles. Once it’s conceded that women can choose, the argument is only about what the circumstantial rather than fundamental restrictions to their choices can be.
Where do men like Akin come from? Are they trained by their parents, our schools, or our churches? Are they born, or are they made? Is nature or nurture to blame? Can they change, or is it in them, in their very natures, is it natural? How do we change our political systems so that such men do not have power over others? Is there a group of people who, by inclination, through training, or by position that we can trust to guard against such men?
Indeed, my own position is abortion should only be allowed in case of great danger to the physical health or life of the mother–precisely, indeed, to wall off the “mental trauma” loophole that would instantly widen to a yawning chasm. There is, of course, no necessary logical connection between this position and Akin’s comments or Mourdock’s theodicy–although obviously there are overdetermined psychological and cultural overlaps. As you say, cede the circumstance of rape, and all other restrictions become circumstantial–and, although inexorable logics and slippery slopes don’t always happen in politics, they frequently do. But it’s all irrelevant now: the overwhelmingly likelihood now is that the holocaust of the unborn will continue as long as the Republic endures. The butchers have won. I suppose you can indulge yourself in boogie-man tales about them awful conservatives who’ll take away your right to choose, but why waste time?
(Don’t worry about those pesky, insufficient state restrictions. They’ll disappear soon enough.)
It may not sound like it, but in a roundabout way I’m trying to be sympathetic to this point. E.g., if one proceeds from the first principles of many in the anti-abortion movement, the need to carefully manage the question of rape pregnancies is understandable. I dislike the way in which Akin or Mourdock are treated as if they’re stupid hicks (though Akin may well be stupid in other respects)–I think that’s the progressive’s way of avoiding that at least the theodicial argument makes sense in relation to the first principle. (The rapes-don’t-cause-pregnancy trope, on the other hand, is a desperate attempt to drag a sort of folk science in to save the day.) The first principle is where the really incommensurable oppositions come to rest and I don’t really know what can possibly be done about them, because I don’t think there is any real way to bridge them. (That’s the problem with the idea of a pragmatic ‘moderate’ position that says, “Well, ok, how about some inconveniences and restrictions here and there”: it makes no one happy and rests on no principles other than ‘let’s create a compromise’).
Thank you for an even-tempered response. I’m not feeling very hopeful at present.
Prof. Burke puts his finger on a problem — highlighted effectively (and emotionally) by Withywindle — but I think it’s worth highlighting the last line of Tim’s response: “That’s the problem with the idea of a pragmatic ‘moderate’ position that says, “Well, ok, how about some inconveniences and restrictions here and there”: it makes no one happy and rests on no principles other than ‘let’s create a compromise’”
As a description, this is accurate enough: quite regularly, compromises that emerge on policy areas where first principles are prominently and unavoidably involved make no one happy and rest on no principles. How could they do either? Compromise here means violating prominent first principles; and they can’t rest on principles, because clashing principles it was characterizes the predicament in the first place. At best, they could rest on other first principles, but only at the cost of violating principled positions of all those engaged in the controvery.
I’d go beyond Burke, though, by pointing out that such predicaments in the construction of policy are not rare, but common. Governments and their laws and regulations routinely touch on issues involving first principles. But, since such issues have long been recognized as unresolvable in principle, yet they must be resolved for government to be government, we quite routinely reach pragmatic moderate positions that make many people unhappy on principle.
The name for this reality, since at least the Renaissance, has been ‘prudence’. In the sixteenth century (which I know a little more about than other periods), many Europeans faced a religious schism in their immediate communities that could not be resolved on principle. For adherents of the existing church, Protestants were heretical schismatics, and thus (from a widely held perspective) consciously or unconsciously agents of the devil. Ecclesiastical and civil law had well-articulated principles for handling heretical schismatics, many of which ended up on the scaffold or pyre. On principle, compromise or ‘moderation’ were both wrong and dangerous. Equally, Protestants of various stripes identified the Roman church as the ‘Whore of Bablyon’, and insisted that subjection (even while disagreeing internally) to its ceremonies as a guarantee of damnation (cf. Calvin’s response to the so-called Nicodemites).
