AnalPhilosopher

I'm a conservative. I'm also a proponent of animal rights. I won't say I'm a proponent of animal rights because I'm a conservative, the way Peter Singer says he's a vegetarian because he's a utilitarian, because that would imply a logical connection between them. I don't think there's any logical connection between conservatism and animal rights, or indeed between any political morality and animal rights. But they're not incompatible, either. One can be a conservative and a proponent of animal rights or a conservative and an opponent of animal rights. That there are more of the latter than of the former is an accident.

Let me explain what I mean by "proponent of animal rights." Animals matter. Morally. They have intrinsic moral significance, just like human beings (but unlike plants). Immanuel Kant famously denied that animals have intrinsic moral significance. If it's wrong to treat animals in certain ways, he held, it's not because the animal is wronged but because some human being who takes an interest in the animal is wronged. Utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham say that it's not rational agency that confers moral status on a being; it's the capacity to suffer, and animals have the capacity to suffer.

I'm not a utilitarian, but I'm not a Kantian, either. I'm a nonKantian deontologist who believes that it's wrong to harm others. Animals can be harmed. Their lives are valuable to them in the same way that your life is valuable to you. Why is it wrong for me to kill you? I suspect you will say that my killing you deprives you of your future, which contains enjoyments, experiences, projects, and activities. Animals such as dogs, cows, pigs, and chickens are capable of enjoyments, experiences, and activities, too, although perhaps not of having projects. If animals can suffer the same sorts of loss that you can, then if that loss makes it wrong to kill you, why doesn't it make it wrong to kill an animal?

Why should my conservatism be thought to deny any of this? It might be said that conservatism is committed to conserving traditions, and that it's traditional to treat animals as resources for human use. But no conservative endorses all tradition. Slavery is traditional. No conservative defends slavery. There must be a criterion for distinguishing between those traditions that are worth preserving and those that are not. I suggest that the criterion involves harm to others. Slavery harmed slaves. That is why it need not and should not be conserved. But using animals for food and other purposes (entertainment, for example) harms them. That it's traditional to so use them is therefore irrelevant. Bad traditions should be abolished, not conserved.

I've only sketched my argument. The main point of this post is that there is no logical incompatibility between being a conservative and being a proponent of animal rights. If there is, then I'm horribly confused.

I found this site by accident. Note that the site owner builds models of drawings by M. C. Escher, who is one of my favorite artists.

To the Editor:

The nuclear crisis in Iran is just the current example of a global nonproliferation regime held together with chicken wire and hope. As the regime crumbles, we can expect other countries to move up the crisis list, each bringing fresh opportunities for pre-emptive military action.

We can't bomb our way out of proliferation. But in a world where nuclear weapons are the badge of real nations, no self-respecting superpower is going to disarm unilaterally and every nonnuclear state will want a seat at the table.

The only way to escape this deadly cycle is for the nuclear powers to step up and lead negotiations for an international agreement for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

For years, Iran has signaled its willingness to back off nuclear weapons if everyone else does. Why not accept this offer?

Chris Cooper
New York, Jan. 27, 2005
The writer is a spokesman for AbolitionNow.org, a nuclear disarmament coalition.

Here, for those who want to see what I looked like as a child, is an image from about 1960. The man is my paternal great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Jackson (1881-1963). The woman is my paternal grandmother (Tom's daughter), Margaret Jane Jackson (1911-1967). The taller boy is my brother Glenn (born 1955). I'm the shorter boy (born 1957).

The liberal view of abortion is advanced chiefly by the women's movement in the democracies of the West, although one need not be a feminist in order to espouse it. Of the two features that render the abortion conflict particularly perplexing, the liberal view addresses only the special nature of the fetus. The claim that is the heart of this view, and on which all of its further components depend, is that a fetus is not the kind of entity whose rights or interests are properly taken into consideration in determining the morality of abortion. Although abortion results in the death of the fetus, it does no harm or injury because the fetus is not the sort of thing that can be harmed or injured. Abortion therefore lacks a victim. In the liberal's opinion the appearance of interpersonal conflict in the case of abortion is an illusion. The only party whose rights or interests are at stake is the pregnant woman; because the fetus is granted no standing in the question, there can be no genuine conflict. As long as an abortion is consented to and carried out competently, then it is a private matter between a woman and her physician. There is simply no issue concerning the moral status of abortion—or at any rate no issue that does not equally arise for all other surgical procedures.

On the liberal view abortion is morally on a par with appendectomy. If this is so, there is no ground for state regulation of abortion that is not also a ground for state regulation of appendectomy. Any law that stipulates permissible grounds for performing abortions, or that prohibits their performance altogether, is an unwarranted invasion of the contractual relationship between a woman and her physician. For abortion, the only permissible policy is a permissive policy.

(L. W. Sumner, Abortion and Moral Theory [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981], 15)

Compulsion, n. The eloquence of power.

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

Certain expressions that are not themselves objectionable annoy as a result of overuse. One of them is "Kudos to," as in "Kudos to President Bush for bringing democracy to Iraq" or "Kudos to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for ignoring Fahrenheit 9/11." The word is Greek, meaning "glory," but the best synonyms are "praise" and "honor." I see the word nearly every day in The Dallas Morning News, either in a letter to the editor or in an editorial opinion. Can we please vary the usage, people?

My friend Peg Kaplan sent a link to this. Peg should not be assumed to agree with its contents.

To the Editor:

Our food habits could not be more dysfunctional. Food makers lobbying to edit national dietary standards is the tip of the iceberg.

Deciding what we grow and eat is now answered by large agribusinesses here and overseas, farm subsidies, chemical companies, genetic engineers and lobbyists.

The quickest change comes from our buying dollars.

Melanie Cheng
San Francisco, Jan. 26, 2005

Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity.

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

See here for a famous philosophical limerick.

Many problems would be solved, and much controversy averted, if people would simply do their jobs. If you're a teacher, teach. Don't indoctrinate. If you're a judge, apply the law. Don't make it up to suit your inclinations. If you're a scientist, stay within the confines of your discipline. Don't expound on matters outside your ken. If you're a journalist, report the news. Don't interject your opinions about the events you cover.

Every job, from teacher to reporter, comes with various rights and responsibilities. One cannot, while claiming to do one's job, enjoy its rights without assuming its responsibilities. I'm not suggesting that everyone work to rule (working to rule, for those who don't know, means doing your job and nothing more than your job), for each of us ought to be encouraged to do more than is strictly required by our job descriptions. In other words, each of us should be encouraged to perform supererogatory actions. Professors may be expected to have only three office hours per week. It would be praiseworthy, although not strictly required, for a professor to have four, five, or six office hours.

What I'm suggesting is not that one work to rule but that one not combine jobs or try to do other people's jobs. That leads to trouble. If you enjoy persuading people and can't help but do it, you should not go into teaching, for that is not part of the teacher's role. If you have moral convictions that you feel cannot be compromised, don't become a judge, for judges must keep their moral convictions out of their rulings. You may think that a particular statute is wrongheaded, but you must apply it conscientiously to the case at hand. If you want to be a political player, don't go into journalism, for journalists are spectators, not players. Go into politics.

Does anyone else sense that the line between playing a game and watching it—between participation and observation—is being blurred? Look at fans at major sporting events. They try to influence play on the field or court. Nobody is content any longer to stay out of the fray.

Someone might agree with what I've said to this point but disagree about what I'm about to say. My sense, acquired over a long period of time, is that liberals (I used to be one) have a more difficult time doing their job than conservatives do. Liberal judges are not content merely to interpret and apply the law. They want to shape it. Ronald Dworkin argues that constitutional law is nothing more (or less) than moral theorizing. Judges are philosopher kings! Liberal reporters could not resist the temptation to try to influence the recent presidential election. Day after day, news stories in The New York Times and other newspapers were biased against President Bush and in favor of John Kerry. Liberal scientists (both natural and social) take positions on matters of public policy, thinking—falsely!—that their expertise in the realm of fact gives them expertise in the realm of value. Liberal philosophers think that their training in analysis, argumentation, and criticism gives extra weight to their values, which of course it does not. I could go on, but you get the idea.

What do all of these cases have in common? The answer is: a captive audience. Students are in class to be taught. A teacher may view them as a captive audience for moralizing or preaching. Reporters have readers who expect to be informed. A reporter may try to influence them by using emotive language or by emphasizing certain events rather than others. (Bias, to be effective, cannot be obvious.) Scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins have avid followers who enjoy their popularizations of science. They abuse their readers (violate their trust) by interjecting political and moral bias into their discussions. See here.

I'm not saying that only liberals blur boundaries, but they do, it seems to me, have more trouble staying within the confines of their job descriptions than conservatives do. Why that should be is an interesting question, one that I may take up on another occasion.

1-29-85 What a raving libertarian I was five years ago! It is hard to believe how much I have changed in that short period of time. Instead of viewing government as the villain, as I once did, I now view it as the savior—the savior of justice and morality. Through government, we can insure [sic; should be "ensure"] that people have enough food to eat, enough clothing to wear, and enough shelter and fuel to survive through the cold months. These are basic needs, and justice requires that they be met by the state—the community as a whole—if they are not met through private exchange. The Keith of five years ago was cold, cruel, and cynical. The present Keith, in contrast, is sensitive and caring.

R. M. Hare died on this date three years ago, at the age of 82. He was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. I am privileged to have been able to correspond with him. Once, I asked him whether he was a Christian. He said he was, but that he rejected the supernatural part of Christianity. In other words, he did not believe in God and he did not believe in an afterlife. He was a Christian in the sense that he subscribed to Jesus's moral teachings. I believe this was precisely the position of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who, as many of you know, excised certain portions of the Bible to produce what is known as The Jefferson Bible. See here for Hare's philosophical autobiography. See here for my bibliography of Hare's writings.

Jesse Ashdown, "Don't Let the Millennium Bug Bite: Should New York Reinstate Sovereign Immunity for the Year 2000 Computer Glitch?" Albany Law Review 62 (1998): 293.

Heather Noelle Duffey, "Attention All Child Stealers—Oregon Welcomes You: State ex rel. Johnson v. Bail, 938 P.2d 209 (Or. 1997) (en banc)," University of Dayton Law Review 23 (spring 1998): 623.

Kelly D. Hine, "Vigilantism Revisited: An Economic Analysis of the Law of Extra-Judicial Self-Help or Why Can't Dick Shoot Henry for Stealing Jane's Truck?" The American University Law Review 47 (June 1998): 1221.

Kevin H. Smith, "How to Become a Law Professor Without Really Trying: A Critical, Heuristic, Deconstructionist, and Hermeneutical Exploration of Avoiding the Drudgery Associated with Actually Working as an Attorney," University of Kansas Law Review 47 (November 1998): 139.

A. Mechele Dickerson, "To Love, Honor, and (Oh!) Pay: Should Spouses Be Forced to Pay Each Other's Debts?" Boston University Law Review 78 (October 1998): 961.

If you get a chance, watch Saturday Night Live tonight. The musical guest is Scissor Sisters. Tonight's episode is a rerun. When I saw the original a few weeks ago, I didn't know what to make of the band. The male singer sings in a high-pitched voice, wears feminine clothing and boots, and struts about the stage. He has dance moves I've never seen before. This band may take the world by storm. The singer may become the new Elvis. Be sure to watch both songs. One comes early in the program, the other late.

To the Editor:

Re "Two Views of Democracy for Iraqi Voters: Bullets and Ballots" (front page, Jan. 28):

On Sunday, Iraq will hold its first elections since the United States invasion. While the legitimacy of the elections has been questioned even in the mainstream press, one ethical question calls for greater attention.

President Bush has called for the Iraqi people to "defy" the insurgency despite the fact that many Iraqis will certainly die if they vote. Much of Iraq is out of control, including most of Baghdad.

The United States military controls only a very small part of Iraq. We ought to acknowledge that the United States, as occupier, owes the Iraqi people security before asking them to risk their lives.

Mr. Bush wants the Iraqis to vote, not because it is the right time for them, or the best thing for Iraq, but because the failure or postponement of elections would be an embarrassment for him.

Iraqis will die on Sunday, for an election intended primarily to save the president from further embarrassment.

Thomas E. Noerper
Minneapolis, Jan. 28, 2005

See here for my discussion of this common saying.

Police, n. An armed force for protection and participation.

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

Nothing says "Texas" as much as the longhorn. See here. The University of Texas at Austin athletic teams are known as the Longhorns. I see longhorns from time to time during my bike rallies.

To the Editor:

In "Winning Cases, Losing Voters" (Op-Ed, Jan. 26), Paul Starr presents the Democratic Party with the Hobbesian choice of living by its convictions or compromising its principles in order to get more votes.

But the choice is not that bleak. Senator John Kerry did get more than 50 million votes. It is as reasonable to suggest that a more unequivocal stand on the war in Iraq would have gotten him more votes as it is to assume that he lost votes because of his perceived lack of sufficient "moral values." Democrats who would abandon their core convictions to convince more voters that they have "gotten religion" would rightly be perceived as weak and hypocritical, and would probably lose anyway.

Perhaps what the party needs is candidates who, like Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, articulate their beliefs with conviction. The message is good. What we need are better messengers.

John A. Viteritti
Southold, N.Y., Jan. 26, 2005

Note from AnalPhilosopher: It's "Hobson's choice," not "Hobbesian choice." What an idiot.

Any philosopher will tell you that there can be more than one rationale (justification) for a given action or policy. An act of promise-keeping, for example, can be justified on both consequentialist and deontological grounds—because of the kind of act it is and because of its consequences. So why does Paul Krugman consider it morally problematic for President Bush to have—and assert—more than one rationale for Social Security reform? See here. There are many reasons to reform Social Security. Why should President Bush pick just one of them? Don't let Krugman hoodwink you. If there are five reasons to reform Social Security, then President Bush should emphasize all five. There is nothing whatsoever disreputable about this. Indeed, he would be a bad arguer if he ignored good arguments in support of his conclusion.

Epicure, n. An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in gratification of the senses.

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

Consequentialism is a superset of utilitarianism. It is the doctrine, to put it crudely, that the right thing to do, for anyone, at any time, in any situation, is to maximize the overall good (i.e., to bring about the best overall consequences, where no interests, even those of nonhuman animals, are either disregarded or discounted). Here is Samuel Scheffler's formulation:

Among ethical theories, those that I call 'act-consequentialist' may be characterized roughly as follows. Such theories first specify some principle for ranking overall states of affairs from best to worst from an impersonal point of view. In other words, the rankings generated by the designated principle are not agent-relative; they do not vary from person to person, depending on what one's particular situation is. For they do not embody judgements about which overall states of affairs are best for particular individuals, but rather judgements about which states of affairs are best, all things considered, from an impartial standpoint. After giving some principle for generating such rankings, act-consequentialists then require that each agent in all cases act in such a way as to produce the highest-ranked state of affairs that he is in a position to produce. (Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions, rev. ed. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994], 1 [footnote omitted] [first edition published in 1982])

Kagan (consequentialism): No ACRs; no ACP.
Scheffler (hybrid theory): No ACRs; ACP.
Commonsense morality: ACRs; nonmaximal ACP.
KBJ (deontological egoism): ACRs; maximal ACP.

Admittedly utilitarianism does have consequences which are incompatible with the common moral consciousness, but I tended to take the view "so much the worse for the common moral consciousness". That is, I was inclined to reject the common methodology of testing general ethical principles by seeing how they square with our feelings in particular instances. (J. J. C. Smart, "An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics," in Utilitarianism: For and Against, by J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973], 1-74, at 68)

1-27-85 I had an interesting question for Bob Schopp the other day. I asked him if [sic; should be "whether"] there was anything strange or unusual about publishing an article the thesis of which one does not accept, or has doubts about. My "bad-samaritan" paper is of just that sort (I am assuming, of course, that the paper will be published). In the paper, I argue for criminal sanctions for bad samaritans; but I'm not sure that I would like to impose such sanctions. Basically, I wanted to see if [sic] I could make a good argument on behalf [sic; should be "in favor"] of bad-samaritan laws, and I think that I did. But I disagree with one of the argument's premises—namely, that moral perfectionism constitutes a legitimate reason for infringing liberty. The argument, however, is valid, and a given person might take it up and use it as the basis for enacting bad-samaritan laws. Is that odd? Bob didn't think so. He said that after a series of articles, or a book, which states and defends a particular proposition, one might get a reputation in the field; but one article ought not to create such a reputation. That relieved me. I may one day be known as a liberal, and I don't want my past to come back to haunt me.

An oxymoron is a contradiction in terms. A pleonasm is a redundancy. The other day, a blurb in the sports section of The Dallas Morning News said that University of Pittsburgh basketball player Yuri Demetris was arrested for burglary and simple assault. He is accused of "entering a former girlfriend's apartment twice through a bedroom window and hitting her with a closed fist." That's pleonastic. Either he hit her with a closed hand or he hit her with a fist.

