Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. At New Ideal, Ben Bayer argues that abortion bans purporting to makes exceptions "for the life of the mother" don't really do so because of a common misconception of what life is for a human:

Likewise, women forced to bear unwanted children may still breathe and have a pulse and even pursue some human values. They're not dead. But living is not merely escaping death. It's the untrammeled, positive pursuit of values.

To rob a woman of the central choice of when and whether to have a child is to rob her of part of her life: it may not destroy her brain but it stops her from using it, i.e., from using her sovereign judgment to control her own body and lifepath. That is a real "impairment of a major bodily function."

If there is to be a silver lining to the Dobbs decision, it will be that a more rational and complete idea of what a human life is gains much-needed currency in our culture.

This is ultimately what it will take to ensure that a woman's right to abortion is recognized and protected by law.

2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn defends big business:

The failure to distinguish between economic power and political power leads people to believe that large corporations have grown through coercion.

Although government cronyism exists in a mixed economy, Big Business -- large corporations -- is not inherently immoral. On the contrary, absent government favors and protectionism, companies grow large because they act morally. It means that they are productive: they continually develop and produce goods and services that customers value. They are just: their trade with others (customers, employees, suppliers) is voluntary and mutually beneficial. They respect the individual rights of others: they do not initiate physical force, including deception and fraud. (Accepting government subsidies and tax credits in a mixed economy is not immoral, as long as one keeps advocating for free markets and for reducing government interference).

The confusion between political and economic power is why so many people are, oddly, both paranoid about "big business," and yet naively trusting of big (i.e., improper) government "solutions," such as antitrust law.

3. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney shares further insights on "motivation by love" prompted by the Q&A of her recent interview by Yaron Brook (also embedded below):

...The change from motivation by threats to motivation by values can be fast.

...

Once you identify the deep values on both sides of a choice, you often resolve the conflict and feel motivated with desire to act to gain and keep the greater value.

For anyone not yet familiar with the potential for conflict between motivation by love and motivation by fear, there is a link to Moroney's very helpful golf course analogy near the start of her post.

4. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger considers a few surprising positives from Trump's recent election win:

[H]ere in Florida, I talk regularly with many MAGA people, and they are motivated more by a rejection of the Left than by xenophobia and racism (which are usually present, beneath the surface). They are Trumpians based on sense-of-life. Despite some ugly elements, the motivating factor of the MAGA people is the "American sense-of-life" that Ayn Rand described and lauded in "Don't Let It Go" (1971), reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It.

Binswanger follows with the relevant Rand quote -- which also contains a warning.

This positive is the most important and possibly also the most tragic of the election, which I see as having gotten a very wrong man into office for some laudable reasons.

-- CAV