Moral Progress

If religious ethics is true, then there can be no such thing as moral progress, because the moral principles accepted by primative people living in biblical times was perfect, which means it cannot be improved.

Progress in General

Would you trust your child to a doctor that has read no medical text book that had been written in the last two thousand years?

If you needed a bridge built, would you consider the best bridge builder to be somebody who popped into this century after last working to help Caesar cross the Rhine River?

It seems unlikely.

It seems unwise.

The Possibility of Moral Progress

Yet, there are those who think that we should structure society according to moral principles and practice set down two thousand years ago, and ignore anything written or said since that time. Those ancient principles, they assert, were perfect. This means that nothing discovered since then can improve on those principles.

This is as dangerous as trusting your child to a doctor or your bridge to an engineer who thinks that nothing positive could have been discovered and no improvements made over the past two millennia.

Not a Relativist Argument

This is not an argument for common moral relativism -- a view with which I emphatically disagree. This view is willing to treat moral principles like medicine and engineering. The principles have not changed -- at least not much. However, our understanding of those principles has improved significantly over time. Over the course of that improvement, religion has been more of a hindrance than a help.

Morality vs. Law

Morality is concerned with organizing societies in ways that make the lives of its citizens better than they would have otherwise been.

Some may argue that this is the realm of law, and not morality. However, in the realm of law, we still have to ask, “What makes a law just or unjust? What laws should we have and what laws ought not to exist?" Ultimately, these are moral questions that cannot be answered without investigating the nature of justice and 'ought'.

The question then becomes, “Can we improve the ways in which we organize society to better benefit the people who live there?” The answer to this seems obvious. Just as we can improve health care, and improve on our engineering practices, as we gain information over time, we are also able to discover and put into place better ways of organizing our society and better moral principles to live by.

The Substance of Moral Progress

Improvement, of course, requires the ability to recognize which primative ideas were wrong and need to be abandoned. It requires the ability to make adjustments in what we believe is right and wrong.

For example, primative acceptance of slavery was a mistake. We need moral principles separating church and state in order to prevent the violent destruction in religious wars that emerge when state and church are mixed. A better society is one that treats women and men as political equals, gives members of the press freedom from political persecution, and requires that the accused be convicted by a jury of its peers before punishment is justified. Such a society respects the scientific method and the results that scientists come to -- results that have helped us fight starvation, disease, and the forces of nature.

All of these ideas -- ideas that did not occur to primative people (or the gods they invented) -- are ideas that now know make important contributions to creating a society in which everybody, on the whole, is better off.

I want to repeat, saying that moral progress is possible is not the same as saying that moral principles themselves change over time -- any more than the possibility of medical or engineering progress means that biology or physics has changed over time. It means that, because of our improved understanding of the universe, we can have better medical care, better engineering, and better moral systems, than primative tribes could have dreamed of.

It takes a vivid imagination to think that our contemporary moral principles can all be found in books written in the distant past. The case that our laws are grounded on religious text would have a lot more support if God had given Moses the 10 Amendments (also known as the Bill of Rights) rather than the commandments that are listed -- some of which are now widely regarded as unjust and unsuitable for a just society.

Why could God have not said, "Thou shalt not own another person or treat him as property?" Why could God not have said, "No person shall be subject to punishment unless first convicted by a unanimous vote by a jury of his peers?" Why did God not say, "No human shall rule over another as a Monarch or King, but only at the will of the people casting votes in a fair election.?"

God did not say these things because the people who invented God had not yet learned them. They had some moral rules right -- prohibitions on lying, murder, and theft. But they still had a lot to learn, as did the Gods they invented.

The Constitution of the United States could have been dictated by a benevolent God at the start of time. We could have had a Book of Monroe that identified the three parts of government and ways for keeping them in a system of checks and balances. Instead, it was “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” who ordained and established this Constitution for the United State of America.

The authors of the Constitution were aware of the fact that they were merely human and subject to error. They knew that future generations would come up with new and better ideas. Therefore, they included a method for revising the Constitution and incorporating these improvements.

Summary

On the other hand, religious ethics simply denies the possibility of moral progress. They insist that the original rules were correct because they were handed down by God. That which is perfect when it begins cannot be improved. That which was handed down by God cannot be corrected by humans thinking up better ideas.

This assumption, that primative tribes knew the best rules for organizing society, is a very dangerous assumption to make -- as dangerous as trusting a child's medical care to primative shamen or having modern structures built using only those engineering principles accepted at the time of Caesar.

We will almost certainly pay a very high price in terms of human suffering if we insist on using primative rules written by substantially ignorant people long ago to organize a modern society.

The concept of moral progress is entirely at odds with the idea that these primative tribes had a perfect moral code.

Moral Argument against 'under God'

Anybody who believes that 'under God' was not meant to denigrate citizens not sharing certain religious views, also has to believe that 'with liberty and justice for all' was not meant to denigrate those who would defend tyranny and injustice.

Setup

At the start, I would like to make two points.

1. Morality vs. Law

First, I would like to stress that blog is concerned with morality, not law. An institution (such as slavery before 1865) can be immoral at the same time that it is constitutional.

