1000 Posts and a Birthday

Somewhere in the midst of discussing the Case of the Communion Cracker I wrote my 1000th essay.

It’s also my birthday.

As a result, I have decided to relax a little, sit back, and enjoy myself.

So . . .

Hello readers.

I want to thank all of you for showing up. Some of you have been here a while, and you still show up. I am honored.

Some people might be surprised that, after all of this time and effort writing blog posts, that I still do everything wrong. My posts are way too long. They are boring. They are poorly proofed and edited. It is, in short a surprise that people show up at all.

Nobody comes here so that they can breeze through the atheist news of the day. Or, if they do, they quickly leave again and swear never to return. Coming here takes a certain amount of commitment to whatever the subject of the day is going to be.

I’m sorry about the editing problems. I just run out of time. You see, when I go to edit a post, I usually end up rewriting it. I remove all of the old mistakes (because I simply block off whole sections of text and delete them) but introduce new mistakes in their wake. At the end of the day, when I am finishing up my post, my head is typically bouncing off the desk as I fall asleep at the keyboard. That has something of an adverse effect on quality. I’m sorry about that.

Yet, I’m still up at 4:30 the next morning to start my research for the next post.

Tell you what. If somebody out there will give me $1.7 million, I’ll quit my job and work on these essays full time. That will include editing. C’mon. What do you say? It’s my birthday, after all. Clearly, I deserve $1.7 million.

Oh well. Until the $1.7 million or something similar shows up, I will continue to do what I can.

I’ll be back tomorrow to continue working on the second 1000 posts.

Alonzo Fyfe

Donahue, Censorship, and Hate Speech

There are two statements that the head of the Catholic League has made with respect to the Case of the Communion Cracker that deserve special mention, because they bring up special moral considerations.

[Note: Previous posts covering other aspects of this issue can be found in the Case of the Communion Wafer Part I: Theft, Part II: PZ Myers, and Part III: Bill Donahue]

Censorship

In the first press release that the Catholic League sent out on this issue, , Minnesota Prof Pledges to Desecrate Eucharist Bill Donahue said:

Because the university is a state institution, we are also contacting the Minnesota legislature.

In what follows it is necessary to remember that this blog is concerned with morality, not matters of law. If one wants to know what the law does or does not allow, consult a lawyer. This blog is concerned with ethics.

On the matter of free speech, one principle that I have defended a number of times is that the right to freedom of speech does not imply a right to immunity from criticism. In fact, it implies no immunity from criticism. Criticism is a form of speech, so naturally if there is a right to freedom of speech it must include the right to a freedom to criticize.

PZ Myers has a right to freedom of speech. This includes a right to communicate the proposition that the consecrated communion cracker is still just “a frackin’ cracker”. This includes the right to treat any cracker that comes into his rightful possession as a cracker, and to do with that cracker whatever he may rightfully do with any other cracker.

This right to freedom of speech does not grant Myers a right to immunity from criticism. It is still perfectly legitimate to use words and private actions in order to condemn Mr. Myers if he should perform such an act. In fact, the right to freedom of speech implies that it would be wrong to prohibit others from criticizing Myers for those actions, since criticism is speech.

The question of whether people have a right to criticize Myers through words and private action is a different question from the question of whether he would deserve criticism if he were to perform such actions.

However, the primary distinguishing characteristic of the state is its monopoly on violence. The right to freedom of speech implies a right to immunity from violence. Bringing the threat of government violence against people is one way of reacting to another person’s words with violence. Whenever anybody summons ‘the state’ to stand on their side they are summoning the ultimate instrument of violence.

Summoning the state to stand on one’s side is the very definition of censorship.

The charge of ‘censorship’ tends to be used too liberally. People often use the accusation as a way of deflecting blame and silencing criticism. For example, if a person makes a racist remark and becomes the subject of a stream of condemnation and adverse private actions as a result, he is likely to scream ‘censorship’ at those critics and assert his right to freedom of speech. However, as I said above, the right to freedom of speech is not immunity from criticism or private actions. Using the concept of ‘censorship’ in this way counts as an abuse of the term – a rhetorical ploy used to try to trick critics into silence.

However, the charge of ‘censorship’ is used legitimately whenever it is used against people who try to summon the power of the state to silence an opinion. Here, the word does apply.

Since Donahue has threatened to summon the state to his side to silence those he disagrees with, the accusation of ‘censorship’ would be perfectly legitimate in this case.

Hate Speech

I have written a couple of posts about hate speech. Hate speech, I have said, involves making unfounded moral accusations against a group of people as an expression of one’s own unjustified hatred and/or as a way of promoting hatred in others.

This leads to the second statement that Donahue made that I would like to look at. This occurred in the second press release, “Hysteria Marks Myers and His Ilk”

It contains the following statement:

As a result of the hysteria that Myers’ ilk have promoted, at least one public official is taking it seriously. Thomas E. Foley is chairman of Virginia’s First Congressional District Republican Committee, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and one of two Republican at large nominees for Virginia’s Electoral College. His concern is for the safety of Catholics attending this year’s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Myers’ backyard. Accordingly, Foley has asked the top GOP brass to provide additional security while in the Twin Cities so that Catholics can worship without fear of violence. Given the vitriol we have experienced for simply exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we support Foley’s request.

Earlier, I said that “hate speech” was speech that makes unfounded moral accusations against a group of people either as an expression of the hate of the speaker or to rouse sentiments of hate in the audience.

Donahue’s statements clearly qualify.

There is absolutely no evidence that Myers and his ‘ilk’ are interested in any sort of violence. At the very least, Donahue did not provide any.

In fact, in the very same press release, Donahue himself testifies to the lack of evidence of any threat of violence.

But he’d better be careful what he says, because if I get any death threats, it won’t be hard to connect the dots.

Apparently, Donahue had not gotten any death threats. Yet, in spite of this absence of evidence of a threat to violence, Donahue acted to paint Myers and ‘his ilk’ as people prone to violence – as people to be hated and feared because of a tendency to do harm that requires Donahue and his allies to seek additional security.

The hate-monger wants people to believe that the targets of their hate are a threat because the hate-monger feeds off of fear and hate. Donahue either believes this nonsense – which makes him a bigot in that he presumes the moral inferiority of whole groups. Or he does not believe this nonsense but is willing to use fear and hate to manipulate others for his own benefit.

Either way, it does not speak favorably to the matter of his own moral character.

If Donahue were a moral and just person, there are a couple of things that he would have done differently.

I find it interesting to note that Donahue runs an organization that he claims to be concerned with civil rights. Yet, Donahue shows absolutely no understanding about what civil rights are about. One of the things it is about is not using hatred and fear as a weapon to score political points.

Another thing that a person concerned with civil rights does not do is make gross overgeneralizations about whole groups.

In my own case, I will criticize a person only when I have evidence that the person has done something wrong. I will never make an accusation against Donahue and ‘his ilk’. This is because I am aware of the fact that Donahue’s ‘ilk’, just like Myers’ ‘ilk’, make up a diverse set of people who do not all share the same beliefs and moral failings. I condemn Donahue for Donahue’s words and actions, and worry about the ‘ilk’ only when I have evidence on which to make a judgment.

Donahue does not need evidence. Donahue is more than willing to make a pre-judgment of Myers’ ‘ilk’ – to judge them without evidence by making unfounded generalizations. This pre-judgment is the very essence of bigotry, and it is something that Donahue seems to have no problem with.

Conclusion

Donahue’s problem is that he does not have any type of moral theory that tells him what counts as a violation of a civil right and what does not. All he has are his own feelings. Since those feelings include Donahue’s hatreds, bigotries, and prejudices, we can easily see those sentiments coming out in his moral claims.

This is not a blanket charge. This is something that can be demonstrated.

We see Donahue’s call for censorship in his threat to appeal to the legislature to silence those who make claims he does not like.

We see Donahue’s disposition towards hate-mongering in branding Myers’ ‘ilk’ as prone to violence without any evidence but Donahue’s own desire to believe the worst in (certain) others.

We see Donahue’s prejudice in his disposition to pre-judge Myers’ ‘ilk’ – making gross generalizations that allows him to judge a whole group of individuals without any consideration of individual differences.

This from a person who heads an organization that is allegedly concerned with civil rights.

They should be acutely embarrassed.

The Case of the Communion Cracker III - Bill Donahue

The Case of the Communion Cracker Part 2: Bill Donahue

So far, I have given a moral evaluation of the theft of a communion cracker.

In brief, there are three types of theft, distinguished from each other by the method used to illicitly get possession of property that belongs to somebody else. Property illicitly acquired through the use of force is robbery. Property illicitly acquired through the use of stealth is burglary. Property illicitly acquired through the use of deception is fraud.

