I Am a Values Voter

Apparently, I am not a 'values voter', I am an 'issues voter'. And whatever I base my evaluation of issues on, it is not 'values.'

We have a situation here where one group decide to manipulate the people with a campaign of deception, and another group of people who have said that they will accept the responsibility of keeping others informed abdicated their responsibility to think about what they said and wrote when reporting on what the first group was doing.

The idea of calling fundamentalist Christians 'values voters' is a marketing trick - an attempt to manipulate and deceive others into believing things that are, at best, questionable by manipulating the use of language. This trick works by taking a term that has long been associated with a particular concept in public language, and suddenly shift that term to some other concept. This confuses the public into assigning the first concept itself to the second - to assign the concept of 'value' to the concept of 'fundamentalist Christian'.

In this case, 'value' means 'that which is should be promoted or encouraged'. There are differences of opinion as to what has value - as to what people should be bringing about. However, this dispute was always over the answer to the question, "What has value?" Not a dispute over whether we should have value or, whether we should have 'something else' other than value.

The campaign of deception began when a group of people involved in this dispute about what has value decided to hijack the term 'value' for its side of the debate. This is done by spending a lot of money producing a lot of propaganda and standing up in front of a lot of people using this old term in its new way. Its purpose is to take a serious subject (indeed, what is often as important as life and death itself) and muddy up the discussion by confusing the language. Once the subject has been sufficiently muddied, the agents who muddied our language can seek to attach the original concept of 'value' (meaning 'that which we should pursue') to their opinion of what has value, without actually defending the claim that they are right.

People who would pull this type of rhetorical trick are morally contemptible. They display a lack of respect for the subject at hand (actually trying to determine what it is that we should be pursuing). They also display a lack of respect for others by seeking to 'convince' them by treachery rather than by honestly presenting their case and allowing the listener to make up their mind.

To compound the problem, they are seriously mistaken about what has value. They have used this trick to promote false beliefs that 'value' can be found in such things as the worship of mindless zygotes as persons and in doing harm to real persons such as pregnant women, homosexuals, and those who do not share the religious belief of those who practice this deception. These are people who act on the principle that 'value' means replacing honest debate with rhetorical tricks and manipulative deception. These are the characteristics that we now see marking the so-called 'values' voters.

This is now combined with the fact that this same group seems to be the most devout defenders of an administraition that promotes torturing people; many of whom happen to be innocent of any wrongdoing. They have made themselves defenders of injustice (in the form of arbitrary arrest and indefinite imprisonment without a trial, and the abandonment of the principle of habeas corpus), and defenders of arbitrary and unchecked executive power.

It is no wonder that we see the likes of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and George Bush (who regularly display their love of the art of manipulative deception) among the public representatives of this group.

These are the representatives of the so-called 'values voter'.

The second moral breakdown can be found among the reporters who have decided to report on this story. It does not take philosophical brilliance to see that when these people are calling themselves and their followers 'values voters' that they are seeking to engage in manipulative deception by hijacking the concept of 'value'. It takes very little effort to include this concern in their reports - to report the fact that there are people who would call their work an effort hijack the concept of 'value' and confuse rather than contribute to public debate. It takes very little effort to report the fact that there are those who would view this type of manipulative deception contemptible and inappropriate for anybody who is actually concerned with moral values.

Obviously, many reporters do not think. They display the intellectual acuity of a parrot, merely repeating the phrases that they hear without giving any thought as to what they mean or the motives that might being those who want them repeated.

I am a values voter, as are those who think like I do.

We evaluate the position we take on issues according to our values.

We happen to think that torture is wrong, and that there is a fundamental right to habeas corpus - a fundamental right that people have to demand that governments provide a reason for imprisoning them.

We are people who value a state that does not entice would-be dictators to seek public office by creating offices with unchecked power.

We are people who assign value to beings that have desires and interests and not to clumps of cells that have no interests.

We are people who value the happiness and security of both our homosexual and our heterosexial neighbors and have no interest in bringing misery to their lives.

We are people who value honest debate - people who value a clear use of language and find it contemptible to manipulate others on important moral issues by the deceptive use of rhetorical tricks.

I am not going to assert that those who disagree with this stand are not 'values voters'. They are 'values voters'. Their problem is not that they do not have values. Their problem is that their beliefs about what has value are mistaken. Because they are mistaken, they do real harm to real people in the real world. They make the world worse than it would have otherwise been.

They, of course, would say the same about me.

This is why we need honest debate about what really does have value and what does not, and why we must not allow people to hijack the term 'value' by the use of rhetorical tricks.

Bush, God's Plan, and Moral Responsibility

Sometimes (often) I think in pictures. As I read, a group of seemingly unrelated ideas get together in my head for an impromptu meaning and express themselves in the form of a picture or, more likely, a scene as if from a movie.

This happened recently with the following items that I picked out of the local news.

(1) President Bush, in commenting about Iraq, said that when history records the events that it “will look like just a comma.” He was roundly criticized for this - for claiming that an action that resulted in so much death and injury is trivially insignificant. No person who loses a limb, no family who loses a family member, considers such a loss insignificant. This is, in fact, much like Stalin's comment that 'one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic'.

(2) I read an analysis of Bush's comment that related it to a quote popular among evangelical. Attributed to the mid 20th century comedienne Gracie Allen, it says, "Do not put a period where God has placed a comma." In this context, what Bush is saying is that, "The situation in Iraq is not over yet. God's plan is still unfolding. This is clearly a part of his plan." Bush is not saying that this loss is insignificant. He is saying that this loss is a part of a bigger plan and the value of this sacrifice will be revealed in time.

(3) A newspaper article that I read today shows how Bush's policies have utterly failed with regard to what, in 2002, he called 'the axis of evil'. Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Iran is openly enriching uranium while its leader is threatening to wipe Israel off the map. North Korea just tested a nuclear weapon and is threatening to test-fire a nuclear missile.

The image that this created in my mind was that of Bush playing a game of chess. As he plays, his opponent takes one piece after another. First, a few pawns disappear, which happens in every game of chess, so Bush dismisses the loss as insignificant, compared to the value of winning.

Then, a few more pawns disappear, as well as a couple of larger pieces. With these losses, Bush mumbles, "Do not put a period where God has placed a comma. This is all a part of God's plan, and God will reveal his wisdom in time."

This chess player then ends up sacrificing some extremely valuable pieces. He sacrifices the institution of truth and aversion to deception. He loses the principle of checks and balances. He makes a move where he captures a pawn (some information on terrorist attacks) by sacrificing his queen (the right of habeas corpus). Yet, he still stands before the crowd and insists, "This is all a part of God's marvelous plan. God is still revealing himself through me. Just wait, and you will see a tremendous victory - made all the more tremendous of the struggle we have gone through to win it."

Then, with all of his pieces gone and his king one move away from checkmate, Bush the chess player says, "Behold the greatness of God that He can create a situation that looks this hopeless; yet, as we all know, God will win in the end!"

Checkmate.

This play shows up in my mind as an illustration of the irresponsibility found in this way of thinking. The person who thinks, "This is all a part of God's plan," does not have to take responsibility for his own actions. He is simply acting as an agent of God, and whatever happens is a part of God's plan. This is true for any action the agent makes. Ultimately, it means that no action is wrong. Every action is a part of God's plan and God, being perfectly virtuous and wise, cannot have anything but the best possible plan.

The worst implication of this is intellectual laziness. For Bush the chess player, this means that he does not have to give a lot of thought to each move he makes. He is going to pray, and God is going to tell him how to move his pieces. Because these actions come from God, they are God's responsibility, and not Bush's.

Failure is not an option because, if the project failed, then this would be God's failure, and God cannot fail. "Failure is not an option" in this context does not mean, "We must work as hard as we can to succeed." It means that there is no state of affairs that can result from our acdtion that would qualify as a failure. No matter what the outcome is, we get to count it as a success, because it is God's will, and God can do nothing but succeed.

This is just another example of a form of religious thinking that is dangerous and is the source of misery and suffering in the real world. It is another example of how we are worse off - we life with more death, more injury, more illness, and more failure because people adopt attitudes where they can abdicate their responsibility as real agents in the real world - where they can shift blame onto somebody else and go about their lives in blissful ignorance of the harm they do to others.

One of the implications of the view that we live in a real-world universe that is indifferent as to our success or failure is that we really can fail. When we fail, our failures have consequences. Those consequences include deal, injury, and other forms of harm to real human beings. That harm is not a part of God's plan. That harm is a real-world tragedy.

It is not our fate to suffer those harms. There are actions that we can take so that we can make better decisions. We will not be able to eliminate harm entirely, but we can improve the chance of picking better options over worse options. We can increase or decrease the amount of death and misery in the world with the choices that we make.

