Even opposing government-responsibility stances presuppose the state is a distinct moral agent
Evidence
At times, the challenge of enacting a po liti cal identity within this context becomes dramatically apparent. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for instance, one anonymous White House offi cial initially sought to defl ect criticism of the federal government’s response by arguing, “Normal people at home understand that it’s not the president who’s responsible for this, it’s the hurricane.” Four days later, with criticism mounting, President George W. Bush embraced the opposite normative extreme, in which the scope of the government’s responsibility appeared to be limitless: “[A]s long as any life is in danger, we’ve got work to do… .” As a statement of government responsibility for hurricane prevention and disaster relief, the latter quotation seems preferable to the former, which trades on a prescriptive version of the actomission distinction that should be rejected. What both quotations share, however, is an ac know ledg ment of the state as an in de pen dently signifi cant actor, one for which even an apparent duty of comprehensive lifesaving can only be imposed as a result of reasoning, choice, and responsibility. … Thus, although arguments against agentrelativity at the level of the state are correctly motivated to the extent that they recognize greater causal potential and therefore greater responsibility for the prevention of suffering by states, they overshoot to the extent that they seek to deny the state separateness or coherence as a distinct human institution. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 177
Categorization
- SEED: The Katrina example — where nature itself becomes a liability-shifting device — could ground an essay on how governments use ‘acts of God’ rhetoric to escape climate and disaster obligations.
- ADDENDUM: Reinforces the grafting-and-growth / environmental-regulation theme by showing how responsibility for natural harms is rhetorically allocated.
- XREF: connects to: Limited government need not erase a society’s distinctive moral character — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 92
Broader Connections
- Limited government need not erase a society’s distinctive moral character
#qualifies(0.75) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 92