When I first looked at the CEC website, I happened across an article by Alasdair MacIntyre The Only Vote Worth Casting in November. Knowing Prof. MacIntyre's formidable reputation as a philosopher and writer, I am probably heading for certain humiliation by fisking his article. But what better way to start my involvement on this blog than with imposed humility?

So it begins.


"When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither."


This is not a serious argument. At best, it is a straw man. At worst, it is self-contradictory. Are there two choices or three? It would seem that there are at least three choices: Republican, Democrat, and Neither. (Actually, there are many more choices: Green, Libertarian, etc. and Neither, but let's set that aside for the moment). There's lots of criticism of the first two choices, but virtually no examination of the third.


"And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives."


This is a remarkably naive statement. It appears that the fundamental objection here is to a two party system. The various groupings of issues which comprise the policy platforms of the two parties are the result of a series of votes, negotiations, and compromises that are inherent in any democratic system. Would having 20 parties be better than 2? How about 200 or 2,000? Wouldn't more parties simply result in negotiations and compromises in the legislative vs. the electoral process?

Prof. MacIntyre appears to completely misunderstand the process that has just taken place in the US. No "false choice" has been "imposed." No one has "arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives." That power was granted to the "framers" by those who choose to participate in the process – party members and voters.

I am not active in party politics, but I know many who are, in both parties. It's a lot of work. They spend hours working out policy issues and negotiating differences internally to reach consensus. That is how the alternatives are framed. My job as a voter is to select from among the alternatives.

If Prof. MacIntyre is disappointed with the results of this process, perhaps a more construction reaction would be to engage in the process, or propose a realistic alternative. That is the true "duty" of a citizen in a free country. The "duty to withdraw" is not.


"These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement."


If so, it is only because they are straw men. If they are taken seriously, they seem to invite easy contradiction.


"But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility."


Ah, received wisdom. Ingrained at that. Again, the apparent distain for democracy and the democratic process is palpable. But I digress.


"But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush's conservatism and Kerry's liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target."


This statement is breathtaking in its confusion. The only vote worth casting is a vote against the system? But isn't the system a democratic system? And isn't the democratic system a voting system? So the only worthwhile vote is to not vote, which is a way of voting against voting?

The logic here would confuse Godel.


"Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions."


Uh, they answer the questions we ask. We, the People. If we don't care, we don't ask, and they don't answer. If we care, we ask, they answer. We ask, they report, we decide. They work for us. It's called democracy. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else that has been devised.


"What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish. These two sentences, if fully spelled out, amount to a politics. It is a politics that requires us to be pro-life, not only in doing whatever is most effective in reducing the number of abortions, but also in providing healthcare for expectant mothers, in facilitating adoptions, in providing aid for single-parent families and for grandparents who have taken parental responsibility for their grandchildren. And it is a politics that requires us to make as a minimal economic demand the provision of meaningful work that provides a fair and adequate wage for every working parent, a wage sufficient to keep a family well above the poverty line."


So, to be pro-life, we have to support universal healthcare, welfare, and the minimum wage. Oh, and we have to reduce the number of abortions.

This kind of moral equivalence blurs the distinction between 1,300,000 dead children each year (an Iraq war every month), and the impact of an additional $1 in the minimum wage. Sorry, no comparison.

Again, I am not a partisan political guy. But it seems to me that the reason that the Republican party has been in ascendancy over the past two decades (including the Clinton years, when the Democrats became more like Republicans) is that people realize that the Democratic "solutions" to poverty hurt the poor. It's that simple. To wit:

Raise the minimum wage: the poor are hurt because there are fewer entry level jobs that create career pathways to higher, sustainable wages.

Universal healthcare: the poor get stuck in the crummy national health system, while the rich buy their own healthcare outside the system.

Welfare: the poor get stuck in a cycle of dependency and hopelessness that demoralizes and degrades them. The rich feel their responsibilities are satisfied with the payment of their taxes (if any).

And so on. The point is there are many different policy options we can explore, and their impact on the poor is not well understood. There are reasonable and "pro-poor" or "pro-life" positions on each side.

The same is not true for abortion on demand. It is clear and settled. There is no moral other side.


"The basic economic injustice of our society is that the costs of economic growth are generally borne by those least able to afford them and that the majority of the benefits of economic growth go to those who need them least."


Excuse me, but this is flat out wrong. The basic economic fact of our society is that we are virtually all economically better off than our parents. And that was true for their parents as well. Economic growth imposes no aggregate costs – it is a positive sum game. We live longer and healthier life, earn more, work less, have a cleaner environment, and get more for our money.

