Rumsfeld and the Generals

Entertainment Versus News

I logged on to the internet this morning and went through the headlines, as is my habit, and I could not find anything worth writing about. Every headline was really a local story about some local crime or event that became a national story only because it involved a Hollywood starlet, young blonde woman, athlete, child, or kitten.

Really? Nothing important is happening in the world or in the nation that might affect the whole population?

I have this prejudice about what I call news. Something is not news unless it is something that gives me a reason to change how I do things, or about which my input might be important. If a new provision in the tax code affects me, then that is news, because I will have to change how I do things to conform to the law. If there is a dispute on some issue of national importance, I would like to know the issue so that I can render an informed judgment, and try to direct some effort to promoting that decision.

This morning's news offered nothing of substance.

Of course, no objection can be raised against reading things for their entertainment value. A problem arises when entertainment entirely replaces substance, as it seems to have been doing in the past week.

Rumsfeld and the Generals

The headlines did contain the trailing elements of a story that does qualify as news. A number of former generals has stepped forward to suggest that the President replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

However, I fear that, no matter how much I read up on these issues, I will never be qualified to give an informed decision. I simply will not be given access to the types of information that I will need in order to determine if these Generals are raising legitimate complaints. For all I know, they could be spoiled brats who are whining about the fact that the Secretary of Defense did not go through sufficient effort to stroke their egos – because, I can well imagine, generals have very large egos.

I see this as a problem to writing an informed opinion on the matter. I have read others who had no problem siding with the generals against Rumsfeld.

I get the impression -- and, I admit, this is only an impression -- that these claims are being made by partisan writers who judge truth or fiction by whether a story can benefit the party. They hear former Generals speaking up against the Bush Administration. They simply assume that anybody who speaks against the Bush Administration must be telling the truth, and take any critic's word on face value.

To me, this sounds too much like cherry-picking the data.

Remember how the Bush Administration assumed that anybody who had anything bad to say about Saddam Hussein must be right. This is the same process, except with the Bush Administration as the target rather than the Saddam Hussein regime.

Criticizing Rumsfeld

I am not saying that Rumsfeld is beyond criticism. I can make a good case for dismissing Rumsfeld without mentioning the testimony of these generals.

Let us assume that the director of NASA was given a project crucial to well-being of the country. NASA’s director had agreed, and indeed promoted, estimates that the project would cost less than $100 billion. The payoff to the people of the United States would be huge (e.g., peace in the Middle East and a population of Iraq who worshipped us as the greatest, most humanitarian people ever to exist, plus direct access to cheap oil in the hands of a friendly and adoring nation).

Three years later, the project had cost nearly $300 billion. There was no sign that the hemorrhage of taxpayer dollars will come to an end. The project has also cost the lives of nearly 2,400 Americans, with 17,500 wounded. The lost also includes the damage done to the lives, health, liberty, and property of other countries.

Now, the project is anticipated to cost over $1 trillion. There is no way to count how many people will be maimed and killed before the project comes to an end, and the project might not even be successful. The cost of the project is hindering the country’s ability to respond to other emergencies. Yet, the project has been conducted in such a way that the cost of ending it might even be higher than the cost of continuing it. At least, the Administration is intent on trying to convince the people that, no matter how much the project costs to complete, the cost of dropping it would be higher.

Furthermore, to add to the analogy, we can assume that this hypothetical NASA project is plagued by corruption. Kickbacks and bribes are business as usual. This is a weak moral analogy to the torture and abuse that has become a part of the campaign in Iraq. The Administrator sets the moral and cultural tone of the agency. If we find corruption and abuse rampant in the system, we must hold the administrator accountable for the culture he has fostered.

Now, whoever managed this type of project would be . . . should be . . . ripe for an unfavorable job performance review. We do not need the testimony of generals to tell us that there is a problem here. The case is simple. “Mr. Rumsfeld. You were given a job to do with this budget and this timeline. You said that the budget and the timeline were reasonable. Your project is now so massively over-budget and so massively behind schedule that we have good reason to question your competence as a manager. We think that it is time to give this project to somebody else.”

So, I am not questioning the testimony of these generals because I have a soft spot for Rumsfeld and, in the style of a political partisan, I am willing to defend him at all costs. Rather, I am simply somebody who wants to actually base my conclusions on the evidence, rather than one who accepts or rejects evidence on whether it supports a desired conclusion.

Responsible Decision Making

As I said at the start, I do not have, nor will I ever have, enough information about the inner workings of the Pentagon to make an informed assessment as to the merits of these generals’ claims.

With so many generals coming forward, I may not think it is reasonable to draw an informed conclusion myself. However, I do think that they provide justification for calling for an investigation. If I was running a company, and seven mid-level managers quit while complaining about one of the Senior Vice Presidents of the company, I would consider it a dereliction of duty (a charge fit to be discussed in an ethics blog) to casually brush those accusations aside.

The job needs to be given over to people who, unlike me, and unlike a list of pundits who feel qualified to judge the issue, actually have access to the types of information they need to make an informed decision. They definitely have to be non-partisan, and have an overriding concern for the welfare of the troops and the success of the project.

Let them make the decision to keep this manager, or to find a new one.

Bush answered the challenge by saying, “But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”

That is not a morally responsible position to take. It is an arrogant and presumptuous position to take.

White House "Shake Up"

In related news, today we heard of a “shakeup” of the White House staff. New Chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten has been suggesting that there will be some personnel changes.

We have already been told that this shakeup does not include Rumsfeld. Instead, today, we hear that Press Secretary Scott McClellan is stepping down. This has all of the sense of a speaker, proposing poorly considered ideas based on fantasy and wishful thinking can make those ideas sound better if they switch to a different microphone. They have not yet recognized that the problem is with the message, not with the quality of the equipment used to tell it.

Risks and Costs of War

Imminant Threat

As I have read the news recently, I have had a question running around in my head. It seems to be an obvious question – a question that would pop into the heads of most people. Yet, I do not read of anybody asking this question.

The question comes from news that Iran has announced that it has the capacity to produce enriched uranium – at least, uranium enriched to the point where it is useful for producing nuclear power. To accomplish this, they are centrifuges running. It has a supply of uranium. In spite of having all of this, we are told that Iran is a good 10 years away from making an atomic bomb.

Now, I think back three years. We were told that Iraq may perhaps be trying to acquire uranium. We had weapons inspectors in the country who could find no sign of centrifuges or any of the other infrastructure that could be used in making a bomb. Yet, we were told that we had to invade Iraq right away, because we did not want the ‘smoking gun’ to take the form of a mushroom cloud.

Maybe somebody can explain to me how these two stories fit together. How can a country with a working atomic infrastructure creating enriched uranium be of no immediate concern, while a country with no evidence of an infrastructure and only rumors of an unsuccessful attempt to acquire uranium can be an imminent threat?

Are we, perhaps, seeing sign of an administration that draws whatever conclusions suits its purpose from the available evidence?

Let's simply quit pretending that Iraq ever was an imminent threat. The Bush Administration wanted to attack Iraq for other reasons, and they did not want us to attack them for an immoral and unprincipled act of naked aggression. They filled our lives with fear so that we would cower and say to them, "Oh, protect us from this menace, great leader." Here, have our power, our wealth, and our blood. The Bush Administration used what we gave them, of course, though they did not use our blood, our freedom, and our livelihood to protect us from any real threat.

Let’s quit pretending that, with each new discovery, we have uncovered the "smoking gun" that proves that the Bush Administration deceived and manipulated the American people into war. It will take decades for historians to tag and catalogue all of the smoking guns already found.

The question is hardly even worthy of debate any more. The only debate left is: What are we going to do about it?

Opportunity Costs

Next, we can turn our attention to the cost of this project. When it comes to talking about costs, we have an annoying habit of only looking at the cost in terms of American (taxpayer) money and Americans killed or wounded. I try, at least, to always mention the Iraqi casualties. However, nobody has told us what those numbers are. We are left to guess – as if Iraqi casualties really are not worth counting.

This does not include the people of Iraq who are maimed, and the destruction of property, and the money and blood that other countries have poured into this campaign, both in the form of direct contributions, and in the form of forgiven debts.

Even here, we are counting only the money and lives paid out of pocket and what could have been done with it. We must add the cost of medical care for the wounded, and the lost production that those fighting the war, those who are killed, and those who are wounded would have produced as workers.

When it comes to computing costs, economists tell us that the most accurate way to do this is to look at foregone opportunities. To illustrate the economist’s concept of cost, imagine that you have $1000. You have two options. Option 1 is to donate it to Person A, as a gift. Option 2 is to lend it to Person B for five minutes, who will hand back $1100 when he is done. According to the economist, what is the cost to you of making a $1000 gift to Person A?

The right answer is: $1100.

(Or, more precisely, the net present value of $1100 times the risk. However, we can ignore these complexities. Let us just assume that Person B will pay the money back quickly and with no risk.)

That is the cost of donating $1000 to Person A.

What is the cost of the Iraq War? To determine the cost, we need to look at what else we could have done with that money and with those lives.

For example, I was watching a PBS special called, “Malaria: Fever Wars” the other day. In the show, it was suggested that malaria could be brought under control for $3 billion per year.

