An Incomplete Analogy

A friend, Leire Balder, responded by email to my post Against Paternalism with the following mild criticism:

Hmmm . . . not to be trouble, but there's a small hole with Mr. Cornelison's analogy. By his analogy, what we ought to be aiming for is actually complete anarchy, since that's what the animals live under. Of course, the anarchy that the animals live under is one where the
strongest survive, so it sounds like you are advocating a complete social anarchy. Given certain assumptions, like the goodness of all the people in a society and the existence of some kind of basic law of morality which all persons observed without any enforcement of those moral codes, I guess that could work . . . I think, realistically, that extreme anarchy has the same problem that any other ideal government has; humanity screws it up somewhere along the way. That said, practically, for the present, it might be nice if we could convince the legislators that big government is not the answer . . .

I will respond -- I agree that, as with almost all analogies, the analogy is not perfect. I disagree that any imperfection in Cornelison's analogy is the one criticized. However, I think that my comment following the quote showed that my initial readong of Cornelison does support anarchy, and thus does support Leire's criticism.

Looking just at Cornelison, he stated that: "The Creator has made special provision in nature for the paternal government of the young; but he has made it plain that it is the proper aim of that government to secure its own early extinction by developing in the young the power of self-government. "

The rest of book shows clearly that Cornelison is no anarchist, and his analogy doesn't support anarchy. The proper end of government does not include "paternalism" which is essentially this: "Oh no, you can't do things the way you want, because you'll hurt yourself. Here, let me make that decision for you." In nature, we see paternalism when an animal raises her young. This paternalism disappears when the young reaches maturity. In nature, we also see, as Leire points out, no government that prevents the wolf from eating the rabbit. These two functions, protection from self-induced harm and protection from violent, external harm, are different, and Cornelison condemns the former while supporting the latter. This is not anarchy, but merely a philosophy of limited government.

However, in line with my comment about the government working itself out of a job, Cornelison suggests that the government begins as paternalistic and then loses its paternalistic authority. Is this really true? And when is the cut off time appropriate? There will always be young people. Oh, are we talking about a young society . . . so, for the first fifty or so years of American Independence, paternalism was fine? I don't really think this is what Cornelison was saying, and I certainly don't support governmental paternalism at any stage.

My comment suggests that the government could work itself out of a job entirely, thus conflating the two concepts of protection against self-induced harm and protection against violent, external harm. I agree with Leire that a government can never fulfill its true responsibilities to the point where people are so well educated and behaved that they would not longer need a government. There are too many problems with such a proposition. First, I don't think that it is humanly possible (humans fail, period). Second, to even achieve the result, the government would have to take over far more than I think it should (compulsory public education, compelled orthodox belief system, etc.).

Enough said.