Caring about your community…
Is actually immoral, and makes you very similar to a racist! Or so Don Boudreaux tells us.
Libertarians, My Libertarians!
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
Oyveh. "If you believe that proximity, in and of itself, is an ethically relevant consideration"
ReplyDeleteSo instead of helping the woman who has fallen in front of me get up and collect her groceries I should figure, meh, think of the time spent, work out my hourly wage, contribute that amount to charity instead, that'll be jsut as good, the hell with proximity as an ethically relevant consideration, and stroll off feeling justified?
Apparently so, Ken.
DeleteI let the rage flow through me for a bit after reading that one, then I remembered something my man had to say about such people:
ReplyDelete" Here is a statement clearly and philosophically laid down which we can only content ourselves with flatly denying: "The fifth rule of our Lord is that we should take special pains to cultivate the same kind of regard for people of foreign countries, and for those generally who do not belong to us, or even have an antipathy to us, which we already entertain towards our own people, and those who are in sympathy with us." I should very much like to know where in the whole of the New Testament the author finds this violent, unnatural, and immoral proposition. Christ did not have the same kind of regard for one person as for another. We are specifically told that there were certain persons whom Hespecially loved. It is most improbable that He thought of other nations as He thought of His own. The sight of His national city moved Him to tears, and the highest compliment He paid was, "Behold an Israelite indeed." The author has simply confused two entirely distinct things. Christ commanded us to have love for all men, but even if we had equal love for all men, to speak of having the same love for all men is merely bewildering nonsense. If we love a man at all, the impression he produces on us must be vitally different to the impression produced by another man whom we love. To speak of having the same kind of regard for both is about as sensible as asking a man whether he prefers chrysanthemums or billiards. Christ did not love humanity; He never said He loved humanity; He loved men. Neither He nor anyone else can love humanity; it is like loving a gigantic centipede. And the reason that the Tolstoians can even endure to think of an equally distributed affection is that their love of humanity is a logical love, a love into which they are coerced by their own theories, a love which would be an insult to a tom-cat." ~ Chesterton, Varied Types
I will grant him that a "classical liberal" ideologue is less likely to be a racist than a person with economically suboptimal attachments to a group or region, but I'll take my chances with the localist every time. We are getting to a point where anyone who denies the malign consequences big business' dominance can only be explained by dimness tinged by sentimentality or dishonesty.