Moral Principles and Moral Courage
As I have followed the national budget debate over the past twelve months or so, I have been struck by the ways that the arguments are framed morally. Today, it has become commonplace to declare that the budget is a “moral” document, that as a statement of the nation’s economic priorities, it makes decisions that are moral by their very nature, both in themselves and in their consequences.
This declaration is, of course, absolutely true: it is hard to see how anyone might imagine the federal budget to be merely “economic.” In fact, it is so true that the reminder is almost unhelpful, for once we attune ourselves to the moral questions at stake, we see that in fact that participants are making moral claims all the time concerning budget priorities. The question then is not whether moral principles, but which moral principles.
I see at least two great sets of moral claims at play. One set is based upon economic stewardship. The United States today is living beyond its means, and in fact, has been doing so for some time. While extending costs over time may be appropriate and even advisable when benefits likewise extend over time, passing costs to future generations for benefits enjoyed only today goes against any stable norm of stewardship. And when certain national priorities threaten to grow beyond the government’s ability to sustain them—I have in mind entitlement programs—stewardship demands that we consider how we might pursue these priorities responsibly.
A second set of moral arguments emphasizes justice. While we have an obligation to consider our stewardship responsibilities for the sake of future generations, it is equally important to carry out our responsibilities to our neighbors today. So if justice requires that all members of society have the ability to participate in our common life, the cost of efforts to reduce deficits may not be borne by the most vulnerable members of society. Programs designed to meet these goals may need to be rebuilt from time to time, but the foundational requirements of justice with regard to the poor do not change.
I find it helpful to consider the moral framing of the debate in this way because, first of all, it encourages us to consider our motivations in the debate—and equally important, the motivations of others. Often, opponents in the political budget fight are caricatured as uncaring and selfish (on the one side) or stupid and selfish (on the other). Recognizing that our opponents’ positions may be morally grounded is valuable, even if we reject the policy prescriptions that flow from them. It may not be necessary to find that our opponents are uncaring, stupid or selfish; it could be that they are merely wrong.
But does the recognition of the varied moral positions at stake issue help us as we stumble towards policy? I think it may, for although we may arrive at these moral principles from different religious or ideological starting places, they enable a place from which alternate political conversations may become possible. We may discover, uncomfortably perhaps, that our moral principles cut both ways in terms of policy. The moral principle of stewardship, for example, applies not only to our finances. Surely, a wise steward will not pay for yesterday’s fiscal deficits by passing social or environmental deficits to tomorrow. It’s hard for me to see how tax increases on the most wealthy can or should be avoided in pursuit of these ends.
The moral claims of justice also cut both ways. While justice requires bringing to the most vulnerable the care to which they are entitled, justice is also implicated in our obligations to future generations, and that will require us to take a hard look at unsustainable spending patterns in particular areas. This will include military spending. But the far more significant challenge, and the more difficult, will be the rebuilding of entitlement programs. And for that reconstruction project, justice itself will require that all options remain on the table.
What becomes clear, I believe, is that neither justice nor stewardship can be considered alone, and they certainly need not be opposed to each other. Fortunately, the interplay of these two principles may result in more policy options than we perhaps had expected. These are moral decisions, these are difficult decisions, but they remain decisions.
And here we arrive at what is perhaps most challenging. To make moral decisions, we must be morally courageous. And in politics, that requires refusing easy answers (“tax the rich!”; “cuts across the board!”) and a willingness to assume some of the costs that come with being morally principled. Both of the tempting options of “more of the same” and “less of the same” must be rejected. Now is the time for public policy makers to be as courageous as they are principled.
Professor Brink:
I would like to thank you for your reasoned contribution to this conversation. I particularly appreciated your emphasis on respect for opponents in temporal issues, “It may not be necessary to find that our opponents are uncaring, stupid, or selfish; it could be that they are merely wrong.”
I think there is a reverse edge to that sword, which I would articulate as “It could be that I, myself, am wrong here.” I try to keep that in mind often. In an era where human fallibility is rarely reflected upon or admitted in the public square, I appreciate your reminder.
While I believe that, for the most part, I understand and follow your line of dialogue, I do have one question.
You write, “A second set of moral arguments emphasizes justice…justice requires that all members of society have the ability to participate in our common life…”
Is this, then, your definition of “justice,” at least in the context of this particular dialogue? If so, what is the basis for that definition?
