The Manhattan Declaration Part III: Infidelity

I have been writing this month on the Manhattan Declaration - a document outlining a set of principles on matters of life, marriage, and religious liberty.

The Declaration contains the following line:

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love.

(See: Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience.")

On this, the Manhattan Declaration is correct.

Of course, I would not put it in those same terms. In desire utilitarian terms, we have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to promiscuity and infidelity, and to promote stronger desires for tight marital bonds between individuals.

A basic long-standing objection against adultery is that it involves the breaking of a promise. The wedding vow itself is a promise not to sleep around with others. A person who then has sex with violates that promise and this, in itself, involves doing something that no good person would do.

But what do we say about the people who never make such a promise? They enter into a marriage in complete agreement that each may have sex with others, No promise is done, so there is no wrong.

Another way of stating the issue with respect to adultery is that it is not a question of whether a promise, once made, should be kept. It is a question of whether the promise should or should not be made - what the promise (or the lack of a promise) itself says about the moral character of the individual.

The desire utilitarian case against adultery is that people have many and strong reasons to praise those who make (and then to keep) a promise a marital (or relationship) fidelity, and to condemn those who engage in sex without that fidelity - engage in promiscuous and adulterous behavior.

A large portion of those many and strong reasons comes from the many and strong reasons we have to prevent the spread of disease, and the desire-thwarting that those diseases bring. We get many of these reasons from preventing the spread of disease such as syphilis and AIDS. Recent medical research is showing that many forms of cancer - cervical, pancreatic, oral, anal, and even potentially some breast cancers - are cause by the spread of sexually transmitted viruses.

(See: Stanford University series on Darwin's Legacy Lecture 8)

We have many and strong reasons to hope that we, ourselves, do not get these diseases. We have many and strong reasons to hope that those we do not care about get these diseases, We should have many and strong reasons to hope that we can keep these diseases out of the future of any child's life. So, we have many and strong reasons to promote strong desires for extended monogamous relationships, and to condemn those who are promiscuous or adulterous - as well as those who promote and glorify promiscuity and adultery.

We have many and strong reason to hold that those people who make a promise of marital fidelity and keep that promise are better people - far better people - then those who show those values that have in the past and will continue to contribute to the spread of these diseases and the desire-thwarting that result from them.

These points argue that there is a virtue in promoting institutions, norms, and policies that have the effect of encouraging long-term monogamous relationships and of discouraging those things that tend to break marriages apart.

This idea of promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires (such as promoting an aversion to promiscuity and adultery and promoting a desire to be in a long-term monogamous relationships) is one that has to take the scientific facts into account. People like to imagine all sorts of harms and benefits circulating around the fulfillment of their own desires.

While abstinence-only sex education is certainly consistent with promoting an aversion to promiscuity and (later) adultery, we cannot ignore the evidence that says that this option is so drastically opposed to our biological natures that the attempt does more harm than good. We get more disease, more misery, and more death trying to teach abstinence then we would get by supporting long-term, mutually caring, relatively safe monogamous relationships.

If you wish to absolutely avoid any chance of getting in an automobile accident then this can be done by totally abstaining from ever getting into a car or being near a road. However, insofar as this is completely impractical, the next best option is to teach people to drive safely.

Consistent with all of this is the fact that those who oppose homosexual marriages are the true enemies of marriage itself. The many and strong reasons we have for promoting long-term monogamous relationships are reasons for promoting long-term monogamous relationships among both homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. Our institutions should be (a moral person would insist that they are made to be) just as strongly supportive of the long-term monogamous homosexual relationship as it is of the long-term monogamous heterosexual relationship.

People who are not supportive of long-term homosexual relationships through the institution of homosexual marriage have placed themselves on the side of promiscuity, disease, misery, and death instead. In at least this part of the lives, they bring evil into our society, and the suffering that comes along with it. If they are unable to see the evil that they do, it is because their prejudices and bigotry as well as their own egos refuse to admit the vicious truth of what they do.

The Manhattan Declaration Part II: Marriage

Religious moralities do not come from gods. They come from human beings. They are assigned to gods as a way to give them an illusion of legitimacy - because history has shown that "You must obey me," tends to be far less effective than, "You must obey God, and I am the voice of God."