Malaria kills 700,000 people per year, and sickens millions of others. Let us attribute all of the deaths in the Iran-Iraq War and the First Persian Gulf war to Saddam Hussein (an accurate account), plus the number of people in his own country that he had executed. Let us be liberal and add a large number simply because we do not want to understate the case. A figure of 2,000,000 should cover everybody. Saddam Hussein was still a far smaller threat to the people of the world than malaria. By devoting our energy to this killer, we let a much more deadly killer go free.

I pulled this number out of a hat, by the way. The Iran-Iraq War claimed 1 million lives. I could not find anybody claiming that Saddam Hussein was responsible for more than a few hundred thousand deaths outside of the war, so this seems like a safe number.

So, for the cost of the Iraq war, we could have prevented half of these deaths and countless millions of people from getting sick (with the loss of productivity and the increased poverty this brings with it), and had hundreds of billions of dollars left over. In fact, we would have even more money than that, according to The World Bank. They estimate that malaria costs Africa $12 billion per year in lost productivity, yielding what most investors would consider to be a highly favorable return on a $3 billion per year investment.

Leaving that issue aside, using the economists’ way of computing costs, we can honestly claim to be suffering 350,000 casualties per year because of the war – because we chose to fight the lesser of two evils.

Plus, we would have had huge amounts of money left over.

When we talk about the cost of this lie – the cost to the world, including the opportunities to have done good deeds elsewhere that would have saved lives, promoted good health, and reduced poverty – we should recognize that lives and cash tell us only part of the answer. Sticking strictly to costs in terms of lives and cash (and only American lives and American cash at that) seriously underestimates how much damage this war is actually doing to the people of this planet.

These are the considerations that rational people use in deciding where to commit resources. Irrational people use other means for making their decision. They pray for guidance or they go with what feels good to them to determine right from wrong. As we see, it is a very unreliable method, resulting in the commitment to hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives to campaigns that produce far worse results than a reasonable alternative could have provided.

Let there be no mistake. I have often written in favor of removing Saddam Hussein from power. The costs that I mentioned above are real, and well worth our concern. I was in favor of the war in principle. Iraq is filled with real people who deserve better lives than Saddam Hussein was willing to provide them. My only objection was that our leaders lacked the competence to do the job efficiently.

In Fairness

In fairness, I must say that the expected cost of the war, for those who started it, was to be much less than it turned out to be. Accordingly, the most of controlling malaria is an estimate. Once the project got started, these estimates also might have been found to be too low. These caveats add some measure of uncertainty to the points I raised above. I felt obligated to mention them.

Crusades

In all of my moral condemnation of the religious right, I realize that I have never taken the time to put their actions in the moral and historical context into which they most accurately fit.

This is not a new and strange phenomenon in our history. It has happened time and time again. A group of religious leaders pick out a group of individuals – individuals who are more than willing to live in peace with their neighbors if given a chance – and identify those others as ‘THEM!’ Then, they rally the people into a political crusade to do away with THEM. Though probably motivated by religious zeal, they are not the least bit deterred from their mission by the fact that uniting the people against THEM tends to also create a situation where those people give great quantities of political power and personal wealth to US – those who are calling for the new Crusade.

It practice, it is no different than what happened in the original Crusades. At that time, THEM were the Muslims who were living in the holy land. That there were heathens and infidels in the holy land was certainly an insult to Christianity and one that must be dealth with. So, a few rousing speeches about the Muslim ‘war on Christianity’ and the people marched off, ready to slaughter whole towns full of Muslims – every man, woman, and child.

We see the same thing happening with each Inquisition of the Middle Ages. This time, THEM were the Jews and Muslims who were only pretending to be Christians in order not to be subject to the laws that made non-Christians second-class citizens. Yet, these inquisitions also targeted other Christians – those Christians who doubted the Inquisitor’s religious beliefs. No doubt, these people were engaged in a ‘war on Christianity’ and had to be dealt with. Burning at the stake seemed to be an appropriate way of dealing with THEM. Of course, it did not hurt that those who lead the inquisition were able to win all sorts of financial backing and political authority with which to execute their program.

There were also inquisitions that targeted scientists. Those who denied that the Sun and all things orbited the Earth were clearly trying to dethrone God. They were questioning man’s role as the center of the universe around which everything revolved. In doing so, they were also challenging the authority of the Church. Horror of horrers, they were saying that Church leaders, who get their facts directly from God, were wrong. This was clearly an attack on Christianity that could not be tolerated.

They target – another group of THEM that turned out to be useful – were the witches. Of course, there was no such thing as 'witches' in the sense that the religious conservatives used the term. However, religious persecution only requires an accusation of witchcraft. The accusations do not have to be true or honest. In fact, as we look at the history of these different religious crusades, they are all grounded on fiction at one point or another. Besides, in place of evidence, the Church can simply torture its ‘suspected witches’ into confessing their crimes and naming names. Then, they have all of the evidence they need.

During the religious wars of the rise of Protestantism, THEM were either false-Christians who had taken over the Vatican, or the rebel populists who were attacking true Christianity as represented by the church. Both groups, in this case, were equally successful at rallying their followers into war by the need to attack THEM in the name of God. The resulting wars depopulated whole regions of Germany and France – all of this justified by people who claimed that they promoted hate in God’s name, and who were believed.

In the middle of the 1800s, THEM were the abolitionists. Southern slave owners stood clutching their Bibles firmly to their chest proclaiming that God loves slavery. Nowhere in the Bible does God clearly and unequivocally say, “Thou shalt not regard another person as property.” In fact, God routinely commanded his faithful followers to take slaves, and gave careful instructions for the care and feeding of slaves. Clearly, given the fact that God thinks so highly of the institution of slavery, those Yankees who were against slavery had to also be against God.

Now, we are living in a time where people are calling the faithful together to fight yet another crusade. This time, THEM are liberals, homosexuals, and atheists. Once again, a group of religious zealots are going before the people and rallying them to fight a noble fight in God’s name against THEM. “Oh, and while you are at it, do not forget to give us all of your wealth and give us dictatorial political power so that we may better execute God’s will, thank you very much.”

Like all of the previous crusades, this one too aims to promote hatred, and spread misery among a group of people who would have been content to live with others in peace, if given a chance. However, when the people know peace, they are not inclined to give wealth and power to political zealots. Giving wealth and power to political zealots requires having a THEM to hate and to fight.

These 21st Century Crusaders/Inquisitors might try to defend their actions by saying, “We are not anything like those earlier Crusaders or Inquisitors. We are not calling for anybody’s execution. We are not defending slavery.”

I know that my co-worker has a stack of $20 bills in her desk drawer. I stop by on the weekend and take one of those bills out. I could have taken more. Yet, clearly, I cannot argue that, because I did not take as much as I could have, that I have done nothing wrong. It would be absurd of me to claim, “I should be praised, rather than condemned, because of the restraint that I showed in not taking more money than I have.”

I can well imagine the assailant saying, “Do not punish me. You should be praising me. There should be statues in my honor and I should go down in history for my benevolence. After all, I only maimed my victim, when I could have killed him instead.”

This is the argument that religious zealots give. “Certainly, we are reducing you to the status of second class citizens. However, what we could be doing to you is far worse. You should really be thanking me for my generosity. As long as you bow before me and call me ‘master,’ I will let you live. Be happy with that. Now, you are dismissed. Remove yourself from my sight.”

This is the historic and moral context of the current rise of the religious right. Future generations will look back on this decade as yet another crusade. It is yet another example of religious zealots went before the people and argued that, for the sake of God and all that is holy, we must attack THEM. “Oh, and while you are at it, give me unlimited political power and great personal wealth so that I may better lead the battle against THEM.”

The only question that we have not yet answered for those future historians is how bad this crusade will get before the end.

Situational Ethics

The more arrogant and self-righteous of theists tend to freely condemn atheists by saying that atheism lends itself to promoting what they call “situational ethics.” Situational ethics, they claim, is a menace to all of civilized society. Defending civilization, they argue, requires treating all atheists with suspicion and contempt – suspicion, because they are without morals; and contempt, because they seek to infect others with their immorality, particularly children.

Though clearly an ideology of hate, it is widely accepted. That, in itself, is not surprising. It is not the first time that a doctrine of hate became a cultural norm.

However, it is particularly interesting to note that these hucksters of hate tend to be among the most skilled practitioners of situational ethics. Rather than advocate moral principles that apply equally to all people, they advocate one set of very rigid principles to others, while applying a different and much less stringent set of moral principles to their own behavior.

Here are a few examples of situational ethics that I have written about in this blog.

(1) Religious “situational ethics” were found among those who condemned an atheist organization that sent a letter of protest to Jeb Bush. The protest concerned a program, called “Just Read, Florida,” which decided to use only one book – a book widely known to be a primer for Christianity. Yet, when a university used a book discussing on Islam as a university-wide reading assignment for college students (adults), these same people went far beyond sending a letter of protest. They filed a lawsuit.