Regardless of the method used to take somebody else's property, the object remains the property of the person it was stolen from. If one discovers that one has acquired stolen property, he or she should return it to its rightful owner is as good a condition as circumstances allow.

I have given a moral evaluation of PZ Myers' reaction to this event.

It was wrong for him to incite people to commit theft.

However, nothing that he wrote constitutes 'hate speech'. Hate speech involves making false moral claims about a group of people in order to promote hatred against them. The types of speech that classify has hate speech includes:

(1) The Connecticut Valley Atheist's Christmas sign that shows the world trade center and the text, "Imagine No Religion" - thus falsely casting moral blame for the 9/11 attacks on all people who subscribe to any religion.

(2) Ben Stein's "Expelled" that tried to link all atheists and all those who believe in evolution to the Nazi Holocaust.

(3) Any claim that tries to blame all Catholics for the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

(4) Any claim similar to (3) above that tries to assert that all homosexual men are child abusers.

What all of these statements have in common is that they make over-general moral claims for the purpose of promoting hatred of whole groups of people regardless of the innocence of individual members of that group.

If it were possible to honestly acquire ownership of a communion cracker, in that case I would be tempted to join Myers in designing some way to forcefully communicate to people the fact that this is just a cracker.

Donahue said:

It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ. We look to those who have oversight responsibility to act quickly and decisively.

Nobody is going to desecrate the Body of Christ. That body turned to dust a long time ago (if it ever existed at all). The fact that some delusional people think that this cracker is the body of Christ does not make it true, any more than the fact that a person thinks that they have a bank account with one million dollars in it does not make it true.

In fact, that would be the point of the demonstration - to state clearly that this is just a cracker. I can agree that it would be wrong to desecrate the body of Christ (as I think it is wrong to desecrate anybody), but that has nothing at all to do with this cracker.

Do I need to respect the fact that some people believe that a communion cracker is the body of Christ?

Well . . . do they have an obligation to respect my view that it is not the body of Christ? By what moral rule am I required to treat a cracker as if it is the body of Christ (against all reasonableness to the contrary), but others are not obligated to treat the cracker as if it is just a cracker?

Whenever moral claims are asymmetric like this, you have injustice. You have people imposing rules on others that they are not willing to apply to themselves. You have people who are 'doing unto others' that which they are not willing to allow others to do unto them.

The symmetric rule - the rule that is imposed on others and self alike - is, "It's your cracker, do what you want with it as long as you do not harm others. If you want to pray to it, then pray to it. If you want to cover it with a cheese spread and ham and serve it as an appetizer, then do so."

If PZ Myers legitimately acquired a set of communion crackers, then he would be within his rights to serve them with a cheese spread and ham, or to do anything else to them that he may do to any other cracker that he might happen to come into possession of.

If the crackers were truly his.

I know that these acts would upset a lot of people. What is the moral status of that?

Well, imagine a mentally handicapped adult who thinks that a doll that he sees (it is not his) is his sister Jane. He takes the doll and screams at anybody who tries to take it back. If we take the doll from him, this will induce suffering. To what degree does this suffering have moral relevance?

Well, up until the point that the person with delusional thinking becomes a threat to others. If he is an otherwise harmless individual, his suffering gives us reason to say, "Let him have the doll. Go ahead and humor him. He's not hurting anybody."

However, when his delusional beliefs are a part of a pattern of behavior that involves doing harm to others, then there is reason to quit playing nice when it comes to humoring that person.

In this particular case, we are talking about death threats and other threats of violence made against the student who stole the cracker. These are threats of violence grounded on the delusional belief that this cracker is the Body of Christ. When a delusional belief is inspiring people to threats of violence, with a possibility of actual violence, it becomes morally legitimate to confront them with the fact that this is just a cracker.

If it were possible to honestly get a communion cracker, then there would be good reason to communicate to those who have made threats of violence based on the delusion that it is the body of Christ that a key premise that they are using to try to justify their actions are absurdly false. As such, the actions that they claim to be justified are not justified in fact.

It is not hate speech to say, “The premise that you are grounding your call to do violence to another person on is deeply flawed.” Particularly when the premise that the person is grounding his call to do violence to another person on is deeply flawed.

Now, let us look at this from Donahue’s position. Donahue wants to ban people from saying that, “The premises that some of my people are using to justify violence to others is deeply flawed.”

What type of claim is this? By what authority does anybody have the right to say, “Nobody may question the reasons that these people give for threatening harm to others?” The very act of threatening harm to others opens up every reason one might give to defend that harm to scrutiny and criticism. If you do not want a belief of yours to be questioned, then resolve never to use it to try to justify doing harm to others. Because, the instant you use it to try to justify doing harm to others, others (particularly those who would be harmed) have a right to question it.

This does not only apply to death threats against a student who stole a communion cracker.

It also has to do with the fact that these beliefs are being used to justify political actions. They are used to justify denying people the benefits of stem-cell medical research, to prevent the distribution of condoms to prevent the spread of disease, to prevent women from having early-term abortions, and to prevent homosexuals from having the benefit of marriage.

As soon as a belief is used to justify actions harmful to the interests of others, others have a right to question those beliefs. If you want your religious beliefs to be immune from questioning and criticism, then do not use them to justify policies that are contrary to the interests of others. The instant that a belief is used to justify harming others, that belief is on the table and it can be challenged, particularly by those whose interests are to be harmed.

For the very reason that these Catholic beliefs are being used to justify policies that are harmful to the interests of others, those beliefs are on the table, and may be legitimately challenged. It is not hate speech. It is, instead, the right of any person whose interests are to be sacrificed to challenge the reasons that others give for having those interests sacrificed.

The Case of the Communion Cracker II - PZ Myers

As I mentioned, a member of the studio audience asked me to render moral judgment on the Case of the Communion Cracker.

In my first post I discussed the original theft, attempts to use force to prevent the theft, and the series of death threats that actually followed the theft.

Now, I would like to look at PZ Myers’ response to this news story, posted in the blog entry, It's a Frackin' Cracker.

Myers is clearly responding to the absurd reaction generated by what amounts to the theft of a cracker. He is clearly and accurately describing this reaction as an absurdity, and the fact that if one starts off with crazy premises (e.g., that the cracker has been changed into the body of Christ), one gets some equally crazy conclusions (the death threats and hysteria following upon the theft of a cracker).

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege . . .

There is a problem here in that Myers statement here calls upon others to perform immoral acts.

The morally acceptable way for a person to acquire the property of another is to ask the person for the use of their property. If one has reason to believe that there are strings attached, and the person wanting the property fully intends to violate those conditions, then the person asking for the property must state that fact. If it means that one does not acquire the property - so be it.

Now, I am not, in any way, going to treat seriously the proposition that this cracker is, was, or ever will become the body of Christ. It is just a cracker.

However, the cracker is somebody's property, and there are limits in what a person may and may not do to acquire the property of another person.

Myers asked his readers to acquire communion crackers and send them to him. There is no morally legitimate way for anybody to acquire a communion cracker. (Or, at least, it would be extremely difficult.) So, Myers has asked his readers to act immorally - to engage in deception and theft.

That's not right.

Any communion crackers acquired through deception still morally belongs to the Catholic Church and, as such, ought to be returned to its rightful owner.

If anybody happens to acquire a communion cracker honestly, then that is a different matter. But, like I said, I do not think that this is going to happen. Anybody acquiring a communion cracker has acted dishonestly (immorally) in acquiring it.

Setting that issue aside, there are charges of intolerance and 'hate speech' going on here.

If it is 'hate speech' to deny that a cracker becomes the body of Christ in the face of a religious doctrine that says that it does.

Then, clearly, it is 'hate speech' to say that a cracker does become the body of Christ in the face of a-religious doctrine that says that it does not.

Why is the denial of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation 'hate speech', but the denial of the atheist doctrine of non-transubstantiation not 'hate speech'? What gives the Catholic Church the right to demand that their beliefs not be questioned, but denies the atheist the right to make the same claim about their beliefs?

In fact, I think it would be useful for atheists to begin to show people the absurd way in which people hide behind the accusation of 'hate speech' by using the term the way it is used against us - here every statement that asserts that an atheist has a false belief is branded 'hate speech' and is accompanied by demands that it be removed.

As long as those communications were done with tongue firmly planted in one's cheek - because the intent is to show the absurdity with which people use the charge of 'hate speech' against atheists.

If somebody denies the theory of evolution, accuse them of engaging in 'hate speech' against those who believe that evolution has taken place and, in doing so, infer that anybody who makes such a statement in the face of those who believe it is true should be morally condemned for not respecting the beliefs of others.

The claim, "It is just a cracker," is not 'hate speech'. Just as the claim, "It is not just a cracker," is not hate speech.

