AnalPhilosopher

Dr John J. Ray, my polymathic friend Down Under, has started yet another blog, this one devoted to showcasing the thought of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). See here. It's already the new year in Brisbane, Australia, where John lives. Happy new year, John! May 2005 bring you joy, peace, wealth, fame—but no new blogs.

Here is something we Texans should not be proud of. See here as well.

12-31-84 Monday. Another year has passed like water under the bridge. Whereas five years ago I entered the decade of the eighties, I now enter the second half of the eighties. Can it be? I can still remember the strangeness of writing "1980" on my notes at school. Soon I'll be writing "1990," and then "2000." And all this sentimentality for artificial benchmarks! I'm getting older; there's no denying it.

Yesterday, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that a university policy that makes benefits available to unmarried heterosexual couples must make them available to homosexual couples. See here. The court did not say that state universities must make benefits available. It said that if they are made available to unmarried heterosexual couples, then they must be made available to homosexual couples. The ruling was based on the equal-protection clause of the Montana Constitution. (See paragraph 35 of the opinion.)

There are two things Montanans can do if they don't like this ruling. First, they can withdraw benefits from all unmarried couples. Heterosexual couples could choose to marry to regain their benefits. Second, they can amend their state constitution to make it clear that the equal-protection clause does not require benefits for homosexual couples. In effect, they'll be overruling this case. It'll be interesting to see what happens. By the way, here is a New York Times story about the case.

Let's think philosophically about the upcoming Iraqi elections. I assume that there are certain outcomes of the electoral process that would be unacceptable to the United States. We don't want a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy, for example. One Iran is enough. But does this mean that the election was a sham? No. There are three possibilities, not just two.

The first is to hold an election and let the chips fall where they may. This is what John Rawls called "pure" procedural justice. (See A Theory of Justice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971], 86.) In this type of procedural justice, there is no independent standard by which to evaluate the outcome. Whatever outcome emerges from the process (assuming the process conforms to the announced rules) is just.

The second possibility is to hold an election but insist that only a certain result emerge. Any other result would nullify the process. This would make the electoral process a sham, for the result, we might say, was foreordained. What's the point of having a process if we already know the result and are going to implement it no matter what?

The third possibility is to hold an election but limit the range of acceptable results. This differs from the first possibility in that it imposes an independent test on the outcome. It differs from the second possibility in that it's not a sham election. Provided the outcome is within the designated range, it will be accepted as just. In Rawlsian terms, the second and third possibilities constitute "impure" procedural justice. (He doesn't use this term, but it contrasts nicely with his word "pure.") Since there is no procedure that can guarantee the result we want, both are also forms of "imperfect" procedural justice. (An example of perfect [but impure] procedural justice would be giving the final piece of a cake to the person who cut the cake. It's assumed that the just outcome is equal slices and that this procedure will guarantee it.)

Think of three possible poker games we might play. The first allows any distribution of money at the end of the evening. One person may, for all we know at the outset, go home with everyone else's money. This will make the game both exciting and dangerous. It will be a risk-taker's delight. The second requires that everyone go home with the money he or she brought to the table, however it got distributed by the poker games. This would make the games superfluous, although we may very well have enjoyed playing. This sort of game will be preferred by the extremely risk-averse. The third says that nobody goes home broke, or with less than a certain amount of money. It creates a safety net, so to speak. This sort of game will be preferred by the moderately risk-averse. Notice how the third rule combines aspects of the other two.

Given the expenditure of resources (including precious human lives) that the United States had made in Iraq, it is entitled to implement the third possibility. We must not cheat ourselves (and Iraqis) of a democratic regime in Iraq out of false fealty to some procedural ideal. Constraining the results doesn't make the election a sham. It's an acknowledgment that there are other values (substantive ones, such as democracy) besides process. Certain outcomes, we stipulate in advance, are unacceptable. But this allows for a range—perhaps a wide range—of acceptable outcomes.

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert cites the following recent remark by President Bush as an example of his being out of touch with reality: "The idea of democracy taking hold in what was a place of tyranny and hatred and destruction is such a hopeful moment in the history of the world." But the remark also illustrates our president's lack of clarity when it comes to the major life-and-death issue of our day.

Good English has its basis in good thinking. The president's bad English is symptomatic of his bad thinking (an idea cannot be a moment).

It is safe to say that he thinks this idea is a hopeful one, but since when do untold thousands have to die, be crippled, be bombed, imprisoned and tortured to sustain a careless thinker's optimism?

PHILIP WALKER
Santa Barbara, Calif., Dec. 24, 2004

Railroad, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

One of my longtime readers, Alex Chernavsky, picked up on something I said the other day. I had written that philosophy is not a search for truth. "How, then, does it differ from sophistry?" he asked.

There are two kinds of truth, or rather two ways for a proposition to be true. The first is necessary truth. It's necessarily true that puppies are dogs, that 2 + 2 = 4, and that no widows are male. Philosophers, given their training in conceptual analysis, are equipped to ascertain necessary truths. But notice that these truths say nothing about the world. They relate concepts. It's necessarily true that unicorns are one-horned animals, but this says nothing about whether there are unicorns.

The second kind of truth is contingent truth. It's contingently true that there are no unicorns (there could be), that there are dogs (there might not be), and that George W. Bush is president (he might have lost the election; indeed, some people think he did!). Philosophers have no expertise with regard to contingent truths. Where would they get it? In their graduate seminars? From reading philosophical treatises? By talking to other philosophers? I'm not saying that philosophers cannot make truth claims. Of course they can, and they do. I'm saying that their being philosophers doesn't make their truth claims any more authoritative than they would otherwise be. They're in the same boat as everyone else. Contingent truth is the province of everyone. Each of us is equipped to make careful observations about the world and to form beliefs on the basis of what we discover, using reason as our guide. Science is just common sense disciplined. The discipline allows scientists to find patterns and order in what appears to be chaos.

If philosophy is not about ascertaining contingent truths, then what's it about, besides ascertaining necessary truths? In my view, the role of the philosopher, as such, is to explore and map conceptual space. Just as we share a language, we share a conceptual scheme. How we speak is indicative of the concepts we have and use. Learning to speak is learning the conceptual scheme. This is why philosophers are so attentive to language. It is the means by which concepts are grasped and understood. To a linguist, language is an end. It is studied for its own sake. To a philosopher, language is a means. It is studied for the sake of something else, namely, the concepts (things signified) that words (signifiers) express, denote, or refer to.

Philosophy, in short, is conceptual analysis. I must immediately qualify this. The term "conceptual analysis" is sometimes used to refer (pejoratively) to those philosophers who seek necessary and sufficient conditions for concepts. But not all concepts are amenable to this approach. Some are; some are not. The philosopher's job is to study and correctly describe the behavior of concepts, even if they are not sharply demarcated from surrounding concepts. It is not to reform or revise our concepts (much less our entire conceptual scheme). Some concepts, such as time, space, rights, and justice, are complicated. Only a careful philosopher can describe them accurately. Also, there are specialized concepts in various occupations, professions, and academic disciplines. Philosophers of law, for example, focus their attention on the concepts that are distinctive to law, such as precedent, cause of action, and tort. Philosophers of science focus their attention on the concepts that are distinctive to science (or rather, to particular sciences, such as physics, biology, and chemistry).

I like to think of it this way. The role of the philosopher is to discover what is possible, necessary, and impossible, given this or that. (Nothing is possible, necessary, or impossible simpliciter.) It is not to discover what is actual. That task falls to others. It's an important task. It's just not philosophical in nature. Nothing in our training as philosophers equips us to perform it.

To return to Alex Chernavsky's question, I take it that by "sophistry" he means arguing irresponsibly, with no concern for the truth. But this doesn't describe philosophy. It's not that philosophers aren't concerned about truth or deny that there is such a thing. It's that it's not their job to ascertain it. John Locke described philosophers as "Under-Labourers." Their job, he wrote, is to clear the underbrush and other debris from a site so that others ("Master-Builders") can build impressive edifices. Master-Builders are the likes of Isaac Newton. Under-Labourers are the likes of Locke, at least when writing in his philosophical capacity.

By the way, my views on the nature of philosophy have been much influenced by Alan R. White, who taught for many years at the University of Hull in England. See his essay "Conceptual Analysis," chap. 5 in The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, ed. Charles J. Bontempo and S. Jack Odell (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975), 103-17.

Although animal rights may be a remote goal in a nation that still disregards the rights of the poor, of women, of people of color, and of children and the elderly, there can be little, if any, doubt that conventional morality strongly proscribes the infliction of any "unnecessary" pain on animals and imposes an obligation of [sic] all humans to treat nonhumans "humanely." Despite ubiquitous agreement on these points, there is also widespread acknowledgment that animal abuse does continue unabated in our society. What accounts for this ostensible irony is that animals do not have rights under the law. There are, of course, many laws on the federal and state levels that purport to protect animals from "inhumane" treatment, but these laws do not really confer rights in the sense that we usually use that term. Indeed, the vast majority of these laws do not even prohibit certain types of conduct that adversely affects animals. To the extent that the law does contain any types of prohibitions, such as the illegality of dogfighting or cockfighting, these prohibitions are usually more concerned with class issues or other moral issues than with animal protection. Similarly, aggressive efforts by police to prohibit the use of animals in religious "sacrifices" may have more to do with racist attitudes about the religion involved than with concern about animals. Both dogfighting and cockfighting are activities that are ostensibly more common among members of disempowered minority communities. Although these prohibitions also appear to be related to a general social disapproval of gambling, other animal wagering activities (e.g., horseracing) are more common among the middle and upper classes; indeed, several such events, such as the Kentucky Derby, are quite celebrated. Prohibitions (e.g., no animal can be used in burn experiments) may imply that there are some interests possessed by the animal that may not be traded away simply because of consequential considerations (e.g., the animal has an interest in not being used in burn experiments even where it can be plausibly argued that humans will benefit). Animals are the property of people, and property owners usually react rather strongly against any measure that threatens their autonomy concerning the use of their property.

(Gary L. Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law, Ethics and Action, ed. Tom Regan [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995], 17-8 [italics in original; endnote omitted])

I've been collecting language gaffes for at least a quarter of a century. Now that I have a blog, I can (heh heh) embarrass people. On 5 December 1986, Charlayne Hunter-Gault said the following on The MacNeil/Lehrer Report: "Can the Teflon president shake this off and bounce back?" The images run together like cars in a demolition derby.

See here for Joshua Muravchik's essay. (Thanks to James Taranto for the link.)

Richard Posner and Gary Becker have joined the blogosphere. I, for one, am delighted to have them, if only because it legitimates the activity. Here is the first post from their new blog. It's by Judge Posner and concerns preventive war.

To the Editor:

"Prescription for Confusion" (editorial, Dec. 28) correctly observes that doctors, as well as drug companies and the Food and Drug Administration, share responsibility for the pain medication fiasco, but you do not sufficiently emphasize the role of marketing.

According to its annual report, Merck, the maker of Vioxx, spent 28 percent of its revenues (more than $6 billion) on "marketing and administrative" expenses last year, while spending only half that on "research and development" and keeping 30 percent in net income. Figures for other major drug companies were not much different.

We are all aware of the incessant direct-to-consumer advertising, but that pales beside the amounts spent on marketing to doctors, including what the companies call "education." That is why doctors learn to practice a highly drug-intensive style of medicine and to use the newest, most expensive brand-name drugs, even when there is no evidence, as in the case of Vioxx, that they are more effective than older, cheaper drugs.

The medical profession should break its dependence on the pharmaceutical industry and educate its own. Until then, the industry should come clean about all the money it spends influencing doctors' prescribing habits.

Marcia Angell, M.D.
Arnold S. Relman, M.D.
Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 28, 2004
The writers served as editors in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Richard Posner's son, Eric, is a law professor, just as his father was before becoming a federal judge. Here is the younger Posner's op-ed column from today's New York Times.

Thirty years ago, Robert Nozick, then a young (36-year-old) philosopher at Harvard University, published Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Much has been written about this book—and about Nozick—over the years. Some of it is adulatory, some critical. Some of it is insightful; some of it, in my view, misconceives the nature of his project. Nozick didn't set out to prove, establish, or demonstrate that there are individual rights (in the sense of absolute side constraints), so it's no criticism of him or his book that he didn't do this. (Are we to be judged by what we set out to do or by something other than what we set out to do?) He assumed that there are rights of a certain sort and tried to show what follows from this assumption as far as a state is concerned. What he thinks follows is that no more than a minimal, nightwatchman state is justified.

Think of it this way. Nozick believes that the following propositions are incompatible:

1. Individuals have rights.
2. More than a minimal state is justified.

Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable. Liability to attacks of laughter is one of the characteristics distinguishing man from the animals—these being not only inaccessible to the provocation of his example, but impregnable to the microbes having original jurisdiction in bestowal of the disease. Whether laughter could be imparted to animals by inoculation from the human patient is a question that has not been answered by experimentation. Dr. Meir Witchell holds that the infectious character of laughter is due to instantaneous fermentation of sputa diffused in a spray. From this peculiarity he names the disorder Convulsio spargens.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Hello again Professor,

I am responding to your blog entry [here] on personal growth. As of right now I am a mere 23 years of age. When you say that age brings wisdom, I must be ahead of the curve because I have always considered myself a conservative (although since I have been through college I guess you could call me a conservative/libertarian).

To me, conservatism and the Republican Party seemed more pragmatic and realistic. I have always been pro-life and believed in personal responsibility. Too many of the Democratic Party's ideas seem good on the surface but when I look at the facts and see how little they have benefited those they are trying to help, it is just a waste of my money (and believe me, I like being efficient with my money; perhaps this is why economics always came easy to me).

Now that I have just graduated from Penn State and am about to start my first "real" job (salaried, benefits), I will be especially conscientious about domestic policy. As my one instructor said when a student asked him how he decides whom to vote for, "I hate paying taxes. I vote with my pocketbook in mind."

Justin Shutters

What a wonderful world we have wrought! A few minutes ago, I registered on All Music Guide. It's free. I wanted to see whether I could listen to samples of music from any album. Yup. Please locate Richard Souther's album Cross Currents (1989) and, after registering, play a clip of "High Tide." The effect is overwhelming, especially when the synthesizer comes in. It makes my atheistic spirit soar. I have the album on compact disc, so I get to experience the song in its entirety.

Addendum: Here's a better way to hear a sample of "High Tide." Go to Richard Souther's website, click "discs," click the Cross Currents album cover, and click "High Tide." Enjoy!

Bill Clinton—bless his diseased heart—laid the groundwork for the war in Iraq, which has done so much good for so many people. See here and here. President Bush had the political and moral will to build upon this groundwork. This, by the way, is another instance in which liberal good intentions did not produce good results. Conservatives, with their superior grasp of human nature, understand that force can be a force for good in this world.

I love full moons. No, I'm not a werewolf, although, truth be told, I have something of the Steppenwolf in me. Like him, I am approaching 50. The moon was full this past Sunday. As I walked Sophie and Shelbie on the school grounds in the dark, I gazed upward at it. It had a beautiful, peaceful aura. The sky was filled with specks of light. Some were stars. Others, though giving the appearance of being stationary, were airplanes moving silently across the sky on their way to or from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

"To take his own view of the matter, the Steppenwolf stood entirely outside the world of convention, since he had neither family life nor social ambitions. He felt himself to be single and alone, whether as a queer fellow and a hermit in poor health, or as a person removed from the common run of men by the prerogative of talents that had something of genius in them. Deliberately, he looked down upon the ordinary man and was proud that he was not one." (Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf, trans. Basil Creighton [New York: Bantam Books, 1969 (1927)], 57-8)

David Graham has a new blog. See here. David is a vegan and a libertarian.

To the Editor:

It's easy for George W. Bush to express sorrow and to send condolences and even some aid for the Indian Ocean tsunami devastation, since he appears to bear no culpability, as he does in other situations in other parts of the world.

But the next time there is a severe offshore earthquake and resulting tsunami, the sea level will be just a little bit higher, and the water and destruction will go a bit further inland and kill even more people. And for that, he will bear some culpability for not even wanting to consider global warming, much less do anything about it as the leader of the country most responsible for man-made warming and ice-cap melting.

Pierre E. Biscaye
Palisades, N.Y., Dec. 27, 2004
The writer is a special research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: The tsunami, like everything else bad that happens in the world, is President Bush's fault. This would be funny if it weren't so outrageous. President Bush's enemies—the legions of Bush-haters from whom we heard so much during the presidential campaign—attribute supernatural powers to him, which is, I suppose, a tribute to his effectiveness as a leader.

Prescription, n. A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I'm not entirely happy with what I wrote yesterday about cellphones. See here. This, by the way, is one important respect in which scholarship differs from blogging. Had I been writing a scholarly essay about cellphones (God forbid), what I posted yesterday would have been a first draft; and once I had second thoughts, I would have rewritten it. Nobody would have known of the first version, with whatever problems it had. But once I post something on this blog, it's in the public domain, for all to see.

There are two things we could do about this. First, we could insist that academic bloggers such as me post only polished essays. That would kill academic blogging. Second, we could relax critical standards for material posted on a blog. What's unfair is holding academic bloggers to academic standards. I hope you see why. Sometimes I post provocative material just to see how it sounds, or what sort of feedback it generates. I use my blog as a sounding board, the way scholars use lectures as sounding boards. Ideas need to be tried out before being published in their final form.

That said, let me get back to cellphones. I wrote that there is no need for special legislation, since there are already laws on the books that govern careless and reckless driving. But the real question is whether cellphone usage while driving can ever be careful. In other words, is cellphone usage per se careless? Take music, for example. It can distract, but must it? I don't think so. Sometimes it's a mere accompaniment (soundtrack?) to driving. It can even soothe frayed nerves. How about talking? I've had many conversations with passengers while driving that did not interfere (I think!) with my driving. Obviously, a conversation can become so heated that it could cause one to drive carelessly, but the point is that not all conversations do so.

So the question is whether cellphone usage is special. There are two aspects of cellphone usage that make it dangerous. First, it requires that one hand be off the steering wheel. But this problem can be solved by requiring headsets. Second, it diverts attention from the roadway. But doesn't a conversation with a passenger do the same? If you read the news report to which I linked yesterday, you saw that some experts think cellphone conversations are relevantly different from conversations with passengers. If you're my passenger and we come upon a construction zone, you can stop talking or even warn me of the danger so that I can pay attention to my driving. A person talking to me on a cellphone cannot do either of these things. I think this matters. So even the use of cellphones with headsets poses a special danger that might justify a ban on all cellphone use during driving.

Those, at any rate, are my second thoughts. Whether I have third thoughts remains to be seen. What do you think? Are cellphones special, such that existing laws are inadequate to deal with them?

Addendum: A law against cellphones would obviously prohibit only their use while driving. It would not be illegal to have a cellphone in one's vehicle or even to use it while in one's vehicle. People should pull over (i.e., bring their vehicles to a halt) before having cellphone conversations. Probably some people already do. One more thing. Perhaps, instead of having a separate provision dealing with cellphone use, the existing law against careless driving should be amended as follows: "Use of a cellphone while driving is a per se violation of this statute." It would be easy to establish a violation of this statute in the case of handheld cellphones, which can be observed by police officers. It would be less easy, but still possible, to establish a violation in the case of headsets, where all one sees is the driver's mouth moving. But these are matters of proof, not principle.

Should the Civil Rights Act (which forbids sex discrimination in employment) be interpreted as prohibiting an employer from requiring makeup of female but not male employees? See here for one court's answer. (Thanks to Mindy Hutchison for the link.)

You wrote [here]:

If you listen to liberals, abortion is an easy case, both morally and legally. They appear to have no doubts about their position; nor do they tolerate any doubts, qualifications, or subtleties in the politicians they support.

A few weeks ago, I checked to see whether there's an entry on Joel Feinberg on Wikipedia. There wasn't. I recently wrote the entry on Feinberg for the second edition of Encyclopedia of Philosophy, so I made myself a note to write an entry for Wikipedia. A few minutes ago, curious, I checked again. I'll be darned if somebody hasn't posted a short biography. See here. I'll have to enlarge it soon—if I can figure out how to do it.

I don't know what this means (it might not be good), but I just typed my name into Google with quotation marks and got 63,000 hits. I typed the name of my illustrious teacher, Joel Feinberg, and got 10,300 hits.

William J. Bennett is one of the most highly educated people in the United States. He has a Ph.D. degree in philosophy from The University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School. Five months ago, Bennett wrote an open letter to the Democrat Party—prior to its convention—in which he pleaded for moderation, foreign-policy bipartisanship, and civility, none of which is incompatible with robust political debate. See here. You may wish to read this open letter to see whether the Democrats heeded his advice, gratuitous though it was.

Bennett, like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Ronald Reagan, was a Democrat at one time. This got me to thinking. Is it your sense, as it is mine, that far more people went from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party than vice versa? Let's suppose for the sake of explanation that this is the case. Why is it the case? The cynic might say that growing old makes one insensitive to the concerns of others and that this makes the Republican Party more appealing. Another—in my opinion better—explanation is that age brings wisdom, perspective, realism, and moderation, and that these attributes fit better with the Republican Party than with the Democrat. As people age, they (1) come to see the complexity of social life; (2) form a more realistic view of human nature; (3) have a better grasp of the relation between past, present, and future; (4) give more weight to things like security and stability and less to liberty and experimentation; and (5) think rather than feel. The Republican Party is the party of the mature and the responsible.

I don't want to be dogmatic about this. I'm interested in what others think and will post some of the more thoughtful answers. Are you wiser now than you were? If so, why? What sorts of things do you know or understand now that were obscure to you before? What experiences altered your worldview, outlook, attitudes, beliefs, and values? Are there respects in which you were a better person when you were young(er)? If so, what are they, and are they offset by the respects in which you're a better person now? Do tell all.

Most academics are well above average in intelligence. But "intelligence" in the academic context means only the ability to perform the intellectual operations required by particular academic specialties. Intelligence is not a synonym for good sense, let alone for character. A talent for mathematics or economics does not imply a talent for government or politics.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001], 397)

To the Editor:

More than two-thirds of Americans support something less than abortion on demand, yet Roe v. Wade allows abortions under practically any circumstance.

By clinging so tightly to Roe, the Democrats have indeed earned the "abortion any time, anywhere" label that Gordon Fischer, the Iowa Democratic chairman, decries.

Mark Hammitt
Burlingame, Calif., Dec. 24, 2004

To the Editor:

I am disappointed to hear prominent Democrats distancing themselves from abortion rights.

The problem with the traditional liberal stance is the depiction of abortion as an act of choice, freedom or women's liberation.

In fact, any mother (indeed, any parent) knows that choosing between aborting a pregnancy and raising an unwanted child is a wrenching predicament, not a simple matter of preference, and that the decision to end a pregnancy can be a responsible one, not a selfish one.

If Democrats want to regain the vote of the heartland, they would do better to reaffirm their values of social responsibility and compassion, instead of allowing access to abortion and liberalism itself to be equated with glib notions of individual free choice.

Amy Borovoy
Princeton, N.J., Dec. 25, 2004

Here is David Brooks's follow-up column on the best essays of 2004. Since he mentions Peter Beinart's essay on the Democrat Party, let me throw in my two-cents' worth. It seems to me that if the Democrats cast out the likes of Michael Moore and MoveOn.org, it will cost them votes. The leftists will either vote for a third-party candidate or stay home in disgust. But these lost votes will be replaced by new votes cast by centrist Democrats who either voted for President Bush or stayed home. It's a tradeoff. Give up the lunatic Left; get the reasonable center. For the life of me, I don't see why the Democrat Party doesn't do this. Is it risky? Yes. But pandering to the America-hating lunatics hasn't exactly gotten the Democrats into the White House, has it?

Today's Dallas Morning News contains an Associated Press story about Texas legislation that would "restrict the use of cellphones by drivers." (See here for a related story.) I've been thinking about this for some time. Do we need a new law? There are already laws on the books that apply to reckless and careless driving. They just need to be enforced against cellphone users. Surely it's careless to drive while talking on a cellphone, not just because (at least) one hand is off the wheel, but because the conversation is likely to divert one's attention from the roadway. Even people who are walking (on campus, for example) find themselves bumping into others as they look down to dial.

It might be objected that if talking on a cellphone constitutes careless driving, then so does fiddling with a cassette or CD player. But why is this an objection? I would argue that this behavior, too, constitutes carelessness, maybe even recklessness. (Recklessness is imposing a significant risk of serious harm on others while being aware of that fact. Negligence [carelessness] does not require awareness.) It might also be objected that listening to music or to a passenger can be as diversionary as talking on a cellphone. But this is no objection, for I would say that those activities, no less than cellphone use, should be illegal when conjoined with erratic driving.

Why are we so cavalier about driving? It's one of the most dangerous things any of us does, day in and day out, yet we treat it as if it's risk-free. Think of all the people whose lives have been snuffed out because someone was driving carelessly or recklessly. All of their projects have been destroyed. They have been deprived of a future of experiences, activities, and enjoyments. Why do we allow immature teens and the elderly to drive? Why are we not harder on those who drive while intoxicated? Driving should be viewed as a solemn undertaking, fraught with risk. When you get into your car, you should be focused, alert, and deadly serious.

I guess I'm not opposed in principle to a new law that addresses cellphones. I just think we already have the tools we need to solve the problem. What we lack is the will to use them. Police officers need to be on the lookout for all kinds of careless driving. Perhaps if more people were arrested and punished, we'd all be safer.

This week's link is to Metatome.

Late in his life, Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr was asked whether he had known any geniuses. Two, he said: his former colleague William O. Douglas and his former law clerk Richard A. Posner. Posner has been a federal judge (on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago) for more than 20 years. He is a prolific writer. I've probably learned as much from Judge Posner as from any other human being (which is not to say that I always agree with him, although, when I don't, it worries me). This week, he is guest-blogging at Brian Leiter's site. See here for the judge's first substantive post. Be sure to read the follow-up, in which Judge Posner responds to criticism.