(2) Religious “situational ethics” are found among members of a religion who, if they are in the majority, insist that the majority has the right to dictate all matters of policy and culture; but, if they are in the minority, insist that there are limits to the majority’s right to impose its religion on others. In America, they greet any claim that there are limits to what the members of the majority religion may dictate in terms of policy and culture with cries that this represents a “war on Christianity.” Yet, in Afghanistan, they scoff at the idea that a call for limits on the Muslim government represents any kind of “war on Islam.”

(3) Religious “situational ethics” can be found among those who insist that there is nothing wrong with posting “In God We Trust” in public buildings and a pledge of allegiance to "One Nation Under God." However, they would protest that it would be unjust to even consider a national motto of “We Trust in No God” or a pledge to “One Godless Nation.”

(4) Religious “situational ethics” can be found among those who insist that teaching something other than abstinence-only sex education is anti-Christian. However, they would consider it absurd to suggest that serving pork in the school cafeteria is anti-Jewish or that serving lunch at all during Ramadan is anti-Muslim.

(5) Religious “situational ethics” can be found among those who say that atheists are dangerous people because they practice situational ethics, and any who practice situational ethics cannot be trusted, while they show no signs of even attempting to make sure that they advocate, let alone follow, a systematic moral code that applies to all people equally.

Two Types of Situational Ethics

There are actually two types of situational ethics. One of them does not create any problem, and even religious people freely and openly embrace it. The second type is clearly problematic, and readily rejected even in most non-religious ethical systems.

(1) Rules With Exceptions

The first type – the non-problematic type -- employs moral rules with exceptions. An example of such a rule says, "Do not kill except in self-defense or as punishment for a crime for which the accused has been proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt or as collateral damage in a just war."

I do not necessarily agree with all of these exceptions. However, the reader only needs to agree (or, at least, understand) one of them to understand how we can have a problem-free exception to a moral rule.

This rule lists a number of exceptions to the prohibition "do not kill." Those prohibitions describe situations under which it is permissible to kill. However, this type of 'situational ethics' is not the type that is seen as a problem. We can still view the whole principle -- the principle that includes the exceptions, as an 'absolute.' The rule that one ought not to kill except under conditions A, B, and C still applies equally to everybody.

(2) Different Rules

The second type – the problematic type – of situational ethics is one that uses different rules for different people. People who practice this form of situational ethics are people who say something like, "the majority religion gets to dictate policy," when they are a member of the majority religion, while saying, “The majority religion must respect the rights of minority religions,” when they are a member of the minority religion.

We could adopt the rule that, "The majority religion must respect the rights of minority religions unless the majority religion is Christian." However, this would be as problematic as a rule that states, "No person shall take the property of another without their consent unless that person is Alonzo Fyfe."

(3) The Difference

The difference between these two types of rules is that the first type does not mention any specific individuals or groups. The second type . . . the problematic type . . . does.

Each of the five examples I gave at the start of this essay are examples in which religious people claim that the rules change depending on the group they are talking about. Where they talk about ‘us’, the religious club to which they belong, they use one set of rules. Where they talk about ‘them’, the religious club to which others belong, they say that a different set of rules applies.

What is first is the fact that we see absolutely no sign on their part that they are struggling to reduce the temptation to adopt ‘situational ethics.’ They claim that it is wrong. They claim that those who reach for situational ethics are deserving of condemnation. However, they do not care enough to avoid it to look at their own words and actions. They do not care whether they are doing the right thing, or whether they are doing things that they, themselves, condemn.

Universal Law

Immanual Kant suggested a moral test whereby one is to ‘act only on those principles that one can will to be a universal law.’ This is a moral test that the illegitimate form of situational ethics cannot pass.

For example, let us look at the case of ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The claim from those who practice religious ‘situational ethics’ is that it is perfectly permissible to have this as a part of the Pledge, and to have ‘In God We Trust’ as the national motto. Yet, they would not consider allowing ‘One Godless Nation’ or ‘We Trust in No God.’

This is hypocrisy.

The claim is that removing mention of God in these slogans asserts atheism and is anti-Christian. Yet, if this is true that if we talk about a family without mentioning its car, then it must necessarily have no car. The motto, "one nation under God" is related to "one godless nation" in the same way that “a family with a car” is related to “a carless family.” The claim that, “The family went to the park yesterday,” which does not mention whether the family has a car or not, entails that (proves that; as in ‘could only be true if’) the family does not have a car is a flat-out lie.

In the same way, saying that a pledge or national motto that does not mention God entails atheism is also a lie. Yet, apparently, only non-Christians are prohibited from lying. Christians can lie whenever they want, if the lie is a useful way to gain wealth (contributions and donations), power (votes), and to promote a general hatred of others.

Somebody who prefers truth to lies will recognize that if we say nothing about a family’s car, that this is consistent with both claims. It is consistent with the beliefs of those who think that the family has a car, and consistent with the beliefs of those who think the family is carless. On the issue of “under God”, the same is true of the government’s silence on the issue. Silence is the only option that does not side with the theists against the atheists, or side with the atheists against the theists.

It is the only option that can pass the test of acting on a principle that one can will to be a universal law. It is the only option that a person who hates ‘situational ethics’ can endorse. Those who endorse one of the two alternatives (e.g., “one nation under God” or “one Godless nation”) cannot, in fact, be the opponent of situational ethics he claims to be.

Moral Prescription: Whose Reasons Matter?

In a comment about a week ago, an anonymous commenter used a common objection to those who say that morality is objective.

He disputed the theory by claiming, in effect, that somebody else can listen to all of my arguments, and they will not have any effect on his preferences one way or another. If he prefers to torture people, nothing I can say will give him any reason to change those preferences. In his words,

Ex hypothesi, there is no reason anyone who supports positions contrary to your own on immigration, wiretapping, or foreign policy to accept your criticisms as legitimate or authoritative, except insofar as you show that their views are contrary to their own prudential as opposed to "moral" interests.

The Isolated Man and Child Example

The example that I have used elsewhere to illustrate this point involves a case of two people – an adult and a child – who have become isolated. They are somewhere where nobody else can physically reach them or interact with them. There is, however, two-way radio communication, so you can talk to them. The adult, it turns out, has a desire to torture the child and has said that he is going to do it. Nobody can stop him, and he is not going to be made to suffer for his acts. Your job, as the man on the radio, is to talk him out of it.

No matter what you say to the man in isolation with the child, he can simply answer by shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I don’t care.” If, in fact, he does not care, then you are stuck. You will not be able to persuade him not to torture the child.

The Anonymous Commenter is correct. Your reasons will have to appeal to the desires he already has. If those desires include a desire to torture the child, and this desire outweighs all of the adult’s other concerns, then he is going to torture the child. Nothing you can do or say will stop him.

Similarly, reason alone cannot change a person’s desires with respect to immigration, wiretapping, or any of the other wrongs that I have written about in this blog.

However, where the Anonymous Commentator has made his mistake is in thinking that this matters in any relevant way.

Theist and Atheist Ethics

Religious ethics claims to have an answer to the problem of motivating the man on the island. Whatever the man in isolation with the child wants, he certainly does not want what God will do to him in the next life if he harms that child. Thus, the theist claims that we always have a reason not to do that which is wrong. Thus, he has more and stronger reason not to torture the child than to torture the child.

However, this depends on getting him to believe that there is a God that will punish him. If there are atheists about who are willing to tell him that God does not exist and that he has nothing to fear of the afterlife, the man in isolation will loose his incentive not to torture the child. This is where atheism is seen as such a threat to morality.

[Note: This does depend on one’s brand of theology. The theology that claims that access to heaven depends on believing in God and not on good deeds offer this man no reason not to torture the child. The theology that claims that God rewards those who torture children (the way some theologies claim that God rewards those who blow up civilians, execute converts, block important medical research, turn a blind eye to the earth’s environment, or fight for legislation that inflicts great harm on others) also would give him no reason not to torture the child. For the purpose of this posting, however, we are talking about a God that will punish those who torture children.]

If it is permissible to lie to the man to keep him from torturing the child (which it is), then the atheist is just as free to make up stories as the theist. The story does not have to say that there is a God who will punish him in the afterlife. It could be that the man will break out in an extremely painful rash where he will feel as if he had been skinned alive and dipped in salt water. This does not give us any particularly compelling reason to make it a ‘religious’ story about gods and demons and heaven and hell.

More importantly, the theistic claim that they have a useful fiction, even if it is true, is quite different from the claim that they have the moral truth.

In fact, one of the problems with the religious story is that it is just as good at getting people to do things that are evil as it is at getting them to do things that are good. History shows us how it has been used to motivate tribes and countries into attacking and slaughtering or enslaving their neighbors, burn witches and scientists at the stake, fly airplanes into buildings, blow themselves and dozens of civilians up on busses and trains, release chemical weapons in subways, and pass hate-based “marriage-protection” legislation.

Time and time again demagogues have stood before crowds and used religious speech to convince the people that they are a part of a great army that must unite to fight battles that should have never been fought.

Desire Utilitarianism

I have mentioned these propositions before, but let me repeat some of the basic claims that serve as the foundation for desire utilitarianism.