Now, the claim that evolution is responsible for the Holocaust - that is hate speech. Here, we are talking about an absurd implication that a person uses to promote unjustified and unfounded hatred of others. The only reason somebody would make such a claim - the only reason that a person would believe it - is because they hate the people that they are claiming to be responsible for the Holocaust, wish to promote that hatred in others, and do not care what lies they utter in order to accomplish that end.

The claim that all Catholic priests sexually abuse children would be hate speech, because it is not true, and those who assert that it is true are doing so to promote hatred and fear of people who are innocent of the accusations made against them.

Atheists have engaged in hate speech against theists. I have condemned some instances in the course of this blog. See, for example, Connecticut Valley Atheists: Imagine. I classified that as hate speech because it took an act that some religious beliefs are responsible for and used it to condemn all religious beliefs - an attempt to use false claims to promote hatred of others.

"It's just a cracker," is not hate speech - no matter how forcefully it is made.

The Case of the Communion Cracker

A member of the studio audience has written to me and asked that I pass moral judgment on The Case of the Communion Cracker.

In fact, there are several different moral issues now related to this event. We have the original event in which a student took a communion cracker from a church, the actions taken to stop the student from taking the cracker, the threats against the student, and PZ Myers’ response to those threats.

Let’s start at the beginning.

‘Body of Christ’ snatched from church, held hostage by UCF student

Student who took religious icon getting death threats

‘Body of Christ’ returned to church after student receives email threats

The facts of the case, as laid before me are that name walked into a church, went through the communion service, had a communion wafer placed on his tongue. He removed it, and he attempted to leave the church with it.

This is theft, plain and simple.

The communion cracker is the property of the church. It is given to parishioners under an implied contract where the person receiving the property agrees to certain terms and conditions – these being that the cracker will be eaten on the spot. The student, in this case, indicated his agreement to these terms and conditions by opening his mouth and allowing the cracker to be placed inside. That he had no intention of consuming the cracker demonstrates that he engaged in an act of deception (he lied) to acquire property that would not have otherwise been given to him. After obtaining illicit possession of the property, he attempted to (and succeeded in) removing it from the premises. This constitutes theft.

Having said this, we are talking about the theft of a cracker here. This is not a kidnapping, or anything on that order. Nor is it a hostage situation. It is theft. The cracker was the property of the church, and it was stolen.

The next issue before me is that people who noticed that the student was stealing church property attempted to use force to stop the theft. The student, in this case, claimed that the use of force was wrong.

The student, in this case, was mistaken.

If I noticed somebody had entered my home and was leaving with my property, I would be within my rights to use violence in order to prevent the theft. Some people would argue that I would be within my rights to shoot the thief. I would not go that far. However, grabbing the thief as he left my property and demanding by force or threat of force that he leave the stolen property behind would be within my rights – I would not be expected to be condemned for it.

Then there was the reaction of the Catholics after the student had successfully stolen church property – including death threats and alleged planned attempts to storm the student’s room to ‘rescue the hostage’.

These types of actions in insanely disproportionate to the crime that was committed.

In fact, it borders on criminal insanity.

Let’s say I have a favorite pet rock, Herbert. The neighbor kid stole it. To get the rock back, I break into my neighbor’s house, kill the kid, and take my rock.

It is my rock.

Then, the police start asking me questions. They find out that I believe that this rock is a real person – that if Herbert did not get his ‘medicine’ then he would suffer horrible agony, and it is to prevent this agony that I broke into the house, killed the kid, and brought back my rock.

That story that I told would be considered justification for locking me up as a danger to society.

There is nothing wrong with me having a special affection for my pet rock Herbert. However, when a person’s pet beliefs make them a threat to the well-being of others – when it makes them consider acts of extreme violence – then it is time for civilized people to recognize that the person who holds these beliefs are a danger to others, and to treat them accordingly.

The fact that there might be a large number of them may be relevant to their political power – which has important practical implications. However, it is not an argument against the fact of the matter, that these people are suffering from false beliefs that make them a threat to others.

Demagogues will take what I wrote above and twist it into saying that I think Catholics should be rounded up and hauled off into concentration camps for our own protection. These are people who are so fond of bearing false witness against others that they cannot resist the opportunity to find absurd interpretations of what other write.

A very small percentage of the Catholic population responded to these claims with death threats. A large percentage of the Catholic population would view the death threats as inappropriate and would condemn anybody who ever acted violently. So, a vast majority of Catholics show no signs whatsoever that their religious beliefs make them a threat to others – at least in this sense.

The blame among the Catholics belongs only to those who make the threats or who commit acts of violence, not to the whole Catholic population. Just as the blame for the theft of this communion cracker belongs to the person who stole it and not to the whole of whatever group he may belong to.

Of course, a few, who feed off of the fear and the hate that they grow in others, will ignore this set of facts and promote a gross misinterpretation of what was said – in order to grow the fear and hatred that they life off of.

Moral Rights vs. Legal Rights

A number of topics of public discussion in recent weeks – rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees, treatment of citizens in foreign lands, the current FISA Amendments - have touched on a significant inconsistency in the way Americans think of the relationship between legal and moral rights.

It is a consistency that is particularly blatant among the religious right, though it is not limited to them.

It is an inconsistency that makes its greatest expression in light of claims made to defend religious references in the Declaration of Independence, ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘In God We Trust’ as the national motto, and the claim that atheists cannot be moral (because morality requires God).

The importance of claiming that our rights come from God – for those who insist on this theory – is to say that our rights have a source that is outside of human contrivance. If our rights do not come from God, then they come from man – and what man gives, man can take away. If, instead, our rights come from God, then no man can take them away. Putting America ‘under God’ in this sense means putting the country under this set of external moral constraints that do not allow mere mortals to dictate the difference between right and wrong.

[Note: I argue, of course, that this is a false dichotomy. Our moral rights exist in the form of discoverable relationships between malleable desires – desires we have the power to influence through social forces – and other desires. Those relationships exist in nature. Man has no more power to ‘decide’ on a different set of relationships than he has to ‘decide’ to alter the gravitational constant or the speed of light in a vacuum. It is, furthermore, inappropriate for the government to declare that those who hold the ‘god theory’ of rights are inherently more patriotic than those desire utilitarians, but that is a matter for another post.]

Let’s take this claim seriously – that our rights come from God or some other external source, and that they are human rights. They do not come from man.

Now, let’s look at how these same people treat the rights specified in the Constitution. According to the dominant vie these rights only apply to American citizens. If a person is not an American citizen, then he has no Constitutional rights.

This Constitutional theory requires the assumption that our rights come from man, and what man can give to people, man can give away. Because man has assigned these rights only to a particular subset of people, only that particular subset of people has these rights. What man gives (in terms of rights), man can take away.

This applies to the FISA bill because of the assumption that, while the warrantless searches and seizures of American citizens is ‘wrong’ in some sense, it is not wrong’ to conduct warrantless searches and seizures of people from other countries. While rounding up Americans, torturing them, holding them indefinitely without formal charges or a trial, is considered ‘wrong’ in a sense, it is not considered wrong to inflict these harms on foreign nationals.

Please note I have noted an inconsistency. There are always two ways to resolve this inconsistency.

If it is morally permissible for a government to conduct warrantless searches and seizures of foreign nationals on foreign soil, then this suggests that the ‘right’ against warrantless searches is merely a political contrivance, and there would be nothing morally wrong with opening up warrantless searches of American citizens on American soil. That which it is morally permissible to do to others, it is morally permissible to do to Americans, and it is only made illegal as a matter of (arbitrary) legal contrivance.

On other hand, if it is morally impermissible to conduct warrantless searches and seizures against Americans – if this is no mere legal contrivance but represents some form of natural right to privacy – then it is equally immoral to conduct warrantless searches and seizures of foreign nationals. After all, they are human beings as well, and as such they have the same God-given (or external) rights that Americans have. Denying that they have the same rights is the same as denying that those rights come from God (or denying that they are something other than mere human contrivances as well).

It is surprising to note that those who allegedly view rights as coming from God (or some other external source) and as being applicable to all men (to use the Declaration of Independence's wording) tend to be the most vocal at insisting that those rights only be granted to some men while enthusiastically violating the same rights of others.

At the same time, those who allegedly view rights as mere human contrivances tend to be the most vocal when it comes to insisting that if something is a moral right – a human right – that it truly must govern our behavior towards all men.

Let me repeat, I consider this to be a false dichotomy. There is a third option. It is possible to hold that rights have no divine origin, but that they exist in nature (in the form of relationships between malleable desires and other desires). As moral rights, that which (the government claims) it may permissibly do to foreign nationals, it is saying it may permissibly do to Americans. That which we say the government may not rightfully do to an American (not as a matter of political contrivance, but as a matter of moral right), it has no moral right to do to a foreign national.

