----- Original Message -----
From: "Ellen Frank" <frank@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
What people deserve is exactly the issue the right wing will
raise -- the rich deserve their luxuries and the poor have no
right to take what others have earned fairly (I guess they'll
want to leave Ken Lay out if it). How do supporters of
a progressive tax respond unless they are willing to say the
existing distribution of income is fundamentally unjust?
Ellen
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Dismantling the right's use of desert arguments will need to encroach in
a big way upon the failings and strengths of the self-ownership thesis
we've inherited from Martin Luther and John Locke. This is extremely
difficult territory to navigate when explaining social causation and the
sources of selfhood in terms citizens can easily digest. The quotes I
posted from Frank Knight show how a "secular Calvinist" and darling of
the right can provide a toehold when the policy wonking begins in
earnest. Demonstrating that the libertarian approach to responsibility
and causation can no longer carry the explanatory and justificatory
burden many on the right simply assume to be valid has been taken up
quite a bit lately by political philosophers in the journals Philosophy
and Public Affairs and Ethics and are well worth checking out.
Ian