Beliefs are mental states that describe how the world is. The person who believes that he is going out with Jenny believes that the universe is so constituted that the proposition, “I am going out with Jenny” is true.

Desires are mental states that describe how the agent wants the world to be. The person who has a desire to go out with Jenny does not necessarily believe that “I am going out with Jenny” is true. In fact, he can believe that it is false. But he would prefer the world in which “I am going out with Jenny” is true. He will be disposed to act so as to make or keep the world in a state where “I am going out with Jenny:” is true.

People always seek to make or keep true the propositions that fulfill the more and the stronger of their own desires. They always act to make or keep true the propositions that fulfill the more and stronger of their own desires given their beliefs. In this way, false beliefs can get in the way of their fulfilling their desires.

Desires cannot be ‘true’ or ‘false’. The propositions that are the objects of the desire can be true or false. A person who has a desire has a motivating reason to make or keep the proposition that is the object of the desire true. However, the desire itself is not true or false. The desire merely exists. As a result, there is no way to get on the radio and convince the adult who is in the isolated environment with the child that his desire is mistaken.

However, this is not a valid test for an objective morality. An objective moral system can be perfectly comfortable with this fact. Indeed, an objective moral system has to be comfortable with this fact.

Morality is not concerned with what to say to a hypothetical man in isolation with a child who can only be reached through radio contact. Morality is concerned with the lives we live in fact, which involves a great deal of interaction and within which no person is truly isolated.

In the real world, “wrong” refers to that act that it makes sense for society to respond to with condemnation and sometimes punishment.

Implications for the Man on the Island

So, what does Desire Utilitarianism tell us about the isolated adult who wishes to torture the child?

It says that we cannot use reason to change the man’s desires; reason has no necessary connection to desires.

However, there are a great many things that reason cannot do. Reason does not grow food. However, it tells us how to use the tools we have to grow more food. Reason does not measure the distance to the sun, but it tells us how to figure this out. Reason does not change peoples’ desires. However, it tells us how to use the tools of social conditioning – praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment – to change those desires.

Our inability to accomplish a great many things through reason alone – our need to use other types of tools to accomplish tasks that are outside of the reach of reason – does not change the fact that statements about how to use those tools are objectively true or false. Astronomy remains an objective field of study, even though no person can accomplish anything in astronomy using reason alone.

Ex hypothesi, the isolated man is outside of the reach of our tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. Therefore, we are powerless to help the child in this hypothetical case. The only help we can provide is by convincing the man that torturing the child will not ultimately fulfill the desires he has. It is a claim that may well be false.

We may try to manipulate the man with a lie, claiming that torturing the child will harm his interests in some way, such as bring about eternal torture in hell or cause him to have a disease. However, these manipulative stories do not suddenly become ‘true’ because they are useful . . . if they are useful.

Yet, it is still a perfectly true and accurate statement to tell the man that torturing the child is wrong.

If he told us his act was not wrong, we would not think that he is making a claim about his own motivation or reasons for action. We would take him to be claiming that we, people in general, have no reason to bring the tools of condemnation and punishment to bear on people like him.

He would be mistaken.

This is the same sense in which the person who says, “Homosexuality is not immoral” is not making a claim about his own desire to engage in homosexual acts. He is saying that society in general has no reason to bring its tools of condemnation and punishment to bear on people like him. The reasons that society does offer are all flawed.

In the same sense, our telling the man on the island that his act is wrong is not meant to be a claim that he has no desire to torture the child. We are not talking about what will fulfill his desires. We are talking about the fact that people generally have reason to bring the tools of condemnation and punishment to bear against people like him.

That claim is either objectively true, or objectively false.

The isolated man with the child might not care about this truth, but he can do nothing about the fact that it is true. He can do nothing to change the fact that his act is wrong.

Those who claim that we have reason to bring the tools of condemnation and punishment against homosexuals, however, are mistaken. We look at their reasons and discover them all to be flawed – to be grounded on false premises or drawn through invalid arguments.

All of this argues for a state in which we are quite prone to shout in frustration at the isolated man through the radio, “If you touch that kid you son-of-a-bitch I swear, when I get my hands on you . . .”

The mistake that rests at the root of the isolated man case is in thinking that our moral claims are paying attention to the reasons that the would-be torturer does or does not have for torturing the child. That is not the case. Our claim is about what reasons society has for using its tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. Once we recognize this fact, we can see how we can have an objective morality without claiming that reason alone can cause the isolated man not to torture the child.

Gerrymandering (aka Partisan Apartheid)

Why is it that, in spite of widespread dissatisfaction with the Republican Party, the Democrats are unlikely to regain control of the House and Senate this year.

The answer can be found in the science of gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is the fine political art of depriving people of representation in government without actually passing a law that explicitly prohibits people from voting or prohibits their vote from being counted.

Imagine, if you will, a political region with 1,000,000 voters, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. The task at hand is to divide these people into ten representative districts.

Option 1:

• 5 districts 100% Democrat

• 5 districts 100% Republican

This system has the virtue of guaranteeing that whoever wins the party nomination will win the general election. It is a perfect system for making sure that incumbents get re-elected. Please remember, the choice as to how to divide the people into districts will be made for people who would like to stand for re-election without any real chance of losing.

Option 2:

• 8 districts that are 61.5% Republican and 38.5% Democrat

• 2 districts that are 100% Democrat

This system will result in a legislature made up of 8 Republicans and 2 Democrats. In other words, it is the system designed to guarantee a Republican majority in the legislature. This is the type of system one wants if the Republicans are going to really screw up the nation – getting the nation into a costly war under false pretext, open the doors of the national treasury to their friends and supporters, and shred the Constitution –without fear that these acts will cost them control of the House.

This takes advantage of the fact that partisan voters will vote for their party no matter what that party does.

Indeed, this type of system can guarantee that a party keeps control of the legislature even if it is a minority of the population. A nation that is 40% Republican and 60% Democrat can gerrymander the following option:

Option C:

7 Districts that are 55% Republican and 45% Democrat

3 Districts that are 100% Democrat

This will give the legislature a 7 to 3 Republican majority, while the population they represent has a 4 to 6 Democratic majority. This is how gerrymandering works.

The Moral Argument

There is no reason to view a policy of gerrymandering as anything less disrespectful and destructive of democracy than a practice such as apartheid. With apartheid, the government tells people who they do not trust that they may not vote. With gerrymandering, the people that the government does not trust can still vote. However, the voting districts have been manipulated in such a way that those votes are worthless. They might as well be handing in blank ballots – they might as well stay home and do nothing – for all the good it will do them to vote.

It is ironic, to say the least, that while legislators moan about low voter turnout and the need for more voters to go to the polls, they are instituting gerrymandered districts that make voting a waste of time. “Yes, Mr. Voter, we know that we are rigging the rules so that your vote is insignificant. But you are not supposed to really act as if your vote is insignificant. You’re supposed to act as if your vote is important. Even though it isn’t, because we gerrymandered a rigged system.”

Gerrymandering, by the way, was one of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s claims to fame. He was able to arrange to redraw the districts in Texas in a way that guaranteed the Republicans six additional seats in the House of Representatives. These were not seats that the Republicans gained because they were better able to serve the people. These were seats that the Republicans gained because they were able to pass laws that rendered huge numbers of Democratic votes irrelevant.

Because he was such a successful promoter of partisan apartheid, Republicans viewd DeLay was a hero of the Republican Party.

The only people who could cheer somebody who sought to make peoples’ votes ineffective and irrelevant is if they care nothing about the principles of democracy. A person who cares about democracy shows this by being appalled when he hears about political leaders who seek to diminish or destroy the ability of the people to choose their leaders. The person who cheers the disenfranchisement and alienation of voters – making their votes irrelevant to the political process – is the person who puts personal power over principle.

We, as voters, should no more support the candidacy of those who cheer gerrymandering and their effects than we would vote for a candidate who proposed and fought for laws to establish some form of apartheid.

Pro-Gerrymandering, Pro-Apartheid. These are just two different tools for those who seek to accomplish the same goals. In this case, the goal is for Republicans to keep control of the House in spite of how unpopular they are right now.

Do not think that, because I picked on the Republicans in this article, that they are the only ones who are guilty. Democrats have proved that they are as fond of partisan apartheid as Republicans.

Democratic Politics

Recent news reports show a sharp drop in President Bush's popularity to record lows. Taken by itself, this could be reason to celebrate. However, when I took the time to look at the numbers I find reason for concern.

I find that people who hate Bush, hate him for the wrong reasons. Torture, rendition, imprisonment without trial, secret orders suspending the Constitution, a political ideology that supports dictatorship in principle, and manipulating the American public into a costly war do not count for much of a reason to hate Bush. Those who hate Bush for these reasons hated him already. Bush's big public relations problems have been the Dubai Ports deal and the high price of gasoline.

Bad Reasons to Hate Bush

The Dubai Ports Deal: One of the reasons Bush is in trouble because he did not exhibit the requisite level of blind anti-Arab bigotry that the American public demands. There was only one reason for the flare of public hostility to the Dubai ports deal -- the people who wanted to run the ports were Arab.

