Whether he is at a conference of like minded colleagues, speaking to Joe the Plumber, or making campaign stump speeches, Barack Obama has expressed time and time again his preference for \u201credistribution.\u201d\u00a0 Every time he calls upon \u201cthe rich\u201d to \u201cpay their fair share,\u201d he reveals his desire to confiscate the resources from some in order to transfer it to others.<\/p>\n
Though the stuff of sound bites, voters need to realize that words like \u201credistribution\u201d and \u201cfairness\u201d serve as windows into an entire ideology, a left-wing ideology that has long since become the prevailing orthodoxy of the contemporary academic world.<\/p>\n
The demand for \u201cfairness\u201d is the call for equality, it is true.\u00a0 But equality here is conceived very differently from how Americans have traditionally thought about it.<\/p>\n
In fact, the conception of equality held by Obama and his ilk is not only different from that affirmed by America\u2019s founders and their posterity.\u00a0 The two understandings are mutually antithetical.<\/p>\n
Historically, when Americans have affirmed equality, it has always been equality under the law <\/em>of which they spoke. As such, equality is inseparable from freedom or liberty as Americans have understood the latter.\u00a0<\/p>\n That is, the equality\u2014like the liberty\u2014that they prized was held to consist in a system of formal procedures to which all citizens were equally bound.<\/p>\n But procedural notions of equality, liberty, and justice the Obamas of the world disdainfully dismiss as \u201cmere formalism.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n True justice, true freedom, true equality, they insist, must be \u201csubstantial.\u201d<\/p>\n The work of superstar academic philosopher Martha Nussbaum provides as unadulterated an illustration of this view as any.\u00a0 Nussbaum thinks that to determine whether a society is just or not, we need to ask: \u201cWhat is each person able to do and to be?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n To put it more bluntly, the justice of a social order is to be measured in terms of the opportunities <\/em>that it supplies to each of its members to develop their \u201ccapabilities.\u201d\u00a0 Liberty, that is, consists of \u201csubstantial <\/em>freedoms\u201d with which the members of a decent society should be equipped.<\/p>\n Nussbaum sets her sights upon \u201centrenched social injustice and inequality, especially capability failures that are the result of discrimination or marginalization.\u201d\u00a0 With an eye toward rectifying these miscarriages of \u201csocial justice,\u201d the government, she declares, must aim \u201cto improve the quality of life for all people, as defined by their capabilities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n To no slight extent, the seventeenth century English philosopher John Locke influenced many of America\u2019s founders.\u00a0 Locke was a prominent proponent of the \u201csocial contract\u201d theory.\u00a0 The idea behind the concept of the social contract is that institutional arrangements are just as long as they have the consent<\/em> of those who are to be governed by them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nussbaum rejects traditional social contract theories.\u00a0 She maintains that the latter fail to insure \u201cfair treatment\u201d to the citizens of other societies, our own disabled citizens, and (\u201cnonhuman\u201d) animals.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is another way of saying that traditional social contract theories fail to guarantee equality\u2014or \u201csocial justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Unless the \u201cdeep asymmetry of power\u201d that exists between parties to any social contract is corrected, true equality and justice promise to remain forever elusive.\u00a0 There are asymmetries of power between, on the one hand, the disabled, members of the Third World, and animals and, on the other, the able, Westerners, and humans, respectively.<\/p>\n These asymmetries of power, in turn, are morally unacceptable inequalities that the proponents of procedural equality\u2014what we have traditionally described as \u201cequality under the law\u201d\u2014not only ignore but perpetuate.<\/p>\n We have, then, no morally defensible option but to treat justice, freedom, and equality as substantive.\u00a0<\/p>\n In case there is any confusion over how Nussbaum (and Obama) understands equality and justice, Nussbaum states her account in plain English: Justice depends upon \u201coutcomes\u201d\u2014not, primarily, procedures.<\/p>\n She draws us a picture.<\/p>\n \u201cSuppose we are dividing a pie, and we want to divide it fairly.\u00a0 One way of thinking about fairness is to look to the outcome of the division: the fair process is the one that gives us equal shares. Another way of thinking about it is to look at procedure: the fair division may be the one in which everyone takes a turn with the knife.\u201d<\/p>\n Nussbaum favors the former.<\/p>\n And so does Obama.<\/p>\n This is what voters must recognize.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whether he is at a conference of like minded colleagues, speaking to Joe the Plumber, or making campaign stump speeches, Barack Obama has expressed time and time again his preference for \u201credistribution.\u201d\u00a0 Every time he calls upon \u201cthe rich\u201d to \u201cpay their fair share,\u201d he reveals his desire to confiscate the resources from some in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n