Leftism and the Gospel Continued: Affirmative Action

[_Droopy]

As a government policy and from within the framework of the gospel, is Affirmative Action compatible with the teachings of the Church?

Specifically, if discrimination on the basis of skin color is considered to be morally wrong, then what, from a gospel perspective, may count as morally/ethically legitimate policies who's principle purpose is to ameliorate the former immoral social situation? This would, at the outset, be broken down into a few categories or questions:

1. Can the wrongs of racial discrimination be made right through compensatory discrimination, or should the core of racial nondiscrimination be equal and open, unhindered access to all rights of citizenship for all, irrespective of skin color?

2. Can compensations for past discrimination, of whatever kind, be extended to any but those who actually experienced that discrimination?

3. At what point does any civil rights movement, as normally understood, end? At what point, in other words, can its fundamental mission be understood to have been accomplished?

[_Analytics]

As a government policy and from within the framework of the gospel, is Affirmative Action compatible with the teachings of the Church?

Specifically, if discrimination on the basis of skin color is considered to be morally wrong, then what, from a gospel perspective, may count as morally/ethically legitimate policies who's principle purpose is to ameliorate the former immoral social situation?

One thought that comes to mind is the restitution step of the repentance process. To the extent that one race's sins have caused harm to another race, affirmative action to give restitution to the damaged race is indeed compatible with the teachings of the Church.

[_Gadianton]

One thought that comes to mind is the restitution step of the repentance process.

heh, I was thinking along the same lines.

In many of Droopy's posts, he's emphasized how hard working rich people are, but a fundamental tenet of capitalism and freedom, per Milton Friedman, is that being born into money is no more immoral than being born with a high intellect. One of the incentives of capitalism, in fact, is the ability to transfer ones wealth to kin at death. And capitalism makes no moral demands, nor does it provide any incentive for the children of the rich, to work hard.

Wiping out empires of Native Americans was at least as bad as a government confiscating the wealth of its people. Confiscating wealth breaks a major incentive within capitalism. Therefore, if the government is guilty of confiscating wealth of one generation, it should make some restitution by paying it back to the rightful inheritors from the next. Has the result-oriented restitution to Native Americans necessarily been a staggering success? Maybe, maybe not. But the process of rich parents handing down gobs of money to their children has also led to questionable results. It's the right of the beneficiaries of result-measures to invest or squander their money as they see fit, just as it is the right of rich kid to blow their inheritance.

Further, it's important as a capitalist society that we see our government make such restitution, because it gives us confidence that government is serious about protecting free-market incentives, such as the incentives to build fortunes to pass to our kin.

[_moksha]

Can wrongs be righted?

I think redemption is one of the strong messages of the New Testament, so yes I would say Affirmative Action is compatible.

[_Droopy]

One thought that comes to mind is the restitution step of the repentance process. To the extent that one race's sins have caused harm to another race, affirmative action to give restitution to the damaged race is indeed compatible with the teachings of the Church.

1. How can a "race" (an entire vast collective of disparate individuals for diverse backgrounds, cultures, nations, and life experiences) own another similar "race" any form of restitution?

2. Who owes who? How can present Americans, for example, who had no part in slavery or Jim Crow (and the vast majority of whom would not) owe contemporary blacks, many of whom did not suffer under those oppressions, "restitution?"

If those blacks still living are to receive reparations, from who is it going to morally and legitimately come? Should I, a baby boomer raised in Seattle, Washington, who had no part in Jim Crow, segregation, or other systematic discrimination, and would not have had any part in it, be made to pay restitution to blacks who experienced such discrimination? Should my children and grand children?

4. Should the descendents of the fair number of wealthy free blacks who owned black slaves be forced by law to pay reparations to presently living black Americans?

[_Droopy]

In many of Droopy's posts, he's emphasized how hard working rich people are, but a fundamental tenet of capitalism and freedom, per Milton Friedman, is that being born into money is no more immoral than being born with a high intellect. One of the incentives of capitalism, in fact, is the ability to transfer ones wealth to kin at death. And capitalism makes no moral demands, nor does it provide any incentive for the children of the rich, to work hard.

This is probably because "capitalism" is not a system or philosophy of anything, but simply freedom in the economic sphere. We can do what we will with our freedom, but we cannot choose the consequences of our use of our freedom.

Wiping out empires of Native Americans was at least as bad as a government confiscating the wealth of its people. Confiscating wealth breaks a major incentive within capitalism. Therefore, if the government is guilty of confiscating wealth of one generation, it should make some restitution by paying it back to the rightful inheritors from the next. Has the result-oriented restitution to Native Americans necessarily been a staggering success? Maybe, maybe not. But the process of rich parents handing down gobs of money to their children has also led to questionable results. It's the right of the beneficiaries of result-measures to invest or squander their money as they see fit, just as it is the right of rich kid to blow their inheritance.

You have not adduced any logically connected argument here. A father handing down an inheritance to his offspring has no analogous relationship to a government paying reparations to an entire collective group for past injustice. The father's inheritance is not a reparation, but a gift (many times, but not always, made or withheld based on the perceived worthiness/competence of the offspring to receive it) and the money being passed on was earned through productive economic activity in selling goods or services to other free individuals who choose to buy them because they would rather have them than something else at that particular time.

This is not analogous to burning down your house and having to pay to rebuild your house. Government waging war and later paying reparations for the wealth it has destroyed has no apparent logical relation to me leaving the wealth I created to my son upon my death. The one is restitution for the destruction of wealth. The other is a gift for the maintenance and, hopefully, wise investment of a loved one.

The Amerindians were in many cases just as culpable for the ongoing wars that occurred during the American move West as were whites, and committed unspeakable atrocities against peaceful settlers (similar to those they had been committing against each other for thousands of years previously). There was, in other words, a tragic clash of civilizations, not the peaceful transfer of earned wealth from one generation to another within a nuclear family. Where is the logical analogy?

While the improper confiscation of wealth violates liberal democratic principles governing free market relations, the American government and the Anerindians at that time were at war. There was, in other words, nothing capitalist about it. The cavalry was funded by the American taxpayer, and war is not a productive, wealth creating activity.

Further, inheritance, in western law, is a legal concept with specific rules and definitions attached to it. Upon what grounds do you claim that all presently living Amerindians have some preemptive claim upon a portion of my income for things done to them a century and a half ago by others no longer living?

A second problem here is coming to some determination of the reparations owed from specific Indian tribes to living members of other tribes for centuries of genocidal war, land grabbing, theft, cannibalism, torture, and the selling of other Indians into slavery.

It seems this will have anthropologists and archeologists busy for a long time to come.

But the process of rich parents handing down gobs of money to their children has also led to questionable results.

Yes, it has, but its none of our business.

It's the right of the beneficiaries of result-measures to invest or squander their money as they see fit, just as it is the right of rich kid to blow their inheritance.

Which is irrelevant to the question of the moral legitimacy of reparations to beneficiaries who never experienced the offense to which the reparations are related, from those to whom the offense was never related.

Where, in other words, are the reparations coming to modern white Americans for the countless slaughters, torture, and inhuman brutality committed by Amerindians against peaceful settlers?

Do modern Scandinavians owe the British and the French for what the Vikings did?