As a result, I am not going to argue whether having 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance is constitutional. Instead, I am concerned with whether a person of good moral character could support having such a pledge. I am going to show such a person could not offer their support. If it is constitutional to do so, it is merely another example of a contitutionally permitted injustice.

2. Tactics in the Church/State Separation War

Second, I want to comment about the tactics that individuals who favor church-state separation have been using over the last few decades.

Church-state separation is not a popular doctrine to defend. Many who do so become the targets of a great deal of anger and abuse.

To save themselves from this abuse, some defenders have been hiding behind judges robes, presenting a legal case to the judge against these forms of discrimination, but refusing to present a moral case to the people. They wait for the judges to give a decision, then hide while the public vents its anger.

Now, the angry mob of church-state unificationists are taking out the judges. This is no accident; it is the result of a deliberate campaign to replace each separationist judge with a unificationist judge as the opportunity allows. By popular demand, they are gaining the power to interpret, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," to mean "Congress shall not get in the way as theocrats turn the United States into the Christian equivalent of Afghanistan under the Taliban."

People who have grown accustomed to an army of separationists judges working to defend them from the theocrats outside of the wall, are waking up to discover that those theocrats are on the wall, and what has once been a fort is being turned into a prison.

It is time to address the immorality of some of these policies.

Moral Principles

If any government official were to stand up and say, for example, "Jews are despicable enemies of what is truly American, even though they do no wrong, and even though they break no just laws, purely because they do not share our beliefs," morally decent people would be outraged, as they should be.

Decent people will have the same reaction to any neighbor who supports such an official. That neighbor clearly does not understand the moral obligation of a government to give its peaceful law-abiding citizens equal respect and consideration.

Yet, anybody who says thet Pledge of Allegiance with the words 'under God' included as they are is making this same type of morally repulsive claim.

The Pledge states that we are one nation with liberty. Including 'liberty' in the Pledge says that liberty is good, and that any who promote tyranny are despicable enemies of what is truly American.

The Pledge states that we are one nation with justice for all. Including 'justice' in the Pledge says that justice is good, and that any who promote injustice are despicable enemies of what is truly American.

The Pledge states that we are one nation indivisible. Frances Bellamy created the Pledge in the late 1800s specifically to deal with the scars of the Civil War, and to unite the nation. His reason for including the word 'indivisible' was to communicate the idea that America was to remain one country, and that those who would seek to divide it are to be considered enemies of what is truly American.

When Congress added 'under God' to the Pledge during the McCarthy era, it was meant to convey the same message. Our nation's enemy then was the (godless) communists. Including 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance was Congress's way of telling people that a good American must believe in God, and that those who do not believe in God are unAmerican. The godless (or, actually, if we were being honest, the non-Christian) are people to be viewed with suspicion and distrust.

By adding these words, the government created a situation where peaceful law-abiding citizens are forced to endure a situation where their government calls them the moral equivalent of tyrants and perpetrators of injustice. To participate in public life, they are forced to endure these rituals. However, the greatest wrong rests in the fact that the government forces their children to sit in attendance while the school leads their friends in a daily pledge to regard those who are not 'under God' in the same light as those who promote tyranny and injustice.

No decent human being would allow a government to force its peaceful law-abiding citizens or their children to endure this daily public ridicule and humiliation.

“Under God” Is “Merely an Expression of Faith”

Some seeking to defend the Pledge argue that it simply asserts the speaker's belief in God and is not meant to ridicule or humiliate people with different beliefs. They say that rewriting the Pledge is like passing a law to punish people for merely saying that they are Christian.

I doubt that a more absurd statement has ever crossed human lips.

If 'under God' was not meant to promote Christianity and to hold other views in contempt, then it seems that 'indivisible', and 'with liberty and justice for all' were not meant to promote unity and to hold separatism, tyranny, and injustice in contempt.

Imagine a politician standing before a crowd and saying, "These words, 'with liberty and justice for all', are merely an expression of our heritage. They are not meant to actually promote liberty and justice. They are perfectly compatible with the defenders of tyranny and injustice being just as good Americans as those who say the Pledge. And it is simply absurd to claim that we have children recite these words as a way of encouraging them to adopt the values of liberty and justice and to reject tyranny and injustice."

It is a matter of historical record that Francis Bellamy included the word ‘indivisible’ specifically to promote the Union and to discourage children from adopting the separatist values that contributed to the Civil War.

The person who denies that ‘under God’ is meant to endorse monotheism and to hold alternatives in contempt, and particularly to entice children to favor monotheism over other views, is entitled to the same ridicule and contempt that we would offer the person who said that the Pledge was not meant to support Union, liberty, and Justice and to hold contrary views in contempt.

Morally Expressing Faith

The moral objection against the Pledge as written is not an objection to people asserting their belief in God. Those who wish to do so can use the same option that George Washington used when he was sworn in as President. Washington voluntarily added the words ‘so help me God’ to the end of what was written into the Constitution as a godless oath. In doing so, he expressed his own beliefs without denigrating or showing contempt for any alternative view. It is a perfectly legitimate way for a government official to express his faith.