Let us go back to the chess player and turn the clock back to a time before the game starts. Let us give the chess player an appreciation for the fact that he can lose, and that loss means real-world death and suffering for people who need not have died or suffered. Let us add to the fact that we are the ones who are going to die and suffer depending on how well this person plays the game.

Under these assumptions, we see that we have reason to try to make sure that this chess player is the best chess player he can be. We have reason to insist that he study and practice - that he learn as much as he can about the game.

We have reason to become angry if he decides to be lazy - if he decides that he does not need to study because he is putting us at risk.

Have somebody point a gun at your head - somebody who shows callous disregard as to whether the gun is loaded or, rather than checks the gun empirically to determine that it is safe, insists that his faith that the gun is not loaded is sufficient.

It is not sufficient when the agent is putting lives at risk other than his own. We have reason to insist that the chess player become as good as possible - reason to condemn him if he fails - and reason to replace him with somebody who is competent when he shows his incompetence.

In other words, we have reason to insist on a doctrine of personal moral responsibility that includes blaming people for their failures rather than allowing them to escape blame and passing the blame up to God.

"Don't blame me. It was God's plan!"

Government Secrets

In a comment to a post a couple of days ago to my post on the National Intelligence Estimate, Chris responded that we should elect representatives committed to releasing as much information ‘as possible’ so that we, the voters, can decide how to handle important issues.

I thought it would be useful to add some detail to that idea.

‘As possible’ is a vague phrase. One meaning is that the government should release all information that the laws of physics would allow it to release. In other words, there should be no government secrets.

This yields a statement that is not true. There are examples where it is clearly in our nation's interests that the government keeps certain secrets. During World War II, the allies had captured an enigma machine from the Germans allowing us to decode German communications. It would have been foolish to let the Germans know that we had broken their military codes. It would have been just as foolish for the government to release information that would have caused the Germans to think, "The only way they could have gotten this information is if they had broken our military codes."

It would also be absurd to imagine the nation as a whole participating in a debate as to whether (and when) to invade France. The idea of newspapers publishing aerial reconnaissance photographs and information on military strength so that we, the voter, can decide whether the time is ripe for an invasion is out of the question.

Another possible definition of ‘as possible’ is ‘as possible without sacrificing other, vital national interests.’ This is not an absolute claim. For all practical purposes, this says that we are going to start with the assumption that information is to be released, and put the burden of proof for classifying information on the shoulders of those who want to classify it. The military value of our breaking the enigma code would provide the 'burden of proof' necessary to classify information suggesting that we had broken the code.

This implies that we cannot avoid the fact that politicians have to be allowed to make certain decisions based on information that we do not have access to.

This further implies that we need to pay attention to whether we can trust the people who will have access to that type of information.

Clearly, Chris has an important point - particularly with regard to this administration.

The Bush Administration has a history of lying to the American people. If any employee lied to his boss with the regularity that this Administration lies to the American people, that boss would have lost all trust in that employee. The boss who typically takes the word of an employee who claims to have had a doctor's appointment would be asking this employee for a note from the doctor's office. The boss who typically takes an employee's word as to when the employee comes to the office and leaves will begin having the employee check in and out.

This Administration routinely edits scientific reports - lies about the conclusions that those scientists have reached - rewriting and inventing conclusions to make the report support (or, at least, not condemn) Administration policies. Just two days ago I wrote about how Bush stands up before one audience after another and lies about the nature of the debate between him and his rivals. It is quite clear that this administration cares nothing for the truth and will lie and distort reports to get them to appear to support administration policies.

I want to stress this. Within the Bush Administration a moral 'aversion to deception' does not exist. If it existed, we would find instances in which they sacrificed advantage to tell the truth. I know of no such example.

In the desire-utilitarian model of ethics, we keep people from lying (even when they can get away with it) by giving them an aversion to lying. We keep them from taking our property without our consent (even when they can get away with it) by giving them an aversion to taking property without consent. We can see evidence of whether a person has an aversion to lying and stealing by noting whether he refuses to lie or steal, even when he could have gotten away with it. This way, we learn to trust people.

With the Bush Administration, we get the opposite. We get an Administration that lies even when they can't get away with it. Because it has so little aversion to deception, we have no reason to trust anything that this Administration says or does.

The Administration, by its own admission, released only a portion of the National Intelligence Estimate.

At this stage of the game, only the most gullible fools would deny that this Administration decided what to include and what to keep classified by asking, "Will this passage make us look good, or make us look bad?"

The released NIE report is just another lie.

When an employee gives his employer enough reason to mistrust him, the employer is given reason to ask for more proof than he would normally ask for. An employer who typically trusts that his employees are going to the doctor when the employee says he is may start asking for notes from the doctor's office. An employer who trusts employees to come to work and leave on time may start asking an employee to check in on time.

As is often the case, one 'bad apple' can make the situation worse for everybody. Because one employee misuses sick leave, the corporation adopts a policy that all employees must provide a note from their doctor. Because a handful of employees do not come to work on time or leave early, all employees must check in.

Bush is our employee; we are his employer. Like any employer who has been given more than enough reason to abandon the last shreds of trust in an employee, we now have reason to demand that our employee, Bush, give us some independent verification that what he says is true. Without it, we can dismiss anything he says as just another half-truth or lie used to conceal his incompetence.

Furthermore, prudence indeed shall dictate that we apply these procedures to all future Presidents - that we assume that none of them can be trusted to be honest with us and that we must have some independent verification - where possible - of what is really going on.

At the same time, prudence still dictates that the government keep some secrets.

One upon a time, there was a country quite different from our own, where the people created a 'congress' of elected officials who had the power to make laws - including laws where they could obtain certain types of information. The President had the power to veto those laws. However, if this 'congress' felt strongly enough about the law they could override the President's veto and make a law the President would have to obey.

As you can tell, that system is quite different from our own where the President has the power to rewrite legislation to his liking using 'signing statements' - instruments that allow the President to rewrite any bill to suit his wishes after he signs it, giving the Congress no ability to override his decision.

This was also a country where this 'congress' could require the Executive Branch to submit documents to an entity called a 'court' where a 'judge' would review the documents for 'probable cause' and 'reasonableness'. Again, this is quite different from our system where the President can simply refuse to allow anybody to review or question his decisions.

This procedure whereby the people defended themselves from malicious and tyrannical leaders by having other bodies empowered to review their work was a system these people called 'checks and balances,' and was considered essential to preserving their safety and happiness from all sorts of tyranny. It seems to have worked, since this nation did not suffer under any form of tyranny until these checks and balances were removed.

Ultimately, I think that this forgotten country was one that we could learn some valuable lesson from. They knew that people were not to be trusted with absolute power. Since it is quite clear that we often cannot trust Presidents with the truth, and because it is sometimes unwise for us to be looking over all of the information a President might have available, maybe it would be wise for us to have a system where a 'congress' or 'courts' have the power to collect that information and look it over, to make sure that the President is being honest with us.

So, ultimately Chris is correct – given a few caveats. We should be asking our candidates whether they believe in government of the people. If they believe in government of the people, we need to ask them if the people can make good choices without accurate information. We should ask them whether they disagree with the claim that decision-makers need good information if they are to make good decisions, and what this implies about the government keeping secrets from the people, or altering reports, or filling the country with lies and other forms of deception – all seemingly showing an intent to prevent the people from making informed decisions.

We should be selecting those candidates who agree that the people are the boss of the country and that it is inappropriate (at best) to be concealing information from 'the boss' (other than what 'the boss' says he never wants to see).

We should be choosing candidates who will take a look at these signing statements and be ready to impeach any President who thinks that he has the power to rewrite laws when he signs them. We must select candidates who promise to uphold the rule of law and the principle of checks and balances and who will not further the job of creating an omnipotent executive branch that plants the seeds for this or some future generation to descend into tyranny. We must select candidates who realize that we are the boss and that we have the right to the information we need to cast intelligent votes on the directions we want this country to take.

The Problem with Religious Ethics

Religious ethics is not always a problem. However, when it is a problem it is not because it is religious. It is because it is wrong. It is because religious ethics, written by a group of primitive tribesmen who had very little understanding of the real world, contains a lot of mistakes. When people today do not see those mistakes, they come to tell themselves that they are great and noble people when are, in fact, doing something evil and causing unjustified harm to others.

The problem with religious science (when it is a problem) is that it is sometimes wrong, and those who believe it have beliefs that do not fit in with how the real world is built. These false beliefs cause them to make mistakes. Most of those mistakes (the earth is only 10,000 years old) are trivial – not much of significance hangs on them. Some of those mistakes (diseases are caused by alienation from God and are best cured through prayer) are dangerous – and sometimes fatal to innocent people, such as children.

The problem with religious morality (when it is a problem) is that it is sometimes wrong. When people make moral mistakes – when they pursue and promote what they think is good but which is actually evil – innocent people always suffer.