Conservatism refers both to men's attachment to the customs and institutions which have long surrounded them and to the doctrines by which such an attachment is explained and defended. No attitude has been more common in human history. Change has generally been regarded with suspicion, and innovators have frequently been forced into the position of insisting that they merely seek to restore what has been temporarily lost. Under these conditions, laws are not "made," but must be declared by the ruler, sometimes after they have been coaxed from some divine source. Conservatism is therefore the preference for what has grown up over a long period of time in contrast to what has been made by deliberate human contrivance.

(Kenneth Minogue, "Conservatism," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards [New York: Macmillan Publishing Company & The Free Press, 1967], 2:195-8, at 195)

Thanks, Peg, for reminding us. Forgetting is easy. Remembering is hard.

Magic, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

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

To the Editor:

Re "At Harvard, the Bigger Concern of the Faculty Is the President's Management Style" (Education page, Jan. 26):

There are many faculty members at Harvard who are not "concerned" about the management style of Lawrence H. Summers, the university's president, but who rather strongly support his leadership of our university, and for two basic reasons.

First, his substantive decisions strike us as good (notably, his expansion of the campus and his plans to invest significantly in the sciences).

Second, Mr. Summers's statements about issues of concern at the university seem to us intelligent and honest.

But we do have a criticism of Mr. Summers: that he apologizes for perceived political incorrectness. At universities, of all places, the ability to speak freely needs to be preserved.

Steven Shavell
Professor of Law and Economics
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, Mass.
Jan. 26, 2005

One of my Ethics students (who will go unnamed) began a sentence today with "I was taught that." When he finished, I went back to it, for it seemed worthy of discussion in its own right. Does having been taught something have any normative weight? Suppose I grew up in a family of ax-murderers, I said. How would you react if I said, "I was taught that one should sharpen an ax before using it to murder someone," or "I was taught that one is obligated to murder at least one person a month"? You would say that my having been taught it, however solemnly, cuts no normative ice, and you would be right. Whether what we are taught is worthy of perpetuation is the question; that we were taught it is irrelevant. At the very most, there is a presumption that what we were taught is worthy of perpetuation, but it seems to me to be a weak presumption, easily overridden.

Things are hopping over at The Conservative Philosopher. Lots of links by others; lots of visits; lots of philosophers asking to join the blog. I had no idea there were so many conservative philosophers! I'm glad there are. Liberals have dominated the discussion for too long. Their argumentative muscles have atrophied.

Here is an essay on Americanism by David Gelernter.

Dogs. Yes, dogs. I love dogs. They are loyal to a fault; they are playful and enthusiastic; their love for their human companions is unbounded and unconditional; they hold no grudges; they are patient; they appreciate little favors (as well as big ones); and they don't care whether you're a success or a failure in your work or in your love life—as long as you come home to them. Schopenhauer said that he would not want to live in a world without dogs. Neither would I. I have learned as much from my canine companions as I have from certain philosophers I could name. They teach me (by example); they inspire me; they entertain me; they fulfill me.

Nobody should be surprised to learn that the editors of The New York Times have come out in opposition to Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. See here. If you read the opinion carefully, you'll see that the only reason for opposition is that Gonzales took positions as an attorney that the Times doesn't like. No evidence is presented that Gonzales is anything less than a superb attorney. Does the Times evaluate all attorneys on the basis of which cases they take or which legal arguments they make? Perhaps we should evaluate doctors on the basis of which patients they care for. The Times has become a national laughingstock. Indeed, I'll go further. The Times has become a reliable anti-authority in moral matters. If it opposes a candidate, that's a good sign that the candidate is superbly qualified.

To the Editor:

As a Christian, I do not understand why the teaching of evolution frightens so many fundamentalists.

I believe that God made man. This is a matter of faith: it cannot be proved according to any scientific paradigm. I also believe that natural selection was the means by which man came into existence.

This is science: it is observable and overwhelmingly supported by physical evidence and scientific consensus.

The greatest irony for fundamentalists is their failure to recognize that science and faith, which can forge a powerful partnership to help us understand the world and our place in it, are both gifts from God. This is not frightening; it is liberating.

I invite fundamentalists to peel the stickers off their science books and confidently take a look at what's inside.

John Hickey
Forest Hills, Queens, Jan. 23, 2005

I just put out a plea for help over at The Conservative Philosopher. See here.

Liberty, n. One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

The rising People, hot and out of breath,
Roared round the palace: "Liberty or death!"
"If death will do," the King said, "let me reign;
You'll have, I'm sure, no reason to complain."
Martha Braymance.

Someone just brought this to my attention.

Why someone would think that there could be such a thing as homosexual marriage has puzzled me. It seems obvious that marriage is inherently heterosexual. But in trying to be charitable to those who believe otherwise, I have racked—some would say "wrecked"—my brain. I think I figured it out. There are different conceptions of marriage. To some, it is nothing more (or less) than an emotional bond between two (or more?) people. Since homosexuals can bond, they're capable of marrying. Since marriage is a package of rights and duties, it is valued. To deny homosexuals an opportunity to participate in this valued institution is to treat likes differently, which violates the principle of equality.

The problem with this reasoning is that it rests on an unduly narrow understanding of marriage. Marriage is more than an emotional bond between two or more individuals. It is a procreative union. Society so values its children that it creates an institution that encourages men and women to form lasting bonds. Children need both a mother and a father. They need resources, love, and care over a long period of time. Marriage is a legal structure designed to ensure, or at least increase the likelihood, that children are brought into loving homes with two parents (one of each sex) and ample resources. Specifically, it provides inducements for fathers to stay with their children. Men, you know, have a tendency to stray.

Given this understanding of marriage, which I believe to be widespread (except possibly in academia), there is no parity between heterosexual and homosexual couples. Only the former can procreate. This logical difference, given society's interest in reproducing itself and its institutions, makes a moral difference. It is not unjust to limit marriage to heterosexuals. The burden of persuasion is on those who would tinker with this long-standing institution. To date, I have seen no argument that comes close to carrying this heavy burden.

May we not hence conclude, that the knowledge of the human faculties is but in its infancy?—that we have not yet learned to attend to those operations of the mind, of which we are conscious every hour of our lives?—that there are habits of inattention acquired very early, which are as hard to be overcome as other habits? For I think it is probable, that the novelty of this sensation will procure some attention to it in children at first; but, being in nowise interesting in itself, as soon as it becomes familiar, it is overlooked, and the attention turned solely to that which it signifies. Thus, when one is learning a language, he attends to the sounds; but when he is master of it, he attends only to the sense of what he would express. If this is the case, we must become as little children again, if we will be philosophers; we must overcome this habit of inattention which has been gathering strength ever since we began to think—a habit, the usefulness of which, in common life, atones for the difficulty it creates to the philosopher in discovering the first principles of the human mind.

(Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, in Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays, ed. Ronald E. Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983], 1-125, at 39 [essay first published in 1764])

Here is my nephew Jared, who is now almost 23 years old. I haven't seen him in more than 11 years.

It's been only two days since I put out a call for conservative philosophers to join me in a new blogging venture (see here), but already the blog has six members (counting me). Several items have been posted (not all by me) and there have been more than 300 visits to the site. I'm excited! I hope to have at least a dozen members, when all is said and done. Two dozen would be even better. The idea is for someone to post something each day. If more than one item is posted, fine. Please spread the word about this new blog. If you know of someone who satisfies the criteria and might be interested, let me know.

If you care about any of the following, you should abstain from meat:

• animals
• the natural environment
• your health
• humans

To the Editor:

Re "This Is Your Brain on Politics," by Joshua Freedman (Op-Ed, Jan. 18):

The group of political professionals and scientists from U.C.L.A. must have tested the wrong group of Democrats.

There are many of us who voted for John Kerry who believe that we were fighting over the future of our country. Now that George W. Bush has been re-elected, we can expect to see further deterioration in the environment, less money for the inner cities, a continued underfinancing for No Child Left Behind, and a repeated spurning of world opinion.

Indeed, many of us Kerry voters had our eyes on the world, not the World Series.

Evelyn Jackson
South Wellfleet, Mass.
Jan. 20, 2005

This week's link is to KurzweilAI.net.

Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

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

Why couldn't Paul Krugman just write a column about the role of Federal Reserve Chairman and then evaluate the candidates? It would do his readers, most of whom are not economists, a service. No, he has to bash President Bush. See here. Has anyone else come to the conclusion that the man is filled with hate?

Keith:

I too hate editors [see here], but consider this aphorism (from my stepson, a writer):

Great writers are gods;
great editors are atheists.

My new communal blog is up and running. Already there are five members, counting me. I hope to get at least a dozen. There must be some female conservative philosophers out there. If you know of someone who qualifies (see here for the criteria), let me know. So far, I'm the only member to have posted on the new blog, but others will begin soon. Here is my latest post, "What Is Conservatism?" I hope you visit The Conservative Philosopher regularly and spread the word. Please note that the comments function is enabled.

Most people, including most academics, are confusing mixtures. They are moral and immoral, kind and cruel, smart and stupid—yes, academics are often smart and stupid, and this may not be sufficiently recognized by the laity. They are particularly likely to be both smart and stupid in an era of specialization, when academic success is likely to crown not the person of broad general intelligence but rather the person with highly developed intellectual skills in a particular field, and both the field and the skills that conduce to preeminence in it may be bulkheaded from the other fields of thought. The brilliant mathematician, physicist, artist, or historian may be incompetent in dealing with political or economic issues. Einstein's political and economic writings are a case in point. Picasso's artistic, or Sartre's literary and philosophical, or George Bernard Shaw's dramatic genius did not inoculate them against Stalinism, or Heidegger's philosophical genius against Nazism. But if the compartmentalization of competence, and the underlying disunity of the self, are not widely recognized—and they are not—a successful academic may be able to use his success to reach the general public on matters about which he is an idiot. It doesn't help that successful people tend to exaggerate their versatility; abnormal self-confidence is a frequent cause and almost invariable effect of great success.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 51 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

I don't know where the time went, but it's been 12 years since I brought two-month-old Sophie to my house in Fort Worth. She was born in a horse barn in Red Oak, Texas. I've watched Sophie go from a rampaging puppy to a rambunctious middle-aged dog to an old girl who sleeps a lot, walks more slowly, and doesn't hear as well. But one thing hasn't changed: my love for her. We have been constant companions for a dozen years, with several more to go.

1-24-85 Thursday. I sometimes wonder whether change, in itself, is either good or bad. In particular, I wonder whether change in one's ideological convictions is either good or bad. Here's why I wonder about this. In just five years, I have done an about-face on many issues, such as the desirability of promoting economic efficiency above all else in society and the desirability of maintaining a clean, open environment. Now, I am even rethinking my position on capital punishment. At one time, I was vehemently opposed to capital punishment, but now I think that it may be justified in a narrow range of cases, such as where the defendant has committed multiple murders. Is there something wrong with this flip-flop in my views? Obviously, I think not; otherwise, I wouldn't change them. But many people consider change to be intrinsically bad, as when they criticize Ronald Reagan [1911-2004] or other politicians for switching political parties. There is a feeling that the person is malleable; subject to change on a whim; a ready target for pressure groups intent upon getting their way. This, of course, need not be the case. A person may simply come to reinterpret the data, or draw a different conclusion from experience. In my case, I have been exposed to many more arguments, pro and con, than I was, say, five years ago. I now see the inherent contradictions in libertarian capitalism. And so on I go, trying to develop the most coherent and justifiable moral system possible. Look in on me five years from now: It's hard telling what you'll see in the way of ideological convictions!

I have always been and will always be a fan of the Detroit Tigers, my home-state baseball team. The Tigers gave me two of the greatest moments of my life: World Series victories in 1968 (when I was 11) and in 1984 (when I was 27). Even if the Tigers never win again (perish the thought!), I will die happy. Since August 1989, however, I have been a fan as well of the Texas Rangers, who play just 10 miles from my Fort Worth house. I love the Rangers the way a parent loves adopted children. Recently, I was distressed to learn that the Rangers were pursuing Carlos Delgado, who refused to stand in the dugout when "God Bless America" was played. See here. Today I learned that he will not be signed by the Rangers. Thank goodness! Did the Rangers think he would be acceptable to Texans? Some, perhaps, but not all. Many of us would have boycotted the team. If Delgado thinks this is such a vile country, why is he here enjoying its benefits? Can you say "ingratitude"?

Addendum: Please don't say that I'm trying to deny Delgado his rights. He has every right to express his opposition to the war in Iraq. I, in turn, have every right to refuse to put money in his pocket—and to condemn his revolting ingratitude.

To the Editor:

In "Caught Between Church and State" (Op-Ed, Jan. 19), Susan Jacoby outlines the history of the conflict between science and religious fundamentalists' desire to have creationism and "intelligent design" taught alongside evolution in public schools. Maybe scientists should stop opposing and instead encourage such classroom comparisons.

When Darwinian evolution, with its compelling array of facts from all branches of science and support from nearly every scientist, is laid alongside creationism, creationism, with absolutely no scientific facts to support it and only a handful of scientists, is going to appear simplistic and embarrassingly nonscientific. In fact, it will appear to be just what it is: religion.

Max M. Brown
Sarasota, Fla., Jan. 19, 2005

To the Editor:

Scientists don't explain evolution properly. I believe that's part of the problem; it's why people are so reluctant to accept evolution, so adamant about labeling it "just a theory." That's why school boards are going to ridiculous extremes, like pasting disclaimers on science textbooks and reading statements to student groups saying that evolution is not a fact.

Scientists need to explain that though evolution is a theory, details of it have been adjusted and proven for years, and are continuously tested and proven. They also need to make it clear that believing in evolution doesn't mean that you can't believe in God.

Roni Berenson
Chesterland, Ohio, Jan. 19, 2005

To the Editor:

Two points must be added to Susan Jacoby's discussion of the Christian fundamentalist effort to force creationism into the science curriculum. First, fundamentalists falsely characterize evolution as "just a theory," thus deceiving people who do not know that a theory in science is not a speculation but a model that best fits the available evidence; like all the biological sciences, evolution is not a complete model, but it is evidence-based science.

Second, what evolution threatens is not faith in God but faith in a literalist reading of Genesis; the only reason fundamentalists care about this topic is that their primary faith is not in God but in scriptural inerrancy.

Steven Tiger
Philadelphia, Jan. 19, 2005

Habeas Corpus. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.

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

Someone wrote to ask what the costs are of a rule that allows homosexuals to "marry." I told him that he had misunderstood my post. I wasn't comparing the costs of these two rules:

1. All and only heterosexuals may marry.
2. Any couple, heterosexual or homosexual, may marry.

3. All and only heterosexuals may marry.
4. All and only those who have or intend to have children may marry.

5. All and only those 21 years of age or older may consume alcohol.
6. All and only the mature may consume alcohol.

The success of Left2Right makes me think that a blog of conservative philosophers would be useful and enjoyable. If I can get four others to join me, I'll set it up. There is no limit to how many members we can have. (Left2Right has more than two dozen.) Here are the criteria for membership:

1. Holder of a Ph.D. or D.Phil. degree in philosophy.
2. Trained in analytic (as opposed to Continental) philosophy.
3. Conservative.

To the Editor:

Re "Mideast Tensions Are Getting Personal on Campus at Columbia" (news article, Jan. 18):

The most serious charge against Prof. Joseph Massad of Columbia is that he violated the academic freedom of one of his students by conditioning class attendance on her willingness to agree with his perspective on controversial events.

According to the student, and at least one other witness, she raised her hand during a discussion of Israel's incursions into the West Bank to point out that Israel often issued warnings to civilians before its bombings. Professor Massad reportedly replied, "If you're going to deny the atrocities being committed against the Palestinian people, then you can get out of my classroom."

If Professor Massad indeed made such a statement, which he denies, then he violated the student's academic freedom to express views contrary to his. Columbia has a duty to determine if this serious accusation is accurate and to take appropriate action if it is.

Alan M. Dershowitz
Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 18, 2005
The writer is a professor at Harvard Law School.

Feminists are convinced that if men and women are different, men will be ranked as superior. Instead of accepting the difference and showing that the claim of superiority doesn't follow from it, they deny difference. It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. Charles Murray weighs in on the Harvard imbroglio here. It sure would be nice to see liberals come to the defense of science.

Addendum: There's actually a pattern here. If sexual difference might be interpreted as hierarchy, deny sexual difference. If believing that there are different races inclines people to racism, deny the existence of races. If nations go to war, work to destroy nations. If religion generates hatred and violence, destroy religion. Liberals always attack at the wrong point.

I grew up in Michigan, the Great Lake State. It has two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. I grew up in the Thumb Area, about 20 miles southeast of Saginaw Bay. See here. Most of my family still lives there.

I just learned (while watching the Steelers-Patriots football game) that Johnny Carson died. He was family. I spent many a night with him, laughing at his antics. I loved his monologues, his skits, and his corny jokes. One day he complained about the heat in Burbank. "How hot was it?" Ed McMahon asked. "It was so hot that I saw a dog chasing a cat, and both were walking." I'm tempted to say that Johnny will be missed, but he's been missed for many years.

Here is my encyclopedia entry on sodomy from a few years ago. The editor changed my wording in a couple of places without my permission. I hate editors.