“I pledge allegiance . . . so help me God,” is also a perfectly legitimate way for somebody to express their faith. It raises no moral flags. The person who says this is not saying that those who believe otherwise are unAmerican in the same way that those who defend tyranny and injustice are unAmerican. He simply, honestly, expresses his own beliefs.

The morally decent person would find this option acceptable. The morally contemptable person would reject this option in favor of a national policy of daily rituals to treat their peaceful, law-abiding neighbors with contempt.

A National Day (Or More) of Science

If you want to save lives, you can do more by becoming an engineer or scientist than by becoming a priest, by studying data than by studying a bible, and by building machines and levees than by building churches.

President Bush has declared Friday, September 16th, as a "National Day of Prayer" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Thankfully, he also used this opportunity to encourage people to perform acts that would actually benefit the victims of this disaster; to contribute time, money, and needed goods.

After this day of prayer, there is something else we can do that will actually help to save lives in the future. We could use a day or more of good science.

Thousands of years of prayers have done little to save people from the ravages of hurricanes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters. Dumping virgins into volcanoes have never saved a village. No rain dance has ever ended a drought. All of the prayers that a nation can muster will not keep any hurricane away from our shores.

At the same time, we can see even with Hurricane Katrina, that science has given us far more power than prayer. Scientists built the weather satellites that took the pictures that told us that a hurricane was on its way. Scientists built the rocket that put the satellite in orbit, and the communications equipment that allowed us to see what the satellite could see. Satellites designed and programmed the computers that ran the computer models that predicted the path of the hurricane, giving people a chance to escape. Scientists ran the equations that told us that the levees around New Orleans would be topped, and possibly destroyed, by a Level 4 hurricane.

Max Mayfield, head of the National Hurricane Center, called the governors of Mississippi and Louisiana, and the mayor of New Orleans, well before the storm hit and told them what to expect. He did not get his information by looking at entrails or fasting while praying for divine guidance. He got his information by taking physical data, putting them into formulae that had a proven ability to explain and predict the future based on current observations, and read the results.

There was no magic. There was no miracle. There were human minds using human intelligence to solve a problem.

Scientists save lives.

These people, that some condemn with the accusation that they base their whole perspective on "atheistic materialism" that sees no place for a God, have helped more blind men see and lame men walk than any religous prophet.

Those who ignore scientists -- people who have no respect for what scientists do, how they do it, or the results they get – get in the way of saving lives.

Science vs. Religion

There is a debate over whether science is compatible with religion. Some religious leaders fear that science has the power to replace religion, so they seek to tear down and destroy science.

I really have no interest in that debate. I know that there are excellent scientists who hold their ability to look at the world objectively and use data and scientific theory to guide their conclusions, who are also very religious. I know others who think that science provides no evidence for a God and no reason to postulate a God, and have given up on those beliefs.

I do not think that it is at all important to take sides in that debate.

I do not know Max Mayfield’s religious beliefs. I see no reason why they are at all important. He, and the people who work for him, have the capacity to look at data, plug it into scientific formulae, and get conclusions that save lives. The lives are saved.

Max Mayfield, and those who worked underneath him, worked to save lives. That is the only fact that I will judge them on. That is the only fact that any morally decent person should judge them on. Not on their religious beliefs. Only on the efforts they made to save lives.

They did good.

Moral Guidance of Science

Science can be used for good or for evil. Science is not unique in this. Since the very first moment that humans learned how to use tools, those tools could be used equally well by good humans (to help themselves and others live better lives), or for evil (to do harm to others).

I can well imagine an early cave man with his cave wall painted with the slogan, “Clubs no kill people; people kill people.”

Good people use science to help others; bad people use science to harm others. Science itself is neither good nor bad. Science itself is tool. It is more powerful than most tools, but it is still a tool. Its use depends on the moral character of those who use it.

There is nothing evil in using the power of science to better understand hurricanes and their effects in order to save more lives. If we give scientists the tools to study hurricanes, learn their ways, and learn how we can better defend ourselves against them, we will have a power to save lives far beyond anything that prayer has ever demonstrated the ability to do.

Good, Evil, and the Ravages of Nature

Most of the world’s religions carry a common message. Nations whose citizens behave morally will tend to benefit, while nations that shun their moral duties and obligations will suffer. Usually, it is said that they benefit or suffer because of the blessings or punishment of a God.

Yet, these things are true, in a way, even if there is no God. If we, as a nation, act irresponsibly by neglecting the capacity to save and protect lives that the scientist creates, then we will suffer the consequences. Lives (and property, to the degree that it is also important) will be lost that could have been saved.

We will, as a nation, continue to be punished for our irresponsible behavior.

President Bush's Responsibility for Katrina

Morality is about values. It is about choices. The choice to put friends in charge of departments that exist to save lives, rather than people skilled in those responsibilities, tells us a lot about President Bush's values.

President Bush has accepted responsibility for the federal government's poor response to Hurricane Katrina.

In a sense, this is as significant as Bush publicly stating that the sun is hot. Of course Bush is responsible for the federal response to this natural disaster. He is the President of the United States. It is his job to be responsible for such things.

