Table of Contents
Preface |
1 |
Introduction |
3 |
George Orwell |
37 |
The Moral Foundations of the United States Constitutional Democracy: An Analytical and Historical Inquiry into the Primary Moral Concept of Equality |
43 |
An Ecological Organic Paradigm: A Framework of Analysis for Moral and Political Philosophy |
88 |
What Medical Ethics Has to Offer the Larger Field of Moral and Political Philosophy |
131 |
A Tribute to my Father, Judge Leland Rutherford |
147 |
Excerpt
Preface
The three central essays in this collection present a general framework of analysis for moral and political philosophy and examples of the usefulness of this framework. The logical progression thus begins with the second of these essays An Ecological Organic Paradigm: A Framework of Analysis for Moral and Political Philosophy. This essay describes a four-part framework of analysis based on a multidimensional understanding of human nature and ecology, with ecology being understood as the interaction between an organism and its environment. The usefulness of this framework is illustrated by applying it first to political philosophy in The Moral Foundations of the United States Constitutional Democracy: a Historical and Analytic Inquiry into the Primary Moral Value of Equality. The framework is also then used in the third central essay to analyze an applied moral philosophy in What Medical Ethics Have to Offer the Larger Fields of Moral and Political Philosophy. The essays, however, are presented in the order in which they were originally written and they can be read in that way.
The essays are closely interrelated, but they were originally presented to quite different audiences. There is thus some significant overlap, repetition and even duplication of some of the central themes. These are being applied in different contexts, however, and this is helpful for the purpose of illustration.
I also think it is useful for authors of this type of work to give some indication of their personal background and the influences in their lives. The last essay is a tribute to my father and it may in part serve this purpose. The occasion for writing this tribute was a distinguished alumni award her received from his high school in Westlake, Ohio. I feel fortunate to have written this essay before he died at the age of 92. The book is dedicated to my mother, Gladys Rutherford, who was my first and best teacher. The first essay is on George Orwell simply because I wish it to be so.
The introduction is an overview and the place to begin.
Equality as an Affirmation of Our Common Humanity
(Excerpts from Moral and Political Philosophy)
Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much. Public opinion, or [on?] any subject, always has a “central idea,” from which all its minor thoughts radiate. That “central idea” in our political public opinion, at the beginning was, and until recently has continued to be, “the equality of men.” --- Abraham Lincoln 1856
Our government is a constitutional democracy.
At the time of a clash of civilizations it is not unusual for both sides to re-examine, define, and even sometimes codify their basic values and cultural institutions in order to both preserve and convey their basic values and traditions. At the time of the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, the United States did this poorly. It appears that we are making a similar mistake in our war against terrorism, which is very much a battle of ideas and ideologies and will have to be understood as such for any chance of a long-term resolution and reconciliation. We are missing a defining opportunity in the history of the moral and political philosophy of the liberal tradition; first, by not defining our primary moral value as equality, understood as a respect for human life; and second, by not defining our government as a constitutional democracy, which is the only way to convey both the substantive and the procedural concepts of equality that it incorporates.
At the time of the fall of communism, however, the media, the academics, and our government almost universally described the United States as a capitalistic democracy. This was in part because we allowed the Soviet Union to describe their communism to be primarily an economic system rather than a totalitarian political system, which denied any concept of moral or political equality. The primary alter-native to communism should have been constitutional democracy. The emphasis on capitalism, even for those countries without a legal or institutional substructure to support capitalism, was for the most part at least a short-term disaster. We can recognize today that we have paid a price in terms of our credibility in third world countries by defining ourselves at that time in a primary way as a capitalistic economic system rather than a constitutional democracy. Even in our own country, for example, the degree to which we are a social welfare state or a regulated capitalism is determined by a political process. Our political culture determines our economic policies. The same can ironically be said of the former Soviet Marxist state, which did not wither away, but collapsed of its own weight without the arbitrary use of coercive power to support it.
It is the constitutional aspects of our government, such as the Bill of Rights, that incorporate our substantive concepts of equality. The constitutional principles are placed beyond the majority rule of the legislative process. It is the democratic aspects of our government that incorporate the procedural aspects of equality, such as "one person, one vote."
The primary moral value of United States constitutional democracy is equality.
Jefferson, Madison, Tocqueville, and Lincoln all considered equality to be the primary moral principle of constitutional democracy. Yet again, in the current war on terrorism, which began on September 11, 2001, I cannot recall one instance of even a mention of equality. The terrorist attack of 9/11 was an attack on our freedom and security and it is perhaps understandable that our values have subsequently been described primarily in those terms. The Declaration of Independence, however, was written in the manner of Euclidean geometry. Its first premise was that "all men are created equal" and that put everything that followed, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in a moral context. Even the great reformers, such as the women suffragettes and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., did not repudiate these principles, but urged us to live up to them and place them into practice. A singular emphasis on freedom and liberty at this time may be good for rallying the nation, but it should also be understood that we are in a battle of ideas, in part, with a radical version of Islam. Islam, the religion of 1.2 billion people, is based on a submission to the will of God. Much of the liberty that we convey, on the other hand, is seen by others as the license and self-indulgence in our popular culture rather than the political concept of self-government. During the current war on terrorism it may be appropriate that we emphasize freedom, and to win this war we will need the cooperation of many countries that are not constitutional democracies. To win the peace, however, we will need to understand and convey that our primary moral value is universal equality. It is some recognition of our common humanity in a pluralistic world that makes the accommodation of a wide variety of attributes, cultural differences, desires, and beliefs possible without the use of coercion or being the cause of alienation.
Such concepts of equality are perhaps so ingrained in our own culture that we take them for granted and fail to reflect on them, to clarify and delineate their meaning, and to convey to others their significance. On the other hand, the enormous damages done recently in the court of world opinion concerning the issues of prisoner abuse in Iraq and our failure to voluntarily abide by the spirit of the Geneva Conventions would likely have been avoided if we had understood and attempted to convey our primary moral value as equality, understood as an affirmation of the dignity and worth of our common humanity. The distortion of our moral compass has been from the top down, beginning with our academic elites.
