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MORGAN HUNT
On Monday, March 29, Boston College Republicans hosted Amherst College Professor emeritus Hadley Arkes for a Zoom lecture on Natural Law and traditional morality. Professor Arkes is a highly respected academic, a student of Leo Strauss, and the founder of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding. It was an engaging talk, in which Professor Arkes laid down the philosophical and historical foundations of Natural Law, elaborated on its implications, and took many questions from the audience The Wednesday following, BC Heights published a news piece by Victor Stefanescu about Professor Arkes’ lecture, entitled “Arkes Denounces Same-Sex Marriage, Abortion At BC Republicans Event.” This “news” article did not even attempt to report on the event in an unbiased manner. Stefanescu carefully picked and chose select quotations of Arkes in an attempt to smear not only the event, but Professor Arkes and our organization. The article focused on his opposition to homosexuality, his backing of former President Donald Trump, and his admission that he probably “offended everybody” at the event. It also falsely claims that Arkes promoted conversion therapy. The article neglected to summarize Arkes’ arguments for the Natural Law—the entire focus of the event—proving that it was written to provoke emotional sentiments in those who didn’t attend the lecture and would likely take offense with Arkes’ viewpoints. Stefanescu additionally failed to place Arkes’ quotes in the proper context of his arguments. A week and a half later, on April 11, BC Heights published an opinion piece by Scott Baker called “A Message to Prospective Students: Boston College Is Still Homophobic.” In this article, Baker references us with regard to Arkes’ talk: “On March 29, BC College Republicans hosted notorious homophobe and transphobe Hadley Arkes, who gave a lecture that promoted conversion therapy, argued that homosexuality is a choice, and compared homosexuality to drug use and prostitution. At this point, after hosting a white supremacist last year, BC College Republicans should be considered a hate group and not an officially sanctioned student organization with University funding.” There are so many things deeply wrong and pernicious about this passage. Like Stefanescu’s news article, this opinion column completely ignores the focus of Professor Arkes’ talk, which was first and foremost a defense of the Natural Law. It also slanderously misrepresents what Arkes said during the lecture. Arkes did not “promote conversion therapy” at any time. He simply referenced cases in which “therapy and conversion” had led people to no longer consider themselves homosexual. Neither did he compare homosexuality to drug use and prostitution; he brought up the latter two as analogies to make an argument about bodily autonomy and consent. In addition, Baker falsely accuses a previous guest of BC Republicans, Andrew Klavan, of being a “white supremacist.” Instead of challenging Arkes’ or Klavan’s beliefs, which he evidently doesn’t agree with, Baker uses ad hominem attacks and slanders to charge Arkes, Klavan, and our organization with spreading “homophobia,” “white supremacy,” and “hate”. We at Boston College Republicans do not tolerate such false attacks. If Scott Baker had actually gone to our event, he would’ve found Professor Arkes more than willing to respond to questions in the Q&A and engage in debate with those attending. Additionally, he would’ve found Professor Arkes and our organization to be far less “hateful”, and far more tolerant and welcoming, than he believes. Baker could have challenged the Professor’s arguments real-time in a healthy academic debate, but instead chose to slander a well respected academic and the organization which hosted him in a disrespectful and flawed opinion column. It is equally despicable that Scott Baker would write a hit piece calling the BC Administration, and the school as a whole, “homophobic.” Such a polemic displays a level of arrogance and disrespect unbecoming of a Boston College student. If one actually wanted to convince the administration to change their views on establishing an LGBTQ resource center, etc., a more civil and polite column would be significantly more effective. Ironically, I personally agree with Baker’s views on homosexuality and gay marriage. I support gay marriage and, while I believe in the Natural Law, I don’t find homosexual love and attraction to be inherently bad. I knew going into the event that I would disagree with Professor Arkes’ views on homosexuality. Yet unlike Baker, I believe in academic debate and the lively engagement of ideas with which I disagree. In fact, I decided to challenge Professor Arkes in the Q&A portion of his talk. I laid down my case for gay marriage, and he laid down his case against it. We debated the issue back and forth for five or so minutes. It was such an interesting conversation that many people talked to me about it after the event had ended. Some agreed with me on the issue, some didn’t, but most people remarked that I had brought up some good points in defense of homosexuality and gay marriage. That is how one must approach controversial issues on a college campus. It should be how all those in favor of gay marriage approach the issue at Boston College. BC Republicans’ guest speakers always hold Q&A sections where all