I hope everyone is having an enjoyable Sunday, as I am. I've been busy around the house: cleaning, cooking, reading the newspaper, and watching the NFL playoffs on my 42-inch plasma television (in high definition!). I ran 3.1 miles in gorgeous weather. I've been tinkering with my department's new blog instead of posting here. I'll post some things later. It's time to eat.

Intention, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

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

To the Editor:

Re "Mad Cow Across the Border" (editorial, some editions, Jan. 19):

Nearly 190,000 animals have been tested for bovine spongiform encephalopathy since June 2004 as part of an intensive Department of Agriculture surveillance program. None have tested positive. Even if additional cases of B.S.E. are discovered in the United States, scientists agree that B.S.E. is not a public health risk.

At least 82 percent of the cattle harvested in the United States are less than 30 months old. Current science says that B.S.E. develops only in cattle older than 30 months. The testing program targets these cattle. Testing all cattle would be like testing children for Alzheimer's disease. It is just not necessary.

As a rancher, a mother and a grandmother, I am confident in the safety of the beef I serve to my own family and to others around the nation.

Jan Lyons
President, National Cattlemen's Beef Association
Manhattan, Kan., Jan. 20, 2005

I keep hearing it said that the rationale for limiting marriage to heterosexuals can't be childrearing, since infertile heterosexual couples are allowed to marry and homosexual couples with children are not. This betrays a misunderstanding of law. Law works by means of rules, and these rules must be workable. Take the drinking age. The point of the drinking age, I think everyone will agree, is to limit alcohol consumption to those who are mature enough to handle it. Why, then, doesn't the law say this? Why doesn't the law say, "All and only the mature may drink"? The answer, which should be obvious, is that it would be unworkable. Maturity is difficult (expensive) to ascertain. But we know that maturity is linked to age, even if imperfectly, so we use age as a surrogate for it. Is this unfair to mature underage people? Perhaps, but this is more than offset by having a workable rule.

The same reasoning applies to marriage. Marriage is an institution designed to encourage childrearing. It provides a bundle of rights and responsibilities that have been shown to be to the advantage of children. The law might stipulate that only couples who have (or intend to have) children may marry, but this, like a rule limiting alcohol consumption to the mature, would be unworkable. So the law does the next best thing: It finds a surrogate. Since only heterosexual couples can procreate, and since sex is easy to ascertain, limiting marriage to heterosexuals serves the law's purpose of promoting childrearing. It's an imperfect rule, admittedly, and it's arguably unfair to those denied its benefits, but the costs of an alternative rule are significant.

There are many, many examples in which the law trades fairness for efficiency. We're not dealing with an ideal world in which there are no information costs; we're dealing with a world in which costs are substantial and in which there is more than one valuable thing. This is true in the law of evidence as well. The rules of evidence do not have as their sole rationale ascertaining the truth. They reflect a concern for fairness and efficiency as well. Sometimes we prefer fairness to truth. Sometimes we prefer efficiency to truth. In the case of homosexual "marriage," the law prefers workability to strict justice. Rough justice is enough.

Kathryn Murphy, "Can the Budweiser Frogs Be Forced to Sing a New Tune? Compelled Commercial Counter-Speech and the First Amendment," Virginia Law Review 84 (September 1998): 1195.

Ken Saltman, "Men with Breasts," Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 25 (1998): 48.

Max Kolbel, "Lewis, Language, Lust and Lies," Inquiry 41 (September 1998): 301.

Michael Kober, "Kripkenstein Meets the Chinese Room: Looking for the Place of Meaning from a Natural Point of View," Inquiry 41 (September 1998): 317.

Robert Black, "Chance, Credence, and the Principal Principle," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (September 1998): 371.

Elegy, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example begins somewhat like this:

The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The wise man homeward plods; I only stay
To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

Peg Kaplan has been blogging up a storm. She has several posts about the Lawrence Summers kerfuffle. See here. (I had to use "kerfuffle" at least once in this blog. Take a good look at it, because you may never see it again.)

If you've driven into Texas from the northeast, chances are you drove through Texarkana. Actually, there are two Texarkanas: one in Texas and one in neighboring Arkansas. I don't think there's one in Louisiana, but there should be.

I just created a blog for my department. See here. My colleagues have been invited to join. I hope they do. Our students will be able to comment on our posts and stay abreast of developments.

This is hilarious.

The following letter appeared in today's New York Times:

To the Editor:

Re "Harvard President Apologizes Again for Remarks on Gender" (news article, Jan. 20):

When Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard University, suggested that women's underrepresentation in science may be attributed to innate factors related to gender, he created a "teachable moment" for greater public awareness of the need to advance women in science.

Considerable research and experience refute the notion that the status quo for women in science is natural, inevitable and unrelated to social factors. Research also shows that expectations heavily influence learning and performance.

If society and individuals anticipate that women will not perform as well as men, there is a good chance that those expectations will be met.

We must continue to address the many ways people are discouraged from pursuing an interest in science and engineering. Society benefits most when we take full advantage of all the talent among us.

It is time to create a broader awareness that enables women and other underrepresented groups to step beyond historical barriers in science and engineering.

Carol B. Muller
Sally K. Ride
Palo Alto, Calif., Jan. 20, 2005

The writers are, respectively, chief executive of MentorNet, the E-Mentoring Network for Women in Engineering and Science; and a professor of space science, University of California, San Diego. The letter was also signed by 98 other academics and scientists.

1. Innate differences between the sexes are part of the explanation of disparities in certain occupations.

2. Innate differences between the sexes are the whole of the explanation of disparities in certain occupations.

To the Editor:

I do not understand the public outcry regarding Lawrence H. Summers's suggestion that innate differences between the sexes may explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.

Is Harvard, a bastion of excellence in higher education, not allowed to touch that question? I hope not.

For critical and free-thinking ideas to flourish, it needs to be addressed.

There is a procedure in evaluating hypotheses within the scientific method. If Mr. Summers's statement falls on its merits, it will be because it will be thoroughly investigated and then summarily rejected. This, in turn, will attract more women into the various scientific fields and foster a greater understanding.

Isn't that, after all, the point of science?

Tony McGovern
Broomfield, Colo., Jan. 20, 2005

To the Editor:

I am saddened that the president of Harvard is under attack for suggesting some possible causes for the relative scarcity of senior women in science. As a woman with a talent for science, I have a personal interest in understanding why I have met so few like me.

We have ample evidence that there are differences in the ways men's and women's brains process information and in the ways their bodies process medications. Why shouldn't science question whether some differences, unrelated to social conditioning, might make the genders more or less competent at science?

While the academic community may have faith that scientific talent is gender-neutral, some of us would still like to know the truth of the matter so that we may one day understand, predict and control it.

Elizabeth Bryson
San Diego, Jan. 20, 2005

The editors of The New York Times crack me up. Just as Socrates (as reported in Plato's Apology) disavowed appealing to the pity of his jurors while doing precisely that, the editors disavow criticism of President Bush while criticizing him. See here. The Old Gray Lady has become a laughingstock, and the sad thing is, her editors don't realize it.

I'm a noncognitivist about moral judgments. Their function is not to describe but to prescribe. Since prescriptions are neither true nor false, moral judgments are neither true nor false. This is not to say that morality is nonrational, for each of us must work out a coherent set of moral beliefs and try to integrate them into our lives. Logic—specifically, the law of noncontradiction—plays a crucial role in this process. Nor is rational persuasion impossible. Rational persuasion consists in showing one's interlocutor that he or she is committed to believing or valuing this because he or she believes or values that. Some philosophers fear that if moral judgments are neither true nor false, then morality becomes a nonrational activity. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I've often heard it said, by philosophers, that philosophy is the search for truth. If this is the case, and if moral judgments are either true or false, then there should be less evaluative scatter among philosophers than among nonphilosophers. But I don't see any evidence of this. In my experience, there is as much evaluative scatter among philosophers as among lawyers, doctors, engineers, journalists, or people generally. Compare two philosophers with similar training: Brian Leiter and me. Both of us have law degrees and both of us have Ph.D. degrees in philosophy from prominent institutions. Both of us teach and write philosophy. When I read Brian's blog, I shake my head in wonder, for his values are diametrically opposed to mine. This is not a slam on Brian. I'm just using him as an example. There are many others.

If values are objective and if philosophy (or philosophical argumentation) is a means to discover them, then there should be convergence on moral beliefs and values among philosophers. Shouldn't there at least be less divergence among philosophers? But again, I don't see it. If anything, there is more evaluative scatter among philosophers than among people generally! In normative ethical theory alone, there are deontologists and consequentialists; within the class of consequentialists there are partialists and impartialists; within the class of impartialists there are rule-utilitarians and act-utilitarians. In political philosophy, there are libertarians, utilitarians, welfare liberals, Marxists, anarchists, and conservatives. In philosophy of law, there are realists, positivists, pragmatists, and natural lawyers. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I hope nobody writes to me to say that it's logically possible for there to be objective values even though evaluative scatter is great. Of course it is. It's logically possible that I'm a brain in a vat and that you're a robot. What I'm concerned about is plausibility, not logical possibility. It's highly implausible, given the extent of evaluative scatter and the amount of time such scatter has existed, that there are objective values. There are two hypotheses:

1. There are objective values, but philosophers haven't figured out how to discover them, despite trying very hard for many centuries.

2. There are no objective values.

Fiddle, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

To Rome said Nero: "If to smoke you turn
I shall not cease to fiddle while you burn."
To Nero Rome replied: "Pray do your worst,
'Tis my excuse that you were fiddling first."
Orm Pludge.

The liberal mantra about abortion is "choice." It's said to be nobody's business but the woman's whether she carries her pregnancy to term or ends it by killing the fetus. But when it comes to other important matters, such as educating one's children and saving for one's retirement, liberals are opposed to choice. They oppose the use of school vouchers that would give parents a choice of where to educate their children. They oppose privatization of Social Security, thus forcing everyone to stay in a system that is going bankrupt.

Liberals don't really care about choice. First, they don't trust people to make good choices. Look at the rhetoric during and after the presidential election. To explain why President Bush was reelected, liberals say that the American people were ignorant (of relevant facts), stupid, or duped by devious Republicans. If only the American people would follow their more educated and intelligent betters, they would be fine. They would be cared for. Second, liberals are heavily invested in the public-school system and the Social Security system. Teachers are a Democrat constituency. My guess is that most of the bureaucrats in the Social Security Administration are Democrats, or at least liberals. So tinkering with these institutions jeopardizes Democrat electoral prospects. The Democrat deal is: "You vote for us; we'll take care of you."

In the case of abortion, the relevant constituencies are feminists and those who benefit from legal abortion by providing "abortion services." Giving women the "choice" to kill their fetuses keeps a lot of people working and keeps the money coming in to feminist coffers (largely through fear-mongering). Perhaps I'm cynical, but I don't see liberals as principled defenders of individual choice. I see them as defenders of turf. They're motivated by self-interest, not altruism.

Here is Paul Krugman's latest rant. What I don't understand is why he's opposed to giving individuals a choice about how to invest for their retirement. It's my understanding that nobody would be forced to opt out of Social Security. What Krugman wants to do is force people to stay in.

For someone with a Ph.D. degree, Andrew Sullivan sure is stupid. A minute ago, on Scarborough Country, he said that President Bush is inconsistent for seeking to expand liberty abroad while contracting it at home. His example of contracting liberty at home? Opposing homosexual "marriage." That has nothing to do with liberty. If President Bush advocated punishment of those who engage in homosexual sodomy (fellatio, cunnilingus, or buggery), Sullivan would have a point. But to my knowledge, President Bush has never advocated that. What he advocates is limiting marriage to those who can benefit from it.

Thank you, Steven Pinker, for bringing some sanity to the discussion of Lawrence Summers's remarks. See here. (Thanks to The Volokh Conspiracy for the link.)

Can you say "sore loser"? See here.

See here for Carol's take on President Bush's inaugural address. Amen.

My friend Bill Keezer has posted some reflections on diet. See here.

Like Dave Barry, Jeff makes me laugh. See here.

Law professor Gail Heriot, who blogs at The Right Coast, has been writing about homosexual "marriage." See here.

To the Editor:

After reading all the prevarications, half-truths and rationalizations offered by Condoleezza Rice about our invasion of Iraq ("Rice's Day: Sharp Views of Senators, and Nominee's Replies, Focusing on the War," excerpts from testimony, Jan. 19), I turned the page to see the true face of the Iraq war revealed.

There it was in your photograph, a small child with blood-stained face and hands, screaming because her parents had just been killed by American troops when their car failed to stop as directed.

I stared at this little girl's picture for a long time and wondered how Ms. Rice might explain to her, someday, why she had been forced to live life without a mother or a father because of a "strategic" decision to topple Saddam Hussein.

Indeed, what words of comfort or justification could ever be spoken to the countless thousands of Iraqis who have lost parents, brothers and sisters in the violence spawned by this senseless war, or to the relatives of our own countrymen and women whose lives have been tragically wasted? I could think of none.

Rather, as an American for whom this war violates every principle I believe once made our nation great, I was overcome with a deep and unremitting sense of shame.

Joseph J. Saltarelli
New York, Jan. 19, 2005

Here, in case you missed it, is the text of President Bush's inaugural address.

This is the springtime of my loving—
the second season I am to know
You are the sunlight in my growing—
so little warmth I felt before.
It isn't hard to feel me glowing—
I watched the fire that grew so low.
It is the summer of my smiles—
flee from me Keepers of the Gloom.
Speak to me only with your eyes
it is to you I give this tune.
It isn't hard to recognise—
these things are clear to all from
time to time.

Talk Talk—
I felt the coldness of my winter
I never thought it would ever go
I cursed the gloom that set upon us
but I know that I love you so
but I know that I love you so.

These are the seasons of emotion
And like the winds they rise and fall
This is the wonder of devotion—
I see the torch we all must hold.
This is the mystery of the quotient—
Upon us all a little rain
must fall.

Coronation, n. The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.

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

This just in: A federal district judge in Florida upheld the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) against a constitutional challenge. See here. The case will be appealed. If the United States Supreme Court affirms the district judge's ruling, there will be no need for a constitutional amendment to prohibit homosexual "marriage." If the Court reverses, there will. I am confident that homosexual "marriage" will not be forced on the citizens of any state. I am even confident that the citizens of Massachusetts will amend their constitution to undo the damage done by their Supreme Judicial Court. These are exciting times.

If you've been following the controversy about Harvard president Lawrence Summers (see here), read this essay by Robert Wright. It's a PDF file. Scroll to page 51 to begin reading.

I have three vices (if you don't count blogging): swearing, chewing toothpicks, and drinking coffee. I've never smoked, and I drank alcohol for only three years in my youth (mid-1974 to early 1978). I drink two cups of coffee every morning. It perks me up. I used to drink a cup of instant coffee in the afternoon, but recently I switched to tea. There are many deliciously flavored teas on the market. Right now I have four kinds: Celestial Seasonings Cinnamon Apple Spice; Bigelow Orange & Spice; Celestial Seasonings True Blueberry; and Lipton Raspberry. All are caffeine free and soothing.

Count me among those who object to the extravagance of the presidential inauguration. I don't care whether the money comes from private sources. This is my government. Celebrations should be kept to a minimum. If the Bush family wants to expend its resources on a private party in Kennebunkport or Crawford, so be it; but keep the government out of it. I'm not saying that the money should be used for other purposes (such as tsunami relief). Nor am I concerned (much) about the awkward symbolism of celebrating while American soldiers are dying in Iraq. I'm an Epicurean. I value frugality in my own life and in my government.

It is certainly unjust arbitrarily to deny legal marriage to persons who are capable of performing marital acts and entering into the marital relationship. So, for example, laws forbidding interracial marriages truly were violations of equality. Contrary to the published claims of Andrew Sullivan, Andrew Koppelman, and others, however, laws that embody the judgment that marriage is intrinsically heterosexual are in no way analogous to laws against miscegenation. Laws forbidding whites to marry blacks were unjust, not because they embodied a particular moral view and thus violated the alleged requirement of moral neutrality; rather, they were unjust because they embodied an unsound (indeed a grotesquely false) moral view—one that was racist and, as such, immoral.

(Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001], 89)

To the Editor:

Re "Laura Bush Defends Gala in Time of War and Disaster" (news article, Jan. 15):

While I agree with the first lady's assertion that "there's a symbolic aspect of the inauguration that . . . you never want to—for any reason—cancel it," I think that she and the president are missing the real point.

It's not the inauguration that people are shaking their heads at. It's the fact that while this administration asks so much of our citizens, it is unwilling or unable to demonstrate any moral leadership during this time of war and natural disasters.

How refreshing it would be to see a scaled-back inauguration, with a significant portion of the money raised for the celebrations going to charities that desperately need additional funds. Such an action would, at the least, indicate that the president and his friends were aware that we are living in difficult times.

We, the people, are being asked to be patriotic, support our troops and increase our charitable contributions, while our leaders are being asked . . . to party. That's the issue.