Bush also admitted that mistakes were made. However, he has not yet said what those mistakes were. He has promised an investigation into uncovering what went wrong However, he has not yet announced support for an investigation that has any chance of reaching the conclusion, "The President failed to live up to his obligations." In fact, today, Senate Republicans blocked a measure to set up an independent investigation into what happened with respect Hurricane Katrina.

I would like to take a look at the question of where Bush ultimately failed to execute his duties as President of the United states.

Friends over Americans

Bush appointed individuals to manage disaster relief who had no experience managing disaster relief. In fact, they had had no experience in any task relevant to successfully executing a rapid response to a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina.

What do these appointments say about Bush's moral character? He had jobs to fill. He knew some friends and loyal supporters who could use the work, so he assigned those friends to these jobs. It means that, when Bush was thinking about these appointments, he cared more about how he could help his friends and supporters than how he could best take care of Americans caught in a significant national emergency.

Every choice a person makes tells us something about that person's character -- their values. A person who chooses a veggie sandwich (without cheese or mayonnaise) rather than a thick steak with sautéed mushrooms and a baked potato with butter and sour cream is telling us something about what that person values.

A person who chooses a head of Homeland Security or the Federal Emergency Management Association who has been a loyal supporter, but who has no background in security or emergency management, tells us what that the person making those appointments values as well.

Morality is about values. Morality consists in caring for the things that one should care about. People should care about their friends. However, the President's primary obligation is not to his friends, but to the people of the United States. A person of good moral character looks at the task of finding somebody to fill the lead roles in agencies concerned with national security and disaster relief should be primarily concerned with whether the American people are safe and can obtain prompt and efficient help in case of an emergency.

We see evidence of this as well in the comments that Bush made as he toured the devastated areas. Of all of the things he saw, the one that sat closest to the surface of his conscience as he spoke was the damage to friend Trent Lott's house. The President said, ""Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house," cracked Bush, "there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

Bush's values are clearly not what they should be for a man in his position.

Intellectual Recklessness

President Bush has shown a consistent tendency for believing what he wants to believe, independent of the evidence.

Recklessness occurs when a person, going about his normal business, is not careful about how his actions may affect others. The reckless person is not malicious; he does not intend to harm others. However, he does not exercise proper caution, so his actions end up harming others unintentionally.

The drunk driver illustrate the moral quality of reckless behavior. The drunk driver does not intend to kill anybody as he drives home; he just wants to get home. However, drunk drivers do care people. Their recklessness puts others at risk, and sometimes those risks become real.

The intellectually reckless person is somebody who goes about his normal business without considering the effect that his beliefs might have on others. He is not malicious; he does not intend to harm others. However, he does not exercise proper caution when it comes to properly securing his beliefs. He believes things that are unfounded. Due to these unfounded beliefs, he ends up harming others unintentionally.

President Bush has shown a strong tendency for intellectual recklessness throughout his administration.

There is mountains of scientific evidence supporting the claim that humans are increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which in turn will contributes to global warming. However, Bush does not want to believe it, so he denies the evidence. He even has staff members edit the scientific reports to claim more uncertainty than the scientists actually reported.

At the same time, UN weapons inspectors in Iraq were reporting no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. In spite of this, Bush insisted that the weapons must exist, and subconsciously if not consciously encouraged intelligence staff to interpret findings in such a way that supported this belief.

Bush simply did not believe that this hurricane would be substantially different from any other hurricane that struck during his Presidency. He knew that there would be destruction, and took steps appropriate to any other hurricane that struck. However, it took days to get through to him that this hurricane was different.

Those who allow the evidence to determine their beliefs, rather than allowing their beliefs to determine the evidence he will listen to, knew that this hurricane would be different days before it hit land. President Bush did not realize the full scope of the problem until four days after the hurricane struck New Orleans.

Bush did not hesitate to respond to the effects of the hurricane because he was malicious. He simply forms his beliefs recklessly -- without due consideration of the evidence of the facts. As a result of this intellectual recklessness, people get hurt.

Some of them die.

This is what comes from the actions of an intellectual "drunk driver."

I have written more about the concept of intellectual recklessness at my web site.

Conclusion

Morality is about values.

President Bush shows his values in the choices that he makes. When he chose to put friends and supporters into positions of authority in FEMA, he showed that he valued those friends and supporters more than he values the American people he was supposed to serve. His friends get important jobs. The American people get a Government bureaucracy that cannot do its job.

President Bush also showed his values in his disregard for evidence. He holds onto his beliefs with a stubborn certainty, apparently unconcerned with the risks that recklessly formed beliefs have for the lives and safety of others. As President of the United States, intellectual recklessness can have the most severe consequences.

America has a right to a President with strong moral values. Morality is not about sex. Morality is about choices. Hurricane Katrina showed us some of President Bush's choices. Hurricane Katrina showed us a lot about President Bush's moral character.

Side Note

A student of history can easily see how rare it is to live in a land where a common citizen can write something like this about the leader of his country without fear for his life or, at least, his freedom.

Americans have done some things extraordinarily well. This is one of them. I wish to express my appreciation to those who have made this happen, and hope that we all can keep up the good work.