Religious moralities come from human beings, and human beings put into those moralities all of their prejudices and biases, their lust for power and to be served by others, their likes and dislikes and their arrogant presumption that they have figured out all of the truths to be known and any who disagree with them are not only wrong, but wicked, and must be punished.

One of the prejudices that nature has given human beings is the prejudice to view the objects of their own desires as having intrinsic merit - as being not only, "That which I like," but "That which deserves to be liked because of its intrinsic qualities." This leads to the attitude that "different is evil." When confronted with others whose likes are not compatible with one's own the tendency is to view those likes as "perversions" - as a warped and disgusting tendency to pursue that which has no or negative value.

"And I know it has no or negative value because I do not like it or actively dislike it."

The vast majority of us are heterosexual. Nature has created in us a strong desire for heterosexual acts. As I think back on my ancestors across millions and millions of generations I can tell you very little about a great many of them. Yet, I can say that, since the evolution of sex, none of them - or almost none of them - died a virgin.

Combine this with the unfortunate prejudice mentioned above and we see people reaching an unfortunate conclusion that heterosexual relationships are intrinsically good and tht there must be something defective in those who do not pursue that which intrinsically ought to be pursued.

This is an unfortunate prejudice in that it causes some people to do harm to others who do not deserve to be harmed. they do harm to others because it pleases them to see themselves as superior and "the others" as inferior. However, if there is any clear line in the moral universe, it is that doing harm to others merely because it makes us feel good sits on the far side of that line.

There may be a natural human disposition to view "different as evil" but it is a disposition that good people will try to hold in check. The institution of morality was invented for the purpose of establishing a set of institutions that hold our poorer nature in check and to allow our better natures to flourish (to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires). This means holding in check the disposition to view "different as evil" and to grant liberty to those who are different, so long as they are not dangerous.

Even here we must be wary, because the disposition to view different as evil - the good feelings generated by holding "us" as superior and "them" as inferior - will seduce us into seeing a threat where no threat exists. We WANT to believe that we have reason to do harm to those who are different, so we accept things as evidence even though they stand in bold conflict with reason and responsibility.

The Manhattan Declaration contains the following quote:

[Permitting homosexual marriage] would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life.

(See: Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience.")

There is nothing in this but an expression of the attitude, "Different is evil." This is an expression of people who have taken what they like and assigned it extraordinary or supernatural virtue, so that they can generate in themselves the "good feeling" of seeing themselves as superior to those who are different.

This is bigotry and prejudice in its true form, prejudging those who are "like me" as superior, and prejudging those who "different" as "defective" and "worthy of condemnation."

It is accompanied by claims that "the others" are dangerous that make no sense when held up to the light of reason. They are claims of harm accepted by those aching for an excuse to act in ways harmful to others, and will grasp at any straw that can be offered as "justification" - to people who are similarly seduced by their own bigotries to accept.

They claim that marriage is meant for procreation and for raising a child.

Yet, nothing in a childless homosexual marriage is a threat to a heterosexual couple raising a child. And the belief that a homosexual couple must necessarily do a poorer job of raising a child has little or no basis in fact. People accept these claims, not because the research forces them to accept these claims, but because the pleasure of seeing themselves as superior to others seduces them into accepting these claims.

The most blatant irrationality with respect to the claim that these bigots have the best interests of the children at heart is the fact that many of those children are homosexuals. There is a very real harm being done to the interests of those children to put on the scale against the imaginary harms and benefits that spring from the bigot's imagination. It is a clear and obvious harm that is ignored because . . . well . . . "those who are different from us" are inferior and inferior interests do not need to be considered.

Even if there is a difference of opinion on this matter, morality demands that we give those who may be harmed the benefit of the doubt. The burden of proof is never on those who say that harm may not be inflicted, but always on those who say that harms must be inflicted. Furthermore, the moral person demands that the proof be something more substantial than, "It kinda feels like it might be a good idea." Harm requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The bigot's standards for evidence are much, much lower.

