Right becomes Wrong – Arizona Immigration Law Turned Down!

People are holding up a sign that shows an American flag in which the fifty stars are replaced by a swastika, thus claiming their protest against the Arizona Immigration Law! Mexicans are happily embracing each other because a federal judge has just turned down the core elements of this law, depriving it of its most essential elements for enhanced immigration enforcement in Arizona! 

 

There can be no doubt anymore! The right has become wrong; straight is now crooked; common sense turned into no(n)sense; the upstanding transforms into insincerity; upswing into downturn! What is the reason for all this? Why is it that the longer we walk toward the future in our civilization, the more we step backward, deteriorate, decline? 

One reason is the ubiquitous arbitrariness of values and convictions, generated and driven solely by individual and self-centered aspirations, making people lose sight of more comprehensive perspectives. Another reason is that educational institutions and processes no longer convey the profound foundation for understanding political issues on more or less all levels of schooling, teaching, and instruction. Who has learned about the subsidiary principle, the history of ideas of statehood, forms of state and government, division of powers, genesis, purpose, and necessity of state organization and state institutions? The knowledge about the holistic underpinning of Western culture alone provides the foundation for independent thinking and judgment.

The philosophical reason for the misconceptions of immigration and immigration control lies in what we might call a neo-cosmopolitan idea. It claims the individual human being, not the (nation-) state, to be the protagonist in interstate and international relations. While the traditional position sees the (nation-) state as the moral actor in political affairs through which individual rights can be guaranteed, the neo-cosmopolitan stance stipulates a radical reduction of state-sovereignty. It promotes the idea of a global social contract. Indeed, this position presupposes the state to be a mere transient circumstance of political relations whose regulatory and hindering mechanisms – such as borders and stringent immigration policies – stand in the way of individual freedom. 

 

For people thinking – or rather intuitively opinionating – along these lines, citizens' interests within the boundaries of any given (nation-) state are not and must not be considered superior or more exclusive vis-à-vis any other individual that stands outside these limits. For them, not the nation is the subject of the ius gentium, the law of nations, and the protagonist of international relations, but rather the individual human being. There are no international relations at the end of the day. It is only the individual who has and may stipulate legal claims in a global society's cosmopolitan community. This democratic universalism builds the nucleus of this particular strand of political thinking that rejects nation-states' right and political necessity to uphold clear rights (and duties) for their citizens and due process for attaining citizenship. 

 

Both positions – the traditional and the cosmopolitan – promote individual rights and are rooted in the normative ontology of individualism and human rights. However, the difference lies in what each side considers to be the protagonist of political relations. The traditional approach accepts the organization of the (nation-) state as the inevitable perennial model for the protection and promotion of human and individual rights and a potentially peaceful international order. The position of political cosmopolitanism considers the Westphalia nation-state model to be an instrument of oppression and failure that stands in the way of individual liberty and progress. phantasm

 

It would go far beyond the purview of this brief essay to outline all the epistemological, ontological, anthropological, and historical reasons why a world republic will forever remain a romantic illusion. Language and religion have been named two more pragmatic reasons for the impossibility of establishing a global society, no longer divided up by state boundaries and national confinements. The nation-state's condition, clearly defined by territorial borders and distinct legal order, is and will be the best form for a just social order in which the individual's rights are promoted and protected at the same time. We can only base a functional and indeed humane world order on the constitution of (nation-) states and their behavior toward each other guided by an international legal order. It is precisely through international relations that the community of states influences one another and promotes, by way of public opinion, diplomacy, and yes, under specific circumstances, forceful intervention into domestic affairs of a nation, the protection of individual human rights. 

 

The current political debate in the US shows that not even the federal government's exponents are aware of this circumstance. A liberal bias seems to precede the observance of one of the core purposes and tasks of any (nation-) state – to protect its borders and provide security and safety for its citizens. But the misperceptions in this particular regard join hands with the neglect of another essential principle of good governance – the principle of subsidiarity. The subsidiarity principle says that the level of (political) organization that is best able to deal with a task efficiently should take care of that task. While constitutional and federal rules should guide immigration and immigration enforcement, there is no doubt that particular regions and states face specific challenges that need countering in different and proportional ways. The immigration situation for states like California, Arizona, or Texas is different. The federal government must grant those states some leeway in how they safeguard and enforce federal immigration laws. 