Gas/Oil Prices: Americans want Bush to do something about the high price of gasoline. Summer is coming, vacations are near, and the price of gasoline might be $3.00 per gallon. Yet, if he "does something" about the high price of gasoline, this will only spur consumption, spur global warming, and dry up investment capital that has become available to companies promoting alternative fuels.

Even the threat of government action to reduce prices will damage the business case for alternative energy. As the possibility of government interference to make "cheap oil" increases, the risk of investing in alternative energy also increases, which means less investment and more global warming.

The Democrats, then, will ultimately seek re-election by promising to do more to contribute to global warming than the Republicans.

There is no doubt that Democratic political leaders are conducting polls to determine what the people want to hear. Those polls are telling the Democrats to focus their energy on harvesting anti-Arab sentiment and to promise the people cheep gas. Democrats would be wasting their time talking about torture, rendition, imprisonment without trial, secret orders suspending the Constitution, an ideology that says the President has the power to declare a national emergency and make himself dictator, and starting a war by lying to the American people.

The Minimum Wage

Already, Democrats are planning what to do if they should gain control of one or both houses of Congress in 2006. One of the policies moving up their political ladder is an increase in the minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage sounds like a great idea. All we have to do is to mandate that companies pay a little more each hour and we will have instant prosperity.

If raising the minimum wage is so effective, perhaps we should raise the minimum wage to $100,000 per hour and we can all retire by the end of the month.

It would not work. Economic research and economic theory both tell us that, when you raise minimum wage, you help a few minimum-wage workers at the cost of throwing others into unemployment.

(1) Some companies barely making a profit today will go out of business.

(2) Some companies, faced with higher wage rates, will cut back on hours and benefits.

(3) Some companies will raise prices to pay for the costs -- meaning that those who manage to get the higher wage will get higher prices to go along with it.

(4) Some people who would have otherwise stayed out of the labor market in order to raise their children, pursue a dream, retire, or stay in school will find the job market more tempting, increasing the labor force, and forcing out the lower-skilled, low-end workers.

In short, raising the minimum wage will harm the people it is supposed to help.

Think of it this way. Assume that the government established a minimum price for a car of $10,000. What would happen to the cars that people are now buying for less than $10,000? Will they ALL now sell for $10,000? Or would a large number of them instead end up going to the automobile unemployment line?

Consider the body of literature that can be found on this list. I know that the list was compiled by a Republican-control house committee. However, that does not change the fact that this is peer-reviewed research, and that the body of research not supporting these results is quite small.

When conservatives decide to ignore the large bulk of research that contradicts their position on abstinence-only sex education, and latch onto a few pieces of research that support their position, liberals call it ‘cherry picking,’ sneer, and cast insults.

What should we treat liberals who ignore the large bulk of research that contradicts their position on abstinence-only sex education, and latch onto a few pieces of research that support their position?

At this point, at least one liberal will think that I am arguing for leaving these people at the mercy of the free market. That would not be true. I can give arguments for all sorts of government assistance, and I would argue for taxing the rich to pay for it. I simply think that the effort should go into programs that work, and not programs that make the situation worse.

The Ideal Political Candidate

My ideal political candidate would say something like this.

"I promise that I will never, ever hire people to rewrite scientific papers to conform to administration policy. Instead, I will hire people to rewrite administration policy to conform to the best scientific research available.

"If that research ends up supporting the position of people on the other side of the political isle, I will do the right thing and support the policy that the experts tell me is wisest, rather than put party loyalty above my political responsibility and do what the party wants.

"In determining what is the best scientific research available, I will look for the research that has the respect of people who are experts in that field.

"Finally, the position of 'expert in the field' is not be for sale -- going to the representative of whatever industry or special-interest group that happens to make the highest campaign contributions."

Yes, I recognize that this is a fantasy -- something that has no chance of happening in the real world. Such a candidate has zero chance of getting elected. However, in an ethics blog, it somehow seems appropriate to talk about ideals from time to time, just to remind ourselves how things could be.

Abstinence Only Sex Education

The Bush Administration has made it a tradition to first decide on a policy, then to go to experts in the field and say, "Now, tell me what I can use."

We can see this policy in action when we look back on the decision to invade Iraq. We can also see it applied to the issue of global warming.

This is not just the policy of the Bush Administration. This is what a whole subculture that the Bush Administration relies on as its base thinks of as intellectual competence.

We are also starting to see how costly it is. Iraq has, so far, cost us killed and wounded, as well as 300 billion. The cost of global warming could easily run into trillions of dollars and destroy several smaller countries and whole provinces of some larger countries.

They also apply this model of intellectual competence to the issue of abstinence-only education, with the same type of disastrous results.

Recently, with respect to legislation for federally funded abstinence-only education, the American Medical Association said:

AMA oppose federal funding of community-based abstinence-only sex education programs and instead support federal funding of comprehensive sex education programs that teach about contraceptive choices and safe sex while also stressing the importance of abstinence in preventing unwanted teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

It adopts this position as a body of professionals who are experts in their fields, who have the capacity to read and understand the scientific findings in this field and a dedicated purpose of implementing those finds.

A rational person always obtains his advice from those who are experts in the field. He obtains his legal advice from lawyers, has engineers create his building plans, and trusts to doctors to provide the best available medical advice.

Moral Responsibility of Inferior Options

What is the moral responsibility of a person who chooses an inferior option?

If a doctor has two procedures available for treating a disease, and he picks the procedure with a survival rate of 50%, and abandons the procedure with a survival rate of 80%, then he is morally responsible for the deaths of those 30% he has not saved. Similarly, people who advocate abstinence-only sex education are morally responsible for the harms suffered by promoting the less effective method of preventing those harms.

So, to the degree that abstinence-only education routinely produces poorer results than other forms of sex education, those who advocate abstinence-only programs are morally responsible for those inferior results. This amounts to real human lives and suffering that is on their hands.

Other Moral Factors

Now, it is certainly relevant to ask whether a procedure that saves 80% of the people is wrong for some other reason, forcing us to use the worse but morally permissible alternative. For example, if a vaccine that is 80% effective involves the torture of unwilling subjects, it may not be morally permissible to harvest this option.

However, in this case, no such argument can be made.

Sex is a normal appetite like hunger and thirst, and no more wrong to satisfy than any other appetite. Among those who are not yet adults, the wrongness of sex rests entirely upon the risk – the chance that the child will do harm to himself or herself, and the interest that concerned people have to prevent harm. There is no moral relevance independent of this concern to prevent harm.

Some religions might have a doctrine that disagrees with this. Then again, some religions have a prohibition on eating pork or eating at all during daylight hours during Ramadan. Yet, the Jew may mandate that nobody eat pork. Nor would it make sense for him to argue that others eating pork is an attack on his religion. Similarly, the Muslim may not reasonably argue that anybody who eats between sunrise and sunset is engaging in some sort of “war on Islam.”

If a religious doctrine has social consequences, such as prohibitions on murder and theft, then an imposition on others may be justified. However, the fact that abstinence-only education has no effect on preventing harm shows that it has more in common with religious prohibitions on eating pork or eating during Ramadan than it has with murder and theft. It is one of those religious prescriptions that may not legitimately be forced on others.

Teaching Encourages Wrongdoing

I hear some in who accept abstinence-only religions claim that teaching children about safe sex tells them that this is okay. According to this argument, teaching adolescents about safe sex implies teaching them that sex is permissible, which contradicts the religious teachings of some parents.

However, every religion (in a society that seeks peace among different religions) has to put up with the fact that their children will encounter people who do not share their purely religious prohibitions. The Jew must recognize that the grocery stores sell pork, which will suggest to their children that eating pork is not wrong. Muslims in a free and religiously tolerant society must raise their children in which others do not accept a prohibition on eating during daylight during Ramadan. In a religiously tolerant and free society, all children receive a mixed message. This is a poor argument for instituting religious bigotry.

The arguments for abstinence-only sex education are as poorly founded as arguments for banning pork from school lunches and banning school lunches entirely during Ramadan.

Majority Rules

I then hear abstinence-only advocates argue, "We are the majority religion. Freedom of religion gives us the right to appeal to our religious doctrines in order to determine what laws we support and prohibit. If yours was a majority religion, you would get to decide the laws. But you are the minority, so you had better just sit down and shut up.”

This argument makes me think of the recent case in Afghanistan where the people sought to execute Abdul Rahman for the crime of converting from Islam. If majority religions may impose their practices on others, then certainly the minority religions in Afghanistan should simply sit down and shut up. Yet, I did not hear Christians taking this position. In fact, they screamed about religious freedom and tolerance.

As they should have done.

But many are hypocrites. They argue “majority rules” where they are a majority and only respect “minority rights” if they are a minority.

This makes me want to ask, “Will you people please try to adopt a consistent moral standard and stick with it?"

The Guaranteed Safety Argument

Another argument often heard from abstinence-only advocates rests on the fact that abstinence is the only guaranteed way to prevent getting pregnant or getting a sexually transmitted disease.

This is true.

It is also true that abstinence from swimming, boating, or any activity in or near standing water is the only guaranteed way to prevent drowning. Abstaining from flight is the only way to guarantee that one will not die in an airplane crash. Abstaining from all forms of human contact is the only way to guarantee that one will not catch a great many diseases from meningitis to the common flu.