The authors of the Manhattan Declaration have made the situation worse. They have created a god in their image. They have assigned their prejudice to a god, creating a god that shares their prejudice and who, then, sanctions and defends the unjustified harms that the bigots would cause to "those who are different from us."

They pump up their chests with arrogant and false pride over the declaration that, "We have devoted ourselves to a higher power. We have devoted ourselves to pursuing God's will."

No, you have devoted yourselves to acting on natural prejudices and bigotries that you only imagine to be God's Will because that combines the good feeling of doing harm to those who are "different from us" to the good feeling of "serving a higher power who smiles on us when we do harm to those who are different from us."

When humans assign their prejudices and hatreds to a god, they then wrap those prejudices in an armor of faith where they can close their ears and refuse to listen to any argument that suggests that they are wrong. "God said that we may . . . indeed must . . . harm those who are different from us, and God cannot be mistaken."

Perhaps God cannot be mistaken. But humans can - and the gods that humans invent are prone to all of the same weaknesses and faults - prejudices and bigotries - of those who create their gods in their own image.

The Manhattan Declaration Part I: Religious Liberty

According to a recent declaration on Christian principles, if a person were to stand up in a crowded room, shout "Allah Akbar", and start shooting everybody present, it would be a violation of his religious liberty to duck and cover and head for the door, or to shoot the person who is doing the shooting.

A group of Christians have released a proclamation that they have titled the "Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience" in which they talk about a number of moral concerns regarding life and death (abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research), marriage (homosexual marriage), and religious liberty.

(See: Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience.")

I have no doubt that the authors of the text would protest the above account. However, their discussion on religious liberty leave this as a logical implication of the principles they put forward.

No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

What the shooter in this example is doing is expressing freely and publicly his deeply held religious convictions. Apparently, according to this declaration, he has a right to do so. To say that somebody has a right is to say that others have a duty to interfere. Clearly, when the authors of this declaration argue for a right to religious liberty, they are arguing for a duty on our part not to interfere with them. A direct application of this principle to the example of the shooter implies that we would be morally prohibited from taking any action that would interfere with the shooter's interest in expressing his most deeply held religious sentiments.

Clearly, the authors of this declaration would not declare that the shooter has such a right. However, this leaves them with a choice. If they are going to deny that such rights exist, then they need to alter their principles accordingly. Sometimes it is permissible to interfere with somebody else's expressions of deeply held religious convictions.

In this declaration, the authors state that Christian doctrine requires that they obey the law and to engage in civil disobedience when the law is unjust. However, this is a Christian doctrine. To impose this doctrine on others would, it seems, be a violation of the prohibition on "worshiping God according to the dictates of conscience." So, even though a Christian who would sign this declaration may not be an advocate of the use of this type of violence, the declaration gives moral sanction and permission to those who would.

Should a person whose conscience permits such violence be prohibited from worshipping God according to those dictates? If the answer is "sometimes yes", then the prohibition can clearly sometimes be violated.

One of the great advantages of having an inconsistent and inherent moral philosophy is that the agent gets to appeal to that half of the contradiction that is most useful at the moment in justifying their actions. If a health care provider wishes the liberty to refuse to provide abortion services to somebody who may want an abortion, prohibiting them from refusing is a violation of their religious liberty. If a homosexual couple wishes to get married according to the dictates of their conscience, apparently, then it is the religious liberty of the Christian signers of this document to prohibit such unions that is at stake.

For some reason the authors of this doctrine have adopted a set of principles in which they get all of the liberty, while everybody else gets all of the burdens. Yet, they claim that this self-contraditory and self-service doctrine does not come from man (specifically, not from the brains of the authors guided by their own convenience), but from God.

This is not an argument, which I have been protesting against in the past week, that says that religious moderates are to be condemned for the wrongs of religious extremists. This is an argument that looks at a specific declaration that has been set forward and shows the logical implications of that declaration. It is no different than raising objections to act utilitarianism on the grounds that it would authorize a doctor to kill a healthy patient to use his organs to save five patients who would otherwise die.

I assign my criticism only to the argument itself, and to those who endorse this argument – specifically its signers, but also any who would endorse the principles even without signing.

The principles in this policy ultimately implies that there is no limit on what a person may do, since any opposition or interference would, on these principles, violate the agent's right to "express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions."

