A policy "pivot point" that we liberals encounter frequently is the difference between "prescriptive" and "descriptive" definitions of good and evil, right and wrong. While this distinction may sound a bit abstract, it plays directly into major policy concerns for us liberals and specifically for us "politically" as Democrats. I will outline this "pivot point", provide some examples and then explain how we help or damage ourselves through our choices on this issue.
This is an very imperfect discussion of a complex topic. I would spend the time to try to make it better, but in fact I have to get back to work and try to pay some bills. Your indulgence of my relationship with my mortgage lender is appreciated.
A descriptive approach to what is "good" - or "bad" - attempts to analyze the evidence and logic regarding a given situation and to sort facts, actions, concepts, choices, etc., into good and bad. It is akin to the scientific method, though not necessarily synonymous with it. In medical research, for example, we attempt to figure out what medicines work, fail or backfire, ideally finding increasingly consistent and nuanced results as regards efficacy, i.e. "good"-ness for a sought cure. Or we look at a policy like single payer health coverage, itemize all of the costs and benefits of it and declare it "good" or "bad" according to its net result. Descriptive definitions of value are reality-based, evidence-based, results-based and represent conclusions drawn from premises.
Similarly, much of the common law and natural law traditions or theories represent descriptive attempts to "discover" or "calculate" what the law actually "is" from principles. I am informed, though lack personal knowledge, that a substantial part of Islamic law and Jewish law developed through principles of descriptive jurisprudence, i.e. attempts to "discover" what the law "is" from general jurisprudential premises, as opposed to "pronouncing" what the law will be by fiat or election.
"Prescriptive" approaches to good involve a decision, as opposed to a discovery, about what is or shall be deemed "good." A mundane example is the decision to use metric units vs. Imperial units to measure flour, or the decision to put traffic on a two way street on the left versus right lane as measured from the perspective of the drivers. There is nothing fundamentally and absolutely "good" as regards human welfare, good order or motorist safety for a country to go right-side versus left-side in its highway design and motoring practice. In jurisprudence, these are known as "mala prohibita" (bad only because prohibited) or "mala in se" (bad in themselves, inherently evil and therefor prohibited.)
Naturally, many policy and philosophical examples may include elements of both descriptive and prescriptive goods, or may be ambiguous. Check-kiting, for example, is an example of "descriptive badness" to be prohibited as fraudulent under general principles against fraud, but "prescriptive" insofar as statutes define what a "check" is, how it differs from an I.O.U. or promissory note or cash tender, etc, the outer contours of "kiting," etc. Nor does a division of the set of possible "goods" and "bads" into descriptive and prescriptive relieve us; we must still decide what our first principles are by which we will describe things. Do we oppose fraud or violence more than we protect liberty, or less? That sort of question about first principles seems ultimately to require a choice of competing values, i.e. a prescriptive act.
Plato may have been the first to delve into this problem formally in his dialog Euthyphro, in which his mentor Socrates is said to have engaged the prisoner Euthyphro as to whether "the good" was good because God prescribed to be such, or whether God merely described what is good and evil and on that basis promoted the former for its goodness and condemned the latter for its badness.
One gets at least a whiff of this question from at least one passage from the Hebrew Bible; readers for whom the Hebrew Bible (or other texts) may be able to come up with better examples. In Micah 6:5-8, one finds the following text:
With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my first-born for my rebellious acts, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
The passage is tantalizing in its ambiguity: does God tell the speaker what is good because it is good, or does God tell the speaker what is [i.e. shall be deemed hereby] good because God said so? Is there a meaningful difference between the ceremonial acts described at the first part of the passage and what one might call the "moral" commands of justice, kindness, humility, as virtuous in their own right? I don't want to hijack us into a discussion within a religion of which I am not even an adherent, but many Kossacks may be able to "get" the concept of description/prescription mor efficiently from that passage.
Okay, what does all this have to do with ruining the Republicans and driving them to existential despair, unemployment and perhaps for a few the jailhouse? A lot. Here are some practical examples.
Here's a question. Does a woman have a right to an abortion in the United States? There are several possible answers to this question. One is a description of current jurisprudence under the right of privacy defined under Griswold, Roe and Roe's progeny and further limiting cases, for which the answer would be "Yes, with some restrictions permitted to some states." Another answer is "yes, women own their bodies and own their lives and therefore their "right" to an abortion is absolute, even if violated by the law. The first case is strictly descriptive, the second is either prescriptive or, if you want to be pedantic, the premised of women owning their own bodies, etc. are prescriptive and the conclusion merely describes the consequences of those premises. It boils down to whether one is describing or prescribing rights, i.e. implicitly defining "rights" either way.
Another example is discussion of the separation of church and state. A reasonably competent lawyer could conclude, i.e. describe, that "separation of church and state" is a consequence of the non-establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment. On the other hand, narrower interpretations of the establishment clause (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion....") admits narrower interpretations as well. When secular-minded liberals like me get our backs against the wall by creeping theocrats, we tend to pull out the "separation of church and state" card, which phrase our opponents politely remind us exists nowhere in our federal constitution. Then we are typically out of ammo.
We are all to often incapable of making a prescriptive case for separation of church and state, why it's an excellent idea. One can hear and see our individual and collective clumsiness on this point on many secular, atheist and pro-separation blogs and podcasts; we don't rely well on morals, ethics, common decency, standards of fairness, but cite as authority the decisions which could fall any time five conservative Justices get a proper case. On abortion, we are little better; NARAL is good at banging on Roe (and at backing corrupted incumbents like Al Wynn in my state) and banging on the law, but not so effective at advocating as a policy matter against the use of cops, prosecutors, squad cars and jails to ruin the lives of women, their doctors and their nurses.
Some of this rhetorical lethargy and underperformance comes from the laziness of relatively good times. While under attack, access to lawful and safe abortion and separation of church and state are in fact still overwhelmingly the law of the land and established practice. It's hard for NARAL to win the fight when they don't need to and they still get paid. Ditto organizations of severely questionable effectiveness like the Freedom from Religion Foundation or Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hard times and poverty tend to make you smarter if they don't kill you and they have not had hard times in many years.
But whether it's a cause of laziness or an effect, we secular-minded liberals have perhaps gotten so used to talking amongst ourselves that we argue by footnote. "See Roe" and "See Lemon" are not arguments. They are descriptions of prior wins, wins that are jurisprudentially (meaning long-term politically) vulnerable.
My hope is that this theoretical and political musing will generate discussion from minds smarter than my own here, which happily are abundant in a community like DKos. My hope is that we will get better at advocacy. We need more Malcolm X, more Gloria Steinem, more Mother Jones (the activist and perhaps the magazine as well), and less of Zorba the Cite-Checking Clerk. I am old enough to remember Mario Cuomo's speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. He never apologized for being a liberal and, though a gifted attorney, never argued by footnote but from impassioned principle.
Let the discussion begin. Thanks.