All of this is true, but nobody argues that we should ban swimming, boating, flying, or all forms of human contact. Instead of banning these activities, we insist that those who take part in these activities take precautions to reduce the risks. We recommend or require that those who go near the water wear lifejackets. We mandate safety rules when flying, and encourage people to wash their hands and take other precautions to prevent the spread of disease when in public.

In short, we do not demand abstinence from water activities, we teach safety. We do not demand abstinence from flying, we teach safety. We do not demand abstinence from social interaction, we teach safety.

However, in the area of sex, these people demand a different set of rules.

This makes me want to ask again, “Will you people please try to adopt a consistent moral standard and stick with it?"

Conclusion

The Bush Administration has adopted an irrational pattern of deciding on a policy and pursuing it in the face of all evidence. When they decided to invade Iraq, they ignored the experts, and we can see the cost. On the issue of global warming, they decided on a policy, ignored the experts, and we are starting to see what this will cost the world.

The issue of sex education is another area where they first determined their policy, then cherry-picked their evidence. Here is another issue where their backwards way of thinking will pile up another set of casualties and costs. Most of these casualties will be kids -- this is who will suffer the cost of their backwards thinking. Imagine how much better off we would be if people learned to follow the pattern set by the American Medical Association – first, look at the evidence; then, establish policy.

Immigrant Labor and Outsourcing

Old Business: Another Bush Lie

50 days after the start of the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration was claiming to have found trailors used to manufacture biological weapons. According to the Washington Post, two days before Bush made this statement, the Pentagon filed a unanimous report stating that the claim was false.

Is such a reckless disregard for the truth a sign of a good moral character?

New Business; Immigration and Outsourcing

I do not see why it is supposed to be good for the American economy to outsource jobs to some foreign country where low-paid workers can do the work, but such a poor idea to bring those same workers into this country to work at the same jobs in the same factories?

Or …

I do not see why it is supposed to be such a good idea to bring foreigners into this country to "do the work that Americans will not do," but it is such a poor idea to outsource similar kinds of work to other countries so that the same people can do similar work over there?

In America, we seem to have Republicans who insist on shipping jobs overseas but detest the idea of foreign workers coming to America, and we have Democrats who think that it is an act of mercy and kindness to have foreign workers come into America to work, who detest "outsourcing" American jobs overseas.

I cannot find anything consistent in these two positions.

Inconsistency

I hear liberals say that immigration is good because the immigrants do work that Americans will not do, while outsourcing takes away jobs that Americans will do. At the same time, outsourcing is to be condemned for exploiting foreign workers by giving low-paying, menial, and degrading tasks at low wages with no benefits. Those who say this also claim that illegal immigrants in America are gaining economic opportunities they would not otherwise have.

In reality, outsourcing involves exporting jobs that Americans will not do at the pay rate that foreigners are willing to accept. Immigrants take jobs that Americans will not do at the pay rate that immigrants are willing to accept.

The two issues are the same. However, people who debate those issues take an absurd position. On one issue they assert their position while claiming those who disagree are either stupid or evil. Yet, when they move to the other position they embrace the very same arguments that their ‘stupid’ or ‘evil’ opponents used in the first issue.

People assert that we must condemn outsourcing, and deny work to foreigners so that Americans can have those jobs for higher pay. At the same time, they insist that we have the liberty to give low pay jobs to foreigners seeking jobs in America who are willing to do work at those wages that Americans will not do. Another group of people insist that we keep jobs in America out of the hands of immigrants so that Americans can earn higher pay, while they praise outsourcing jobs because it gives foreigners opportunities that they would not otherwise have.

Numbers of Jobs

One of the claims that both sides make, in their separate contexts, is that the jobs that immigrants/foreigners take are jobs that Americans would otherwise have. This is false.

At higher wage rates, some of those jobs would be taken over by machines. Other jobs simply would not be worth paying for. The higher price for the goods and services those businesses would produce would mean less demand for their higher-priced goods, which means less production, which means fewer jobs. The higher cost for those products means that industries who use those products will face higher costs, so they too will face lower demand, which means fewer jobs.

A lot of those jobs will disappear if businesses had to pay more. Some of jobs that depend on those industries will also disappear.

Medical Care and Education

There is an important point of asymmetry between the two types of cases.

Foreigners coming to America also use government services -- education, medical care -- that Americans pay for through their tax dollars. Foreigners staying in their own country taking outsourced jobs are not straining our government services.

Can this be a true moral difference?

If we use this to argue for outsourcing and against immigration, we are saying that the best system is the one that allows us to best exploit foreign workers. We are to prefer paying them a wage without education and medical benefits over paying them a wage with education and medical benefits.

This may be a political difference. However, it hardly qualifies as a morally defensible difference. If these people have a moral right to basic medical care and education benefits for their children, then they have this right regardless of where we put the factories -- in America or in some other country. This is part of what it means to have a moral right.

If, instead, they have no such moral right, then we should feel just as free to deny them medical and education benefits in America as we feel about their not having these benefits as they work in some other country.

Either way, we find no morally justified reason to have one attitude towards outsourcing (conservative - pro; liberal - con) and a different attitude towards immigration (conservative - con; liberal - pro).

Taking Sides

At this point, I have not said which is better.

I do not have space for detailed arguments, so I will briefly state that I tend to support both immigration and outsourcing.

Take two groups; A and B, where A is more prosperous than B. It would be morally difficult to justify limiting peoples’ freedom for the purpose of driving B even further into squalor for the purpose of making A still better off. This principle gives us a common answer for immigration and outsourcing – where freedoms are limited to drive foreigners in squalor to benefit Americans.

Tragically, Americans do not even benefit. It makes no more sense to say that America suffers from prosperity in India and China than it does to say that Colorado suffers from prosperity in California and Texas. It makes no more sense to worry about immigrants finding work here than it does to worry about another crop of college graduates finding work. These people do not drive away or take jobs; they create jobs.

To the degree that we worry – as we should – that the rich are getting richer by exploiting workers, we are not doing those workers any benefit by destroying their jobs. It would be better to simply tax the rich to provide the poor with medical care and an education to go along with their salary.

Conclusion

Like I said, this is not a definitive argument for any particular conclusion on these issues. It is an argument that people should at least try to be consistent. It is strange that people who sigh in exasperation at the arguments they hear their opponents use when discussing one issue, use those same arguments when discussing the issue. It suggests that people should think a little more clearly about what they are saying.

Leaks, Lies, and President Bush's Moral Character

The Bush Administration lied to Judith Miller about what the National Intelligence Assessment said about Iraq's quest for nuclear weapons. In doing so, the Bush Administration lied to us, the American people -- again -- about the degree to which Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States.

Recent disclosures that Bush authorized certain leaks bring the fact that this Administration lacks any type of moral compass right up to the surface.

A clip from Hardball that discusses the major points of this issue can be found at Crooks and Liars.

Allegedly, “Scooter” Libby said that he was authorized to leak information contained within the National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq at the same time he disclosed the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Wilson (formerly known as Valerie Plame). This authorization, he said, came from President Bush through Cheney.

The President has the power to declassify information when he thinks it serves the national interest. In this case, he sought to counter claims that Valerie Wilson’s husband Joe Wilson was making regarding intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq.

Specifically, the Bush Administration was using reports that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger as evidence that it was seeking to build nuclear weapons that could be used to threaten the United States. Wilson said that not only had this report been discredited, but the President either knew or should have known that it was discredited. Yet, these discredited claims had made it into the State of the Union address and had been used to order an attack.

In order to counter these claims, Bush authorized the release of information from the National Intelligence Estimate that said that the threat of Iraq’s purchase of nuclear material was indeed a real threat. Libby met with Judith Miller from the New York Times and gave this information.

Now, the first moral issue to raise is that Libby lied. Libby told Miller that “one key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was vigorously trying to procure uranium.” The NIE contained no such judgment. In fact, the annex to the NIE reported that the view of the State Department was that "claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are ... highly dubious."

In a question and answer session today, Bush said that, “I thought it was important to people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying, and I felt that I could do so without jeopardizing ongoing intelligence matters. So I did.” He said, “I wanted people to see the truth, and I thought it made sense for people to see the truth. That is why I declassified the document.”

So, if we allow that Bush declassified the information and Libby got his instructions from Bush through Cheney, we are left with an additional question.

Who told Libby to lie?

Assume that the decision to reveal the truth came from Bush. What Libby told Miller was not the truth. It was a lie. Somewhere down the chain of command, through Cheney to Libby, somebody decided that, instead of revealing the contents of the document, Libby was going to lie. He was going to claim that the NIE said something that it did not say.

This leads to a follow-up question for President Bush.

“Mr. President. You say that you declassified the NIE so that we can learn the truth. What, then, was your reaction when you discovered that the information actually given to the press was a lie? Were you angry? Did you demand some sort of disciplinary action?”

Furthermore, we must admit that this was a highly unusual way to declassify a document. Only three people knew that the document was declassified – Bush, Chaney, and Libby. Not even the head of the CIA knew about this.

