I was very pleased to see the responses by Bryan Mercadente and Sebastian Wang to my “Examination in the Philosophy of Liberty.” I was also pleasantly surprised, not only by the quality of the responses, but by the speed with which they were concocted. Long ago when I was an A-level student, I would not have been able to conceive such answers, even given a whole week. Nor to encapsulate them in so few well-chosen (in most cases) words.

Knowing that Dr Gabb is a teacher of both these young men, I did look for influences from him on either of their prose styles! But I found none of his trademark Greek aorists. And both of them write like journalists, not like academics.

I was, I must say, a little miffed by Mercadente’s sideswipe at my marking system. I am steadfast in my view that the purpose of education is to teach how to think, not what to think. As a former mathematician, a consequence of this is that for me, it matters less what your conclusion is, than how you got there. That was why I set the marks, not on the specific answer selected, but on the justification. And the premium attached to the answer “other (specify)” was to reflect that originality is worth more than rote learning – if it isn’t botched.

Q1)    How should you judge what actions are right and what actions are wrong?

Mercadente’s answer, “an action is wrong when it invades someone else’s domain; it is right when it does not,” is just about spot on. Though I cannot quite agree that right and wrong “are not natural objects waiting to be discovered.” If only because our conceptions of right and wrong do change or expand from time to time, so there are always moral rules that are out there, but we haven’t discovered them (or recognized the necessity for them) yet.

Wang, in contrast, answers: “according to an established religious or moral code.” The difficulty I find with this is that, if the code has had time to become established, it is almost certain to be out of date. Indeed, Wang recognizes this when he says, “culture shifts too quickly to supply lasting standards.” But at the end he says, “we have a nature, and morality flows from the flourishing of that nature.” That is spot on.

Mercadente’s specific answer, combined with this aspect of Wang’s justification, would have scored 10 out of 10. As it is, I have to give Mercadente 9 for audacity, and Wang 7 for a very good justification of someone else’s moral ideas.

Q2)    What is the status of human rights?

Mercadente accepts a human right only if “there is a recognised rule protecting it and some institutional or customary mechanism that can enforce that rule.” Though he does say later, rightly, “governments excel mainly at destroying rights.” Does this mean, then, that if a government violates a human right, “human rights” do not allow the victims any recourse or redress, even once that government has been removed from power?

He also says, “the point of rights is to prevent people evaluating one another as livestock.” But that does not show, as he claims, that rights are not earned. Indeed, my own view is that those who refrain from treating humans as livestock, by so doing, earn for themselves a right not to be treated as livestock.

I am also confused by “nature contains force, not entitlement.” “Contains” in the sense of “holds back,” or of “includes?” Neither seems to make much sense.

Wang, in contrast, answers that rights “are innate to anyone who is born of human stock.” And this is so, regardless of how individuals behave towards others. His argument invokes what Mercadente calls Sky Daddy; but that is unnecessary. For Wang says that “rights exist because the human person exists,” and even this agnostic can agree that the human person is the ultimate source of rights – it is why they are human rights. He says, rightly, that the human person has “worth that no state or majority may annul.” And he (too succinctly!) rebuts Mercadente: “recognition [of rights] is not creation [of institutions to recognize them].” Otherwise put, human rights exist independently of means of enforcing them.

Assigning marks is tough on this one, but I have given Mercadente 4, Wang 7.

Q3)    What are the important human rights and freedoms?

Mercadente answers, within a comfortably Lockean framework, “life, security of person, liberty and property.” That is good, as far as it goes.

But Wang goes further, answering “all of the above.” This is the first occasion on which either young man has agreed with my own selection! He rightly emphasizes the importance of dignity, which I see as the right to be treated as a human being; saying “a human being is more than an animal with a legal perimeter.” (He doesn’t say it, but a human being is more than a bunch of bits in a database, too. That is why my opposition to digital ID and all it implies is so vehement.)

He also recognizes that “bills of rights codify certain protections that history has shown to be necessary.” And that, while “rights are not unlimited,” “denying any of these categories leaves the person vulnerable.” Mercadente scores 7, Wang 8.

Q4)    What is your nation?

Mercadente claims to be giving his own answer, but (like me) actually answers “England,” which is option (a). He rightly pooh-poohs the UK as an “administrative abstraction.” And he says, “If Whitehall collapsed tomorrow, England would still exist.” Spot on. Meanwhile, Wang answers “Britain,” meaning that it is the British culture, and the people who follow it, that he feels an allegiance to. That’s fine.

My alter ego the Darn-Poor Rhymer, back in 2014, made the same point as Mercadente does with his collapse of Whitehall. In the following words:

England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales,

When the state that rules them fails,

They won’t sink into the sea!

They’ll be ours, and we’ll be free.

So, for me, this gives Mercadente a one-point edge. Scores: Mercadente 8, Wang 7.

Q5)    What is the binding force which holds a nation together?