Enthusiasm, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. Byron, who recovered long enough to call it "entuzy-muzy," had a relapse which carried him off—to Missolonghi.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Eight years of hard running has made me a cripple. Later today, I undergo an MRI examination to find out what's wrong. My doctor and I suspect sacroiliitis—inflammation of the sacroiliac joint. Once we get a diagnosis, we'll figure out what can be done and what to do. I'm still running, just not as far or as fast as I'd like. Speaking of running, did you know that there are new world records in both the 5,000 and the 10,000 meters as of this summer? A 21-year-old Ethiopian, Kenenisa Bekele, broke both records in the space of nine days. As I was just telling a law-school friend (Steve Munger, now a labor lawyer in Atlanta), more than a minute has come off the world 10K record since we were in law school in the early 1980s. The record was 27:22.3 (by Henry Rono of Kenya). Now it's 26:20.31. I wonder whether I'll see another minute come off before I die. Surely there must be a limit to how fast a human being can cover 6.214 miles.

Somebody please explain to me how Blogger makes money. I've never paid a penny for this blog, although I pay $60 a year to the company that provides the site counter. There used to be advertisements at the top of my blog, but now there is just a search tool. When there were ads, I could understand it, for I was acting as a content provider, delivering eyeballs to the companies that advertised; but now I'm stumped. By the way, I believe Blogger is now owned by Google. Does that help?

Addendum: Wikipedia has an entry on blogs. See here.

Hi Keith,

Just wanted you to know how much I appreciated your piece this week on liberals and abortion. No one can untie a knot better than you and embarrass everyone for missing the obvious. Your assessment of the liberal view of abortion can be applied to so many other liberal positions. What it comes down to is something fundamental to today's (militant) liberalism: its complete intolerance.

During the elections I wished so much I had a bumper sticker that read: I'm not voting for Bush; I'm voting against Michael Moore (who epitomizes the Left to me). In all honesty, I'm not a big fan of G. W. Bush (though I do admire some of his qualities); it's more that I am so completely morally offended by the intolerance of "liberal" America. And now that I've read your piece, I recognize the "reason" behind my intuitions.

Thanks so much!

Maria Fish

After years of watching a standard 27-inch television, I broke down and bought a Dell 42-inch high-definition plasma. I also purchased my first DVD player. I have little or no technical competence, so I was sure I'd fail to get the television and DVD player set up properly; but somehow I managed it. Two nights ago, I watched the first Alien movie (1979), and last night, with the fireplace crackling nearby and all the lights off, I settled in to watch Legends of the Fall (1994), which a friend gave to me several years ago. It was wonderful. The scenery (it was filmed in Alberta) is gorgeous. I'm probably the last person in the country (if not the world) to see this film, but on the off chance that you haven't, do so.

If some animals count for something, which animals count, how much do they count, and how can this be determined? Suppose (as I believe the evidence supports) that eating animals is not necessary for health and is not less expensive than alternate equally healthy diets available to people in the United States. The gain, then, from the eating of animals is pleasures of the palate, gustatory delights, varied tastes. I would not claim that these are not truly pleasant, delightful, and interesting. The question is: do they, or rather does the marginal addition in them gained by eating animals rather than only nonanimals, outweigh the moral weight to be given to animals' lives and pain? Given that animals are to count for something, is the extra gain obtained by eating them rather than nonanimal products greater than the moral cost?

(Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia [New York: Basic Books, 1974], 36-7 [italics in original])

Addendum: See here for Peter Singer's contemporaneous review of Nozick's book.

Dr Bill Vallicella has some interesting thoughts about travel, to which, by the way, there is a fundamental constitutional right. See here and here.

Every year, around Christmas, there is an impassioned (and sometimes ugly) debate in newspapers and on television about the so-called separation of church and state. Invariably, someone will say that a religious symbol on public property violates "the separation of church and state." This will be followed, just as invariably, by the claim that those words don't appear in the Constitution. Sometimes this exchange ends the discussion. It's as if the discussants don't know how to proceed.

It's true that the words "separation of church and state" don't appear in the Constitution, but it doesn't follow that the Constitution doesn't require the separation of church and state. The word "privacy" doesn't appear in the Constitution, either, but the Supreme Court ruled almost four decades ago (rightly or wrongly) that there is a constitutional right to privacy—a fundamental right, in fact, one that can be violated only under compelling circumstances. The Constitution is a text. How to read or interpret it—what it means—is a matter of considerable controversy among lawyers, legal scholars, and philosophers of law.

When people talk about the separation of church and state, they undoubtedly have the First Amendment in mind. This amendment is packed with clauses. One concerns freedom of speech. Another concerns freedom of the press. Yet another concerns the right of peaceable assembly. Two of its clauses deal specifically with religion: the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause. But these clauses are worded in such a way as to leave room for disagreement about what, exactly, they permit and require. We can't simply read them and decide whether, for example, they prohibit the public display of a crèche. I believe the framers of the Constitution drafted these clauses using generic (vague) language so that succeeding generations could give them meaning. They did not want to hamstring future generations. If I'm right about this, then the intention of the framers (their "original intent") was that we not limit ourselves to their intentions. This is ironic, perhaps, but it's not contradictory.

The point of this post is that we should stop using the expression "separation of church and state." It cuts no philosophical ice. All it does is distract us from the issue. To use the expression is to deploy a theory of what the First Amendment's religion clauses mean. Better to state the theory straightaway.

To the Editor:

Re "Debate on Malpractice Looms for Senate" (news article, Dec. 20):

Practicing under price controls, as most physicians do today under Medicare and managed care, does not leave us much choice when malpractice insurance premiums rise. In order to balance the books, one has to increase one's daily office visits by reducing the allotted time per patient, which sooner or later will negatively affect quality of care and result in more malpractice suits.

Congress has a choice to make. Either price controls are abolished so that we can adjust our fees to our expenses, or medical malpractice insurance premiums must be harnessed. There is no other option, and the informed public must become an active participant in this discussion.

Michael Harel, M.D.
New York, Dec. 20, 2004

Liberals love to characterize conservatives as unsubtle and immoderate, but the liberal position on abortion is nothing if not extreme. It is that there should be no legal restrictions whatsoever on a woman's right to abort. Even partial-birth abortions may not be prohibited. Actually, it's worse than that. Many liberals would fund abortions from the federal treasury, which means that those who believe abortion to be murder—and there are lots of them—would be forced to subsidize it. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is no conservative, but he has come to have doubts about the liberal position on abortion. See here (free registration required). (I wish Cohen would come to have doubts about the death penalty, which he strenuously opposes.)

There are two issues with respect to abortion. The first concerns its morality. The second concerns its legality. One could hold that abortion is immoral but that it should be legal. Only legal moralists hold that law should enforce morality, and not many people are legal moralists. Liberals could learn from one of their heroes, philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson. In her 1971 essay "A Defense of Abortion," Thomson rejected both extremes about the personhood of the fetus. She denied both that all fetuses are persons and that no fetuses are persons. In other words, some fetuses are persons and some are not. Of course, Thomson went on to argue (for the sake of arguing) that fetal personhood doesn't entail that abortion is wrong, but personhood, in her view, makes abortion a hard case rather than an easy case. If you listen to liberals, abortion is an easy case, both morally and legally. They appear to have no doubts about their position; nor do they tolerate any doubts, qualifications, or subtleties in the politicians they support. I congratulate Cohen for not following the liberal herd on this issue. Perhaps others will join him.

Rumor, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.

Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
Against my enemy no other blade.
His be the terror of a foe unseen,
His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
And nurse my valor for another foe.
Joel Buxter.

It is not surprising that judges are ultimately limited in their skepticisms, at least so long as they continue to engage in their responsible tasks of judging. Academics, being irresponsible (and often socially marginal), are freer to follow ideas out to their most destructive limits.

(Sanford Levinson, "Law as Literature," Texas Law Review 60 [March 1982]: 373-403, at 379 n. 18)

I have an admission to make. I don't care one whit about Iraqis. Okay, maybe a little—but certainly not as much as I care about Americans. Why, then, did I support the war in Iraq? Because Saddam Hussein deserved punishment for his crimes and it appeared that unless we brought him to justice, he would escape punishment. Punishment is not a bad thing that needs justification, as utilitarians think. It's a good thing.

What we should have done—what President Bush should have done—was topple Hussein, dismantle his Baathist government, and get out, leaving it to the Iraqis to rebuild. Longtime readers of this blog may recall that I urged getting out at least twice. To the reply that this would have created a civil war, I say, "Isn't that what we're likely to have as soon as we leave?" We do plan to leave, right? We can't stay in Iraq forever, controlling events. In the end, the Iraqi people will get the government they want—and deserve. I suppose they could select another despot, but if they do, the blood won't be on our hands. We will have given them a chance for democracy.

Am I confident in these judgments? No. I've been ambivalent about the war from the outset, even if it hasn't come through in my blog entries. I suspect that many conservatives, maybe even most of them, are ambivalent. I wonder how many liberals are ambivalent. They should be, since (1) they profess to value individual liberty and (2) the war stands a chance of permanently liberating millions of people who would otherwise remain in bondage.

To the Editor:

There are serious charges that voters in Ohio were systematically disenfranchised by violations of state and federal voting laws through, among other things, manipulation of the vote tabulator by a representative of the company that created the software.

Our American press, inexplicably, has been thunderously silent.

The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee have been conducting hearings into many of these problems. There is a likelihood that the report of the presidential electors from Ohio, due on Jan. 6 to Congress, will be challenged.

The list of what should be blockbuster media stories is long and growing. But these stories are not out there. As a result, most Americans don't know as much about serious, credible charges of the theft of democracy as about what happened in Ukraine.

William F. Hewitt
New York, Dec. 20, 2004

Jews-harp, n. An unmusical instrument, played by holding it fast with the teeth and trying to brush it away with the finger.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Much has been written about moral values since the election on 2 November. The received wisdom is that the issue helped Republicans and hurt Democrats. But what's the issue? What exactly are these "moral values" that supposedly animated so many voters?

The first thing to note is that everyone has values. Even nihilists, who profess to avoid making moral judgments, have values. Whenever a student tells me that he or she doesn't play the morality game, or that moral judgments are only so much hot air, I reply, "Good; then you won't mind my giving you a failing grade in this course." This invariably elicits a cry of "Unfair!" That's a moral judgment. Having, expressing, and acting on values is part of being human. We're hard-wired for it.

What voters were probably trying to say to exit pollsters is that they subscribe to Republican values rather than to Democrat values. It's not as though Republicans have morality on their side (however much they would like to believe this). It's that the values endorsed by Republicans are more in line with those of the majority of voters.

Some people identify morality with sexual morality. But it's arguable that there is nothing morally distinctive about sex. If certain sex acts are wrong, it's because they're disrespectful (coercive, manipulative), not because they're sexual. But given that people identify morality with sexual morality, and given that Republicans are thought to have better sexual values, I can see how some people might say that "moral values" led them to vote Republican. They're saying that this particular cluster of values—those concerning sexual intercourse—was important to them.

Morality is pervasive. If morality includes character, as the Greeks thought, then arguably everything one does has a moral dimension, since character is an ongoing construction. What I do in my house, alone, affects my character, which manifests itself in my public behavior. Some philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), think that there are duties to self as well as to others. One such duty, Kant said, is to develop one's talents. If I lie around all the time, letting my talents rust, I act wrongly. Utilitarians believe that everyone has a moral obligation to work full time to promote overall utility. This, needless to say, leaves no room for "moral holidays." All the great moral traditions—virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism—maintain that morality is pervasive. It is the water in which we fish swim.

Liberalism and conservatism are political moralities. The Democrat party is the liberal party in contemporary American politics. The Republican party is the conservative party. Most people who vote Democrat do so because they subscribe to liberal values and believe that these values are more likely to be realized by Democrats. Most people who vote Republican do so because they subscribe to conservative values and believe that these values are more likely to be realized by Republicans. Democrats are more egalitarian than Republicans when it comes to the distribution of wealth. It would be unfair, however, to say that Republicans don't care about equality, for they do. It's just that they stress equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcomes or resources. Both parties value equality, in other words, but they have different theories of what it requires in the way of public policy.

There are also evaluative differences in foreign affairs. Liberals tend to be unpatriotic (perhaps "nonpatriotic" is less pejorative) in the sense that they assign no special value to being an American. They view themselves as human beings first and as Americans second (or third, or fourth, or not at all). Being an American is an accident, in their view. Therefore, it would be morally arbitrary—not to mention unfair to disadvantaged nonAmericans—to say that one has special responsibilities to other Americans. Liberals think there are only general responsibilities: responsibilities to human beings as such. Conservatives, of course, deny all this. They say that being an American is morally special, that loyalty is a virtue, that partiality is no vice. Each of us, besides having general responsibilities to human beings as such, has special responsibilities to one's compatriots, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and family members.

Another important evaluative difference between liberals and conservatives, and therefore between Democrats and Republicans, concerns tradition. Liberals say that tradition has no intrinsic value. Each tradition must be evaluated on its merits, with no presumption either in favor of or against it. Conservatives say that tradition has intrinsic value and that this creates a presumption in its favor. It's not that tradition always prevails. It's that it always has weight. The liberal denies this. Conservatives look to the past for guidance, believing it to be a repository of wisdom. Liberals look to the future for inspiration, hoping to escape the "injustices" of the past and present.

There are many other evaluative differences between Democrats and Republicans that are rooted in their respective political moralities. Each party has a worldview: a set of beliefs, values, principles, assumptions, presumptions, and attitudes. These worldviews are not disjoint, but they're not coextensive, either. Think of them as partially overlapping circles. What voters seemed to be saying on 2 November is that they prefer the worldview of Republicans to that of Democrats. It would be nice if we could think of it this way instead of in terms of "moral values," which suggests that liberals are nihilists. Liberals are not nihilists. They're as committed to morality as conservatives are. They just have a different set of moral values.

[William Clark] 25th December Christmass Tuesday I was awakened before Day by a discharge of 3 platoons from the Party and the french, the men merrily Disposed, I give them all a little Taffia and permited 3 Cannon fired, at raising Our flag, Some men went out to hunt & the Others to Danceing and Continued untill 9 oClock P, M, when the frolick ended &c.

[John Ordway] Tuesday 25th Decr. 1804. cloudy. we fired the Swivels at day break & each man fired one round. our officers Gave the party a drink of Taffee. we had the Best to eat that could be had, & continued firing dancing & frolicking dureing the whole day. the Savages did not Trouble us as we had requested them not to come as it was a Great medician day with us. we enjoyed a merry cristmas dureing the day & evening untill nine oClock—all in peace & quietness.

[Patrick Gass] Tuesday 25th. The morning was ushered in by two discharges of a swivel, and a round of small arms by the whole corps. Captain Clarke then presented to each man a glass of brandy, and we hoisted the American flag in the garrison, and its first waving in fort Mandan was celebrated with another glass.— The men then cleared out one of the rooms and commenced dancing. At 10 o'clock we had another glass of brandy, and at 1 a gun was fired as a signal for dinner. At half past 2, another gun was fired, as a notice to assemble at the dance, which was continued in a jovial manner till 8 at night; and without the presence of any females, except three squaws, wives to our interpreter, who took no other part than the amusement of looking on. None of the natives came to the garrison this day; the commanding officers having requested they should not, which was strictly attended to. During the remainder of the month we lived in peace and tranquility in the garrison, and were daily visited by the natives.

[Joseph Whitehouse] Tuesday 25th Decr. 1804. we ushred in the morning with a discharge of the Swivvel, and one round of Small arms of all the party. then another from the Swivel. then Capt. Clark presented a glass of brandy to each man of the party. we hoisted the american flag and each man had another Glass of brandy. the men prepared one of the rooms and commenced dancing. at 10 oC. we had another glass of brandy, at one a gun was fired as a Signal for diner. half past two another gun was fired to assemble at the dance, and So we kept it up in a jovel manner untill Eight oC. at night, all without the compy. of the female Seck, except three Squaws the Intreptirs wives and they took no part with us only to look on. agreeable to the officers request the natives all Stayed at their villages all day.—

Tuesday Decemr 25th This morning being Christmass, the day was announced by the discharge of our Swivels, and one Round from our small arms of the whole company; about 7 o'Clock A. M. we fired our Swivels again, when Captain Clark came out of his quarters, and presented a Glass of Brandy to each Man of our party.— He then ordered the American Flag to be hoisted, which being done; he presented them again with another Glass of brandy.— The Men then prepared one of the Rooms, and commenced dancing, we having with us Two Violins & plenty of Musicans in our party.—

At 10 o'Clock A. M. the whole of the party were again served with another Glass brandy they continued dancing 'till 1 o'Clock P. M. when our Cannon was fir'd off, as a signal for dinner, at half an hour past 2 oClock P. M. we fired off our Cannon, and repaired to the Room to dance, which they continued at till 8 o'Clock P. M. There was none of the Mandans, Excepting 3 Squaws our Interpreters Wives at the Fort, the Officer having requested the Natives, to stay in their Towns, which they complied with, the Officers this day named our Fort, Fort Mandan,—

(Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition [Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1987, 1995, 1996, 1997], 3:261, 9:106, 10:68, 11:113-4 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

To the Editor:

I'm for keeping Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense because he is against increasing the number of American soldiers in Iraq. Sending more soldiers only means more targets for those Iraqis who don't want our army occupying their country.

I did not want any Americans to risk their lives in Iraq. We should bring home those who are there. So better Mr. Rumsfeld than some eager beaver who wants to double our army in the desert as we repeatedly did in the jungle to no avail in the 1960's and 70's. We toppled Saddam Hussein; as George Aiken, that wonderful old Republican senator, said of an earlier time of troubles, Declare victory and come home.

Once we left Vietnam and quit bombing its people, they became friends and trading partners. Iraq has been nestled along the Tigris and Euphrates for 6,000 years. It will be there 6,000 more whether we stay or leave, as earlier conquerors learned.

I tried to persuade Santa Claus to bring our troops home for Christmas, but he said, "No, Rumsfeld sees light at the end of the tunnel if we hang in there and don't listen to old veterans like McGovern."

Is there really a Santa Claus, Virginia? If so, why were 14 soldiers killed at lunch after a hard night searching for that light at the end of the tunnel?

George McGovern
Mitchell, S.D., Dec. 22, 2004
The writer was a senator from South Dakota and the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee.

David Brooks of The New York Times hands out this year's Hookie Awards. See here.

Overwork, n. A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

R. Jason Richards, "Stop! . . . Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go, and Do Not Ask for a Notary," John Marshall Law Review 31 (spring 1998): 879.

Garth Meintjes, "Dying with Style and Grace," Notre Dame Law Review 73 (1998): 777.

Michael S. Spindler, "What You Always Wanted to Know About the Accounting Provisions of the Foreign Concept Practices Act (But Were Afraid to Ask)," Alberta Law Review 36 (1998): 473.

Stephen Tromans, "Is Franz Kafka Alive and Well and Working for the Environmental Agency? Transfrontier Waste Shipments and Proportionality," Journal of Environmental Law 10 (1998): 146.

Daniel I. Steinberg, "Divergent Conceptions: Procreational Rights and Disputes over the Fate of Frozen Embryos," Boston University Public Interest Law Journal 7 (spring 1998): 315.

Christmas never had any religious significance in my family (nor did Easter), but we always celebrated it. It was (and is) a secular day of gift-giving and merriment. My mother made a ridiculously large meal, with all the trimmings; gifts were exchanged; people dropped by to eat or say hello; and games were played. I'd like to wish all my readers a merry Christmas and, in general, a happy and healthy holiday season.

The fundamental question of political philosophy, one that precedes questions about how the state should be organized, is whether there should be any state at all. Why not have anarchy?

(Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia [New York: Basic Books, 1974], 4)

Something happens when you become a parent. You can't be a child anymore. You must grow up, however old you are in chronological terms, and be responsible—for someone else's life and welfare depend on you. Utterly. This isn't to say that every parent discharges these awesome responsibilities, but, fortunately for their children, most do.

Something similar happens when a political morality assumes power. By the time George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009, conservatives will have presided over this country for 36 of the previous 56 years. That's 64.2%. Richard Posner and other astute commentators say that Bill Clinton is best viewed as a consolidator and conservator of Ronald Reagan's policies. If we count Clinton as a conservative (for he was no egalitarian liberal), that makes 44 of the previous 56 years, or 78.5%. The only liberal presidents we've had since January 1953, when Harry Truman left office, are John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter. Most of the liberal candidates in recent years—Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry—were crushed by their conservative opponents. Carter, the most recent liberal president, was sent packing in January 1981—28 years before President Bush leaves office.

So liberals have been out of power for 28 years. That's a long time—a whole generation. This political impotency has affected liberals in many ways, not least of which is psychologically. Many of them, such as Michael Moore and Brian Leiter, act like children. See here. They're mature in chronological terms, but infantile in political terms. They're unruly, tempestuous, snide, and snotty. Having no power, they're unaccountable for its use. Nobody's life or welfare depends on them and they know it. They can take pot shots at those in power with impunity. They can play the rogue, the scamp, the brat, the rebel, the punk, the outsider. They can be as irresponsible as they please in proposing policies, since there are no real-world consequences to their actions.

If and when liberals regain the White House, they will have to grow up. The lives and welfare of hundreds of thousands of people, all over the world, will depend on their policies. If they're wrong, they'll hear about it. Actually, now that I think about it, it's not a matter of liberals regaining the White House and then growing up. It's a matter of demonstrating to the American people that they are grown up. For Americans will never elect the moral equivalent of a child to the presidency. One wonders whether liberals really want the responsibilities of power. Judging from the antics of Moore, Leiter, leftist academics, and the Hollywood crowd, they'd rather be perpetual children, throwing eggs at the White House and running away to avoid being caught by the grown-ups who live there.

David Velleman is a philosopher at The University of Michigan, which is my alma mater. (Sort of. I attended The University of Michigan-Flint.) Yesterday Velleman posted a brief discussion of epithets (such as "homophobe") on his communal blog and has gotten much feedback. See here. I haven't read all of the feedback, but Velleman had to shut the comments down for a while to let people cool off. He says he's still in experimental mode with respect to the comments function. It'll be interesting to see how long he keeps it.

To the Editor:

"Bush's Inauguration Will Pay Honor to U.S. Troops Abroad" (news article, Dec. 17) is yet another example of the Bush administration's preference for the superficial over the meaningful.

The reality is that the commitment of more than 100,000 troops to Iraq under false pretenses, the complete lack of a plan upon their arrival, the forced reactivation of soldiers who have already served, the lack of adequate protective equipment, inadequate veterans' health benefits and the absence of an exit strategy do far more to dishonor the troops.

I would suggest that the millions of dollars raised for these inauguration events be donated to the soldiers' families, who are struggling to survive—an action that would truly honor our brave soldiers.

Daren D. Repishti
Louisville, Ky., Dec. 17, 2004

Several prominent philosophers have written to me to express agreement with what I said in this post. One called Barbara Fried's essay "childish." Another agreed that it's "bizarre." I see from Fried's web page that she has a graduate degree in English and American literature. She's a lawyer with a literary background. This explains her obsession with Robert Nozick's writing style. But that merely raises the question: Why was she commissioned to write an essay for a philosophical periodical? Were there no philosophers available? The editors of Social Philosophy & Policy have some explaining to do.

Just to be clear: I have nothing whatsoever against Fried. I'm sure she's an able lawyer. I even enjoyed reading her essay. But (1) I emphatically disagree with her about the cogency of Nozick's argument (as I will explain shortly in this blog) and (2) I'm puzzled by why her essay appeared in a philosophical publication. There is nothing (or very little) philosophical about it. Also, I'm put off by her trashing of Nozick, who's no longer around to defend himself.

Luminary, n. One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not writing about it.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Ah, Texas. It's said that if you don't like the weather here, you should wait 15 minutes—or some other ridiculously short period of time. Here's how wacky our weather is. Since Sunday, the high temperature at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport has been 54, 73, 66, 46, and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. That's right: five days, five different first digits. Maybe today it'll be in the 80s.

To the Editor:

Has any war been won without shedding blood? Yet our newspapers dwell on the casualty figures from Iraq as if they were a catastrophe we have never experienced.

We've deleted from our minds that thousands of lives were surrendered in the cause of freedom in past wars. How can some say, "If we were not in Iraq, our men would not be dying"?

We were summoned to war with terrorists when we were attacked on 9/11. In going to Iraq, our field of battle is being fought on foreign soil, not our own.

Do you think that terrorists would have abandoned their concentration on America if we had not invaded Iraq? And would they abandon their jihad on America if we left Iraq?

We rightly grieve for the brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives so that we can live in freedom at home and be eternally grateful for their protection!

Betty Pearson
Elmhurst, Ill., Dec. 22, 2004

Mine, adj. Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Last night, with my feet being warmed by a crackling fire, I read a bizarre essay by Stanford law professor Barbara H. Fried: "Begging the Question with Style: Anarchy, State, and Utopia at Thirty Years," Social Philosophy & Policy 22 (winter 2005): 221-54. Fried's aim in this essay is to explain why Robert Nozick's 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia has been "so influential" (221). Why has it, together with John Rawls's 1971 book A Theory of Justice, "arguably framed the landscape of academic political philosophy in the last decades of the twentieth century" (221)?

The obvious answer to Fried's question—because it's a high-quality work—is quickly dismissed. She says that "the answer cannot be found in the cogency of [the book's] affirmative argument" (221). Nozick's argument, she writes, "is so thin and undefended as to read, often, as nothing more than a placeholder for an argument yet to be supplied" (222). Without elaborating, Fried lists eight "substantive questions begged or dodged in Nozick's book" (222). She says she will defend her "bald assertion" that Nozick's argument fails in another essay. I, for one, will be waiting.

