An effort at logical coherence is a mandatory situation for any mental declare and a fortiori for any social concept. Talking of vice-president Kamala Harris’s stance on abortion, the Wall Avenue Journal experiences (“Biden at Middle of Combat Over Abortion After Profession of Reservations,” Might 8, 2022):
Throughout her graduation tackle Saturday at Tennessee State College in Nashville, Tenn., [Ms. Harris] stated the U.S. was pressured to defend rules equivalent to “the rights of ladies to make selections about their very own our bodies.”
Neglect about what “the U.S.” is meant to confer with. Ms. Harris in all probability means “the U.S. state equipment.” It’s doubtless that she doesn’t have a transparent imaginative and prescient of the issues concerned on this method of talking.
Right here is the blatant contradiction that I’m not the primary one to notice. I’ve by no means heard Ms. Harris talk about the correct of a lady to make selections about how she makes use of her personal physique to work—for instance, by accepting a wage under a government-decreed minimal wage if she desires to, versus remaining unemployed. Neither is she recognized for defending the correct of a lady to make selections about using her personal physique by carrying a handgun to guard herself in opposition to anybody who can be attempting to make use of her physique in a method she doesn’t need to. (On this later case, an unique constitutional Modification exists that the vice-president may buttress, as an alternative of incoherently undermining it.) Such examples might be multiplied.
Abortion is a posh and tough situation, however a minimal effort of coherence is required.
Maybe Ms. Harris is as an alternative talking of the collective proper of fifty%+1 of American ladies to make use of the physique of any particular person lady as they see match? However, then, since any human being can apparently resolve he’s a lady, is she invoking the collective proper of fifty%+1 of all People to make selections concerning the particular person physique of any minority lady within the 50%-1 group? And why concentrate on People versus, say, Mississippians? To not communicate of ladies in the remainder of the world, whose majority could have a special conception of, say, microaggressions. And what’s so sacred a couple of numerical majority anyway? Logical consistency shouldn’t be collectivism’s sturdy level.