John Stossel: Price Gouging

The type of price gouging Stossel seems to be defending is like that of a person on a yaught finding a shipwreck victim floating in the ocean, and charging him $100,000 to come on board.

A few days ago, a friend pointed me to a syndicated column written by John Stossel in which he defended price gouging, and asked for my opinion.

Strossel asks us to consider a scenario where an individual with a dehydrated baby is looking for water. The individual first goes to somebody who was selling water at the standard price. However, because of the huge demand, this seller has run out of water.

The parent then finds another person who is selling water for $20 per bottle. Because he sold the water for such a high price, he still had water in stock, and the parent (in his scenario) was able to save the dehydrated baby.

His point was that price gougers save lives.

In Defense of "Price Gouging"

I understand Stossel's main point about price gouging. I have written an article defending "price gouging" myself and the ways in which interfering with this practice does more harm than good.

However, my analysis differs from Stossel's in one crucial respect. Stossel neglected to consider an essential point.

The parent can only get the water if he has $20.

Stossel said, "By charging $20, the price gouger makes sure his water goes to those who really need it." However, this is not true. The price gouger will freely sell a bottle of water for $20 to the person who wants to give his dog a shampoo. At the same time, the parent who has a dehydrated child, but who does not have $20, gets nothing.

This is not a case of resource going to those "who can really need it." The resource goes to those who can really afford it, and cares not one iota about 'need'.

Types of Scarcity

There are two distinct types of situations we have to look at here.

Long Term Structural Scarcity

The first type of situation involves a long-term structural shortage. This applies to gasoline and oil. In New Orleans for the next several months it involves tree cutters, carpenters, engineers, cleaners, electricians, and a large number of experts. High prices will bring more people into the city to do the work that needs to be done.

However, we still have to consider the fate of the people who simply do not have enough money to pay the higher prices, or who can pay it only by giving up food, clothing, shelter, health care, or educational opportunities -- all of which cost money.

In the case of gasoline, rich people can consume gasoline without concern, contributing to a scarcity that drives prices up. As long as they want the gasoline more than other things, they can continue to drive the prices up. They could be using this on all sorts of wasteful activities; the market does not care. The market only cares about their willingness to pay. Meanwhile, the poor, who need to give up more important goods and services to get gasoline, are forced to pay whatever price the rich are willing to tolerate.

Ultimately, I believe that markets do a much more efficient job than government bureaucracies in allocating scarce resources. However, it is simply not true that markets channel resources to those who most need them.

Short Term Emergency

The second type of situation involves a desperate short-term need under emergency situations. These are cases where an emergency has generated a short-term immediate need for something that is typically easy to come by, but not in this case.

Under this description, we can include a case in which a car breaks down on a lonely piece of road during a blizzard. The driver sees the lights of a house nearby, bundles up the baby, and goes to the house.

The farmer, in this case, decides that he will let the stranded motorist and the baby use his house, but charges them a rate of $100 per minute (each) and $10,000 to use the phone.

We can include in this category somebody on a pleasure yacht coming across a life raft from a shipwreck. The owner of the yacht shouts down that he will sell passage on his boat for a mere $100,000 per ticket. Using the radio to call for help will cost extra.

We can imagine a case in New Orleans where somebody with a private helicopter flew from rooftop to rooftop willing to take on passengers at a rate of $10,000 per seat, or an individual with an SUV willing to drive somebody to safety at the same price.

When Stossel talks about selling water for $20 per bottle, this seems to be the type of price gouging he has in mind in this instance. These are examples of individuals exploiting a temporary, desperate need that some people may have in extraordinary circumstances.

There is no virtue here. These are evil and despicable people, fully worthy of our condemnation. Just societies consider these types of people to be criminals, and deservedly so.

The Store Owner

So, what is the morally responsible option if one is a store owner with a large supply of water, facing an emergency with a huge demand? Stossel explores two options. One is to sell the water (or give it away) in which case it will disappear too quickly, and those in need will go without.

The other option is to sell the bottle at an excessively high price, in which case the rich bid the price up beyond what the poor can afford, and the poor end up dying of thirst.

There is a third option, a morally responsible option, which is to sell the water at a reasonable price (and give it away to those who cannot pay), but limit the purchase to 1 bottle per customer (per day) until the crisis passes.

This is no different than volunteering to allow the stranded motorist to use one's house and phone, picking up the shipwreck survivors without charge, or volunteering to pick up stranded survivors and carry them to safety. These are the duties that a virtuous person willingly accepts.

Consequences

Strossel warns us that there will be too few heroes in times of crisis, so we must allow the price gougers to seek whatever payment they can accept. If we fear that we will have a shortage of (potential) heroes willing to help others in a time of crisis, we need to make some more.

This is what morality is for. We praise those who help others, and condemn those who do not, just so that we will have a larger supply of those who help others when we need them.

Strossel's strategy, to praise those who shun kindness, and denigrate those willing to help, will have the opposite effect, making heroes more scarce in times of need.

Argument vs. Violence

In researching Stossel's article and other responses to it, I came upon "An Open Letter to John Stossel" at GreatScat.

