Why Victor Reppert is a Democrat

Hippie philosopher Victor Reppert has done a post to justify his party affiliation:

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-i-am-democrat.html

Let’s look at some of the highlights:

It would be wonderful it trickle-down actually worked, or if in particular Christians were so generous enough so that government action was not necessary. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Indeed, the evidence suggests that some professing Christians are so miserly that gov’t action may sometimes be necessary. Here’s one piece of the evidence:

Social Security was identified with Socialism when it was proposed, and it is sometimes attacked today as a Ponzi scheme. But I can't forget how much things better were for my mother and father, both political conservatives, once they started receiving it. In my childhood Medicare was attacked as Socialism, but again, it has made a huge difference to many people, including my parents.

The man who wrote this statement is a professing Christian. Indeed, a Christian apologist no less. He’s also a tenured professor.

But he wasn’t generous enough to dig into his pockets and provide for his own parents in their time of financial need. So, yes, thanks to selfish individuals like the writer in question, it may be necessary for other taxpayers to pick up the tab and do for someone else’s parents what other grown kids won’t do for their own.

Nevetheless the general principle that government should keep its filthy laws off our collective economic body seems just false, and there can't be any greater proof that what we have seen this past week. The bitter fruits of deregulation have been reaped this past week, and now one of the leading deregulators, a member of the Keating Five, wants the job of cleaning up the mess?

That’s his idea of proof? Remember this little gem from the article which Reppert posted?

“Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.”

Fannie Mae was a textbook case of the kind of a gov’t agency that Reppert was implicitly touting at the time he posted an article which showcased that very example. But now that Fannie Mae has turned into a classic, big gov’t boondoggle, Reppert cites this as, of all things, compelling proof of the need for more gov’t agencies like Fannie Mae.

And who does Reppert imagine is going to foot the bill for Fannie Mae? The taxpayer. But wasn’t Fannie Mae supposed to benefit the taxpayer?

If Reppert were a real philosopher, instead of an intellectual charlatan, he would exhibit some capacity to consider the obvious.

Let's take a look at something that was enacted in the Clinton years, the Family and Medical Leave Act, which was for the purpose of preventing companies from firing mothers who took of to have babies and spend time at home with their children before going back to work. I was pleased to see that McCain voted for this legislation, but I remember Limbaugh and other conservatives railing against it. But gee, if you're pro-life and you want women to carry their babies to term and not abort them, how can you be against this sort of legislation? Is overturning Roe all you can think of when you think about lowering the abortion rate?

Reppert is actually old enough to remember a time when a blue-collar worker could support a stay-at-home mom (and their kids) on a single income. But he’s forgotten that. If Reppert were a real philosopher, instead of an intellectual charlatan, he would question the premise. Why does a married woman and mother have to work outside the home in the first place? It wasn’t always that way. Yet that would require Reppert to give the matter a modicum of thought. But who needs to think for a living when you can be a professional philosopher instead?

I think the abortion rate will actually rise if McCain is elected and fall if Obama is elected. So pro-lifers should vote Democratic this time.

Notice that Reppert doesn’t make the slightest effort to argue for this counterintuitive claim. That’s something you’d expect from a philosopher. Is the problem that, as a tenured professor, Reppert can slack off?

In foreign affairs, again I am actually a conservative, I am very conservative about the traditional Just War theory, and skeptical of modernists who think that that its provisions are "quaint" because we live in a "post 9/11 world."

Of course, Just War theory is rather quaint. It was formulated by Augustine (a church father) and Aquinas (a medieval theologian), as well as some lesser theologians of the same vintage.

I realize that this will come as a revelation to Reppert, but military technology changes over time, and—as a result—the nature of the threat changes over time. Of course, a philosopher would appreciate that fact. But if you’re a tenured flimflam man like Reppert, it’s easier to coast to retirement.

Iraq was, in my view, a completely unjust war, and when I get in a bad mood I actually think it's a war we deserve to lose, since we invaded the country immorally to begin with.

Notice anything missing from this statement? You know, like a supporting argument? That’s something you might expect from a philosopher. Reppert is such a poseur.

I don't care what the justification is.

What a fascinating disclaimer for a philosopher to make. “I don’t care what the justification is.” If that’s his position, then why is he a Just-War theorist?

Reppert doesn’t care what the justification because he begins and ends with his invincible prejudices. “Don’t bother me with the arguments!”

BTW, notice that when Reppert is attacking our methods of counterterrorism, he poses as a Kantian deontologist—but when he’s defending the welfare state, he helps himself to utilitarian arguments.

For him, socialist ends justify socialist means, but counterterrorist ends never justify counterterrorist means. A real philosopher would attempt to be consistent. But, of course, we’re not engaging a real philosopher—we’re engaging Victor Reppert.

There are things you don't do to prisoners of war

Yet another example of what an intellectual slacker he is. Were we talking about interrogation techniques for POWs in general? No. That was never the issue.

And things you don't do to criminal defendants

Which begs the question of whether jihadis should be treated like shoplifters.

And the people we picked up off the battlefield in Afganistan should not have been put into some "neither fish nor fowl" category so that they we could do what we wanted with them.

Another assertion bereft of a supporting argument. It’s nice to be paid to be a philosopher when you don’t have to do the work of a philosopher. What did Russell say about intellectual theft?

As I’ve noted once before, Reppert came of age during the Sixties, and he shows little evidence of intellectual development since then. He’s trapped in his psychedelic timewarp. 21C Phoenix on the outside, 1967 Haight-Ashbury on the inside

So these are some of the main reasons why I am a Democrat.

I counted a lot of assertions. Where were the reasons?