Having convinced herself that the prominence (i.e., popularity) of Anarchy, State, and Utopia is not a function of its philosophical merit, Fried must provide an alternative explanation. She settles on Nozick's use of rhetoric, understood as "[t]he art of using language so as to persuade or influence others" (226, quoting the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). Nozick, she says, is "a master stylist" (229). Anarchy, State, and Utopia is "in many respects a rhetorical tour de force" (226). The bulk of Fried's essay is designed to establish this thesis. She shows, among other things, how Nozick portrays his antagonists as fools, how he pretends to be "a humble toiler in the vineyards of truth" (229), how he plays the "charming rogue" (235), how he slyly misdescribes his opponents (e.g., as "redistributionists" rather than as "egalitarians"), how he preemptively dismisses utilitarianism, how he makes "flat-footed, brash declarations" (247), and how he blurs the line between the real world and various ideal worlds.

Fried's criticism of Nozick's use of rhetoric is so relentless and merciless—so mean-spirited—that, in the conclusion, she explains herself. "By this point, the reader will have detected more than a whiff of censoriousness in this essay's tone. Perhaps it is appropriate in closing to say something about the implicit ethical criticism that lies beneath it" (253). She goes on to explain that there is nothing "inherently suspect about the use of rhetoric to enhance the persuasiveness of academic arguments" (253). Indeed, "Since our arguments are communicated through the medium of words, we cannot avoid the rhetorical. Whether or not it is a virtue, it is a necessity" (253). Earlier, she had written this: "I would wager there is no academic who has not, at one time or another, deployed numerous rhetorical devices, some of which are catalogued here, to slide the reader past inconsistencies or gaps in an argument" (228).

So everything Fried says about Nozick could be said about Rawls or any other political philosopher—in which case, why pick on Nozick? But it gets worse. Fried admits that "Many of these rhetorical devices [used by Nozick], although they have the potential for mischief, are not inconsistent with the possibility that Nozick's substantive argument holds water" (228). This is of course correct. Every philosophical essay has both a logical and a rhetorical dimension. The logical dimension is cognitive, the rhetorical affective.

Many years ago, David Gauthier wrote a book entitled The Logic of Leviathan. It was an attempt to extract the argumentative structure of Thomas Hobbes's great work. Someone else might have written (for all I know has written) a book entitled The Rhetoric of Leviathan. These books are logically independent of one another. They are about different aspects of the same work. Philosophers are trained to extract the cognitive content from philosophical essays, leaving their rhetorical dimension for others to study. Philosophers are quite capable of doing this with Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Does Fried think we're fools? I predict that Fried's essay will confound philosophers, especially as it appears in a philosophical periodical rather than an organ of literary criticism. Philosophers will read it and ask, "What's the point?"

In the end, here's what we learn from Fried. First, rhetoric is inescapable, even in works of philosophy. Everybody uses it. Everybody must use it. Second, there is nothing "inherently suspect" (228) about the use of rhetoric. Even if it were escapable, in other words, it would be unobjectionable. Third, no amount or kind of rhetoric can undermine the logic of a work. Even if Nozick is the master rhetorician she makes him out to be, therefore, it has no bearing on the quality of his argument, which must be examined on its merits. One wonders why this essay was commissioned, or, if its content was not known by the editors beforehand, why it was accepted for publication. It belongs not in a prominent philosophical periodical but in a journal of aesthetics or literary criticism.

The other day, Marty Lange of Austin wrote the following in a letter to The Dallas Morning News:

Utah, Boise, Cal, and Louisville are all as good or better than the Washington State team that kicked the Horns last season.

If the enduring prominence of Anarchy, State, and Utopia cannot be explained (or explained adequately) by the cogency of Nozick's argument, then what explains it? One important factor at play, I suspect—which I will not pursue directly here—is the ad hominem one. Nozick, by virtue of his academic position at Harvard and his academic reputation, lent respectability to a set of arguments that has had few champions within the mainstream academy, and none of his stature. Arguments that were easy for the academic establishment to marginalize when they came from the likes of Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand suddenly demanded to be taken seriously simply by virtue of the fact that they came from Robert Nozick. Nozick was hardly unaware of the strategic value of his endorsement—a fact that he played on in Anarchy, State, and Utopia in ways I will return to below.

(Barbara H. Fried, "Begging the Question with Style: Anarchy, State, and Utopia at Thirty Years," Social Philosophy & Policy 22 [winter 2005]: 221-54, at 226)

I hate to end my blogging day on a negative note, but who in the world watches Greta Van Susteren, and why? Night after night, she dishes out tabloid trash. The Fox News Channel should be ashamed of itself.

Carol Platt Liebau has an interesting post about the so-called religious wars. See here. Carol already has a substantial blog readership, which is not surprising, given her intelligence, her wit, her engagement with important issues, and her stylish writing. Carol is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Indeed, she was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. She was the biggest fish in the biggest pond.

I bought my first computer—a Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III—23 years ago today. It was a mistake. I thought I could use it for word-processing, but all I could do was program it. About all I ever did with it was make a ping-pong ball go across the screen. Meanwhile, Bill Gates was inventing and perfecting Windows. Sigh.

The province of logic must be restricted to that portion of our knowledge which consists of inferences from truths previously known; whether those antecedent data be general propositions, or particular observations and perceptions. Logic is not the science of Belief, but the science of Proof, or Evidence. In so far as belief professes to be founded on proof, the office of logic is to supply a test for ascertaining whether or not the belief is well grounded. With the claims which any proposition has to belief on the evidence of consciousness, that is, without evidence in the proper sense of the word, logic has nothing to do.

(John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, ed. J. M. Robson, vols. 7 and 8 of Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, gen. ed. J. M. Robson [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974], 7:9 [1st ed. published 1843; 8th ed. published 1872])

Is the United States of America a Christian nation? If so, in what sense and to what effect? See here for a thoughtful (albeit brief) discussion.

I love my fireplace. We Texans have mild winters, but I'm able to use the fireplace for several months each year. Sometimes I fire it up as early as October. This year, I didn't need it until December—eight days ago, in fact. I get a lot of use out of it in December, January, and February. March brings warm weather, so I might use the fireplace only ten or fifteen times that month. I buy wood by the cord and stack it against the back wall of my garage. I collect kindling during my twice-a-day walks with Sophie and Shelbie. The only other thing I need are newspapers, of which there are always plenty. I calculated some time back that each fire costs me $2.50. Where else can so much pleasure be had for so little? The feeling of warmth on my feet as I read is priceless. Now if I can just figure out a way to work at the computer while sitting in front of the fireplace. It would be nirvana.

Mark Spahn sent a link to this interesting map. I grew up in Michigan's Thumb Area, specifically in Tuscola County. We called soft drinks "pop." The map has it right. I'd be interested in hearing from others who've lived in various places. Is the map correct? By the way, notice how uniform Michigan is in this regard. Both peninsulas are blue.

To the Editor:

It is fascinating the extent to which apologists for the Iraq war will go to justify the unjustifiable, although William Safire does so [see here] with a literary flair that is unique.

To find weapons of mass destruction, he constructs an alternate reality, thereby hoping to justify an invasion in this (actual) reality.

Unfortunately, such an alternate reality, while entertaining, is a weak justification for the deaths of more than 1,300 American soldiers.

Matt Schwab
New York, Dec. 20, 2004

It's snowing here in Fort Worth, where we have a temperature of 33.1º Fahrenheit. Yeehaa! We get snow only two or three days a year, and it melts within hours. That's just enough to make me appreciate living in Texas. In Michigan, where I grew up, snow was a fact of life for months on end every winter. Once you've lived in the Southwest, as I have for the past 21 years, you can't go back. By the way, my girls—Sophie and Shelbie—had a ball on our morning walk at the school grounds. Shelbie was particularly animated, racing to and fro, carrying an old shirt, sniffing the air, and jumping up on me. I laughed several times at her antics. Time to get a fire going. . . .

Maybe I'm naïve, but what does a person's sexuality have to do with serving in the armed forces? Whether you're attracted sexually to males or females (or both) should have no bearing on your ability to serve your country. Obviously, the military must have rules, and one of those rules may concern open displays of sexuality or sexual behavior. For example, the military may prohibit and punish sexual intercourse between soldiers, even if it's conducted in private (if you don't like this rule, don't join the military); and certainly there should be punishment for forcible or coercive sex. But these rules should be neutral with regard to sexuality. They should cover heterosexuals as well as homosexuals.

In the civilian workplace, people are expected to suppress (or at least hide) their sexuality. Work is for work, not flirting or dating. Why are things any different in the military? It seems to me that if people were properly modest, there would be no need for rules of any kind on this matter, and hence no need for rules that single out homosexuals. Our sexual identities and proclivities would never surface. We would be, while at work, desexed. Those who cannot desex themselves should not apply.

By the way, I'm tired of the retort that heterosexual males don't like the idea that other males may be looking at or thinking about them in a sexual way. First, there have always been gays in the military, and presumably they have always looked at or thought about other males in a sexual way, just as heterosexual men look at and think about women in a sexual way. Heterosexual men survived this. Second, why should men be immune from sexual looks and thoughts? Why is it acceptable for men to sexualize women but not acceptable for other men to sexualize them? Perhaps rescinding the rule against gays in the military will reduce the level of sexual objectification. Third, men can't prevent men in civilian life from sexualizing them. Why should the military protect them from being sexualized? Why is the military different? Men need to stop being so damned squeamish. Women are told (by men) to rebuff unwelcome male advances. "Slap the lout in the face!" Can't men do the same?

Emotion, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Keith,

Knowing of your pleasure at seeing Paul Krugman exposed for the shrill, carping fool that he is, I send along this link to a thorough debunking of one of Paul's latest screeds.

It is one thing to misrepresent and obfuscate when presenting your opinions on something—not to say doing so is okay, just that it is understandable that you might get some facts and figures wrong on a topic for which you are merely expressing your personal opinion—but to present such a weak and (seemingly intentional) erroneous argument in a field of study in which you are supposedly an "EXPERT"? Well, yikes is all I have to say.

Just a little more evidence that Mr. Krugman is motivated by pure partisan politics rather than the seeking of truth and knowledge.

Regards,
Steve Walsh

Ally Eskin has posted a beautiful Christmas card for her readers. See here. Thanks, Ally. Happy holidays to you and yours! Keep up the good work, and congratulations for being so disciplined with your workout regimen. The way I see it, the more you exercise, the more you get to eat.

As usual, Peg Kaplan is stirring up trouble. See here.

Jeff takes on an Oakland (California) theater. See here. By the way, Beautiful Atrocities has been nominated for Best Non-Asian (Foreign) Blog in the Asia Blog Awards 2004. Vote here.

It is widely agreed that young black males are significantly more likely to commit crimes against persons than are members of any other racially identified group. Approximately one black male in four is incarcerated at some time for the commission of a felony, while the incarceration rate for white males is between 2 and 3.5%. Absolutely speaking, blacks commit most of the crime in the US, accounting for half of all arrests for assault and rape and two-thirds of arrests for robbery. (Blacks are in fact proportionally more heavily represented in all categories of felony except those requiring access to large amounts of money, such as stock fraud.) These figures parallel prevalence rates by race according to victims' reports, so they do not represent bias in arrests. Some criminologists use the rule of thumb that a black male is ten times more likely than his white counterpart to be a criminal.

(Michael Levin, "Responses to Race Differences in Crime," Journal of Social Philosophy 23 [spring 1992]: 5-29, at 5 [endnotes omitted])

Someone objected to my claim (see here) that no conservative can support homosexual "marriage," citing New York Times columnist David Brooks as a counterexample. But that just raises the question whether Brooks is a conservative. Thinking of oneself as a conservative or calling oneself a conservative doesn't make one a conservative, any more than thinking of oneself as a Christian or calling oneself a Christian makes one a Christian.

The following three propositions are incompatible:

1. David Brooks is a conservative.
2. David Brooks supports homosexual "marriage."
3. No conservative supports homosexual "marriage."

What if Ernest Hemingway, rather than Clement Clarke Moore or Henry Livingston Jr, had written "A Visit from St Nicholas"? It would read like this. Thanks to Robert Hayes for the link.

My brother Glenn and his wife, Janet, were married—for better or for worse—25 years ago today. Congratulations! It's good that they married each other; otherwise, four people would have been miserable instead of just two. I'm kidding. I'm kidding!

Suppose I tell you that I'm a liberal and that, as such, I assign intrinsic value to individual liberty (understood as the absence of constraint). Wouldn't it be uncharitable of you to reply that I'm (therefore) committed to allowing murder, rape, robbery, and larceny, since these are exercises of liberty? Liberals aren't mindless in their valuation of individual liberty. They say that liberty may be constrained for certain purposes, such as preventing harm to others. Liberty isn't license, after all.

Now suppose I tell you that I'm a conservative and that, as such, I assign intrinsic value to tradition (i.e., traditional practices, institutions, and ways of life). Wouldn't it be uncharitable of you to reply that I'm (therefore) committed to allowing (or endorsing) human chattel slavery, racial discrimination, and the exclusion of women from public office, since these are traditional practices? Conservatives aren't mindless in their valuation of tradition. They say that certain traditions, such as slavery, ought to be abolished rather than conserved. Tradition isn't tyranny, after all.

If there is one thing that distinguishes philosophy from other academic disciplines, it is the insistence on charity in interpretation. This means that, before criticizing an argument, one must make it the best it can be. If the argument as presented is invalid, one must supply the missing premise(s) to make it valid. If a premise is subject to more than one interpretation, one must choose the most plausible interpretation. Politics as currently practiced in the United States has no principle of charity. If anything, politicians and their associates make their opponents' arguments the worst they can be. It's disgraceful how little charity was shown to President Bush's argument for war in Iraq. His rationale was misstated or ignored, his motives questioned, and his integrity impugned at every turn.

But I digress. The point is this. If you're a conservative, be charitable to liberals. If you're a liberal, be charitable to conservatives. In my experience, liberals are more uncharitable than conservatives. Remember: I was a liberal for many years. I've been on both ends. Conservatives no more defend all traditions than liberals defend all exercises of liberty. Both political moralities are more complex and subtle than that.

To the Editor:

In your Dec. 19 front-page report about the latest troubled wonder drug, Celebrex, you said sales of Celebrex and Vioxx "quickly skyrocketed—thanks in part to changes in federal rules in 1997 that made it much easier for drug makers to advertise medications directly to consumers on television, in newspapers and in magazines."

Would it not be in the best interest of the private citizen, the taxpayer and the patient in general to roll back those 1997 rule changes?

The false pretense of most of the drug companies' advertisements is to educate the public. With today's intense media coverage and the near-universal availability of the Internet to aid those patients who are truly interested, we don't need this "service."

Let's return to the old days when doctors were educated by professors and were expected and trusted to remain current in new therapies and treatments.

Dale Reid, M.D.
Eau Claire, Wis., Dec. 19, 2004

I'm reading Richard A. Posner's book Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). In the chapter on political satire, he says this:

It is natural for intellectuals to exaggerate, as the novel [George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)] does, the efficacy of attempts at brainwashing, since, loosely speaking, intellectuals are in the business of brainwashing as well as being principal targets of it. (page 269)

This week's link is to Philosophy News Service.

Lawful, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I believe that all the holidays (holy days) at this time of year have to do with the fact that it's the winter solstice. So, in the holiday spirit, let me wish everyone a happy winter solstice!

I love this. I wonder why Paul Krugman made the list in 2003 but not this year. He's certainly no less annoying. Also, notice that Andrew Sullivan made the list. That's strange, because he's no liberal. Liberals are egalitarians. But Sullivan's no conservative, either. No conservative (much less a Roman Catholic, as Sullivan claims to be) can support homosexual "marriage." Sullivan is a libertarian. First and foremost, though, he's a homosexual. I've never met anyone who's first and foremost a heterosexual. How sad, to define oneself in terms of one's sexual proclivities.

If you're an intellectual (i.e., if you have a life of the mind), and you probably are if you're reading this, then you should not miss a day of Dr John J. Ray's excellent blog. He will provoke you, pique your curiosity, pander to your best instincts, and puncture any liberal delusions you may have. See here. By the way, for those who haven't been with me from the beginning, John helped me with my blog not long after I got started in early November 2003. Out of the blue, from the other side of the world (literally), he offered to change my template. I trusted him. He rewarded my trust. John didn't even mind that my blog looks like his. Thank you, John. Keep up the good work.

Racism can be understood as the view that race (racial membership) has intrinsic moral significance, i.e., that race is a morally salient category. Nonracism denies that. Nonracists say that race has no intrinsic moral significance. If race has any moral significance at all, they say, it is because race is correlated with other traits that do have intrinsic moral significance. That is to say, race has, at most, extrinsic moral significance.

Speciesism is analogous to racism. Speciesists hold that species (species membership) has intrinsic moral significance, i.e., that species is a morally salient category. Nonspeciesism denies that. Nonspeciesists say that species membership has no intrinsic moral significance. If species has any moral significance at all, they say, it is because species is correlated with other traits that do have intrinsic moral significance. That is, species has, at most, extrinsic moral significance.

Nonspeciesism is compatible with differential treatment for members of different species. Suppose I have to choose between a human being and a dog, as in a lifeboat situation. I may choose the human being, but that choice doesn't make me a speciesist. Whether I'm a speciesist depends not on what I choose, or do, but on the basis or rationale of my choice. If I choose the human being because he or she is a human being, I'm a speciesist. If I choose the human being because he or she has a greater expected lifespan, a higher quality of life, or more dependents who will be adversely affected by his or her death, or because the human being is my child or friend, I'm not a speciesist.

This shows the fallacy of thinking that concern for animals necessarily reduces one's concern for humans. One can be nonspeciesist simply by refusing to treat biological humanity (membership in Homo sapiens) as a morally salient category. If humans are special, morally, it's because of other traits, not because they're human. Incidentally, both Peter Singer and Tom Regan, the founders of the modern animal-rights/animal-liberation movement, would choose the human being in the hypothetical case I described. But neither of them is a speciesist.

Hi Keith!

It's the president of your Luxembourg fan club again, whom you converted to vegetarianism some months ago. As regards dog food, what about feeding them with minced roadkill? I suppose there's a law against it, but I don't see what harm it could do. Or perhaps there isn't enough roadkill around.

Is there a "vegetarian ethics" stance on this?

Cheers,
Cathal Copeland

P.S. If you wish to publish this letter, feel free to do so!

If the determining influences are filtered through our own network of predispositions, expectations, purposes, and values, if our own threshold requirements are carefully observed, if there is no jarring and abrupt change in the course of our natural bent, then it seems to me to do no violence to common sense for us to claim the act as our own, even though its causal initiation be located in the external world. In short, the more like an easy triggering of a natural disposition an external cause is, the less difficulty there is in treating its effect as a voluntary action.

(Joel Feinberg, "Causing Voluntary Actions," chap. 7 in his Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970], 152-86, at 172 [essay first published in 1966])

To the Editor:

Re "New Debate Over Restoring Death Penalty" (news article, Dec. 16):

The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, opposes capital punishment because "states with the death penalty have homicide rates that are 44 percent higher than those without it" and "rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them."

But it can be reasonably argued that these states choose to impose the death penalty precisely because they possess the factors and subpopulations that disproportionately contribute to a high homicide rate. Moreover, to claim that the death penalty fuels violence is to argue that it not only doesn't decrease the murder rate, but also increases it more than it would otherwise be increased. This claim is dubious in the extreme.

If the proponent of the death penalty is incorrect in his belief that the penalty deters homicide, then he is responsible for the execution of murderers who should not be executed. If the opponent of the death penalty is incorrect in his belief that the death penalty doesn't deter, he is responsible for the murder of innocent individuals who would not have been murdered if the death penalty had been invoked.

Steven Goldberg
New York, Dec. 16, 2004
The writer is chairman of the sociology department at City College, CUNY.

The following item appeared in the sports section of The Dallas Morning News a couple of years ago (I've had it tacked to my bulletin board):

Jackets baseball team seeks players

The Rockwall Jackets, an 11 yr. old Select baseball team seeks dedicated and experienced players for the Spring Season. A tryout will be held on Dec. 18. For more information, call [000-000-0000].

Ability, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I admire and respect police officers, but I've never understood why they don't immediately remove vehicles from accident scenes. Obviously, attending to the injured must come first, but once this is done, the vehicles must be cleared! Why should dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people be inconvenienced—as I was this afternoon—because police officers want to leave the vehicles in place? I used to practice law, so I know the retort: "We need to diagram the accident scene." Of course you do, but you don't need the vehicles to remain where they are in order to do this. Get them off the damn road so traffic can resume and people can go about their business; then draw your diagram.

Ally Eskin, my friend in Pennsylvania, takes us into the deepest, darkest jungle of all: the female mind. See here.

To the Editor:

John Horgan feels that he is "traveling lightly through life, unencumbered by beliefs." But he unwittingly reinforces the misperception equating atheism with amorality.

Those of us who are atheists, secular humanists or whatever term we prefer share many beliefs, among them the importance of integrity, responsibility, tolerance, personal freedom and truth.

Amy S. Rich
Orange, Conn., Dec. 12, 2004

To the Editor:

The idea of an opposition between religion and science is a fallacy. The synagogues I have belonged to have been filled with scientists. The intimate knowledge of nature's wonders that science provides is a source of religious inspiration.

Many people in religious groups have great uncertainties as to the nature of God. What each religion provides is a rich tradition of scriptures, practices and community through which we may contemplate our ultimate concerns.

Ron Meyers
New York, Dec. 12, 2004

One of my professors at Wayne State University, which I attended from 1979 to 1983, began his career as a Continental philosopher but switched, early on, to analytic philosophy. I was surprised to hear this, because he struck me as the consummate analyst. He seemed to have only disparaging things to say about Continental philosophy. Sensing my surprise that he had been what he now despised, he explained, "Recent converts are the most zealous." This expression has stayed with me over the years. I think it's true. It certainly explains my conservative zealotry.

Yes, I'm a zealot, but not, I hope, in the worst sense. I'm passionate; I'm devoted; I'm principled. I'm an enthusiast for a cause. I'm zealous in the way lawyers are expected to be zealous in behalf of their clients. Lawyers must represent their clients zealously within the bounds of the law. I represent conservatism zealously within the bounds of reason. I think liberals are misguided. If I sometimes seem impatient with them, it's because I know their games—their distortions, their blinders, their manipulations, their little dishonesties, their hypocrisies, their fallacies. I have a particular distaste for feminists who put dogma ahead of science, and yes, many of them do. The tragedy is that feminism has nothing to fear from science. Science cannot supply norms; it simply tells us how things are. If science tells us that men and women are different, we must—if we are rational—accept it. But what we do about the differences is up to us. Aquinas knew that Christianity had to make its peace with science in order to survive. Feminism awaits its Aquinas.

Another reason I'm zealous—and here I introspect—is that I'm making my way in a new world, a world of conservatives, some of whom, frankly, I once despised. New converts must prove that they belong, that they're not spies, that they're loyal, faithful, committed, and trustworthy. They do this in a number of ways. Two prominent ones are exaggerating their commitment and lashing out at (by, inter alia, exposing the inconsistencies of) former colleagues. The more I distance myself from my liberal friends, the more conservative I feel. I'm not saying that these psychological processes are ideal, or even desirable, but they exist. Think of the people you know who converted from one religion to another, or who became theists after a long period of doubt or denial, or who became naturalized citizens, or who changed political allegiance. They were zealous after their conversions, weren't they? Perhaps, in time, zealotry subsides. Perhaps it becomes something akin to devotion, the way lust (sometimes) becomes love. Perhaps one day I will be less zealous in my conservatism. We shall see. In the meantime, I'm going to kick liberal ass.

I'd like to wish my parents—my mother Laura and my stepfather Jerry—a happy 34th wedding anniversary. The years have been kind to my immediate family. I hope they continue to be.

Nirvana, n. In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

This is a terrific album. Forget that it's 31 years old. The songs "The Bomber," "Take a Look Around," and "Tend My Garden" are mind-blowing.

More and more of our lives are being committed to the care of computers. This may or may not be good, all things considered. The downside is that, if the computers crash, through accident or attack, our lives fall apart. The upside is that our lives become easier and less time-consuming, leaving more time for leisure. Case in point. Until this semester, I had to bubble in grade sheets with a #2 pencil and drive them to campus by a certain day and time. I often ran up against the deadline and had to rush to campus. Sometimes I went late at night and left the sheets with the police dispatcher, who had an office in the same building as the registrar. This saved me from getting up early and driving to campus.

Now we post grades online. It's simple. No more bubble sheets; no more #2 pencils; no more making a special trip to campus to drop off sheets. I just logged in, clicked on the appropriate course, and clicked radio buttons with my computer mouse. When all the buttons were clicked, I clicked "submit." A message appeared saying that the process was complete. A few minutes later, I received an e-mail message informing me that the grades had been posted, presumably to guard against malicious people hacking into the system.

I work at home, as you may have surmised. It might be said that this further insulates me from campus. But I don't see it that way. If anything, not having to drive to campus merely to deliver grade sheets may make me more willing to drive to campus for more edifying things, such as listening to speakers. This new technology simplifies and improves my life. I assume it also allows students to learn their grades earlier. As my chair, Denny Bradshaw, is fond of saying about our department (Philosophy and Humanities), "every day, in every way, UTA is getting better." I wonder how many other universities have online grade-posting.

