(I’ve activated comments for this one, and invite further contributions. No anonymous posts. I will also delete idiotic, gratuitously insulting remarks etc. [non-gratuitous polemics are welcome, of course!].)
Leading administrative law expert and distinguished and prolific BU law professor Gary Lawson writes with the following comments:
“I’m puzzled by why you thought it was worthwhile to post Benjamin Hellie’s empty screed on bloggers. I say empty because someone could write exactly the same piece, almost verbatim, but switch the characterizations of the left and right simply by defining justice as, e.g., keeping what belongs to you instead of evenly distributing wealth and power. In that case, left-wing bloggers become, on Hellie s reasoning, presumptive liars because they are consistently defending injustice. This does not seem like a very constructive line to pursue.
“The intellectual ball could be advanced by a serious discussion about the nature of justice. (If Hellie does not think that any such discussion is necessary because justice just is, self-evidently, evenly distributing wealth and power, he is in the wrong line of work.) The ball could also be advanced if someone clever could figure out a way objectively to assess the intellectual integrity of various blog sites and then survey a sufficient number empirically to test propositions about left-leaning and right-leaning blogs. But one hardly needs to smear Professor Hellie to harumph at his post. Way below the usual standards, I m afraid.”
Philosopher Benj. Hellie from Cornell replies:
“Lawson should deploy the powers of exegesis he learned in law school on uncovering the causal mechanism I lay out in the following paragraph [from the original posting]:
‘People do not like injustice. The knowledge that injustice is being done to others offends their sense of morality; the knowledge that injustice is being done to them makes them angry and resentful. Both these emotions contribute to a desire to use the political system in order to counter injustice. So it is very helpful for the right wing to achieve its goal if the existence of injustice, and the unjust effects of the policies it endorses, can be concealed.’
“Lawson alleges that you can substitute in `keeping what belongs to you’ for justice rather than `evenly distributing wealth and power’ (note I said nothing about the desirability to anyone of absolute equality: my claim is that we are at present in a state of obscene inequality and getting worse, and that it would be desirable to nearly all to make things more equal) and get an argument that left-wingers are liars. He seems to think I argued as follows: * right-wingers support injustice * therefore right-wingers are liars.
“This manoeuvre shows Lawson’s grasp of the argument to be on a par with his grasp of psychology and his grasp of the intense degree of suffering the libertarian policies he endorses have caused, both in the third world and at home.
“What I actually argued was A. right-wingers support things that are against the interests of the vast majority B. if the vast majority knew this, what right-wingers support could not exist C. therefore right-wingers are liars.
“So suppose that Lawson’s parallel argument runs like this: D. left-wingers support things that are against the alleged property rights of a tiny minority E. if the vast majority knew this, what left-wingers support could not exist F. therefore left-wingers are liars.
“Grant D. What about E?
“*First: even if what Lawson said were correct, this would have no effect on polemic in favor of policies directing more resources toward the poor in the future: everyone would be able to “keep what belongs to them” on those policies; they would merely prevent inequality from becoming more hideous.
“* Second: Lawson needs to show that if people were aware that taxation (for instance) involves people not being able to ‘keep what belongs to them”, they would be appalled — and that the degree to which they would be appalled would outweigh the degree to which they would be appalled if they were aware of how hideous inequality is at present. (At least for those who, unlike Lawson, are not benefitting from this hideous inequality.) This is so laughable as to not be worth belaboring, but I’ll do it anyway since the issue is important. People are already aware that taxation involves redistribution; only libertarian loons and the black helicopter crowd are whipped into a state of moral frenzy by this fact. Does Lawson really think that the 95% of Americans who have been made worse off by Reaganite upward redistribution would rather continue to have their condition worsen in order that the minority of the opulent might continue with their hoarding? What about the tens of millions of Latin American peasants who have been looted, immiserated, and cruelly suppressed? Time to get out of the ivory tower, Lawson.
“*Third: Lawson presupposes that everyone else share his opinion about what belongs to whom. Does the two trillion dollars directed upward between 1980 and 2010 in the US alone belong to those who figured out how to game the system to snatch it up, or to those whose activities they are exploiting? The point is not what the answer to this is, it’s what people would think if it were put to them: while Lawson might disagree, surely I and Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof are not the only ones who regard this massive upward redistribution as ‘a kind of looting”.
“Finally note that for the purposes of the argument, it does not matter what the correct definition of `justice’ is: argument A, B, C does not use it. The word `justice’ is used in the argument for purposes of abbreviation and rhetorical effect.”
UPDATE: Hellie responds to his critics, below, here.
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