I deleted this section from an earlier draft of When All Else Fails. But this still seems like an apt theory to me: the de re if not de dicto goal of political philosophy is to produce theories which justify holding government and its agents to low moral standards. (See, e.g., Henry, Chris, or John at Crooked Timber.)

The Vulcans appreciated the nice things I said about them in my previous books.[i]To express gratitude, they invited me to visit planet Vulcan to lecture on the history of Earthling political philosophy. The Vulcans sat in grave silence as I covered Rawls’s theory of justice and the myriad responses to it, theories of state legitimacy and authority, democratic theory, just war theory, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and the like.

At the end, one Vulcan—I believe her name was T’Luminareth—raised her hand and asked, “In your view, what is the purpose of political philosophy? What is the nail to which Earthling political philosophy is the hammer?”

“Good question,” I replied. “I suppose we could say that political philosophy is the normative analysis of social institutions. Following Nobel laureate economist Douglas North, I’d define institutions as ‘the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction.’[ii]The purpose of political philosophy is to determine the standards by which we judge institutions good or bad, just or unjust.”

She shook her head. “No, that’s not right. Perhaps that’s what Earthling political philosophy aspires to do. But that’s not what it does. Rather, for the most part, Earthling political philosophy attempts to justify holding government agents and political actors to absurdly low moral standards. Nearly all of your philosophers—from Plato to Aristotle to Hobbes to Rousseau to Marx to Mill to Rawls to Habermas—spent most of their time trying to prove that governments and their agents are exempt from normal, commonsense moral obligations. You Earthlings seem to think your governments and their agents are magical, as if they’re surrounded by force field that both relieves them of their basic moral duties and requires you to treat them as if they have a privileged moral status over the rest of you. Hundreds of years ago, you believed in the divine right of kings. You Earthlings realized that was a mistake. Yet rather than reject the idea altogether, you’ve imbued all government agents, including yourselves as when you vote, with a magical and majestic exemption from normal standards of right and wrong.”

At this point, T’Luminareth forced a smile (for my comfort) and turned to the other Vulcans, “Really, were I not inclined to give Earthlings the benefit of the doubt, I’d say the purpose of Earthling political philosophy is to rationalize evil.”

At first, I was shocked and angry. But I realized she was right, as Vulcans usually are.

What did T’Luminareth and the other Vulcans found so puzzling about Earthling political philosophy? What is this “moral force field” we Earthlings apparently believe in, but which Vulcans think silly? In short, it’s that when government agents commit injustice, we owe them special deference. This book explains why they are not owed any such deference; instead, we have a right to protect ourselves and others from injustice.

[i]In Brennan 2016a, I used the Vulcans as a model of the ideal democratic participant. In Brennan and Jaworski 2015, 172-5, I explained that Vulcans are superior to Earthlings; everything we can do, they can do better, and for any task, the best of us are worse than the worst of them. Nevertheless, I explained, both Vulcans and Earthlings would benefit from interplanetary free trade. In turn, I used this point to explain why markets in designer babies are probably a good thing, even if it, implausibly, it turned out that in the long run only the rich could afford designer babies.

[ii]North 1990, 3.