A Just Society Cares About People

I’m not saying that you have to agree with me on everything, politically.

In fact, I think it’s better if you don’t. I think in a healthy democracy, you’re supposed to have a huge diversity of reasonable people, all of whom love their country and none of whom want to deliberately hurt anyone, but all of whom see things a little differently. I think you’re supposed to have stuffy conservatives and starry-eyed liberals and a few genuine libertarians and a few people far to the left, and they’re all supposed to squabble and argue and roll their eyes at each other and compromise to set a budget and pass some laws to keep order. In that system, none of us will get EVERYTHING we want, but nobody will be in danger either. We’ll watch the returns the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, cringing or cheering every now and then, but not in terror for our lives and our futures. We wouldn’t have to keep refreshing the tab on social media every few minutes to see if kids with cancer will die or our immigrant neighbors will be sent to a camp. That’s a good system. I want it.

I’m just saying, I don’t know how we’re supposed to go on as a society, if you don’t care about anyone.

If I think that trickle-down economics is nonsense but you’re convinced that it works, one of us is objectively wrong. But it doesn’t make either of us a bad person. If I insist that trickle-down economics is a scam that hurts poor people and you’re just sure it will help the poor better themselves by creating a good economy, one of us has bad information, and that’s not a small matter. But I think we can still be friends, if you actually care about helping the poor. I don’t see how we ever can if you would LIKE to hurt the poor.

If you think that immigrants are valuable and important to America’s culture, but we need to make sure there are enough resources for the people who are already here, so we need to have more red tape around who gets into the country, I disagree. But I don’t think you’re a bad person to prioritize the people already here in that particular way. I think you are a truly horrible person, if you WANT to hurt immigrants. I think you’re a deeply unjust person if you would like to take away the citizenship of immigrants who already jumped through every hoop to get here, or the children of those immigrants. I think you’re a monster if you want to make sure that the immigrants suffer as much as possible while they’re on their way out the door.

If you just don’t happen to like flowers, I’m sorry for you. I think the destruction of Jackie’s rose garden is awful. But I don’t think it’s a moral issue. I just think you have terrible taste.

Same with that plan for a ballroom at the White House. I think it’s a stupid idea. In fact, I’d like to vote for any politician who promises to use the ballroom only once, to throw a great big party for a thousand immigrant children, with a slip-n-slide down the center of the room and coloring on the walls with Sharpie and glitter fights and silly string and a make-your-own sundae table, and then invite the whole party onto the White House lawn to cheer as the building is demolished. But that doesn’t make me a morally better person than the person who likes the room.

If you don’t think we should have a Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that’s not necessarily a moral failing either. In fact, all of us ought to have a good vigorous knock-down argument about how to spend our tax dollars to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty, once the current situation is over.

But it is objectively true that a world where a government spends money on shows like Mr. Rogers and Reading Rainbow and Sesame Street, is a better world than one where we throw a bunch of money at remodeling the White House and retrofitting a “free” luxury airplane and making sure the astronomically wealthy don’t have to pay their taxes. Not necessarily because those shows were so good, though I think they were excellent. But because it’s better to throw a bunch of money at making children happy, and teaching them to read and do math and enjoy books, than it is to throw money at people who already have far too much money.

We can argue about how we’re supposed to make children happy and well educated, and neither of us is a bad person. But it actually is wrong to not care about whether children are happy and educated. And it’s wrong to funnel money away from people who need it and give it to decadent people who don’t help our society at all.

This is not a good or a just society.

I’d like to make it just.

You don’t have to agree with me on how, but we ought to make it just.