Both agree with me in answering “shared culture.” Mercadente says that shared culture “creates the sense of belonging that allows millions of strangers to behave as if they are members of the same moral community.” But Wang goes further, and says: “A nation survives only when these underlying moral expectations remain strong.”

Here, it is Wang’s dart that hits the bull for 8, while Mercadente hits only the outer for 7.

Q6)    What is politics?

Mercadente answers (agreeing with me): “a system that enables an in-group to exploit and oppress everyone else.” He calls it “a structure that exists mainly to extract obedience, money, and deference.” If he had added “non-accountability” to that list, that would have been a bulls-eye.

Wang, on the other hand, answers “a system that brings power to those that consider themselves the best.” He says “when humility disappears, politics degenerates into domination.” But he doesn’t seem to appreciate that arrogance, the total opposite of humility, is built into the very foundations of the political states we suffer under today.

Scores: Mercadente 7, Wang 5.

Q7)    Who has a right to tell you how you should behave?

Here, both agree with me on the selection: “your own conscience as a human being.”

Mercadente says: “The only legitimate constraints on behaviour are the reciprocal rules that make coexistence possible. Beyond those, a person is answerable only to his conscience. Anything else is force masquerading as duty.” That’s close to the bulls-eye again.

Wang says, rightly, that “conscience must be properly formed.” But he goes on to recommend “moral education – through family, faith, and tradition.” What is to prevent “moral education” being skewed for nefarious purposes? Particularly when it is delivered by organizations such as the BBC? Or – Sky Daddy forbid – the woke, joke Anglican church!

In my view, conscience can only be properly formed by using it, seeing how well the results work, and adjusting behaviours accordingly.

Scores: Mercadente 7, Wang 5.

Q8)    Where does the authority of a political government come from?

Here, Mercadente gives his own answer: “From its willingness and ability to govern within the moral consensus of the intelligent.” I’m not sure that “intelligent” is a tactful or a good word to use here. Nor is there much if any of a “moral consensus” today, given that the establishment and its intellectual class seem to have lost moral contact with the ordinary people. He would have done a lot better if he had aligned his answer with Q7, by saying something like: “From its willingness and ability to uphold the reciprocal rules that make coexistence possible.”

“A government becomes legitimate only when it does not go out of its way to destroy its subjects” is going in the right direction, but far too weakly. “A government that seeks to destroy its subjects has lost all legitimacy” would have been better, particularly since John Locke said much the same (and more). And “I will accept organised domination when it will lead to better outcomes” raises the question: better outcomes for whom?

Wang, in total contrast, answers “from the voluntary consent of everyone among the governed.” This would have been my second choice (the first being “by it providing objective nett benefits to every individual among the governed.”) And he is right when he says, “a government that violates human dignity forfeits its claim to obedience.” But I do not like his idea of tacit consent. Is someone who refuses to vote because there is no-one worth voting for, as I did for three decades, giving his consent to whatever government is elected?

Scores: Mercadente 3 (being too original can be risky!), Wang 6.

Q9)    In what sense are we all equal?

Both Mercadente and Wang agreed with me that the best option is “we are all ethically equal, so each of us should obey the same moral rules.” But I wonder how far either of them is aware of how radically this idea goes against the design of the current political system, the “Westphalian” nation state? Where the members of a sovereign have moral privileges, such as making laws, taxing, and being the final court of appeal, over everyone else, the subjects?

Mercadente says, rightly: “no one is born with a natural licence to invade the body or property of another.” But try telling that to Rachel Reeves, or to the apparatchiks that put Lucy Connolly in jail. And Wang says that true equality “limits hierarchy by insisting that all authority is accountable.” But I don’t see Sajid Javid or Boris Johnson being held accountable for those who died from or were harmed by the COVID “vaccinations” they mandated. Or Ed Miliband or Keir Starmer being held responsible for old people dying or suffering because “nett zero” policies make them unable to afford to heat their homes. Wang must not have heard of the idea that “the king can do no wrong.”

But since their hearts are in the right places on this issue, both the young men score 5.

Q10)   What is justice?

Again, I have agreement that justice is “the condition in which each individual is treated, as far as practicable, as he or she treats others.” Again, I doubt that either of the young men fully appreciate just how radical this idea is. To see that, you only need to contemplate what might constitute justice for the politicians I mentioned under Q9 above.

I liked Mercadente’s “justice is … what remains when sentimentality is stripped away and only workable rules survive.” The very same rules, which “make coexistence possible,” and which, if obeyed by everyone, safeguard the human rights of all human beings. I also liked Wang’s “justice … includes proportionate punishment for wrongdoing, protection of the innocent, and respect for the dignity of every person.” Both, I think, deserve to score 7.

To sum up

(Literally.)

Mercadente: 9+4+7+8+7+7+7+3+5+7 = 64.

Wang: 7+7+8+7+8+5+5+6+5+7 = 65.

The slow, plodding tortoise has beaten the mercurial, risk-taking hare by a single mark. Aesop had it right! Oh, and by the way, I graded them both B+.