Social Conservative Dichotomy
There seems to me a contradiction in the position of many social conservatives. While they push strongly against abortion laws and against homosexual marriage, prostitution or recreational drug use, they advocate for individual property rights. In a philosophically consistent moral system, it seems the two positions would be mutually exclusive. An examination of these positions leads to other surprising conclusions about social conservatives as well.
Abortion is a situation wherein a pregnant woman, desiring for whatever reason to not be pregnant, has the pregnancy terminated. For her, the reasons are personal and those of an individual involving few others. For a social conservative this is not true. Social conservatives believe society has a right and duty to dictate to the woman how she may use her body and, being pregnant, she may not infringe upon the rights that the social conservatives would confer upon the fetus. For the pregnant woman, social conservatives dictate a social responsibility and thus certain requirements and duties that conflict with any rights the woman, as an individual, may have or thought she had. She may not have an abortion. She must have the baby. Society requires this action, an action that compels the individual cower before and offer subservience to the whole of society.
The position of social conservatives on homosexual marriage shows a similar position, although marriage, being a social institution involving many, is not to be conflated (a new word for me) with abortion. The two are separate issues with few similarities. Yet here, again, social conservatives would use the right of society, as a society, to dictate what individuals may do. They would dictate what constitutes a proper marriage. Homosexuals may not marry. In fact, they must not be homosexual. They must desist in such action and conform to the dictates of society as defined by the social conservatives. For a fact, many homosexuals wish it were so easy. If it were, there would be no issue. But, I digress.
Here we have the two major defining issues of social conservatives. In each they confer upon society a right to dictate to individuals proper action in what are ostensibly private and individual actions. A similar dissection of recreational drugs and prostitution will give similar observations. We come to financial matters.
Here social conservatives argue the rights of individuals to the product of their labor. An individual works; they exchange their time and use of their abilities for pay. This pay, in the form of money, represents claims on the goods of others. Does society have any rights in this exchange? Do others have some claim on the product of the time and effort of the individual?
Obviously government makes claims on this labor and through the use of taxes takes some portion of the individual’s pay and uses it for things other than what the working individual may have chosen. Government then is society’s arbiter of the results of labor, of material gain. Is there any limit to this authority? May government take any amount without restriction? Social conservatives will argue government is limited to certain functions, such as providing roads, military, police, courts, prisons and the few other things enumerated in the Constitution, and thus has a very limited claim on the fruits of labor.
Yet if government is limited to those few claims upon output, how do social conservatives then rationalize the use of government to dictate to the pregnant woman what she may or may not do? Abortion and pregnant women are not among the enumerated authorities. Neither is prostitution. This is where the inconsistency of the social conservative comes to the fore. They make their arguments to suit themselves. In this they are no different from the liberal whose arguments are from the book “I’m Ok, You’re Ok”. Decide what you want the answer to be, then decide on the argument to support your position. Shades of Immanuel Kant, social conservatives sound like tort lawyers. Ladies and gentlemen, we need more consistency in our moral compass and laws than that.
In contract law, there is no contract if both parties do not enjoy some benefit from the contractual relationship. Society is similar. If society demands something of the pregnant woman, society then owes something to her in exchange. Social conservatives pretend not. She got pregnant. She has to have the baby. That’s her problem. But is the baby not the product of her ability as a woman? Why does she not have the individual rights given to those whose product is from their labor?
Yet this is the position of social conservatives. They demand adherence to certain rules which preclude any involvement on their part. These are not the rules of a just society, they are the rules of a society of overlords. Do as we say. They are wrong. People either have individual rights to themselves, their labor and their bodies, or they don’t. You cannot divide the baby for the two claimants and still have the baby.
Society is not a group of individuals thrown together but remaining individuals. Society is (Webster’s) ‘a voluntary association of individuals for common ends’. The ends of the pregnant woman and the social conservative must be the same or they are not of the same society. If they are not of the same society, they need to separate themselves. Otherwise, they each must have the same opportunities, rights and obligations to themselves and to others. Society, in requiring certain actions of individuals, obligates itself to responsible behavior towards those same individuals. We are all in this together. If, as the social conservatives would have it, we are not; we have a society of overlords and their subjects.
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