Jacqueline F. Dorfman
New York, Jan. 15, 2005

Here is the Wikipedia entry on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Note that its neutrality is disputed. I haven't read the whole entry, but there are two possibilities. Either PETA supporters have made the entry too favorable to the organization or PETA opponents have made it too unfavorable. Or both. That the entry is disputed shows that animal rights remains a controversial topic in our society. This is not necessarily bad. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) said that all great movements go through three stages: ridicule, discussion, and adoption. We're past the ridicule stage and into the discussion stage. Whether we get to the adoption stage remains to be seen. I hope we do. I'm working to increase the chance that we do.

Rascality, n. Stupidity militant. The activity of a clouded intellect.

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

Ryan Gendron sent a link to this interview with John Mackey, who is the founder and chief executive officer of Whole Foods Market. Thanks, Ryan!

I get a lot of wacky e-mail. It comes with the territory. This morning I received a letter from a man who challenged my claim (here) that "No conservative can support homosexual 'marriage.'" He said I shouldn't make such absolute statements. Why not? Compare the following:

No liberal can support slavery.
No libertarian can support progressive taxation.
No Christian can support (or condone) adultery.
No feminist can support exclusion of women from the professions.
No Marxist can support private property.

It's great to see college students noticing—and taking action against—liberal bias on campus. See here and here. Students pay good money to attend college. They aren't paying to be indoctrinated, preached to, or badgered.

To the Editor:

Yes, processed-food manufacturers were issued a reprieve on trans fats from the Agriculture Department's dietary guidelines. But it bears mentioning that the meat and dairy industries also have a history of being shielded from scrutiny.

There is no dietary requirement for cholesterol whatsoever, and too much of it in our blood becomes a risk factor for deadly disease. Yet the guidelines give the allowance of 300 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day, simply so people may eat foods of animal origin, the only foods that actually contain cholesterol. (Plants are free of cholesterol, and in fact supply phytosterols, which are good for human health.)

Interestingly, 300 milligrams don't go very far. A person handily uses up his or her entire U.S.D.A.-designated daily quota for cholesterol after consuming two small eggs. How many would believe that the government actually advises people to completely curtail meat and dairy intake after that limit has been reached?

Pamela Rice
New York, Jan. 13, 2005
The writer is the author of a book about vegetarianism.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Anyone with any sense knows that men and women differ. The only question is the extent to which these differences are rooted in biology. Many prominent biologists, psychologists, and anthropologists believe that the differences are largely biological. Even certain feminists are coming to understand this. See Katharine K. Baker, "Biology for Feminists," Chicago-Kent Law Review 75 (2000): 805-35. It's not a matter of ranking one sex above the other; it's a matter of understanding the sexes. It's a scientific question, not a moral question. But apparently certain "scholars" at Harvard University don't see it that way. They think any suggestion of innate differences is sexist. See here. One participant at the conference said that she had to "speak truth to power." What she was doing, unbeknownst to her, was speaking ignorance to truth.

My life's in jeopardy
Murdered in cold blood is what I'm gonna be
I ain't been home since Friday night
And now my wife is coming after me

Give me police protection
Gonna buy a gun so
I can look after number one
Give me a bodyguard
A black belt Judo expert with a machine gun

Gonna buy a tank and an aeroplane
When she catches up with me
Won't be no time to explain
She thinks I've been with another woman
And that's enough to send her half insane
Gonna buy a fast car
Put on my lead boots
And take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money
But I'll still be alive

All I did was have a bit too much to drink
And I picked the wrong precinct
Got picked up by the law
And now I ain't got time to think

Gonna buy a tank and an aeroplane
When she catches up with me
Won't be no time to explain
She thinks I've been with another woman
And that's enough to send her half insane
Gonna buy a fast car
Put on my lead boots
And take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money
But I'll still be alive

And I'm oh so tired of running
Gonna lay down on the floor
I gotta rest some time so
I can get to run some more

She's comin'!
She's comin'!

Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's Hardball, is a simpleton. For several months now, he has been wailing about the war in Iraq. I don't expect everyone to support the war, but I do expect its critics to be fair. Matthews is unfair. He seems to think that there can be only one justification for a war. Why this should be escapes me. A given action can have multiple ends, purposes, or motives, not to mention justifications. Punishment, for example, can be justified on both utilitarian grounds (as crime prevention) and retributive grounds (as payback for wrongdoing).

Once he narrows the possible justifications to one, Matthews stipulates that the one justification for the war was to prevent attack on the United States by nuclear weapons (or other weapons of mass destruction) in the hands of Saddam Hussein. His third step, no less absurd than the previous two, is to claim that this justification fails, since—we now know—there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq. Apparently, Matthews is not subtle enough to notice the difference between a proposition's being true and its being reasonable to believe it. Whether President Bush was justified in going to war is a function not of what was the case when he acted, but of what he had reason to believe was the case.

Night after night, Matthews hammers away, implying that the war in Iraq was a fraud on the American people perpetrated by unsavory "neocons" in the Bush administration. He invites guests who share his cynical belief. They reinforce each other's prejudices. Fortunately, the American people understand that the war in Iraq is part of a much larger war in which all of us have a stake. There can be and were multiple independent justifications for the war. Whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction has no bearing on whether it was reasonable to believe that it did. Just as it can be unreasonable to believe a true proposition, it can be reasonable to believe a false proposition. Matthews's simplistic take on the war was repudiated at the polls 11 weeks ago. It must kill him.

Robert Light just sent a link to the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books. See here. The essays by Harvey Mansfield and William Bennett look particularly good. Enjoy! (Thanks, Robert.)

Obstinate, adj. Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy.

The popular type and exponent of obstinacy is the mule, a most intelligent animal.

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

This week's link is to Fragments of Consciousness.

Why do I think that no matter what President Bush proposed to do about Social Security, Paul Krugman would oppose it? See here for his latest diatribe. And by the way, isn't it precious to hear Krugman make fun of President Bush's claim to have been held accountable by the voters? For what, and to whom, is Krugman accountable? Has he ever met a payroll? Has he ever run a business? Has he ever been responsible for the functioning of a firm or a governmental agency? Has he ever produced anything besides words on a page? He has no credibility, no real-world experience, and, sadly, no decency. He's a bitter little man with a megaphone.

Dr John J. Ray, my polymathic friend Down Under, is a prolific blogger. Here is his roundup of blog posts. If you find one of his blogs interesting, be sure to bookmark it!

Some animals are wild and some domesticated. Some domesticated animals are used as resources for human ends and some are cared for as family members. I believe our moral obligations differ depending on which category a particular animal belongs to. This is not ad hoc. I also believe that our moral obligations to humans differ depending on which category they belong to. I have obligations to my children, for example, that I have to no other child. I have obligations to Americans that I have to no other nationality. Here are the three categories:

1. Wild animals. Wild animals should be left alone. We should not hunt them, trap them, capture them for zoos or circuses, or displace them. Nor should we intervene to prevent predation. Saving one animal from another only starves the other. The relevant principle here is nonmaleficence (do no harm).

2. Domesticated resource animals. Institutions such as factory farms, which treat animals as resources for human consumption, should be abolished. We should stop breeding cows, pigs, and chickens for their meat, eggs, hides, and other materials. The relevant principle here is nonmaleficence (do no harm).

3. Companions. Domesticated animals that we take into our homes, such as dogs and cats, have the status of children or friends. We have obligations not only to refrain from harming them (as we do to all animals), but to provide for their needs. The relevant principles here are nonmaleficence (do no harm) and beneficence (do good).

Some of the support for tort reform is rooted in hatred of lawyers. That is an improper basis for legislation. Some, however, is based on a belief that lawsuits are responsible for the high cost of health care. Let's think clearly about the issue before acting. See here for Richard A. Posner's thoughts. Judge Posner is the author of Economic Analysis of Law.

No conservative can support homosexual "marriage." The only question is whether there should be a constitutional amendment to prohibit it. Some conservatives, including President Bush, believe there should be, even though no federal court has forced it on any state. But other conservatives don't believe it's necessary. Unless and until a federal court forces it on citizens of a reluctant state, they will refuse to amend the Constitution. See here. I'm with the latter group of conservatives. Let's not tinker with the Constitution until we have to.

Certain topics, such as innate sexual differences, must not be discussed. See here.

Felon, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.

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

Here are three classic readings on the morality of abortion. (Thanks to Stuart Buck for the link.)

Just as atheists can convert to theism and theists to atheism, liberals can convert to conservatism and conservatives to liberalism. I'm a prime example of someone who converted from liberalism to conservatism. See here and here. Is conversion necessarily a nonrational process? No. If, after reflection on my noetic structure, I conclude that conservatism makes more sense of what I already believe and value—of my principles, judgments, and convictions—than any other political morality, it is rational for me to think of myself as (and call myself) a conservative. Conversion may be experienced as a discovery—of who one is—but that doesn't mean it's nonrational. Rationality consists in finding order, system, organization, pattern, structure, and harmony in cacophony.

It might be wondered whether this process can be extended from self to others. Is it possible to persuade someone (rationally) to become a conservative? Yes. There are three steps. First, one must show the person to be persuaded that conservatism is consistent. All this means is that it's not internally contradictory—that there is no proposition that it both affirms and denies. Consistency is a minimal requirement of rationality. This is not to say that all rational people in fact have consistent beliefs, but that, if they discover that they have inconsistent beliefs, they are motivated to relieve the inconsistency. Rational people are troubled by cognitive dissonance.

Second, one must show the person to be persuaded that conservatism is coherent. Coherence includes, but is not limited to, consistency. The propositions that John Kerry is president-elect and that it's Monday are consistent, for neither entails the denial of the other, but neither is evidence for the other. What does John Kerry's being president-elect have to do (logically) with what day of the week it is? A coherent set of beliefs is one with an evidentiary or inferential structure. Some beliefs in the set are more basic or important than others and provide support for them. Coherence is to consistency as a functioning whole is to the collection of parts that make it up. My car is a coherent thing. Its parts fit together in such a way as to make it function.

Third, one must show the person to be persuaded that conservatism makes more sense of what he or she already believes and values than any other political morality. This requires displaying conservatism's content and structure: what its various parts are, how they support one another, which are dispensable and which indispensable, and so forth. Persuasion, to be effective, must be ad hominem. That is to say, it must begin where one's interlocutor is. If my interlocutor doesn't share my premises, then my argument gets no traction with him or her. It doesn't matter whether I accept the premises. If my interlocutor doesn't, then my argument fails. Argumentation—whether inductive or deductive—consists in drawing or leading (ducere) someone from where he or she is to some other place.

The best model of this persuasive process is Joel Feinberg's tetralogy The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984-1988). Feinberg is a liberal. He doesn't try to establish liberalism in the sense of showing that it's true. Political moralities are neither true nor false. They're organizing frameworks. Feinberg tries to show his readers that liberalism—the view that only the harm and offense principles are valid—provides the best account of their firmest convictions. He is providing a coherent structure and inviting his readers to examine it in light of their values. He thinks this structure will do less damage to the readers' considered judgments than any alternative. I say "less damage" because changes in one's judgments will almost certainly have to be made. The idea is to dispense with less-important judgments and preserve the more-important ones. In Rawlsian terms, the idea is to find a reflective equilibrium between principles, mediating maxims, and judgments.

So yes, it's possible to argue people into conservatism (or any other political morality). And yes, it is (can be) a rational process. First show your interlocutor that conservatism is consistent. Then show that it's coherent. Then show that it makes more sense of his or her beliefs and values (principles, judgments, convictions) than any alternative political morality. You're trying to get your interlocutor to "see" that he or she is—already!—a conservative. You're trying to induce a political conversion.

To the Editor:

Sour grapes abound in the critic of inaugural balls; one side lost, and it insists that the other mustn't enjoy winning. Winning is pleasurable, and should be allowed a measure of unapologetic celebration.

The war on terror is very real and very deadly, but it is also long-term. We have to live accordingly. Names aside, our closest equivalent is the cold war, and Americans celebrated many an inaugural ball under the threat of mutually assured nuclear annihilation. We did not stop living then; we won't now.

Honor and reverence must be paid to those on the front lines. Let us judge the president and the G.O.P. on how they do so during the galas, and let them enjoy their laurels.

Laura Ackerman Sack
New York, Jan. 12, 2005

To the Editor:

Re "What the First Lady Will Wear" (Fashion page, Jan. 11):

A truly wonderful way for Laura Bush to go down in history for all time would be as the first lady who wore a "used" dress for the inaugural ball, thus paying honor to the young people who are dying in her husband's misbegotten war.

She already has very nice gowns, like the one she wore recently to the Kennedy Center. The so-called Commander in Chief Ball is truly an obscenity in these times.

Barbara Pleskow
Weston, Conn., Jan. 11, 2005

The same authority which puts down internal dissension, which promulgates laws and restrains those who break them if it can, must equally oppose external enemies. These do not merely comprise those who attack the borders of the people ruled by the authority; but also, for example, pirates and desert bandits, and, generally, those beyond the confines of the country ruled whose activities are viciously harmful to it. The Romans, once their rule in Gaul was established, were eminently justified in attacking Britain, where were nurtured the Druids whose pupils infested northern Gaul and whose practices struck the Romans themselves as "dira immanitas". Further, there being such a thing as the common good of mankind, and visible criminality against it, how can we doubt the excellence of such a proceeding as that violent suppression of the man-stealing business which the British government took it into its head to engage in under Palmerston? The present-day conception of 'aggression', like so many strongly influential conceptions, is a bad one. Why must it be wrong to strike the first blow in a struggle? The only question is, who is in the right, if anyone is.

(G. E. M. Anscombe, "War and Murder," chap. 6 in her Ethics, Religion and Politics, vol. 3 of The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981], 51-61, at 52 [italics in original; footnote omitted] [essay first published in 1961])

If someone thanks you, say "You're welcome." Don't say "Thank you." Don't say "No problem." Don't say "Sure." Don't say "That's all right." For God's sake, don't say "No big deal." Here is a complete list of proper responses to "Thank you":

"You're welcome."
"You're welcome."
"You're welcome."
"You're welcome."
"You're welcome."

1-16-85 Wednesday. Looking back on the law-school experience [at Wayne State University], it was not at all what I had expected. I had expected to find freethinkers there—people who were concerned with knowledge for its own sake rather than for what it would bring them in the way of power, wealth, and prestige. But I was quickly disappointed. I found lots of insecure and bigoted people in law school. Some were unsure of their abilities and ended up suspecting everyone else of conspiring to ruin their careers (or so it seemed on occasion). Others were upset about the "special treatment" that was meted out to minorities, both at the admission stage and in terms of tutorial programs during law school. Still others were just narrow-minded—concerned with furthering their own material aims at the expense of doing justice or inquiring about the history of specific legal rules. Me? I flitted about between the law school, the History Department, and the Philosophy Department determined to be broad-minded and liberal. My goal was to understand, not conquer, and in that I think I succeeded. Now I am in a much more liberal environment [The Department of Philosophy at The University of Arizona]. I will always remember my law-school days with fondness, not because of the pressure and the bigotry, but because I rose above it all and came out a more well-rounded person. I think.

Here is a heartwarming new blog.

My winter break is almost over. Spring classes begin Tuesday. My break ended on a pleasant note, with my brother Mark visiting for two days. We ate out a couple of times, worked on the house, walked the girls, talked, and watched movies. Friday we watched Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West and Legends of the Fall. Saturday we watched The Mosquito Coast and Cold Mountain. Mark and I are history buffs, with a special interest in the American Civil War. If you haven't seen Cold Mountain, you should. The acting was excellent and the plot gripping. I also enjoyed the beautiful scenery. One day, years ago, I found my mother's list of movies she'd watched. Her rating system was "Good" and "Real Good." The four movies Mark and I watched were real good.

To the Editor:

Re "A 9,000-Pound Fish Out of Water, Alone in Alaska Since 2002" (Anchorage Journal, Jan. 9):

Friends of Maggie, an Anchorage citizens' group, has worked to persuade the Alaska Zoo to relocate its solitary female African elephant, Maggie, to a warm climate and the company of other elephants.

Four superb institutions are willing and able to give Maggie a spacious home with other female African elephants in a mild climate.

Female elephants are one of the most socially needy and complex land mammals on the planet. Outside captivity, they never live alone, and never live in the sub-Arctic.

Maggie could live 40 more years. Surely she deserves a better future than 40 years on a treadmill in a cement barn in Alaska.

Penelope Wells
Exec. Dir., Friends of Maggie
Anchorage, Jan. 10, 2005

Thursday [see here], you posted some thoughts on the words "if" and "whether" and how the former is sometimes used when the latter would be more appropriate. Friday [see here], you committed a similar mistake when you wrote, "Mark is going to visit me this weekend." You should have written, "Mark is coming to visit me this weekend." Unless, of course, you were not predicting his travels but were describing an event that would occur this weekend. If that's the case, you should have written (using the simple future), "Mark will visit me this weekend," or (more formally) "Mark is fixing to visit me this weekend." Considering the locale, that might be the best choice.

Harold Hedberg

Rite, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.

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

J. W. Dawson Jr, "What Hath Gödel Wrought?" Synthese 114 (January 1998): 3.

Norman J. Waitzman and Ken R. Smith, "Separate but Lethal: The Effects of Economic Segregation on Mortality in Metropolitan America," Milbank Quarterly 76 (1998): 341.