Regards,
Lindsey E. Arnold
Quantico, Virginia
Professor Brink:
I would like to thank you for your reasoned contribution to this conversation. I particularly appreciated your emphasis on respect for opponents in temporal issues, “It may not be necessary to find that our opponents are uncaring, stupid, or selfish; it could be that they are merely wrong.”
I think there is a reverse edge to that sword, which I would articulate as “It could be that I, myself, am wrong here.” I try to keep that in mind often. In an era where human fallibility is rarely reflected upon or admitted in the public square, I appreciate your reminder.
While I believe that, for the most part, I understand and follow your line of dialogue, I do have one question.
You write, “A second set of moral arguments emphasizes justice…justice requires that all members of society have the ability to participate in our common life…”
Is this, then, your definition of “justice,” at least in the context of this particular dialogue? If so, what is the basis for that definition?
Regards,
Lindsey E. Arnold
Quantico, Virginia
Professor Brink:
I would like to thank you for your reasoned contribution to this conversation. I particularly appreciated your emphasis on respect for opponents in temporal issues, “It may not be necessary to find that our opponents are uncaring, stupid, or selfish; it could be that they are merely wrong.”
I think there is a reverse edge to that sword, which I would articulate as “It could be that I, myself, am wrong here.” I try to keep that in mind often. In an era where human fallibility is rarely reflected upon or admitted in the public square, I appreciate your reminder.
While I believe that, for the most part, I understand and follow your line of dialogue, I do have one question.
You write, “A second set of moral arguments emphasizes justice…justice requires that all members of society have the ability to participate in our common life…”
Is this, then, your definition of “justice,” at least in the context of this particular dialogue? If so, what is the basis for that definition?
Regards,
Lindsey E. Arnold
Quantico, Virginia
Thanks for your comment. I quite agree with your remark on our fallibility. If there’s one thing that I expect to relearn in this Alternate Conversation series is that this sort of thing is hard work, and that I should expect to make mistakes, both as develop specific policy implications of convictions and then again as I attempt to communicate them to others.
I think you’re also quite right to focus on the account of justice that I’m assuming. I think that in the biblical view, justice must be understood to be more than merely procedural –that is concerned with more that maintaining fair “rules of the game.” Rather, justice is also restorative—it seeks to restore what is broken, working always to regain the righteousness that originally characterized God’s good creation. This certainly has implications for our criminal justice system, but it also has implications for distributive justice. A properly designed societal welfare system should have as its purpose not simply the bare sustenance of those who are poor—that is provide resources to keep people alive, clothed and housed. Rather, justice demands we do these things so that people can be restored to community, that they can be enabled to contribute to our common life
Much more could be said on this, but I’d emphasize also one further point: while governments have a particular role in seeking justice, it does not carry this responsibility alone. In particular, a wise government will realize the limits of its own competence; indeed, as we ask the details about how governments go about this work, we may find that it is especially by challenging and supporting other social institutions (familes, churches, schools, nonprofits) that governments best carry out their responsibilities for communities in general and for vulnerable people in particular.
There's some beginning thoughts. I expect I'll refine and add to this conception over the next weeks and months.
Thanks for your comment. I quite agree with your remark on our fallibility. If there’s one thing that I expect to relearn in this Alternate Conversation series is that this sort of thing is hard work, and that I should expect to make mistakes, both as develop specific policy implications of convictions and then again as I attempt to communicate them to others.
I think you’re also quite right to focus on the account of justice that I’m assuming. I think that in the biblical view, justice must be understood to be more than merely procedural –that is concerned with more that maintaining fair “rules of the game.” Rather, justice is also restorative—it seeks to restore what is broken, working always to regain the righteousness that originally characterized God’s good creation. This certainly has implications for our criminal justice system, but it also has implications for distributive justice. A properly designed societal welfare system should have as its purpose not simply the bare sustenance of those who are poor—that is provide resources to keep people alive, clothed and housed. Rather, justice demands we do these things so that people can be restored to community, that they can be enabled to contribute to our common life
Much more could be said on this, but I’d emphasize also one further point: while governments have a particular role in seeking justice, it does not carry this responsibility alone. In particular, a wise government will realize the limits of its own competence; indeed, as we ask the details about how governments go about this work, we may find that it is especially by challenging and supporting other social institutions (familes, churches, schools, nonprofits) that governments best carry out their responsibilities for communities in general and for vulnerable people in particular.
