There are debates worth having, and then there are debates. One of the most dispiriting aspects of our current age is that very often you have to get one side of the debate up to a baseline of logic before any positive exchange of ideas can begin. Recent weeks have provided a rather dramatic example of the kind of fruitless debate that is sucking up intellectual oxygen.
It started on April 6, with a column by CNN commentator Sally Kohn about the debate over whether Christian businesses should be forced to participate in same-sex weddings. It was titled, “Hey, Christian Business Owners: The Government Isn’t ‘Forcing’ You To Do Anything.” See if this makes any sense:
When you put it this way, the issue of government force is funny indeed. If I drive fast enough over the speed limit, the cops will, in fact, pull me over and “force” me into a jail cell for reckless driving. There’s a reason why “force of law” is a common expression. There’s a reason why we say laws are enFORCEd. All laws are backed with the implicit threat of force. Otherwise, people would disregard them.
At The Federalist, Sean Davis laid out what’s wrong with Kohn’s ridiculous argument as clearly as could be done. And for that, he was countered by Ryan Cooper at The Week:
These laws also operate on coercion. If you interfere with someone’s property right, by entering his house without his consent, for example, then under the law he can call on public authorities to, at the very least, violently compel you into leaving. He can probably call on them to stuff you into a jail cell and, in some cases, kill you outright. Property, wealth, and corporate structures rest on a premise of violent state coercion — that is to say, law, per Davis.
Why it’s almost as if government coercion is just in some instances, and injust in others! And people might disagree whether the utility of a law justifies the corresponding abridgement of liberties necessary to enforce it! Davis was a bit baffled by Cooper’s argument, saying “Not sure I disagree w/ anything in it. Of course laws are coercive. Question is whether coercion is appropriate.” But Cooper argues that there’s no real debate here, since using force to shore up laws “is a background condition of all economic activity, then whether it’s ‘appropriate’ is meaningless.”
So, to review, by arguing that conservatives have no choice but to argue that using force to underpin laws is always good or always bad — regardless of the specific law being discussed — Cooper is setting up a strawman so imposing there’s probably a pagan cult on a Scottish island dedicated to worshipping it. Of course, the biggest sin in the progressive worldview is always one of hypocrisy. So Cooper wrote another column today to hammer this point home, headlined “For conservatives, government coercion is bad — except when it’s not.” Is this a statement anyone would really disagree with? I’ll spare you the more tortuous aspects of the column and get to the real heart of things. Based on his inability to see the complexities behind the historical and legal frameworks underpinning property rights, it sounds like Cooper really had his mind blown by Das Kapital or something:
Actually, coercion can very well be bad when it supports things you don’t like and good when it supports things you do! It just depends on whether your opinions are just. For instance, I like that the federal government has basic food saftey laws. However, I don’t like that the government sends armed agents to raid Amish farms for selling raw milk and I think it’s entirely unnecessary and unjustified as a matter of public safety. As a logical distinction, this is not complicated. And to the extent we have earnest disagreements about which laws are just, that is why we have free speech and a political process to work out these disputes.
Look, I get that conservatives are supposedly on the wrong side of history and whatever cultural and political values I cherish are going to be ablated by right-thinking progressives. But this oppressive fate would be easier to accept if decades of progressive education hadn’t bequeathed us a liberal punditry eager to rally around rank idiocy of a kind so pure it can be demonstrated with mathematical proofs — so long as it futhers the statist imperative du jour.