Please note, in this posting at least I have not defined what it is morally permissible for the Government to do to American citizens or to foreign nationals. I want to make it clear that this post is not concerned with supporting any particular conclusion about what is permissible and what is not. This post is concerned only with pointing out the demands of consistency – that whatever the government is morally permitted to do to foreign nationals it is permitted to do to citizens, and whatever the government is morally prohibited from doing to citizens it is prohibited from doing to foreign nationals – whatever that may be.

Only a hypocrite will argue that it is permissible to do to foreigners that which morality prohibits doing to an American citizen – that which is a moral right. Moral consistency does not allow any other option.

Political Reality

With respect to any piece of legislation that comes before a legislator, there are two sets of questions to be answered. The first set concerns the quality of each item in the legislation. For each item, one may ask, "Is this item worthy of my support?" The other question, of course, is, "Should I vote for this legislation?"

Every legislator will almost certainly have to vote at some time to institute a practice that is unjust, or approve a law that does harm to (those he thinks are) innocent people, or causes unnecessary suffering. Because, in spite of the fact that the bill contains something bad, it contains more good than bad, and the legislator must vote for or against the whole bill.

The same is true of executives (governors and presidents) who sign the bill into law.

A moral objection to a provision of the bill does not necessarily imply that a good person would vote against that bill.

These issues come to mind with respect to the current FISA bill – the bill that will be used to govern the future of wiretapping for security purposes. Many people on the political left are opposed to this bill. Democratic Presidential candidate Barak Obama also opposed this bill, until recently, when he announced that he will vote for it.

I have read a number of objections against Obama’s change in position.

I have spent the day trying to learn enough details about the bill in order to discover what position I would take on it. To be honest, I could not find enough clear information on which to make a decision. However, my research took me through a great deal of criticism of Obama's shift in position. A lot of that criticism was missing some very important elements.

It appears to me that criticism of a bill (as distinct from criticism of a specific element of a bill) requires more than simply an announcement that there are reasons to reject provisions within the bill. It requires some discussion of what alternatives are available, and what the consequences are of a particular action.

For example, one of the criticisms made against Obama was that he was concerned with winning the election, and seems willing to abandon principle when there are votes at stake. However, I have never found this to be a sensible criticism. It is the same as saying to a candidate, "I believe that you are the best person for the job. However, I demand that you act in such a way that you give up any chance of winning the election, and actually hand the seat over to somebody who, in that position, will spell disaster for the country."

I do not approve of lying. I do not approve of a candidate saying that he favors a position he does not favor in order to attract votes. At the same time, I see no sensible reason to object to a candidate who says, "I am voting for this legislation, even though it contains elements that I do not like, because I do not see a better alternative available. I am not saying that this legislation is perfect. To insist that I only vote for perfect legislation is to insist that I never vote in favor of any legislation."

Again, I am not talking about lying. I am talking about making the honest claim that, “This is the best option that I think is politically viable at this time. If you do not like this option, then change political reality so that we can get a better version of this law passed. Sitting around and griping – expecting political reality to change magically rather than by hard work, while demanding that candidates act as if they are not running for office in the real world, is irrational nonsense.”

People who have read this blog know that I am adamantly opposed to having 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance, and 'In God We Trust' as the national motto. However, when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals releases its decision on these matters, I fully expect Obama to denounce the decision and to speak in defense of these practices. His defense will make no logical sense, and I will take great pains to show its flaws.

However, I also realize that I live in the real world. I expect – I even hope – that Obama will denounce the 9th Circuit Court opinion (if it comes out against 'under God') for the simple fact that, if he does what is right, it could cost him the election. Given the consequences of his renouncing the 9th Circuit Court decision, and the consequences of McCain becoming President, I choose the former over the latter.

When Obama states his position, I expect to rip it to shreds in this blog – and I will encourage others to do the same. However, I will do so with full understanding of why he stated that position. I will do so knowing full well that before any politician can dare to support the position that I support, I need to put the work into making it politically viable for him (or her) to do so. That’s my job as a citizen.

For similar reasons, people who are opposed to certain elements of the FISA Amendments need to do the same thing. They can certainly know and understand that some of its positions are morally objectionable. However, they have to recognize that it is senseless to demand that a politician take a position on that issue that will guarantee that he will lose the election to a worse candidate. They have to recognize that their first duty must be to contribute to changing the political landscape to one in which a politician can take the correct position on the issue, and still win an election.

It is a politician's duty in this winner-take-all political system to pull together the best 51% of the country against the worst 49% (or the best 60% against the worst 40%). If he makes it his goal to pull the best 49% together against the worst 51%, then he is handing the reigns of government over to the worst 51%.

When I read about people saying of a candidate, "I refuse to support him because he refuses to act in a way that will cost him the election and give power to the worst 51%," this type of attitude strikes me as irrational to the point of insanity. I can make no sense of it. Yet, I see it all the time.

If the alliance of the best 51% is not willing to support the 4th Amendment, then it becomes my job – our job – to get them to see the value of the 4th Amendment. If we fail, this does not change the fact that the candidate's job is to pull together an alliance of the best 51%. The only thing that changes is that the best 51% happens to be a group of people who simply refuse to support the 4th Amendment – and the 4th Amendment is as good as repealed.

Perhaps an alliance of the best 51% will support the 4th Amendment. If this is the case, then Obama should defend it as well. It is open for somebody to make that case. Yet, many of the critics that I see do not make the case – or they assert it without offering any reason to believe it other than, “Of course the majority realize that my position is correct.”

To the degree that somebody can make this case, to that degree they have a case for condemning the politician who does not defend the 4th Amendment – for saying that the politician is making a mistake. Where they cannot make such a case, their protest amounts to insisting that the candidate unite the best 49% against the worst 51% - that is to say, they are insisting that the candidate be irrational and foolish in a way that does irreparable harm to the country.

Mutiny

I seem to be in a state of dispute with a couple of my most loyal readers – or, at least, a couple of my most loyal readers who post comments – on matters of foreign policy. Therefore, I would like to take the opportunity to refine my position.

So, let’s start at the heart of the issue. Sheldon asked:

At what point are they justified to pick and choose? I would think that as soon as they could discern the unjustness of the order.

My quick answer is:

At the point at which they are justified in declaring that the Constitution is null and void, and the military no longer has a duty to answer to its civilian commanders.

Because that is what we are talking about. The decision that the military can act independent of its instructions from the government is a decision that the Constitution is no longer in effect.

We might well come to a point in which this is the case. But let’s not pretend that this is an easy decision to make, or a decision without consequences.

The first charge that I think will be leveled against me in saying this is that I am exaggerating – that the type of issue under consideration is not as serious as I am making it out to be. In fact, in every conflict, you will find countless instances in which people disobey bad orders and do so without challenging the legitimacy of the Constitution.

I am assuming that we are not talking about the type of every-day moral concerns that are a part of life even for those of us not in the military. I am talking about the refusal to follow orders – in effect, acts of mutiny. At that level of transgression, we are talking about cases in which a soldier has determined that he is not answerable to a superior officer – and ultimately not answerable to the Commander in Chief of the military.

Sheldon provides a couple of examples.

Would we tolerate the destruction of a crime ridden area of a U.S. city, like we tolerated the destruction of Fallujah? Would we tolerate no-knock mid-night raids on families' homes based on faulty intelligence? (Not to mention lack of search warrants).

My answer here is that we should not have tolerated these actions in Iraq. Or, more precisely, we should not have tolerated our government giving these types of orders to soldiers in Iraq. As soldiers, they must give up a certain amount of moral autonomy (since this is required of an effective military). In exchange, we have an added obligation to make sure that they only receive good orders.

They have done their job.

We have, so far, utterly failed to do ours.

I have written a number of posts, much like the questions that Sheldon asked above, concerning the moral quality of the orders that have been sent to soldiers in Iraq by our government. These include:

A Different Kind of War

Baiting

The Capture and Internment of Former President Bush

In the Year 1781

As I see it, the fact that soldiers in Iraq are getting these types of orders is our moral responsibility. We are not soldiers. We have not given up our moral autonomy. In fact, quite the opposite – we have taken the moral responsibility of making sure that those who have given up moral autonomy are not used by others for personal or political gain, but instead relied upon when the principles and values they are worthy of being defended are at risk.

On this point, I want to add the fact that soldiers do not give up their right to be citizens. They are citizens who have a special knowledge relevant to the moral quality of the actions they have been receiving. Thus, they have a special obligation to inform the rest of us when the military is being abused for personal and political gain. The soldier who protests immoral orders is in the same position as the citizen who protests.

