Philip AbbottCritiques

There is a popular lyric that notes the difficulty of talking to a man with a shotgun in his hand. It is precisely this image of the state that has created liberalism and has since haunted the liberal mind. It is extremely difficult to envisage a man reaching an independent moral judgement... and acting freely upon it when faced with such imminent distraction. Suppose we even assume that the man with the shotgun is asking us for some laudable sacrifice. Someone approaches you with / a shotgun aimed at your face or just resting languidly on his waist and asks you to contribute some money ("anything you can afford")to the American Cancer Society. The distinction between request and demand immediately dissolves as your eyes fix upon the barrel of the gun... The calculation now rests upon considerations of... prudence. ...The liberal has now for three hundred years been devising ways to construct a door between the man with the gun and the citizen but every liberal is aware that the situation is not qualitatively altered if we do not actually see the gun. ... Nor is it altered if we elect the man who is to carry it...
It is not the purpose of this essay to demean the efforts of those men who have devised constitutions and suggested innumerable social and economic practices to keep the shotgun behind the door. It is rather to suggest that the liberal has sacrificed / the genius of his ethical theory to the political wisdom which emerges from it. ...pp 7/8/9