Patricia Blazey-Ayoub, "The Law of Spitting," Criminal Law Journal 22 (June 1998): 151.

Joseph J. Ortego and James W. Weller, "Limiting Landlords' Lead Paint Liability," Journal of Environmental Law and Practice 6 (summer 1998): 46.

Bill Livant, "The Hole in Hegel's Bagel," Science and Society 62 (fall 1998): 446.

Four Jackson boys grew up in rural Michigan. Two of them—Glenn and Gary—live within ten miles of the family home in Vassar. Two others—Mark and I—live 100 miles apart in Texas. I'm in Fort Worth; he's in Sherman. It's only an accident that Mark and I live this close together. He moved to Texas when he was 18 to work in the construction industry. I moved to Texas (from Arizona) in 1988 to teach philosophy. Our careers could have taken us anywhere in the country, yet we ended up 100 miles apart. Mark is going to visit me this weekend.

Only history can determine Mount Rushmore's true significance. For present generations, William Williamson made its importance clear in the early days of the memorial. "The whole project," he told his congressional colleagues in 1928, "is symbolical and allegorical. Washington symbolizes the founding of our country and the stability of our institutions; Jefferson our idealism, expansion, and love of liberty; Lincoln our altruism and sense of inseparable unity; while Roosevelt typifies the soul of America—its restless energy, rugged morality, and progressive spirit. The memorial, as a whole, will idealize all that is best in our national traditions, principles, and form of government. It will symbolize maturity, stability, noble purpose, and liberty of thought and action."

(Gilbert C. Fite, Mount Rushmore [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952], 238)

To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof blames the shortcomings of our health system for our high infant mortality rate (column, Jan. 12). Regrettably, the high infant mortality reflects a society where young girls and women take drugs while pregnant and give birth to low-weight, drug-addicted infants.

Even the best medical system and heroic doctors and nurses cannot save them. Singapore has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world, Mr. Kristof points out. Why? Not because its medical care is superior. Drug use is severely discouraged there.

Betsy McCaughey
New York, Jan. 12, 2005
The writer, a former lieutenant governor of New York, is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Yesterday I distinguished between objective and subjective consequentialism. See here. A reader asked whether anyone subscribes to objective consequentialism, since it makes the rightness or wrongness or an action depend on its actual consequences rather than on what the agent foresaw or could reasonably have foreseen at the time of action. He said objective consequentialism might be appropriate for God or angels, but not for humans.

Most consequentialists are objective consequentialists. But remember: We're talking about the rightness or wrongness of actions, not the goodness or badness of agents. There are four possibilities:

1. I act rightly and am praiseworthy for it.
2. I act rightly but am blameworthy for it.
3. I act wrongly but am praiseworthy for it.
4. I act wrongly and am blameworthy for it.

Property, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all the others. The object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.

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

Paul Krugman is so partisan that he can't be trusted. Here is his latest column. Only someone who hasn't been reading his columns for the past few years would trust him to provide fair, balanced, honest economic analysis. But knowing how much he hates President Bush, and knowing how this affects his judgment, I don't even pay attention to his technical claims. Why? Because I know from experience that he would ignore or minimize anything that makes the Bush administration look good. Just ask yourself: Has Krugman ever said anything even remotely favorable about the Bush administration? Surely the Bush administration has done something laudable, even by Krugman's standards. Then why hasn't he said so?

Oh my god! I made Jeff's list of blogger feet. See here.

The word "if" is routinely used where "whether" is appropriate. "If" is a conditional. "Whether" signifies an alternative. Thus, it's incorrect to say, "Go outside and see if it's raining." One should say, "Go outside and see whether it's raining." Either it's raining or it isn't. There's nothing conditional about it. But it would be correct to say, "Let me know if you want to go to the game," for one could just as easily have said, "If you want to go to the game, let me know." Wanting to go to the game is the condition being expressed. If that condition is satisfied (it may not be), then you are to let me know. Try rearranging the earlier sentence: "If it's raining, go outside and see." That's nonsense.

See here. Side A contains pleasant images. Side B contains disturbing images.

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest.

Religion is a form of life; it is language embedded in action—what Wittgenstein calls a "language-game." Science is another. Neither stands in need of justification, the one no more than the other.

Present-day academic philosophers are far more prone to challenge the credentials of religion than of science, probably for a number of reasons. One may be the illusion that science can justify its own framework. Another is the fact that science is a vastly greater force in our culture. Still another may be the fact that by and large religion is to university people an alien form of life. They do not participate in it and do not understand what it is all about.

Their nonunderstanding is of an interesting nature. It derives, at least in part, from the inclination of academics to suppose that their employment as scholars demands of them the most severe objectivity and dispassionateness. For an academic philosopher to become a religious believer would be a stain on his professional competence! Here I will quote from Nietzsche, who was commenting on the relation of the German scholar of his day to religious belief; yet his remarks continue to have a nice appropriateness for the American and British scholars of our own day:

Pious or even merely church-going people seldom realize how much good will, one might even say wilfulness, it requires nowadays for a German scholar to take the problem of religion seriously; his whole trade . . . disposes him to a superior, almost good-natured merriment in regard to religion, sometimes mixed with a mild contempt directed at the "uncleanliness" of spirit which he presupposes wherever one still belongs to the church. It is only with the aid of history (thus not from his personal experience) that the scholar succeeds in summoning up a reverent seriousness and a certain shy respect towards religion; but if he intensifies his feelings towards it even to the point of feeling grateful to it, he has still in his own person not got so much as a single step closer to that which still exists as church or piety; perhaps the reverse. The practical indifference to religious things in which he was born and raised is as a rule sublimated in him into a caution and cleanliness which avoids contact with religious people and things: . . . Every age has its own divine kind of naïvety for the invention of which other ages may envy it—and how much naïvety, venerable, childlike and boundlessly stupid naïvety there is in the scholar's belief in his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the simple unsuspecting certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as an inferior and lower type which he himself has grown beyond and above. [Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, para. 58.]

It's heartening to see that the Major League Baseball players union has endorsed serious—or at least more serious—drug testing. The players have two self-interested reasons to support such a measure. First, it levels the playing field. If some players are using performance-enhancing drugs and others are not, then those who use them will have a competitive advantage over those who don't. This isn't fair to those who choose not to use them, especially if their reason for not using them is health-related (as opposed, say, to their cost). Second, it promotes overall health and well-being. Steroids are dangerous, even life-threatening. If I were a player, I'd want strict rules and strict enforcement.

Addendum: Here is the New York Times story about the new policy.

I'm the second of four boys in the Jackson family. Glenn was born two years and three months ahead of me. When he turned 30, I vowed that I would not follow him. When he turned 40, I complained bitterly, for I knew what was next. Today he turns 50. I fear that he will drag me kicking and screaming into that nether realm. Dammit, Glenn! Ease up! There ain't a heck of a lot of decades left for us. But seriously, happy birthday, old man. Most of my life has been spent trying to live up to your high standards.

To the Editor:

Re "Atheist Files Second Suit on 'Under God' in Pledge" (news article, Jan. 6):

Although Congress's 1954 insertion of the phrase "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance is of doubtful constitutionality, Michael Newdow's attempts to have the courts remove the phrase are unwise, as I pointed out in a debate with him last spring (at an A.C.L.U.-sponsored meeting at the University of Maryland).

Should he win in the Supreme Court, the country's response would surely be an unstoppable constitutional amendment that could well shred the First Amendment. Should he lose, the ruling would likely also damage the First Amendment.

Defenders of religious freedom and church-state separation should expend their effort on more important issues, such as blocking efforts to force all taxpayers to support faith-based schools or to impose faith-based limits on reproductive freedom.

Edd Doerr
Silver Spring, Md., Jan. 6, 2005
The writer is president, Americans for Religious Liberty.

The war in Iraq can be called George W. Bush's war. Was it right? That depends on the moral theory one brings to bear on the question. Let's bring consequentialism to bear. Was the war right according to consequentialism? That depends on which version of consequentialism one brings to bear. There are two versions: objective and subjective. The former evaluates actions on the basis of their actual consequences, even if unknown to the agent. The latter evaluates actions on the basis of what the agent believed or expected (or could reasonably have believed or expected) their consequences to be.

It's too early to tell whether the war in Iraq was right if we adopt objective consequentialism, for we don't know all of its consequences. Only time will tell. Any consequentialist who condemns the war, therefore, is either a subjective consequentialist or a pessimist about what's to come. What about subjective consequentialism? What does it say about the war? According to Shelly Kagan (a consequentialist),

if we are subjective consequentialists, we will say that if in fact all the available evidence supported the belief that the given act would have the best results—if this was the conclusion that any reasonable person would have reached—then this was indeed the right act for the person to choose. Admittedly, this was not the act that ended up having the best results, and this is unfortunate. But given that there was no way to know this, the right thing for the person to do was the act that looked like it would lead to the best results overall; it is this act that was best from the moral standpoint. (Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics [Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998], 65-6)

Birth, n. The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Ætna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.

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

It's only a matter of time before Chief Justice William Rehnquist leaves the Supreme Court, through resignation or death. He's 80 years old. He'll be 84 when the next president takes office in 2009. So, in all likelihood, President Bush will get to name the next chief justice. He could appoint someone new to the chief justiceship, but he'll probably elevate one of the sitting justices to that position and let the new member be an associate justice. I think President Bush should elevate Clarence Thomas to the chief justiceship.

First, Justice Thomas is young, as Supreme Court justices go. He's 56. He said when he was confirmed that he planned to be on the Court for 40 years. If he stays healthy and continues to enjoy the work, he could be chief justice for a quarter of a century, which is plenty of time to leave his stamp on the law. Second, he's a known quantity. Justice Thomas was appointed by President Bush's father and has written many opinions. It's unlikely that he'll change his judicial philosophy this late in the game. Third, it will be hard for Democrats to oppose him without seeming racist. I'm not saying you're racist if you oppose him. I despise that inference. But there are people who will assume that opposition to Justice Thomas is based on his race. Politically, this helps President Bush.

If Clarence Thomas becomes chief justice, and I hope he does, it will be a great day for African-Americans (as well as for all who believe in racial justice). The court that once ruled (in Dred Scott v. Sandford) that African-Americans are property (noncitizens) would be presided over by a descendant of slaves. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the majority opinion in Dred Scott, would be replaced by a man who, had he lived 150 years ago, would have been a mere thing in the eyes of the law. This is the measure of the greatness of this country.

I believe that the vegetarians, with their prescription to eat less and more simply, are of more use than all the new moral systems taken together: a little exaggeration here is of no importance. There is no doubt that the future educators of mankind will also prescribe a stricter diet. One hopes to make modern men healthy by means of air, sun, habitation, travel, etc.—including medical stimuli and toxins. But nothing which would be difficult for man seems to be ordered any longer. The maxim seems to be: be healthy and ill in an agreeable and comfortable manner. Yet it is just this incessant lack of moderation in small matters, this lack of self-discipline, which finally becomes evident as universal haste and impotentia.

[S]o long as philosophers fail to muster the courage to seek a totally transformed regimen and to exhibit it by their own example, then they are of no consequence.

The philosopher's product is his life (which occupies the most important position, before his works). His life is his work of art, and every work of art is first turned toward the artist and then toward other men.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, "Philosophy in Hard Times," chap. 5 in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale [Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1990 (1979)], 99-123, at 106, 107, and 109 [notes written in 1873] [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

One of those days
that just comes and goes
it's not so special
she watches the birds
that rest on a ledge
outside her room
the wallpaper old and faded
a crack in the window pane
the radio just keeps playing
playing that same old song.

She smiles to herself
"they think that I'm strange
they say I'm a dreamer
but I don't complain,
though I don't have much
to call my own."
and she's not a movie star, no
and she's not a beauty queen
she'll tell you it doesn't matter
'cause she's not the only one
she says,

"I know a place
where I keep the best of things
(kingdom)
I'm not gonna wait
for my piece of heaven.
(kingdom)
Where there's a road
it leads to the promised land
(kingdom)
I just turn the key
the key to the
kingdom."

She stares at the page
of a new magazine, the morning papers
she walks into town
and catches a show
if she can find the time
and she's not a movie star, no
and she's not a beauty queen
she'll tell you it doesn't matter
'cause she's not the only one.
she says,

"I know a place
where I keep the best of things
(kingdom)
I'm not gonna wait
for my piece of heaven
(kingdom)
where there's a road
it leads to the promised land
(kingdom)
I just turn the key
the key to the
kingdom."

Ally Eskin is feisty. See here. She won't admit it, but it's because she's a redhead.

To the Editor:

Re "CBS Dismisses 4 Over Broadcast on Bush Service" (front page, Jan. 11):

It is important that CBS took steps to correct the gross lapses in journalistic standards that led to the flawed report on the documents regarding President Bush's National Guard duties. But we must not lose sight of the equal, if not greater, importance of investigating the story itself and not just the faulty journalism.

The story that CBS failed to investigate still needs to be investigated. Who is Bill Burkett, the source of the allegedly forged documents? What are his connections? Did he act alone? Did a Bush hater's plan go awry, or did a Bush supporter's plan work all too well? It may be useful to consider the question, Who stands to gain?

In this case, the beneficiary of the story is certainly George W. Bush. The allegedly left-leaning Dan Rather and his team—the same journalists who first broadcast the pictures from Abu Ghraib—are now disgraced and neutralized.

Let's hope that there are nevertheless still some indomitable journalists who have the courage to investigate and report the truth.

Dorothea Halliday
Bridgehampton, N.Y., Jan. 11, 2005

One of my readers, Peg Kaplan, asked what "demi-vegetarian" means. Good question, Peg! I'll be happy to explain. I got the term from R. M. Hare, who used it in the title of an essay: "Why I Am Only a Demi-Vegetarian," chap. 15 in his Essays on Bioethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 219-35. According to Hare (who says he did not invent the term), a demi-vegetarian is "someone who, while not being a full vegetarian, let alone vegan, eats little meat, and is careful what kinds of meat he (or she) eats" (pages 224-5). Hare wrote that he and his wife ate little or no meat at home (except when hosting guests whom they knew—or guessed—would not like a vegetarian meal) and occasionally ate meat in restaurants when there was "no obvious alternative" (page 225).

The prefix "demi" means half, or, in this context, imperfect. So a demi-vegetarian is someone who is imperfectly vegetarian. We might say "almost vegetarian." As in the case of vegetarianism proper, the regimen can be for dietary or moral reasons, or both.

Now to my own diet. I learned when I was 15 years old that I was allergic to dairy products. Since then (1972), I've consumed no milk, cheese, butter, ice cream, or yogurt. I gave up red meat (beef, pork, lamb, venison, &c) in 1981, nearly a quarter of a century ago. That left only turkey, chicken, fish, and eggs in my diet, as far as animal products go. I gave up turkey in 1982, leaving chicken, fish, and eggs. That's where it stood for many years. Finally, a couple of years ago, I gave up chicken, although if something I buy (such as ramen) is made with chicken stock, I will eat it. Also two years ago, I began buying eggs from free-roaming hens. So, for about two years, the only animal products I've consumed are fish (sardines, for example, but also frozen fish) and free-range eggs. It would be dishonest of me to call myself a vegetarian, and I never have, at least without immediately qualifying what I mean. I'm almost a vegetarian. I'm a demi-vegetarian.

I'd like to thank Eugene Volokh and Brian Leiter for the links. To those of you who are new to this blog, let me describe myself. I'm an attorney (no longer practicing), a philosopher, a friendly atheist (in William Rowe's terminology), a conservative (having been a liberal most of my life), a subjectivist and a deontological egoist in ethics, a positivist and a federalist in law, a retributivist, a compatibilist, a headbanger, a demi-vegetarian, and, perhaps most importantly, a native Michigander. I'm a country boy who went off to college. This blog is my literary outlet (or one of them). Not everything I post here is philosophical in the strict sense, but everything I write reflects my philosophical training, which emphasized clarity of thought and expression, logical rigor, and a healthy (some would say obsessive) concern for the difference between factual, evaluative, and conceptual claims. Enjoy your stay.

Representative, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.

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

Richard Allen Posner was born on this date in 1939, which makes him 66 years old today. Happy birthday, Judge Posner! I, for one, hope that you ascend to the United States Supreme Court. Compared to several current justices, you're a whippersnapper. You should have been elevated years ago. Our jurisprudence is poorer for your absence.

Addendum: The average age of the current justices is 70.2 years. Justice John Paul Stevens is 84. William Rehnquist is 80. Sandra Day O'Connor is 74. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 71. Anthony Kennedy is 68. Antonin Scalia is 68. Stephen Breyer is 66. David Souter is 65. Clarence Thomas is 56.

I like this new blog, which I discovered via InstaPundit. Then again, I liked Andrew Sullivan's blog when I first found it—until I caught on to him. Sullivan claims to be a conservative, but he's not. He's a libertarian elitist with disdain for the truly religious. GayPatriot may be the real deal. We'll see.

J. J. C. ("Jack") Smart is one of the most distinguished philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. He is a materialist, an atheist, and a consequentialist. Here is his entry on atheism and agnosticism for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I think you'll agree that Smart is a wonderfully talented writer.