At what point are soldiers justified in picking and choosing?

Whatever point that is, before we get to that point, we reach a point where those of us who have not given up moral autonomy have an obligation to act. If the members of the military are getting morally outrageous orders, then we should be protesting on their behalf, because we have in fact broken our contract with the soldiers.

But this reflexive admiration of war heroes is a short-cut around the critical examination of what soldiers are ordered to do in a broader context. It is an intentional propagandizing distraction, to "Support the Troops" on their mission, and to just "trust the institutions".

I agree that the command to “support the troops” is often abused. Political leaders use this as a red herring – as if, somehow, refusing to support the leader of the troops is the same as refusing to support the troops.

I have argued against this line of reasoning as well. Imagine that you have a company of soldiers. How do you “support the troops”?

Well, one of the requirements for supporting the troops is to make sure that they have high-quality leaders who will not expend their lives needlessly. I can imagine the leader of a company who is incompetent complaining that anybody who objects to the quality of his leadership is insulting the soldiers under his command. In the name of respecting and honoring the troops, we are told not to question the competence of their leader.

Yet, these two acts are qualitatively different. To support the troops, you replace incompetent leaders who are not willing or able to secure the best advantage for his troops, and replace that leader with somebody competent to do the job. President Bush is an incompetent and immoral leader. We owe it to the troops to replace him with somebody who is competent and moral – somebody who will not order the troops to do anything that an honorable person would not do.

However, recognizing this distraction (and condemning it) still does not threaten the assumption that the soldiers themselves are to be respected. In fact, my argument for condemning this distraction is still grounded on the assumption that soldiers are to be respected – and the type of respect that they are due is inconsistent to allowing this type of abusive propaganda. Indeed, the respect that they are due is consistent with condemning this type of propaganda that people use to exploit the soldier for personal or political gain.

Actually, I do not think that I find myself in disagreement with Sheldon. The points that he has brought up are valid and important. I simply happen to think that there is a way of answering them that is consistent with the policy of respect for the troops. Indeed, there are ways of answering those objections that are built on the very assumption of respect for the troops.

We have failed the soldiers. We have allowed the development of a set of institutions whereby soldiers can be used to launch wars of aggression for the political and financial gain of the Executive Branch of government and their friends. We need to correct these institutions. We should not be asking or expecting soldiers to take a course of action that is illegal and unconstitutional until we have first pursued the option of removing the offending parties from public office in ways that are fully constitutional.

Quite by coincidence, there was a news story today that will give us the opportunity to improve our institution with an eye to helping to ensure that the military gets quality orders. A bipartisan panel has released a report suggesting changes in the War Powers Act. I am not writing here to endorse its findings, but rathter to susggest that it is an important starting point for reform to eliminate the problems we have seen through the last seven years. See Los Angeles Times, New Law Is Urged on War Powers

Flip Floppery

Democratic Presidential Nominee Barak Obama has announced recently that he will visit several countries in Europe and the Middle East and that, in doing so, he may ‘refine’ his policy with respect to Iraq.

Some people are upset that he is leaving the option open for a change in policy – that he may decide to continue the war in Iraq rather than end it. There are people on the left who fear that they might not have the anti-war candidate they wanted. And there are people on the right who are anxious to find reasons to accuse Obama of the political crime of flip-floppery.

Obama, for his part, is in damage-control mode. He is arguing that he has said nothing to indicate a shift in position – that working out the details in how he is going to carry out his stated objectives is not the same as changing those objectives. Deciding how to get the ball through the goal posts is not the same as moving the goal posts.

For my part, I think that Obama should be free to move the goal posts. He should be free to act on whatever new information he acquires and to choose the best course of action based on available information. This would include the option of another Iraqi ‘surge’ or the option of attacking Iran if the evidence suggests that these are legitimate options.

Having said this, I argue that there are important moral limits on the legitimacy of attacking another country. The presumption should be against launching an attack. It is only with the accumulation of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that attacking is necessary that it becomes legitimate to attack. Because people have a tendency to see what they want to see and to manipulate the public accordingly, that presentation of evidence should be made to an impartial third party. I do not believe that these moral requirements for an attack on Iran are near to being met. Yet, this is different from saying that they cannot be met.

It is, I think, a moral failing on the part of the political left that they think they have enough information to determine the right strategy and to confine Presidents to what they think is the best option. It is a sign of extreme arrogance – a foolish arrogance that says that important decisions can be made by people who know almost nothing about the facts of the matter.

I would hope that, if any of these anti-war advocates on the political left were to visit with European leaders and visit the middle east, that they, too, might have the courage to 'revise' their plans in the light of better evidence. It would be a moral crime to insist, “We will pursue this policy that I have decided upon regardless of what the evidence tells us.”

That type of thinking – the thinking that attacking Iraq is a good idea regardless of what the evidence actually said – is what got us into this mess.

I am not saying that these people on the political left are mistaken. I am saying that I do not know if they are right or wrong – and neither do they. Yet, they act as if they do and, what is worse, insist that no amount of evidence or closer understanding of the issues, no amount of personal contact with the people involved, no amount of top-secret military intelligence – can contain anything that could convince Obama that they are mistaken. Whatever evidence and understanding Obama may acquire, he must not revise his plan so as to continue the war or attack Iraq.

What I am looking for in a Presidential candidate is not somebody who will pander to the demands of the ignorant. I want somebody who states that he understands the principles involved and has the intelligence and moral character to actually act in accordance with those principles.

Most importantly, what I am looking for in a fellow citizen is somebody who recognizes the limitations of his own knowledge, and who does not pretend to greater wisdom and intelligence than he actually has.

What I am looking for in a fellow citizen is a realization that evidence matters, and that any belief, no matter how firmly held, can be shaken and brought down with sufficient evidence.

What I am looking for in a fellow citizen is an admission that somebody who has looked at an issue up close and actually had long conversations with the people involved might actually have an informed opinion that is better grounded than that of the liberal who knows only what he has read on the internet and seen on the evening news.

Generally speaking, flipflopping should not be considered a moral or political wrong.

Having said this, I want to add that I am not so naïve that I do not recognize the flipping of flops to be the sign of a moral and political wrong. When a candidate changes his position on a political issue – particularly when the candidate changes from an unpopular to a popular position – we have reason to ask whether the change was motivated by a consideration of the evidence, or whether it was grounded on political expedience.

It is certainly legitimate to use the changing of an opinion as a sign that the candidate is being dishonest, just as it is legitimate to use the look in a person’s eye as a sign that he is trying to be deceptive. However, we must distinguish between the signification and the thing signified. The crime is not to be found in the way that a person looks around, but in the fact that he is lying. Similarly, in politics, the crime should not be the fact that a candidate has shifted his position, but his reasons for doing so.

To the degree that we make the flipping of flops a political crime, to that degree our elected offices will become the property of people who never change their opinions. This type of standard makes stubbornness in the face of evidence a political virtue – and that is precisely the opposite of the type of person we have reason to want to see in public office. It is decidedly not in our mutual interest to promote such a standard.

What we should be promoting is a standard where we ask and expect candidates to provide us with reasons for their change of opinion, and to evaluate those reasons according to whether they make sense or, instead, suggest that the candidate is allowing himself to be persuaded by political convenience.

We should also be leaving it open for a candidate to say, "Hey, I'm trying to be your representative in government. I do not agree with you on this issue. However, I recognize your right to demand that your representative actually represent you in Congress. So, while I disagree with you on this issue, I will represent your wishes in Congress." This way, candidates will not have to lie to be elected, and we can start to grow a more honest crop of politicians.

As far as I am concerned, I like Obama's recent statements on Iraq. I like the idea that a candidate will make decisions based on evidence, and that the evidence might cause him to change his mind. I find that comforting.

Enforcing Laws and Obeying Orders

In a comment to a recent post, one of my regular commenters, Shaldon, brought up the issue of the degree to which a soldier can be morally praised or blamed for the quality of the actions he is ordered to perform.

McCain was shot down after about 20bombing missions over North Vietnam. Seems to me that a legitimate question would be what were the effects of those bombing missions to people on the ground? Did that aerial bombardment terrorize the people below? What is the likelihood that more than a few innocents were killed or maimed from the bombs McCain and others dropped?

Sheldon also says:

I am pretty tired of this admiration for so-called "war heroes". The real war heroes are those with the moral courage to speak of the truth about what they have seen, done and experienced.

I first want to stress that the principles that I apply here do not just apply to “war heroes”. They apply to first responders in general – police, fire department, paramedics, coast guard. They apply to anybody who puts his or her life on the line for others.

In this sense, the same types of questions that a soldier can ask, a police officer can ask as well. "What are the purposes of the laws that I am enforcing? What are the effects? What are the chances, if I follow the law in this case – if I wait to get a warrant or I release this person I suspect of a crime but against whom I have no evidence – that innocent people will die?"