To be sure, there are local disruptions and misallocations, and in a country of 300 million we can find some really sad cases, but with our system does a good job of minimizing these impacts.


"Compare the rise in wages of ordinary working people over the last thirty years to the rise in the incomes and wealth of the top twenty percent."


Let's do that. According to the US Census Bureau, between 1967 and 2001, the ratio of the 80th percentile (top 20%) income to the median (50%) income went from 1.66 to 1.98. So, yes, the top 20% income grew faster than the median. A little faster. About 20%

But more interesting is the fact that median income grew, in real terms (i.e. adjusting for inflation), more than 30% during this time. The 10th percentile (lowest decile) income grew even more: 43% in real terms.

But most interesting of all, during the period from 1979 to 1988, 85.8% of the lowest income quintile increased 1 or more quintile. In other words, the notion of a fixed group of "ordinary working people" is false, at least in the US. Our flexible labor system has enabled an enormous surge in practically everyone's well-being over the past 30 years.


"Compare the value of minimum wage now to its value then and next compare the value of the remuneration of CEOs to its value then."


On CEO pay, Prof. MacIntyre finally makes a point we can agree on. The ratio of CEO pay to average pay in public companies is way too high, and is unsustainable in my opinion. That is why my pay is limited to not more that 6 times the average wage in our organization.


"What is needed to secure family life is a sufficient minimum income for every family and that can perhaps best be secured by some version of the negative income tax, proposed long ago by Milton Friedman, a tax that could be used to secure a large and just redistribution of income and so of property."


A better system would be the FairTax, which shares some of the negative income tax aspects of Milton Friedman's proposal.

I challenge Prof. MacIntyre to defend the notion that a large redistribution of income is just.


"We note at this point that we have already broken with both parties and both candidates. Try to promote the pro-life case that we have described within the Democratic Party and you will at best go unheard and at worst be shouted down. Try to advance the case for economic justice as we have described it within the Republican Party and you will be laughed out of court."


Really? My observation is the opposite. Members of these parties are very engaged and generally open to discussion (to varying degrees, of course), despite their portrayal in the media. Perhaps Prof. MacIntyre would not be so despairing if he relied on primary research, rather than secondary sources such as the mainstream media. The parties are actually filled with lots of good people, struggling with making our nation better and stronger.


"Above all, insist, as we are doing, that these two cases are inseparable, that each requires the other as its complement, and you will be met with blank incomprehension. For the recognition of this is precluded by the ideological assumptions in terms of which the political alternatives are framed."


Do not mistake disagreement with blank incomprehension. The argument is comprehended, but fallacious. The two cases are indeed separable. They are not required as complements. Abortion, simply put, has priority. If two candidates held the same position on abortion, the other factors come into play. In this election they did not. That may be a painful fact to pro-life supporters of the Democratic economic positions, but it is a fact nevertheless.


"Yet at the same time neither party is wholeheartedly committed to the cause of which it is the ostensible defender. Republicans happily endorse pro-choice candidates, when it is to their advantage to do so. Democrats draw back from the demands of economic justice with alacrity, when it is to their advantage to do so. And in both cases rhetorical exaggeration disguises what is lacking in political commitment."


My sense is that such compromises of principle are actually quite rare, limited to situations such as the recent Pennsylvania senate race and the Clinton presidency. In the vast majority of situations, Republicans choose pro-life candidates when they have a choice, and Democrats choose pro-union candidates when they have a choice. My sense is that Prof. MacIntyre here uses rhetorical exaggeration to disguise what is lacking in real-world examples.


"In this situation a vote cast is not only a vote for a particular candidate, it is also a vote cast for a system that presents us only with unacceptable alternatives. The way to vote against the system is not to vote."


One wonders in what circumstances Prof. MacIntyre could ever support a candidate for public office. If a candidate was anti-abortion, supported universal healthcare, unlimited welfare, extremely progressive taxation, but opposed a high minimum wage, could he support such a candidate? Could he support such a system?

Or put another way: has there ever been a candidate that Prof. MacIntyre could have voted for, given these criteria? John F. Kennedy was aggressive in supporting the Vietnam War – surely that should be a pro-life disqualifier?

And if the "system" has never once turned out an acceptable candidate, is choosing not to vote sufficient? Aren't we compelled to press for real change, rather than the lazy, resigned pathway of staying at home on election day?

No, our system may not be perfect, but at the end of the day it works. It allows for spirited, hard-hitting debate on important issues, and we end up with relatively moderate and stable forms of government which allow for enormous human liberty and progress. It even allows people like Prof. MacIntyre not to vote.

The perfect is indeed the enemy of the good.