Been seeing some discussions lately regarding that Supreme Court ruling saying, essentially, that you don’t have to bake the cake. The complaints – mostly from the Left but a lot of Righties have problems with it – revolve around a belief that a civil society cannot have people refusing to serve except for the most narrow (on the Left, none, really) exceptions. But I find it curious that none of the people saying we must bake the cake insist that we must carry our weight. It is rather a one way street – I have to bake the cake, but the lazy a** collecting bogus disability payments doesn’t have to get a job.

Chesterton pointed out that learning philosophy is important even though it can be a bit of a bore. The reason for this is because we’re either going to live by thought that has been thought out, or thought that hasn’t been thought out. For at least the past century, its been living by un-thought-out thought. How’s that been working for us?

The dichotomy of Bake the Cake/Sit on Your Butt is the result of simply not thinking about it. It seems like it is unfair to not bake the cake, just like it seems like it is unfair to force the lazy to work. But once you sit down and think about it for a bit, the opposite becomes clearly true.

The problem with slavery isn’t that you have to work. Heck, it doesn’t even require any great cruelty…and some of the largest slave owners of the past treated their slaves pretty well; so well that at times people were able to unfavorably contrast the treatment of free labor in the North with slave labor in the South. No; even if the slave is well treated and given every comfort that free labor would provide, it would still be wrong – and it is wrong because it is compelling someone to do for another. It is the refusal to acknowledge that the slave is a person who can choose to do or not do that is the problem with slavery. The fields do have to get plowed. The house does have to be cleaned. If anyone agrees to plow those fields and clean that house, great; but the moment you can tell a person they must plow your fields and clean your house, you have done evil no matter how nicely you otherwise treat the person. And, of course, treating them with brutality merely multiplies the basic evil of compulsion.

So, too, with any action where someone is doing something for another. You can plow your field. You can hire someone to plow your field. But you must not be able to force someone to plow your field. Or bake you a cake. Or so much as pass the salt. That a person may in some situations even have a moral obligation to do for you – such as sees you drowning and being fully capable of assisting, refuses – this does not entail any legal obligation to do. It must never involve a legal obligation to act.

We got this wrong because in our very understandable and morally correct desire to end and correct the injustices of racism, we fell into the trap of saying that discrimination is wrong rather than correctly identifying the problem as unjust discrimination. Words really do matter a lot! We ridicule the notion of our ancestors fighting whole wars over the definition of a word but they fought because it is important: what words mean and how you use them determine what sort of people you’re going to be. Because we’re lazy and rather ignorant – and don’t think out our thoughts – we fell into a trap: Discrimination is wrong! And so we went out to slay the dragon called Discrimination. Except we didn’t. And we can’t. But we did create a new tyranny to replace the old.

You see, we can’t end Discrimination. It would be impossible to live without Discrimination. For instance, we very much discriminate against blind people who want to be airline pilots. We also discriminate against 5’2″ men who want to play center for the Lakers. When you make out your Thanksgiving guest list and don’t include the wino who lives behind 7/11, you just discriminated. To discriminate is just to choose – and wisdom dictates that your choices be based in reality.

But we still gave it the old try, now didn’t we? And so, unable to end what is necessary for living, we got into the absurdity of saying that to end Discrimination, you must bake the cake. The person demanding the cake discriminates all day but the moment someone denies the cake: Bigot!!!! Off to court we go you homophobe! This is just wrong. Just as a person can decide who to have over for Thanksgiving, so they can decide who to do something for. It must be this way. To be free at the end of the day is the freedom to refuse. To say, “no” without let or hindrance. Doesn’t matter why – good reason, bad reason, no reason: if a person doesn’t want to do it then that’s the end of it: they don’t want to do it. No power on Earth should be able to compel a person to do anything for another.

But what about that bum, Mark? You said early on that we can’t allow people to sit on their butts: aren’t you saying that we can’t compel action? Huh? Explain that!

I will: here goes.

We do have our autonomy. Our ability to choose and our bedrock right to refuse. But we also do live in a society and doing so places certain obligations upon us. First is that we do no harm to the society. Obviously don’t break, steal or kill. We have no right to destroy or take what belongs to others – or to society collectively, like a bridge or a nature park – and we must not kill other people. But beyond these rather bare-bones requirements, we also have an obligation to not unduly burden our fellows. The difference can be illustrated by your neighbor asking you for a ride because his car broke down and your neighbor demanding you chauffeur him around. We, as a people, do carry a price of civilization around with us, and that price is to be reasonable. Someone needs a little help and you can provide it, it is morally incumbent upon you to do so. Not a legal obligation, but if you coldly refuse aid you could render at no significant cost to yourself, you have busted the societal deal. But it is all of us carrying the price of civilization. A man who does demand you chauffeur him around is breaking the deal as badly – maybe more badly – than the person refusing aid.

The pragmatic facts of life are that anyone who is physically fit refusing to work is breaking the deal. Anyone who is begging for money so they can get high or drunk is breaking the deal. Anyone working the system for unearned money (and this from welfare cheats to people using personal injury attorneys for bogus claims) is breaking the deal. Without getting into forcing these people to do for others, we are within our rights to force them to stop being a burden. That is, we can use compulsion to get the bum to go to work, to get the druggy to quit, to get the grifter to pay back what he’s stolen. I can’t order the bum to get a job, but I can set up a situation where he’s either going to get sober and get a job, or be sent some place where in return for being housed and fed – rather than living on the streets high – he will work. Of course even in such a place he can refuse to work…but we will adhered to the Biblical command of if a man will not work, let him not eat. We can and must enforce the deal – you can’t be a bum, you can’t be a drug addict, you can’t be a thief. We will give you every opportunity to become a responsible member of society but when push comes to shove you are either going to do your duty or you will find yourself without the means to live.

Now, this might seem a bit like a paradox but that is only because it is. You see, human life isn’t something that fits into neat, little boxes. Humanity isn’t a series of blocks of wood to be shaped and kept in line. The same society which diligently protects the right to refuse will refuse to allow people to take advantage of others in the name of a right to refuse. You don’t have to remain sober. You don’t have to work. But if you are a lazy drunk we won’t feed you after you spent a night sleeping on the streets in a puddle of your own urine. We will strike a balance, which is how all human society exists; the general rule and then one or more exceptions to it; applied with such wisdom as we can muster, but never allowing ourselves to be suckers.