When public intellectuals comment on current affairs, their comments tend to be opinionated, judgmental, sometimes condescending, and often waspish. They are controversialists, with a tendency to take extreme positions. Academic public intellectuals often write in a tone of conscious, sometimes exasperated, intellectual superiority. Public intellectuals are often careless with facts and rash in predictions.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 35)

This week's link is to The WWW Philosophy Virtual Library.

Here is another letter about wild horses.

To the Editor:

The theological anguish of religious apologists like William Safire over natural disasters like the tsunami [see here] always makes me wonder why they don't just accept the obvious conclusion that God does not exist.

To be sure, there are always convoluted theological explanations for why predictions of a benign universe ruled by a loving deity are so often violated. But when scientific theories fail to agree with observation, they are modified or replaced by better theories.

The accurate atheist prediction that such tragedies are natural occurrences, bound to happen in a morally neutral universe, has the virtue of avoiding such unnecessary psychological pain.

Douglas E. McNeil
Baltimore, Jan. 10, 2005

Like Steve Rugg, my friend in South Carolina, I'm disappointed in Armstrong Williams. See here. Every conservative should be, and we should not be reluctant to say so for fear of harming one of our own. Since full disclosure is the order of the day, I suppose it's a good time for me to disclose that I'm being paid by the Bush administration to produce this blog. Just kidding. I alone am responsible for the screeds you see here every day. By the way, Steve is rapidly approaching 7,000 visits. Perhaps you'll be the lucky 7,000th!

I read with interest your blog post [here] about liberal ends/liberal means. I have never seen the conservative means you recommend work. I am 46 years old.

For example, reducing regulation often simply results in abuse which costs more to repair than the regulation cost to the economy. Look at Enron in the California energy catastrophe. Look at the annual Houston oil-refinery explosion (I lived in Houston for 20 years—an explosion every year). The regulatory solution evolved in response to corporate abuse. Why should anyone believe that corporations will behave correctly if regulations are removed? Where is the historical record that will give me comfort?

Why do conservatives believe that corporate behavior is exempt from correction? Regulations are intended to inhibit bad behavior—something conservatives are in favor of when it comes to criminals. Do you believe that eventually market forces act to self-correct the behavior of corporations? How long should we wait, generally, for the market to correct bad corporate behavior? You know, crimes are mostly committed by young people—perhaps if we stop regulating them they will grow out of crime as they get older. In the meantime . . . [shrug].

At least government is self-correcting to the extent that politicians can be replaced democratically.

Low taxes often lead to deficits, which often lead to inflation or a weak dollar. In my life, every economic boom has coincided with tax revenues being at a high enough level to keep the government solvent, not when rates starved the government. Low taxes, little regulation, and a minimal safety net sounds like a third world country to me. In fact, the U.S. is becoming more like Mexico and Brazil than it is like Japan or Europe. Is that the conservative vision?

Thank you for indulging my rant.

Matt Burr
Austin, Texas

Imagine a world identical to the one we have, but with one difference. In the imaginary world, there is an institution devoted to telling people the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about public affairs. The people who are hired to work in this institution are trained to keep their values out of their reportage. Nobody cares what they do on their own time, but when they're at work, they are expected to be scrupulously fair, like judges. Their aim is to provide all the facts so that readers, listeners, and viewers can make up their own minds. In philosophical terms, the direction of fit in this institution is word to world, not world to word. That is to say, its practitioners try to get things right (i.e., make their words fit the world), not make things right (i.e., make the world fit their words).

My sense, and I may be wrong about this, is that there is a great need—a significant pent-up demand—for such an institution. It would be C-SPAN writ large. But whereas C-SPAN achieves objectivity (nonpartisanship) by not talking over the events it portrays, this institution achieves it by keeping the values of its practitioners out of the story. Among other things, reporters are taught to avoid emotive, judgmental language. Consider the following three descriptions:

1. Lazy.
2. Unmotivated.
3. Laid back.

Private, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack and an impediment in his hope.

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

Everyone is in an uproar over Randy Moss's pretense of mooning Green Bay fans this past Sunday. I watched the incident live. It was funny. Moss scored a touchdown, turned his back to the fans in the end zone, and pretended to pull his pants down while bending over. The key word is "pretended." No flesh was shown. Why anyone would be offended or disgusted by a fake mooning boggles the mind. Is this a remnant of the Janet Jackson incident? Have we become squeamish? Are sportswriters milking this just to give themselves something to talk about?

It gets sillier. James Brown, the studio host of Fox's NFL coverage, said after the game that "Talent only excuses so much." I'm sorry, James, but talent doesn't excuse anything. That we think it does shows how far our moral standards have fallen. By the way, have you heard the expression "Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk"? This suggests that obnoxious behavior is justified or excused if the person who engages in it performs on the field of play. But why would that justify or excuse boorish behavior? We really do seem to have a double standard for athletes and other celebrities. They get away with things that others can't, simply because they entertain us and earn a lot of money doing so.

My point is this. Randy Moss didn't do anything wrong. But if he had, his status as a successful athlete wouldn't have justified or excused it.

Can anyone seriously doubt that Paul Krugman's opposition to President Bush's policies is personal? See here. I think it's rooted in envy. Krugman knows that, as an academic, he is powerless. President Bush, by contrast, has real power to change the course of the world—and he's changing it in ways Krugman disfavors. Krugman thinks President Bush doesn't deserve this awesome power, that he is a child of privilege. But why doesn't he deserve it? He's been elected president twice. He has run the gantlet. What has Krugman been elected to? All I know is that President Bush will be talked about hundreds of years from now. Nobody will remember the bitter little economist from Princeton.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I stopped reading Andrew Sullivan's blog when he began dismissing proponents of the Federal Marriage Amendment (or opponents of homosexual "marriage") as religious fanatics. (Am I a religious fanatic?) This saved him the hard work of refuting their arguments. But there were other reasons why I stopped reading Sullivan. For someone who has a Ph.D. degree, he's a sloppy thinker. See here for just one of many examples. I now think that Sullivan's only selling point is that he's a homosexual. Why someone would read him on that basis is beyond me.

CBS released the findings of an independent panel on the scandal involving Dan Rather. See here for the New York Times story. What I find risible is the panel's denial that the sloppy reporting was due to political bias. Then why did Mary Mapes contact a representative of the Kerry campaign? Just ask yourself: Would the story have been rushed onto the air if it had been a Democrat president?

Addendum: The attorneys at Power Line played a prominent role in unmasking the scandal. Here is their take on today's report. By the way, did you notice that the Times calls blogs "Web logs"? How quaint.

Addendum 2: Michelle Malkin (from whom, I might add, I get many visitors) has done a terrific job of covering the CBS scandal. See here.

Dr John J. Ray has started yet another blog. See here.

A utilitarian would not recognize the distinction between dutiful actions and supererogatory ones. What one should do, according to the utilitarian, is to maximize the general happiness or whatever, and this leaves no room for supererogation.

(J. J. C. Smart, Ethics, Persuasion and Truth, International Library of Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984], 43)

To the Editor:

I am unconvinced by the argument that the United States is generous with foreign aid once private giving is considered. Americans have a great and unique tradition of private philanthropy. But private giving simply pales in contrast with the resources of the federal government.

We do not rely on the generosity of private individuals for domestic disaster aid. Even though many Americans gave to relief funds when hurricanes struck Florida last year, President Bush still quickly signed a bill allocating $2 billion in initial disaster relief.

Of course, the United States government has a greater obligation to its own citizens than to those abroad. But the devastation in Asia is so many orders of magnitude greater than in Florida that it seems absurd to me to claim that our government's $350 million commitment to tsunami relief is anywhere near adequate, even when considering donations by the private sector.

Daniel A. Simon
New York, Jan. 4, 2005

Most people make a distinction between what they owe to others and what it would be good to do for others even though it's not owed. They think of the former as obligation (or justice) and the latter as supererogation (or charity). Supererogatory action is action that is above and beyond ("super") the call of duty ("erogation").

Consequentialists refuse to acknowledge the category of the supererogatory. For them, there are just two categories: obligatory and forbidden. Every action is either obligatory (if it maximizes the overall good) or forbidden (if it doesn't). If you do less than the best, in other words, you act wrongly. Each of us, at all times, must do the best he or she can to make the world as good as it can be, counting everyone's interests (including the actor's) equally. That someone is unknown to you, or of a different nationality or religion, or far away from you in space or time, is irrelevant.

To the reply that the category of the supererogatory is deeply entrenched in our thinking, consequentialists say that that's neither here nor there. They give no weight to traditional understandings, conventional practices, or entrenched beliefs or values. Their aim is not to reconstruct or systematize what we already believe or value, for these may reflect bias, ignorance, or prejudice; it is to revise our beliefs and values (and ultimately our behavior) so as to bring them in line with what morality requires (as they see it). They are revisionists. They are trying to change the world, not make sense of it.

Most people are unwilling to go this far. If consequentialism demands that much, they say, it can't be the correct normative ethical theory. Many consequentialists realize the futility of asking people to give up so much, so they propose weakened versions of their principle. Peter Singer, for example, says that if it's in a person's power to prevent something very bad from happening without thereby giving up anything morally significant, he or she ought to do so; and he's willing to allow each of us to determine, in good faith, what's morally significant. Breaking a promise to my children is morally significant, so I would not have to do so in order to use the resources promised to my children to relieve famine.

Singer believes that even this weakened version of his consequentialist principle would drastically change our world. He's certainly right about this. Most of us in Western nations have far more resources than we need to provide for our own and our children's basic needs. We ought (he says) to give these resources (or some of them) to the needy. Just imagine if each affluent American (or Westerner) gave five, ten, twenty, or a hundred dollars to the tsunami-relief fund.

Many people will bristle at the idea that they are obligated to help the needy. They think of it as charity—as something that is morally good to do, but not morally required. Singer asks why we think this way. The radical Singer (the unreconstructed consequentialist) wants to obliterate the distinction between the obligatory and the supererogatory. The moderate Singer is willing to preserve the distinction, but he urges us to reclassify famine (and tsunami) relief as obligatory. In other words, the moderate Singer is willing to leave the categories in place, but he wants us to move famine relief from one category to the other.

Note the structure of Singer's argument. He wants us to stop thinking in terms of supererogatory action. Each of us should rank states of affairs from best to worst and perform the action that brings about the highest-ranked state of affairs. If we don't, then we act wrongly. But supposing we continue to think in terms of supererogatory action, he asks that we move famine relief from the supererogatory category to the obligatory category. The radical Singer is a purist. The moderate Singer is more practical and reasonable, for he takes account of what people are like and what they are (and are not) likely to do.

I thought of a good way to explain liberalism. Twice a day, I put on my walking shoes (old Asics running shoes) to go out with Sophie and Shelbie. Shelbie, my one-and-a-half year old, knows that the shoes mean walking, and she loves to walk (and run). In her excitement, she chews on my shoes as I try to put them on. This defeats her purpose, for it slows me down. If she would leave me alone, we would get outside more quickly. (Believe me, I've explained this to her a hundred times.)

Liberals want a world in which everyone's basic needs are provided for. But the policies they adopt—progressive taxation, regulation, transfer payments to the unproductive—defeat their purpose by stifling economic growth. The best way to see that needs are provided for is to promote a robust capitalist economy with low tax rates and minimal regulation. Nobody questions the liberal end; what's questionable are liberal means. If rationality is the capacity to choose appropriate means to one's ends, then liberals are irrational. To the extent that they violate people's rights, they are immoral as well.

Kindness, n. A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.

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

Why is the tax on cigarettes so high? I can think of two reasons. First, there is little sympathy (and much scorn) for smokers, so those who legislate higher cigarette taxes don't fear retaliation at the polls. Second, the demand for cigarettes is inelastic (i.e., not sensitive to price), so raising taxes on them is an effective way to generate revenue. Smoking is stupid, but people have a right to be stupid. Taxing cigarettes beyond the rate for other commodities is unfair.

It's been 30 years since Animal Liberation was published. I don't know how many times I've heard or read about its influence, which is said to be significant. But where's the evidence for this? Has anyone done a study? And how much influence is a lot of influence? Is it influential as philosophy books go, as books about animals go, as books about animal ethics go, or as books in general go? And how much of the book's influence is due to its argumentation, as opposed to the emotional wallop packed by its images and descriptions of how animals are used in laboratories and on factory farms? If all or most of the book's influence is due to emotional factors, then neither Singer nor his philosophical colleagues can take pride in the fact that it was written by a philosopher; for another book that had the same images and descriptions—but not the arguments—would have had the same effect.

Philosophers are usually careful in making factual claims, since they have no factual expertise, but for some reason (self-interest?) they take liberties when it comes to making claims about the influence of this or that philosophical work. How influential has John Rawls's A Theory of Justice been, either popularly or professionally? Nobody knows! We need a society or a discipline that measures such things by strict empirical standards—and publishes the results. By the way, I'm not suggesting that the worth of a philosophical work (or any other scholarly work) lies solely, or even largely, in its impact on nonphilosophers. But when self-serving claims are made that philosophical works such as Animal Liberation have had significant extraphilosophical influence, I'm skeptical. Let's see the evidence.

In the 1960s people experimented with "free sex" and "open marriages," mostly to their own grief. The libertine life did not prove to be a life of liberty; the desire for the intimacy involved in sexual exclusiveness turned out to be deeper than the proclaimers of sexual freedom had thought. In the end, the "freedom" achieved was simply the freedom of those who have "nothing left to lose," as Janis Joplin emphatically put it.

(Kristján Kristjánsson, "Casual Sex Revisited," Journal of Social Philosophy 29 [fall 1998]: 97-108, at 106)

To the Editor:

"The Army We Need" is set in much too limited a context to determine our military needs. We should ask: why the worldwide suspicion and hatred of America? Are there genuine grounds for the belief that we are engaged in a drive for planetary domination? Could we enhance our security by a change of policies?

Let me suggest these initiatives: draw down our overextended global system of military bases; cancel our foolish missile defense program; lead a worldwide crusade to rid the earth of nuclear weapons; acknowledge that we were misguided in invading Iraq, move to share responsibility with the United Nations and leading powers, and schedule withdrawal of our troops; and turn to a more evenhanded policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by ceasing financial and diplomatic support for Israel's settlement expansion into West Bank territory.

Benjamin Solomon
Evanston, Ill., Jan. 2, 2005

To the Editor:

We don't need a larger Army. What we need is to get over the idea that we have the right to run the world. What we need is a new foreign policy that matches the resources that the nation is willing to spend, which excludes a military draft and neocon delusions.

Lyle Sykora
Lake Carroll, Ill., Jan. 3, 2005

Everyone has heard of the double standard. It consists in treating likes differently. But there's also a single standard, which consists in treating unlikes the same. Both are unjust. Here's an example of the latter. There have been two highly publicized incidents in recent years in which grown women—teachers—had sexual intercourse with teenage boys. I don't much care about these cases, but it's hard to avoid discussion of them if you watch cable-television talk shows such as The O'Reilly Factor, as I do.

Over and over, I keep hearing outrage from so-called experts that there is inadequate outrage about these cases. It is said (always somberly) that if the sexes of the participants were reversed—if the teacher were male and the student female—we would be outraged, aghast, and indignant. The implication is that there are no morally relevant differences between the cases. Our moral reactions, therefore, should be the same. Since they are not, something is wrong. Either we are sexist or, worse, we are titillated by the idea of an attractive female teacher having sex with her male students. Either way, men come out badly.

What we have here is one of the poisonous fruits of feminism. Feminism teaches that there are no innate psychological differences between males and females—that the differences we observe (which are obvious to anyone not blinded by ideology) are superficial, the result of differential socialization. What's wrong with teacher-student sex, feminists say, is that it involves an adult and a child, and it would be equally wrong (and equally troubling) if the sexes of the participants were reversed.

But why should this be? Men and women differ in many respects, including psychologically. These differences are rooted in biology. To say that men and women differ is not to judge one of them superior to the other. That was Aristotle's mistake. There are different races, but none is superior to the others. The reason we feel differently about a man having sex with a girl and a woman having sex with a boy is that only females can become pregnant. A woman who is impregnated by her student can provide for her child. A girl who is impregnated by her teacher cannot. Since we care deeply about the welfare of children—and should—we are naturally more concerned about the latter case than the former. The cases are not alike in all morally relevant respects. To treat them the same, therefore, is to employ an unjust single standard.

It isn't sexism to have different responses to these cases. It's common sense. That feminism views our differential responses as sexism shows how far removed it has become from ordinary life and commonsense morality. Feminists are busily engaged in what Roger Scruton calls "the joyous work of falsehood." Because of the damage these false beliefs do, it's not enough to ignore feminism. It must be thoroughly and soundly refuted.

Pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection.

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

Hi there

Your blog [Animal Ethics] is exactly what I need right now and I hope you—or someone—can help me with an ethical dilemma regarding my one-year-old dog.

I am in a position of having to chose one life over another. My dog has recently killed some of my ducks and it seems that this may be next to impossible to switch off in him. Some of the training/rehabilitating already taken place seemed extremely effective until he ate another one, in spite of close supervision. I have had indications that he could go after our cats in a predatory way.