Yet government continued — occasionally bloodily — and communities continued to function, even where the re-establishment of religious uniformity proved to be impossible. Many Europeans ended up compromising in practice about issues that were in principle beyond compromise. Awkward, uncomfortable and inefficient ‘moderation’ turned out to be more appealing to a vast majority of the population than rigor and perfection in the persecution of heretics.
Neither side accepted the compromises that their followers were making for centuries. The Vatican condemned the Peace of Westphalia and all Catholic sovereigns who signed it — without effect. Protestant divines (and their various Awakenings) looked for the day that compromise would end. Transformed by the new conditions of the 19th and then the 20th centuries, rejection continued (loudly) of both the heretics and, equally, of any ‘moderate’ path that denied the sovereignty of principle on the issues involved. American Evangelicals of some persusasions continue to reject the possibility of a ‘secular sphere’. Yet the ‘pragmatic moderate’ positions that satisfyin no one persist — and indeed, they have proven to satisfy a great many people.
There are other cases, too, more problematic ones for sure. Rejection of slavery in the 19th century was a matter of principle that long faced ‘pragmatic moderate’ solutions that prevented its abolition. Pragmatic moderates long looked for ways that other European states could live with a National Socialist Germany (and could have prevailed had the Hitler regime not combined its genocidal ambitions with unrelenting military aggression against its neighbors). In truth, it’s often hard to defend prudence; it has gotten a bad name. Yet in the end, we cannot survive as a society — even at the scale of a village, and far less on the scale of a nation — unless we sometimes reluctantly practice it.
This will not satisfy Withywindle, who feels called to end what s/he calls ‘butchery’. It will not satisfy feminists who feel equally called to defend the autonomy of their persons from state or religious interference. That’s the predicament, and that will not go away, prudence or no.
Yes. Beautifully put. Carol Nackenoff put it very well at our last Jonathan Haidt symposium also–that the Constitution is an agreement about disagreement. Which means in part it agrees that no one is likely to be permanently or thoroughly satisfied about the state of affairs in the country that it governs.
I also think another saint of “prudence”, by the way, might be Edmund Burke, whose work I think is recently wrongfully associated with a particular version of American conservatism. One of the overlooked things about Edmund Burke, including his critique of the French Revolution, is that he not only conceded that many fundamental things about the culture and life of nations will change, but that they should change. He was not one of those Counter-Enlightenment figures who rejected change or progress in toto. Burke’s dispute was with the mechanisms and instrumentalities of progress and transformation embodied in the French Revolution and similar projects. The curious lacuna in Burke is what he thinks the mechanisms of change actually are, and how they might converge or be directed towards progress. (Because he also clearly thinks that progress is not guaranteed or assured.) I think that change in an Edmund-Burkean paradigm has to happen in everyday life, in communities, in familial and personal relationships, in our sense of selfhood, in expressive and customary cultures.
What is hard for some contemporary American conservatives to accept is that this sort of change has in fact happened in some of America’s communities and people, apparently a thin majority of them. It seems it was fine to hold Edmund Burke out as a bulwark when the everyday life of community and culture seemed on balance to still be in accord with a conservative sensibility. It obviously seems less fine to do so when it is not, which probably accounts for the eclipse of Burke as a figure whom contemporary conservatives actually read and understand as opposed to genuflect towards.
Admittedly progressives and liberals don’t particularly grasp that in many cases in their own communities and lives they are defending habitus rather than agitating for transformation–that is also a very hard role for them to inhabit. But the mysterious kind of change that Burke agreed can happen has happened, sometimes less mysteriously, sometimes more so, and so some important things about culture, morality, aspiration, selfhood and so on are different than they were.