12-18-84 . . . This was, in a manner of speaking, my last day of work for the fall semester. I spent the entire day, from eight o'clock in the morning to past midnight, grading my [Introduction to Philosophy] students' final exams and recording the grades on computer sheets for the registrar's office. It was weary[ing] and sometimes boring work, but I enjoyed some of the student comments. Many confessed that they had been persuaded by some of the arguments that we had considered during the course, while others said that they were utterly unpersuaded. Even those who were unpersuaded, however, claimed that they had learned a lot by considering and rejecting so many arguments. As some of them put it, "I learned how to think critically about things that I had previously taken for granted." That, believe it or not, made me feel good, for I see the main purpose of philosophy as criticizing arguments and methods. If only one student had his or her perspective broadened by taking this course, then it will have been well worth my trouble in teaching it. I will miss my students. But then, there are plenty more where they came from.

To the Editor:

Will Carroll ("Swinging for the Fences," Op-Ed, Dec. 14) and Carl Elliott ("This Is Your Country on Drugs," Op-Ed, Dec. 14) insightfully track the common roots of chemical performance enhancement in baseball and the rest of life. But a critical difference has slid past them.

Baseball is a game that measures scores and records, chalking up wins and losses.

What renders the latest revelations scandalous to the public is not, I fear, sobering social insights of the sort mustered by Professor Elliott. What irks Americans is that drug use wreaks havoc with the rules, rendering impossible a satisfying answer to "Who's best?" or "Who won?"

And compulsive concern with those two questions is at least as pervasive in our society as performance insecurity.

David Schildknecht
Cincinnati, Dec. 14, 2004

The truth is that while punishing a man and punishing him justly, it is possible to deter others, and also to attempt to reform him, and if these additional goods are achieved the total state of affairs is better than it would be with the just punishment alone. But reform and deterrence are not modifications of the punishment, still less reasons for it. A parallel may be found in the case of tact and truth. If you have to tell a friend an unpleasant truth you may do all you can to put him at his ease and spare his feelings as much as possible, while still making sure that he understands your meaning. In such a case no one would say that your offer of a cigarette beforehand or your apology afterwards are modifications of the truth still less reasons for telling it. You do not tell the truth in order to spare his feelings, but having to tell the truth you also spare his feelings.

I was myself for some time disciplinary officer of a college whose rules included a rule compelling attendance at chapel. Many of those who broke this rule broke it on principle. I punished them. I certainly did not want to reform them; I respected their characters and their views. I certainly did not want to drive others into chapel through fear of penalties. Nor did I think there had been a wrong done which merited retribution. I wished I could have believed that I would have done the same myself. My position was clear. They had broken a rule; they knew it and I knew it. Nothing more was necessary to make punishment proper.

(J. D. Mabbott, "Punishment," Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, n.s., 48 [April 1939]: 152-67, at 153, 155)

Dear Keith,

Regarding your posting on "Flighty Flew"[1] (nice pun, by the way!), the piece by Flew entitled "Sorry to Disappoint, but I'm Still an Atheist!" actually first appeared in 2001[2], well before the current business about his avowal of minimal theism or deism or whatever. The issue of Rationalist International you link to[3] merely asserts that this piece still represents his official position, which seems a rather dubious move on their part.

In answer to your question about who cares, I confess I do. While I am an amateur in these matters, I find it both instructive and enjoyable to see how people reason about religious belief. You yourself have said that you think very few people are swayed by theistic or atheistic arguments[4], and so to see an atheistic philosopher revising his views on religion is an extraordinary event, like the occultation of one planet by another. I can also understand how, from your perspective, it might not seem all that interesting, even if it is unusual.

Let me mention another good pun on Flew's change of views: Michael Sudduth[5] dubbed it "One Flew Over [the] Theist's Nest." For my own part, I must say that it does indeed seem like Flew season, though personally I have no plans to take any Flew shots. Atheist wags might regard Flew's concession of minimal theism as mere efflewvium, however.

Best wishes in your blogging,

Chuck Bearden

Force, n.

"Force is but might," the teacher said—
"That definition's just."
The boy said naught but thought instead,
Remembering his pounded head:
"Force is not might but must!"

Fans of the Boston Red Sox are insufferable, as I knew they would be if the team ever won the World Series. See here.

Jennie R. Shuki-Kunze, "The 'Defenseless' Marriage Act: The Constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act as an Extension of Congressional Power Under the Full Faith and Credit Clause," Case Western Reserve Law Review 48 (1998): 351.

David A. Hyman, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Narrative," Indiana Law Journal 73 (summer 1998): 797.

Robert R. Keatinge, "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves: The Supervising Attorney and His or Her Firm," South Texas Law Review 39 (March 1998): 279.

"Careful with That Tax, Eugene: The Taxation of Punitive Damage Awards Under Section 104 of the Internal Revenue Code," Cumberland Law Review 28 (1997): 117.

"Alabama Judicial Selection Reform: A Skunk in Tort Hell," Cumberland Law Review 28 (1997): 215.

I found a terrific new blog—one that reassures me that I'm not wasting my precious scholarly time by blogging; or that, if I am wasting it, so are many others. (Misery loves company.) See here. Thanks to Dr John J. Ray, my polymathic friend Down Under, for the link. Incidentally, I put a permanent link to the new blog on the left side of this one, in the green area.

Suppose I want you to vote for me, but rule out such techniques as force, coercion, and manipulation, each of which, however effective it might be, is disrespectful. What should I do? I should do what any would-be persuader should do (see here), viz., show you that you already subscribe—without realizing it—to the beliefs and values to which I subscribe, and that I will seek to implement while in office. Liberals have failed to do this. Instead of showing prospective voters that their commitment to equality (everyone is committed to equality) requires such things as a progressive income tax, affirmative-action programs, and various other governmental policies, they act as though the rationale for these programs is self-evident. It's not. It needs to be demonstrated. People need to be shown the inferential path from "I value equality" to "I should support this, that, and the other program."

Why have liberals failed in this persuasive task? I think a large part of it is elitism or condescension. Liberals don't think ordinary people are capable of thinking things through. They view the mass of voters as objects to be manipulated rather than as persons to be persuaded. They think like Lenin or Trotsky at the vanguard of the proletariat. They think they're saving people from themselves—from a false consciousness. Conservatives have done a much better job than liberals of persuading people to vote for them. They talk to voters rather than at them. Conservatives are just as committed to equality as liberals are, but they have a different conception of it. Equality, they say, requires not equality of absolute condition or equality of resources but equality of opportunity, and this, for all intents and purposes, already obtains. They work hard to persuade voters that this is the conception of equality that coheres best with voters' other beliefs and values.

If I'm right about this, then liberals, to be successful, must rethink their approach. They must stop condescending and start explaining. They must stop treating prospective voters as objects to be manipulated, which is disrespectful, and start treating them as persons to be persuaded, which is respectful.

David Brock, who went from conservatism to liberalism a few years ago (the opposite of what I did), is mad at Bill O'Reilly for calling him a weasel (among other things). Brock wants to appear on O'Reilly's program to rebut the charge, but he says O'Reilly won't invite him. See here. Be sure to read the comments from Democratic Underground readers. I think O'Reilly should—and will—invite Brock to appear on his program. Brock will get creamed, just as Paul Krugman did when O'Reilly and Krugman appeared on Meet the Press a few months ago.

This advice is unsolicited and will, in all likelihood, be resented, but Democrats should stop fighting lost wars and get on with trying to win the next one. See here. The party needs to retool. Making cosmetic changes to the product won't increase sales.

Dr Bill Vallicella has posted several items about Antony Flew, who may or may not be an atheist. See here. One good effect of these stories about Flew would be making people attend to the meanings of "theist," "atheist," "deist," and "agnostic."

Here is the latest from the inimitable Peggy Noonan.

This is a good reason—there are many of them—not to go to Mexico. (Thanks to James Taranto's Best of the Web Today for the link.)

By the way, if you're not having Best of the Web Today e-mailed to you every weekday, you're missing out. It's among the best things I read each day.

Texas has the largest prison system in the United States. See here.

12-17-84 Monday. I mentioned the other day [see here] that I had had a verbal spat with Mylan Engel, a fellow graduate student. Today Mylan and I chatted with one another in the Philosophy Department office, so I suspect that Mylan has no ill feelings toward me. I certainly have none toward him. Our spat was just one of those things—a clash of interests which at the time seemed paramount, but which later came to be viewed as minor. When I die, I don't want anyone to be mad at me.

See here for Donald Luskin's reply to Paul Krugman's column of this date.

To the Editor:

Re "Christian Conservatives Press Issues in Statehouses" (front page, Dec. 13):

It is astonishing that State Representative Cynthia Davis of Missouri could say about liberals: "It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go. I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go."

While liberals and conservatives clearly disagree over social policies, I don't think that any policy advocates on either side would consider cold-blooded murder as a solution to these differences. I believe I can speak for people on both sides of these issues in saying that such a comparison is inappropriate and offensive.

Robert Krauss
New York, Dec. 13, 2004

Some of you may not know this, but there is a raging debate taking place between philosophers, biologists, physicists, chemists, lawyers, and theologians concerning what's known as intelligent-design creationism. For example, I have in my hand an 805-page book, published by a prestigious university press, on the debate: Robert T. Pennock, ed., Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001).

Here's what I don't understand. If there's enough to be debated at this level, between extremely bright and highly educated individuals, why is intelligent-design creationism not taught in public schools as an alternative (or complement) to evolution? Why is it dismissed out of hand as "religion"? What do secularists have to fear? They act as though evolution can't possibly compete with intelligent-design creationism—as though, if both are taught, many or most students will reject evolution. But why can't evolution compete? Teach both theories and let the chips fall where they may.

I hate to say it, for I am a firm believer in evolution, but there is more dogmatism and insecurity among secular scientists than in any religion the world has ever known.

Curse, v.t. Energetically to belabor with a verbal slap-stick. This is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, is commonly fatal to the victim. Nevertheless, the liability to a cursing is a risk that cuts but a small figure in fixing the rates of life insurance.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Chicken is a pastime that tests courage. Two people drive their cars toward one another at high speed. The one who veers—if someone does—is chicken. The other has proved to be braver. At least this is how it is seen by participants and (some) observers. I would argue that the one who veers demonstrates rational self-interest, while the one who doesn't veer demonstrates rashness, recklessness, or foolish adherence to principle.

American politics, with its two major parties, can be viewed as a game of chicken. Each presidential election amounts to the parties driving their cars toward one another at high speed. If a party chooses a moderate candidate who alienates the radicals in the party but increases its chance of winning, it veers. It puts self-interest (electoral victory) ahead of principle (ideological purity). If a party chooses a radical candidate, it is risking all by putting principle ahead of self-interest. In 2004, the Democrats chose a radical candidate. What will they do in 2008?

Note: Having given this a bit more thought, I'm not sure the analogy works. My best-case scenario as a driver is that I don't veer and the other driver does. But this would mean that the Democrats' best-case scenario is that the Republicans choose a moderate and the Democrats don't; and surely, in terms of electoral victory, that's not the case. Perhaps there's a modified game of chicken taking place in politics—one in which bad things happen to the party that doesn't veer when the other does. If anyone can describe that game, please do.

Mr. Higgins [see here] is making the common mistake of believing that everyone thinks as he does. To say that views come first and principles are derived from those ever-changing views may apply to him, but it certainly does not apply to me, or most conservatives I know.

Mr. Higgins states that his own views are changed by circumstances and events in his life, and that these views then form his principles. He then assumes everyone else does the same. For a conservative, however (or at least me), views on specific judgments are indeed changed by circumstances and events, but principles do not change. That's why they are called Principles. Unlike liberals, conservatives don't "accidentally fall into positions" as Mr. Higgins says he does. We instead study the issues, evaluate the consequences, then take a stand for what is right or wrong, and stand by it.

He correctly observes, however, that a conservative from the 1950s is different from a conservative today, but he is referring to specific judgments, which of course change over time as different issues emerge and take center stage, and others fade away. But the principles of conservatism have remained the same, even though they may have different labels or were expressed in a different way through the years.

Principle: A basic truth, law, or assumption. Does this definition sound like something that changes depending on circumstances? Well, we do have the word "assumption" in there, which leaves open the possibility of change, but implies a difficult process, sort of like amending the Constitution. One must be very serious, and at least 2/3 must agree. Otherwise, stick to what you know is proven and true.

Are conservatives consistent all the time? No. Do we always follow our principles? No. We are fallible humans like everyone else on the planet—but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try, or simply give up believing in a right and wrong, or abandon principles based on circumstantial emotions.

Conservative beliefs are based on unchanging truths about human nature and natural law; i.e. PRINCIPLES.

A basic truth (principle) is not something that changes depending on circumstances. Mr. Higgins has unwittingly acknowledged what most conservatives have long known about liberalism: 1) it is a view based on emotion rather than reason; and 2) it has no principles other than "whatever is best for me at the time."

Danny Sheives
Houston, TX

The vegetarian lifestyle is clearly not "cruelty free," as animal activists wish to believe. There is no such thing as a bloodless veggieburger. The difference between vegetarian and omnivorous lifestyles is simply that in the former, the killing of animals is indirect and unintentional, and animals are not intentionally consumed. We fail to see how that makes vegetarianism morally more acceptable than being omnivorous.

(Charles S. Nicoll and Sharon M. Russell, "The Unnatural Nature of the Animal Rights/Liberation Philosophy," Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 205 [1994]: 269-73, at 270)

Paul Krugman has book smarts, but he has no practical intelligence. Think about it. He gets a national forum from The New York Times to write about economics. What does he do? He rails against President Bush. Twice a week, for years on end. The man is obsessed. His rhetoric is shrill and hateful; he never acknowledges error; he never has anything good to say about the Bush administration or bad to say about the Democrats. He has painted himself into an ideological corner.

The cost of this is that nobody can trust him when he makes economic claims. He will never persuade anyone who doesn't already agree with him, and those individuals don't need persuading. It's all very sad. Krugman, by being imbalanced, has destroyed his credibility as an economist. See here.

To the Editor:

Re "War Figures Honored With Medal of Freedom" (news article, Dec. 15): How can one justify awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to those whom President Bush called "three men who have played pivotal roles in great events"?

George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, came to the "pivotal" conclusion that Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program was a "slam dunk" case.

Gen. Tommy R. Franks acquiesced in the Pentagon's "pivotal" estimates on required troop strength, which was sufficient to topple Saddam Hussein's regime but has proved inadequate to secure the peace.

And L. Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator of the American occupation, made the "pivotal" decision to transfer sovereignty on a rushed timetable, leaving Iraq in a deteriorating security situation.

The irony is that President Bush decided to award these medals of freedom even before Iraq takes its first real step to freedom: holding free and fair elections.

It has consistently been this administration's policy to declare victory and move on, even if the facts are at odds.

Jack Nargundkar
Germantown, Md., Dec. 15, 2004

To the Editor:

To give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the architects of a bogus war is an act of Orwellian gall.

We were never threatened by or attacked by Iraq. To refuse to admit this is either unabashed arrogance or unspeakable manipulation and deception. These medals are as credible as ones given to athletes who take illegal steroids, except that the consequences are far more serious.

Leo Hansen
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Dec. 15, 2004

This op-ed piece appears in today's New York Times.

Longevity, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

A fallacy is an argument that appears to be good but isn't. It's psychologically appealing but logically infirm. Logicians divide fallacies into two jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories: formal and informal. Formal fallacies are those that can be detected (identified) solely on the basis of their form. Informal fallacies are those that cannot be detected (identified) solely on the basis of their form. To identify informal fallacies, one must examine either their content or the context in which they are presented. We might say that every fallacy is either syntactic (a matter of form), semantic (a matter of content), or pragmatic (a matter of context).

The slippery-slope fallacy is an informal fallacy. Every slippery-slope fallacy has the same form. Act A is said to cause event B, which is said to cause event C, which is said to cause event D, and so on, for any number of events. If the final event is bad, then one would be well-advised not to perform act A, which started the slide to it. Note that act A is not said to be intrinsically bad. It may not be. What's said is that A is dangerous. It will start a slide—a causal cascade—that will lead to a bad place.

All slippery-slope fallacies are slippery-slope arguments, but not all slippery-slope arguments are slippery-slope fallacies. In other words, some slippery-slope arguments are good arguments. To determine which arguments are fallacies, one must examine the content, not merely the form. Specifically, one must determine whether the causal connections being asserted are real. Here is an example of a slippery-slope fallacy from yesterday's Dallas Morning News:

If the first agenda item of the 2005 Texas Legislative session is banning gay civil unions, then the first item for 2007 must be denying homosexuals employment, health care, adoption rights and housing. Then, 2009 will see branding for easy identification, and 2011 will be internment.

It's a shame conservatives will have to wait that long to see their dream fulfilled.

Kevin Kasper, Carrollton

1. If p, then q.
2. Not p.
Therefore,
3. Not q.

Hello.

Perhaps this is out of place but on the very last e-mail you wrote to me I have noticed a link and clicked on it. I then went ahead and read some of your blogs among which was the one [see here] where you wrote of our course. After reading it I felt a need to tell you that at the very beginning of the course I truly did not see how one can indeed make it more interesting and also connect it to the virtues and vices. Simply put, I was rather skeptical and even feared that I have made a mistake by signing up for it.

However, even though there was a problem with [the e-mailing of] my term paper and toward the end of the semester I was not able to attend class several times, I wished to let you know that I extremely enjoyed the class. Furthermore, two of the most excellent things about it were that you taught that course with so much passion and were very knowledgeable that it affected the rest of us in the same manner. There is, in my opinion, nothing better then attending a class that carries such an atmosphere.

Two, you compelled me, at least, to view the expedition in a different and a new way which is always greatly appreciated. Also, the assigned reading, I think, did help bring it all together regardless of their length.

I hope you do not mind me writing you an e-mail and in such a lengthy manner too.

Thank You!

Sanela Ficur

Bill Keezer has a long post about what it takes to be a Christian. See here. Bill recently passed the 10,000-visit mark on his blog. Congratulations, Bill!

Christ's human acts are the public acts done through his human body and the private mental acts correlated with the brain-states of that body; and if it is to be a human body its capacities must not be radically different from those of our bodies. So there is a limit to Christ's power qua man. If the human actions of God the Son are done only in the light of his human belief-inclinations, then he will feel the limitations that we have. God, in becoming incarnate, will not have limited his powers, but he will have taken on a way of operating which is limited and feels limited. So using the notion of divided mind we can coherently suppose a divine individual to become incarnate while remaining divine, and yet act and feel much like ourselves.

(Richard Swinburne, The Christian God [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994], 203)

I've lived in three states: Michigan (26 years), Arizona (five years), and Texas (16 years). The weather in these states differs considerably. I loved spring and fall in Michigan. I loved winter in Arizona. Texas's seasons are more distinct than Arizona's, but not as distinct as Michigan's. In Texas, we endure oppressively hot and humid summers in order to enjoy cool, dry winters. Today was near perfect: clear, cool, and breezy. I used the fireplace last night for the first time this fall and will fire it up again tonight. As you might guess, I do more reading in the wintertime than in the summertime. What could be better than a crackling fire warming one's feet as one reads a work of history or philosophy? Ah!

Antony Flew is an atheist. Antony Flew is a theist. Antony Flew is an atheist. Does anyone care? I don't.

Pat Buchanan has been hosting MSNBC's Scarborough Country in Joe Scarborough's absence. (Get well soon, Joe!) Last night, Pat moderated a discussion about Christmas symbols in public space. One of his guests, an avowed atheist, denied the reality of Jesus. She didn't deny his divinity; she denied his reality. No wonder atheists are so despised. Some of them talk crazy. There is at least as much evidence for the existence of Jesus as there is for the existence of Socrates. How much do you want to bet that the woman in question affirms Socrates's reality?

Hi Keith,

I am an economist from Virginia and I found your interesting article about labels and politics. [See here.] Curiously enough, I found your article from a link from India (you might be interested in Amit Varma's excellent blog called The Middle Stage)—an example of the global economy, I suppose.

Although I think your article does articulate a coherent and logical argument for the way people should form political views, I would argue that that is not the way either you or I or anyone actually comes up with political views. Your labels are broad and catch-all and I think you are intelligent enough to see that maybe you are making patterns that aren't really there. What exactly is traditionalism: racism? sexism? burning heretics at the stake? Probably not. You and other "conservatives" are nothing like the conservatives of the 1950s, so there is obviously some picking and choosing of traditions and some other paradigm that allows that choice.

But maybe those choices were largely made by others and you are just following the leader. We all do this. My politics are similar (although not identical) to my parents'. Maybe yours are too. But we didn't choose are parents under some set of basic principles.

Let me give you my own example: My political philosophy could be called non-violence (which would make me sort of liberal). I abhor guns. I oppose the death penalty. I don't eat meat and I don't wear leather if I can avoid it. I believe we should only attack countries that have attacked us (I supported the military action against Afghanistan because they were allied with Al Qaeda, but I opposed the invasion of Iraq). I abhor torture. I also oppose abortion.

You might think that this is a good example of someone adopting a political philosophy and choosing my stand on the issues accordingly. But that isn't how it happened—it never happens that way. I kind of accidentally fell into most of these positions, began seeing a pattern, and enforced some order on the rest of these positions. For example, I used to support the death penalty until I lived in Minnesota where they don't have it. Then I realized that the death penalty was unnecessary. My view against the death penalty hardened when I learned that many people have been freed from prison because of DNA evidence when they were falsely convicted beforehand. Some of these people could have been executed. I remember changing my mind about abortion when I was a teenager. I was in speech class and a frizzy haired girl who I thought must have been one of those damn liberals—I was less liberal then—shocked me by giving a coherent speech against abortion. I never thought about it before, but I thought that if a woman thought she should not be able to have an abortion—even if she were raped—maybe I should think about it more. I didn't become a vegetarian until I met my wife. She's from India and was not comfortable eating meat. I decided to give up some meat (beef and pork). Then I gave up poultry. Then I gave up fish. Then I gave up leather. But I did not marry my wife with the notion that her beliefs might fit into some non-violence philosophy. Also, my views on economics are based primarily on my education at the University of Minnesota which are not liberal (I was once a T.A. for Ed Prescott—the newest Nobel laureate).

It is just chance that the liberals got stuck defending abortion and the conservatives got to attack it. It could have been the other way around. I remember in the 1970s many Republicans supported abortion rights because it fit their view of getting the government off the backs of individuals (both father and son Bush supported abortion rights in the 1970s). Some liberals thought that the little fetus was a creature we must protect and defend like anyone else. But the National Organization for Women (NOW) changed everything. They insisted on abortion rights because they didn't want society dumping on them. Their view on abortion was the National Rifle Association's view on assault rifles—they wanted the option and they weren't going to let politicians take away that option. NOW was strong in the Democratic party—the rest is history.

So don't be so sure that your view on abortion or any other political view stems directly from a set of principles. Your views came first, the principles later.

Thank you,
Michael Higgins (Ph.D.)

Is anyone else puzzled by the number of entertainers—actors, musicians, comedians, athletes, dancers—who weigh in on matters political? Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Barbra Streisand, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, The Dixie Chicks, Mike Farrell, Rob Reiner, Janeane Garofalo, Al Franken—the list goes on.

Let me put forth a hypothesis. Entertainers know, deep down, that their "work" is unimportant. They make people laugh and cry, for God's sake. Actors are pretenders. Comedians tell jokes. Athletes play games. To compensate for the frivolousness of their livelihoods, they enter the world of politics, which deals with all that is important, from life and death to war and peace to prosperity and destitution. This hypothesis certainly doesn't justify entertainers' forays into politics, but it may explain it. What do you think?

By the way, I'm not implying that entertainers have no right to have opinions or to express them, so don't write to me and say that. I'm implying—now I'm saying—that their being entertainers doesn't give their opinions any extra weight. Janeane Garofalo's opinion (i.e., her moral judgment) about the war in Iraq (see here) has exactly the same weight as anyone else's, which is zero (or close to it). I wish she would acknowledge this instead of making it seem as though her celebrity makes her opinions weightier, more profound, or more respectable.

To the Editor:

Re "Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena" (front page, Dec. 13):

The Pentagon is debating whether to resurrect elements of its short-lived Office of Strategic Influence.

As a novelist, I appreciate the opportunities that an official Bureau of Lies will create with its twisty deceptions and elegant half-truths.

The beauty of the Pentagon's strategy is that it will dovetail with the Bush administration's surreal, happy-talk universe.

But fears that "misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets," as you report, are fully justified.

Isn't this exactly what the administration wants? When the media are more effectively deceived, every military truck will have the most up-to-date armor, and every offensive will be a glorious victory.

Michael Blaine
Jefferson, N.Y., Dec. 13, 2004

Defenceless, adj. Unable to attack.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here is a story about a McDonald's restaurant in a hospital lobby. Can we please stop demonizing McDonald's? It provides people with foods they want. If these foods make people fat, is it McDonald's fault? Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

Language is like the intestinal tract. Words are ingested, digested, and expelled. See here for some of the new ones. (Thanks to Mindy Hutchison for the link.)

The other day, I posted Bob Doyle's criticism of Mindy Hutchison's letter about Wal-Mart. In addition, Peg Kaplan wrote about Mindy on her blog. See here. Now Mindy has her revenge, er, rejoins.

This is downright bizarre. It reminds me of the glittery KISS shirt I made in high school. I wanted people to know that Kiss and I were tight.

George Washington died on this date in 1799 at the age of 67. See here for an account of his death.

Regular readers of this blog know my routine. Each day, there are certain items that I post. Collectively, the posts are meant to be interesting, educational, and entertaining. (Some may be all three.) I learn from reading other blogs. I hope you learn from reading mine. For those of you who haven't discerned the method in my madness, each day I try to post the following (in no particular order):

• A quotation, often (but not always) philosophical in nature
• A definition from Ambrose Bierce's classic work The Devil's Dictionary, which, as you may have surmised, I adore
• A letter from a reader ("From the Mailbag")
• A letter from that day's New York Times
• A daily item (see below)
• Something original and philosophical (to justify the name "AnalPhilosopher"!)