It is the essence of being wrong on a moral matter that innocent people are made to suffer.

However, this suggests (though it does not imply) that when religious ethics is not wrong – when it correctly identifies that which is good and that which is evil – then it is not a problem.

Survivors

I sometimes imagine a situation in which I am one of several survivors of a spaceship crash on a planet. We had been traveling through space for a while, and I had gotten to know the other passengers fairly well.

Brad believes in God. Brad also believes that his God tells him never to lie, or even to utter a claim that might be false without honestly reporting what doubts he has. He has no doubt that God exists, but he recognizes that he may not know exactly what God wants. Therefore, he divides his religious commandments up into two categories. There are commandments having to do with public morality - actions that affect others. These are commandments against murder, rape, theft, and deception. These, he thinks, should be forced on everybody. However, other commandments do not affect others - like prohibitions on homosexual relationships. If a person is not doing harm to others, Brad holds, "This is between you and God. It is none of my business."

Charlie also survived the crash. Charlie is an atheist. He thinks that this is the only life he has and he is going to make as much of it as possible. Charlie is completely selfish. He will tell the truth when the truth is useful, and lie when he thinks that lying is useful. He will help others who are useful to him, but cares nothing about others who are not useful. People have tried to tell Charlie that it is always rational to assume that others are useful because you never know what the future may bring. However, Charlie answers that this is irrational. The rational person plays the odds. You need to measure the chance that you will get away with lying (or killing) somebody and profit from it with the chance that you will not profit from it. It is stupid to assume that lying and killing is never profitable.

David is a religious fundamentalist. He has his interpretation of what God wants, and those who do not follow his interpretation are to be condemned. Since I'm writing about what I should do if I find myself in this type of situation, I am going to write under the assumption that there is no God. In this case, where does David get his 'moral principles'? They effectively come from David's own mind. He reads what he wants to believe into that religious text he carries around. He hates homosexuals, so he reads into his book that he may condemn homosexuals. He hates people who deny the existence of God, so he reads into his book that he may do away with those people who deny the existence of God. David is ultimately seeking to set himself up as dictator. He says that he is working for God, but he is actually working for himself.

Alliances

Shortly after we discover that we are the sole survivors, the other atheist, Charlie, comes to me and says that we must form an alliance against the theists. After all, we are in a desperate situation here, and we cannot let their irrational thinking rule the day. They are going to pray for salvation, while those of us who are more rational will recognize that prayer is a waste of time and resources. Our rescue depends on discovering a way to send a signal to perspective rescuers.

I'm afraid that I am going to reject Charlie's offer. I cannot trust him to tell me the truth because he will lie to me the instant he sees an advantage in lying, and I cannot reliably tell when it is in his interest to lie. He will take my property when the expected cost of getting caught is less than the expected benefit of the theft. If a situation arises where my death will suit his interests, he will kill me (or let me die).

Brad, actually, would be the better ally. We are assuming, of course, that Brad is sincere in his beliefs. If he is, then he will not lie to me, rob me, or kill me the instant he sees an advantage, and may even seek to safe me at some personal cost. I will be able to trust what he says, even when it is not in his interest to tell me the truth. I can trust my property with him, even when he can steal from me without getting caught. I can trust him with my life.

Negotiations

My most serious problem would be convincing Brad to form an alliance with me, rather than David.

David is going to be telling Brad that I am just like Charlie. He will be saying that, because I do not believe in God, that the only thing I believe in is pursuing my own interests - just as Charlie does. He will try to convince Brad that it is in Brad's interest to form an alliance with him, David, rather than me.

My warning to Brad would be to look out for the first instance that he and David have a disagreement on a matter of religion. “Brad, David thinks that God has him on speed-dial for all important announcements. He thinks that he gets his truth straight from God. In fact, he gets his truth from his own mind. He is a dangerous combination of arrogant and intellectual recklessness that has no choice but to view any act you make against him as an act against God.”

I need to explain to Brad why I am not like Charlie. I hold that morality consists in promoting good desires and inhibiting bad desires. Those good desires includes an aversion to making false claims - an aversion that not only makes me reluctant to lie, but reluctant to accept and pass along anything that I have not checked to make sure that it is true. They include an aversion to theft, meaning that I will be no more inclined to take his property if I could get away with it than I would be to do any of the things that I absolutely hate doing, even when I can get away with them.

I need to explain to him that morality consists in promoting desires and aversions, so I am fully committed to promoting an aversion to lies, theft, and murder in others and using the tools of praise and condemnation to do so. Hopefully, our combined effects might have an effect on Charles so that his 'selfish' acts will come to include a personal revulsion at acts of deception, theft, and murder. Hopefully, they can also have an effect on David so that, when he reads his own desires and interprets them to be God's word written onto his soul, it will include personal dislike of deception, theft, and murder.

If not . . . if it turns out that we must defend ourselves from their violence, we can at least have the advantage of being united against a common threat. Meanwhile, the theocrat and the selfish atheist will be at each other's throats. Maybe, I would tell Brad, they will be too busy attacking each other and will leave us in peace.

Conclusion

The main point of this story is to point out why I do not see an important alliance between atheists against theists. The important alliance is with those who truly do hate dishonest against those who freely lie when they see an advantage to do so. It is with those who hate theft against those who will take from others when they can get away with it. It is with those who value living in peace with any who can live in peace with them rather than those who seek to attack those who do not think like they do.

This is why I write the blog as I do. I do not care whether the person I write about is liberal or conservative, atheist or theist. I care only about whether they are honest or dishonest, intellectually responsible or intellectually reckless, reluctant to do harm or willing to do harm, creating pockets of absolute power without checks and balances or creating systems of checks and balances to counter absolute power.

That, I think, is the best place for us to be focusing our attention.

The National Intelligence Estimate

For years now, the Bush Administration has been criticized for ignoring intelligence reports that did not tell them what they wanted to hear. I wonder if the critics are going to commit the same error.

In the most recent round started when the New York Times reported that a classified National Intelligence Estimate that said that “the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.”

This was combined with Bob Woodward’s book “State of Denial” that accused the Bush Administration of mishandling the war and occupation of Iraq as well.

In order to counter this bad press, the Bush Administration ordered sections of the National Intelligence Estimate to be released to the public so that they can see for themselves what it says.

This raises the question of whether those who criticize Bush are going to fall victim to the same types of mistakes. Are they, too, going to pay attention only to the parts of the NIE that say what they want it to say, and ignore the parts that go against their cherished plans? Or are they going to trust that the experts actually might know what they are talking about.

I am talking about those liberals who demand that we pull our troops out of Iraq.

The parts of the NIE that I am interested in are these:

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.

Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

This suggests that if we are perceived of having been driven out of Iraq, that this will improve the morale of the jihadists, aid their recruitment and support, and make the world a more dangerous place for Americans and Europeans. (Note: The NIE also states, “The jihadists regard Europe as an important venue for attacking Western interests.”)

Consider, for example, the Revolutionary War. Two key battles in that war were the Battle of Trenton where George Washington lead the ragged remnants of the Continental army to capture the city of Trenton. Washington did not capture this town because Trenton represented some key strategic location. He captured the town because he needed a victory with which to rally his troops and the country as a whole. Morale is a key component of any battle. In fact, victory in the battlefield has often had to do more with morale than with the size of the forces.

A victory in Iraq may well supply just such a boost to Jihadist morale, which would be a very bad move on our part.

Another example from the revolutionary war concerned the Battle of Saratoga. France had been sitting out the war up to this time, since it did not want to waste its effort on a losing cause. The American victory at the Battle of Saratoga convinced the French that the Americans had a fighting chance.

There are always people on the fence; people waiting to see which horse pulls into the lead so that they can make sure to bet on a winning horse. There are people in the world who may be tempted to aid the jihadists, but are not doing so because they worry about what might happen to those who support the losing side in this conflict. If we give the jihadists a victory, this could well inspire people now on the sidelines – important people with a large amount of backing – to take sides, and to take the wrong side.

It makes sense to say that withdrawing from Iraq could be a turning point in the battle against Islamic fundamentalists. I wish to leave it up to experts to make that determination.

“Cherry picking” is specifically the act of picking the evidence that supports one’s conclusion, ignoring the evidence that does not support that conclusion, and then asserting, “See, my case is proved!”

Holding up evidence that said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Queida, ignoring evidence that contradicted these conclusions, and asserting, “See, my case for attacking Iraq has been proved,” is one example of cherry-picking.

Picking the evidence that says that entering Iraq was a bad idea, ignoring the evidence that says that leaving Iraq in a way that would allow the Jihadists to claim that they drove us out and won a victory, and then asserting, “See, my case (that we should leave Iraq) is proved,” would be yet another example.