The response changed Stossel's situation into one where a desperate parent shot and killed the store clerk. Desi, the author, ended the posting with, "Now my questions. Just out of curiosity, are you a Libertarian, and did you complete Economics 101? On second thought, however, your answers don't really matter. You're dead. Heh heh. Good luck with that journamalisming thing."

"...You're dead. Heh heh."

That crossed a line.

All things considered, if I had an option to choose my neighbors, I would much rather have John Stossel with his misguided libertarianism, or even the price gouger who will sell water for $20 per bottle only to those who can afford to pay, before I would choose Desi with her cheerful love of death.

There are too many problems in this world caused by those who cheerfully celebrate the deaths -- even if imaginary -- of those who disagree with them. These types of people have proved far more dangerous than "price gougers" could ever be.

Rush Limbaugh on Cheering Disaster

Limbaugh claims that being religious makes him a better man than others because he knows that some things are absolutely wrong. However, it does not seem to have helped him recognize the moral fault of 'bearing false witness'.

On his website, Rush Limbaugh posted a transcript titled, "The Left Celebrates Katrina Destruction, Terror Attack They've Been Waiting For." In this transcript, he stated, "The left is happy. They're energized. They're excited in the midst of a national disaster where many of their own constituents were harmed and maybe killed."

One moral principle that transcends almost all moral systems (and all moral systems of merit) is the principle that it is wrong to "bear false witness against thy neighbor." Whenever a person speaks about his neighbor, he should make sure that his statements are true and accurate.

Speaking dishonestly about a neighbor leads to injustice. Unjust treatment is treatment that cannot be justified. Any treatment grounded on the words of those who bear false witness is, by that fact alone, unjustified in the same way that convicting an accused criminal based on lies is an unjust conviction. Civil society requires that its citizens have a respect for the truth if they are to prevent the misery and injustice of actions grounded on error.

In the Judeo-Christian religion, the prohibition against bearing false witness is a commandment; the 9th Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Though I think that the Bible was written by men without any divine intervention, they were men smart enough to see that civil society required that the people have a respect for the truth.

The Nature of False Witness

Limbaugh's claim that the left is celebrating the destruction in New Orleans is false in two respects.

Broad Statements are Always Unjust

First, "the Left" is not a unified body. "The Left" includes many poor New Orleans citizens who have watched family members die, or are friends and neighbors of those who have done so. The claim that they are celebrating this destruction is a very obvious lie.

"The left" includes people who have watched the suffering on television and sat crying for its victims. "The left" includes people who are reacting out of genuine anger that people could act in ways that bring about this type of misery, and who swear to do everything in their power to make sure it never happens again.

It is simply not possible to use a blanket term such as "the Left" in this way and make a true statement. This is why prejudice and bigotry are immoral. They are attempts to paint whole groups of people with a common brush, and they are never entirely true. They always bear false witness against at least some members of that group.

It is always unjust to blame one person for the actions of another, so statements that attempt to paint all people on "the Left" or any other group in one broad stroke are always unjust.

Compassionate Warnings

Second, consider the case of a mother who has told her son to wear a helmet when he rides his bike, just in case he gets into an accident. However, her son ignores her advice. Let us assume that the son is an adult not living at home.

Limbaugh's form of reasoning would have us think that this mother is eagerly waiting for her son to have an accident, so that she can run up to him, happy and energized, and say, "See, I told you so!"

Limbaugh seems unable to imagine the mother, living in anguish that her son's recklessness will get him hurt, reaching that fateful day when she gets a call from somebody who says, "There's been an accident." He seems unable to imagine the anger and hurt with which the mother greets her son in the hospital and says, "How many times have I told you to wear a helmet?"

When the son looks up at his mother and answers, "This is probably the happiest day of your life, isn’t it? You just could not wait for the day when you could come in here and say, ‘I told you so.’”

The son's words -- or anybody else who claims to be speaking for the son in these terms -- are not the words of a virtuous person. They are cruel and mean-spirited. A morally conscientious person would not say them of an individual without considering alternatives. No person can accurately make this claim of an entire group.

Arguing in Limbaugh's Terms

Some might want to claim that Mr. Limbaugh is not, in fact, bearing false witness because he truly believes what he says.

However, what Limbaugh believes is irrelevant.

I can illustrate the error in this way of thinking with a simple hypothetical story.

Imagine, Rush Limbaugh dies and is standing in line at the entrance to heaven. Ahead of him is a man talking to the gatekeeper. Limbaugh can hear the conversion.

Looking in his book, the gatekeeper says, "You blew up a bus. You killed a lot of people."

"Yes, I did," the man answers proudly.

"You have killed innocent people. You have broken the commandment against murder. You cannot enter."

"I do not believe they were innocent," says the man. "They were supporting an immoral government. I have a right to attack those who support my enemy."

"It does not matter what you think. It matters what you did, and what you did was to kill innocent people. You committed murder, so you cannot enter."

When Mr. Limbaugh steps up to the gatekeeper, the gatekeeper says, "You bore false witness against your neighbor."

"No," says Limbaugh. "I believed that my statements were true. I did not think that I was bearing false witness."

