Reflections From a Murky Pond

One of the more ubiquitous, and certainly one of the most strident, rants of America’s domestics enemies is that the government should tax the “rich” more – much, much more. This is presented with two generalized rationalizations: the blatant, glaring, and glaringly stupid falsehood that the “rich” don’t pay their fair share and the somewhat less stupid idea that they can afford to pay more so it’s OK to take their wealth from them.

Presenting facts backed up by numbers and charts is, by and large, useless with the Statists and Socialists that call themselves Liberals and Progressives and it’s utterly useless with their minority tenants, who foolishly see themselves as beneficiaries of this agenda. Hence, I’ll leave that aside for now.

I will instead focus on the “They can afford it” rationalization since it is not based upon falsehoods, being instead based upon utilitarianism or consequentialism. I wonder how they would respond to a similar argument on a subject that Liberals have strong and visceral feelings about – abortion.

They Can Afford Them

Let America as a nation and society outlaw the abortion of White babies but continue to allow minorities, especially the Blacks, to engage in the unsavory practice. Let America as a people go so far as to guarantee these minorities access to abortion through subsidies and funding.

Due to the striations in household economies, including access to health insurance, Whites can, more often than not, afford to have these children. While an unplanned pregnancy might be an inconvenience to them, it is unlikely to drive Whites into true poverty. Statistics show this is not similarly true for minorities.

Furthermore, there is a long waiting list for White babies. There are far more prospective adoptive parents than there are White babies up for adoption. This is sadly not true for minority babies, especially Black babies who are seven times less likely to be adopted even after their prices – euphemistically called “adoption finalization costs” – are discounted up to 33% by the various agencies.

Finally, one also has to take the modern definition of racism into account. Since 64% of the women partaking of abortions are non-White, making it illegal for them to continue to do so would cause a disproportionate impact upon these minority women. Such disproportionate impact has been held by the courts to be racist and discriminatory even if the laws or practices in question have absolutely no racial component.

As can be seen from these facts there’s no reasons based upon consequences for continuing to allow Whites to abort their babies but many reasons to make sure that minorities, especially Blacks, are continued to be allowed to do so. The Whites can afford the children and the adoption system can handle those White babies that end up in it; neither is statistically the case for non-Whites.

~*~

The arguments above are all factual within the limits of polling accuracy and statistical analysis as applied to population groups. In point of fact, these arguments make up a large part of basis for the Liberals’ ongoing fight to keep abortion legal and have the government subsidize it. That doesn’t make this “modest proposal” any less abhorrent.

It’d be an interesting thought experiment to graph the outrage of who’s more bothered by criminalizing abortion for Whites and who’s more bothered by not doing so for minorities.

Yes, the rich can afford to pay more in taxes. That ability to pay more doesn’t mean that it’s right to tax them more just because others want their money, just as the facts of abortion demographics don’t make it right to base the abortion laws upon individuals’ and society’s ability to afford having and raising the children.

The argument that they can afford it so it’s OK to take from them is an example of the grievous flaws in utilitarianism or consequentialism.

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I have posted before about the ethics of reciprocity – the “Golden Rule” – as have others that I know online, which is not surprising since this Golden Rule seems fundamental to almost all ethical thought, philosophies, and religions.

The question arises though of whether we’ve all failed to fully grasp and internalize both sides of this ethical equation.

Have we focused too much upon the primary action and not enough upon the reciprocal reaction? Have we also failed to recognize that it functions much as an engine, a natural law that we’ve placed too many “higher order” considerations upon?

Any of the variations of, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” may serve well as admonishment or exhortation to right behavior by people, but we seem to fail to connect it with, “As you sow, so shall you reap,” which common sense tell us must be the reciprocating side of this ethical equation.

The greatest problem this schism causes is the cognitive dissonance it causes is in those cases where the primary action was a negative or harmful one.  This causes both internal conflict and hampers effective mitigation of the negative or harmful effects of the primary actor’s actions.

If the theory of Reciprocal Ethics is true than it must be true in all its parts or be claimed false. Therefor, natural law would require that negative actions lead to similarly negative responses as a normal course of events and to break this cycle requires conscious decision to engage in an unnatural course of response which might very well, due to its unnaturalness, be misunderstood as weakness, vulnerability or surrender of the point in contention by the original actor.

Some few in the course of history have understood this, though with mixed results.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.

– Mahatma Gandhi (Disputed)

Gandhi, through his cult of personality and abetted by the nature and proclivities of the two cultures involved and the greater scope of world events, succeeded in breaking the natural laws of reciprocity and doing so in a manner that achieved his victory, India’s Independence from Britain.

Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

MLK seemed to understand the basic equation of reciprocity but did not seem to understand that sense was not what was called for, since sense would lead people to follow the natural order of action and reciprocation. As can be seen by the largely unalleviated and unabated levels of racial angst and hatred among the Black population in America, despite the legal and pragmatic success of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King was largely unsuccessful in his prescription.

One has to accept the basic nature of the reciprocal engine that is the foundation of Reciprocal Ethics and fully understand the difficulties involved in convincing people to behave otherwise.

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This post is solely due to the emotions that my friend – you don’t really know me so you don’t understand the weight of that word upon my soul -  ichabod dredged up out of my memory by including a simple image in one of his articles.

I refer you, my valued reader, simply to this video – a rare glimpse of Canada’s Bluenose as she lived and loved upon the Widowmaker,

The Bluenose vs. Gertrude L. Thebaud

Years and years ago I stood the deck of the Bluenose II, which was a true replica of the original great lady of the Grand Banks. Standing there I wept. I wept with both the joy of her lines and life and with grief over Man’s casting her and her sisters aside along with the love of them in favor of the practicalities of modern maritime shipping.

I wept as I read and commented on ichabod’s article and I wept still as wrote this one.

I f you can’t understand why I weep without shame over the loss of these grand queens of the seas then the languages of our souls have too little in common with each others’ to ever truly understand each other.

I say that without reproach for I know that I’m a living, or plausible facsimile of living, atavism in this modern and needfully oh-so-practical world.

For those very few who will care, the Bluenose died in January of 1946 when she was gutted on a Haitian reef. With her died an era and large part, – in my estimation – of Man’s soul.

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