Commenter namae nanka sends along links to some interesting posts on the concept of what he calls “liberal autonomy theory”. Mark Richardson has some good thoughts on the topic. Discussing the popular TV show “Wife Swap”, Richardson writes on the argument put forward by a San Francisco liberal that she is happy to have been lucky to be born in the U.S., Richardson writes:
I’ve heard this kind of line before. It relates to the idea that what counts is that we self-determine who we are and what we do. Therefore whatever aspect of our lives is an “accident of birth” is thought not to matter.
It’s a position that’s difficult to hold to consistently. After all, our IQ and many of our personality traits are influenced by heredity and are therefore an accident of birth, as also is the family upbringing we experience.
So our San Francisco couple should also reject a sense of pride in their own intelligence, education and work ethic as these are a product, to a significant degree, of conditions we are born into. But they don’t – they are proud of these qualities to the point of arrogance.
It’s actually more logical to recognise the debt we owe to generations past for the positive qualities that we do inherit. Past generations have battled through to recognise and perpetuate ideals in culture and personality. We do rest on these achievements, even if we inherit them rather than creating them for ourselves. So pride in a larger entity does make sense – more so than the belief that we are self-created as individuals.
If you follow the liberal argument – that people exist by “accident of birth” – we can see why the entire Birther argument is a non-starter for liberals. The most prominent example I’ve seen is from Matt Yglesias who recently tweeted on this (no link). They don’t care to even investigate whether Obama was born outside the U.S. because birthright is a disgusting concept to them. If someone was accidentally born in Kenya that should have no bearing on whether or not they are President of the U.S. Not to say that I believe that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii – just that this is the reason that the topic is not given attention by the prestige press. They don’t care about it from first principles. They believe the Constitution is wrong to place limitations on people not born in America.
To the land-holding status quo, birth is not generally thought of as an accident. It is a planned investment. This idea pervades cultures where land-ownership isn’t denigrated; where property rights are valued i.e. The South and where inheritance is valued. These also happen to be places where family values are strongest and where the patrilineal line is valued. We can then see how this filters into the argument surrounding abortion. When you believe that birth is accidental or arbitrary, you can support an argument that you have the right to snuff out that accident. If you adhere to a system in which birth is planned or an investment, it is something tangible and not arbitrary.
Christopher Lasch elucidated the difference between the elites of old – the landed gentry – and the modern managerial elites whose power rests in their ability to garner high salaries and exert bureaucratic control over our society. He makes it clear that this transition is also a transition from a fundamental conservatism to a fundamental liberalism. From natural limitations to unbounded possibilities. Lasch’s point was that the evolution of the cradle of our economic power – from land to credential – has also had cultural effects. In his book The Culture of Narcissism, Lasch makes the case that such a transition has led to our great unhinging. It fits into Lasch’s great overarching theory that the most radical idea is the obliteration of the family. A concept of “accidental birth” creates the idea that the family is not self-directed or autonomous. This transition undergirds many policy proposals aimed at punishing the successful to subsidize the unsuccessful.
I’ve written before on what Mark Richardson mentions about paying homage to our ancestors:
Our big human brains incurred a cost. The investment in energy and genetic resources detracted from other physical areas that could have been genetically purchased. Like erecting a building on a fixed budget (the inputs that make up a human are somewhat fixed), a contractor has to make tradeoffs between aesthetic design and infrastructural quality. Putting money and resources into constructing a fancy modern lobby area takes away from the money that goes into other aspects of the building. In humans, our big brains developed through more difficult food gathering methods that incurred tradeoffs from investment in more purely physical characteristics like musculature.
Each individual present today is a conglomeration of genetic mutations that worked. A masculine alpha male had to face challenges to his dominance when others sought to overthrow him. The alpha male who came out on top passed on his genes, but he had to pay something and risk something for that to happen. The spoils should be his to keep. The gene pool of those deemed “better off” today exacted a price in their genetic history. Their lunch wasn’t free.
To summarize: liberals tend to embrace the concept of “accidental birth”. It is a self-reinforcing idea. The people who are more likely to actually accidentally give birth are the ones who embrace the concept. In their particular paternalism, liberal elites assume that the type of people who accidentally bring babies into the world are unable to behave differently. Because someone is randomly born into their life station, it isn’t really theirs. Their burden or their privilege must be shared by the rest of society. Never mind that the parent of a privileged child is much more likely to have planned to bring that particular child into the world to share in the success that it’s parents have earned/gained. So at the very least we see that people rationalize their different stations in life to fit their particular circumstances. It is my belief that liberals tend not to see that they are crafting just-so theories to support their particular station and that they are operating off of some notion of justice.
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All it simply means is in the end, Darwinism will come true. Survival of the fittest is not an accident nor can it be circumvented. Especially as many of those accidents depend on the state to survive.
The mental contortions necessary to believe that some cannot control themselves, which is true, and thus produce children who are born disadvantaged, whether by genetics or geography, and that the solution is found in tabula rasa programs, are an impressive mental pretzel.
It is simply the logical conclusion of the Golden Rule, or Kantianism.
It is with this sort of thinking that liberals successfully control the masses. Smart people take responsibility for their plight (even if not their own fault) and seek to change it. This mindset grants a person a lot of power through self-determination. But when people are convinced that their situation is not their fault or it is out of their control to change by themselves (and others are ‘preventing’ them from fulfillment), they feel powerless. Powerless people become angry and desperate. And desperate people are easy to control.
