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Posted December 4, 2002
The corruption of the language of virtue and vice is near complete.
It began long ago. First, a very different way of thinking about morality — the language of righteousness and sin — co-opted the common-sense perspective of virtue and vice. Those concerned with righteousness added a hysterical, extremist take on human choice and habits. Whereas someone speaking solely in terms of virtue and vice knew that nothing could guarantee the goal of excellence, and that happiness could still be a fleeting thing, the religiously minded, on the other hand, just knew that everything was absolute
and black and white,
and that the smallest stray off the mark warranted eternal torment. So, as the question of righteousness and appeasing a jealous god became paramount, common sense often flew out the window. Morality ceased to be a humane instrument, and the noose and the bonfire were not far behind as extra inducements to goodness.
With the rise of the industrial revolution, and the enlarged role for science and technology, another perspective wormed its way into the discussion: medicine. Now, in the Hellenistic period, the idea of philosophy as therapy
was well entrenched. But because medical science was so rudimentary, the medical analogy remained largely that, an analogy. In our modern period, however, medical science made quick progress, and those enamored of the medical model of morality quickly (and often hastily) replaced virtue and vice
with health and illness,
and often did so with an alarming lack of caution. A lot of truly nutty ideas have come in and gone out of fashion under this model, most amusingly masturbatory insanity
(the amusement we find in such notions is a dark one, however, as many youngsters were castrated and mutilated to prevent their gratification of indecent
obsessions). It took a long time for older religious standards of morality to cease dictating the precise shape of the medical model of well-being. Even in our own day, the medical model is often most used as an excuse to avoid guilt and shame (two indispensable concepts from the perspective of sin) rather than promote actual human flourishing. And so, within this model, one finds many primitive notions dressed up in trendy clothing. The hard work of cultivating good habits, and respecting the idea of excellence through balance, is often left by the wayside, as people worry endlessly about getting rid of each and every addiction.
But a far worse corrupter has scuttled the language of virtue: politics.
It may at first be hard to see why. It is, after all, harder to change others than it is to change self. So why would anyone bother to, well, bother with politics, when self-improvement is easier?
The answer is an old one: improving oneself is a sometimes frightening enterprise, as one confronts the all-too-fluid nature of identity. Sure, one knows that aspects of oneself are truly sub-par. But if that part were changed, that would mean that one's very self has changed, and then . . . metaphysical quandaries ensue. Existential horror opens up. One has to deal with self and other and nothingness and death and other unpleasant matters. At least, these issues become live ones as soon as one thinks hard about self-improvement. And these issues are ones that most people would rather not confront.
Much easier, then, to fix on some evil others to fight or at least threaten. Better to think about changing someone else rather than oneself! If someone must die, let the war go against others. If someone must change, let it be the other guy. If someone must change his mind, let it be that fellow over there, lurking in the shadow of an alien ideology.
And what happens to all the notions of virtue and vice? They become tools in political gamesmanship, not instruments for improvement. Example? Take vice at random; take greed.
Greed has a simple definition. It is the excess of acquisitiveness. And those who are greedy present terrible pictures of themselves, pictures that we rightly react to in something like revulsion. In their pursuit of wealth, of the best deal,
they will let all sorts of human relations go fly, and they will abandon all sorts of other endeavors, endeavors that would often yield much greater joy. And the worst cases of greed push acquisitiveness to the next step: they abandon fair dealing to obtain their booty, resorting to fraud, blackmail, or theft.
Now, to those who are obsessed with politics, greed
becomes unmoored from the basic level of human interaction, and they turn the word into a weapon in the rhetoric of democracy. Our opponents are greedy,
don't you know, simply because they don't want to spend our
money (a fund obtained by state confiscation of money, known as taxes) in the way we want to spend that money.
This is most embarrassingly evident in the liberalism
of the modern state, wherein one often hears proponents of one program or another calling some opponent of that program — or of the tax that would support it — greedy.
Amusingly, users of this word have grasped a two-edged sword by the blade itself, and their own blood pours over the wounds of their enemies: those who call others greedy in a political contest usually prove only their own greed.
The most recent case of this, to my knowledge, was of an Oregon student who wrote a concise little column for The Oregonian. Like so many others who have something to gain from a political measure, he labeled those reluctant to agree with him greedy.
In my column on the Laissez Faire Books site, I made the obvious points. But I didn't have enough space to go the next step, and make the not-so-obvious point: politics corrupts much more than language, twisting greed
in terrible directions.
Consider: When generosity and charity
become politicized, and aid to the less fortunate a matter of state policy, all issues of niggardliness, generosity, and prodigality become questions not of individual balance, but matters of justice.
And, when made a matter of justice, the ideal behavior becomes compulsory, not to be decided by individual conscience. And at this point generosity has been swept up into one domain — politics — and law-abiding citizens have every reason to respond to entreaties for aid with a summary dismissal: I gave at the office, on my W-2 form.