And, yet, we still have reason to demand that anybody who joins the police force (or the district attorney's office, or becomes a judge) to enforce the law regardless of whether he or she agrees or disagrees with the law. We expect the police and the judge to enforce the law even when they think it is an immoral law meant to use government force to take advantage of others, or puts innocent lives at risk.

Similarly, we have reason to expect that anybody who joins the military will carry out his or her orders. Soldiers have no more discretion with respect to carrying out orders than a police officer does enforcing the law. (There is, in fact, a fair amount of discretion in both of these jobs, but not enough to threaten the point of this argument.)

At the same time, this duty to enforce the law, and the duty to obey orders, has its limits. Beyond a certain point, society becomes so corrupt that a person of good conscience cannot agree to go along with the actions.

There are two conflicting forces at play here.

One is the chain of command, which a functioning military requires. Higher-rank soldiers give their commands to the lower-rank soldiers who are then expected to carry them out. People with lower military rank give up a certain amount of their autonomy, and agree to follow orders. In return, those giving the orders acquire the responsibility of giving those under them orders that a respectable moral agent would carry out.

However, people higher in rank are not perfect, and some of them command others to do things that no moral person would do. The Nuremberg Trials established the principle that "I was just following orders" is not a legitimate defense against moral crimes committed during wartime. Lower-rank officers have a moral obligation to question the moral legitimacy of the orders they are given and, where those orders are found morally wanting, have a moral duty to refuse to obey.

Refusing to obey a direct order, like civil disobedience, puts the agent at risk of punishment. However, the individual is expected to have sufficient moral integrity that he is willing to accept punishment over committing a moral crime.

Yet, the distinction between what is and what is not a moral crime does not come to us in black and white. It comes to us in shades of gray, with no bright lines by which we can mark a particular option clearly morally permissible or clearly impermissible.

So, there are going to be areas where soldiers and law-enforcement agents are going to have questions – where reasonable people can disagree. We are even going to disagree over whether the realm of items we can permissibly disagree about. In the face of these types of questions, the benefit of the doubt goes to enforcing the law as written, and obeying the order s that are handed down.

Clearly, we cannot sensibly advocate a principle that nobody should become a police officer or a soldier until the institutions that give rise to their orders are perfect, and no police officer or soldier has a chance of getting a bum or immoral order. This would be the same as saying that we should have no police force or military.

Since abolishing the military and police force until we literally make perfect the system whereby agents obtain only perfect orders is out of the question, we are stuck with moral principles that sometimes command soldiers and police officers to do immoral things with small penalties.

Everything that I have written above is consistent with a right – even a duty – to question the morality of what one is asked to do. The obligation to enforce the law as written or to obey an order has its limits. At some point, police have a right – even a duty – to ignore unjust laws. At some point, even a member of the military has the right – even the duty – to consider whether the institutions that he is protecting deserve his protection.

This is a duty we all share. Since police officers and military personnel are limited in the degree to which they can question their orders, we have an obligation to set up institutions that make it more likely than not that soldiers will get good orders.

So, I agree with Sheldon's statement that people who speak the truth about war crimes and atrocities are also heroes, and deserve to be treated as such. People who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s and met with newspaper reporters in secret to reveal corruption to the highest levels of the Nixon administration deserve our praise and gratitude.

These are admirable actions.

Sheldon also says:

Another question relevant to McCain's qualifications is whether he is more likely to order similar attacks on Iran, and recklessly expand a regional war, and cause even more bloodshed and human suffering.

Sheldon is right - these are important questions. It is also permissible to use the intentional actions that McCain has performed as a pilot, as a prisoner, and as a Senator, to try to predict how he will behave once he enters White House. This is why getting shot down and being imprisoned are not signs of one’s ability to be President. Since these were involuntary actions, they tell us nothing about the types of intentional actions McCain would perform as President – and that is the question in need of answering.

Soldiers and police officers have a right and a duty to ask about the moral quality of the orders that they receive or the laws they are told to enforce. Yet, they also have a duty – as do the rest of us - to trust the institutions to provide them with good orders and just laws. They have no liberty to pick and choose – at least not until the orders become so heinous or the laws become so unjust that it is unreasonable to expect that the institutions that provide them are worthy of continuing, let alone be protected and upheld.

The Pledge Project: Patrotism and Respect

I am going to break protocol with this blog and spend a posting discussing strategy, regarding the status of 'under God' in the Pledge and 'In God We Trust' as the national motto.

The people who want to keep these references are going to market their position by branding opposition of these terms under the word 'offense'. The position that they are going to sell is that atheists react to the word 'God' the way that vampires react to the sight of a cross. It causes us to cringe and hiss and to fly away in fear. That is why we want the word 'God' removed from all public buildings and public ceremonies.

Of course, under that term those who want the word 'God' inserted into these civic ceremonies have as little reason to do so as one would have to put away a cross in the presence of a vampire. Doing so is very dangerous. Furthermore, it is obvious that vampires (or atheists) do not deserve such consideration. After all, we have to remember what kind of people we are dealing with here – people who have rejected God and given themselves over to dark forces.

Two other key terms that are association with the Pledge and the Motto are "Patriotism" and "Respect". Saying the Pledge and displaying the national motto are ways in which a person shows respect for the country and for all of those who have fought to protect it.

We must recite the Pledge in schools to teach patriotism and respect. We must start civic ceremonies with the Pledge to teach patriotism and respect.

We must post "In God We Trust" in our civic buildings to show patriotism and respect. It is, after all, our national motto, so refusing to display it is the same as being ashamed of one's country. It is the opposite of patriotism and respect.

Or so the sayings go.

These three terms – 'offense' on the other hand, versus 'patriotism' and 'respect' – are what shapes most peoples' understanding of 'under God' and 'In God We Trust'. Given these associations, the vast majority of the people favor keeping 'under God' and 'In God We Trust'.

There is this issue of 'separation of church and state'. However, this is just some slogan that the vampire-atheist has invented to try to get good Christians to remove the offensive word 'God' from the public square. For the past 40 years, fundamentalists and evangelicals have been hard at work convincing the people that no such "separation of church and state" exists. So, it does not provide a good reason to concede to the requests of the vampire-atheists 'offended' by the mention of God in public.

Now, I want to suggest a new strategy.

This strategy begins by taking "patriotism" and "respect" as given values. These are good things.

Of course, these are not absolute goods. The Nazi soldier was hyper-patriotic and full of respect for his country and its leader. The patriot cannot be somebody who will support his country without any regard to the moral quality of its actions. A patriot should be somebody who is proud of his country, including the moral quality of its actions, and strive to make a country worthy of pride and respect. These must be considered patriotic acts. A patriot will not only defend his country, but he will work to make his country constantly worthy of that sacrifice.

Taking these two values as a given, in questioning the use of the Pledge of Allegiance at a civic ceremony or in school, the question to ask is this:

Why do you insist on starting this ceremony with a message of contempt for some of the soldiers who are fighting and defending the freedoms you take for granted? Is this your idea of patriotism – declaring that soldiers who are, at this moment, putting themselves at risk for us are to be virtually spat upon by putting them in the company of our nation's greatest enemies? The Pledge, with the phrase 'under God', says that many of those soldiers are no better than those who would support rebellion, tyranny, and injustice. What about showing a little respect here? Do you deny that the soldiers fighting for our freedom deserve respect?"

Of course, where respect is a value, the only response available to this claim is to deny that 'under God' shows a lack of respect towards any soldier.

But that is just not true.

To say that the words 'under God' respects the soldier who does not believe in God is the same as saying that the word 'indivisible' respects rebellion and that the words 'with liberty and justice for all' respects tyranny and injustice.

There is no escape from this objection – because the statements above are all true.

The same form of objection applies to those who would post the motto 'In God We Trust'.

You insist on posting a sign here that says to the soldier who has returned from fighting to defend this country, 'If you do not trust in God, then we do not consider you to be one of us.' I believe that these soldiers deserve our respect for what they have done, not to be insulted. I think we need a sign that speaks well of all soldiers who have fought honorably for our defense. But that doesn't seem to be the case with people like you. You think that insulting people who have fought for our freedom by saying, 'We do not consider you to be one of us,' is a perfectly legitimate act. Apparently, you do not value respect.

When they say that the national motto respects those who do not believe in God, then they can be asked:

If somebody were to suggest that you put up a sign that says, 'If you are not white, then we do not consider you to be one of us,' that this would be taken as showing respect for those who are not white?

So, whenever you encounter somebody defending the Pledge and the Motto using the terms 'patriotism' and 'respect', throw the terms right back at them.