 

It makes one wonder why immigration, while it clearly should allow for regional arrangements, is dominated by federal mandate. It astounds even more how liberal bias and political correctness undermines genuine police work. 

 

The results of these failed policies are apparent, and recent developments prove the authority of the outlined arguments. The case of Arizona attests that states take matters into their own hands when the federal government falls short of necessary relegation they should derive from the principle of subsidiarity.

Shameful decision by federal judge in California!

The decision of a federal judge in California to overturn Proposition 8 and rule that the State's ban on same-sex marriages violates the constitutional right to equal protection is but one more proof that our culture's moral underpinning is in severe danger.

 What underlies this and, more or less, all socially contested issues is both an undifferentiated misconception and misuse of the principle of equality. This tendency in the political and juridical realms must be considered the most pernicious trend that has begun to destroy American and Western culture's social fabric.

In addition to the philosophical misconception of the equality notion, ideological strategies are applied in the public and political realms to insulate the concept and prevent a critical debate from taking hold. Whoever attempts to question equality aspirations is denigrated as discriminating, antiquated, a violator of human rights. As far as the issue of same-sex marriages is concerned, even as homophobic. This intolerable state of public debate needs urgent change. The essential prerequisite for a turnaround would be the proper theoretical understanding of the notion of equality, as only sound theory can ultimately provide for good (political) practice.

It is clear that in terms of their human dignity, all men are equal – male and female, people of any ethnic descent, skin color or sexual orientation, infants and geriatrics, everybody. Yet, in addition to their biological and sexual differences, all humans are different regarding their concrete way of being. How would we otherwise justify different income levels, responsibilities and entitlements, property, and tenure?

For the proper dealing with equality, it is thus inevitable to differentiate two levels of equality – the formal or primary one, on which all men are equal; and the factual or secondary one, based on the former, differentiation and disparities are allowed. This fact grasped, equality clearly forbids a schematic equal treatment and not only affords but even demands differentiations that have to be justified by objective and factual rationales. The only thing the principle of equality forbids is arbitrary and groundless differentiation.

It is the perennial task of politics and its legislative and juridical proponents – at any given time and any stage of societal development – to decide which differences are justifiable and which are not. This principle defines what is meant by social justice and demonstrates that a one-dimensional concept of equality must not be confused with justice. (Social) justice can only happen when the two levels of equality – the formal-normative and the factual-contextual – are reconciled and synthesized on objective grounds.

Only the violation of formal equality's outer boundaries or absence of a factually evident reason for any stipulated regulation violates the principle of equality.

This outlined dualism of form and content forbids the schematic treatment of gender issues and any other aspect of social disparity, including the issue of same-sex marriages. To treat the latter different from traditional marriage does not at all violate the principle of equality. The (moral) imperative to upkeep traditional marriage in its exclusivity in both its respects – as a religious sacrament and a civil union – derives from the idea that every social claim has to be designated its proper place in the cultural cosmos of (occidental) values and credos. This cultural underpinning cannot and must not be altered by impulses of individual hedonism and personal gratification, which seem to have become the driving social forces in our societies. Instead, the stakes of the common good and humanistic considerations have got to return to our public, political, and legal discourses.

 But in the given context, we must not deceive ourselves over the fact that it is about more than the desire to satisfy individual sensitivities and personal preferences when it comes to the claims of the gay communities and particularly same-sex marriages. When we deal with gender issues and related topics, we face actions that aim to create new power structures and identity designs, intending to alter our societies substantially. The termination of the traditional binary gender code in the name of equal treatment and anti-discrimination, as a precondition for the destruction of traditional marriage, is supposed to pave the way for an amorphous society that allows for all possible combinations of social coexistence and ways of life.

An adequate understanding of equality is necessary to grasp the issue in all its far-reaching implications, comprehend its multi-faceted impact on society, and unmask the ideological strategies pushing the problem in the various societal contexts.

It appears to be utterly essential to revive and preserve the fundamental values of gender relations and deny arbitrary designs of same-sex unions to being put on level par with traditional forms of human cohabitation. The importance of the issue is paramount and rests at the core of our cultural identity. We will soon find out if our collective social reason will recover the strength to overcome the onslaught of the impertinent forces of irresponsible social engineering and reverse the course of moral deconstruction.

A California federal judge's recent decision is one more example of why we must not leave same-sex marriages to regional sentiments and state legislatures' arbitrariness. It will not be long until federal constitutional regulations must settle the issue in a way with which the entire nation can live..