----- Original Message ----- From: "Ellen Frank" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 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 > ================== 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
