Ideals and Practicalities:

Chris from Semper Reformanda suggests that my post on natural rights and states rights begs more questions than it answers:

I would love to see him elaborate on this. Is he suggesting that the Supreme Court can override state decisions on "natural rights" if there are enough states that take a certain view? Was the deciding factor in Lawrence, for example, the fact that only 13 states had anti-sodomy laws? Is the Supreme Court to rule by situational ethics...with the number of state laws (or international laws) on a certain view being the determining factor of the ethic du jour?

And I would ask Jonathan: if this country is not being torn apart right now over a number of social issues (abortion and homosexuality, chiefly), just exactly how do you define "tear this country apart"?

The “torn apart,” is just a figure of speech. I simply meant that it’s better for nations not to engage in divisive culture war battles, or if, because justice ought to be done, we have to, not to fan the flames.

As to when it’s appropriate for the federal government to leave the securing of natural rights to the states v. stepping in and issuing a decision that binds all state governments, let me do my best to answer this, and I’m sorry if I don’t have a definite answer. Ideals—even those grounded in natural rights—sometimes have to be compromised with. This nation was founded on compromises with natural rights ideals. But it’s the ideals and not the compromises that ought to guide us. There are ideals and there are practicalities. And sometimes it’s just not practical to implement an ideal; justice sometimes has to wait.

If our Founding taught us anything, it was that ideals cannot be implemented into existence within the blink of an eye. One can make the argument that slavery was illegal & unconstitutional at the time of the Founding, but this ideal certainly couldn’t have been implemented in 1776 or 1789. And if the French Revolution—a revolution that was founded on the very same principles of liberty and equality as the American—taught us anything, it's that it sometimes can be dangerous to attempt to fully implement ideals overnight.

I’d love to see gay marriage recognized in every state. And I’m sure pro-life advocates would love to see abortion outlawed in every state. Natural rights arguments can be made on behalf of both claims. But at what price would it be worth to see this happen overnight? I certainly don’t think gay marriage is worth fighting a literal civil war over. What about abortion? Would it be worth a literal civil war, one where thousands of Americans killed one another if the end result was that abortion could be outlawed everywhere? A literal civil war is just an extreme—the worst possible outcome—that I used to illustrate a point. If we accept this premise, then we can also accept that it can be appropriate to compromise with certain ideals if we are doing so to avoid some kind of lesser [than a real civil war] harm that would result from moving too fast with justice.