• Mondays: Animals
• Tuesdays: Internet Resources for Philosophers
• Wednesdays: Gratifications
• Thursdays: Language
• Fridays: Texana
• Saturdays: Who Says Scholars Are Humorless?
• Sundays: Peeves

This week's link is to Philosophy Now.

Hyphen. When two or more words are combined to form a compound adjective, a hyphen is usually required. "He belonged to the leisure class and enjoyed leisure-class pursuits." "He entered his boat in the round-the-island race."

Do not use a hyphen between words that can better be written as one word: water-fowl, waterfowl. Your common sense will aid you in the decision, but a dictionary is more reliable. The steady evolution of the language seems to favor union: two words eventually become one, usually after a period of hyphenation.

bed chamber, bed-chamber, bedchamber
wild life, wild-life, wildlife
bell boy, bell-boy, bellboy

(William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 3d ed. [New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1979], 34-5)

Dave Barry can change any mood to jovial. Believe me, I've experimented. See here for his latest bit of genius.

I hoped it would happen, but, to be honest, I didn't think it would. Television series are being released on DVD. Some time back, I purchased the first season of La Femme Nikita. I believe the second season is now out. The other day, I was overjoyed to see that the second season of the long-running series Soap is now available on DVD. I was unaware that the first season had been released. (I assume it has.) Soap is one of my favorite television series of all time. Night after night, back in the late 1970s and early 1980s (and later in reruns), I laughed at the antics of Richard Mulligan, Billy Crystal, Ted Wass, Robert Guillaume, Katherine Helmond, and the gang. See here. What wonderful actors! What witty scripts! If you missed out on Soap the first time around, you should purchase it on DVD.

Stephen King, the science-fiction writer and Boston Red Sox fan, is quoted in today's Dallas Morning News as saying, "The difference between Stewart [O'Nan] and I is that I was born and grew up in New England." People pay money to read this guy? He's illiterate! Here is Bryan Garner: "Because the pronouns following between are objects of the preposition, the correct phrase is between you and me. Yet the phrasing between you and I is appallingly common—'a grammatical error of unsurpassable grossness,' as one commentator puts it. Little can be added to that judgment." (Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 84)

Here is John Fund's latest column.

To the Editor:

We said we opposed the war two years ago because it was illegal and unjustifiable. It was a principled stand that will not change. We want to defend what remains of international law, which is the only hope for peace.

Perhaps if the United States were to ask us differently: "We made a mistake and we're sorry. We've learned our lesson and won't do it again. But it's not right for Iraqis to suffer because of our mistake. We're asking you to help them, not us."

But we know President Bush will never utter those words. And we could not believe him even if he did.

Helena Lunazzi
Chelsea, Quebec, Dec. 12, 2004

Carl Elliott is a bioethicist, which means he studies the moral dimension of the life sciences, one application of which is medicine. See here for his take on performance-enhancing drugs.

Grades are posted. The fall semester is over. It's time for football, fires, family, food, and philosophy. I taught two courses this fall: Logic and The Virtues and Vices of Lewis and Clark. I teach Logic every year, and always enjoy it. The Lewis and Clark course was a one-time deal, designed to give me a break from the usual upper-level courses I teach: Philosophy of Religion, Biomedical Ethics, Philosophy of Law, and Seminar in Research Methods and Philosophical Writing. I wanted to do something to celebrate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. What better way to celebrate than to offer a course at the intersection of two of my greatest interests: ethics and Lewis and Clark?

The course didn't go as well as I had hoped. I tried to do too much. I wanted the students to read primary sources, so I assigned the new one-volume edition of the journals, edited by historian Gary E. Moulton and published by The University of Nebraska Press. I thought there should be an overview of the expedition with illustrations, since I couldn't presuppose any historical knowledge in my students (many of whom are philosophy majors), so I also assigned a glossy volume written by historian Stephen E. Ambrose and published by The National Geographic Society. This was already too much material for one course, but I made it worse by assigning a coursepack of readings on virtues in general, virtue theory, and particular virtues such as courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom.

The objective of the course was twofold: first, to learn about virtue and vice by applying these concepts to real-world people and incidents; and second, to learn about the Lewis and Clark expedition by viewing it through the lens of virtue theory, which is experiencing somewhat of a revival in moral philosophy. Each, I hoped, would illuminate the other. The students would come away with both an understanding of virtue theory and knowledge of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The course would be in applied ethics, but instead of applying theory to the professions, the environment, business, medicine, the military, or law, as most philosophers do, we would apply it to historical events. We would examine the moral dimension of the expedition.

The course met 29 times for a total of 75 minutes at a time. It often seemed as though we had just gotten started when I looked at my watch and realized it was time to go. Time flies when you're having fun, and I had fun every minute I was in class. I'm almost ashamed to know as much as I do about Lewis and Clark. On and on I rambled, filling in details, speculating about motives, putting events in historical context, and answering student questions. Every page of our 413-page book contains descriptions of incidents that cry out for philosophical analysis. This incident illustrates fortitude, I would say, and this resourcefulness, and this practical wisdom, and this temperance, and this generosity, and this veracity, and this justice, and this perseverance. Although I'm a trained philosopher and can read the journals through the lens of virtue theory, I'm still a boy at heart, and this, in my opinion, was the greatest adventure ever undertaken.

I wouldn't mind teaching the course again in a few years. If I do, I'll assign only the journals. The virtue and vice stuff will come in as we go—by lecture rather than through readings. By the way, the student term papers were interesting and for the most part well done. I had each student choose a virtue or vice and show how it was exemplified during the expedition. I have a feeling that some of the students will be lifelong Lewis and Clark buffs.

Symbol, n. Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere "survivals"—things which having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. They were once real urns holding the ashes of the dead. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

12-13-84 . . . The most amazing thing happened today. It snowed in Tucson. That's right. I had heard reports all morning that it was snowing in some parts of town, but I didn't think much of the reports until I walked outside to buy a newspaper [The Arizona Republic]. There, in all their majesty, were the Santa Catalina Mountains, covered in snow! When I saw the whiteness, I literally stopped in my tracks, so stunning was the view. Realizing that I could not let an opportunity like this pass by, I drove to the grocery store and purchased a roll of color film with which to capture the wintry beauty. It may never snow again in the mountains while I'm here. And take pictures I did! I walked across the road for some, stood atop the garbage bin for others, and even asked a stranger to snap a picture of me in front of the mountains. All told, I took ten pictures. Next time someone expresses skepticism about the possibility of snow in Tucson, I'll whip out the pictures and say "Case closed." Despite the existence of snow in other parts of town, we got nothing but rain near my apartment.

I discovered Barry Holstun Lopez 24 years ago today. It changed my life. See here if you want to be transformed.

One of the students in my Lewis and Clark course, Mason J. West, who has served in both Bosnia and Afghanistan, brought the United States Army Rangers to my attention. See here, here, and here. Pat Tillman was a Ranger. I'm proud to have such devoted and accomplished soldiers on my side. I salute you, Rangers!

I apologize to my blogging friends for not linking to them as often as I should. On many days, it's all I can do to post my own entries, much less read what others are saying on their blogs. I'm just about done grading for the fall semester, so I should have more time during the next month or so. Speaking of blogging friends, Peg Kaplan up in icy Minnesota continues her fine blogging. It seems like Peg just got started, but she has over 21,000 visits.

The emotive theory arose through a modification of subjectivism, the theory that 'This is good' means the same as 'I approve of this'. Subjectivism naturally had fallen foul of the objection that the theory implies that if one person says 'This is good' and another says 'This is not good' (or 'This is bad'), they would not be contradicting one another. Yet they certainly seem to be contradicting one another: there is a disagreement between them. The answer of the emotivists, of whom C. L. Stevenson had the most thoroughly worked-out theory of this sort, was that when someone says that something is good he or she is not primarily reporting that he or she has an attitude of approval to that thing: he or she is expressing such an attitude. There is a disagreement between someone who says that something is good and someone who says that this same thing is bad, but the disagreement is not a disagreement in belief. The disagreement is not about the truth or falsity of a proposition, but is a disagreement in attitude. The disagreement is analogous to that which might be expressed at the end of a political election, when supporters of one side might cry 'Hurrah' and supporters of the other side might cry 'Boo'.

(J. J. C. Smart, Ethics, Persuasion and Truth, International Library of Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984], 38 [italics in original])

Dear Keith,

Sometimes economic and logical ignorance and anti-capitalist bias just must be rebutted, even though it should be obvious to everyone. In regard to Mindy Hutchison's post re: Wal-Mart [see here], the following observations:

First, even if it is true, as Ms. Hutchison "supposes" (which I doubt), that Wal-Mart predominantly hires people "for just under full-time status, so they aren't eligible for benefits," where do you think Wal-Mart gets these apparently "exploited" employees? From the ranks of better-paid full-time employees with benefits? I haven't heard about any Wal-Mart gangs shanghaiing people and forcing them to work for Wal-Mart, so Wal-Mart's employees must be there voluntarily, presumably because Wal-Mart offered them better employment opportunities than they had before. Keep in mind, Wal-Mart had to hire all these new employees to start the new store BEFORE the Targets and other stores were driven out of business by Wal-Mart's competitive pricing and efficiency.

Second, even if it is true (which I doubt) that most of these employees rely on government-provided or subsidized health care paid for by "the rest of the taxpayers," is it not then likely these people were also relying on government-provided or subsidized health care before they voluntarily chose to work for Wal-Mart? So Wal-Mart's employment of these people would, at worst, have no effect on the cost to taxpayers for these people's government-subsidized health care. More likely, at least some of these employees would now qualify for full-time status and benefits and others would have improved their economic lot sufficiently to pay for at least some of their own health care. In addition, since these employees must now have better employment opportunities than they had before, presumably most of them are earning more than they did before, and paying more taxes! In fact, some of these employees may have had no employment before and been receiving welfare benefits. Therefore, when Wal-Mart employs these people, tax collections go up, use of government-subsidized health care goes down, and welfare benefit payments go down, which is a net benefit to everyone. Contrary to what Ms. Hutchison concludes, we do NOT "end up paying the price of Wal-Mart in other taxes."

Third, according to Ms. Hutchison, Wal-Mart appears and suddenly we have a "giant concrete hell" where there "used to be thousands of trees, grass, cute little squirrels, and other wildlife." I see, the Target store and the Sam's Club and "other stores in the Target shopping area" that were there before the Wal-Mart appeared apparently did not have any paved-over parking areas or buildings and, certainly, did not use any "concrete"! I'm sure the Target shopping area looked just like a National Wildlife Preserve until the evil Wal-Mart arrived and transformed it into a "giant concrete hell."

Fourth, Ms. Hutchison contends that "Wal-Marts are typically patronized by lazy shoppers who leave their carts all over the parking lot." I wondered what happened to all those hard-working and apparently more conscientious Target shoppers once Wal-Mart drove Target out of business. I also wonder where these new lazy Wal-Mart shoppers come from.

Fifth, Ms. Hutchison contends she was "probably risking [her] life going to Wal-Mart [at 3 A.M.] with the scary degenerates there!" Ahh, but she just had to have "a nice folder to turn in a research paper" the next morning at 7:30 A.M. The irony is so great you couldn't cut it with a diamond saw. If Wal-Mart is such a dastardly place with "scary gangsters hang[ing] out there in the middle of the night and during the day," why would she ever patronize it, even when faced with such a life and death situation as needing "a nice folder." And yet, there was Wal-Mart, open at 3 A.M. to serve her life-and-death needs and to save her from her own lack of foresight and planning. She was able to get her "nice folder" at the last possible minute, and for this Wal-Mart is condemned, rather than praised. I'm sure she would have been much happier had there been no store open to serve her dire, last-minute needs in such a fashion.

Sixth, about that research paper. Ms. Hutchison appears to be a college student. Given the mush that passes for reason and logic in her letter, I suspect she is majoring in postmodern feminist critical studies, cultural anthropology, or one of the other pseudo-disciplines that have become the home and last refuge of discredited Marxist theories and charlatan academics who do not have the intellectual horsepower to do real academic work. If she had just submitted her letter rather than the research paper, I'm sure she would have made her academic adviser very proud!

Bob Doyle

You owe it to yourself to try these.

I just discovered a new and exciting blog. I take it that "independent" (in the title) means free, as in free of feminist dogma. Thank goodness! Feminism has been a net detriment to women. Read this entry by Charlotte Allen and you'll be a regular reader of the blog.

To the Editor:

My work as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Brookings Institution, the Council of Economic Advisers and the Bureau of Economic Analysis has left me with a good pension, Social Security and an annuity.

I do not believe that I would have had the discipline or financial savvy needed to build a comfortable retirement by investing in the market—and I had the advantages of a strong middle-class background and a good education.

It is not a patronizing attitude that leads many liberals to doubt that the more poorly paid and poorly educated workers would not be well served by having to manage a portion of their Social Security.

It is an understanding of the realities of the economic situation of these workers, and an understanding that someone holding down a low-paying job (or two) and scrambling to make ends meet is just not in a position to do a reasonable job of managing those funds.

Mimi Hook
Silver Spring, Md., Dec. 11, 2004

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman ("Borrow, Speculate and Hope," column, Dec. 10) says that the government "would have to borrow to make up the shortfall" of diverted payroll taxes.

It already does so. Social Security assets are payroll taxes; the liabilities are benefit payments. Current assets exceed current liabilities by a hefty margin, and the government uses this "surplus" to help finance its budget deficit.

Take the surplus away—by reducing payroll taxes—and the government would have to borrow this amount from somewhere else, but it doesn't change the total amount of borrowing the government has to do.

The point about private accounts is about freedom of investment choice. Should individuals be able to give up some portion of government-promised benefits in the future to have some portion of current taxes diverted into an account where they can make the investment decisions and potentially diversify their risk?

Christopher L. Boyatt
New York, Dec. 10, 2004

Here is an essay on the behavior of genes by the aptly named Gene Robinson.

Mammalia, n. pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Debbie Fetterman covers running for The Dallas Morning News. Yesterday, in the online version of the newspaper, she said that Elly Rono set a course record in the White Rock Marathon. But his time, 2:14, was slower than that (2:12:18) of John Lodwick in 1982. See here. Today, in the print version of the newspaper, she clears things up. Rono, she says, set a course record, but not the race record. Lodwick still holds the race record.

Let's think about this. Changes are constantly being made to the White Rock course. How much of a change makes it a different course rather than the same course changed? All of the marathons have been held in Dallas in December (to my knowledge). Do we have separate records for warm and cold days, dry and wet days, windy and calm days? Variations in weather are at least as important to a runner's time as changes in elevation or road surface. If we don't have separate records for different weather conditions, why do we have separate records for different courses?

Assuming that only different courses—and not variations in weather conditions—are registered, how much change is too much? The White Rock course has changed two or three times during my eight-year marathoning career. We used to start at City Hall, but now the marathon starts at American Airlines Center several blocks away. The elevation may differ by a few feet. Does that make it a different course from the one I used to run? I'm sure the Boston and New York marathon courses have changed over the years. I wonder whether these changes produce different records. They shouldn't. There should be a single Boston record, despite variations in the course and in the weather. The same should be true of Dallas and other cities.

Incidentally, if different courses are different enough to warrant treating them as separate races for purposes of keeping records, what sense is there in having a race record? The race organizers face a dilemma. Either the courses are sufficiently similar to one another or they're not. If they're sufficiently similar, then there should be only a race record, not separate course records. If they're not sufficiently similar, then there should be only course records, not a race record. Therefore, there should be either a race record or course records, but not both. As it stands, there are both. This is metaphysically (ontologically) incoherent.

12-12-84 I had a minor verbal altercation with Mylan Engel this morning. (Mylan is a fellow graduate student and teaching assistant.) While I was sitting at my desk in the Social Sciences Building discussing animal rights with about six of my students, Mylan came in from his office next door and asked us to quiet down. He said that a couple of his students were taking an exam next door. I apologized and told him that we'd make an effort to calm down. But a few minutes later he was back, this time more vociferous in his demands. Of course, I was to have none of it. I told him that I was holding office hours and that he should not have been giving an exam in the T.A. office. This angered him, and we exchanged heated words. Mylan said that I was being "unreasonable" and "unfair," and I said that he was being unfair to us by demanding utter quiet. "I have office hours three hours per week," I said, "and during that time I reserve the right to talk—loudly if necessary." He walked out of the office in a huff, insisting that I think of myself as "God's gift to the earth." Now, I don't know where Mylan got that phrase, but it's not true. Even if I believed that there were a god, I wouldn't think that I was his or her "gift" to anyone. And so on we talked, unperturbed by Mylan's outburst. Looking back, I handled the situation well. I still think that I am being reasonable in holding discussions—sometimes boisterous discussions—with my students during office hours. As I see it, that's what office hours, and the T.A. office, are for.

Today was the official final day of classes. I lectured to my students on animal rights, defending Peter Singer's argument from several criticisms, and attended the last class session of Alvin Goldman's course Theory of Knowledge. While I was waiting for my students to complete their evaluation forms, one of them, Mike Spille, raised his hand and asked: "How do you spell 'incompetent'?" I virtually died of laughter, as did the other students. Mike is a good friend, one of my "disciples." Later, when telling the story to Alvin Goldman (before class), he suggested a response: "How do you spell your name?" What a fantastic answer! I wish that I had been witty enough to think of it at the appropriate time. In any event, the fall courses are over, and I expect to receive good evaluations from my students, as I always have. Unlike some other professors, I try to make philosophy interesting and relevant instead of dry and obscure. My students should appreciate that (but maybe they don't).

Clement Ng just forwarded a link to this site. I've only skimmed it, but it looks interesting. Thanks, Clement!

I get a lot of visitors from Lindsay Beyerstein's blog, for which I am grateful. Lindsay is that rarest of birds: a thoughtful liberal.

Going to the White Rock Marathon this morning as a spectator was heartbreaking. These are my people. This is my race. I never thought, when I began marathoning in 1996, that I'd have to stop, but the body sometimes balks. My hip tells me, whenever I run, that I shouldn't be doing it. (See here for the gory, boring details.) Eleven days ago, I ran 4.3 miles and felt terrific, but that evening my hip began to ache. I must have aggravated whatever injury I've suffered. I thought for a few hours that I'd be able to run the half marathon today, which would have gotten me out among the runners, but it was not to be. I plan to see a specialist soon. If I can't run again, I'll accept it, but I won't like it. Thank goodness I can still bicycle.

The weather in Dallas was perfect for everything except running a marathon. It was sunny and warm. Believe me, the sun, even on a cold day, saps one's energy. As much as I like sunshine, I prefer overcast, cold weather for long runs. When I arrived at the finish line at about 9:40, the slower half-marathoners were finishing. Today's marathon winner, Elly Rono of Kenya, broke the course record with a finishing time of 2:14. (See here. Free log-in required.) He looked fresh, which disgusted me. The person next to me said that he had "negative body fat." Within minutes, I saw the first relay finisher and the first female finisher. Then I waited for my friend Joe Culotta. I snapped two pictures of him as he approached, which brought a smile to his face. Later, we ate pasta salad and commiserated in the beautiful American Airlines Center (where the Dallas Stars and Dallas Mavericks play).

I had a number of interesting discussions with other spectators, including some who, like me, were unable to race because of injury. I clapped so often that my hands got sore. I must have yelled "Good job!" or "Good run!" or "You're almost there!" a thousand times. Every runner in the race has a story to tell. Some of them have overcome great obstacles to participate. All of them are disciplined and motivated. I saw every conceivable body type, from tall and lean to short and dumpy. I saw young and old, black and white, male and female. It's amazing how many gaits and postures there are. I guess that's part of the beauty of running. Everyone can do it. It's the most elegant and elemental sport there is.

Addendum: I may be wrong about Rono setting a course record. Two different sources (one of them here) show that John Lodwick ran a 2:12:18 in 1982. Debbie Fetterman, the author of the story in The Dallas Morning News, says Rono set the course record. We'll see what tomorrow's print version of the newspaper says. My hunch is that Fetterman misread "2:12:18" as "2:18."

Why, oh why can't I have students like this? (Thanks to Danny Friedmann for the link.)

Keith,

Redwood, a British company, has also great vegan cheese assortment, including Edammer and Gouda style. As a Dutch man I know these things, of course.

See for example here.

I don't know if it is available in the US but first it wasn't in the Netherlands, but then people started to ask for it and now it is available. Good stuff.

Met vriendelijke groet,

Danny Friedmann
Amsterdam

If you have a high-speed Internet connection, click here and watch the video of "Pretty Pink Rose." When you put two geniuses together (Adrian Belew and David Bowie), you get magic.

i'm lookin thru my telescope lookin for a UFO
i'm lookin thru my telescope searching for a ray of hope
to come out of this dark night
i hope they understand wrong from right
and maybe they can show us how to clean up our mess . . .

i'm lookin thru my telescope lookin for a UFO
i wonder what they see on earth do they see the hate and hurt
or do they see the christmas lights
and mirth and hear songs of peace on earth
well maybe they know a way to make it so . . .

somebody will have to fall out of the sky
somebody to show us how to survive
oh, wouldn't that be nice

i hope they come out of this dark night
i hope they understand wrong from right
and maybe they can show us how to clean up our mess . . .

somebody will have to fall out of the sky
somebody to show us how to survive
oh, wouldn't that be nice

i'm lookin thru my telescope i'm lookin for a UFO
i'm searchin for a ray of hope . . .

somebody to guide us out of this dark night
somebody to show us how to take the hate and hurt
and turn it into peace on earth . . .

somebody will have to fall out of the sky
somebody to show us how to survive
somebody to guide us, oh, wouldn't that be nice

i'm lookin for a UFO i'm lookin thru my telescope
for somebody with a ray of hope . . .

You may have noticed the other day (see here) that I wrote "grilled cheese sandwich" rather than "grilled-cheese sandwich." Truth be told, I began with the latter and ended up with the former. Here is my reasoning. It's pretty clear that in the expression "small-business loan," the hyphen is necessary to prevent confusion. What's small is the business, not the loan. By parity of reasoning, if I said "grilled-cheese sandwich," I would be implying that it's the cheese, rather than the sandwich, that's grilled. But this is false. It's a grilled sandwich that just happens to have cheese in it. So "grilled cheese sandwich" is correct (as is "grilled turkey sandwich"). If it confuses, too bad.

Bryan Garner, my authority on language, recommends always using the hyphen. "Some guides might suggest that you should make a case-by-case decision, based on whether a misreading is likely. You're better off with a flat rule (with a few exceptions noted below) because almost all sentences with unhyphenated phrasal adjectives will be misread by someone" (Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 494 [italics in original]).

With all due respect to Garner (and much is due), I disagree. If we adopted his rule in other contexts, we'd have toasters that don't work unless a metal grate is closed over the bread (to prevent idiots from sticking their fingers in and getting burned or shocked). Let's not dumb down our language. Careful writers should decide on a case-by-case basis, as I did, whether to use a hyphen.

By the way, Garner's book is in its second edition, with a new title. It's now Garner's Modern American Usage. The first edition is one of the best books I've read, so I expect the second is even better.

Russian, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

To the Editor:

I have one simple recommendation for the Democrats who are now gathering in Orlando. And that recommendation is tell the nation what liberalism is. Tell our fellow misinformed countrymen how liberalism has affected them, and how they have benefited from it. That doesn't sound so difficult, does it?

Stop allowing the conservatives in the Republican Party to define what liberalism is. When you do that, you will see how the poor and working-class white community will begin to support the Democratic Party.

You could also tell the nation how conservative principles, especially economic, benefit the fat cats and wealthy elites.

Rudy Orozco
North Bergen, N.J., Dec. 8, 2004

Here is an interesting op-ed piece about the desire of certain atheists to associate with like-minded others. I'll pass, thank you. I'm busily unjoining organizations. Some of you may remember that I resigned my longtime membership in the American Philosophical Association to protest its politicization. The APA voted to oppose the war in Iraq. I wonder why the APA didn't vote to oppose President Bush's reelection. Hey, why doesn't the APA vote on all moral issues? Then we could simply consult the APA Proceedings and not have to think for ourselves. Philosophers, as such, have no moral expertise. Why then does a gang of philosophers have moral expertise?

Someone wrote to me to ask whether I'm as concerned about human rights as I am about animal rights. He said that, in his experience, those who believe that animals have rights tend to "humanize animals and dehumanize humans." I don't speak for others, obviously, but I don't know of any philosopher (including me) whose concern for animals in any way undercuts his or her concern for humans. Peter Singer, for example, is as devoted to human beings as he is to animals. This is why he believes it wrong to allow human beings to suffer and die when one can easily prevent it. See here. Many people who claim to care about human beings would not go that far. There is, in short, no incompatibility between caring for humans and caring for animals; nor do I know of any psychological study that suggests (much less proves) that caring is a zero-sum game. (If it's possible to be nonracist or nonsexist, why isn't it possible to be nonspeciesist?) If anything, those who care about animals care more about humans than those who care only about humans.

Somebody console me. Tomorrow's White Rock Marathon in Dallas will be the first I haven't run since 1995. I did eight White Rock Marathons from 1996 to 2003, plus three Fort Worth Cowtown Marathons, for a total of 11. I've done dozens of shorter races, ranging from two miles to 30 kilometers (18.6 miles). Two or three years ago, my right hip began to ache on long runs. Each year it got worse. Near the end of last year's marathon, I decided that my marathoning career was over. I would continue running and racing, of course, but not at that distance.