"It does not matter what you think. It matters what you did, and what you did was bear false witness against your neighbor. Therefore, you cannot enter."

Truth Matters

When this hypothetical Limbaugh tries to avoid moral responsibility by basing morality only on what he thinks is wrong, he is defending common moral relativism. This is the type of claim made by somebody who believes that there is no right or wrong except that which the person thinks is right or wrong. Since Limbaugh did not think he was bearing false witness, he wants to assert that he did no wrong.

However, he would be mistaken. The prohibition against bearing false witness in fact is that which generates the obligation to check one's sources, look for other interpretations, and show the moral integrity necessary to determine whether what one says is true and accurate before saying it. It is an obligation to have a love for the truth and a hatred for “bearing false witness” that is so strong that one tries to avoid it wherever possible.

We all make mistakes. However, the virtuous person will make fewer mistakes because he knows that he is morally responsible for his mistakes, and goes through the effort to make sure that he does not bear false witness. The vicious person does not care whether he bears false witness or not. He does not care about the truth, and is more than happy to try to sway others with a convenient fiction.

Conclusion

If Mr. Limbaugh truly believes in God, if he believes that this God punishes sinners, if he believes that it is a sin to bear false witness against one's neighbor, then I find it odd that Mr. Limbaugh is so apathetic when it comes to determining whether he is bearing false witness against his neighbors.

It is as strange as a person who believes that there is a God, that this God punishes sinners, that it is a sin to murder, and yet murders without remorse or apprehension.

However he may reconcile these conflicting beliefs in his own mind, from a more objective perspective this much can be said: Neither of these descriptions refer to a person of good moral character. A person of good moral character does not murder, and does not bear false witness against his neighbor.

A person of good moral character would not say that the left cheers the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

The Blame Game

There is a lot to be said for fixing the problem rather than fixing the blame. However, we cannot ignore the fact that sometimes a person is the problem.

I want to say at the start that this blog is different from my other writings. There, I write about general moral principles. I analyze what they are and how we can know about them.

Here, I want to show what comes up when when I apply those principles to real-world events.

For example, many people are protesting that this is not the right time to be participating in any sort of "blame game". There are people who need help. Our obligations to help these people means that it is wrong to divert resources away from that activity into a game of blame and counter-blame.

They are wrong.

Helping people means getting the resources they need to them as quickly and efficiently as possible. It means constantly looking at how those resources are being managed, identifying problems, and taking care of them quickly so that people who need those resources can get them.

A good leader does not wait until the crisis is over to ask, "How can we do this better?" He is asking himself that question every waking moment of every day. He is constantly on the watch for problems that are preventing him from getting the best possible results, analyzing those problems, and eliminating them as quickly as possible.

If he finds that a problem exists because the person handling a set of resources are not handling them well, he replaces that person immediately with somebody who will do the job well.

He does not wait to assign responsibility. He solves the problem.

The person who says, "Let's not play the blame game" is effectively saying, "Let's not try to identify and fix the problems that may be keeping us from doing a good job." The person who says "Let's not play the bmake game" is more interested in protecting political allies then in finding problems that prevent resources from getting to those who need them.

Finger Pointing

There is a different aspect of the "blame game" that is not so defensible - that is not defensible at all. This is a childish game where everybody who had their hands in a particular pie look for somebody else to blame when things go wrong.

What these people should be doing was fix the problem.

This is where leadership plays a role. The leader tells his subordinates not to play the blame game and fix the problem. Yet, at the same time, a true leader is looking over their shoulders with an eye to finding out who does their job well, and who does their job poorly. One type of employee who is doing his job poorly is the person who is looking for somebody else to blame rather than doing his own job to the best of his ability.

Ultimately, the rule that I use when I am running a project is that I am the one to blame if anything goes wrong. If somebody who reports to me makes a costly mistake, I was the one who put that person in that position. Therefore, ultimately, it is my costly mistake. As the leader, it is my job to make sure that I assign responsibilities to those who can handle them.

The type of employees that I would like to see in any position are those, when a crisis forms, are too busy trying to solve the problem to concern themselves with blame - except insofar as those employess need to assess the competence of people who report to them.

Preparation

After the attacks on 9/11, the federal government should have immediately started looking at the most damaging attacks that terrorists could launch against the United States. A possible terrorist attack on the levees at New Orleans should have been high on that list. With enough high explosives, terrorists could blow open the levees and destroy a whole city.

In accordance with the government's duty to protect the people, it should have had a plan for dealing with such an attack. This attack, unlike a hurricane, would probably not come with any advanced warning. There would be no opportunity to get 80% of the people out of town before the flooding started.

A plan to deal with a terrorist attack on the New Orleans levees could have easily handled a hurricane that gave four days' warning and that could be tracked on a map.

None of this seems to have been done.

It is a lot easier to act in the face of a crisis than to react. Cruise ships start off each cruise with a lifeboat drill. Airplanes give the same instructions for what to do in case of an emergency at the start of every flight. Cruise ships have lifeboats and airplanes have emergency exits that, hopefully, are never used.

Buildings have sprinkler systems, and IT departments for any sizable business has backups that they hope will never be used.

