France has just imposed a tax on airline tickets "to help the world's poor." Leaving aside the question of whether foreign aid programs work (They don't. Just look at Palestine.), this policy violates the principle that the duty of a government is to serve its people. However, this policy also strikes me as following naturally (though not necessarily inevitably) from a belief in international progressivism. According to the progressive philosophy, it is the responsibility of the state to improve society. Furthermore, the justness of society is not determined so much by the conduct of its people as by the policies of the state (irrespective of their effectiveness or their unintended consequences). It thus follows that the state becomes the chief moral agent* in a society, as opposed to the individual. If the state is the chief moral agent, then, in a globalized world, the state becomes responsible for helping other states make their societies more just, as opposed to individuals from wealthier societies helping those from impoverished ones through altruism or businesses investing in these poor communities and providing economic opportunities for them. And if the state is responsible for providing aid to poorer states, then there is no reason it cannot tax its people for just such a purpose. It's not as if they have the duty to provide for themselves and their families: The state has already taken care of that. Thus, people have no right to their own money because spending it cannot possibly fulfill any moral imperative.
This policy is a reductio ad absurdum of progressivism, and it illustrates why I cannot embrace it as a morally serious political philosophy.
*Getting back to my debate with Josh, it is this enshrinement of the state as the chief moral agent, as opposed to the individual, which renders Progressivism incompatible with Christianity, in my view.
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