The Anti-Manichaeist

kudos to Better than Therapy for helping me find the Mark Noll article. I find Rick to be a natural compadre in the quest to improve the overall distribution of political habits of deliberation about politics among evangelicals.

Mark Noll writes that he doesn’t plan to vote because he has derived stances from his faith on seven issues: race, the value of life, taxes, trade, medicine, religious freedom and the international rule of law. He doesn’t plan to vote because he does not find anyone taking serious his combination of concerns. He also finds the public discourse intellectually stunted with the extreme partisanship resulting in a neglect of the public good.

First response:Noll’s negative characterization of US politics stems in part from how the inflammation of the cultural wars have been poisoning the US’s democracy for the past thirty some years. Relations between the parties have been more civil and productive in the past, a past that Noll as a historian wishes to harken us back towards.

I’m going to summarize the seven positions, provide some commentary.

Race: Noll describes the history of racism, its impact and the need for recompensation for the effects of racism.
comment:Noll sounds very much like William Sandy Darity Jr and his call for some recompensation. Noll’s idea of Marshall plans for inner-cities is very interesting. However, it is no surprise that these issues are not in play today. But I don’t see how because a particular issue isn’t important in an election should make one apathetic about who gets elected.

prolife: Noll is militantly prolife. He says that, “Assumptions that are nearly universal in human history testify that, without compelling reasons to the contrary, life should be favored over death.” Now, he is one of those sojourner-style pro-lifers that believes that economic support should be given to mothers to help them with giving birth and taking care of their children.

Comment:The assumption that we should conflate human life and personhood and treat personhood as beginning at conception has not been universal. Both Augustine and Aquinas did not share this view. There are observed facts about the fetal development process that pose some ambiguity as to when we are human beings, rather than potential human beings.
Noll frames the debate as all or nothing, as most pro-lifers do. This obscures how the concrete political question often in dispute is when we legally define the beginning of human personhood, or when the unborn has a legal status other than as part of his/her mother’s boday. Neither side is for the killing of human life, but the commandment not to kill does not rule out exceptions and applies to human beings and there has been some mystery, or room for disagreement, as to when we begin or end as human beings.
Noll needs to acknowledge that discerning right conduct in politics requires making fallible judgements as to what aspects of this fallen world of ours may or may not be changed. I would contend that there is no way that first trimester elective abortions are going to be made illegal again and so all political capital spent on this issue is a waste of resources.

Taxes:Noll is in favor of sharply progressive income taxes, since a good deal of our ability to earn wealth stems from how we have benefited from the social infrastructure of the US.
Comment:Its unclear what a sharply progressive income tax means, presumably one with a higher marginal tax-rate. I wish Noll had endorsed the USBIG that promises to simplify the enormous complexity of the US tax system with a simple progressive program where everyone above a certain age receives a direct transfer of a certain amount of income and then pays a flat marginal tax rate on the rest of their income.

Noll is correct that we benefit from living in the US. However, he skirts over whether or not fallen human nature entails that we pay attention to the bad incentive effects of too sharply progressive income taxes, like those of France, which are almost never actually enforced for good reason.

There are other ways to help the people of the under-developed world, which may merit us accepting higher taxes.

Trade:Noll is in general in favor of advancing more free-trade.
Comment:Noll seems to neglect how greater economic interdependence between nations causes them to need to become more political interdependent and mandate a need for more int’l governance. The argument is simple. In the course of doing business, legal disagreements happen and need to be resolved with implied or actual recourse to a legal authority that both sides accept. The problem is that with international trade, different trading parties may not both accept a particular legal authority. Globalization is often about the rising need for more extensive int’l governance to settle these conflicts and the defacto nature of the authorities that emerge.
Noll doesn’t consider arguments for trade-protections for under-developed countries with infant-industries who need to avoid over-dependency on fickle, foreign capital. He also doesn’t consider how the extensive poverty of many under-developed countries would make “free” trade, not very fair trade. Mostly, Noll seems to segregate the economic and political issues, in this regard. One can do that in academia, but not in real life.

medicine:Noll is in favor of ensuring basic medical coverage to all and the gov’t wielding its police-authority over parts of the medical system that act based on their perceived short-term self-interest.
comment:Sure, that would be a very good thing, which would require a more competitive political system to become an issue. But do we disregard proposed more moderate changes that emerge from our existing system because our ideal is not put on the table?

Regarding religious freedom:Modern World History affirms that the right to worship God or not as one wishes.
comment:In much of the world, religious beliefs/values are intertwined with the values that justify the existing state. How to increase religious freedom in those states from its preexisting fallen state is not so clear.

Regarding international rule of law:The US must exert int’l leadership, since it is the only nation that is in a position to do so. But we need checks against our authority to prevent us from over-extending ourselves in unilateral actions. Noll seems to accept that self-interest will never be removed from our int’l manipulations. He accepts that self-interest is a legitimate reason for the use of force, but only when the strictest standards of justice are observed.
comment:This is a wee bit vague. It doesn’t sound that far off from what Kerry stands for, except that he can’t use the language that Noll uses because of the number of anti-war democrats that would object. I think part of what has been characterized as flip-flopping by Kerry on this issue is his need to couch his stances more carefully as a politician.

Final point: The US political system is designed to promote strategic voting. I believe that we should work towards a viable third party system where third parties that bring positions like Nolls to the attention of the two main parties are rewarded more. Noll doesn’t seem to concern himself with possible structural changes that would make this more likely to be the case.

As far as I can recall, Kerry is pretty pro-free-trade. The only issue that would land Noll on the Republican side is Abortion. Bush has said that he doesn’t think the US is ready for making abortion illegal. If we read between the lines that likely means he wisely is not going to spend a lot of his political capital on the issue, not unlike Ronald Reagan.

I don’t see any compelling reason why Noll would not vote for Kerry. Sure, he’s not boldly advancing some of the more radical proposals that Noll would like to see made law, but he is closer than Bush in these regards.

But man would I like to get Noll to post at my blog.
dlw