Play-by-play
Why we need public philosophy
Political consultant and commentator Paul Begala writes on healthcare reform in today’s Washington Post. Rather than evaluate any of his claims, I think it’s worth walking through his piece to see just how many distinct moral claims he makes in less than 800 words.
Claim 1:
I am a proud progressive Democrat, someone who believes affordable, quality health care is an economic necessity and a moral imperative.
Explanation: self-explanatory–healthcare is a moral imperative.
Claim 2:
We cannot achieve perfection in this life, and if that is our goal we will always be frustrated.
Explanation: moral perfection is impossible; practicality is paramount.
Claim 3 (a long one):
No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt’s original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers — a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn’t even cover the clergy. FDR’s Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn’t work, you got nothing from Social Security.
If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner’s circle: farmworkers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.
Explanation: morally flawed actions can be redeemed through subsequent improvements.
Claim 4:
So I am trying to find the right blend of principle and pragmatism — ever mindful that, aside from race, health care is the most difficult domestic issue of the past century.
Explanation: same as above–practicality is paramount.
Claim 5:
The Founders gave us a standard: “a more perfect Union.” It’s an odd phrase; we don’t generally speak of something becoming “more perfect.” I believe it means that we have a duty, every generation, to make progress.
Explanation: we have a moral imperative to make concrete improvements toward perfection that build on the previous generation. There’s an implied teleology here: the “more perfect Union” is a goal that we can (and must) approach but will never hit.
My “explanations” are a bit glib, and there’s a lot to digest here. My relatively simple point is that Begala is making a philosophically sophisticated argument for why we ought to support a potentially unsatisfactory bill (from a moral perspective). I’m not sure whether he privately gives these claims the attention they deserve. But I know that most of us — no matter what side we’re on — certainly don’t.
–Sam
Related posts:
- On the site of public philosophy
- Give me health care, or give me death
- What is equality?
- “Dalrymple” on health care
- The new Republican brand
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