That is exactly what the 9/11 hijackers were doing . . . expressing freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.

That is exactly what the terrorist who detonates a nuclear weapon in Washington DC would be doing . . . expressing feely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.

Certainly there must be religious convictions that people must not be permitted to express freely and publicly. Yet, the Manhattan Declaration gives us no such limit.

There is a reason why the Declaration does not give us any limit. This is because it is not actually a doctrine of religious liberty. It is a recipe for religious tyranny. It was written by people who, in the first two sections of the paper, wish to impose their religious beliefs on others even to the point of doing great harm to the interests of people who do not share their religion. It is quite certain that people with those types of values are not going to want to declare that there are limits in the harms that religious people may impose on others.

Instead, they are going to cap their declaration of religious tyranny with a set of principles that say that "We support religious liberty. This means that we have the liberty to do whatever pleases us and the rest of you have an obligation to submit."

No, I did not forget that they are not actually speaking about a right to "do whatever pleases us". They have a right to worship God according to their own conscience. Yet, there is no God. Nobody gets any moral law from God. Instead, people assign their own wishes and desires to God, and they do so according to their own pleasure. So, while they declare, believe, and certainly wish us to believe that they are acting on a higher moral value. They are, in fact, acting according to their own pleasure and using God in an attempt to justify the harms that they would have others suffer.

That is certainly what we find here. We find a declaration written by people who would be pleased with the liberty to impose their values on others without regard to the people made to suffer. To give their actions legitimacy they tell us that they are not actually acting according to their own pleasure. Instead:

The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ.

In other words, it is God that grants them to do these harms. These are not being inflicted at the pleasure of those who created the Declaration. They are God's will. So, they must be legitimate. And we have an obligation to "religious liberty" to allow them to inflict those harms it pleases them to inflict.

It is a very convenient theory.

Blaming the Moderates - Considerations of Rationality

All fiction should be condemned. If not banned outright, we should at least universally condemn all fictionists - people who create and distribute works of fiction.

The reason we should adopt this attitude is because all works of fiction are basically lies. To tolerate fictionism is to tolerate lying. Those who tolerate lying, in turn, are enablers for all of those who engage in fraud and other forms of deception. If we condemn all lying - even fiction - then there is no way that the fraudster, the deceptive advertiser, the political manipulator, or the public relations specialist can get the idea that the lies they engage in are somehow permissible.

This argument is meant as a reductio ad absurdum of the claim that religious moderates must be condemned as enablers of the actions of the violent religious extremists. Blaming the former for the actions of the latter is as absurd as blaming "fictionists" for the actions of liars and other forms of malicious manipulators of the truth.

It has been my position in this blog that all moral condemnation must be tightly focused - that only those who are actually guilty are to be condemned. There is a human tendency to divide the world into tribes of "us" and "them", and to take the wrongs committed by a subgroup of "them" (or even imagined wrongs) and apply it to all of "them". This is used to "justify" intertribal conflict - such as conflict between the atheist tribe and the theist tribe.

The way to avoid this outcome is to constantly focus attention on keeping condemnation tightly focused only on those who are guilty, to be on guard for the tendency to make irrational leaps from the subset to the whole, and to attack them when and where we find them.

Which is one of the things I try to do in this blog.

The claim that moderates are to be condemned for the actions of the extremists is one of those irrational absurdities embraced, not because they make sense, but because they mask tribal hatreds in a cloak of apparent legitimacy.

If it is permissible to condemn the moderate for the behavior of the extremists, then it should be just as permissible to credit the extremists for the behavior of the moderate. Consider two extreme cases - one of a deeply religious doctor who thinks that God wants him to provide medical care to the impoverished children in third world countries, and the other a violent jihadist who seeks to blow up a crowded shopping mall.

What argument can we give for saying that the doctor deserves to be condemned for the actions of the terrorist that is not also an argument for giving the terrorist moral credit for the actions of the doctor.

The argument is the same. Just as the doctor who promotes devotion to God is an enabler of the terrorist, the terrorist who promotes devotion to God is an enabler to the doctor. To claim that the argument is valid when used as a reason to condemn the doctor for the actions of the terrorist, but invalid when offered as a reason to praise the terrorist for the actions of the doctor, is itself irrational.