The odds of a levy breech, particularly after 9/11, were far greater than the odds of any given cruise ship sinking. Yet, nobody seemed to have thought to install any emergency exits. Nobody seems to have run any lifeboat drills, or even similated a lifeboat drill, for a city that never more than a few decades away from facing a terrorist attack or Category 4 hurricane.

Investigation

Now that the crisis has hit, there are calls for an investigation.

An investigation is needed.

Republican congressmen want a Republican-controlled joint House-Senate committee to run the investigation.

Democrats are resisting this plan.

The Republicans should not even be suggesting it. This has conflict of interest all over it. The problem with "conflict of interest" is that it sacrifices the interests of those who are not participating in the hearing to those who run it. In this case, the conflict of interest in such a hearing risks sacrificing the American people to the political interests of the Republican party.

A Democratic hearing would suffer the same problem.

This issue needs an independent commission whose members of members who are respected for their ability to put the interests of the people above those for any political party. The American people need to have the case heard by people who can look at the issues objectively and state, "In the future, things will work much more smoothly if we institute the following changes."

Ultimate Concern

Hurricane Katrina has exposed one very disturbing fact.

Four years after 9/11, the Federal Government does not have the ability to respond appropriately to a city in crisis. We have lived for four years under a government that has been telling us that we can relax and go about our business, we have found out that we cannot relax and go about our business.

To anybody who has thought that the government has a plan for dealing with the next city-wide crisis, I suggest that you make your own plans. Empirical evidence now suggests that you may need to live on your won for at least 7 days before the government shows up to offer assistance.

It may be useful to have a plan ready. Don't forget to try to think of the multitude of ways in which that plan could go wrong.

When the crisis hits, there will be a lot of people standing around ready to play another round of the blame game. The game does not do those who suffered in the catastrophe any good; it's already too late for that. The responsible person does what he can to prevent being one of those victims.

Introduction: Making the World a Better Place

Why am I creating this blog?

Ultimately, it is because I want to leave the world better than it would have been if I were not here. This has been an interest of mine since I was in high school.

This interest drove me through 12 years of college, where I primarily studied on moral and political philosophy through undergraduate and graduate school. I also spent some time studying economics and history.

I studied moral philosophy because I discovered that this was where people went to study what "better" means. Clearly, before I could even try to make the world better, I needed to know what "better" was. Moral philosophers sought answers to questions like, What is 'better' anyway? How do I recognize it when I see it? Is there a fact of the matter, or is 'better' just a matter of opinion?

I studied economics because most of the debates that people were having on how to make the world better were economic issues. Is capitalism better than communism? Should we raise the minimum wage? What is the best way to control pollution? Should education be the responsibility of the government or of private entities? It is one thing to say that people have a right enough food to keep from starving to death, it is another to be able to say how they get that food.

I studied history because we cannot create laboratory experiments where we look at different ways of organizing society and see what works. The only 'laboratory' we have is to look at the past and to look at the effects that different options have had.

I spent 12 years in college. I never got my PhD because I ran out of money. Ethics, as a profession, does not have a lot of high-paying job opportunities. However, I did get an education, and I still have an interest in making the world better than it would have otherwise been.

Now, I have a few ideas of what ‘better’ is.

I put all that effort into learning this stuff. Now, I want to put it to use. I hope that, with all of that schooling and reading, I have picked up some useful ideas along the way.

I can start off by giving an outline of some of my core ideas that I will be defining and building on in the posts that will come.

1. There is no God, at least not in any morally useful sense. God is not morally useful because we have no way to determine exactly whose idea of God is correct. If we cannot choose among different ideas of God, then our choice is arbitrary. This means that morality, based on God, is arbitrary, and not very useful. Some things we have to figure out for ourselves.
2. There are moral facts. If somebody says, "Capital punishment is wrong," that statement is either true or false. If it is true, then anybody who says that it is false is mistaken -- and vica versa. Sometimes, the answer may be complex. Capital punishment can be wrong in one set of circumstances, but not wrong in others. Still, moral statements are true or false. Morality is the science of finding out which.
3. There are no intrinsic values. There is no mysterious property of "rightness" and "wrongness" to be found in any action, intention, event, object, or state. This might be seen to conflict item (2) above. However, if you think about it, most of the objectively true and false statements that you make in a day have nothing to do with intrinsic properties. “I am in Denver” is an objectively true or false statement. However, being in Denver is not an intrinsic property.
4. All value depends on desire. Without desire, there is no value, it is as simple as that.
5. Moral value does not depend on the desires of the person making the evaluation. Whether capital punishment is wrong does not depend on whether the hangman gets off on killing people. It depends on whether capital punishment, or a desire to kill in certain circumstances, would help or hurt people generally if everybody had it. Nobody can answer this question by looking at their own likes and dislikes. It is quite possible for a person to like something, and for it to be wrong, simply because, if everybody liked it, the world would not be a better place.

That should be enough for now. I hope that I can provide something useful in the days to come.

By the way, I also answer questions -- those that have to do with right and wrong, good and evil. If you have any, let me know. I'll do what I can to answer them.