There's some beginning thoughts. I expect I'll refine and add to this conception over the next weeks and months.
Thanks for your comment. I quite agree with your remark on our fallibility. If there’s one thing that I expect to relearn in this Alternate Conversation series is that this sort of thing is hard work, and that I should expect to make mistakes, both as develop specific policy implications of convictions and then again as I attempt to communicate them to others.
I think you’re also quite right to focus on the account of justice that I’m assuming. I think that in the biblical view, justice must be understood to be more than merely procedural –that is concerned with more that maintaining fair “rules of the game.” Rather, justice is also restorative—it seeks to restore what is broken, working always to regain the righteousness that originally characterized God’s good creation. This certainly has implications for our criminal justice system, but it also has implications for distributive justice. A properly designed societal welfare system should have as its purpose not simply the bare sustenance of those who are poor—that is provide resources to keep people alive, clothed and housed. Rather, justice demands we do these things so that people can be restored to community, that they can be enabled to contribute to our common life
Much more could be said on this, but I’d emphasize also one further point: while governments have a particular role in seeking justice, it does not carry this responsibility alone. In particular, a wise government will realize the limits of its own competence; indeed, as we ask the details about how governments go about this work, we may find that it is especially by challenging and supporting other social institutions (familes, churches, schools, nonprofits) that governments best carry out their responsibilities for communities in general and for vulnerable people in particular.
There's some beginning thoughts. I expect I'll refine and add to this conception over the next weeks and months.
Thank you, Dr. Brink and Lindsey, for your essay and comments. I would like to take Lindsey's question about justice a little further in light of recent events. Dr. Brink, you concluded your response to Lindsey by saying, "….while governments have a particular role in seeking justice….a wise government will realize the limits of its own competence; indeed, as we ask the details about how governments go about this work, we may find that it is especially by challenging and supporting other social institutions (families, churches, schools, nonprofits) that governments best carry out their responsibilities for communities in general and for vulnerable people in particular." Specifically, I would like to gain a better sense of what you mean by “our common life.” I fully agree with you that government should first look to institutions beyond government to achieve its goals of increasing everyone’s ability to “participate in our common life,” but it seems now more than ever that when we prescribe these sorts of partnerships between government and institutions of civil society, we must quickly follow them with a robust theory of social pluralism.
We must be able to describe a normative basis for maintaining (and in some instances reforming) our highly differentiated society. In practical and moral terms, I support government in some instances continuing, and in others beginning, to defer some of its activities in terms of funding or directly providing services to people in dire need. What I think we, Americans, have in common is that we are citizens in relation to government, producers and consumers in economic exchange, neighbors in geographic proximity to one another, and that we share certain norms and practices that follow from these. However, I think we, Christians, must be ready to give a compelling account of social pluralism in such a way that we articulate the differences between a school, a church, a hospital, a government body, a family, a business, etc., and at least promote an awareness that such institutional differences might warrant different kinds of legal recognitions, permissions, and protections. For example, why might it be okay for International Justice Mission or a Catholic crisis pregnancy center to hire only Christians but it would be wrong for the Department of Energy or General Motors to do the same? I think the distinctions highlighted by this question are significant. The latest example that brought this to my mind is the Dept. of Health and Human Services contraception mandate.
Government should do more to encourage what civil society is already doing and to consider what else it might outsource to civil society that it can no longer afford to provide directly, but it must do both while also accounting for the nature, purpose, and identity of the institutions with which it partners. I think this effort might also fall under the interplay between justice and stewardship?
Thank you, Dr. Brink and Lindsey, for your essay and comments. I would like to take Lindsey's question about justice a little further in light of recent events. Dr. Brink, you concluded your response to Lindsey by saying, "….while governments have a particular role in seeking justice….a wise government will realize the limits of its own competence; indeed, as we ask the details about how governments go about this work, we may find that it is especially by challenging and supporting other social institutions (families, churches, schools, nonprofits) that governments best carry out their responsibilities for communities in general and for vulnerable people in particular." Specifically, I would like to gain a better sense of what you mean by “our common life.” I fully agree with you that government should first look to institutions beyond government to achieve its goals of increasing everyone’s ability to “participate in our common life,” but it seems now more than ever that when we prescribe these sorts of partnerships between government and institutions of civil society, we must quickly follow them with a robust theory of social pluralism.