If irrationality is the true enemy, then this is an example of the true enemy. Only, this time, we are talking about the irrationality of atheists.

Rationality says that these inferences are invalid. If rationality is a virtue (and I hold that it is a virtue, though it is one we have only a limited ability to practice), then no good (rational) person would embrace this argument. In fact, the good (rational) person would condemn those who use this argument - particularly when it is used to give an illusion of legitimacy to what is used to condemn (to promote and, in some cases, sell) hatred of all members of a target tribe.

Which is what I am seeking to do here.

Please note, this is not an argument for being nice to religious moderates because it is politically expedient to do so. This is not an argument for promoting niceness at the expense of reason. This is an argument that embraces the position that rationality is a virtue and irrationality is a vice, and condemns a popular form of reasoning because it is irrational.

The claim that we must blame the moderates for the actions of the extremists is irrational - it is an invalid inference and for that reason no friend of rationality would embrace it. For that reason, any friend of rationality would condemn those who practice it.

From here we actually start down a long train of irrational arguments.

Why not credit the terrorist for the good done by the doctor? Answer: Because people can do good without God.

However, people can also do evil without God, so that argument doesn't work.

Ahhh, Alonzo, but what you are missing out on is that religion is required to do evil in the name of God.

Yes, but religion is also required to do good in the name of God, so that argument still does not work. We still do not have anything that a friend of rationality would embrace - that an enemy of irrationality would not condemn.

Religion, Condemnation, and Appeals to Scripture

In light of some recent discussion, I think it is time to specify some basic propositions.

(1) There is no God.

Some people may be distressed by this fact. However, I am under no obligation to bury the truth simply because someone cannot handle the truth. In order for people to best fulfill the most and strongest of their desires, given the fact that they act to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires given their beliefs, they need true beliefs. Belief that a God exists is not on the list.

Even if there is a God, we know nothing about its qualities. It could be a childish God who created the earth and its occupants at set us to war against each other for its own amusement. Or it could be a bored God concerned with something else in some other part of the universe where we are an unforeseen side-effect that God cares nothing about. Or it could be a God who is more impressed with the human who uses its brain and available evidence to conclude that it does not exist than with those who shamelessly assert that faith is a virtue. All claims about what God is like have to be justified separately from the proposition that a God exists.

(2) Belief that a God exists is not morally objectionable.

We all have false beliefs. None of us have time to hold all of our beliefs up to the light of reason and sort them all out, so we all have unfounded false beliefs.

Consider a person with no beliefs. How does he hold that first belief up to the light of reason to judge whether to accept it or not? He cannot. Our first beliefs are acquired arationally. Later beliefs are evaluated in part based on their coherence with these early arational beliefs. They help to select subsequent beliefs. It is a method prone to error. If people are to be held in moral contempt for every false belief they adopt, then we must hold everybody - even ourselves - in moral contempt.

(3) People who base behavior harmful to the interests on others on scripture are evil.

If you are going to do something harmful to the interests of others - if you are going to do anything that has a reasonable chance of harming the interests of others - you have a moral obligation to provide good reason to do so. You have an obligation to begin with the assumption that others are not to be harmed unless the value of doing harm is proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and to provide that reason.

Religious texts offer no good reason whatsoever for behavior harmful to others.

As soon as somebody quotes scripture in defense of a law or policy that is potentially harmful to the interests of others, that person has done what no good person would do. that person has violated the moral prescription against doing harm without good reason.

Religious beliefs are fine for people who apply them to their own lives. If you want to use scripture to decide what to eat, when to eat, what to wear, when to work, when to refrain from working, and the like, you are free to do so. Just as you are free to base these decisions on your horoscope, tea leaves, tarot cards, or the role of a die, if that pleases you.

However, if your scripture tells you to do harm to your neighbor, your act is no more justified than that of the person who looks at his horoscope, reads, "CANCER: Your neighbor must die today. Do anything in your power to make sure that he does not survive to see another dawn."