I am not saying that these will be the effects of pulling out of Iraq. Bush released only 10 percent of the National Intelligence Estimate. I, of course, have no idea what the other 90% says. I continue to hold that no morally and intellectually responsible person can give a responsible opinion about what to do in Iraq unless they have read 100% of that report, including the footnotes.

This means that I am not going to say what we should be doing in Iraq.

I am saying that we have good reason to condemn those who arrogantly assert that they know which plan for Iraq is best when there are stacks of data they have not seen.

I am saying that we have good reason to condemn those who cherry-pick data to support a preferred policy – to condemn those who ‘fit the intelligence’ to their desired conclusion, rather than fitting their conclusion to the intelligence.

We have suffered enough at the hands of such people. We have no use for them, whether they are found on the right side of the political spectrum or the left.

I am saying that it would be a good idea to elect politicians without forcing them to commit to either withdrawing troops or staying in Iraq, allowing them to make their decisions based on the evidence we are not allowed to see, rather than pretending that we know all the right answers and judging candidates by their ability to pander to our ignorance.

President Bush and the Concept of Evil

A discussion of moral theory should have something to say about the concept of evil. Does it exist? What form does it take? What can be done about it?

‘Evil’ as a Religious Concept

In the circles that I frequent I often hear people speaking about ‘evil’ as a religious concept. This means that ‘evil’ does not exist except in the context of religion.

What seems to concern them is the idea that ‘evil’ is presented as a supernatural entity – a force or a being – that has influence on this world. It is the idea that there are two camps; an army of goodness camped in ‘heaven’, and an army of evil camped in ‘hell’, who are doing battle against each other, with Earth as the battlefield. We are supposed to take sides, and help the forces of goodness defeat the forces of badness.

These assumptions make a very good premise for a lot of science-fiction story. However, they have nothing to do with the real world. They are, in fact, fiction. At best, they can be thought of as metaphor.

When I defend the existence of evil, it is certainly not going to take this form. The concept of ‘evil’ that I am going to defend has noting to do with supernatural forces or extradimentional armies. It will have to do with mundane real-world entities whose existence has been very well established.

Definitions

I continue to be grateful to the astronomical community for showing us that definitions are not carved in stone, and that we are free to change definitions whenever new data makes an old definition less useful – the way that astronomers have done with the word ‘planet’. In studying a concept we are not looking for some set of evidence that tells us that a word must necessarily be linked to a particular concept. We are free to say that, ‘even if the public at large is in the habit of using term t one way (e.g., ‘planet’ includes Pluto), it is far better for our studies if we use term t to mean something else (e.g., ‘planet’ does not include Pluto).

Economists do the same thing with money. Normal English speakers have this vague term called ‘money’ that has to do with what we pass back and forth in trade. Economists needed a more precise definition, so they came up with definitions that appear useful in predicting and explaining economic events. Actually, they came up with more than one. They call these ‘M0’, ‘M1’, ‘M2’, and ‘M3’.

So, when it comes to the concept of ‘evil’, no natural law or moral duty compels us to look for ‘the correct’ definition of the word. It is quite sufficient to look at how the term is generally used, and to see if we can come up with a more precise definition that is useful to us.

Elements of Evil

The Desire to Thwart Desires

We can start this by looking at the implications that people would draw if we were to say, ‘There is no such thing as ‘evil’.” I suspect that sentence might cause some people to be nervous. They would be afraid that others will take this to mean, ‘There are no actions worthy of condemnation. Everybody can do whatever they wish without guilt or shame.” This, of course, would make the world a very dangerous place to live in. Fearing this danger, people might be very unwilling to adopt the view, “There is no such thing as ‘evil’.”

So, let’s start with the idea that ‘evil’ refers to those people who do things that make them a serious threat to others. They are people that we have reason to strongly condemn, because condemning them makes the world a safer place. We also have reason to use our social forces to build psychological barriers of guilt and shame in as many people as we can to prevent them from becoming evil – to prevent them from becoming a threat to others.

‘Evil’ is found in desires that are seriously harmful to others. It is found in the person who loves to express his power over others by proving to them what he can do to them. His idea of a fun afternoon is ordering the torture and execution of a group of people and then sitting back in quiet contemplation at the fear this generates in the rest of the population. ‘Evil’ is found in the rapist and the sadistic killer. ‘Evil’, in this sense, certainly does exist.

Furthermore, ‘evil’ in this sense is something that we can fight using social forces such as condemnation. We certainly can and do have reason to put barriers of guilt and shame up to prevent people from becoming ‘evil’ in this sense. Preventing others from becoming ‘evil’ is one of the ways we can better secure our own safety and happiness.

Lack of Concern for the Welfare of Others

However, we have no reason to limit the concept of ‘evil’ just to those who enjoy doing harm to others. It also applies to a casual indifference to doing harm to others – an indifference that makes harm to others possible whenever it is useful.

We could, for example, imagine that Hitler was ultimately interested in promoting Germany. He need not have been after his own glory. Instead, he wanted to make Germany into the capital of the world and the German people its masters. In this sense, Hitler would be able to honestly say to the members of the Aryan race, “I sacrificed everything so that I could give you, the German people, the whole world.”

Hitler could have been a very generous person.

However, if this were true, Hitler would still be evil because of what he was willing to do to others to acquire this gift for the German people. In order to give the German people property in Poland, Hitler has no objections to marching into Poland and killing the Polish population, or to relocate them into slave labor camps (to produce more goods and services for the German people). This was still evil, even if Hitler did this for the benefit of others.

Hitler also wanted a world without Jews. It appears reasonable to assert that the harms that Hitler inflicted on the Jews were not an end in themselves (something he desired for its own sake). They were a means – a way of getting to something else that he valued – a world without Jews. If Hitler actually valued doing harm to Jews, he would need to keep them around so that he could do harm to them. He would not be able to harm people who do not exist. However, this was not his aim. His aim was to eliminate the Jews.

If Hitler harmed Jews as a means to an end, and not as an end in itself, this does not mitigate against the claim that Hitler was evil. His willingness to pursue ends that required doing so much harm to others, and the fact that he considered the harm he did to others of no consequence, is enough to classify his actions as evil.

The general principle to be drawn from this is that a person generally does not need to like harming others to count as evil. He simply needs to show callous indifference to the harm that he might cause to others, or the institutions that they use to protect themselves from harm, to be counted as evil.

Bush is Evil

President Bush’s actions over the past two weeks demonstrate that Bush is an agent of evil. We can accept his claim that he seeks to protect the American people. Yet, he would still count as ‘evil’ in the same way that Hitler’s claim to be working for the benefit of the German people would not protect him from the charge of being ‘evil’. This is because of the harm that Bush is willing to do to innocent people and to the institutions that all of us need to protect ourselves from harm.

Injustice

Bush pushed for legislation that displays significant disregard for the wrongness of torture, arbitrary arrest, and indefinite imprisonment. He seems not to care about the act that his ‘nets’ drag in a lot of innocent people who are forced to endure extreme abuse, and he does not care. Indeed, he cares as little about the harms his systems do to the innocent people caught in his nets as Hitler did for the innocent people caught in his nets.

Lies

Also, Bush has shown zero concern for the truth. Bush lies and ‘bears false witness’ against others without even a smidge of guilt showing through to suggest the wrongness of his actions. I have been critical of some of Keith Olbermann’s rants recently – charging him with inventing wrongs that he could then complain about. However, in his Special Comment on October 4 he correctly charged Bush with a disregard for the truth and a lack of concern over unfairly and inaccurately characterizing others sufficient to qualify Bush as evil.

Bush said that his critics do not want to listen to Al-Queida’s phone conversations. This is a flat lie. I want very much to have the government listen to al-Queida’s phone conversations. I want to make sure that the government is listening to Al-Queida’s phone conversations, and that they are not diverting resources to listening to other conversations, such as those of people who say things the Bush Administration does not want people to say. I am concerned about the Bush Administration using this as a tool of fear and intimidation against the American people. For that, I want somebody (the Judicial Branch) to look over the Administration’s shoulder and make sure that the Administration is not abusing this power for political purposes.

Bush said that his critics believe that his critics want to sit back, do nothing, and wait for Al-Queida to attack us again. Actually, most of those critics condemn Bush for senselessly wasting resources that he could have been using to fight al-Queida to carry out a personal vendetta against Iraq. To manipulate the American people into going along with this folly, the Administration told us falsehoods about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and link to terrorists. (It remains to be seen whether the Administration knew these claims to be false, or simply did not care enough to read the evidence objectively.) Some of his critics think that we should have been using those 150,000 troops and $400 billion actually fighting the war on terror. This is not an issue of ‘waiting to be attacked again.’ It is an issue of ‘fighting those who would attack us and not wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives chasing some red herring.’

