Just in case anyone was wondering, I've now taken in three of Michael Sander's Harvard lectures on "Justice," and unless I missed something waiting for the HD video feed to buffer, the Almighty hasn't been referenced once in the search for undergraduate truth. (There's a reason why they call them "wise fools.") I kept thinking Michael would lead them to at least refer to Jefferson's formulation, ("endowed by their Creator.."), but no such luck. Perhaps--that's where the course is going?
If we don't "own ourselves," who does? The Libertarian argument against progressive taxation is that it represents a theft of our labor, and thus a declaration of ownership by the taxing authority. The Libertarian conludes that unfair taxation is really slavery in disguise and that it violates our ownership of ourselves, but contemporary progressives know slavery is wrong, so they are forced to conclude we don't own ourselves. We are owned by "society." That should set off a few alarm bells, but the students never really could get beyond the concept of majority rule. Professor Sandel, in fact, brow-beat them if they intimated any problem with democracy. I guess he was trying to get them to challenge the limits of mob rule, but no one really seemed to have the answer: we do not own ourselves. How could we "own" ourselves when we we did nothing to create "ourselves?" How could a watch claim ownership of itself? Doesn't the clock-maker own the watch? Doesn't the weaver own the blanket? If the modern mind can't accept God as our owner, it needs to accept "society" as our owner, and the governing democratic arm of society, in these United States, is Congress.
Have you seen Congress lately?
No thanks.
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