The dilemma is multifold. First—I have been in discussion with trainers all over the world (literally—I love this dog). The general consensus is that at best, I can hopefully "manage" the behaviour but the likelihood is that if he has the opportunity (or can take the opportunity) he will kill again. However, he is a perfect dog in most other respects. So, what I am wondering is, what steps do I need to take in order to arrive at an ethical decision?

I did take some ethics, but right now, I could use a bit of back up!

Thanks

Colleen

Lynn D. Wardle is a law professor at Brigham Young University. In this column, published almost a year ago, he argued for the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). I share his view that the only way to prevent federal judges from forcing homosexual "marriage" on citizens of every state (a clear violation of federalist principle) is a constitutional amendment (although it needn't be the FMA). We differ, however, in whether such a judicial ruling is likely. Professor Wardle thinks it is, so, in his view, we may as well act now. I'm not so sure. I think federal judges may restrain themselves in this area. In any event, if a ruling does come, there will be plenty of time in which to get the amendment process going.

Reparation, n. Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted from the satisfaction felt in committing it.

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

There are two positions one can take on torture. The first is the consequentialist position that torture is not intrinsically wrong. Whether it is wrong depends (solely) on whether it produces the best overall consequences. If a given act of torture produces the best overall consequences—and there is no reason it could not—then it is not merely morally permissible; it is morally obligatory. It would be wrong not to torture in that circumstance. The second is the deontological position that torture is intrinsically wrong. It is wrong not because of its consequences but because of the type of act it is. There are two types of deontology: absolute and nonabsolute. To an absolute deontologist, no amount of good consequences can justify torture. It is always and everywhere wrong, whatever the consequences. To a nonabsolute deontologist, torture can be justified (i.e., right, all things considered) if it produces enough overall good. Note the difference between consequentialism and nonabsolute deontology. They are not the same. One denies what the other affirms, namely, that torture is intrinsically wrong.

Many respectable philosophers are consequentialists. Why are they not publicly articulating and defending their view that torture can be justified? The current political climate makes it seem as though only conservatives defend torture. In fact, many (probably most) consequentialists are liberals. (It does not follow that many or most liberals are consequentialists.) The liberal-conservative distinction cuts across the consequentialist-deontologist distinction, producing four categories, not two. I'm a conservative deontologist. Peter Singer is a liberal consequentialist. Where is Peter Singer in this debate? He might hold the view that torture is usually not the best means to maximizing overall happiness (or, as he prefers to put it, preference-satisfaction), but he can't rule it out categorically. (Consequentialists rule out no acts categorically.) Liberal consequentialists need to speak out. If they are remaining silent because they think their defense of torture will give aid and comfort to the Bush administration in the war on Islamic terrorism, then they have no integrity. They are putting expediency (political advantage) ahead of moral principle.

To the Editor:

Re "City of Angels" (editorial, Jan. 6):

The stupidity of the name "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" is evident. Yet divine bilingual inspiration offers a solution: the team should call itself "Los Angeles of Anaheim." Los Angeles would remain in the name, and the "Angels" would continue to be Anaheim's own. Might the "Priests" of San Diego give their blessing?

Alex Kliment
New York, Jan. 6, 2005

To the Editor:

For many Spanish speakers—and there are quite a few in Southern California—the Angels' name problem doesn't exist at all: they are, and will always be, "Los Anaheim Angeles."

The team should just sew an extra "e" on their uniforms and call it good.

Ray Sikorski
Sonoma, Calif., Jan. 6, 2005

Jonathan B. Ko, "Para-Sites: The Case for Hyperlinking as Copyright Infringement," Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal 18 (1998): 361.

Dennis D. Hirsch, "Bill and Al's XL-ent Adventure: An Analysis of the EPA's Legal Authority to Implement the Clinton Administration's Project XL," University of Illinois Law Review (1998): 129.

Douglas R. Richmond, "Associates as Snitches and Rats," Wayne Law Review 43 (fall 1997): 1819.

Richard T. Hull, "Why Be Moral? A Retort to a Response to a Reply," Journal of Value Inquiry 32 (June 1998): 253.

Robert C. L. Moffat, "Mustering the Moxie to Master the Media Mess," University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy 9 (1998): 137.

Ally Eskin is ambivalent about unions. See here.

Oops! Paul Krugman and his Bush-hatin' friends won't like this. Remember: Krugman has been holding President Bush strictly liable for everything bad that happens in the economy. If something good happens, Krugman must, to be consistent, give President Bush credit. Let's see whether he does. Oh hell, who am I kidding? We know he won't.

Norm Weatherby is still up to no good. See here.

Some people would be lost without religion. I would be lost without Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Because they gave me BTO, I can never truly hate Canadians. (Lord knows I've tried.)

Jeff kills me. See here.

If Christian standards of chastity were widely observed the world would be enormously much happier. Our world, for example, is littered with deserted wives—partly through that fantastic con that went on for such a long time about how it was part of liberation for women to have dead easy divorce: amazing—these wives often struggling to bring up young children or abandoned to loneliness in middle age. And how many miseries and hangups are associated with loss of innocence in youth! What miserable messes people keep on making, to their own and others' grief, by dishonorable sexual relationships! The Devil has scored a great propaganda victory: everywhere it's suggested that the troubles connected with sex are all to do with frustration, with abstinence, with society's cruel and conventional disapproval. As if, if we could only do away with these things, it would be a happy and life-enhancing romp for everyone; and as if all who were chaste were unhappy, not only unhappy but hard-hearted and censorious and nasty.

(G. E. M. Anscombe, "Contraception and Chastity," chap. 8 in Ethics and Population, ed. Michael D. Bayles [Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1976], 134-53, at 149-50 [essay first published in 1972])

Like my friend Peg Kaplan up in frigid Minnesota, I can't stop reading, writing about, or talking about Paul Krugman. See here. He is our black beast.

A friend just wrote to ask why The New York Times keeps Paul Krugman as one of its op-ed columnists. We conservatives ought not to think like this. Nothing serves the conservative cause so well as rabid liberals such as Krugman. Twice a week, he shows the arrogance, condescension, fury, sarcasm, hatefulness, spitefulness, and imbalance of liberalism. If I, a conservative, got to pick a liberal to write a semiweekly column for The Times, I would pick Krugman. I honestly don't think anyone who wasn't already a liberal has ever been persuaded by him; and he puts the worst possible light on liberalism. With friends like Krugman and Michael Moore, liberals don't need enemies.

If you haven't heard of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (literally, cowhead), you're missing a wonderful story. See here. Cabeza de Vaca's account of his harrowing journey can be found here. A movie (by Roger Corman) can be found here. Check it out.

If you care about wild (i.e., free-roaming) horses and burros, see here.

To the Editor:

I applaud Nicholas D. Kristof for pointing out the myth of American generosity ("Land of Penny Pinchers," column, Jan. 5).

Time and again, Americans demonstrate a self-serving generosity in times of disaster at home and abroad.

I call it self-serving because it disappears as soon as the hot news stories and the flashy pictures disappear from our living rooms.

It is tragic that more than 150,000 people died in the tsunami. It is even more tragic that we fail to recognize the devastation that occurs every year in the lives of people living in poverty at home and abroad.

To overcome this stinginess, Americans need to acknowledge its root causes.

We have been socialized into a culture that advocates self-reliance, that rewards individuality and that fails to acknowledge the structural causes of poverty.

As long as we perpetuate the myth that equal opportunity is a meaningful reality for everyone, we reinforce the predominant American cultural belief that some people are more worthy of public and philanthropic assistance than others.

Jennifer Shea
Quincy, Mass., Jan. 5, 2005

A few minutes ago, while hanging clothes on the line in the back yard, I turned to see what Sophie and Shelbie were doing. Both were eating grass. They looked like cows grazing in a field. What a hoot! I guess this shows that dogs are omnivores, not carnivores. Then again, sometimes they eat grass in order to make themselves vomit, not because of its nutritional value. Dogs are natural physicians. It's no accident that "dog" is "god" spelled backward.

Speaking of being outside, the weather here in Fort Worth is gorgeous. We had a strange year in 2004. Either we set a record for rainfall or we came close to it. We had only one day of 100 or more degrees. Sometimes we have 30 or more such days. One year (2000), I ran a 15K (9.3-mile) footrace on a day in which the high temperature reached 111 degrees. That's the sixth-highest recorded temperature at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. (The highest is 113 degrees.) The race, needless to say, was brutal. Two days ago, a cold front blew down from the north, which gave us sub-freezing temperatures during the evening. I've had the fireplace roaring. Yesterday's high was 35. Right now it's 52 degrees and sunny. Just one of many reasons why the living is good in Texas.

Addendum: Are there any women out there who hang clothes on a line, or would tolerate a man who does? I've never owned a dryer! Frankly, I don't know why anyone would.

Paul Krugman's latest column (see here) indicts Republicans for various moral crimes. By what standard does he judge them, and does he apply the same standard to Democrats? It would be unfair to judge Republicans by a high standard and Democrats by a low one. One obvious standard is perfection. But everyone falls short of that standard, so why would Krugman focus almost solely on Republicans? Another standard is the set of values and principles to which the person in question subscribes. If you value fidelity (even if you don't preach it), then, if you commit adultery, you fall short of your own standard and are rightly criticized for it. Each of us should hold everyone to his or her standards, and each of us should be encouraged to have high standards.

By this measure, I'm sure many Republicans fall short and deserve criticism. But I'm equally sure that many Democrats fall short and deserve criticism. In more than two years of reading Paul Krugman's New York Times columns, I've yet to see any significant criticism of a Democrat. One would get the impression from this that Krugman thinks Democrats do better at living up to their standards than Republicans do at living up to theirs. I've seen no evidence of that during my lifetime; moral virtue is not a monopoly of one political party. There are good, bad, and indifferent people in every political party. Krugman would do a service to his readers if he were more balanced—if he held everyone, Republican and Democrat alike, to the same standard, whether it's perfection or the standards subscribed to by those being criticized.

I think what turns so many people off to politics is lack of balance, or, what comes to the same thing, partisanship. The failings of one's own party go unnoticed and unremarked, while the failings of the other party are pounced upon, publicized, exaggerated, and condemned. People love it when I say, for example, that I admire Peter Singer's concern for animals but despise his leftist politics. This shows that I have a complex attitude toward Peter Singer. He's no saint, but he's no devil, either. He has good qualities and bad, just like everyone else. If you read only Paul Krugman's columns (God forbid!), you would conclude that Democrats are angels and Republicans moral cretins. He would have much more credibility as a commentator if he would stop being so partisan. But I don't think it's in his nature to change, even if he wanted to.

Conservatives are pessimists. They believe that human beings are essentially bad (evil, selfish, vain, power-hungry) and that the best we can hope for is that their worst impulses are constrained by religion, the family, community, and the state. Liberals are optimists. They believe that human beings are essentially good but are corrupted by society. If corruption is caused by society, then changing society will free humans to be good. Their innate goodness will shine forth like a diamond. This explains the liberal fervor to change (remake, engineer) society. In his New York Times column of this date, Paul Krugman appears to have come around to conservatism. See here. Perhaps there is hope for him yet!

Addendum: My libertarian friend Donald Luskin comments on this post here.

Keith:

That this pompous ass [see here] utilizes membership in a self-selecting clique as a first-order heuristic for assessing credibility, suggests that he lacks the intellectual skills to evaluate the merit(s) of a proposition, argument, or thesis.

This type of mindset is articulated by David Lebedoff in his book The Uncivil War: How a New Elite Is Destroying Our Democracy. If you haven't read the book, the gist of it is that a self-anointed New Elite—as measured by intelligence tests or scholastic achievement—deems itself to be society's experts, who alone are qualified to pontificate upon, offer solutions to society's myriad problems, and in general, guide society in the direction they deem appropriate. Majority rule is abandoned for the oligarchic rule.

Regards,
Tom Staff

Rapacity, n. Providence without industry. The thrift of power.

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

Mindy Hutchison sent a link to this story about how fans can interfere with play on a basketball court. Why fans would want to interfere with play on a basketball court, rather than enjoy the play, is beyond me.

This will come as good news to everyone—including atheists like me—who cares about preserving Western civilization. Religion built that civilization. Religion will save it.

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest.

I found this story about Peter Singer while surfing the Internet. Like most leftists, he can't believe that an intelligent person can be religious. This shows how detached he is from reality. Religion has nothing to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with finding meaning in life.

Addendum: Notice how Singer keeps saying that such-and-such an act is not "inherently" or "intrinsically" wrong. This implies that he thinks some acts are intrinsically wrong, i.e., wrong in themselves, because of the kinds of act they are. He doesn't. Singer is a consequentialist. That an act is of a certain type, e.g., homicide, torture, incest, bestiality, adultery, lying, or breaking a promise, is morally irrelevant to him. The only thing that matters, to a consequentialist, is an act's consequences. If an act of homicide or torture brings about the best overall consequences (which, logically, it could), it is right. If an act of keeping a promise or telling the truth doesn't bring about the best overall consequences, it is wrong. What Princeton University needs in order to counter Singer's teaching is not a religious ethicist, as Marvin Olasky suggests, but a deontologist, someone for whom the type of act one performs is morally relevant. Not all religious ethicists are deontologists and not all deontologists are religious.

By the way, I find Singer's recourse to consent interesting. Consent is a deontological concept. It is linked to rights-possession, which Singer, qua consequentialist, disavows. If a particular act brings about the best overall consequences, it is irrelevant that not everyone affected by the act consents to it. Put differently, if consent has moral significance, then people cannot be used as mere means to collective ends as Singer wishes. As this shows, Singer is not only a bad philosopher; he's a bad consequentialist. Sometimes he appears not to understand his own theory.

Liberalism is the conjunction of two ideals. The first is that of individual liberty: liberty of thought, speech, religion, and political action; freedom from government interference with privacy, personal life, and the exercise of individual inclination. The second ideal is that of a democratic society controlled by its citizens and serving their needs, in which inequalities of political and economic power and social position are not excessive. Means of promoting the second ideal include progressive taxation, public provision of a social minimum, and insulation of political affairs from the excessive influence of private wealth. To approach either of these ideals is very difficult. To pursue both of them inevitably results in serious dilemmas. In such cases liberalism tends to give priority to the respect for certain personal rights, even at substantial cost in the realization of other goods such as efficiency, equality, and social stability.

(Thomas Nagel, "Libertarianism Without Foundations," review of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick, The Yale Law Journal 85 [November 1975]: 136-49, at 136)

1-6-85 Sunday. The main difficulty with law school, for me, was its confining nature. There were times when I hated having to read only law materials. I wanted to read books on other subjects, such as history and philosophy, but there wasn't time to do so. That's why, during my first winter vacation, I wrote a philosophical essay on lying. It was juvenile, but it gave me a chance to delve into other problems besides legal problems and to feel like a whole person again. And yet, I still don't know any other way to learn law but to devote full or nearly full attention to it. There's just not enough time (for most people) to spread one's law studies out for five or more years. Bills have to be paid, spouses and children (in some cases) have to be taken care of, and savings have to be put away. Like other things in life, law school was dreadful, but it had to be done.

I made an odd resolution today. In thinking about my views on political philosophy, I realized that there is little in Marxism with which I agree except the injustice of permitting unlimited accumulations of wealth. I do not accept Marx's theory of the "withering away" of the state (given certain facts about human nature, it will never happen), and I reject the view that violence, in general, is permissible in order to achieve social ends (I do think that, in certain situations, it is permissible). So I've resolved to call myself a "socialist" instead of a "Marxist." In the past, when I called myself a "Marxist" during an intellectual discussion, I got a good reaction, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps the discussant thought that I advocated violence, or supported the U.S.S.R. I don't. Technically speaking, I am nothing more than a socialist. I believe that certain items of property—namely, the means of production—ought to be owned and managed by those who produce the goods, not by wealthy capitalists; and I want to use the state to redistribute wealth in an equitable fashion. Therefore, be it resolved: I am a socialist, not a Marxist.

Kevin Kim makes Korean soup. See here.

To the Editor:

The administration's "sky is falling" depiction of Social Security's future is all too familiar. It's the same tactic that the administration used to get us into the mess in Iraq.

Stress an imminent crisis despite information to the contrary, and continuously drum fear into the American people so that they are unable to see beyond the hype. It worked before, so why shouldn't it work with the gathering "mushroom cloud" over Social Security?

Conservatives have wanted to dismantle Social Security since it began, and privatization is their means to reach that goal.

Barbara Bellantonio
East Meadow, N.Y., Jan. 3, 2005

To the Editor:

Your Jan. 3 editorial does not address the basic issue with Social Security, which is that it is not the place of the government to force people to save their own money.

If you and like-minded people want independently to create a safety net for retirees, you are fully within your rights. But you cannot justify hiring the government, the sole arbitrator of force in our society, to impose your viewpoint on me.

If everyone in our society felt as you do, then everyone would contribute to this independent "fund." If a majority would not voluntarily contribute, then most individuals disagree with the premise of Social Security.