President Bush routinely shows that he has just as much interest in the truth as Hitler had in the Poles. He will use it as much as it is useful, and destroy that which he does not find useful, without the slightest hint that the institution of honesty itself might have some moral value and is not to be wantonly destroyed.

Tyranny

Bush is also continuing to use signing statements as a way of destroying the legislative power of Congress.

Congress passed a bill stating that a FEMA director must have five years of executive leadership experience. Bush signs this bill into law. It is now illegal to hire a FEMA director with less than 5 years’ experience. Bush then issues a signing statement that says that he will ignore this law and hire whoever he likes.

As MSNBC reports, that bill also stated that “nobody but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.” Bush signs this into law. It is now illegal for anybody but the privacy officer to alter or delay these reports. Bush then goes back to his office and signs a statement saying that effectively states that he can and will have these reports edited as he sees fit.

We do not have a legislature any more. We have a dictator, with the power to create laws as he sees fit, answerable to nobody. We might as well disband the Congress for all the good they can do from this point forward.

Either that, or we need to impeach a President and send a message that Presidents also must obey the law – that the word ‘President’ is not simply another spelling for the word ‘Emperor.’

Conclusion

Bush is evil. There is no morality guiding his actions. He will harm innocent people at will, and destroy the institutions of truth, justice, and the separation of powers that we need to preserve our safety and happiness. There is genuine evil in the world, and it can be found in the Executive Branch of the United States and all who support him.

Kant's Categorical Imperatives and Desire Utilitarianism

I am torn on today's posts by two competing concerns. This is theory weekend, and I have a post on Kantian moral theory that I am ready to post. At the same time, Bush has been at his moral worst this week on the campaign trail, and I want to touch on those issues as well.

Therefore, today, I am going to start with a discussion of Kant's moral theory. Tomorrow, I will discuss the most recent Bushcapades in a post that will focus on an analysis of the concept of 'evil'.

Kant's Moral Theory

In last weekend's postings on value theory I discussed the principle of "Do unto others…" and how it fits with desire-utilitarianism.

This week I want to discuss a very closely related principle taken from Immanuel Kant's moral theory. This principle states, "In all things, act on that principle that you can will to be a universal law."

This posting is going to be difficult to write, because I realize that my readers have a widely diverging background in moral theory. Some know Kant's moral theory in detail. Others have never heard of him. I need to clarify some of the questions that those who know Kant's theory will likely have right off the bat, without boring those who have never heard of him.

Categorical Imperatives

Let me start by saying that there ain't no such thing as a 'categorical imperative.' All imperatives are hypothetical.

For the novice, an imperative is a statement about what ought and ought not to be done. Kant argued that there were two types of imperatives.

Hypothetical imperatives are tied to desires. They say something like, "If you want to get to the movie on time, then you should leave within the hour." The imperative (you should leave within the hour) is hypothetical because it depends on a prior condition (if you want to get to the movie on time). Take away the hypothetical condition (if you want…) and you remove the imperative (you should…)

Categorical imperatives are independent of desires. A categorical imperative says, "you should…" without having any preconditions that might sometimes be false. They are, in short, reasons for action that are independent of desires.

As I have argued in the past, there is no such thing. Value exists in the form of relationships between states of affairs and desires. Remove all desire, and you remove all value.

Now, this is a very superficial reading of Kant. I want to remind those who will recognize that I missed some nuances in Kant's theory that I only have a little bit of room here - barely room to scratch the surface.

Kant's Expression of "The Categorical Imperative"

Kant argued that there was a 'categorical imperative' and he expressed it in three different ways. Kant claimed that these three ways are identical. I really do not see how that can be defended. Two of his most famous and influential ways of making his claim are:

Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law

I want to argue that desire-utilitarianism contains hypothetical imperatives that are very near to Kant's categorical imperatives.

Desire utilitarianism says that all value exists in the form of a relationship between states of affairs and desires. Moral value concerns the relationship between desires and other desires. It aims to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. People do this by using social tools such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Desire utilitarianism has implications that closely match Kant's 'categorical imperatives.'

Specifically, we can change Kant's second phrasing to "Act on that desire that you can will to be a universal desire."

Indeed, this fixes some problems with Kant's formula.

Let's say that you walk into an empty room and you take a chair. Can you will as a universal law that anybody can walk into that room and take that chair? If we did, then we would have a problem. The chair can only hold one person. Therefore, the principle that it is permissible to use that chair cannot be made into a universal law. On Kant's theory, that would imply that sitting in the chair is wrong (immoral).

However, let us look at this in terms of desires. Let us say that, instead of a universal 'principle', we are looking for a universal set of desires. The desire we are looking at as a universal desire is not the desire to sit in that specific chair. If we universalize that desire, it would generate conflict and unpleasantness. What we want is, for those who have a desire to sit (which we have no reason to wish is universal), they also have an aversion to sitting in a chair that is already in use. We can, consistently and sensibly, will this universal aversion to taking chairs that are otherwise in use.

This is not a 'categorical imperative' in the Kantian sense. It is still a hypothetical imperative.

The value of the aversion to taking somebody else's chair depends very much on the fact that this aversion minimizes the thwarting of desires generally. It is very much compatible with Kant's hypothetical imperative. However, instead of being a simple hypothetical such as, "If you want to go to get to the movie on time. . . ," it is a complex hypothetical imperative that takes the form, "If [facts about all desires including those facts about desires that are malleable through social conditioning], then it makes sense to promote an aversion to taking chairs that are already in use."

Also, please note the reference to "all desires", and compare that to the Kantian categorical imperative to treat others as ends and not merely means. In desire utilitarianism, this says that

To treat somebody as a means only - as a tool - is to disregard any desires that the person may have.

A movie producer buys a car. That car has no desires. That means that the car can be used in whatever way fulfills the desires of others, regardless of what happens to the car. If the movie producer wants to use the car by using it in a stunt in which it gets smashed in an automobile accident and blown up, he may do so. The fact that this demolishes the car is irrelevant - the car has no interests. It only has value to the degree (and in whatever role) fulfills the desires of others.

People, on the other hand, have interests (desires). To say that a human is to be treated "as an end and not merely as a means" is to say that he will not be used solely for the fulfillment of desires that are not his own. Instead, his desires will be considered in the moral calculus. When the tendency of a desire to fulfill or thwart other desires is calculated, each of us is a member of the 'others' whose desires are included. That way, none of us are treated as a means only.

In the universe, one of the facts about desires is its tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires. Another fact about desires are their susceptibility (if any) to social forces. We do not have to attach the name 'morality' to these properties for these properties to exist. They exist, and they have the properties that they have.

If a desire (D) tends to promote other desires, then those who hold those other desires have reason to promote and strengthen D. If D tends to thwart other desires, then those who hold those other desires have reason to diminish D. Furthermore, if the strength of D is susceptible to social forces, then those others have a reason to employ those social forces to alter the strength of D. We can talk reasonably about what a person who has those desires that people generally have reason to promote, and who lacks those desires that people generally have reason to inhibit, would act under certain circumstances. Those statements are objectively true or false.

All of this is true in the context where all imperatives are hypothetical.

So, desire utilitarianism handles what 'makes sense' about Kantian moral theory.

It handles the idea of treating everybody as an end and not merely as a means. It simply means that we are talking about the relationships between desires and other desires, and what is objectively true about those relationships.

It handles the idea of acting on principles that one wills to be a universal law. It simply translates this into asking how a person would act if he had desires that one could will to be universal desires.

Taking Up Arms

A commenter over at Daylight Atheism, in a conversation I participated in, asked, "When, if ever, is it appropriate to take up arms and resort to violence?”

Okay, it wasn’t a question asked of me, but it is an interesting question.

It is also a dangerous question to answer. In fact, I do not think that there is nearly as much discussion of this topic as there should be because it is a topic about which people are justifiably afraid of giving an honest answer. There is always the risk that his views will be misinterpreted (or, perhaps, correctly interpreted) resulting in all sorts of suffering and abuse.

However, I have given a great deal of thought to this subject, and I'm going to risk giving an answer.

Freedom of Expression

Consistency is important, so I want to present my discussion on taking up arms by starting with another issue where I have already talked about the appropriateness of violence; freedom of expression.

In posts on the "Toledo Riot," and on the riots and violence in response to cartoons of Mohammed that I called “On Cartoons and Violence,” I addressed the issue that the only response to words are counter-words.

The Toledo riots, for example, concerned an instance where people responded to a Nazi rally with violence - much of it directed against the police who were protecting the Nazis. Actually, the police were not 'protecting the Nazis.' They were protecting the right to free speech against those who would do violence against it. The protesters, in this case, may have thought of themselves as attacking the Nazis. However, they were actually attacking this right to free speech, trying to do harm to it.

Protesting the Nazis is legitimate - another proper exercise of the right to free speech. Violence is not appropriate.