The real divide might turn out to be between those of us who either like living the way we are or who believe for principled (even prudent) reasons that you ought to learn to live with the culture of your moment and those who will only be satisfied with sudden transformations driven by strong state intervention, law-making and the capture of civic institutions.
It would be progress if more people, whatever their vision of the righteous life, learned to persuade by living that life and imagining it and showing it to others and worrying far less about prohibiting or forbidding or denying others what they consider righteous or moral or just. Which is, I know, a very liberal (in the old sense) vision.
1) I have a professional interest in prudence; hence pseudonymity requires that I not say too much on the subject. I will mention only that Machiavelli’s Prince murders prudently, and Richelieu’s Statesman prudently conducts a coup d’etat; the concept is broader than mere moderation, tolerance, and compromise–as I trust PQuincy knows, however he may have abbreviated for blogging purposes.
2) A belief in ever-increasing moderation, prudence, what-have-you, strikes me as neither an accurate description of the past or a plausible evocation of the future. If you disagree on the accuracy or plausibility, please note that it is a Whiggish interpretation of history, a comforting and self-praising narrative, which invites skepticism.
3) I take prudence and rhetoric to involve ways for incommensurate beliefs to co-exist. But that does not mean that one ceases to struggle for the victory of one’s beliefs; merely that one substitutes persuasion for violence as one’s tool of choice.
4) John Brown’s body lies a molderin’ in the grave, but his shining example of righteous murder of evildoers will always be an inspiration.
5) I am skeptical that liberals are more familiar with Burke than conservatives. If we are looking for an apples-to-apples comparison, if we locked up the writing staff of the National Review and the New Republic, asked them how much of Burke they had read, and a summary of his arguments, I suspect the staff of the National Review would get a better grade. I am sure that conservative intellectuals are imperfect Burkeans, but it seems to me that a vanishingly small number of liberal intellectuals care a fig for Burke. Does it really strike you differently?
Oh, liberals aren’t at all familiar with Burke. Every time I suggest to people that he’s useful to them, I get a funny look at best. This is strictly my schtick.
Professor Burke, your comment that (Edmund) Burke can prove useful to liberals was interesting to me.
I went to Wikipedia to see what it had to say about him:
“Burke was a leading skeptic with respect to democracy.” And “He opposed democracy for three basic reasons. First, government required a degree of intelligence and breadth of knowledge of the sort that was very uncommon among the common people. Second he thought that common people had dangerous and angry passions that could be easily aroused by demagogues if they had the vote; he feared the authoritarian impulses that could be empowered by these passions would undermine cherished traditions and established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property. Thirdly, Burke warned that democracy would tyrannize unpopular minorities who needed the protection of the upper classes.”
The three fears Burke had about democracies are the same three that James Madison expressed in several places in the Federalist essays. So Madison rejected the democracy of ancient Athens and opted for the republic with its “scheme of representation.” And the powers Madison gave to these representatives were congruent with those Burke advocated. So, Burke and Madison both were wrong. They both failed to understand human nature. Being poor or common does not make one more likely to take advantage of others, but being of bad character does. And people of bad character can be found in all parts of our society. So, our modern republic, modeled on the thinking of Madison, and apparently on the congruent thinking of Burke, has put ignorant men into the government and given them power over others, has enabled the angry passions of the leaders of the national and state governments to abuse unpopular minorities for centuries, has put demagogues into office who work to deny the vote to the unpopular minorities lest they lose their office, and has promoted a “cherished tradition” that gave favor to a minority of white, heterosexual, Christian, male, tyranni over age 50.
This kind of thing happens a lot in our history. Theorists, not pragmatists, are studied and lionized, and when governments are built on their theories, people unnecessarily suffer and die. Such has been the case with Edmund Burke’s ideas about democracy versus representative government.
So, if you meant that Burke is a bad example, and as such, can be a good example for liberals to invoke then I take your point, but otherwise I don’t follow.
I also looked in Peter Watson’s book, “Ideas, a history of thought and invention from fire to Freud,” and did not find any mention of Edmund Burke at all. I also found no mention in the Federalist essays.