This past June, however, I had serious back and hip problems that made even walking difficult. It was so bad that I had to go to the emergency room of my local hospital at five o'clock on a Sunday morning. I kept thinking the pain would go away, but it hasn't. I had another bad week in October. To make a long story short, the pain, achiness, and discomfort have kept me from racing. I still run every few days (this morning, for example, I ran two miles), but I've shifted back to bicycling, which I've been doing since 1982 and which is easier on my bones and joints. I need to see a specialist to find out what's causing my hip discomfort.

There's an interesting story about how I got into running. One of my bicycling buddies, Joe Culotta, whom I've known since about 1990, has done many marathons. He didn't push me to run, but he made it clear that I was welcome to join him. Some time during 1996, when I was 39 years old, I decided to give it a try. (Some men buy a Corvette when they reach 40. I, a nonmaterialist, took on a new athletic challenge.) I had never run more than 3.5 miles at a time. Joe told me not to worry about speed. "Just gradually extend the distance," he said. He gave me a training schedule. I ended up hurting one of my ankles by wearing worn-out shoes, but fortunately the strained ligament healed by the time marathon day arrived. (Take my word for it: Shoes matter.)

The marathon was great fun. I stayed with Joe and another friend for twenty miles, then, confident that I would finish, I left them behind and finished hard. My time was 3:36:09.99. I was hooked. In 1997, I trained hard and chopped more than 28 minutes off my time, finishing in 3:07:35.04. Incredibly, I finished 103rd overall, of 2,663 finishers. In 1998, I did even better, finishing in 3:07:14.30 and receiving the 15th-place medal in my age group (of 337 finishers). Overall, I was 106th of 2,845 finishers. I didn't know it at the time, but that was my peak. I ran 3:10 the next two years, then 3:15, then 3:24. I qualified for the Boston Marathon every year, but never went. A year ago, burned out by years of training, I decided to run with Joe and have fun. We finished in four hours. It was fitting that my marathoning career began and ended with Joe at my side.

Looking back, I ran hard for eight years. I gave it my all. I'm not a natural athlete, much less a natural runner. I just work hard. I live a clean life; I'm disciplined; and I have lots of willpower. Willpower is essential in a marathon, for the final few miles are frightfully hard. The body has long since given out, so the mind must will it to the finish. I call it "running on emotional fumes." My 1998 marathon was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, athletically or otherwise. I'm glad I snatched the final medal. I will always treasure it.

Joe, the man who brought so much joy—and, it must be said, suffering—into my life, will be running in Dallas tomorrow. I plan to be there, cheering him on. Thanks, Joe, for introducing me to this wonderful sport.

The ending of an individual life, if we distinguish it from the pain and fear that may accompany it, is no more a bad thing than the ending of a good play.

(Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964], 54)

One reason I love politics is that it combines principle and pragmatism. It forces participants to make tragic choices. Take liberals. They need power to realize their egalitarian, pacifistic, secular values, but to get power, they have to set aside or qualify their principles. Is it worth it? Some say yes; some say no. Right now, we're seeing a debate among liberals about what to do in future elections. MoveOn.org, which raises a great deal of money (and therefore has significant influence in the Democrat party), has let it be known that it will not sacrifice principle to be elected. It dismisses talk of "moving to the center." It says the Democrat party must stop catering to corporate interests and return to its radical base.

I admire this. I also think it's a recipe for disaster. Bill Clinton proved that only a Southerner and a moderate can be elected president of the United States within the Democrat party. Will Democrats learn this lesson, or will they move leftward and continue nominating losers? The list of losers is growing: George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukakis in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004. Given the demand for ideological purity within liberal ranks, if the Democrats nominate a moderate in 2008, there may be an exodus toward a third-party candidate such as Ralph Nader. This could ensure Republican dominance for an entire generation (or more).

To the Editor:

I can live with your sweeping assertion [see here] that philosophy majors like me are in for a lifetime of financial duress. But I must take exception to your portrayal of the discipline as somehow unconnected with the practical world of business.

The study of philosophy is not some quixotic, abstract escapade for lovers and dreamers. More than ever, it's about the study of logical systems and the development and defense of argument. Upon graduation, philosophy majors possess top-flight writing skills and may have even used a spreadsheet. Each year, pre-law students flock to logic classes because the class provides a solid foundation and background for the LSAT.

I'm glad that I didn't fritter away my college years worrying about how my choice of major would affect my ability to stockpile disposable income over the duration of my life. I have to say I feel prepared if ever I should aspire to the task.

Seth Barnes
Old Orchard Beach, Me.
Dec. 5, 2004

If the Democrat party is to regain the presidency and Congress, it will be with the leadership of people like Brad Carson. See here. (Note: You will have to create an account, but it's free and it's well worth it.)

Dear Keith,

Wal-Mart is despised [see here] because it's a huge business that puts small businesses out of business. The low prices seem good to consumers; however, a recent documentary I saw showed some info about why Wal-Mart is bad.

Supposedly, Wal-Mart hires many employees for just under full-time status, so they aren't eligible for benefits. For example, if full time is 40 hours per week, they only let you work 39. Also, the documentary showed that many of the people on government health care weren't jobless, they just had low-paying jobs (like me).

Apparently, if lots of people go work for Wal-Mart and can't afford to use Wal-Mart's really expensive health insurance policy, they take advantage of government health care. Since they have low income, they qualify for this government insurance and choose not to get another private health care plan. Then who pays for those costs? The rest of the taxpayers.

So even though you get Dove soap, movies, lamps, garden hoses, and food all for a discount, you end up paying the price of Wal-Mart in other taxes.

I will try to find the rest of the info on it, but that's at least part of why people hate Wal-Mart. Also, go check out the Wal-Mart off of Eastchase. If you're familiar with the area, the whole Target shopping center area, and then across I-30 where Wal-Mart and Sam's Club are, used to be thousands of trees, grass, cute little squirrels, and other wildlife. Now it's a giant concrete hell. Wal-Mart won't go out of business, but other stores in the Target shopping area did. (Target was there before Wal-Mart, if I remember correctly.)

Also, go there at 3 A.M. Wal-Marts are typically patronized by lazy shoppers who leave their carts all over the parking lot. I remember I wanted to get a nice folder to turn in a research paper. After being up all night, I went to Wal-Mart and found one, put my paper in it, and drove up to school at 7:30 A.M. so I could be there when University Hall opened. I was probably risking my life going to Wal-Mart with the scary degenerates there! And I'm not usually scared of going places late at night.

Scary looking people hang out there in the middle of the night and during the day.

So you have low paid workers, scary gangsters, killing trees to sell things, a bunch of concrete, and a bad deal for the economy.

One economist said you may get a discount on the product you're buying but you'll pay for it later in other ways, while Wal-Mart owners get rich off of middle and poor America.

Mindy Hutchison

Worship, n. Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Lynn N. Hughes, "Don't Make a Federal Case Out of It: The Constitution and the Nationalization of Crime," American Journal of Criminal Law 25 (fall 1997): 151.

Gerald Vision, "Blindsight and Philosophy," Philosophical Psychology 11 (June 1998): 137.

Ronald Chester, "To Be, Be, Be . . . Not Just to Be: Legal and Social Implications of Cloning for Human Reproduction," Florida Law Review 49 (April 1997): 303.

Jack Achiezer Guggenheim, "KOA is A.O.K.: The Second Circuit's Recent Kosher Trademark Decision Further Illustrates That the Patent and Trademark Office Must Answer to a Higher Authority," Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 22 (winter 1998): 203.

Andre Hampton, "Resurrection of the Prohibition on the Corporate Practice of Medicine: Teaching Old Dogma New Tricks," University of Cincinnati Law Review 66 (1998): 489.

12-10-84 For as long as I can remember, there has been strife in the Middle East—the region to the east of the Mediterranean Sea which now encompasses Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. As I compose this, there is a war going on between Iran and Iraq, a civil war being fought in Lebanon, and tension between Israeli and Arab peoples everywhere. There seems to be no end to the conflict, death, and destruction between the various peoples in the Middle East. Recently, on campus here in Tucson, there were conflicts between Israeli and Palestinian students. What do I make of the situation? My first inclination is to dismiss the issue and ignore it, for it seems that there always has [been] and always will be conflict between these individuals and groups. But as a rational observer concerned with ending pain and suffering throughout the world, I cannot ignore what is occurring. Religion—or rather, religious belief—appears to be the source of most of the conflict. When one's religion teaches that it, and it alone, is the source of truth and morality, one becomes intolerant of other beliefs and lifestyles, and this intolerance ultimately erupts into violence and destruction. Although I have no clue as to how to end the hostilities that are now taking place, I suspect that inroads can be made by eradicating religious belief. But then, that is virtually impossible, given what appears to be a basic human need for meaning and spiritual explanation. And so on we go, fighting amongst ourselves when we could be working together to make this a better world. There is no end, I sometimes think, to human callousness and stupidity.

My day was long and productive. First I taught my [Introduction to Philosophy] course, spending the entire fifty minutes presenting and defending Peter Singer's argument [in "Famine, Affluence, and Morality"] that we have moral duties to the starving of the world (which has relevance because of the current situation in Ethiopia). The students seemed quite interested in the subject, as one might expect, given its impact on their lives. People look up and listen when someone tells them that their lifestyle ought to change! I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture and the feedback. Second, I spent nearly two hours reviewing the course material with eight of my students. We paused every now and then to crack a joke or discuss some current event, but always went quickly back to the task at hand. Third, I attended the penultimate class session in the Theory of Knowledge course [taught by Alvin Goldman]. We discussed the scientific theory of Thomas Kuhn [1922-1996], whose book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1962); I finished reading this book on 21 June 1981], I read three and a half years ago. I find this discussion of scientific theory fascinating. Fourth, I made a copy of my "bad-samaritan" paper and submitted the original to Joel Feinberg, a day ahead of schedule. Fifth, I studied with Andrea Witte in preparation for Friday's final exam in Theory of Knowledge. And sixth, I attended the penultimate seminar in Metaphysics. This evening we discussed Myles Brand's own theory of events, which I find implausible. Brand thinks that there are two sorts of entity in the universe, physical objects and events. Both are particulars. But I find it hard to believe that events have both spatial and temporal location, as his theory implies. Some of them, like the 1984 World Series and the election of Ronald Reagan, seem to have no spatial location whatsoever. To date, then, I am persuaded that Roderick Chisholm's [1916-1999] theory of events is best. For Chisholm, events are states of affairs which occur, or obtain.

There was a blockbuster baseball trade today. Montreal [the Expos] sent veteran catcher Gary Carter to the New York Mets for Hubie Brooks and three other players. This makes the Mets genuine pennant contenders, for they were close to winning the division title this past season without Carter. Consider this (partial) lineup: Keith Hernandez, George Foster, Gary Carter, and Darryl Strawberry. It will be hard to beat the Mets next year, and I expect them to meet the [Detroit] Tigers in the World Series come October. One other note: Howard Johnson, a former Tiger, will likely be the Mets's [sic; should be "Mets'"] third baseman, with Brooks gone. I wish him well. [Gary Carter was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003. The Mets won the World Series in 1986, beating the hapless Boston Red Sox.]

The Montreal Expos are no more. The franchise has been moved to Washington, D.C. Which raises the question: Why was Major League Baseball introduced to Canada in the first place? Baseball is an American sport. It had no business going into the frozen wasteland of Canada. Perhaps now we can work on liberating the Blue Jays from Toronto.

Here is a column by a physician about our society's obsession with drugs.

John Finnis is one of the most distinguished moral philosophers in the world. Here he explains why homosexuality is an intrinsically disordered inclination.

Who says Texans are uncultured? See here.

Dear Keith,

This argument [see here] leads one to a slippery slope: After all, what is "performance enhancement"? In the mental health arena this issue is particularly magnified. Prozac for example can improve someone's personality and concentration to such an extent, he/she gains a clear advantage over someone who is not socially enhanced. In the workplace this makes a big difference. Someone who appears upbeat, focused, effective, highly social is going to outshine someone who is not, and be rewarded with the promotion. Why is use of Prozac okay and steroids not? What about doctors (geneticists) who can now screen for personality disorders at the embryonic stage and discard the less viable ones, or enhance healthy ones? Are the embryos that survive and grow into humans not a product of chemical tinkering and therefore at an unfair advantage? I don't like steroid use in baseball, but it seems to me that like same-sex marriage, you can't stop with one instance without opening the door to others. If a woman can marry a woman, then surely I can marry two, especially if my religion requires it; if steroids are bad because they enhance performance, than surely using Prozac to make up for a attention deficit disorder (along with the next generation of brain enhancers) and tinkering with an embryo to get an awesome athlete, is similarly a no-no. I suppose there are limits one might want to set in the sports arena, but what I am suggesting is this: the line between what is "enhanced" and what is "natural" ability is becoming seriously blurred, especially in our bio-tech age where the sky's the limit, and it's going to become even more difficult to distinguish between what is "natural" ability and what is enhanced. Arguments and definitions are going to need to be flushed out. (Thank God for philosophers!)

Maria Fish

We are losing the war in Iraq. There has been a steady increase in the assaults carried out by the insurgents against coalition forces. The attacks over the past year have risen from about twenty a day to approximately 120. We are an isolated and reviled nation. We are tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. We have lost sight of our democratic ideals. Thucydides wrote of Athens' expanding empire and how this empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The tyranny Athens imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. If we do not confront our hubris and the lies told to justify the killing and mask the destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force and violence to be our primary form of communication, we will not so much defeat dictators like Saddam Hussein as become them.

(Chris Hedges, "On War," The New York Review of Books 51 [16 December 2004]: 8-14, at 14 [posted on 17 November 2004])

Remember that song called "Kill Me"
From Vick Timm's last LP
Too much of a risk for a golden disc
The price he paid for money

Ce soir, ce soir, assassination d'un rock 'n' roll star
Ce soir, ce soir, assassination d'un rock 'n' roll star

Sing your song
You can't go wrong
Tempted his business adviser
No need for alarm, you'll come to no harm
He didn't mention the sniper

Ce soir, ce soir, assassination d'un rock 'n' roll star
Ce soir, ce soir, assassination d'un rock 'n' roll star

The news is read, the need is fed
One yawn ah, two yawn ah, and back to bed
Turn off the light, and hold me tight
C'mon, maman, bend down your head
And just sing on, immortal song
Fini, belle vie, bonne nuit

Remember that song called "Kill Me"
A lecture on political chicanery
Of people's rape, recorded on tape
Brought shame to the presidency

Tonight, tonight, one more point for human rights
Tonight, tonight, one more point for human rights

Remember that song "Kill Me"
Once used by a man from Galilee
He had nothing to lose, he was King of the Jews
Secured his place in history

Ce soir, ce soir, assassination d'un provocateur

The news is read, the poison's spread
One yawn ah, two yawn ah, and back to bed
Turn off the light, and hold me tight
C'mon, maman, bend down your head
And just sing on, immortal song
Fini, belle vie

Vick played his part, with all his heart
He wasn't prepared for the shock
When howling lead bit into his head
A new martyr for the book of rock
A new martyr for the book of rock
The book of rock
A new martyr for the book of rock

To the Editor:

"Lost in a Masquerade," by Maureen Dowd (column, Dec. 9), could have been written about any war.

No army is ever supplied with everything it needs when it needs it. Adaptability and improvisation—the kind demonstrated by American soldiers in Iraq making armor from scrap metal—are the rule of warfare, not the exception.

However untactful Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's comments were to an audience of citizen-soldiers longing to return home, his words were hard fact that will not change, regardless of who is defense secretary.

Anton Olff
New York, Dec. 9, 2004
The writer served in the United States Marines.

Bias is effective only if, and only to the extent that, it is hidden. The editors of The New York Times don't even try to hide their bias. I suppose I should be happy about this, for it makes their bias ineffective. In this editorial opinion, the editors refer to Justice Antonin Scalia's "ultraextreme record." I guess "extreme" wasn't strong enough for them. I can't prove it, but I seriously doubt that the Times has ever called anyone on the left "extreme," much less "ultraextreme." But if Justice Scalia is ultraextreme, then so were Justices William O. Douglas, Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall.

I couldn't have said it better. See here. (Thanks to Dan Gifford for the link.)

Impunity, n. Wealth.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Did you know that you can see—and not just hear—the sound barrier being broken? See here. (Pun absolutely intended.)

Haters are obsessed with the hated (see here), and obsession means, inter alia, inability to stay away from or stop thinking about. I had a feeling that Paul Krugman couldn't stay away from or stop thinking about President Bush for two months. Sure enough, he has interrupted his textbook-writing break to write consecutive New York Times columns about President Bush's Social Security reform plan. Krugman, as you might guess, is opposed to it. See here. (Has he ever supported anything President Bush did?) But notice his grounds. The principle of allowing individuals to control their own retirement escapes him. He sees only the macroeconomic dimension. Liberals such as Krugman pay lip service to principles (and the rights they describe), but in the end they are consequentialists. They are willing to treat individuals as mere means to collective ends.

Steve Rugg from JusTalkin sent a link to this interesting story. Many years ago, I wrote a scathing review of a published debate between Antony G. N. Flew and Thomas B. Warren: The Warren-Flew Debate on the Existence of God (Jonesboro, AR: National Christian Press, 1977). To my surprise, Flew wrote to me. He was very kind. By the way, those who think theism is incompatible with intelligence are going to have a dickens of a time explaining how Flew got dumb all of a sudden. Belief in a supreme being has nothing to do with intelligence. Some of the smartest people in the history of the world, including Isaac Newton, have believed in a supreme being. Some of the dumbest, I'm afraid to say, are atheists.

Correction: The book I reviewed is not Flew and Warren, as I said, but this one: Terry L. Miethe and Antony G. N. Flew, Does God Exist? A Believer and an Atheist Debate (New York: HarperCollins, 1991). My review appeared in Teaching Philosophy 10 years ago this month. See my homepage for publication details. Mea culpa.

New conservatism refers to a group of intellectuals who cluster around the National Review and identify with the conservatism espoused by Edmund Burke. They try to apply Burkean principles to the contemporary American scene, although the relevancy of these principles, which reflect England and its eighteenth-century monarchy, landed aristocracy, and established church in their fight against the challenges of the French Revolution, is more than questionable.

The new conservatives decry both the values of our business society and the policies of the welfare state—the former from the standpoint of antimaterialism, the latter from that of antistatism. They are against materialism, egalitarianism, and the individual's reliance on the state. But since the new conservatives find support for their antiwelfare position only among business conservatives, they have become in practice—whether they like it or not—supporters of business conservatism.

(Max Mark, Modern Ideologies [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973], 59 [italics in original])

12-9-84 Sunday. An astronomer at the University of Arizona (Donald W. McCarthy) has "discovered" a new planet, and it is not even in our own galaxy. It revolves around a star some 134 trillion miles away from Earth. Isn't that amazing? It is the first documented planet from a solar system other than our own, and the first planet discovered since 1930, when a young astronomer inferred the existence of Pluto from irregularities in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. Although I am ignorant of much of astronomy, I listened to the news of this most recent discovery with relish. What boggles my mind is that humans can "see" an object that is 134 trillion miles away. The telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, where McCarthy did his work, must be awfully strong. And so on we march in the quest for knowledge. I am certain that one day we will discover life on another planet. The life that we discover may be very much unlike our own, but the probabilities are good that there exists such life, given the number of stars and planets in the universe. Remember: You heard it here first (just kidding).

In more mundane matters, I finally finished my "bad-samaritan" paper. It is twenty-eight pages long, has ten pages of footnotes (actually, endnotes), and two pages of bibliographical entries. The formal title is "Bad Samaritanism and the Pedagogical Function of Law." As for the paper's prospects, I am quite certain that Joel Feinberg will be pleased with it and give me an "A" in the course, but I also feel confident that it is publishable—if not in a philosophy journal, then in a law review. My first inclination is to send it to the Cooley Law Review (in Lansing, Michigan), because it is a new and untested journal, but then again, perhaps I can publish it in a more established journal. I plan to look through the law reviews in the law library this week and select one to which to submit the paper. But first, I must make some minor changes in the paper. The citation style of law reviews is slightly different from that which I used in the paper (Kate Turabian's style), so I need to tailor it for a law review.

I want to pause for a moment to take stock of myself. I am twenty-seven and a half years old, an attorney, and a budding philosopher. I live in a small, unfurnished apartment on the outskirts of Tucson, have few if any female friends, no visitors, little money, and a voracious appetite for argument and intellectual stimulation. My debts are large, my goals grand, and my health fair-to-middling. But I'm happy. I really am. From someone else's point of view, I may be poverty-stricken, misguided, and hopelessly naive. But from my own point of view I am the luckiest person in the world. So don't pass judgment on me when I'm gone; don't say that I was unhappy. Happiness is a mental state, and I'm seldom out of it. I am the architect of my own dreams.

I've always been and will always be a headbanger, but this album blows my mind. I should have known better than to put it on while I'm trying to write.

In 1972, when I was 15, I discovered that I was allergic to dairy products. They were causing (or aggravating) my asthma. For the past 32 years, I've had no milk, butter, ice cream, or cheese. The only thing I've missed during this time is cheese, especially cheddar. A few years ago, my local grocery store (Kroger) began to carry fake cheese, made from soybeans. It's very good. Here is the brand I eat. It's available in cheddar, jalapeno cheddar, pepper jack, American slices, and other varieties.

The other day, while watching television, I happened upon a story about a New York City diner that specializes in grilled cheese sandwiches. The sandwiches looked delicious. I remembered eating grilled cheese sandwiches as a child. Then it hit me: I can eat grilled cheese sandwiches, provided I use fake cheese rather than real cheese. Unfortunately, I had forgotten how to make them. So I called my mother in Michigan. She told me to put margarine on the outside of the bread rather than in the frying pan. Within minutes, I was eating an old favorite. Thanks, Mom! Thanks, television! But now I have another problem: resisting the temptation to eat grilled cheese sandwiches every day.

Here is Peggy Noonan's assessment of Hillary Clinton.

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman ("Fly Me to the Moon," column, Dec. 5) should not be surprised that the Bush administration has cut the National Science Foundation's budget for science, engineering and mathematics education. The Reagan administration, which, like the current administration, had a tendency to subordinate facts to ideology, did the same thing.

A scientifically literate public would be skeptical of the very strategies that help keep this administration in power: authoritarian pronouncements that lack empirical support, appeals to supernatural events to explain natural phenomena and the manipulation of scientific data to further political and ideological agendas.

Such a public would ask pointed questions and demand answers that are rooted in reason—answers that this faith-based administration, and much of its Congressional choir, would be hard pressed to deliver.

Joseph D. McInerney
Lutherville, Md., Dec. 5, 2004
The writer is a former director, Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, and a past president, National Association of Biology Teachers.

I come from a family of farmers. One of my first scholarly publications (in 1986) was about the ethics and economics of right-to-farm statutes, which limit the extent to which nuisance suits can be brought against agricultural operations. See here for Victor Davis Hanson's op-ed piece about the demise of the American farm.

If you're in a giving mood this holiday season, see here. My friend Norm Weatherby (a.k.a. Quantum Thought) passes on a story about a woman who's never received a Christmas card.

Keith,

I have to say that I simultaneously agree and disagree with your post entitled "What Liberals Don't Get." [See here.]

The part I agree with is the notion that liberals don't understand how our world works. Nations are, currently, the proper order of things. They allow like-minded, and like-cultured, peoples to live together with a common understanding and a common purpose. They also allow a wide variety of cultures to exist. If we were to simply abolish the nation construct we would jam all these different people and cultures together resulting in some sort of global civil war with myriad factions and interests. Not a pretty thought.

That said (sorry), I think it can be argued that the world, in terms of cultures and differences, is becoming smaller. We are all slowly, very slowly, assimilating each other. Think about how Europe used to be; Italians, Germans, French, English, Irish, etc. They are more like neighborhoods now than totally separate nations. Their similarities and differences are like those of our States. There is a common bond and, yet, cultural and language differences. What were once peculiarities to one culture or group of people are being exposed to others. Some of these concepts and ideas are accepted by a broader culture, some are rejected. Thus some live on and some die. It is only a matter of time until there is a worldwide way of thinking; a shared global culture. It just won't be anytime soon.

And democracy is growing and will eventually bind us all together. That is a long way off and cannot be forced into existence before its time, but I think on this the liberals are correct: our common humanity and yearning for freedom and self-determination will bring us together. That day is a long way off but coming nonetheless. Oh, and I think it is moving in an accelerated, nonlinear fashion.

Good post, great blog, keep up the good work!

Regards,
Steve Walsh

Today's Dallas Morning News contains an editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer. See here. It shows a man and a woman in bed. The man is sitting upright, watching a television. He is making a fist and pulling on his hair. He looks angry. The woman is lying on her side, but evidently not sleeping, for she says, "If you get so worked up over athletes taking drugs, you'll undo the effects of all your heartburn, blood pressure, antidepressant, and sleeping pills!"

I don't get it. Is the cartoonist implying that the man is a hypocrite? But why would that be? The concern about athletes and drugs isn't about any old drugs. It's about performance-enhancing drugs, those that give some players an unfair advantage over others. Nobody cares that an athlete takes heartburn or blood-pressure medication, since those don't confer an on-field advantage. The concern about athletes and drugs isn't even about recreational drugs, such as marijuana and cocaine. These don't enhance performance (if anything, they diminish it), and while there may be a general concern about anyone who uses illegal drugs, it has nothing in particular to do with athletes.

Am I missing something, or is this cartoonist just stupid?

My experience with liberals and conservatives (remember: I've been both) teaches me two things. First, liberals think they're smarter than conservatives. See here. Second, they're not. In fact, in some ways, liberals are dumber. Here's a perfect example. Liberals think they lost the presidential election because they failed to get their message across to the American people. It's not the message, they say; it was the messenger. But if that's the case, there will be no need to rethink liberalism. All that needs to be done is to revise the manner in which liberalism is conveyed, or to get a warmer and more photogenic candidate.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The American people knew exactly what they were endorsing and repudiating. They endorsed realism and strength in international affairs. They endorsed self-sufficiency and responsibility in people's private lives. They repudiated tinkering with fundamental institutions, such as marriage. They repudiated redistribution of wealth. If liberals are ever to regain the White House, they must come to grips with these realities. They must change their views, not merely repackage old views. They must come to where the American people are, not try to lead them someplace they don't want to go.