Killing your neighbor and appealing to scripture makes you a murderer. This includes those who support capital punishment who quote scripture that calls for "an eye for an eye." They are murderers, because they have killed without providing good reason to kill. They are murderers for the same reason the person reading the horoscope above and acting on it would be a murderer.

Maiming your neighbor and appealing to scripture makes you guilty of malicious assault. Taking your neighbor's property and appealing to scripture makes you a thief. This applies to anybody fighting over land where they base their fight on the claim, "God gave this land to us." You are thieves. And if you kill others whole engage in an act of theft then you are guilty of murder here as well.

The instant a person appeals to scripture to justify harm to others, at that instant they have done evil. Even if the person harmed actually deserves to be harmed - even if they are actually guilty, the person who has appealed to scripture to justify doing harm has still committed an evil act. This is because it is still the duty of every human being to presume that others are not to be harmed and to use only good reasons to show that they should be harmed.

Again, it is just like the horoscope case. Even if the neighbor turns out to be somebody who deserves to be killed, the fact that the killer did not have good reason to do so makes the killer a murderer.

Yes, this means that there are a lot of people around the world patting themselves on the back and puffing out their chests with pride over how great they are because they are fighting God's war should be ashamed of themselves. Their arrogant false pride is wholly undeserved. For the sake of their victims - those to whom they do harm without justification - it is not only permissible, it is obligatory to stick a pin in that inflated sense of pride and tell these people what type of people they really are.

The Christian conservative who looks to scripture and finds justification for banning gay marriage is guilty of the same moral crime as the Muslim who looks to scripture and finds justifiation for flying an airplane into a skyscraper.

If your reasons are not the type of reasons that are admissible in court, then they are not the types of reasons that should be permissible in Congress.

However, this applies ONLY to those who appeal to scripture to justify harmful actions. As I have argued, a rancher who gets drunk and drives around his ranch - where there are no other people to hit - is NOT guilty of any type of moral negligence, because he does not put others at risk. Similarly, people are free to be as intellectually reckless as they wish with beliefs that do not threaten others. It is when people put others at risk that they acquire the obligation to act (and to think) more responsibly. It is when they consider policies harmful to others that they become evil if they seek justification for those harms in scripture.

So, if we are going to condemn people, the people who deserve our condemnation are not "the religious". It is "the people who base behavior potentially harmful to others without good reason" - a group both broader and narrower than "the religious" and likely includes a good number of atheists as well.

If a person commits an act of attempting to justify behavior harmful to others by means of appeal to scripture, then this makes that person a member of the group, "People who have attempted to justify behavior harmful to others without good reason" - all of whom have done something evil and can justly be labeled as such.

This is true in the same way that a person who commits rape becomes a member of the group, "Rapists", all of whom have done something evil. And anybody who commits theft becomes a member of the group "thieves", all of whom have done something evil. There is no bigotry involved in labeling these groups what they are or to say that they all deserve condemnation based on that fact.

But nothing in this - nothing at all - justifies extending condemnation to anybody outside of the group, "rapists", "thieves", and "those who seek to justify behavior harmful to others without good reason."

Pledges, Promises, and Prescriptions

Pledges, Promises, and Prescriptions

A 10 year old boy, Will Phillips, is getting attention because he has made a principled stand not to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance because America does not provide “liberty and justice” for homosexuals.

(See: Arkansas Times A Boy and His Flag)

Technically, this involves a misunderstanding of the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge is not a mere description of America that happens to be false. The Pledge is a prescription – a statement on what the pledge taker will try to bring about. A person who refuses to say the Pledge is a person who refuses to promise to support liberty and justice for all.

This does not imply that Phillips was wrong. A part of the purpose of a protest is to generate publicity for a message – and Phillips has certainly accomplished that. Furthermore, Phillips’ protest is a statement of moral condemnation of those who treat homosexuals unjustly. It is quite refreshing to see such a widely publicized statement of moral condemnation of a group of hate-mongering bigots coming from a 5th grader.

In this sense, the statements that follow may be seen as pedantic, but they have important implications.

The Pledge of Allegiance is not a values-free description of what America happens to be as a matter of fact. It is prescriptive. It is meant to set forth an ideal – to make a statement of what America should be. It should be one nation, with liberty and justice for all. To the degree to which we fail to provide liberty and justice for all, to that degree we have fallen short of our goal, and the Pledge is a promise to work harder to obtain that goal.