questions and challenges are welcome. In addition, one may just find that they learn something from our guest speakers, all of whom are highly regarded in their fields. It’s also important to consider that Arkes’ views on homosexual activity, that it is immoral and should be discouraged, are not extremist beliefs well outside the acceptable range of public discourse. Just 13 years ago, both major political candidates for President did not support gay marriage. The Catholic Church, the largest church in the world, does not bless homosexual marriage. The common moral and political arguments against homosexuality and gay marriage are not motivated by bias, but instead by religious faith, a desire for sexual purity, the impulse to incentivize procreation, etc. One can disagree with those arguments, as I do, and still recognize there is nothing extreme, evil, uncommon, or unacceptable about them. The act of opposing homosexual activity and gay marriage is not “homophobic” as Baker infers. A person is homophobic when they treat someone with disdain or disrespect simply because of their homosexuality. Too often the disapproval of homosexual activity is equated with the hatred of homosexual individuals. This is logically inconsistent. It is very possible for a person to disapprove of the sexual and romantic decisions of a gay man without hating their very existence. It is even possible for a homosexual individual to oppose gay marriage on religious, moral, or political grounds. Professor Arkes remarked in his lecture that he has homosexual friends who are opposed to the legalization of such an institution. It would be very strange, and quite nasty, to call that subset of the gay community “homophobic.” Put simply, homosexuality is an issue that should be debated on a college campus. There are many reasonable people on both sides of this important debate. I’m glad Professor Arkes came to campus, mainly because of his excellent argument for the Natural Law, but also because his visit allowed this discussion to happen. Professor Hadley Arkes, on April 6th, wrote about his virtual visit to BC in The Catholic Thing, which is well worth reading. To hear the actual claims Arkes made in his talk, don’t read the false and slanderous articles in The Heights. Rather, inquire with Tom Sarrouf (at [email protected]) to get your hands on a recording of the lecture.
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Are Libertarians Conservative?4/11/2021 THOMAS K. SARROUF, JR.
Last week was a great week for the Boston College Republicans. On Monday, Professor Hadley Arkes delivered a speech to the club over Zoom. It was a spectacular event. During the Q&A, someone asked about Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and the conservative-libertarian debate on the Right. The next day, the club got together for a political theory discussion on that same topic. There was great debate back and forth, and I found the discussion to be rich with intellectual content; in my opinion, it was the best political theory discussion we have had in my time with the club. While the subject is still fresh, I want to chime in and bring in some of what Prof. Arkes said on Monday. I do think libertarians are conservative. I also think libertarianism fails as a political philosophy. I am not going to defend that premise in this article (for my refutation of the philosophy, read here). But I do not think that conservatism fails as a political philosophy, neither in theory nor in practice. So why do I think libertarians are conservative if I think their philosophy is insufficient? It is because libertarianism collapses into conservatism. First, it will be helpful to elucidate the difference between a liberal and a conservative, so we can determine which position libertarianism collapses into. The difference, so it seems to me, is regarding the role of pleasure and pain. Conservatives, drawing upon Aristotle, recognize that pleasure and pain are part of life. However, it was not until modern times that the subject of pleasure and pain was seriously considered essential to a political anthropology; only the Ancient Epicureans actually centered their philosophy around the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Modern “classical liberals” like John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and John Locke, among many others, also treated pleasure and pain as essential; Mill specifically focused on the difference between “higher” pleasures and “lower” pleasures, namely the pleasures of the mind versus the pleasures of the flesh. Even so, Mill’s hedonism was what set him as a liberal, albeit in the “classical” sense. Unlike what some people believe, conservatives are not anti-pleasure per se, it’s just that we harken back to the Ancient understanding of how pleasure should play into our lives. Pleasure is a byproduct of an act, not the telos of the act itself. For an example, let’s use a “cradle argument” that was often debated between the Stoic philosophers and the Epicureans. A newborn baby is crying. Why is the baby crying according to each philosopher? The Epicurean says that the baby is crying because of some pain or some lack of pleasure. The Stoic responds and says that the baby is crying because she is hungry, and is lacking in health, which is a state of being; for the Stoic, what matters is oikeiosis, that innate knowledge of what is beneficial for the preservation