Belladonna, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Liberals think nations and religions are forces for evil in the world. They think that people who divide themselves into distinct nations and religions are prone to rivalry and violence. If there were no nations, they say, there would be no wars between nations. If there were no religions, there would be no religious wars. Their solution is twofold: to eliminate nations (i.e., to globalize governance) and to make each nation, so long as it exists, multicultural.

But this makes things worse, not better, for now the distinct cultures that previously existed between nations exist within nations; and getting rid of nations doesn't get rid of distinct cultures. Look at the problems Europe is having with its influx of Muslims. Do we want this? We're a Judeo-Christian people with Judeo-Christian traditions, principles, and values. Let's keep it that way. If we don't, we'll have war within our borders, not just without them. As usual, liberals are well-intentioned, but their plans make things worse rather than better. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The problem with Roe is not so much that it bungles the question it sets itself, but rather that it sets itself a question the Constitution has not made the Court's business.

(John Hart Ely, "The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade," The Yale Law Journal 82 [April 1973]: 920-49, at 943 [footnote omitted])

James Taranto thinks Republicans benefit from having Roe v. Wade on the books. See here. Perhaps, but this is to view it strategically. Constitutionally speaking, Roe was a mistake. Yes, the mistake was made almost 32 years ago, but an old mistake is still a mistake. Someone asked me recently whether the doctrine of precedent prevents Roe from being overruled. No. Lower courts are bound by Supreme Court rulings, but the Court itself is always free to overrule its decisions. It doesn't do so lightly, of course; nor should it. But with mistakes as egregious as Roe v. Wade, the Court should overrule it at the earliest opportunity. Let us hope that President Bush appoints justices who care about the integrity of the Constitution—and who try to undo the damage done by their lawless predecessors.

John Lennon was murdered on this date 24 years ago. He was only 40 years old. Here is what I wrote in my journal on that date:

12-8-80 . . . I just heard a flash bulletin on the Monday Night Football telecast that former Beatle John Lennon has been shot to death. It seems he was shot twice in the back outside his New York apartment. No word on possible motive or suspect. I called Glenn as soon as I heard the news, because he is a Beatle fan from way back. He seemed in shock. Now I just heard a radio report which said police have a suspect in custody—a "local screwball." As you know, or should know, I draw the line at VIOLENCE; that is, people should be free to behave as they want until they physically harm others. This person—whoever shot Lennon—crossed over the line and should be held accountable to Lennon's family for the loss. Trouble is, it's hard to replace a talent like John Lennon.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I love studies such as this. (Thanks to Denny Bradshaw for the link.)

Dr Burgess-Jackson

Just a quick thought about feeding meat to your dogs.

Several studies have pointed out that were we to convert all our farming to organic methods, we would have to convert large areas to producing cattle feed, and raise cattle anyway to produce sufficient amounts of organic fertilizer.

Today, milk cattle are converted to pet-food products when they no longer can produce enough milk.

Would the same cattle raised to produce organic fertilizer be similarly converted when their output of fertilizer dropped?

Oh yes, this message was delayed by Feisty and Bacho (the Aussie Sheep dog and the Beagle) who suddenly wanted to play a short game of "Pet me first—No pet ME first." (They taught me that game early on.)

Being pack animals, dogs NEED the pack experience with their owners (or servants), just as much as they need proper food.

Cheers
Frank Borger

Today's Dallas Morning News contains a letter from a woman who says, near the end, "I loathe Wal-Mart with all my being." What's going on? Somebody explain this to me. Is Wal-Mart despised for the same reason the United States of America is despised: because it's big, powerful, and successful?

Grant Teaff is president of the American Football Coaches Association, which conducts balloting for the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll. The other day, Jeff Tedford, the coach of The University of California-Berkeley Golden Bears, criticized coaches who put The University of Texas Longhorns ahead of his team. In reply, Teaff said, "We do very good due diligence to run a credible poll." Huh? Why not "We do our best"? Why the gibberish? Gibberish is to language as litter is to the environment.

To the Editor:

Re "Gays Ousted From Military Challenge Policy in Lawsuit" (news article, Dec. 7):

It seems strange that the Pentagon's current "don't ask, don't tell" policy encourages questions about whether former members of the armed services are gay, rather than their commitment to or qualifications for the job.

The Pentagon's rationale is that heterosexual personnel have such antipathy for gay people that its mission would be thwarted. That's why the Pentagon has adopted the policy of punishing gay people for a problem that, through their own statements, lies with heterosexual service members.

We live in a strange country—where we hail service members as the most patriotic and bravest of all, yet we deny the opportunity to many who are able and willing to serve, punishing a class of people who are hated simply for being hated.

Raymond Leung
New York, Dec. 7, 2004

Some people think it's silly to label themselves—or others. They say they decide what to believe or value on a case-by-case basis, using reason as their guide. Sometimes they agree with liberals; sometimes they agree with conservatives. Evidently, they think that if they call themselves a conservative (or a liberal), they will be forced to believe or value something they don't want to believe or value; and they don't want to be forced.

These people are confused. Suppose a scientist went out into the world with no theory, framework, organizing principle, or method. The scientist would come back with . . . a list of observations. This list would have no order, no system, no coherence, and no pattern. It would be raw data. The purpose of a theory is to order, systematize, pattern, and render coherent what would otherwise be a buzzing, blooming confusion. This is as true of political theories (or moralities) as of scientific theories.

Political moralities such as liberalism and conservatism have an internal structure. Certain values are more basic (more entrenched) than others. To a liberal, egalitarianism is a basic value. To a conservative, tradition is a basic value. To say that these are basic is to say that they provide the foundation (base) for other values. At the top of the structure are specific judgments, such as whether there should be a progressive income tax, whether racial quotas are permissible, and whether homosexual "marriage" should be allowed by law.

The reason conservatives differ among themselves on particular issues is not that they differ on basic values but that they draw different inferences from those values. Everyone is familiar with debates within Christianity. There are both liberal and conservative Christians. How can this be? It's because the basic values of Christianity can be specified or applied differently. Liberal Christians are inclined to think that conservative Christians aren't really Christians, whereas conservative Christians are inclined to think that liberal Christians aren't really Christians. Perhaps there are some views that are incompatible with Christianity, but the doctrines of the religion are vague and general enough to allow for disagreement as one moves from the basic ("Love thy neighbor as oneself") to the less basic, or from the general to the specific. Does Christianity require a progressive income tax? Reasonable Christians can disagree.

Some people think that conservatism is a list of positions: one on taxation, one on abortion, one on warfare, one on affirmative action, one on prayer in schools, one on childrearing, &c. When they examine the list and find that they don't subscribe to every item on it, they conclude that they must not be a conservative (or at least not a good conservative). But conservatism isn't a list of positions, and neither is liberalism. It's a structured set of beliefs and values. I may conclude that certain beliefs or values subscribed to by other conservatives are mistaken, and I will try to persuade them that conservatism, properly understood, entails their rejection. I work within the political morality, so to speak, just as contemporary biologists work within Darwinism and contemporary physicists work within Einsteinism.

There are, of course, scientific revolutions. At one time, all physicists were Newtonians. Now they're Einsteinians. At one time, I was a liberal. Now I'm a conservative. I've had a personal revolution—a conversion. What happened is this. I realized that my basic values are more in line with those of conservatism than with those of liberalism. Once I got inside conservatism (as it were), I began exploring, probing, and testing. I came to see that conservatism made more sense of my beliefs and values than liberalism did. That I did not personally like certain conservatives, such as Jerry Falwell or Tom DeLay, didn't matter to me. My aim is to work out a coherent political morality, not join a fraternity.

Labels are important, for they are names of theories. It's an accident that conservatives call themselves conservatives. They might well be called traditionalists instead. Liberals might well be called egalitarians instead. But the names we've settled on to mark the differences between the theories represent something real. Thinking that one is outside of theory is silly. If you decide what to believe or value on a case-by-case basis, without attempting to impose a structure on (or discern the order in) your beliefs or values, you're floundering. Far from being the rational thing to do, that would be distinctly irrational.

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment[.] Specifically, in American history, the substitution of the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch. Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of blood, but are accounted worth it—this appraisement being made by beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed. The French revolution is of incalculable value to the Socialist of to-day; when he pulls the string actuating its bones its gestures are inexpressibly terrifying to gory tyrants suspected of fomenting law and order.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

To the Editor:

Re "They All Know Mrs. Clinton, and for 2008, That's the Rub" (Political Memo, Dec. 5):

I am always amused by the frequent characterization of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a "hugely ambitious woman." There probably isn't a politician out there who is not "hugely ambitious," and, in the last election, we were treated by President Bush to as raw a display of huge, unmitigated ambition as we are likely to see anywhere, anytime.

Lois Bloom
Easton, Conn., Dec. 6, 2004

I was stunned but delighted a few minutes ago to discover that Paul Krugman has taken a break from his break to write a New York Times column about Social Security. See here. I missed you, Paul. Come back soon. I fear that I need you the way you need President Bush.

Away, the joker's closing in, reform and they will win, the light is fading fast.
I know, you know, they know, we all know, everybody's gonna burn down.

The girls come crawling on all fours, banging on locked doors, high cards call the tune
I know, you know, they know, we all know
Everybody's gonna burn down.

Play me another hand, lose everything I am, until we meet again.

The ace, that's hiding up your sleeve, will cause the world to grieve, the love you had is gone,
I know, you know, they know, we all know,

The dream, in every player's heart, to win it all not part, they lie awake at night,
I know, you know, they know, we all know.

The game, where gamblers rule the night,
And get your blood they might, the joker's closin' in,
I know, you know, they know, we all know.

This week's link is to The Examined Life.

Hello Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

I read your latest blog entry about your dogs. [See here.] Your dilemma cries out for an empirical approach. Feed your dogs vegan dog food for a few weeks and see what happens. Do they lose their appetite, or perhaps eat with less gusto than usual? Do they become listless and whiny? Does their fur start to fall out?

If you're not willing to conduct the experiment, I would at least be interested in hearing your thoughts about how, exactly, vegan dog food is purported to cause harm to dogs. Is the harm physical (i.e., malnutrition of some kind), psychological, or some combination of both? Surely there must be some data on this subject.

Regards,
Alex Chernavsky

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Roll your cursor over the image of Alex and Ollie to see the color version. Neat!

I finally got around to reading Richard A. Posner's book Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). Although I admire Posner greatly and always learn from him, I find that he treats certain people and subjects cavalierly. For example, here is what he says about Peter Singer:

Singer is an academic philosopher. But his book [Animal Liberation] is written for a popular audience, is not tightly reasoned, and makes no effort to overcome the obvious objections that can be lodged against a version of utilitarianism that expands the community whose aggregate welfare is to be maximized to include animals—objections such as: if there are happier animals than man, we may have a moral duty to shrink the human population to the point at which the maximum number of the happy animals can be supported. (page 158)

Precedent, n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he pleases. As there are precedents for everything, he has only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate those in the line of his desire. Invention of the precedent elevates the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Randy Rhoads was born on this date in 1956. He died far too young, depriving all of us of his vast guitar talents.

To the Editor:

That the Republican-controlled Congress may overturn abortion rights under the label of being "pro-life" (Political Memo, Dec. 2) is offensive. These conservatives stop being "pro-life" as soon as the baby takes its first breath. Then their support shifts to those who pollute our air and water, start ill-conceived wars, supply assault rifles to criminals and limit lifesaving stem-cell research. I long for the day when "pro-life" is defined as what happens after that first breath.

Barbara Ash
Weston, Conn., Dec. 2, 2004

Injustice, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I appreciate the feedback I've received about whether feeding meat-based products to Sophie and Shelbie is compatible with my deontological principle that it's wrong to harm others. I'm not yet convinced that I have inconsistent beliefs. I don't consider this an easy case by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's quite hard. It involves the strength of the principle against harming others, the extent of my obligations to Sophie and Shelbie, and problems of causation.

One obvious solution of the problem is to be a moderate rather than an absolutist deontologist. Moderate deontologists say that it's wrong to harm others, but not if enough good would be brought about thereby. In other words, sometimes the end justifies the means. So the question is where I place the threshold. Does the good I bring into Sophie and Shelbie's lives justify contributing to an institution that harms others? What if the contribution is small, as it appears to be?

I hope nobody thinks I'm rationalizing. To rationalize a decision is to state reasons in its support that played no role in one's deliberations. It is to dress up a decision made on other grounds. If, after deliberating, I conclude that I have incompatible beliefs, I'll decide which of them to modify or abandon. Having said that, I'm going to do the best I can to reconcile the beliefs. I have two strong intuitions: that it's wrong to harm others and that I have a solemn obligation to give Sophie and Shelbie good lives. I will try to do justice to both intuitions.

By the way, several people have said or implied that, if it turns out to be morally acceptable for me to feed meat-based products to Sophie and Shelbie, then it's morally acceptable for anyone, including me, to consume meat. But this doesn't follow. Most people eat meat because they enjoy the taste of it. They don't do it because they have an obligation to make themselves happy. The conflict I face isn't between taste and duty, between satisfying my desires and doing the right thing; it's between two duties, both of which I take seriously. By bringing Sophie and Shelbie into my life, I undertook to give them good lives. It's this duty, and not some generalized desire to promote their happiness, that's creating the logical difficulty.

Dear Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

If you don't mind, I would like to respond to the letter you recently posted by Craig Brackman on the reasons for why the Islamists attacked us [see here]:

Mr. Brackman recently stated that "The blowback theory of terrorist motivation has far more power than the 'they hate our freedoms' theory we hear from conservatives." Later, he adds that this "theory seems to have gained popularity ONLY after 9/11."

Once again, the libertarian has played to type, employing mere naked reason against the complex, messy world we live in. The first place to start when seeking to know the motivations of Islamists should be with the Islamists themselves. Sayed Qutb, the Grandfather of Modern Islamic Jihad, said that the true character of Islam would be embodied in "establishment of the sovereignty of God and His Lordship throughout the world, the end of man's arrogance and selfishness, and the implementation of the rule of the Divine Shari'ah in human affairs." So yes, they hate our freedoms. And I'm sure that the neocons were not pushing Qutb to say this over half a century ago.

Next, what were conservatives saying before 9/11? There is no need to comment on Bernard Lewis's 1990 Atlantic Monthly article "The Roots of Muslim Rage," because its contents are so well known. Let's turn then to Daniel Pipes's article "Same Difference" featured in National Review in 11/7/1994. Pipes states the following concerning the question of fundamentalist Islam: "Liberals say co-opt the radicals. Conservatives say confront them. As usual, the conservatives are right."

And later, "The Left believes that dialogue with the other side, communist or fundamentalist Muslim, has several advantages: it helps us to understand their legitimate concerns, signal them that we mean them no harm, and reduce mutual hostility."

On the other hand, "The Right has little use for dialogue and disarmament. Communists and fundamentalists BEING INVARIABLY HOSTILE TO OUR WAY OF LIFE [emphasis added], we should show not empathy but resolve; not good will but will power."

So the new libertarian nonintervention prescription is simply the old liberal appeasement policy. Once again, the conservatives are right.

Best,
Izzy Broadlink

12-5-84 Wednesday. I neglected to mention yesterday that there was an enormous amount of snow on the Santa Catalina Mountains in the morning. To the best of my recollection, there has never been that much snow on the mountains, but perhaps my eyeglasses were so poor a year ago that I couldn't tell snow from clouds. In any event, it was a beautiful sight—patches of white from ground level to the peaks and a ring of low clouds to add to the panorama. I would never have guessed, two years ago, that there could be snow in Tucson, even in the mountains. My image of Arizona was slightly flawed.

There has been a tragedy in India. Poisonous gas escaped from an underground tank and killed more than two thousand people. Countless others have been blinded and otherwise injured. The gas was used in making pesticides in a Union Carbide plant [in Bhopal], but apparently the safety precautions were insufficient to avert catastrophe. The scenes from India are horrible. Infants and children are lying dead on the ground, people are wandering about with rags over their eyes to shield them from the sun, and corpses are being burned on the street to prevent disease and stench. As I watch, I am simultaneously angry at the corporate criminals who made the tragedy possible and sad to see such suffering. We live in a dangerous age—an age in which common people do not understand what is being done to them by their leaders and those who have power. I hope that Union Carbide is made to compensate every person who has suffered harm. The tort system is there to do justice, and justice had better be done.

It is ironic that I defended capitalism in a discussion with my roommate, Larry T., five years ago. It is ironic not just because I have changed my views, but because Larry is the least likely person to have defended socialism. In subsequent discussions with him, he came across as the consummate capitalist and conservative. Once, he argued that "woman's place is in the home," and I detected more than a bit of racism in his speech and demeanor over the years. I gradually grew to despise his aloofness and elitism, so much so that I could not bear to discourse with him. We parted not as friends, but as antagonists. Larry will likely age into a conservative, cigar-smoking, female-degrading attorney, while I will become a sweater-wearing, radical intellectual. We were, in retrospect, the most unlikely of roommates, but it made economic sense at the time.

The [fall] semester is winding down. I lectured to my [Introduction to Philosophy] students on subjective relativism, the ethical theory which holds that right action is equivalent to action which is believed to be right by some person, and spent two hours talking politics, art, and morality with several of my students. We walked to a nearby donut shop for a snack, and then sat on the huge fountain in front of Old Main enjoying the sunshine and cracking jokes. My students must think me odd to like rock and roll music, have a finely-honed sense of humor, and be interested in such things as bike riding, sports, and animal rights. But then, I would argue that other professors are too stuffy. Professors (instructors, in my case) are people, too, and should be treated as such. I want always to retain a close, friendly relationship to my students.

By now, everyone except cave-dwellers has heard about BALCO, the Bay Area laboratory that manufactured and sold performance-enhancing drugs to athletes. Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees (formerly of the Oakland Athletics) and Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants have admitted to using steroids, although Bonds claims he didn't know that's what he was taking. Another sport I love, bicycling, has been racked with drug problems for many years. One of my favorite bicyclists, American Tyler Hamilton, was recently fired by his team for testing positive for a prohibited substance. He says he's innocent. We shall see.

What's going on? Part of me—the libertarian part—says that people should be able to use whatever substances they want when they compete. Those who don't want to risk their lives or health should take up another line of work. People who don't want to watch supercharged athletes can find another form of entertainment. But another part of me thinks there should be restrictions on what athletes can consume. The restrictions would be justified on both paternalistic and fairness grounds.

The paternalistic ground has to do with the health and welfare of those who wish to use drugs. It's paternalistic because it fails to respect the autonomy of the athlete. It says to the athlete, "I don't care that you want to use these dangerous substances; for your own good, you may not." In general, I'm not a paternalist, but some of these drugs are dangerous. Ken Caminiti, the former Most Valuable Player of the National League, died recently—in his forties. He admitted to using steroids. Lyle Alzado, a former football player, died young. He, too, had used steroids. These appear to be deadly substances. Doesn't society have an interest in protecting people from their own folly?

But even if this paternalistic argument fails—and I admit that it troubles me—there's another good reason to ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs: fairness. Many athletes want to compete, but without risking their lives and health. Shouldn't they be able to? If some competitors use drugs, others will be forced to choose between using them and dropping out of the sport. Just the knowledge that others may be using drugs is enough to induce all or most competitors to use them. The pressure—from peers, family members, and coaches—must be intense.

I can't believe that someone would risk his or her life and health for the short-term gains of athletic victory. Take Jason Giambi. He had a long-term contract with the Yankees. He was financially set for life. But he wanted more. He wanted not just impressive numbers, but eye-popping numbers. Perhaps he was looking down the road toward his next contract, or perhaps he wanted to make it to the Hall of Fame. He sacrificed his future selves for his present self. He sacrificed the irreplaceable for the replaceable. It's hard to feel sorry for someone so stupid.

Maybe I'm strange, but I can't imagine risking my health, much less my life, for athletic glory. I had a bicycling friend who was always looking for an edge. He wasn't even racing, but he wanted to be able to ride at a high level so as to stay with men much younger. He was always looking for supplements (legal, not illegal) that would increase his energy, stamina, and strength. When he told me about these things, as he always did, I asked him why he would risk his health. He looked at me as if I were crazy. He couldn't believe I wouldn't risk my health. I couldn't believe he would. Most of the time, however, he denied that he was risking his health. He was deluding himself.

One of the great attractions of baseball is its history, and in particular its records. I grew up hearing about Babe Ruth's 714 home runs. When Hank Aaron broke the record in 1974, I was in awe, for I knew that it was one of the most storied records in the game. Hank Aaron broke the record cleanly: by playing well for a long time. He was a magnificent athlete—and an honorable one. Barry Bonds now has over 700 home runs. In 2001, he hit a record 73 of them. Until 1998, nobody had struck more than 61. See here. One wonders how much of Bonds's success is attributable to performance-enhancing drugs. To the extent that it is, any record Bonds has set (or goes on to set) is tainted. This destroys the integrity of the game, at least to me. How can we compare accomplishments over time if some athletes used drugs? How many home runs would Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron have hit had they used steroids?

I'm sorry to ramble. As you can probably tell, I'm heartbroken that the sports I love—the sports that give meaning to my life—have been adulterated by greedy individuals. They put their own interests ahead of their sports. Perhaps it's human nature to do this. Perhaps the drive for status is to blame. But aren't we rational, and therefore responsible? Can't we understand that our greed is destroying what is most dear to us?

To the Editor:

Re "Colleges Can Bar Army Recruiters" (front page, Nov. 30):

As a law student, I take issue with the Justice Department's claim that law schools "discriminate" against the military by refusing to allow its recruiters on campus.

On the contrary, my law school (New York University School of Law) and others have the eminently nonselective policy of excluding all employers from campus that discriminate on the basis of race, sex and sexual orientation.

Employers who wish to recruit on campus are free to abandon their discriminatory policies.

Supporters of the Solomon Amendment, the law at issue in this case, which barred colleges and universities from receiving federal money unless they allowed the military to recruit on campus, also claim that excluding recruiters from campus makes it harder for the military to recruit qualified lawyers. The facts belie this claim as well.

This year, the military was allowed on campus. Its antigay policies are so unpopular, however, that only a handful of students applied.

If the military were serious about hiring qualified lawyers, simply ceasing to discriminate would be more effective than quarreling with law schools and alienating their students.

David A. Herman
New York, Nov. 30, 2004

Journalists are supposed to hold the powerful accountable. That's why we call them The Fourth Estate. Why, then, has The New York Times all but ignored the United Nations oil-for-food scandal? Is it because The Times wants to investigate only conservative individuals and organizations? Finally, today, The Times opines on the oil-for-food scandal; but instead of calling for an in-depth investigation, as one would expect, it speculates (hopes?) that Kofi Annan is innocent. The fault for the scandal, according to The Times, lies with the United States. This, folks, is another example of Blame America First. Everything bad that happens is our fault. The Times has lost whatever moral authority it once had. It is a disgrace to journalism.

My friend and former student Rodger Faherty sent a link to this.

Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

One of my heroes, George Armstrong Custer, was born on this date in 1839—in New Rumley, Ohio. He accomplished more in his 36 years than most people accomplish in twice that time. If I had a son, I would want him to be just like Custer. Here, incidentally, is the best biography of Custer I've read, written by a lifelong student of the man and his career. Forget everything you've heard about Custer—much of it, I assure you, is false—and read this book. Custer is one of the greatest warriors this nation has produced. He would have fit perfectly into the Greek world. He had all the cardinal virtues of Greek antiquity: courage, wisdom, justice, and temperance.

Keith:

You have got me in a real bind since I started reading your blog. Every time I eat meat now I feel pangs of guilt which get stronger after reading a new piece. The Costello story [this?]—I can't get out of my head for the last two days it was so powerful and compelling. I talk about it with my wife and even she is feeling the same way. I can honestly see myself not eating meat in the future.

I am a die-hard conservative and truly hate the Left and their friends like PETA and Greenpeace because they don't persuade people through force of intellectual argument—this is beyond them. They coerce through violence and intimidation all wrapped up in their holier-than-thou view of things.

You have done this differently. You have taught me, or have helped me teach myself, why we ought to not harm and cause pain to God's little creatures.

I need to say thanks but I am not sure if that is the right word.

Anyway enough of that.

Joe Cambria

Here is a company that specializes in soy products. The soy nuts are delicious. I purchased them at Kroger.

Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

I've wanted to write to you about homosexual marriage for a while. While I greatly disagree with you, I do appreciate seeing your arguments against.

I have a few points to which I hope you would consider responding in your blog. First, I'm not really clear what your stand on civil unions is. I am assuming that you are against those also, since they are simply marriages disguised by different wording.

Second, when you use the word "marriage," are you lumping all aspects of marriage into one thing? By this I mean, you do not differentiate the social, legal, civil, and religious facets of the whole marriage gem from each other. The conservative argument you present is that by changing any one facet, the whole institution becomes flawed or undermined or simply changed.

Third, are you worried that the same arguments used against homosexual marriage could also be applied in a more reactionary way towards marriage as a whole? Even the simple argument that marriage is the tool to encourage procreation teeters on the edge of a slippery slope. I know that this sort of argument, the slippery slope, is a form of logical fallacy, but even now conservative groups are looking at taking this "No Gay Marriage" energy and directing at legally returning marriage to a more traditional form. [See here.]