Yes, you believe that it is important to show our respect for people who have fought for your freedoms by insulting them and excluding them. You declare that they are the moral equivalent of rebels and tyrants, and declare that they are not fit to be considered one of us. And you have the gall to say that this is necessary to show respect. I am the one who favors respect here. I insist that we show respect for all soldiers who have served honorably.

The ultimate power behind this argument is that the claim being made is true. The question that I have in my mind is why people have, for so long, ignored what is an obvious fact, and thus allowed the theocrats to obtain a monopoly over the concepts of 'patriotism' and 'respect'.

The 'strategy' that I am talking about here is simply one of putting people face to face with the truth. 'Under God' was added to the Pledge and 'In God We Trust' was made the national motto precisely to teach the American people not to respect those who held particular religious views. They were passed into law for the purpose of branding particular religious views 'unpatriotic' – and, thus, to brand those who hold these vies as 'unpatriotic'. This is in spite of the fact that some of the citizens who hold those views still fight and die for the sake of defending the government that insults them.

As long as the theocrats are able to hold a monopoly on the concepts of 'patriotism' and 'respect', they will always be able to brand atheism and secularism as 'un-American' and 'disrespectful'. The way to deny them this monopoly on the concepts of 'patriotism' and 'respect' is to make it clear how these policies disrespect some of the people who most deserve our respect – those who fought to defend our rights and freedoms even though they did not believe in God.

Appeals to Emotion

Over the course of this blog, I have had a few people make the comment that an appeal to emotion is somehow illegitimate. We must appeal to reason only, or so it is said. In some circles, this is virtually de dicta - one of those fundamental truths that is too obvious to question.

A recent example comes from a comment by a member of the studio audience. Heisenberg wrote:

You are right that we, the addressees of political campaigns, should not let ourselves be manipulated by lies and appeals to emotion. Alas, I fear that a comparison to such a heinous crime as child abuse is itself such an appeal to emotion.

Truths considered too obvious to question should always be near to the top of our list of things to question.

Desire utilitarianism holds that all value exists in the form of relationships between states of affairs and desires (and moral value exists as relationships between malleable desires – desires that can be molded through social forces – and other desires). It follows axiomatically from this that it is not possible to talk about the value of something without making a reference to desire.

I use the term ‘desire’ in a technical sense. It refers to all likes and dislikes and, as such, it refers to those things to which an agent may have an emotional attachment. The love that a person may have for his wife, for example, is expressible in terms of a set of desires for her company and well-being. So, as it turns out, ‘appeals to emotion’ are simply a subset of the broader category of ‘appeal to desire’ or ‘appeal to likes and dislikes’.

Since every true value claim (and moral claims are a subset of value claims) must describe a relationship between states of affairs and desires, every true value claim must include an appeal to desires.

Inappropriate Appeals to Emotions

There is one form of appeal to emotion (desire) that is clearly illegitimate. This happens when a person attempts to defend a belief (or defend the claim that a proposition is true) based on the emotional appeal of the proposition being true.

For example, “There is a heaven and a life after death. After all, you do not want to think that your poor wife is simply dead – that she exists no more. It is far better to think that she is in a happier place, looking down on us and smiling.”

The fact that one would be happier if a proposition is true is no evidence at all the proposition is true in fact. This method of argument is very popular, but the form of reasoning is very much invalid.

This is the type of scenario where an objection of an ‘appeal to emotion’ makes sense.

Appropriate Appeals to Emotions

When an appeal to emotion is legitimate is not when you are trying to defend a particular proposition as being true (defend a belief), but when you are trying to recommend a course of action.

In order to recommend an action, one must tie the action to a set of reasons for action, and desires are the only reasons for action that exist. As a result, not only is it appropriate to make an appeal to desires (including emotions) when proposing a course of action. It is actually necessary to do so. One must argue that the action is such as to fulfill some set of desires – typically by arguing that the action will make true the propositions that are the objects of good desires, where good desires are desires that will tend to fulfill other desires, such as those of the agent you are trying to convince.

Technical Account

I beg your indulgence for a few paragraphs of technical babbling.

Philosophers recognize that there is a difference between ‘is’ (or ‘descriptive’) statements and ‘ought’ or ‘should’ (or prescriptive) statements. You can never defend a descriptive statement by an appeal to desires. However, you can never defend a prescriptive statement without an appeal to desires.

It turns out that there is an important area of overlap between these two types of claims. Many people treat the distinction between ‘prescriptive’ and ‘descriptive’ statements as identifying mutually exclusive categories. A statement can belong to one group or the other, but not both.

However, I argue that prescriptive statements are a peculiar subset of descriptive statements. The prescriptive statement, “The agent should do X” has a truth value – just like descriptive statements. The statement “The agent should do X” is true if the reasons-for-action for doing X outweigh the reasons-for-action for not doing X. That is to say, doing X will make true the propositions of more and stronger desires than any alternative action.

As a belief, the belief that “the agent should do X” should not be defended by an appeal to the desires that “the belief that the agent should do X” will fulfill. This would be an example of the illegitimate grounding of a belief on desires that I described above. The belief that “the agent should do X” should be defended by an appeal to the desires that “the act of doing X” will fulfill. This would be an example of a legitimate appeal to desires (emotions) to defend a conclusion.

Back to the Main Point

I write an ethics blog – and I do so under the assumption that desire utilitarianism best describes the phenomena of value. As such, every one of my conclusions is tied to a set of desires, and every one of those desires is then evaluated according to its tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires. I look for the “reasons for action that exist” for bringing about or avoiding some state of affairs, where desires are the only reasons for action that exist. Those reasons for action that exist are the core of every true value claim.

It is not at all inappropriate to use the term ‘child abuse’ when discussing the actions of the California Teachers’ Association as I did in The Art of Political Manipulation. In fact, it would be wrong to. This claim is not an illegitimate appeal to emotion. It is a claim that the very same ‘reasons for action that exist’ that justify our condemnation of those who abuse children applies to the behavior of the California Teachers’ Association in the way that it handled the issue of teacher tenure.

My arguments appear in the earlier article, and I will not repeat them here.

Now, I may be mistaken. It may be the case that when I relate the conduct of the Association to reasons for action that exist and claim that they are the same reasons for action relevant in child abuse, that I am making a false claim. A person can argue against my conclusion by showing that the reasons for action that I alluded to do not apply to the behavior of the Association.

However, my fault in this case would not be that I made an appeal to desires (or an appeal to emotion). My fault would be that I said that there were relationships between states of affairs and desires that do not exist as a matter of fact.

In other words, it is not the appeal to emotions that would be wrong. An appeal to emotions is not wrong in itself. In fact, it is necessary.

Qualifications for President

It appears that the American people are determined to remove all substance from political contests in this country and to fill them with junk.

The top news story in the Presidential race for the past two days has been retired general Wesley Clark's statement that, "I don't think that being shot down and being a prisoner of war is a qualification to be President," on Face the Nation

This is a worthless statement to spend time on. However, since the nation is spending time on it, I want to pull something substantive out of it. I want to look at the qualities that a President should have, and the qualities of being a hero. Over the course of this presentation I will argue that Clark's statement is true. However, I will go further and look at the criteria that is relevant to making these types of judgments.

The thesis that there is nothing in being shot down and being a prisoner of war that makes one more qualified to be President springs from the fact that being shot down and being held at the Hanoi Hilton was not an intentional action. It was not something that McCain choose to do. Therefore, it tells us nothing about his character or about the quality of the choices that he will make as President.

In general, we apply the principle that a person acts so as to fulfill the most and strongest of his desires, given his beliefs. With this principle, we look at the intentional actions of an individual and, from this, we create a theory of beliefs and desires. We look for the set of beliefs and desires that best explains past actions. That theory can then be used to best preduct future actions.

We are constantly employing this technique. For each of us, a lot depends on doing this well. We use this to predict the behavior of our bosses and our spouses, to run our businesses, to negotiate with our neighbors, and to run political campaigns. From the first instant we lay eyes on somebody we look at their clothes and appearance. We see the way they have decided to dress and groom themselves as intentional actions that instantly lead to conclusions about what that agent believes and desires. From those theories, we begin to draw predictions of how that person will act in various circumstances (whether to trust them, or whether to run away).

Being shot down and being a prisoner of war is not an intentional action. It does not allow us to infer anything about the beliefs and desires of the agent. Therefore, it does not allow us to infer anything about how that agent will behave as President of the United States.

By the way, as an aside, the same analysis applies to those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 – at least for those who worked there. I constantly hear these people referred to as heroes. They were not heroes, they were victims. They made no intentional choice to put themselves in danger. Instead, danger came to them – unknowingly. If they had known what was going to happen, we can trust that few of them would have gone there. They were not heroes.