of one’s constitution. The baby knows that she is hungry, and that her hunger is indicative of a lack of health, and therefore she is crying out to be nourished. Who is right, the Stoic or the Epicurean? Let’s find out. We will give the baby a morphine drip so that the pain goes away; if the Epicurean is right, in the absence of pain, the baby will be fine. The baby is shot up with morphine, and stops crying. It worked! Then the baby dies from starvation. Oh no! What’s the lesson? If you assign intrinsic value to pleasure, not only will you not get it in the long-term, but you will lose the ability to get it long-term (because you will be dead like the baby). We all intuitively know this truth: a life well-lived will be full of pleasure, but not because we seek the pleasure, but rather the goodness that pleasure happens to be a byproduct of. About this enough has been said. What is the conservative summum bonum? I take the line from that old Baltimore catechism: “to love and serve God in this life so that I might be happy with Him in the next.” Likewise, Aristotle posits that it is happiness, the highest happiness being homoiosis theoi: “to think the thoughts of the gods before them.” How do we do that? By pursuing virtue, or doing what one ought to do. It is a moralist position. There are many other differences between the core of the liberal philosophy and the conservative philosophy, but the pleasure-virtue difference is something quite important. Now, from Mill’s statements in Utilitarianism about the higher and lower pleasures might make him seem as if he is a liberal, and in the history of philosophy, he would be considered to be one. However, as Arkes pointed out in his speech, “the problem for the libertarians is that they haven’t quite grasped the notion that libertarianism is a moral position.” Libertarians are moralists! Just think about what they say: “The government ought not legislate morality; it is wrong for the government to legislate morality; the government ought not limit my autonomy to do what I want to do with my own free choice so long as I do not hurt anyone else.” These are clearly moral claims, and they represent the core of the libertarian position. The problem lies in the fact that they believe that the government ought not legislate morality. It misunderstands this key point: all laws legislate some morality, even something as seemingly banal as which side of the road people drive on; if no law is posited on that point, people will die. Indeed, to create a law, one must make the moral argument that we ought to have such a law. And so the error in the libertarian argument is that the conclusion of that argument is to seek the obfuscation of all moral claims and instantiations of morality in law and society, even though they begin from a premise that is moral; in short, it is a contradiction. But the moralist starting point is undoubtedly true, so the conclusion must be false, which means that the libertarian moralism ought to collapse into conservatism. That’s the theoretical argument. There is also a practical argument. Arkes said another thing on Monday: "The main point I convey is that the Republican Party really is not shattered or in disarray. It’s in very good condition, because the people in the country have just a clear sense of who the opposition is. As an administration and Congress of the Left extend the powers of the government, in a way that is destructive of the economy and the families, so if people recoil from this new surge of the power of the government, they know exactly who the opposition is, and the party is gifted with so much talent right now, and rising stars." This is indeed true. The libertarian impulse is anti-government, so as the Biden administration and the modern Left continue to grab power, especially in light of continued restrictions under the pretext of the COVID pandemic, any serious libertarian will find themselves turning to ally themselves with the Right. And all the better. Conservatism has long been described as a “big tent,” and we welcome libertarians to engage with us in the tent over the battle for ideas. I have spent the duration of this article asking if libertarians can be called conservative, assuming conservatives are the paradigmatic gold standard by which to judge all other ideologies. But I will conclude with a piece of praise for libertarians, which is that they have something to remind conservatives. In fact, they remind us about something so central to our own beliefs: that there are moral truths beyond the positive law, and that it conforms to a natural law that we can know by our reason, and that the natural law discovered by us teaches us how we ought to act in accord with virtue to achieve true happiness. Arkes said a third thing on Monday: “[Libertarianism] is a good disposition; it’s pretty sound. It takes the point that we have a claim to all dimensions of our freedom, and the burden lies with the government to justify its restraints on any one of those things.” That is not to say that there can be no principled ground for justification of restraining liberty; the liberal and the conservative both hold that there is ground for doing so, though we disagree when it is appropriate to do so. However, the libertarian recognizes and reminds us conservatives that we must be careful when restricting the natural rights that are intrinsic to our existence as persons. |