All of this applies to the phrase, "One nation, under God" as well. This, too, is meant to set forth an ideal – to make a statement of what America should be. It should be one nation under God. To the degree that we fall short of this objective, the Pledge is a promise to work that much harder towards that goal.

Of course, we can never be a nation 'under God' because there is no God to be under. People who demand that we be a nation 'under God' typically see themselves as God's self-appointed magistrates on Earth. So, the promise to be ‘under God’ is a promise to be ruled by those who claim the authority to speak for God, which means being 'under' a religious institution of some sort.

As long-time readers of this blog will note, I hold the Pledge (as written) and the Motto in particularly high contempt – as I do anybody who supports these bigoted hate-mongering prescriptions.

Pledge of Allegiance is a promise on the part of those who take it to fight against the four great anti-Americanisms; atheism, secession, tyranny, and injustice.

It is unconscionable, particularly in a nation that pledges religious freedom, to have children promising to devote their lives to fighting atheism, or for the government to call decent citizens un-American simply because those citizens do not believe in a God.

I count this as hate-mongering, or the selling of hate for profit, because those who sell this particular brand of hate profit by establishing a filter that is 99.9% effective at keeping atheists out of public office – or, at least, keeping out atheists who will admit to being atheists.

And the Motto is pure tribal divisiveness. Its purpose is to divide the population into two tribes. It declares that the primary requirement for being a member of the favored 'us' tribe is to trust in God. If you do not trust in God, you cannot be one of 'us'. You must, then, by the process of elimination (and I use the term in its fullest sense) be one of 'them' – beneath 'us', unworthy of membership, unworthy of respect, worthy only of contempt.

It is precisely because the Pledge of Allegiance and the Motto are prescriptive that they are so contemptible. It is because they prescribe bigotry. Furthermore, their most important function is to teach bigotry to young children, where its lessons are planted at a deep and emotional level that they will find difficult to shake even as rational adults. It is one of the major contributors to the fact that atheist adults, though substantial in numbers, are so politically impotent – because of the shame that makes them admitting what they are even to themselves, let alone to others.

Just as anti-black bigotry was successful even at turning blacks against other blacks, and anti-gay bigotry is successful at turning gays against themselves (leading to high suicide rates among teenage homosexuals and other forms of self-destructive behavior), we see atheists hiding meekly in the closet ashamed to show themselves in public, turning on each other, and, in many cases, ashamed to admit their atheism even to themselves.

In this sense, it does not matter whether the law or social pressure requires people to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance. The law, at one time, required blacks to sit at the back of the bus, to attend black public schools, to eat only in the 'colored' section of restaurants, to use only those bathrooms set aside for 'colored' people, and prohibited from buying houses in neighborhoods that had racial covenants.

When it comes to unjust laws and social customs – when it comes to laws and social customs that are built on a foundation of hate-mongering bigotry and whose primary aim is to turn the next generation into bigots as well – when the law can be broken without violence and without harm to any person or institution other than the institution of bigotry from which it sprang – then there are times when a good person would not obey a particular law or custom. These are times when a good person, in fact, identifies himself as such by his decision to refuse to obey a law or custom.

Even if the law required American citizens to promise to become bigots (or at least act as bigots act), we can still ask the question of whether good people would obey such a law. And even if legislators insist on posting signs in public buildings that declare, "Those who do not trust in God do not belong amongst us," this does not obligate any citizen to show that message any respect.

I once answered the question, "Why don't you stand for the Pledge of Allegiance," with the question, "Why do you stand? Are you such a fan of bigotry that you are willing to make a promise to the state and to your fellow citizens to support it. Because the Pledge of Allegiance is a promise to treat one who does not believe in God the way one would treat secessionists, tyrants, and the unjust."

A person with good desires - a person with a proper aversion to hate-mongering bigotry - just would not be willing to stand for that type of behavior.

The New York Terrorist Trials

A great many Republican politicians and pundits, and a few Democrats, apparently think that rights are the blessings of government - that government bestows rights and governments can freely take rights away for even light and transient reasons.