We must be able to describe a normative basis for maintaining (and in some instances reforming) our highly differentiated society. In practical and moral terms, I support government in some instances continuing, and in others beginning, to defer some of its activities in terms of funding or directly providing services to people in dire need. What I think we, Americans, have in common is that we are citizens in relation to government, producers and consumers in economic exchange, neighbors in geographic proximity to one another, and that we share certain norms and practices that follow from these. However, I think we, Christians, must be ready to give a compelling account of social pluralism in such a way that we articulate the differences between a school, a church, a hospital, a government body, a family, a business, etc., and at least promote an awareness that such institutional differences might warrant different kinds of legal recognitions, permissions, and protections. For example, why might it be okay for International Justice Mission or a Catholic crisis pregnancy center to hire only Christians but it would be wrong for the Department of Energy or General Motors to do the same? I think the distinctions highlighted by this question are significant. The latest example that brought this to my mind is the Dept. of Health and Human Services contraception mandate.
Government should do more to encourage what civil society is already doing and to consider what else it might outsource to civil society that it can no longer afford to provide directly, but it must do both while also accounting for the nature, purpose, and identity of the institutions with which it partners. I think this effort might also fall under the interplay between justice and stewardship?
Thank you, Dr. Brink and Lindsey, for your essay and comments. I would like to take Lindsey's question about justice a little further in light of recent events. Dr. Brink, you concluded your response to Lindsey by saying, "….while governments have a particular role in seeking justice….a wise government will realize the limits of its own competence; indeed, as we ask the details about how governments go about this work, we may find that it is especially by challenging and supporting other social institutions (families, churches, schools, nonprofits) that governments best carry out their responsibilities for communities in general and for vulnerable people in particular." Specifically, I would like to gain a better sense of what you mean by “our common life.” I fully agree with you that government should first look to institutions beyond government to achieve its goals of increasing everyone’s ability to “participate in our common life,” but it seems now more than ever that when we prescribe these sorts of partnerships between government and institutions of civil society, we must quickly follow them with a robust theory of social pluralism.
We must be able to describe a normative basis for maintaining (and in some instances reforming) our highly differentiated society. In practical and moral terms, I support government in some instances continuing, and in others beginning, to defer some of its activities in terms of funding or directly providing services to people in dire need. What I think we, Americans, have in common is that we are citizens in relation to government, producers and consumers in economic exchange, neighbors in geographic proximity to one another, and that we share certain norms and practices that follow from these. However, I think we, Christians, must be ready to give a compelling account of social pluralism in such a way that we articulate the differences between a school, a church, a hospital, a government body, a family, a business, etc., and at least promote an awareness that such institutional differences might warrant different kinds of legal recognitions, permissions, and protections. For example, why might it be okay for International Justice Mission or a Catholic crisis pregnancy center to hire only Christians but it would be wrong for the Department of Energy or General Motors to do the same? I think the distinctions highlighted by this question are significant. The latest example that brought this to my mind is the Dept. of Health and Human Services contraception mandate.
Government should do more to encourage what civil society is already doing and to consider what else it might outsource to civil society that it can no longer afford to provide directly, but it must do both while also accounting for the nature, purpose, and identity of the institutions with which it partners. I think this effort might also fall under the interplay between justice and stewardship?
Thank you Nathan for your follow-up, and my apologies for my delay responding—it’s been a busy few weeks.
I believe you are quite correct that my reply to Lindsey requires some sort of “robust theory of social pluralism.” Indeed, I think that the predominant discourse in American life—that of individualist liberalism—is spectacularly ill-equipped to articulate the sorts of differences that you describe: between a school and church, for instance, or between a government and a business. If all these institutions are essentially based on contracts between consenting adults, then to talk of the “task” or “norm” associated with these entities becomes rather meaningless.
Fortunately, such resources can be found in the Christian tradition, both in Roman Catholic social thought (subsidiarity) and in the Protestant Reformed traditions (sphere sovereignty). Whether or not we need to bring up these traditions in all their complexity every time we make a public contribution is a matter of prudence, I suppose. And figuring out how to do so in ways that are both truthful and persuasive is a further challenge. But I quite agree that we ignore them at our peril: participants in the public dialogue risk talking right past each other because of the deeper theoretical differences that you are raising. As I like to tell my students, there’s nothing so practical as a good theory—we need to get the theory right if we want to make practical difference.
Thanks,
Paul