As I have told you before, I come here to learn.
For learning about Burke, I suggest reading the following, in sequence:
Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch1s2.html
Edmund Burke, Impeachment of Warren Hastings
http://sdstate.edu/projectsouthasia/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=861245
After you have read those, then read *Reflections on the Revolution in France*.
Withywindle:
I read both as you advised. The impeachment has no application to anything other than the impeachment. He is a prosecutor. Prosecutors will say anything to persuade the jury. They are out to win the moment. I think it would be unwise to use any prosecutor’s argument as a basis for governing a nation such as ours, and I fail to see in any case why liberals would find anything to learn from his argument.
His speech on conciliation with the colonies is an aristocrat speaking to other aristocrats about aristocrats abroad. It all has little application to our problems of governance today.
So, I am left with wondering why liberals would learn anything of value from Edmund Burke, except to learn how to recognize the signs of an elitist who, given the chance, will tell you how to live your life the way his preferred tradition and religion require.
Thanks, Withywindle. Your points are entirely correct and cogent, though I don’t see them changing the predicament that prudence is a dirty abandonment of principle except for all the times it is the only possible path.
1) I have a professional interest in prudence; hence pseudonymity requires that I not say too much on the subject. I will mention only that Machiavelli’s Prince murders prudently, and Richelieu’s Statesman prudently conducts a coup d’etat; the concept is broader than mere moderation, tolerance, and compromise–as I trust PQuincy knows, however he may have abbreviated for blogging purposes.
Indeed. Prudence’s mantle covers a lot that is troublesome, as I did try to suggest (slavery, etc.). One might also point out that Machiavelli emphasized the Prince’s capacity to murder prudently when he was a ‘new prince’ precisely as a critique of the much greater violence and disruption that the rejection of prudence in traditional Mirrors of Princes produced. It’s all well to call on your ruler to be just, pious, and loving; but such rulers, when lacking the authority of tradition, brought about terrible outcomes, as Machiavelli himself had observed.
2) A belief in ever-increasing moderation, prudence, what-have-you, strikes me as neither an accurate description of the past or a plausible evocation of the future. If you disagree on the accuracy or plausibility, please note that it is a Whiggish interpretation of history, a comforting and self-praising narrative, which invites skepticism.
That certainly doesn’t seem to be Timothy Burke’s position, nor is it mine: the need for prudence is predicament, and more or less permanent, not a sign of progress. To observe that moderation is valued more at some times than others, however, is not in itself a sign of ‘Whiggish history’. Moderation and tolerance (in the contemporary definition) are positive values today, but they were not in the late sixteenth century. That they are values does not mean that everyone practices them: anything but! Nevertheless, I would rather live in a society that valorizes toleration than one that generally considers it a sign of corruption and failure.
3) I take prudence and rhetoric to involve ways for incommensurate beliefs to co-exist. But that does not mean that one ceases to struggle for the victory of one’s beliefs; merely that one substitutes persuasion for violence as one’s tool of choice.
Precisely my view.
4) John Brown’s body lies a molderin’ in the grave, but his shining example of righteous murder of evildoers will always be an inspiration.
Well, yes, but inspiration for whom? His righteousness may inspire some, but his willingness to murder for it may inspire others, no?
PQuincy: I think most of my responses from now on would be mere quibbling. I have a greater sympathy for holy slaughters than most of my contemporaries. Or, as my dad puts it, “Genocide: The Middle Way.”
There’s an omission at the start of this conversation: what Akin, Mourdock, and their crowd also do is voice male privilege and test the premises for decriminalizing rape. The connection between that thread and the one you explore, from limited abortion rights to full choice, has not always been evident in the anti-choice crusades. Feminists asserted the connection, but it was rarely heard from the true believers before this year. With the underlying contest for power in the open, a generation with different ideas about gender, sex, and religion in politics defeated them for public office. A luta continua.