So, as Roderick T. Long has pointed out, Scrooge's attitude is the natural consequence of politicized generosity. Why should the old skinflint be generous? He has already paid his duties to the state, and the state's workhouses and Poor Laws struck him as good enough. And so, when some do-gooders came around asking for money, he told them to leave him alone. He gave at the office, with his tax bill.
The extent to which this plays out in society has been studied, but not, I think, enough. Mention the idea in public, and watch the reactions. Generally, the reaction is one of incredulity.
But why should anyone be surprised? People who are well off but still struggling have amazing degrees of compassion for those less well off than themselves. But, once they are taxed and taxed and taxed for program after program, they have been encouraged to think the needs of compassion have been met. Further, they know very well the cost of these taxes on their own finances, and can feel the opportunities foregone. One shouldn't need training as an economist to see that the more the taxation, the less the generosity. Not only have the normally compassionate given to the causes they care about, they have been told that their extracted funds have met a real need, thus satisfying at least some of their generous impulses.
The corruption does not end here, though. Consider those who wish to do good.
In a society with a minimal state, few taxed funds (if any) would go to help people in need,
as we say. Those who wish to help others must seek benefactors who voluntarily give. They build institutions to distribute the aid, and institutions to collect the funds for these concerns, small and large. They hold fund-raisers. They become professional. But they don't coerce. They appeal directly to the heart-strings, not to the fear of the policeman's billy-club and the jail.
This was largely the condition of America at the time that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote. And he was amazed at the number of voluntary organizations in the country, many doing the work that the governments of France and England had organized with much less verve and effectiveness.
Once these doers of good deeds get money from taxation, however, they enter another realm entirely. Now, they are not only appealing to the generous, they are appealing to those who wish to vote against the pocket-books and the persons regarded as stingy.
And this leads to an unpleasant element. Now contests at the polling booth become contests of making others do one's bidding. Much of the joy of politics becomes tribal, with people forming groups to best the other groups in the next election, each group with their favored set of projects, each supported by the power to tax.
And ah the joy of it! There are few pleasures greater than funding your pet project and making one's enemies pay for it, too.
And the more this game is played, the more taxes are used to fund projects of a generous, open-handed sort, the more those who wish to help others immediately turn to more taxation to help more people! It is a mad cycle.
And it is not as if only the naturally stingy
are affected. Since one of the chief joys of the self-proclaimed humanitarians becomes sticking the bill to everybody, when they don't get the votes to pass the project, they can blame the lack of support for their projects not on themselves, but on those greedy others who wouldn't vote for the effort. And, in turn, they absolve themselves from the onerous task of writing out checks from their own bank accounts.
And so those who wear most proudly the badges of generosity likely become less generous than they would had they not campaigned for the tax-supported aid.
There is no end to it, though the cycle is not always a simple ratcheting up of taxation and spending; other cycles come into play. The more one redistributes wealth from one to another, the more society grinds down to a slower, more wasteful pace. Tax revenues fall off, and cuts must be made. Some of this has happened since the heyday of the Welfare State in the early 1970s.
It always surprises me, however, what the advocates of this system do when times get tough, how little they understand the cycles they must live with. Many groups who yammer on about their special importance in the machinery of a generous society demonstrate little empathy for their source of funding, the taxpayer, even when times get tough. For instance, as I write this, we are going through a major recession, and there are cutbacks in business as well as in government. Teachers' unions, however, are amazingly brazen in their demands for even better compensation, even as the tax base diminishes and unemployment rises. Somehow they don't see that they, too, should tighten their belts, and wait for higher wages and benefits when their funding source regains a wealthier, healthier condition. A few more cycles with this sad dynamic, and the unions may even find themselves busted at last, when taxpayers become fed up with their greed.
So I'm back to that word greed.
Perhaps we should apply it more generally and liberally than it is common to do so. Consider Ambrose Bierce's definition of the tarrif, that mainstay of 19th century American taxation: A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.
Ah, the greedy consumer, stingily looking for better deals, and even willing to trade with foreigners! Scoundrels all!
Bierce amuses because he turned tables on the businessmen. In truth, businessmen who will not abide free trade, resorting instead to the coercive power of the state to favor them with special status, demonstrate their greed, their unbalanced desire to accumulate wealth. But Bierce, with great wit, calls attention to their greed by shifting it to the greedy businessmen's clientele. And so he highlights the indecency of the protective tarrif, without once resorting to a sophisticated economic argument.
To speak, these days, of the greed of unions, of businessmen, and of bureaucrats whenever they aim to drain the populace of their wealth by means of taxation, is a good thing. It should be encouraged.
But let's not stop there. After we've played this Biercean gambit, then we can add the more sobering moral: whenever we seek special favor for our projects from the state, using its coercive power and its ability to expropriate, we corrupt the moral sensibilities of all concerned. Yes, we breed vice where virtue should prevail, and all in the cause of doing good.
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