In a post titled, “Freedom of Expression,” I further argued that the right to freedom of speech is not a right to be immune from criticism. No right to free speech is violated by saying that somebody is wrong, or even saying that he is maliciously wrong - that he is uttering statements that no good and moral person would utter. The right to freedom of expression means only a right to freedom from violent response to mere words.

Clear and Present Danger

There is an exception. The right to freedom of expression comes with an exception when somebody creates a 'clear and present danger' to others. The person speaking to an angry mob, telling them that they should march to your house and lynch you, would justify a violent response in self-defense.

Also, consider the organized crime boss telling a subordinate to kill somebody. It would be absurd to allow the crime boss to assert that the right to freedom of expression allows him to express the opinion that this target should be killed. The right to freedom of expression does not protect a person who instructs somebody to kill. It also does not protect the Islamic teacher who instructs his students to go out and kill all of the Americans (or infidels, for that matter).

One story in the press recently involves a French high-school philosophy professor who has gone into hiding with his family. He expressed an opinion about Muslims being violent. As if to prove this teacher's point, the Muslim community responded with death threats, including a site that posted maps of where he works and lives, pictures of the teacher and his family, with instructions to kill.

These are evil people who would force a family such as this into hiding for expressing an opinion. If the French government was to issue warrants for the arrest of those responsible for this web site, I would argue in its defense. Muslims are clearly within their right to protest that this teacher's claims were inaccurate, that anybody who would write such an opinion is evil, and that we should question the credentials of a teacher who is prejudiced against a certain number of his students. However, all threats of violence are inappropriate.

Votes and Laws

In the spirit of the universal nature of moral principles, I would argue that these same moral considerations relevant to freedom of expression are relevant to political freedom. The only legitimate responses to expressions of opinion in a free society are counter-words and private actions. Similarly, the only legitimate response to a political campaign is a counter-campaign aiming to collect a larger number of votes.

The only time that it would be legitimate to respond to a political campaign with violence is if the government does not allow citizens to vote, the government allows citizens to vote but still picks the winners and losers, or the government allows people to pick the winners through exercising a right to vote but not allow for free debate (thus not allowing the people to cast informed votes on an issue.

Even here, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, "Governments should not be changed for light and transient causes." No society is perfect. As such, it cannot be the case that any transgression, however mild. The transgression must be significant, and all other forms of response have been blocked.

History

There are two major situations in American history where our government has taken positions that would have justified people in taking up arms against it.

The first situation existed with the institution slavery. If there had ever been a slave revolt in America, where African Americans and Abolitionists took up arms against the government of the United States, that would have been an instance of permissibly taking up arms. African Americans had no obligation to remain slaves for the sake of preserving the peace.

The second situation, the violent response that Native Americans had to American expansion and encroachment into their territories, was also a legitimate use of arms against the government.

A third situation gives us a strong suggestion as to how hard it is to meet the standard of "option of last resort" in a society that allows for free speech. The fact that women were not permitted to vote was another situation in which our political system was politically unjust. Insofar as it forced a group of people to be subject to laws that they had no voice in making, and that that were substantially arranged against their interests, an armed rebellion might have been justifiable. However, these women showed that they were able to obtain their freedom without firing a shot - by taking action that aimed to impress upon the male population that their cause was just.

Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King in America also showed the power of fighting unjust laws in a basically free country without resorting to violence. The success of their efforts showed that they did not live in a situation where armed rebellion was the only option that remained.

Today's America

In America today, even those who express the view that they are upset with the current anti-Constitutional legislation have hardly come close to proving that they have reached the option of last resort.

We have scarcely attempted to communicate our position to others through words – preferring to talk mostly to each other as if our position is an embarrassment.

As the Women's Rights campaign, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi have shown us, the option of first resort is to communicate forcefully to the moderates in this country that the nation is heading in the wrong direction - that this country's position as a model of morality and justice are being diminished, if not utterly destroyed, by the current administration.

And we have an election coming up.

If we fail in this, then we will not have gained any right to take up arms. There is no possible way to justify shooting people when we have not yet made a serious attempt to even talk to them yet.

Senator Frist's Surrender

Apparently, Senator Frist believes that the Americans should surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan - or, at least, we should negotiate a settlement rather than utterly destroy them.

Twisting Words

When I read news stories suggesting that this is Senator Frist's policy regarding Afghanistan, I immediately assume that somebody tried to reduce a complex idea to 25 words or less, and failed.

Then, this failure is compounded my political opportunists who see, in this failed attempt at summary, a 'straw man' that the can use to muddy debate, undercut hopes of rational discussion, and bear false witness against their political opponents, for the sake of personal power. After all, the power-grabber can now honestly say, "Hey, that's what it said in the newspaper."

See, there is a reason why I do not trust Democratic politicians any more than Republican politicians. Democrats will wail and complain and condemn Republicans who twist their words for political advantage. However, judging from their actions, the moral principle they live under is, "It is wrong for a Republican to twist the words of a Democrat for political advantage." Twisting stories about Republicans is perfectly permissible.

The reason they do this is because it works. The reason that it works is because we let them work. We let it work because many of us have picked sides and adopted an attitude that victory is the only thing that matters, and that injustice is only something that our opponents can do to us - never something that we can do to our opponents.

What Should We Do?

Who are the Taliban, and how many are there? Talibanis are like planets. The number of Talibani there are depends on how we define the term. Ultimately, I think that the most useful term to use defines "Talibani" as "people living in the region of Afghanistan and Pakistan who believe in a literal interpretation of the Koran - religious conservatives who believe that these sets of religious prescriptions are to be followed to the letter."

Defined in these terms, I would be comfortable guessing that the number of Talibani we are talking about is in the tens of millions.

So, what should we do with these people?

We could kill them all. We've got this problem in that we have a lot of troops tied up in Iraq right now. However, if we pull them out of Iraq and commit them to the battle in Aghanistan, I am certain that we could kill a few tens of millions of people in no time at all. After all, we have the benefits of modern technology. We could start by simply dropping Daisy Cutters on every village in the infected region until this cancer is destroyed, then move in and eliminate the small pockets that remain. Even if we do not get all of them, we can reduce their numbers to a degree that they are no longer a threat.

This is actually the most contemptible part of the practice of creating straw-man distortions for political gain. We end up painting ourselves into a political corner. Because, if we are not going to kill off everybody in these regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, then we have no choice but to find some way to live with these people.

This pretty much exhausts our options - live with them, or kill them.

Senator Frist dared to suggest that the "live with them" option might actually have some merit.

He was met by a storm of criticism from people who seem to have failed to recognize that the only option to "live with them" is "kill them all!"

I would like to suggest that the option of, "Kill them all!" has some morally questionable elements. When I take my desire-utilitarian moral theory out and plug an aversion to slaughtering tens of millions of people into the set of possible desires, that aversion ends up with a fairly high score. Slaughtering tens of millions of people is wrong.

So . . . then what? If we are going to have to live with them, how do we do that?

Replacement Killers

Consider the fact that the 18-year-old Talibani today was 13 years old when we went into Afghanistan after the attacks on 9-11. These are reinforcements for all of the people we defeated five years ago. Plus, most of the people we defeated 5 years ago are still around. We could not simply round them up and eliminate them. We could only round up some of them. We had to let the rest of them go home, to their wives and children - children that they then raised to respect the Talibani values that their parents grew up with.

Now, people who were 13 years old on 9/11 in this country are gearing up to fight (and kill, and be killed by) people who were 13 years old on 9/11 in Afghanistan.

In another five years, people who were 8 years old on 9/11 in this country will be fighting and killing people who were 8 years old on 9/11 in Afghanistan.

Every year, the Taliban is getting another group of recruits. Every year, we devote another generation of our own children to fighting them.

A hundred years from now their great-great-great-great-grandchildren will be fighting our great-great-great-great-grandchildren, unless we find some sort of strategy that has some hope of bringing about some sort of peace.

If a politician wants to suggest that we should look at options other than rounding up whole populations to be slaughtered, I am willing to at least listen to what he has to say.

Bush Administration’s Assumptions

At this point, I think that we need to admit to another fact - that the Bush Administration is made up of people who tend to lack a certain degree of intellectual acuity. Okay, fine . . . they're a bunch of idiots.

They assumed that societies are made up of populations who want nothing more than to be free. If a society is being oppressed, all we have to do is flick off the top layer of despotic dictators and the people themselves will naturally form a freedom-loving, egalitarian society in its place. So, once the Taliban was removed and the first seeds of a democracy were sewn in Afghanistan, the battle was over. It was time to start looking for another despotic dictator to overthrow.

The Bush Administration failed to even think of how fundamentalist religious indoctrination can turn people against the basic principles of liberty and justice. Of course, this occurs in the context of a fundamentalist religious government in this country passing legislation that approves of torture, rendition, arbitrary arrest, indefinite confinement, unfair trials, warrantless wiretaps and a list of other fundamental injustices. It should have been very easy for them to see the connection. Though, I repeat, one of the fundamental characteristics of this Administration has been its lack of a certain degree of intellectual acuity.