There were heroes at 9/11. Those were the first responders who entered the World Trade Center after it had been hit. These people performed intentional actions that put them in danger. This allows us to say something about the beliefs and desires of those people – and we find in them desires worthy of our admiration and respect – desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others.

Also, there were people who became heroes after the airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center. These were people who responded to the attack with action – actions that considered the well-being of others.

In fact, it diminishes the claim that these first-responders are heroes to give the term as well to those who made no intentional choice to face danger. When we give an honor to those who do not deserve it, we insult all of those given the same honor but who did deserve it.

The passengers who died bringing down Flight 93 are heroes. They performed an intentional action – an action that proved to be a benefit to others. We may cynically assert that they acted only to save their own lives. Yet, history has told us of great numbers of people who refused to act even when they were being killed off (or enslaved) in huge numbers. We have every reason to believe that in addition to any desire for self-preservation, these agents knew that if they did not act their plane would be used as a weapon against innocent people. The passengers of Flight 93 qualify as heroes.

Those who died at the Pentagon also belong in a different category from those who died in the World Trade Center. Military buildings are military targets. People who join the military are people who are willing to put themselves at risk for the well-being of others. The Pentagon is a military target, occupied by people who voluntarily accept risks to life and limb in the defense of this country. They get credit for that intentional action.

In this sense, the same is true of John McCain. For choosing to put himself in a situation where he might be shot down and held as a prisoner of war, he deserves our admiration and respect. However, he shares this right to our admiration and respect with every other fighter pilot who flew combat missions during Vietnam without being shot down. His intentional action was the same as theirs, and so the respect and admiration that is his due is the same as theirs.

The same applies, in fact, for anybody who joins the police force, fire department, search and rescue, coast guard, or the military. This act of joining is an intentional act that tells us something about the character of the individual – something positive – something we generally have reason to praise.

When a person puts himself at risk for the sake of others, and suffers a huge cost because of it, we owe him a debt of gratitude. If a person takes a risk for my benefit, and suffers as a consequence, then I owe him some form of compensation for what he lost. It would be selfish and cruel of me to simply say, "Thank you," and to walk off.

So, we do owe McCain a greater debt of gratitude than we owe to the fighter pilot who did not get shot down and tortured. However, this is not the type of debt that gives McCain any claim to the keys to the White House. It gives him a claim that we make his life more comfortable – a decent set of veterans' benefits that properly convey to these people that, "We are grateful for what you gave up and we are more than eager to share the burden." McCain has no right to point to the White House and say, "You owe me."

Yes, Mr. McCain, we owe you, but the White House is not on the list of things that you may ask from us. We owe that office to the person who will do the best job promoting the well-being of the American people on the whole, and in particular promoting certain values on which that well-being depends.

 

The Art of Political Manipulation

A recent set of articles in the Washington Post focused on a political phenomenon that I consider to be the moral equivalent of the gang-rape of a group of children. These involved the use of focus groups to design political commercials and, through them, to influence the American voters.

(See: Washington Post, Hearts, Not Minds and How Focus Groups Reshaped the 1988 Campaign)

In one example, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a series of educational reforms in California. These included a proposition that would make it easier to get rid of bad teachers.

Research has shown that the most important factor under a school’s control regarding education is the quality of the teacher. This quality is not determined by years of experience or even the amount of training that one has received (though a teacher does have to know what he teaches). It is an as-of-yet undefined quality to pass information on to children. Some people can do this well. Others cannot.

Schwarzenegger’s proposals included provisions for getting rid of teachers who could not teach well.

The California Teacher’s Association, who considers it to be its job to protect the employment of teachers, ran a set of focus groups to determine how to defeat the proposal. They discovered that the people had a particularly strong emotional reaction to the claim that Schwarzenegger had broken his promise to improve the schools. They used this information to create a series of advertisements. And, with this, they defeated the proposal.

I could be wrong about provisions governing the quality of teachers. This would not change my argument. My argument remains grounded on the fact that those who ran these focus groups and who designed their commercials accordingly did not express any interest in the welfare of the children. If they were right on the issue – they were accidentally right – through no fault (or no credit) of their own.

To the degree that the California Teachers’ Association has anything to say about the education of children, to that degree the people of California have entrusted their children to a group of moral monsters. People truly interested in the welfare of children would have looked at the scientific evidence governing the quality of education and based their conclusions on that – and promoted the understanding of the facts of quality education among the population. They would not have engaged in these types of games that ignored the quality of children’s education for personal gain.

Is this perhaps too harsh? After all, it would be difficult to imagine a group of teachers that did not care something about the welfare of their students. Clearly, these people believed that they were doing the right thing.

However, on what is this belief that these people doing the best they can for the children founded? Is it founded on research and scientific evidence? Or is it founded on a desire for a particular state of affairs along with an unfounded desire to believe that no harm is done.

Most (virtually all) people who abuse children do so under the sincere belief that they love those children and would not do anything to harm them. They simply refuse to see their own behavior as harmful. So, the practice of engaging in harmful behavior while convincing oneself that the behavior is not harmful is far from rare. The will to believe that what fulfills the desires of the adult is not harmful to the child is far too common – and scarcely provides us with a difference between the California Teachers’ Association in this case and those who abuse children.

The very act by which the California Teachers’ Association would demonstrate that they actually care about the well-being of the children would be for them to be concerned with serious, empirical research showing what is in the best interests of the child. This is exactly the method that they abandoned when they replaced fact with focus groups and emotion that advanced an entirely question-begging line of reasoning.

What the California Teachers’ Association said in this case was that Governor Schwarzenegger broke his promise to improve the schools. This is not an examination of the proposals under consideration based on the facts. This was an entirely question-begging claim that assumed what was under dispute – that the proposals would not improve the schools.

Another fault that we can find with the California Teachers’ Association in this case is that it provided a poor role model for children. It set a poor moral example. One of the things that the Association should have been teaching its students is that a morally responsible person considers the facts and bases his conclusions on what the evidence suggests would be best for everybody concerned. That the Association actually taught its students is that they condone burying the truth under emotions and demagoguery that does not give any consideration for the welfare of others and aims only at winning.

Another case of the use of focus groups to in a political campaign free from moral constraints concerned the 1988 Presidential election. By using focus groups, the Republicans found that they could score points against the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, based on the latter’s veto of a bill mandating the Pledge of Allegiance.

Requiring people to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional – the Supreme Court had already decided this issue. So, the legislature had put a bill on Dukakis’ desk that violated the Constitution of the United States of America. However, Republicans, with their focus groups, discovered that there was a substantial portion of the population that seems to have no interest in the Constitution. Those voters stood ready to reject a candidate regardless of the Constitutional considerations.

In order to run this campaign, the Republicans who were involved in it had to be the type of people who cared nothing about protecting and defending the Constitution. The campaign itself would require teaching the American people through a series of advertisements to vilify somebody whose crime was obeying the Constitution. The campaign required promoting the assumption that the Constitution is just words to be cast aside when one wants to do so.

Of course, these were the people who were trying to become President. This is an office here the person who takes it is supposed to be somebody dedicated to preserving and protecting the Constitution of the United States. Yet, he was a part of a campaign that tossed the Constitution aside at the first sign of political advantage.

A morally responsible group of people would have sought an opportunity to defend the Constitution – to explain what it is the Constitution demanded in this case. They would have thought it important to teach a vital lesson in freedom and democracy. What they demonstrated instead was affection for deception and manipulation without regard for the damage they would do to the public understanding of the Constitution.

So, we have one group who used focus groups for the purpose of convincing people to sacrifice their children for their benefit. We have another who used a focus group to convince the people to sacrifice the Constitution for their benefit. The real problem is not with either of these groups. The real problem is with a culture that lets these people get away with these types of moral crimes.

As I see it, the news that the California Teachers’ Association had engaged in these practices should be viewed in the same way as news that they had been secretly protecting a group of child abusers. The news that the Republican Party had decided to sacrifice the Constitution for political office should be viewed the same way as the discovery that they had given military secrets to enemy powers. These are not minor transgressions.

When people quit reacting to these as minor transgressions and treat those who engage in them with the contempt they deserve, then these types of people will become much less common and we will have better quality campaigns.

Though I have compared the California Teachers’ Association with child abusers and Republicans with traitors, the real blame rests with the people who allow these practices to continue and even reward those who engage in them. The reason why focus groups are so popular is because we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the findings. We allow these tools to be used against us. In doing so, we lose much of our moral right to criticize those who use the tools that we make possible.

The burden should be on us to demand more from candidates – to demand facts and figures that have been supported by evidence and verified by other research. We should be demanding facts and evidence. As long as we reward political advisors who engineer our deception, we would be foolish not to expect more and more people getting into the business.