This makes me wonder about the nature of the conversation between Libby and Miller.

Did Libby tell Miller that, “According to the recently declassified NIE . . .”

If he had said this, then Miller should have answered, “Then show me. If this is declassified information, then you should be able to hand me a copy – at least of that part which is declassified.”

Or did Libby tell Miller that the information was still classified, yet something the President wanted to get into the press. This would prohibit Miller from asking for a copy. This would prevent her from verifying the story and uncovering the lie. However, if Libby had said that this now declassified document was classified, then that too would have been a lie. Libby would have been lying to conceal yet another lie.

Imagine yourself as a parent, walking into the kitchen, and seeing your 8-year-old child standing on the kitchen cabinet reaching up with his hand inside the cookie jar. When he sees you, he suddenly reaches for a vase and says, “I was just getting this vase.”

Imagine what you would think of the parent who actually fell for the “vase” story and let the child get away with it.

In this case, Bush’s claim that he declassified the information in order to get the truth out to the American people is like the child’s claim that he was reaching for a vase. What we have seen with our own eyes is a child reaching for the cookie jar – or, in this case, a President “leaking” lies to the press in order to convince us to support his call for war.

The good parent would be angry at the child. He would be angry at the child first for trying to steal some cookies. He would be even more angry at the child for lying about it. If the parent had any concern with teaching that child a moral lesson, that child would be punished twice. He would be punished first for trying to take the cookies. The parent will also make sure that the child knows that there was a second punishment for lying about what he was doing to start with.

It is difficult to punish a President of the United States for his actions. Yet, it is not impossible. The Constitution gives us some options, from censure to impeachment. The Senate and the House -- at least one that represented the People rather than serving as the lap dog to the President -- could come up with additional options.

Recall that in one of these crimes President Bush sought to manipulate us through terror by telling us stories of mushroom clouds on the horizon which were simply products of his own imagination.

What punishment is proporational for this crime?

There is another item that the parent would keep in mind as he was thinking about his lying, cookie-stealing kid. “If I let him get away with this now, he’ll just do it again in the future.” If President Bush gets away with this now, we are telling every future President that telling us lies about mushroom clouds in order to get us to fork over 2,500 lives and $300 billion in cash -- so far -- is perfectly acceptable Presidential behavior. If we want to turn our back on this situation, we should ask how many lives and billions of dollars future Presidents will be able to squeeze out of our children and grandchildren.

Or, we can tell this and all future Presidents, “Do NOT try to rule by frightening us with lies about mushroom clouds. We will not tolerate this from you or from any further President.”

Whatever choice we make today, we will be the role-model for future generations. What lessons do we think are worth teaching about war and deception?

Attacking Iran

It appears that the Bush Administration is making plans to attack Iran. According to a story in the New Yorker, Bush is looking to make a name for himself, and sees an opportunity to do so by freeing Iran from the Muslim fundamentalists that control the country.

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

Apparently, Iran's nuclear development facilities are under seventy-five feet of rock and reinforced concrete. Conventional weapons stand a low chance of destroying these facilities. To accomplish this task, the Bush Administration is apparently considering the use of tactical nuclear bunker-busting bombs.

On issues such as this, there is one group of pundits who I immediately put under moral suspicion. Those are people who are common citizens -- people like me -- who claim to know exactly what should be done. These types of decisions require special knowledge. That special knowledge is available only to those who have a high level of security clearance. These people who are making claims about the best strategy or tactics do not have that special clearance. They do not have access to the information they must have in order to make an informed decision. Yet, they declare themselves fit to tell us what should be done.

We can certainly make claims about certain aspects of such a plan. For example, if the Bush Administration believes that an attack on Iran will cause the people to rise up and overthrow their government, then he is almost certainly wrong. When attacked, nations instinctively rally around their leaders – as America did after 9-11. The moral quality of that leadership appears to be irrelevant. There is a strong tendency among any people when under attack to say that it is wrong to question the current leadership no matter what. Indeed, Bush himself has sought to capitalize on those sentiments by suggesting it is tantamount to treason to question his judgments.

Attacking a country tends to solidify its current government, not weaken it.

Typically, these people who claim to know exactly what should be done are people who look at the limited information available and finds a few of them who are saying what the speaker wants to hear, If they are disposed to be against such an attack, they will immediately endorse the ‘evidence’ given to them by speakers who seem to be anti-war. If they are in favor of such an attack, they will select to listen only to those who speak favorably of such an attack. They will cherry-pick their evidence the way that the Bush Administration cherry-picked its intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

The only people capable of making an informed decisions as to what to do are those people who have access to all of the information. We must leave it to those individuals to gather all that they know and all they can find out, and to choose the best course of action.

Here is where we run into problems.

The Bush Administration has proved itself to be incapable of looking at any set of evidence and coming to a rational conclusion based on that evidence. Instead, the Bush Administration has shown a tendency to decide upon a policy first, and then to sort through the evidence to find that which supports their policy. Everything we have heard about the Bush Administration’s decision to attack Iraq suggests that it made the decision shortly after the attacks on 9-11. Then, the staff went to work trying to find a justification for that attack. Any piece of information that could be used to justify the attack was embraced. Any information that questioned the legitimacy of such an attack was cast aside.

The Bush Administration is made up almost exclusively of people who have abandoned reason and rationality. They prefer to listen to the voices in their head, which they either attribute to God or to their own intellectual infallibility. This is an administration that has forsaken reason for faith. They not only shun reason, they denigrate reason and those who follow their dictates. They think that their voices from God gives them the intellectual certainty they need to rewrite the reports of established scientists and intelligence agents. We cannot expect an intelligent decision based on a reasoned evaluation of the evidence from these people.

These people are not entirely rational.

Bush's invasion of Iraq was a faith-based initiative. Then again, so was the attack on 9-11. The funny thing about faith-based initiatives is that they seldom turn out the way that the people of faith expect them to. When it comes to making reliable predictions, people of reason, though they are far from perfect, still tend to have a far better track record than people of faith.

If the Bush Administration is follows its established habits, it has already penciled in a date for the attack. Any pretense towards negotiation and diplomacy are just that -- a show designed to prevent the people from protesting that which is actually inevitable.

If we allow this to be a discussion of whether Iran is or is not a threat -- and when Iran will or will not become a threat -- then we are arguing in the dark. None of us have the information we need to support our desired conclusion. If, instead, this becomes a debate as to whether the Bush Administration has the ability to handle the crisis competently and should be trusted to make the right decisions, I think that we have enough evidence on which to form a reasoned, intelligent, and informed decision.

If we allow this to be a debate over whether we should or should not attack Iran, we are all arguing in the dark. Regardless of the conclusion each of us comes to, none of us has the information we truly need to reach a conclusion others should trust. However, when it comes to the issue of whether the Bush Administration has the capacity to make an intelligent decision based on available evidence, we have a lot of the types of evidence we need to make a reasoned conclusion.

One important conclusion that all people should draw from this is that, in the future, the person to whom we give control of our nuclear weapons should be somebody capable of making rational decisions based on a reasoned assessment of available evidence.

Desires and the Definition of "Good"

Old Business: Leaks

The news this week contained reports that Bush himself authorized that information be leaked from classified pre-war assessment of Iraq. His staff are insisting that these leaks were in the national interest. However, in light of this argument, I would like to resurrect a posting that I made on March 5 called "Subverting Democracy." It explained the moral implications of selective leaks. It forces news sources to try to somehow distinguish between leaks that the President wants to get out and those the President does not want to get out, with criminal penalties applied to those who get wrong.

Old Business: Wiretaps

My argument against wiretaps has never been that the government should not engage in wiretaps. It is that, without oversight, this power can easily be abused. The President can too easily claim that anybody who challenges his policies is a "suspected terrorist" and start an investigation.

Two news items this week relate to this issue.

First, in hearings before the Senate, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that the President can wiretap any American's communication without a warrant.

Second, Crooks and Liars put me onto a statement from a former AT&T Employee about NSA equipment installed at a telephone office.

Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the internet -- whether that be peoples' e-mail, web surfing or any other data.

So, the question comes up again, given that this group believes the President can do no wrong, and has already authorized torture until death, extraordinary rendition, imprisonment without trial, and deceived the country into a preplanned war, how much trust should we have that they are not abusing this power?

How ironic that an administration elected on a platform of returning morality to government does not know how to tell the difference between right and wrong.

New Business: Desires and the Definition of 'Good'"

I had a very nice discussion this week with the people over at at stupidevilbastard.com on desire utilitarianism. In the face of some very good questions I encountered there, I came up with ways of presenting the main points of desire utilitarianism that I had never used before. I thought it may be useful to bring them over here to give readers an idea of how I think.

Thwarting Desires

A reader there reported interpreting desire utilitarianism as saying that desire fulfillment must be consonant with the desires of others or at least not be at odds with the desires of others.

That is not the case. A desire can be at odds with the desires of others and still count as a good desire. The desire to punish wrongdoers, for example, certainly thwarts the desires of the wrongdoers who would be punished. Yet, if we were unwilling to punish wrongdoers, we would end up with more wrongdoers. Where "wrongdoing" itself is defined in terms of actions that fulfill bad (desire-thwarting) desires, we end up with more desire-thwarting, not less.

