Some of my recent reading material has caused me to return to the question (upon which I've pondered off and on for decades) of what it means to be human. Along those lines, I have to confess to being a little perplexed by a post at Powerline today, in which Scott Johnson writes:

One of the great projects of the Progressive movement is the abolition of nature as supplying the standard of human conduct -- the kind of standard to which the Founders appealed in adverting to "the Laws of Nature" in the Declaration of Independence.

Now, certainly progressives are opposed to the very notion of human nature--no dispute about that--but whence comes the notion that nature per se should "supply the standard of human conduct"? I assume that Mr. Johnson considers himself a conservative, and so I wonder if he's actually thought through the import of this statement.

If he really believes this, he's indulging in the naturalistic fallacy. I'm not sure what he has in mind here, but if we were to use nature, even human nature, as a guide to conduct, then rape would be perfectly acceptable, since this is a natural human behavior. As would homosexuality, since there's nothing particularly unnatural about that, either. It may not be useful in reproduction, but there's little doubt that there are people born to be attracted exclusively to members of the same sex, and like it or not, such behavior has been observed in other species as well (some very closely related to us).

I wouldn't claim to be a conservative, but I had thought that conservativism was about operating from higher principles (e.g., divine, or otherwise), and rising above our animal tendencies. I'd like to see a little expansion on this topic from him, because as barely stated, it doesn't make much sense to me.

Somehow I missed your earlier post 'The Natural' but it definitely is one of your great posts (I should pay more attention to your Reader's Favorites list.)

Since I started reading blogs, yours is my favorite and most frequently read blog (SDB was the other.)

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you.

Rand:

"Progressives are opposed to the very notion of human nature"??

Last I checked, Progressives believe that human nature is responsible for:

Premarital sex (hence the need for condoms and why John Paul-II is responsible for AIDS in Africa)

Homosexuality (Or does human nature and physical nature not intersect?)

Being subject to one's own biases (which is why Foxnews is bad, it panders to their beliefs)

Being racist (at least if you're white) and sexist (if you're male) (Hence, why Rush Limbaugh is bad, since he panders to those groups).

Sex is institutionalized rape (a bit of simplification of the Andrea Dworkin argument, but not by much)

Now, the question is whether there are any aspects of human nature that don't require changing that are supported by Progressives?

"Progressives" (which is a pretty broad tent) was probably the wrong word.

Postmodernists and leftists would have been more accurate. And they (at least many of them) really do deny the existence of a human nature. Marxism, in particular, pretty much requires adherence to the Skinnerest notion of the human mind as a tabula rasa, and all human behavior as driven by culture and social pressures. How else to explain the nutty notion, popular on campus, that gender is purely a social construct, and that little girls given toy trucks and little boys given dolls will be just as happy as the reverse? How else to explain the mau-mauing of Larry Summers? Many radical queers insist (like their homophobic opponents) that everyone has a choice, but that homosexual or bisexual behavior is morally superior.

Of course, leftists are hardly coherent or consistent in this view (like many of their views).

By "laws of nature" he's referring not to human nature (which includes rape, murder, etc.) but to the Natural Law, i.e. the innate moral code common to all people in all cultures. C.S. Lewis provides a good, concise examination of the Natural Law in the opening chapter of MERE CHRISTIANITY.

If that's what he meant, that's what he should have written. They're two entirely different things.

I agree.

If I recall Aristotle's work on Nature correctly, just because a given species has subgroups within it that have accidents hindering the healthy functioning of various processes (like procreation or relationships with the group), it doesn't follow that the species has no nature or that each subgroup is its own species with its own nature.

So just because an overwhelming minority of human beings (2% or so) have shown homosexual tendencies throughout time, it doesn't follow that the nature of the species homo sapiens isn't to be heterosexual.

Blindness and other physical or mental handicaps can also be inborn or genetic. But their existence doesn't mean "humanity" is by nature blind or handicapped, just that INDIVIDUALS within this nature can suffer defects.

Inasmuch as everyone is procreated in a heterosexual manner...it follows that the human race itself is heterosexual and that all other proclivities are defects. Lo and behold, every major study has shown that the LGBT people on every continent suffer higher rates of mental and social problems than any other group even when "society" heaps them with support and praise. This would simply not makes sense if a single human nature didn't exist.

Nor would universal human rights mean much if we were broken into a dozen natures according to our defects or proclivities.

You confuse what's natural for a species with what's natural for an individual member of that species. Your logic doesn't "follow" at all.

In the quote Rand provides, Scott states that the Progressive movement is trying to abolish nature as a standard of human conduct. Rand, however, seems not to know WHAT nature Scott is saying should be that standard. He suggests that Scott could be talking about "human nature", as in ANY act a human is capable of engaging in (thus making rape a standard of human conduct, murder a standard of human conduct, dictatorship a standard of human conduct, eating bananas a standard of human conduct, etc etc).
Actually, directly in the quote Rand posted, Scott provides a VERY specific context for his use of the term "nature."

But in the quote Rand posted, Scott provided a VERY specific context for his use of the term "nature." Scott explicitly stated that the "nature" he claims the progressives are trying to abolish is the one referenced by the Founders in the Declaration of Independence, when they spoke of the "Laws of Nature."

Now, unless Rand is suggesting the Founding Fathers of the United States were referencing man's ability to rape, murder, steal, etc. as justification for their Declaration of Independence, then one must recognize that Scott was NOT referencing the CAPABILITIES of man, but was SPECIFICALLY identifying the FUNDAMENTAL identity of man - ie, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, among them the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Thus, given his EXPLICIT context, Scott's statement DOES make sense: One of the great projects of the Progressive movement (as evidenced by the recent Constitutional Conference held at Yale Law School) IS the abolition of the notion that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, among them the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, etc.. By advancing the notion that economic DEMANDS are 'rights' the "progressives" are seeking to destroy the concept of rights as meaning individual sovereignty. And they seek to do this by SUPPLANTING that meaning with its OPPOSITE - with the concept of rights as DEMANDS upon the lives of others, as subjugation and slavery.

In his article, and the Claremont essay he links to, Scott simply points to a specific example of this attempt to replace (abolish) the concept of rights via transformation of the concept into DEMANDS. In this latest case, the demand is to the noun "marriage".