Finally, the reason that I'm in favor of homosexual marriage is that it is unfair that the civil aspects of marriage are denied to a couple simply because of the gender of the two people. The state's recognition of a marriage gives the couple many legal rights and responsibilities. It is these legal rights and responsibilities that homosexual couples want to access. The government can accommodate this, since legal rights and responsibilities fall fully under the government's control. One simple act, a marriage, entwines the couple in a legal framework that would be difficult, and now in Ohio impossible, to create any other way.

I can see that giving these legal rights and responsibilities to homosexual couples would alter the whole institution of marriage. So the logical conservative reaction would be to not want this change. But marriage has changed so drastically over the past 100 years that I don't think the conservatives are defending the same institution that I see today. This leads to a wide gap in the arguments for and against homosexual marriage. Conservatives are using an ideal version of marriage for their arguments and liberals are using the currently sad state of marriage for theirs. And on top of that, the whole issue is clouded by the emotional diatribes on both sides. It is difficult for me to find places that view the issue dispassionately or try to present both sides of the argument.

Thank you for presenting your views and pointing out other conservative arguments against homosexual marriage. While your strong feelings on the subject show in your comments, you do keep your arguments logical and intelligent.

Sincerely,
Chris

Consequentialism is the doctrine that the only morally relevant aspect of an action is its consequences. Each of us, according to this doctrine, is obligated at all times to bring about the best consequences, where all interests, including those of nonhuman animals, are considered equally. To a consequentialist, there are no act-types that are intrinsically wrong. (Deontology is the doctrine that some act-types are intrinsically wrong. Hence, by definition, everyone is either a consequentialist or a deontologist. It is the fundamental divide of normative ethical theory.) Killing the innocent, to a consequentialist, is not intrinsically wrong. Lying is not intrinsically wrong. Cheating, stealing, being unfaithful to one's spouse, raping, terrorizing, breaking promises, and torturing are not intrinsically wrong. Every act-token must be evaluated on its merits, which means on the basis of its consequences. If a particular act of torture maximizes the good, then it is right. If not, then it is wrong. That it is an act of torture (i.e., a token of that type) is morally irrelevant. Here is where consequentialism leads. Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedung, and Pol Pot—the greatest butchers in human history—were consequentialists. (Thanks to Mylan Engel for the link.)

To the Editor:

Re "Don't Expect the Government to Be a V-Chip," by Michael K. Powell (Op-Ed, Dec. 3):

The most common reasoning I have heard quoted for greater government regulation over television and radio is that we must protect our children from programming that leads to moral degradation.

It strikes me as odd (as a parent) that parents have the wherewithal to determine which programming is unsuitable for their children, but apparently lack the capability to communicate this to their children by changing the channel, setting rules for television viewing, or simply removing the television completely.

Instead, it seems that parents would prefer to spend time complaining to the Federal Communications Commission in hopes that it will assist them in parenting their children.

When I was growing up, my parents shut the TV off during the weekdays, and allowed restricted viewing of programs during the weekend; somehow that approach today seems much more effective than looking to the F.C.C. to solve the problem.

What we need in our culture is more parent intervention, not more government intervention.

Mark Lisi
Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., Dec. 3, 2004

Ralph McInerny is a professor of philosophy at The University of Notre Dame, which has a storied football tradition and which recently fired its first black football coach, Tyrone Willingham. Dr McInerny is none too pleased with the firing, although he appears to understand why it occurred. See here. By the way, I had no idea that Dr McInerny is a novelist, much less that he has published 80 novels! Some of us blog, run, and ride; others write novels.

Michelle Malkin is one of the Left's favorite targets. See here. But why? I think it's because she's smarter than they are and they know it. She also writes better and has significantly more influence. The Left's invective is directly proportional to Malkin's perceived power. The more power she is perceived by the Left as having, the more indecent they become in their attacks on her. I think the Left is particularly incensed that she's a female. Women, like blacks, are not supposed to be conservatives. But this insults women and blacks, who have minds of their own. Keep up the good work, Michelle. For every uncivil leftist who attacks you, there are at least five people who think highly of you and your work.

Did President Bush ever say that he was a uniter rather than a divider? If so, what did he mean? His critics have had a field day with the expression, wherever it came from. They say that he has been a divisive president, that he has gone out of his way to marginalize, antagonize, and alienate people, that his policies have been extreme rather than moderate.

The first thing to note is that any policy is going to have both winners and losers. No matter what President Bush does, he will please some and displease others. This is because people have different interests. Pleasing the logging industry will displease environmentalists. Pleasing middle-income taxpayers will displease the welfare industry. Pleasing those in favor of immigration will displease those against it. What is President Bush supposed to do: try to find a policy that displeases nobody? But that's impossible. A fortiori, he isn't going to find a policy that pleases everybody.

Knowing that whatever he does, he is going to displease someone, President Bush should do what he believes best for the country as a whole, taking everyone's interests into account and counting everyone's interests equally. Isn't this what a wise parent does? Every parental rule and decision displeases someone. Does that mean there should be no rules or decisions? Does that mean parents are dividers rather than uniters?

I think the call for President Bush to be a uniter rather than a divider is a call for him to be more like the candidates he defeated. If that's the case, then he should ignore the criticism. He won two elections fair and square. To change his policies to appease those who voted against him would be unfair to those who voted for him. To his credit, he appears to be ignoring the criticism. Perhaps, come to think of it, that's what antagonizes his critics. They don't have his ear and they don't control him. They're helpless. Remember: These are people who crave power. Powerlessness is their anathema.

Architect, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Jeremy Paul, "Campaign Reform for the 21st Century: Putting Mouth Where the Money Is," Connecticut Law Review 30 (spring 1998): 779.

Renee Melancon, "Arizona's Insane Response to Insanity," Arizona Law Review 40 (1998): 287.

Craig Callender, "The View from No-when," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (March 1998): 135.

David A. Harris, "Car Wars: The Fourth Amendment's Death on the Highway," George Washington Law Review 66 (March 1998): 556.

Gerald N. Rosenberg and John M. Williams, "Do Not Go Gently into That Good Right: The First Amendment in the High Court of Australia," Supreme Court Review (1997): 439.

This year, I hope Jews will enhance their celebrations of the beautiful holiday of Hanukkah by striving even harder to live up to Judaism's highest moral values and teachings and moving toward a vegetarian diet.

Hanukkah commemorates the miracle of the oil that was enough for only one day, but miraculously lasted for eight. A switch to vegetarianism on the part of the world's people could help cause an even greater miracle: the end of the scandal of world hunger, which results in the death of an estimated 20 million people annually, while over a third of the world's grain is fed to animals destined for slaughter.

The miracle of the oil brings the use of fuel and other resources into focus, and vegetarian diets make resources go much farther, since far less water, fuel, land, pesticides, fertilizer and other resources are required for plant-based diets than for animal-centered diets. In addition, a switch toward vegetarian diets would greatly benefit the health of individuals and would sharply reduce the mistreatment of billions of farmed animals.

Richard H. Schwartz
president, Jewish Vegetarians of North America

No, I'm not talking about a sports franchise. See here. (Thanks to Mylan Engel for the link.)

To the Editor:

"It's Still a Man's World on the Idiot Box," by Maureen Dowd (column, Dec. 2), reminds us that women are not only underrepresented as news anchors, but also vastly invisible as expert news guests.

Our study "Who's Talking" found that women guests comprised only 11 percent of the national Sunday morning political news shows. That minuscule number dropped by almost 40 percent after the 9/11 attacks.

Women serve on Congressional intelligence and armed services committees. Women economists and military experts can talk about pressing issues facing our nation. Yet who's talking to one another? The men.

When half the population is left out of the conversation, it limits public discourse and it limits our democracy.

Marie Wilson
President, White House Project
New York, Dec. 2, 2004

Here is Peggy Noonan's sensitive but critical column about Dan Rather. She's a wonderful writer.

Now that I have your attention, let me tell you something funny. When I check the statistics for this site, I find that the most common search term that leads people here is "anal." I doubt that these people are searching for AnalPhilosopher or for information about anal-retentiveness. A minute ago, I got to wondering where this blog appeared in a Google search for "anal." It came up on the third page! Here was the first item.

To repeat something I've said many times, the name of this blog refers to two things: first, the fact that I'm an analytic (as opposed to a Continental) philosopher; and second, the fact that, personality-wise, I'm anal-retentive. If you're here because you're interested in excrement or sexual intercourse, you're in the wrong place! That's not to say you must leave; it's to say that you should think only clean thoughts while you're here.

Note from AnalPhilosopher on 14 October 2005: If you came here from Brian Leiter's blog, see here.

Note from AnalPhilosopher on 2 August 2006: If you've come here from Brian Leiter's blog, see here. For the record, this blog had 26,521 visitors this past July (an average of 855.5 per day). Only 167 of the visitors—one in every 158.8, or .6%—came by typing "anal" into a search engine. I'll bet Leiter gets more visits to his blog by people typing "imbecile" into a search engine. By the way, I just typed "anal" into Google. This blog came up on the third page. How does Leiter know that people aren't looking for this blog when they type "anal"? It's easy to remember and it gets you here fairly directly. But who cares how people get here? The main thing is that they get here—so they can see (among other things) what a thug Leiter is.

Here, courtesy of InstaPundit, is a column about liberal domination of academia.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

What is it about President Bush that elicits such animosity? I have never been able to figure it out. Liberals did everything they could, even indecent things, to defeat him. He won handily. He has a mandate to govern. Having failed in their objective, his critics now harass him for surrounding himself with "toadies." Who cares what his management style is? He should be judged by his decisions, not by the process by which he arrives at them. If his decisions are bad, the process by which he arrived at them doesn't vindicate them. If his decisions are good, the process by which he arrived at them doesn't undermine them. I have a suggestion for President Bush's critics: Get your favorite candidate elected; then you can urge any management style you want on him or her.

The weather here in Fort Worth is exquisite: clear, cool (55° Fahrenheit), and calm. If I could bottle and sell it, I'd have more money than Bill Gates.

Mindy Hutchison sent a link to this story from The Houston Chronicle. It makes me sad. Why do humans feel entitled to take wild animals from their habitats for such trivial purposes as amusement? Doing so frustrates the animal's natural urges. How does this differ from human chattel slavery?

Philosophers pride themselves on their mental acuity, but they routinely make a gross error. They confuse defending a view with arguing. That's like confusing (1) defending a fortification from one's enemies with (2) leaving the fort to attack one's enemies. That these are different activities, with different standards of success, is, or should be, obvious, but philosophers don't seem to notice it. They speak as if defending and arguing are two names for the same activity.

Suppose I evaluate something. I might say that a person is good (or bad), an act right (or wrong), a practice fair (or unfair), a law just (or unjust), or a painting beautiful (or ugly). You may ask me to defend my judgment. I will do so by stating the grounds or basis of the judgment, i.e., that which supports it. There is no implication when I do so that you share these grounds, and therefore no implication that you should make the same judgment. All I'm doing is stating the grounds of my judgment. This shows that my judgment is not groundless, i.e., that it has a rational basis, that it follows from or is supported by other judgments I make.

To argue (see here) is to try to persuade others, either individually or collectively. To succeed in this activity, I must use only premises that my interlocutors accept. There is no implication, when I argue, that I accept the premises I use. Thus, I, an atheist, can try to persuade a Christian that he or she should not eat meat. I use Christian premises that I know my interlocutor accepts. Or I can try to persuade a utilitarian such as Peter Singer that the war in Iraq was morally required. He seems to think it wasn't, but I believe he misapplies his theory, perhaps out of eagerness to disagree with President Bush. The only leverage an arguer has is the principle of noncontradiction. The assumption is that people do not want to contradict themselves.

The reason I mention the distinction between defending a view and arguing is that I've been asked by several people to argue for my views about homosexual "marriage." If this means defending my views, as in stating their grounds, all I can say is that I've been doing so for months—in this blog. Anyone who cares to see the grounds of my views should search the AnalPhilosopher archive. If this means trying to persuade others to share my views, that's a different matter. To do this, I would have to know my interlocutors' views well enough to show them that their existing judgments commit them, logically, to certain other judgments regarding homosexual "marriage." I have neither the time nor the inclination to do this. Certainly I have no obligation to do it, especially when the person doing the requesting (or demanding) has been disrespectful to me.

To the Editor:

Re "New Provision Would Allow Slaughtering of Wild Horses" (news article, Nov. 25):

Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, by attaching a rider to the appropriations bill allowing wild horses to be sent to slaughter, has gutted the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act and condemned so-called surplus and unadoptable wild horses to a ghoulish death.

The motive behind this unexpected maneuver is not hard to discern: greed. For every horse that is removed from our vast public lands, the livestock industry is allowed to graze an extra cow and calf at a pittance, $1.37 a month.

Apparently, some seven million head of privately owned cattle eating public grass at this bargain rate doesn't satisfy the beef industry. With new rules allowing the roundup and auction of unadoptable horses (unbreakable stallions and old mares important only to the functioning of bands), profiteers will bid at the wild-horse corrals, and stockmen will get a bonanza.

Thus, Senator Burns has delivered a plum to his Montana livestock constituency.

Hope Ryden
New York, Nov. 25, 2004
The writer is the author of books about wild horses.

Bad news out of Minnesota, not only for animals but for humans. See here.

Here is a thoughtful essay on the so-called journalist's privilege by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh. Unfortunately, he runs together a number of distinct issues:

• Should there be a journalist's privilege?
• If so, what is its normative basis?
• If so, what are its scope and limits? (That is, how weighty is it and does it have any exceptions?)
• Who counts as a journalist for purposes of the privilege?

Professor,

You are indeed correct [see here] that much of what goes into dog food is by-product produced by agriculture oriented toward human consumption.

However, the use of by-products for dog food is economically significant. Because the margins per animal in industrialized agriculture are so small, the removal of the market for dog food might push farm budgets into unprofitability.

As an example, a large proportion of meat produced for non-human consumption comes from culled dairy cows—four year old steak is unpalatably tough. These cows are heavily discounted in the marketplace on a per-pound basis, but their "death value" is critical in dairy budgets.

If you go to this site (PDF) and examine the variable costs and income on pages five and six, you will see that each culled cow is assumed to be worth $630, or approximately $189 per cow in the dairy when averaged over the years of her productive life. When income over variable costs is only $595 per cow in the dairy, removing knacker meat from the equation will reduce dairy profitability by almost a third.

When one considers the massive capital expenditures necessary to build an intensive dairy operation—millions of dollars—this one third change might make the return on investment figures very unattractive.

I would argue that the suffering experienced by dairy cows in confinement operations is even greater than the suffering of beef animals in a feedlot—the stomach pain from acidosis is not as high, but the low-level discomfort and sensory deprivation continues for an average of four and a half years—and the end result of death will be the same.

Margins on feedlot beef are also razor-thin. Take a look here (PDF).

The income over expenses on a per-head basis is only a shade over $11. If removing the by-product market drops the price paid for cattle by only a few cents per pound, feedlots would go bankrupt.

It seems that you dearly want your two hounds to be happy. But I don't think you can justify feeding them meat on the basis that the harm caused by feeding meat to dogs is insignificant.

Additionally, when you quote Samuel Scheffler, he argues that harm is permissible for a "badly needed benefit." Can a preference for meat be termed a "need?" If so, why wouldn't this argument allow humans who prefer tasty steaks to eat animals as well?

Mark Tueting (a.k.a. Smallholder)

Here is a column (uncharitable, in my opinion) about Peter Singer, the Australian who was educated at Oxford University, taught for many years in Australia, and now teaches at Princeton University. I reject Singer's consequentialism (which, incidentally, he applies inconsistently), but I admire his devotion to animals. See here for my essay about Singer. See here and here for Singer's essays about famine relief. (The second essay is shorter and easier to understand, but anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis should be able to understand the first essay.)

I want to thank the readers of this blog, whether you come here once or repeatedly. I won't say you make it possible, or even meaningful, since without you it would be a journal, and I kept a journal for many years. I write because it solidifies my thoughts and because it provides a release. If I could not write, I would go crazy. It would be like living in a cage: I could do it, but it wouldn't have any value or meaning. Having an audience for my thoughts—even if I don't know (m)any of you personally—makes my writing more disciplined, for I must take you into account.

Unfortunately, I'm unable to reply to all the wonderful e-mail messages I receive. I know I should, and I keep thinking I will, but it's impossible. Right now, for example, I have 168 messages in my inbox. The last time I looked, I had 143. Have you ever had so much work to do that you can't bring yourself to get started on it? That's the situation I'm in with regard to e-mail. Time is finite. Every minute I spend replying to e-mail is one less minute I can spend on writing in my blog, reading, writing scholarly essays, talking to students, doing committee work, running, walking my girls, and so forth. I guess that shows that I value these other activities more than I do replying to e-mail.

Something has to give. I hope you understand. I do read every e-mail that arrives, except the nasty ones, which I stop reading and delete as soon as the nastiness manifests itself. Criticism is one thing; personal attacks or snide comments are another. I think of it this way. My blog is free of charge. I don't owe anybody anything. If you don't like me, or what I write, or how I write it, stop visiting. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, you have it within your power to avoid being offended. If, having read something I wrote, you want to get my attention, be nice, or at least respectful.

Addendum: I'm in love with Dorothy. Always have been; always will be. Any man who says he isn't is lying.

Plagiarism, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I keep getting inquiries about Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin. (I'm at UT-Arlington.) People ask me why he's so abusive. I don't know, but I've certainly noticed it. Is he a good philosopher? Yes—although his philosophical output is shockingly low. His essay "Nietzsche and the Morality Critics" (Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy 107 [January 1997]: 250-85) is one of the best things I've read on Nietzsche. I can even excuse Leiter's leftism, although it strikes me as juvenile. (Perhaps one day he'll grow up.) What I can't excuse, because it's inexcusable, is his meanness. I have rarely, if ever, seen anyone so nasty. It goes well beyond disrespectful. Judging from Leiter's writings (see here), nobody in the world is as smart as he is. He must hate living in Texas. He must wake up every day wishing he were somewhere else, somewhere where his talents, tastes, and good values would be appreciated.

Incidentally, people are afraid of Leiter. He publishes The Philosophical Gourmet Report, which ranks programs and chronicles the comings and goings of professors. He fancies himself a philosophical gatekeeper. Many people, especially graduate students and untenured professors, are afraid to cross him. I'm not speculating here; they tell me. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Leiter is a bully. He proves, day in and day out, that intelligence and viciousness are compatible.

My friend and former graduate-school colleague Mylan Engel, whom I admire greatly in spite of our metaethical, theoretical, and epistemological differences, sent a link to this. If you haven't read Mylan's essay "The Immorality of Eating Meat," please do so at your earliest convenience. There's a link to it on the left side of this blog. It's the best thing I've ever read on the moral status of animals. I wish I had written it.

I read the linked essay [see here]. Some good points made, I suppose, but here's my question. Why do we have to tiptoe around some people that Long identifies as extremists? Maybe I'm wrong, but 11th Century thinking and behavior really have no place in the 21st Century. The stuff UBL is doing now was done a millennium ago by the Assassins. The difference is that back then the extremist fury was directed against the entrenched powers of Islam itself; it took the Muslims something like 200 years to finally squelch the Assassins. A millennium later the Muslim empire is long gone and the extremists direct their fury outward, although UBL makes no bones about reshaping places like Saudi Arabia to his image. The current extremists also have an advantage over the Assassins: they can use contemporary technology to extend their reach and bring the 11th Century to the modern world.

I make no claim to completely understand human nature, but experience has taught me that when the actions of people like UBL go unanswered it only invites more aggressive action. I'll point to attitudes in Western Europe regarding the behavior of Muslim populations there. Live and let live has not worked with the extremists there. We either confront them and reduce them or endure continued attacks for a long period of time. We also, then, must endure a shrinking radius of action as the extremists extend themselves throughout southern and southeast Asia, as well as most of Africa. Some people sneer at Fox News opinion pieces, but I think they pretty well have it nailed down when the refer to Europe as "Eurabia." Maybe some Sci-Fi writer can come up with a tale of some future conflict along those lines. The author could have history repeat itself with the Muslims being driven out of Europe by the Poles. That would only be fiction, however. We are living in the real world; we can't adopt a live and let live policy with extremist Islam.

One last thing. It puzzles me why the Chinese seem to be so tolerant of the extremists. I suppose that they still don't regard extremist Islam as much of a threat to their security.

Gerald P. Hanner
Papillion NE

See here. (Thanks to Dan Gifford for the link.)

If you're wondering why I don't enable comments on this blog, see here. Look at some of the comments. One guy, a gun hater, quoted my dismissive e-mail to him from nearly a year ago. What would he say on my blog if he had a chance? He's obviously obsessed with me. In fact, he scares me far more than any gun owner does. Another guy says something about my being weird because I live with two dogs and write about rape. Gee. Is that all I've written about? I've published books and essays on dozens of topics, from rape to suicide to violence to the Reconstruction Act of 1867 to right-to-farm statutes to legal theory to moral theory to legal relevance to free speech to charity to constitutional interpretation to defamation law to the moral status of animals to medical ethics to capital punishment to John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) to ethical egoism to the problem of evil. Somehow I think that if I wrote only about rape, I would be accused of being too narrow. I can't win.

Another guy, evidently thinking that only a university system's flagship campus has any quality, attacks my university, implying that I couldn't get a job someplace better (and utterly ignoring the fact that people make decisions about where to live on the basis of many factors, not just one). What a bunch of losers! They wouldn't know an argument if it hit 'em in the head.

By the way, I didn't read all the comments. I skimmed them. I have a low tolerance for scurrilousness and stupidity.

I found an interesting new blog. One of its readers addresses the philosophical conundrum I posed yesterday. See here.

People who are childless by choice are sometimes described as "irresponsible," or "selfish," or "refusing to grow up," or "not knowing what life is about." But one can hold that having children is intrinsically worthwhile without endorsing this, for we are, after all, in the happy position of there being more worthwhile things to do than can be fitted into one lifetime. Parenthood, and motherhood in particular, even if granted to be intrinsically worthwhile, undoubtedly take up a lot of one's adult life, leaving no room for some other worthwhile pursuits. But some women who choose abortion rather than have their first child, and some men who encourage their partners to choose abortion, are not avoiding parenthood for the sake of other worthwhile pursuits, but for the worthless one of "having a good time," or for the pursuit of some false vision of the ideals of freedom or self-realization. And some others who say "I am not ready for parenthood yet" are making some sort of mistake about the extent to which one can manipulate the circumstances of one's life so as to make it fulfill some dream that one has. Perhaps one's dream is to have two perfect children, a girl and a boy, within a perfect marriage, in financially secure circumstances, with an interesting job of one's own. But to care too much about that dream, to demand of life that it give it to one and act accordingly, may be both greedy and foolish, and is to run the risk of missing out on happiness entirely. Not only may fate make the dream impossible, or destroy it, but one's own attachment to it may make it impossible. Good marriages, and the most promising children, can be destroyed by just one adult's excessive demand for perfection.

(Rosalind Hursthouse, "Virtue Theory and Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 20 [summer 1991]: 223-46, at 242)

To the Editor:

I can't help but wonder about the passion shown by shoppers the day after Thanksgiving versus the apathy demonstrated by the 40 percent of eligible voters who didn't bother to participate in the presidential election this year ("In Annual Rite, Shoppers Mob Holiday Sales," front page, Nov. 27).

I suspect that millions of those who didn't cast a ballot somehow mustered the energy last Friday to rise at the crack of dawn, endure frigid weather, find their way to stores they've never visited before, and wait in long lines just to buy things they didn't need.

Perhaps our voter-motivation efforts are misplaced, focused as they are on civic duty and individual responsibility. Instead, maybe some campaign money could be spent to give everyone who turns up at the polls a new DVD player. Now that would get out the vote.

Robert J. Inlow
Charlottesville, Va., Nov. 30, 2004

Hi Keith,

To follow up on our discussion a few weeks ago (in which I asked if you had an answer to the libertarian argument criticizing the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq), here is a new essay that beautifully makes the libertarian case against the war on terror and in favor of nonintervention. The author, Roderick T. Long, is a libertarian philosophy professor who teaches logic, among other things.

A particularly trenchant point Long makes is that before 9/11, as early as the 1980s, opponents of U.S. intervention in foreign conflicts from all over the political spectrum were predicting major terrorist "blowback"—and were obviously proven correct on 9/11. On the other hand, I don't remember any conservatives before 9/11 predicting a large-scale terrorist attack because terrorists "hate our freedoms." Do you?

This fits perfectly with what I said a few weeks ago when I argued [see here] that the blowback theory of terrorist motivation has far more explanatory power than the competing "they hate our freedoms" theory we hear from the conservatives. Indeed, people would have laughed at such a prediction in the 1980s, whereas the blowback theory was rarely questioned. Unlike the blowback theory, the "they hate our freedoms" theory seems to have gained popularity only after 9/11—an indication, perhaps, of its ad hoc nature. Don't you find this compelling?

I have never heard a conservative answer to the general argument that Long, I, and others have advanced, ever. And this includes the letter-writer whose response to my letter you posted on your blog [see here]. I didn't bother responding to that letter because my response would have been very lengthy and I figured you wouldn't appreciate me (and my critic) trying to turn your blog into a makeshift message-board. And frankly, I thought his response was so off base and he did such an uncharitable job of reconstructing my argument that most readers—especially you—would be able to detect its flaws without my help! But maybe I was overrating my own argument.

Craig Brackman

Harry G. Frankfurt's essay "On Bullshit" cannot be reprinted too often, as far as I'm concerned. See here for an Internet version. Besides being relevant (will bullshit ever cease?), it's a beautiful example of philosophical analysis. I assign it to the students in my Seminar on Research Methods and Philosophical Writing.

In case you're wondering, the essay was first published in 1986 in an obscure periodical with an appropriate name: Raritan. Frankfurt republished it as chapter 10 of The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Low-bred, adj. "Raised" instead of brought up.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)