A Possible Avenue for Change

Ultimately, there will be no peace until we change the culture of Afghanistan. To do that, ultimately, we need to reach the kids. We need to make sure that when the current crop of 11 and 12 year old Afghan children reach the ages a 17 and 18 that they are adverse to the idea of killing Americans for whatever reason. If they have that aversion, then we will be safe.

It would help in teaching them to be averse to doing harm to innocent people if America itself lead by example, through our reluctance to do harm to innocent people. Over the past five years the Bush Administration has communicated quite the opposite message - letting the world know just how little we care about the harms that innocent people may suffer through our practices of arbitrary arrest, rendition, and torture.

We seriously would have been a lot better off if we had been lead by people who were smart enough to realize the magnitude of the problem we are up against and the huge amount of work that is involved in fixing that problem - people who had not made the mistake of thinking that nation-building was as easy as removing a dictator.

Ultimately, this does not square well with Senator Frist's suggestion of inviting the Taliban back into the government. Insofar as the Taliban are a group of people who will teach their children to hate and that violence against innocent civilians is a morally acceptable form of behavior, there is no room for the Taliban in any civilized nation. The very focus of our strategy should be to destroy that way of thinking (without slaughtering people). Frist's plan will have the contrary effect - of giving the Taliban ideology a sense of legitimacy.

Recognizing the fact that I am no expert, I offer the following two options as examples of ways in which we may avoid a future in which Americans who are ten years old today are fighting Afghanis who are ten years old today - in eight to ten years.

Option 1: Close down the Afghani schools that teach nothing but hate, establish actual school (even if they have to be built behind guarded walls for security), and give the children of Iraq a real education complete with a set of values that include, "Thou shalt not use weapons of violence against innocent people."

Option 2: Bring 200,000 Afghani children under the age of 12 to America, where they can live beside our children under the age of 12, go to the same schools, and learn our culture. At the age of 18, the students are drafted into the military for 6 years of service in Iraq. Hopefully, many of these will be driven to become civic leaders in their home communities.

Both of these options have the same core value of reaching the children of Afghanistan and helping to raise them with a proper aversion to killing innocent people that will make the world a safer place for the rest of us.

I am pleased that Frist acknowledged that we need to look for options other than "the military solution" of either wiping out whole populations or engaging in perpetual combat. I think that this is a step above those who say, "Kill them all!" – particularly those who make this claim so that they will not appear to be ‘weak’ on terror.

That is a solution that I tend to be disinclined to support.

Making a Difference

Today's blog will read more like pop-philosophy than I typically write. However, I have a couple of ways of looking at the world around me and my place in it that some might find interesting.

It may seem that, in such a large world with so many people, that there is little that any one of us could do that could actually have a real impact on the course of civilization. There are over 6 billion people on the planet right now. How many of them are going to make much of a difference in this world?

All of them.

Not all of their contributions will be good. However, they will all have an effect - and they each have the opportunity to choose whether their effect on those who are near them will be positive or negative.

Think of it this way. You are on an island with two hundred people. Every villager has an opportunity to make an important contribution to the village.

If we were to add another village on the other side of the planet, the original agent's contribution to his village does not dimish one bit. If we were to add a hundred villages, or a thousand, or six billion people all interacting, our capacity to have a positive or negative effect on the communities we belong to does not change.

Sometimes, I imagine the course of civilization as analogous to a large, heavy body moving through space. One of the things that physics teaches me is that, no matter how massive a body may be, and no matter the other forces acting on that body, a body drifting through space cannot resist even the smallest force acting upon it. Every force produces some movement - some acceleration - in the direction that the force is aiming at. Every force has some measure on the movement of that object through space.

That force will continue to have an effect until the end of time. Even when that force ends (even when we die) the effect of each nudge given to that object will still be there, still causing the object from being someplace at least a little different from where it would have otherwise been.

Will it be in a better place, or a worse place, than it would have otherwise been?

I have written before of how this comes with a certain amount of anxiety - a worry that I am not, in fact, pushing society in the direction it should go. This means constantly checking my arguments for soundness. I sincerely do not want to spend all of my effort nudging society 'over there' only to have it be the case that 'over there' is not such a good place to be.

These concerns are all the more real when combined with the idea that every posting has some effect - small, perhaps, but not 'zero' - in the direction that the world community travels.

Words are not the only things that have an effect. Actions have an effect as well. Whenever we act in a particular way we not only create direct effects from our actions, but we endorse a set of principles that suggest that it is okay to be doing that action.

For example, the drunk driver not only risks the possible effects of driving while drunk. He also endorses drunk-driving as a legitimate activity. He is telling others, "I think it is okay to go ahead and drive home, even when you put the lives of others at risk." By saying this to others, he makes it more likely that others will do the same thing. On the other hand, the person who refuses to drive while drunk also sets an example for others.

Even subtle actions that we often do not think about have an influence on the direction that society travels. We help to determine what shows are on television, what books are on the shelves, and what shows up in the news.

Fox News exists in its current form because people choose to have it as a part of their society. These are people who care more about dogma than truth - and Fox News Channel seems quite content to tell people the lies that people want to hear. Yet, this situation exists because a lot of people have decided to use their spare time nudging society in the direction where partisan dogma and lies are called 'news.'

The web sites we choose to visit, the books we choose to read, the music we choose to listen to, the television stations we choose to watch - every one of them is a nudge, however slight, pushing society in the direction of, 'can we have some more.'

There is an argument that says, "my vote does not count because I cannot influence the election.' If we measure the importance of a vote by the percent chance of altering who wins or loses the election, every voter can reliably predict that his vote is not important.

Except, the margin of victory also matters. It does not determine who wins or who loses the election, but it does communicate praise or condemnation. If a particular candidate can with 80% of the vote (in a free and open election), then this is high praise.

These considerations tie in with my major objections to legislation approved of in Congress regarding the treatment of detainees. The two most common objections that I have heard (and two that I have raised myself) rests with the fact that we are destroying safeguards that are meant to prevent us from harming innocent people (showing that we do not really care whether we harm innocent people), and the fact that other countries may decide to do to Americans what we claim we have the right to do to these detainees.

However, the third and most significant problem with this detainee legislation is simply that it promotes a culture in which torture, arbitrary arrest, indefinite imprisonment, and other forms of injustice are acceptable. It is not just a matter of Americans treating others unjustly or them doing the same to Americans. It is a matter of a world in which the unjust treatment of prisoners becomes the worldwide norm - where people cease to object to the torture, abuse, and unjust detainment of prisoners.

I know . . . I know . . . all prisoners are guilty and deserve torture and abuse merely because they are prisoners. I keep forgetting that little fact.

This is how one makes an impact on society - by helping to shape the type of culture that exists. By words and actions, each of us decides what becomes more common, and what becomes less common, in society as a whole. The claim that, "I can't make a difference," is simply false. Every one of our choices - what we watch, what we read, what we do, what we say, and how we vote - makes a difference.

It has a large effect on those who are nearest to us.

Yet, it also has an effect – a real effect – on society as a whole, nudging it a bit towards one set of values or another.

The only question is: What type of difference are we going to make?

Democratic Cowardice and Submission

Announcement: Carnival of the Godless #50 is now available, hosted by Salto Sobrius.

Today's Post

Over at Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse expressed his dismay in the post, “This Is Not America” that an American congress could pass legislation supporting torture while revoking checks and balances against arbitrary executive power and denying people their day in court. In this presentation, he expressed shock over “the cowardly and submissive way in which the Democratic Party gave in to this.”

He wrote about the opinion that many Democrats “need to be thrown out of office just as badly as do the Republicans.”

I agree with the ends. However, the posting does not does not say much about means.

The Dilemma of the Opposition

Specifically, the post neglects the fact that the Republican leadership pushed these laws through Congress at this particular time for a reason – because the Republican leadership believed that the American people will support candidates who support this legislation and reject candidates who would stand up against it.

Importantly, the Democratic Party strategists seem to have agreed.

The Republican leadership was giving the American people what they want. They pressed this legislation precisely because the people, for the most part like torture, arbitrary arrest, indefinite imprisonment without trial, the repeal of habeas corpus, and an executive branch freed from any checks and balances against arbitrary power.

In America today, those who vote for these things are those whose seat in Congress are more secure than those who vote against it.

Because of this, demanding that opponents vote against this legislation has the same practical effect as demanding that opponents give up their seats to those who support this legislation – Republican opponents sacrificing their seats in the primaries, and Democratic opponents losing the general election.