To understand what this means, imagine that you are sitting in front of a control panel with dials for all of society’s desires on it. On this control panel, there is a dial for the desire to torture children.

Clearly, if you take this dial and turn it up, you will be increasing desire-thwarting. Either the person with a desire to torture children will have his desire thwarted, or the child being tortured will have his desire thwarted. Either way, desires will be thwarted.

If, instead, you turn the desire to torture children down, there will be fewer desires thwarted. There will be fewer instances in which either a child is being tortured or a desire to torture children is being thwarted. The best setting we can have for "the desire to torture children" is zero.

The same applies to other necessary wrongs. If you turn the desire to have slaves up, then either the desires of the slave owner are being thwarted, or the desires of the slaves. If you turn this dial down, then fewer such incidents arise. The best setting for the "desire for slaves" to have is zero. This is also the best setting for the desire to execute Jews, the desire to rape, the desire to execute converts from Islam, and the aversion to homosexual marriage.

Now, on this control panel, there is a second dial for a desire that those who torture children be condemned/punished. This dial is linked to the dial for the desire to torture children. Turning up the desire to condemn/punish those who torture children has the effect of generating condemnation and punishment, which turns the desire to torture children down. Would-be child torturers acquire these social or cultural norms and end up acquiring more of an aversion to torturing children than they would otherwise have had. The net effect of increasing the desire that child torturers be condemned/punished is positive.

Again, the same applies to would-be slave owners, Nazis, rapists, and the like.

The fact is, each of us does have a control panel sitting in front of us. We have the capacity, each time we talk to others, to turn the dials of society’s desires up and down by how we affect others. In what we say, and in what we do, we have the ability to turn up the dial for "aversion to torture", "aversion to rendition", "aversion to unlimited executive power without judicial oversight", "aversion to executing converts from one's religion," "aversion to school rituals that teach children to view those not 'under God' as bad Americans," and the like.

In this blog, I try to do a little bit more. I also try to explain to my readers why it is that a particular dial ought to be turned up or down. If I am right, I hope that readers will walk away with an interest in helping turn that dial a little further.

However, in each case, I could be wrong. Turning a particular dial may have affects that I have not realized, or its effect may not be as strong as I have suggested. In these cases, I thank those readers who bring those instances to the surface through their comments.

The Unimportance of a Definition of Good

Commenters at stupidevilbastard.com also immediately raised the idea that problems in ethics were difficult/impossible to answer because so much depended on the definition of 'good'.

In fact, absolutely nothing depends on the definition of 'good'. Anybody who thinks so has already gotten off to a bad start, at which point it is no wonder that they find that going any further.

To see how unimportant the definition of 'good' is, consider this:

The International Astronomical Union is currently debating the meaning of the word 'planet'. It used to be the case that Pluto was considered a planet -- mostly because of its size. Now, we have discovered another body, larger than Pluto, further out. The problem is, this new body has more in common with the Kuiper Belt Objects than it does with planets. In fact, Pluto has more in common with KBOs than it does with planets. So, do we call this new body a 'planet' and say that we have ten planets? Or do we classify it (and Pluto) as KBOs and knock the number of planets down to eight?

However the IAU decides this issue, one thing is certain. There is no scientific test that one can perform to determine whether Pluto is a planet or not -- at least, not until after we have decided on what the term 'planet' means. The definition of a planet, whatever it turns out to be, will be the arbitrary and subjective choice of a group of people sitting around expressing their own subjective preferences, and the arbitrary and subjective decision by a bunch of scientists to go along with whatever the IAU says.

Yet, this has absolutely no effect on the fact that Astronomy is now and will remain a hard, objective science.

This is because, regardless of whether you call Pluto a planet or a KBO, it will not affect Pluto's size or its chemical composition. It will not cause Pluto to shift its orbit or to acquire more or fewer moons. Pluto will remain the same, no matter what it is called.

It is well within the realm of possibility that we might have two astronomers with different definitions of "planet" -- one with a definition that includes Pluto and one with a definition that excludes it. Yet, this will still have absolutely no effect on the objectivity of astronomy as a science. It will affect the way that each astronomer presents his results, but it will not affect the results.

As soon as somebody can understand why astronomers do not sweat the definition of the word 'planet', one can understand why an ethicist need not sweat the definition of the word 'good'. If somebody says, 'good' = 'happiness', or 'desire fulfillment', or 'species survival', or 'in accordance with God's will', it has no effect on what is objectively true of happiness, desire fulfillment, species survival, or God's will. The definition of 'good' does not matter. What is objectively true of happiness, desire fulfillment, species survival, God's will, and the like are what matter. These things do not change, no matter what we call them.

If somebody approaches a discussion of ethics with the mindset that the definition of 'good' is in any way significant – that ‘happiness’, for example, can somehow be made to change by giving it a different name, he starts off with a mistake. From this mistake, no further progress is possible. Such a person needs first to look at the definition of ‘good’ in the same light that astronomers look at the definition of ‘planet.’ Once he can do that, he can see that any talk about the definition of ‘good’ is really irrelevant. Those discussions are a waste of time.

Making Criminals of Immigrants

This blog entry is an example of a case in which I come here with an intention to write, "X is good" and, after considering the arguments, end up convincing myself that "X is bad."

It is useful not to have preconceived notions as to how an article must turn out and, instead, to try to base one's conclusions on the weight of the arguments.

In the immigration debate, one of the arguments being used is that illegal aliens are criminals and, as such, they ought to be punished. At the very least, criminals ought not to be allowed to cut in line in front of law-abiding individuals who stayed out of the country.

The Original Argument

My original line of argument began with the fact, which I will still defend, that breaking the law does not automatically imply that one ought to be punished. Assume that a law was written that made church attendance mandatory. An atheist decides that he will not go to Church even though the law requires it. It does not automatically follow that the atheist deserves to be harmed.

The theist who argues that, "the atheist refusal to attend church justifies our throwing him in jail," would be putting the cart before the horse. The law itself has to be justified. That requires being able to prove that society has good reason to create the law to start with. If society has no reason to harm atheists who do not attend church, creating a law against attending church does not automatically create a reason to do harm.

Applying this to the issue of immigration, we can conclude that, "these people have broken the law; therefore, they should be harmed," is poor justification for doing them harm. We must first justify the law. Saying, "These people are criminals" begs the question. It assumes what must be proved -- that such a law is justified.

Now, it is a principle of logic that, if you prove a particular argument is a bad argument, you have not proved that the conclusion to that argument is false. Perhaps I can prove that the fortune teller has no good reason to believe that the plane I will be taking to Phoenix will crash. However, my proof of "no good reason" does not prove that the plane will not crash.

Similarly, the proof that the "criminal" argument is question-begging and does not provide a good reason to do harm does not imply that there is no good reason to do harm. It only proves that the good reason, if it exists, cannot be derived from the fact that these people have broken the law. It has to come from somewhere else.

Earlier, I gave reason to doubt that laws restricting the movement of people are actually good laws. After all, the absence of restrictions on moving around within the country has contributed to our strength, rather than become a weakness. I admitted that there were other relevant concerns, but a reason to doubt still exists.

Counter Considerations

This was my original argument. However, I always begin my argument by trying to create the best argument that I can for the side I will be arguing against. I owe it to them not to create any straw man. Sometimes, in creating this best argument, I create an argument I cannot refute.

In this case, the argument that I wrote for the opposite position goes like this:

If we reward those who have broken the law, then we set the stage for encouraging others in the future to break the same law. There will be people in Mexico and other countries who will see our actions and reason, "I know that they have made it illegal to immigrate to America. However, in the past, those who broke the law got to become citizens. At the same time, those who stayed out of America -- the more law-abiding people -- gave up this opportunity. Since America is rewarding those who break the law, and leaving those who obey the law with nothing, we should break the law, in the hopes of becoming citizens next time."

Sending out the word that "successfully entering the United States means citizenship the next time they consider immigration reform," could very well encourage an even larger number of people to cross the border, even further stressing our immigration control resources even more than they are already strained.

If we are going to hire people to prevent immigration into this country, it seems only fair that we will also support them in doing their job. The U.S. Government cannot honestly be said to be supporting our immigration officials if it is offering rewards in the form of potential citizenship for those who break through their defenses. It makes sense to argue that we will do a better job of discouraging people from breaking a law if we do not entice people with the possibility of rewarding those who succeed.

Conclusion

I am well aware of the level of disruption caused by shipping illegal aliens back out of the country. I am also aware that the threat of deportation makes illegal aliens vulnerable to all sorts of abuse and exploitation by individuals who merely have to say, “Do you the people at Immigration to find out that you are in this country?” I am well aware of the fact that some of these illegal aliens now have children who are U.S. Citizens in virtue of being born here and that it does harm to the children to forcibly send their parents away.

I am well aware of the fact that there are additional considerations.

Yet, one of these considerations – a consideration that cannot be ignored even if it should end up being outweighed – is that it is stupid to make it illegal for people to do something while, at the same time, rewarding those who succeed in doing it. That type of policy makes no sense.