Since the announcement came out that some of the people captured and accused of involvement in the 9/11 hijackings were to be tried in civil court in New York "like common criminals", many have protested that such a move is objectionable on the basis that it grants the accused certain rights. There is no talk of these being inalienable, human rights - that governments are instituted to secure rights such as these. Instead, the argument is grounded on a seemingly unquestioned premise that rights are to be spoken of only as conveniences one has at the whim of those holding political power.

The theory that rights are government blessings is the theory that there is no such thing as a just or unjust government. Government can do no wrong if right and wrong are determined by what the government does. The possibility of just and unjust government requires that there is a standard outside of government that dictates what governments may or may not morally do.

At the same time, desirism denies that there are intrinsic moral properties - some type of fundamental moral ought that comes from some sort of great law-giver (either God or evolution) that dictates universal moral oughts.

Rights, in desire utilitarian terms, are facts about relationships between malleable desires and other desires. They are facts about the value of aversions to governments committing certain types of acts - curtailing free speech, arbitrarily arresting and imprisoning citizens at the whim of the head of state, denying people a say in selecting who will make the laws, etc.

These people who object to a public trial are people who clearly have little or no desire to see the government as a protector of rights. They have little or no aversion to the government simply sweeping away rights as a matter of convenience. If they have no desire to see rights protected generally, then they have no desire to protect your rights or to see governments sweep your rights aside on a whim. And they broadcast the same attitude to the rest of the world - telling the whole global community that humans have only those rights that their government tells them they have and no more.

Clearly, there are some circumstances in which there may be reason to deny a prisoner an open trial. Let us assume that somebody working for the German army is captured early in 1944 trying to smuggle plans to Nazi Germany, or somebody captured today needs only to broadcast the activation code for a nuclear bomb he has hidden in a major city. We clearly have good reason to deny that person an opportunity to broadcast the information he wants to get out. Absolute rules fail absolutely.

However, rights do have a weight, and they are not to be violated for trivial reasons.

We hear reasons like:

(1) We do not want to give these people a platform at which to speak. We do not want to give them a platform that they can then use to mock their victims.

Obviously, the right to a trial can be revoked by the government whenever there is a risk of the accused making statements that the government disapproves of what they say. This is not a case of the accused giving some vital piece of information to those who would use it to do great harm. This is a case of shutting people up because those with power do not want them to speak.

There are legitimate reasons to keep people from speaking. However, "Because I do not like what you would say" is not a good reason. It is, in fact, a reason that substantially denies that there is a right to freedom of speech. If the government has the right to silence people who might say something those with power disagree with, then none of us can claim a right to speak. We must all, instead, accept that we may be silenced as well if the government should not approve of our message.

The right to freedom of speech means nothing if it is not construed as a right to say things that others might not want to hear.

(2) The trial will be a circus. It will be out of control.

Again, these protestors are asserting the principle that the right to a trial can be revoked whenever the government declares that it cannot have an orderly trial. Of course, I can think of a great many circumstances in which the government may declare that it cannot have an orderly trial. They correspond to any case in which the government might want to lock somebody away without a trial.

Let us imagine, as a hypothetical example, that the Democrats have set up their campaign headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, and a group of Republicans then get caught trying to bug the Democrats. Let us assume that the President is somebody who wants to protect himself from what might be revealed in any public trial or hearings of those involved. All that President would have to do, if we establish such a principle, is declare that the trial would be a circus and, for that reason alone, must only be held behind closed doors where the words of the accused cannot be heard by the general public.

A politician or pundit who has particularly warm feelings for tyranny and for the government's ability to silence its critics is going to have particularly warm feelings for the idea that it can suspend any trial that the government declares would be a 'circus'.

The biggest circus that a tyranny has to fear is one that exposes the depths of its tyranny.

There are others, but this is a fine start for such a confined space.

In all cases where people are arguing against such a trial, I invite you, he reader, to look for the principle that lies at the heart of their alleged reason to deny such a trial. Look at what it says about the speaker's desire for fair trials and his aversion to the arbitrary exercise of government power. Then ask yourself how secure you would be if those sentiments became universal.