Effectively, American values being what they are, opponents (Republican and Democrat) had a choice. They could stand up to this assault on liberty and justice and allow those who defend this legislation to continue to dominate Congress. Or, they could cave in on this issue and preserve the chance of gaining control of Congress.

What should a person do when faced with these choices? Which is the bigger threat to liberty and justice - all things considered? Are we better off with this law being passed (and a chance that the Courts will overturn it anyway) and an end to the leadership that has these particular values? Or should opponents have stopped this legislation - fought against it - and allowed its defenders to keep political control of the House and Senate.

The Ideal Solution

The ideal solution, of course, would have been for opponents to have blocked this legislation, been seen as heroes in defense of the Constitution and the moral principles written into it, and improved their chances of taking control of Congress.

Yet, the evidence suggests that the American people do not see those who stand up against the principles of tyranny and injustice as heroes. They see such people as villains – unworthy of a seat in Congress. Defending freedom and justice is a sign of weakness - a "softness" that needs to be exterminated from the American psyche.

Evidence suggests that the idea that the American people would greet those who defeated this legislation as protectors of liberty is as much of a fantasy as the idea that the American army would be greeted as liberators in Iraq.

So, what is an opponent of this legislation to do, if defending liberty and justice is something the bulk of the American electorate no longer tolerates?

Fortunately, I do not have to make those moral choices.

However, I am a citizen. These events tell me one thing: that both major political parties believe that the American people support the values written into this legislation more strongly than they oppose it. Both political parties have a great deal at stake that depends on knowing what the American people want. Therefore, they can be counted as “expert witnesses” in reporting on the values of the American people. They might still be wrong, but it is not rational to bet against the best evidence available.

This truth, if it is true, would be a very unpleasant truth. Yet, it is a truth we cannot run away from. In particular, we are being foolish if we decide to live our lives ignoring this truth, and planned strategies for a fantasy world that exists only in our mind – a fantasy world in which the bulk of the American people oppose torture, oppose unchecked executive power, or believe in and support the right to a fair and impartial hearing.

Once we accept this truth we can see that the first priority is to restore these principles and values among the American people. If we should succeed at accomplishing this, then we the Congress will follow suit. If we succeed in accomplishing this, we will create a future society in which parties vie for the ability to prove their devotion to these principles, rather than compete for the opportunity to destroy and discard them.

This means changing our focus from the Congress and from our own individual votes, and instead turning our attention to our friends, families, co-workers, and neighbors.

This means speaking up at the dinner table, speaking up in the casual discussions that go on before and after (and sometimes during) meetings with co-workers or other groups that we belong to. It means giving forceful arguments that state that people who support torture, unchecked executive authority, and deny the right to a fair trial are people worthy of condemnation and contempt.

This also means doing a lot of research and a lot of thinking, so as to be able to best defend these principles among those who are not inclined to look favorably on a defense of these principles of liberty and justice. It means being able to say, “You speak about honoring liberty and justice, but you dishonor them, and here is how…”

It is simply irrational to accuse legislators of ‘cowardice’ in not standing up for the principles of liberty, unless we are demonstrating at least as much courage in our lives – among those we know – watching the backs and defending – vocally, loudly - those who oppose this type of legislation.

Partisanship

By the way, I do not see this as a partisan issue. There was once a time when the Republican Party would have stood up against this type of legislation. There was once a time when the Republican Party was the party of limited government and fiscal responsibility, whose members would have been near to taking up arms before they would allow the type of legislation passed last week. I suspect that there are some Republicans who would still like to oppose this legislation – if not for the fact that their leadership will replace them with more compliant candidates.

This is a matter of defending liberty and justice in both parties. This is not a matter of being Democrat or Republican. It is a matter of having moral values that support or vilify torture, rendition, unchecked executive power, arbitrary arrest, indefinite imprisonment without trial, governments spying on their citizens, and the like.

There are 35 days left until the November elections.

An Uplifting Topic

In light of all of the depressing news of last week, where the U.S. Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of torture and injustice on a number of fronts, I want to spend a day discussing a topic that is more uplifting.

Readers might have heard some buzzing in the background regarding progress in moving humans into space.

As I have argued in the past, I consider this subject vitally important for two reasons.

(1) We live in a universe that is indifferent towards our survival or extinction. We risk becoming nothing more than a collection of archaeological relics for some other civilization to find unless we take steps to improve our chance of survival. That is best done by spreading out into the solar system.

(2) Future generations will be better off to the degree that they are getting their resources from dead space, rather than cutting deeper and deeper scars into the living Earth.

One of the events of the past month involved Iranian immigrant Anousheh Ansari’s 10-day trip to the International Space Station. During her adventure she maintained a blog, where she did an excellent job describing her experiences and her feelings about them.

There was one blog entry where she addressed the issue of spending so much money on this trip when there were people starving on Earth and other problems that the money could have been used for. A part of her answer attempted to justify her mission by pointing out that space science actually does help to feed the people of the world in the form of earth-monitoring satellites.

This is a bad argument. It is like justifying the purchase of a huge yacht because fishing vessels feed the world with all of the seafood they bring in. The purchase of the yacht needs a much tighter connection to harvesting seafood to give this connection any merit.

Yet, I find it strange that people who complain about the amount of money “wasted” on space spend $300 billion per year on the sports industry – buying tickets, building stadiums, collecting artifacts. This does not include the billions of hours spent watching sporting events. This is just in the United States. Imagine the good that could be done if we spent this $300 billion fighting disease and these billions of hours educating ourselves on issues that we will be making important decisions on in the next election – so that we actually know what we are talking about.

If we are going to complain about a “waste of money,” I would say that we first eliminate sports. There are other wastes of time that can be added to the list – such as the filming and watching of television sit-coms, going to movies, eating in restaurants, making and playing computer games, and the like. We have a long list of wasteful activities to eliminate before space tourism will make it any where near the top of the list.

Ansari’s trip does not have the link to feeding the world that she claims it to have.

However, it does not need that link.

More importantly, unlike the other activities mentioned, Ansari’s trip does link to the two goals that I described at the start of this essay. Read the comments to her blog, and read about people being inspired to pursue an interest in science and engineering that she generated. It is quite possible that her trip, and her writing about it, will produce far more than $20 million in world-wide benefit just from the additional scientists and engineers that she has brought into the world.

As Ansari wrote in her blog, “As you can see there are many ways to tackle a problem. What you choose is up to you.”

In Other News

When it comes to developing space, I view NASA to be largely a waste of money and effort. The real news can be found in the private space industry. In past blog entries, I have argued for taking the money that will be spent on NASA projects, and use that money to give a boost (in the form of prizes and other awards) to the private space industry.

Here is some recent news:

Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites released a mockup of SpaceShipTwo – designed to carry 2 pilots and 6 crew members into space, to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and, more important, to see the Earth as one large globe instead of a set of fractured communities.

Bigelow Aerospace has revised its plans to build a private space station. Bigelow tested a scale model of its inflatable space habitat, Genesis I, in July with great success. Because of that success, they are revising their private space program.

Part of this revision involves working with Lockheed Martin to man-rate the Atlas rocket. That is, the rocket will be made reliable enough to carry people into orbit – probably to a Bigelow Aerospace private space station.

(Note: As I mentioned earlier that NASA has selected two private space companies, SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler, http://www.kistleraerospace.com/ as winners of its $500 million Commercial Orbital Transportation Services competition to develop private man-rated rocket systems to carry people and supplies to the International Space Station.)

Bigelow Aerospace is scheduled to fly its second test mission, Genesis II, in January, 2007.

Lockheed Martin has unveiled three models for a new lunar lander. What I find most exciting about this is that two of the three models come with wheels – a lunar “mobile home”.

A new research technique suggests that there could be 1,000,000,000,000,000 (one quadrillion) small objects orbiting the sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. That’s 150,000 space rocks for each person on Earth. I’ve been thinking about what I would like to do with my 150,000 rocks.

The number of extrasolar planets discovered to date: 208. However, these are almost all really big planets orbiting very close to their suns – “hot Jupiters.” Yet, when this solar system structure is fed into a computer model of how solar systems form, the models suggest that 40% of these solar systems could have earth-like planets – earth-like, that is, except for the fact that they are ocean worlds.

I do not believe that we will ever have “warp drive.” Yet, humans will, some day, load themselves onto huge space ships and prepare for multi-thousand-year journeys to distant solar systems to set up homes. I do not think we will be looking for earth-like planets. I suspect that future generations will think of planets as huge gravity wells not worth the effort to climb down to our up out of. They will live in free-floating habitats. This means that any system with a star in the middle (to provide energy) and a gaggle of smaller rocks floating around it (that can be mined) can be a future home.

But that is way down the road. To get there, we have to focus on our survival today.

These efforts are not just a matter of fighting against all of the evils that humans do to one another on this world. There is also the prospect of fighting for an exciting and interesting future.