7/07/2004 05:10:44 PM|||Nathan Moore|||

I think it only proper that I follow up a post extolling the virtues of communist loving Democratic presidential candidates with a tribute to the economic system that makes their nonsense possible.

Martha Nussbaum, a professor at the University of Chicago, writes compellingly about human suffering

Justice requires more. We give lip service to the idea that respect for human dignity is a fundamental moral requirement, and yet we daily allow human dignity to be violated by poverty, illiteracy, unequal liberty and other nation-based inequalities. Most of us, if pressed, would acknowledge that we belong not only to the community of our birth but also to the human community as a whole, and that we have obligations of some sort to that community. But because we are at a loss to say what those obligations are, we find it easier to lapse into inattention. Good theory helps people get a handle on their choices, making it more difficult for them to ignore their obligations.

Philosophical theories of global justice are, then, badly needed to give guidance to personal reflection and public policy. These theories will need to do a lot of hard philosophical work that has not been done before: to articulate accounts of the relationship between personal and institutional responsibility; to think about what is owed a nation that has been despoiled of resources by others in the past; to think how far and in what ways other nations ought to help nations that manage their internal affairs badly. They will have to face the thorny question of intervention. Since at least some governments of poor nations are accountable to the people of those nations, and since there is no transnational government in prospect that is likely to be adequately accountable, how far may we influence the internal affairs of another society, whether by governmental pressure or by material aid? And they will have to face the toughest question of all: How far are we required to do justice to the urgent claims of others who lie at a distance, when it means hurting the life quality of our own children?

A well posited question at the end. I venture my own answer, of course (being that it's my blog): American foreign intervention followed by free markets. The neoconservatives, for all the hell they're (we're) taking have figured that out. Unfortunately, the track record to date isn't yet sterling, not because of a failed ideology, but because success takes time. One cannot take a lawless, isolated land (Afghanistan) or a population oppressed for three decades (Iraq) and transform them into functioning democracies with free markets overnight. But you can do it over time.

As the learned professor stated, we have an obligation because no one else can.

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