While I generally agree that people are hypocritical and don’t have consistency in their beliefs I have to push back against this:
Sorry Chuck, but I don’t believe this analysis is correct. I think birtherism is a stupid distraction that mostly stupid people have glommed onto and I haven’t met anyone, liberal or not, who would be all right with non-native born Americans being eligible for president. In fact, in my lifetime the only time I’ve heard people agitate against the native-born requirement was early to mid 2000′s when some people wanted to see Arnold Schwarzenegger run for president.
Avg Man,
Yeah, I remember it being tossed around about Arnold. It was also met with calls to relax term limits so that Bill Clinton and he could face off in a Battle Royale. We were all so dumb then.
I don’t know though, I’m sticking by my argument. I haven’t read or heard many liberals on this, but I do remember the Yglesias tweet and he’s really not a radical. I’d assume that a good majority of the people who think that immigration should be legalized across the board also disagree with limitations on birthright citizenship and the requirement that a President has to be born in the U.S. Even if they don’t strongly agree with that proposal, they aren’t in strong disagreement either. They’re more likely to be moral relativists and low on the tradition/authority scale. Their general attitude about everything is: “what’s the big deal?” So all throughout the liberal camp there is just not much concern about Obama’s citizenship status. It’s a non-starter for them.
I like a lot of your stuff, but this paragraph is nonsense (even if you are just summarizing this other guy’s point):
“Christopher Lasch elucidated the difference between the elites of old – the landed gentry – and the modern managerial elites whose power rests in their ability to garner high salaries and exert bureaucratic control over our society. He makes it clear that this transition is also a transition from a fundamental conservatism to a fundamental liberalism. From natural limitations to unbounded possibilities. Lasch’s point was that the evolution of the cradle of our economic power – from land to credential – has also had cultural effects. In his book The Culture of Narcissism, Lasch makes the case that such a transition has led to our great unhinging. It fits into Lasch’s great overarching theory that the most radical idea is the obliteration of the family. A concept of “accidental birth” creates the idea that the family is not self-directed or autonomous. This transition undergirds many policy proposals aimed at punishing the successful to subsidize the unsuccessful.”
He is decrying the shift from birth status to general meritocracy of intellect and ambition, where inherited land does not trump intellect. That shift is one of many things that made the US such a dynamic economy and wealthy nation (for example, the South American countries with their landed families didn’t keep up). If “fundamental conservatism” means that one’s station in life is to be determined by how much land and title his extended family owns, count me out. Obliteration of the family doesn’t follow from that, nor does the it follow that this causes the successful to subsidize the unsuccessful (if anything, the argument that the successful should subsidize the unsuccessful is much stronger if one’s station in life is merely a function of how much land his family has passed down).
I’ll note that those countries that did not make this transition seemed to be much more likely to have communist revolutions (just thinking off the top of my head), so he might think twice before bemoaning this transition.
@Average Man – I recently had a conversation with a liberal who said, “So what if he was born in another county? It might make him a better leader.” I pointed out that it’s a Constitutional requirement and the lib responded, “Well that’s another part of the Constitution I disagree with.”
Crank,
I probably applied Lasch’s point too strongly to my argument here. What he generally meant was that there are cultural effects of becoming unrooted from something tangible. The new paternalists are the managerial elite whose power stems from arbitrary distinction – credential, title, position in bureaucracy. A psychic shift came with that. There is the hard and soft narcissism which many more people have in modern society. We are more relatively moralistic. We don’t understand natural limitations to our human wants and desires. Lasch was critical of modern capitalism and focused on what was lost in this great unmooring. I wanted to tie this into the concept of “accident of birth”. As this idea rises we lose something else. Some will say that the costs outweigh the benefits while others will argue the opposite.
White, ultra conservative male here,
I don’t give a shit if a president was born in the United States, for one simple reason:
Sandra Fluke was born in the United States. When homegrown, natural born “Americans” are in reality every bit as die hard venomously anti-american as the arabs who are attacking the embassies, it’s time to stop caring about that rule. Andrew Berwick for President I say.
The problem with Mr. Richardson’s “autonomy theory” is that he won’t take it to its radical conclusion. He won’t get definitive about who is the archetype radical autonomist. In this, he then fails to see that “radical autonomy” is the homosexual “nature,” i.e., a SELF-annihilating “nature.”
Liberalism and its side kick “Feminism” (read: devout dykism) are really just the political expression of the homosexual/dyke “nature.” This “nature” desires “radical autonomy” (absolute and FINAL liberation) which is then achieved via SELF-annihilation (spiritual, intellectual and biological and thus cultural/civilizational). The mechanism of nondiscrimination — which should really be understood as indiscriminate thought and action — then necessitates “toleration” of the pain and suffering that will predictably and inevitable follow one who ALWAYS thinks and acts indiscriminately.
So in short, the desire of the radical autonomist is masochistic and wholly deleterious.
“Not to say that I believe that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii – just that this is the reason that the topic is not given attention by the prestige press.”
yeah chuck. that’s the reason.
i shouldn’t be snarky. let me explain.
i’m one of those people who doesn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other about whether the birth right requirement should be in the constitution. as long as it’s in there, though, i think it should be obeyed, and if obama really was born in kenya, he should be removed from office. but here’s the thing: there’s a 0% chance that he was born in kenya. which is why the media, including mainstream conservative publications, don’t cover it. here’s an analogy: if george w. bush and his entire administration had been flesh-eating lizards from outer space (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_34tqxAjA)
that would be a very serious concern. but the chance that they are is about the same as the chance that obama wasn’t born in the united states (maybe slightly higher; notice rumsfeld didn’t deny the allegation). ergo, the media, including mainstream liberal publications, didn’t cover the burning space-lizard issue when gwb was president.