Stephen Rose
Belleville, Ill., Jan. 3, 2005

The people who sought to abolish slavery were called abolitionists. They wanted the abolition of slavery, not the abolishment of slavery. (Otherwise, we would refer to them as abolishmentarians.) More and more, I see the word "abolishment" in place of "abolition." I have no idea why. The same mistake occurs with "diminution." If you diminish someone's accomplishments, you're engaged in diminution, not diminishment. There's probably a word for this mistake, but I don't know what it is. All I know is that it's a mistake. Perhaps one day, when almost everyone is making it, it won't be a mistake; but it's up to us whether that day comes.

Interpreter, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

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

The Dallas Morning News recently named Karl Rove "Texan of the Year." (He was born in Utah, as I understand it, but lived in Texas for many years before moving to Washington to advise the president.) This choice angered many readers, judging from the letters that appeared in the newspaper in subsequent days. The vehemence of these letters is startling.

One reader says that Rove "epitomizes the hypocrisy of the Bush administration as the principal architect of the strategy of manufacturing the spin necessary for ensuring a win at all costs." I don't know what the hypocrisy part means, but what's this business about spinning? The American people are smart enough to see through campaign rhetoric and other manipulative tactics. Is the reader implying that there was more spin on one side than the other? I followed the campaign. Both sides spun—relentlessly. I don't think anyone fell for it, or if they did, they fell for it on both sides.

As for winning at all costs, it struck me during the campaign that if anyone believed the end (winning) justified the means, it was the Democrats, who are starved for power. What exactly did Karl Rove do that suggests he wanted to win "at all costs"? Did he play hardball? Of course, but so did the Democrats. Politics is not for the faint-hearted. Perhaps the reader is grudgingly admiring Rove for running a successful campaign. If you hate President Bush, then you will hate whatever made his victory possible, and Karl Rove did as much as anyone to make victory possible. Did the Democrats not have their Karl Rove? Would the reader not be singing his or her praises right now had John Kerry been elected?

Another reader complained that the DMN "chose a Machiavellian politician who is seemingly in control of the president of the United States." I've already addressed the Machiavellian part, and Rove, to my knowledge, has never held public office, so it's odd to call him a "politician"; but what's this about controlling the president? Anyone who knows President Bush knows that he has a mind of his own. He's not controlled by anyone, even his parents, whom he loves dearly. If anything, he has gone out of his way to be his own man. His father says he rarely asks for advice. Karl Rove is the president's adviser and campaign director. Obviously, he has influence on the president. But control? I doubt it. Only those who believe that President Bush is a dummy think that he's being controlled by others. There is no evidence that President Bush is less intelligent than any other president, including Bill Clinton. But even if he were, intelligence isn't everything, as Jimmy Carter proved. I'd trade intelligence for common sense, integrity, and moral backbone any day. President Bush has these things in spades.

A third reader accuses Rove of "blatant lying, character assassinations and smear tactics." I agree that these are bad things, but is there any reason to think that Republicans did more of them than Democrats did? Think back to Michael Moore's propaganda movie, to MoveOn.org's comparison of President Bush to Hitler, to the scandalous remarks made about the president by Whoopi Goldberg and other Hollywood types, to the attempt by Dan Rather and his CBS colleagues to make President Bush appear to be AWOL during his National Guard service, to—well, you get the idea. Nobody has been lied about more than President Bush. Nobody's character has been assassinated like President Bush's. Nobody used more smear tactics than the Democrats.

What really chaps the hide of these readers, it seems to me, is that Karl Rove isn't on their side. Boston Red Sox fans hate Alex Rodriguez now that he's a New York Yankee, but they would love him if he signed with Boston. Karl Rove is simply the best at what he does, and his critics know it. Indeed, I predict that if Karl Rove ever goes over to the Democrats, they will celebrate him as a genius and a savior.

keith—

read your "letter to the editor" today, and got curious about the author.

looked him up on google—here's what i found.

is it just me, or is this guy the perfect embodiment of the liberal "i'm smart—they're dumb, and they need us and the government to run their lives or they'll screw everything up horribly" mentality??

hope all good with you. i am freezing my patooties off here [Minnesota]!

peg kaplan

Bob Hessen sent a link to this interesting site.

A free rider, in moral terms, is someone who takes advantage of the benefits of an institution, practice, or arrangement without shouldering his or her share of its burdens. This, unless one has an exemption, is unfair. We call such people "parasites," "leeches," and "moochers." They're takers, not givers. Let's apply this useful concept to Western civilization. The civilization of the West was not an accident. It was an achievement, won with blood and toil over a very long period of time. Each of us benefits in innumerable ways from Western science, medicine, law, art, religion, and philosophy. We didn't do anything to earn these benefits, but if we are to avoid the label "free rider," we must be prepared to pay for them. At a minimum, this means defending Western civilization from its critics and assailants.

Liberals are free riders. They want all the benefits of Western civilization but aren't willing to shoulder the burdens that make those benefits possible. They won't fight. Indeed, they mock those who are ready and willing to fight. By celebrating and promoting "multiculturalism," they diminish the status of Western values, concepts, and institutions. By refusing to teach the classics of Western philosophy—or by treating these works as on a part with works by Third-World authors—they deprive students of their precious intellectual heritage. By demeaning "dead white European males," they cut themselves off from what these males had to teach. I could go on, but you get the idea. Liberals want the rich, edifying culture provided to them by Western civilization, but do nothing to perpetuate it and much to destroy it. It's disgraceful.

Hi. I'm new to your site, having just clicked on your curious name in Michelle Malkin's wonderful blogroll. I've just read some of your posts and, while I found them interesting, I have learned not to give credence to any writings on philosophical matters unless the author is properly credentialed. Although you are a tenured professor at UT Arlington, it must be noted that, because it does not even have a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, such an institution cannot be taken seriously, which makes it difficult to take seriously the attempts at scholarly writing by anyone affiliated with UT Arlington. I realize that sometimes an exceptional scholar may find himself or herself, through no fault of his or her own, placed in an undistinguished institution. Perhaps this is so in your case. But as we are deluged every day by information from all kinds of sources, many of which are unreliable, it is important for the reader to develop quick, useful criteria for distinguishing what is worth reading and what can safely be ignored. I consider the existence of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus the bare minimum requirement for a reputable university; and I consider a tenured position at such an institution a bare minimum requirement for anyone who presumes to write on philosophical matters. If UT Arlington ever acquires a PBK chapter, or if you can somehow earn a tenured position at an institution that already has one, perhaps I will become a regular reader of your blog. Also, I did not see in your brief biography any mention of your membership in Phi Beta Kappa. I hope this is only an oversight on your part. Good luck to you, and Happy New Year!

Dan Fine
Brandeis Class of '74
Phi Beta Kappa, Mu of Massachusetts

P.S. Some of your posts disturbed me. What exactly do you have against the Jews?

Some nut just wrote to me to say that, until my university gets a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, he won't read my blog. What the hell is Phi Beta Kappa? He ended his letter by saying that some of my posts disturb him. He asked, "What exactly do you have against the Jews?" I defy anyone to find anything even remotely disparaging toward Jews or Judaism on my blog. About all I've ever said about Jews is that my three greatest extra-familial benefactors—Leslie H. Kutinsky, Joel Feinberg, and Irving M. Copi—were (in the case of Les, are) Jewish. Maybe he took that as disparagement.

I wish to represent a certain subclass of nonconventional implicatures, which I shall call conversational implicatures, as being essentially connected with certain general features of discourse; so my next step is to try to say what these features are. The following may provide a first approximation to a general principle. Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This purpose or direction may be fixed from the start (e.g., by an initial proposal of a question for discussion), or it may evolve during the exchange; it may be fairly definite, or it may be so indefinite as to leave very considerable latitude to the participants (as in a casual conversation). But at each stage, some possible conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally unsuitable. We might then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected (ceteris paribus) to observe, namely: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this the Cooperative Principle.

(Paul Grice, "Logic and Conversation," chap. 2 in his Studies in the Way of Words [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1989], 22-40, at 26 [italics in original] [essay first published in 1975])

To the Editor:

I share the hope expressed by Jared Diamond [here] despite three difficulties.

First, nationalism and organized religion can be and are used to divide the world into "us" and "them" in struggles for resources rather than to guide human actions for the common good.

Second, the greed of the elite described by Mr. Diamond has persisted despite the lessons of history. Third, the low-level greed and science illiteracy of the sub-elite (middle-class America) are barriers to rational, global decision-making.

It is my hope that these difficulties are not compounded by the finite nature of resources but are instead resolved by the generosity and determination of the human spirit.

Ernest R. Behringer
Ann Arbor, Mich., Jan. 1, 2005

Here is Richard Posner's discussion of the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean. See here for an animation.

Circus, n. A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.

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

My post on evil (see here) elicited a number of interesting—and more than a few puzzling—responses, a couple of which I posted. One person quibbled about the word "evil," but all it means in this context is bad. Bad things happen. Why? Another reader said he had faith in God and was sure that God had a reason for allowing the tsunami. That's fine. But my post was addressed to people who want to explain to their satisfaction why God would allow such extensive (and apparently pointless) suffering and death. In other words, it was addressed to people who want a rational faith.

One reader said he doesn't ascribe omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence to his god. That's fine, too. The problem of evil is not a problem for such a person. It's a problem only for those who believe in a deity of a certain sort. (Not everyone has the same problems!) Some readers thought I was arguing for atheism. I wasn't. This confuses having grounds for one's beliefs with trying to get others to share those beliefs. I assume that theists want to have grounds for their belief in God. To do so, they will have to reconcile God's existence with evil—in all its varieties. What makes the tsunami interesting is that it's a case of natural evil, not moral evil. Theists explain moral evil as the result of bad human choices, i.e., abuses of free will. But no human being chose to create the tsunami. So why did it occur?

At least one reader said he believed in fallen angels. These malicious spirits, he said, could have caused the tsunami. They are godlike in being disembodied but humanlike in having free will. This solves the problem, but at what cost? Richard Swinburne, a devout Christian, says that postulating fallen angels to explain natural evil is ad hoc (literally, for this [purpose]). In other words, it's a hypothesis introduced solely to solve a problem. It has no independent support, motivation, or rationale. Even if you believe in fallen angels, however, you might want to try explaining natural evil without postulating them. It would be a simpler, and therefore a better, explanation. Think of it as an intellectual challenge.

There are two types of solution of the problem of evil. One tries to explain how evil is possible, given a deity of a certain sort. This is a logical or philosophical inquiry. The other tries to explain what God's purposes—assuming there is such a being—actually are. This is a theological inquiry, often called a theodicy (literally, God's justice). The logical inquiry can, and should, be carried out independently of the theological inquiry.

Jeff has a rapier wit. See here.

Feel the calling of a miracle
In the presence of the word.
Now we hold the right to
Rearrange
How the stories can be heard.

In the beginning is the future,
And the future is at hand;
I'll be calling voices of Africa
Be the rhythm to the plan.

From the Congo to Lenasia
Be the writing on the wall.
I'll be calling the colors of
India
See the Asian life explode.

Head in to the headlight.
Don't turn from the rain.
There's a fire raging
Somewhere near
Like a longtime friend who's
Seen it darker than ebony.
Take off on the turnpike
(Asking for the first call)
Give me more of the same
(Asking for a song)
There's a fire burning in my
Heart again.
I'll be calling the dragons of
China;
See the dancers of the Nile.
See the wings of change are
On display
This revelation mine.

Feel the calling of a miracle
In the presence of the word.
Head in to the headlight.
Don't turn from the rain.
There's a fire raging
Somewhere near
Like a longtime friend who's
Seen it darker than ebony.
Take off on the turnpike
(Asking for the first call)
Give me more of the same
(Asking for a song)
There's a fire burning in my heart
Again.

Feel the calling of a miracle,
The revelation mine.

Keith,

Excellent post and question. [See here.] I think there is one answer with two possible explanations:

The death and destruction caused by the December 26, 2004 tsunami (along with most of the other evil that is perpetrated in the world, either by nature or by human beings) is evidence contrary to the existence of the omniscient, omnipotent, loving, benevolent deity identified by many human religions.

Explanation #1: This being, or God, simply does not exist in any form.
Explanation #2: The being, or God, is not omniscient or omnipotent or loving or benevolent.

Philanthropy = love (Gk philos) of humanity (Gk anthropos).
Misanthropy = hatred (Gk misos) of humanity.

Philogyny = love of women (Gk gune).
Misogyny = hatred of women.

Philandry = love of men (Gk andros).
Misandry = hatred of men.

Philosophy = love of wisdom (Gk sophos).
Misosophy = hatred of wisdom.

Bibliophilia = love of (attraction to, fondness for) books (Gk biblion).
Bibliophobia = hatred of (aversion to) books.

Homophilia = love of (attraction to, fondness for) homosexuals.
Homophobia = hatred of (aversion to) homosexuals.

Heterosexual = other (Gk heteros) sexed.
Homosexual = same (Gk homos) sexed.
Bisexual = two sexed.

Heteroracial = other raced.
Homoracial = same raced.
Biracial = two raced.

Sexism = discrimination on the basis of sex.
Racism = discrimination on the basis of race.
Speciesism = discrimination on the basis of species.
Sexualism = discrimination on the basis of sexuality.

Anthropology = science/study (Gk logos) of humanity.
Methodology = science/study of method.
Biology = science/study of life.
Geology = science/study of earth.
Logic = the master science/study.

Gnosis = knowledge.
Diagnosis = knowledge through.
Prognosis = knowledge before.
Agnosis = without knowledge.
Gnoseology = science/study of knowledge.
Epistemology = science/study of knowledge (Gk episteme).

This week's link is to Fides Quaerens Intellectum.

To the Editor:

Re "So What Happened in That Election, Anyhow?" (Week in Review, Jan. 2):

What happened in the election was that Democrats continue to play politics as if it were a gentleman's game. They are polite to the opposition and, despite a decade of vicious abuse, expect Republicans to be polite to them.

Democratic pundits booked onto news programs smile at their adversaries and make reasoned arguments; their counterparts on the right smile back and then spew a torrent of lies and invective.

John Kerry politely overlooked the distasteful facts of George W. Bush's first term, starting with the bald lies about committing our troops to war. Why didn't Mr. Kerry pound on the administration's lies day after day? Why didn't he scream from the mountaintop about its hubris and unbelievable incompetence?

It wouldn't have taken much to defeat George Bush, just the truth.

William Davis
New York, Jan. 2, 2005

Philanthropist, n. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.

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

Here is a terrific blog—by a credentialed philosopher. A few days ago, he posted an item on the pointlessness of theodicy. See here. I have added the blog to my blogroll on the left side of this page.

Paul Krugman, who writes a semiweekly op-ed column for The New York Times, took time off after the election to work on scholarly projects. I hoped that when he returned, the passions he displayed during the presidential campaign would have subsided. Nope. Today (see here) he continues his assault on the character, integrity, and motives of President Bush. Krugman might have said that, while the administration's intentions with regard to Social Security are good, the effect of its actions will be bad. In other words, President Bush means well but is actually making things worse. Instead, Krugman says, or at least strongly implies, that President Bush means ill. He's not a well-meaning klutz; he's evil. He's engaging in "scare tactics." He's trying to hurt ordinary people in order to benefit his wealthy friends and campaign contributors. Krugman always imputes the worst of motives to the president. I'm not asking him to impute the best of motives, although that's what philosophers are expected to do (it's an application of the principle of charity in interpretation); I'm asking him not to impute the worst of motives. I can't imagine anyone who does not already share Krugman's values being persuaded by his hateful, immoderate rhetoric. Which raises the question: Why does he write? Is it merely to build solidarity among leftists? Is it therapeutic? What a waste of intellect and talent.

Mindy Hutchison sent a link to this interesting story about blogs.

Arthur: Sentience—the capacity to suffer—marks the limit of moral considerability. If a being is sentient, its suffering must be taken into account in our deliberations. Nonsentient beings such as rocks and plants have no interests, so there is nothing to be taken into account.

Betty: What about insects and oysters? Are they sentient?

Arthur: If they are, their suffering must be taken into account. If not, not.

Betty: But are they sentient?

Arthur: That's a factual question about which reasonable people can differ. Don't confuse the category with its members. Just because it's not clear whether a particular being goes in the sentient category doesn't mean (1) that the category itself is unclear or (2) that there is no difference, after all, between being sentient and being nonsentient. Compare baldness. Everyone, logically speaking, is either bald or nonbald, but there are individuals who are not easily classified. That there are hard cases doesn't entail that there are no easy cases. That a concept is not perfectly clear doesn't entail that it's perfectly unclear. Some people are clearly bald. Some people are clearly nonbald. Some people are neither clearly bald nor clearly nonbald.

Betty: But how can you use a category or concept—sentience—if it doesn't allow all individuals to be easily classified?

Arthur: Easily. The animals we use as mere means to our ends—cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, rats, monkeys—are clearly sentient. They're not borderline cases. Why should the fact that there are other animals of doubtful sentience, such as oysters or insects, obscure this fact from us? Is a concept useful only if it is perfectly clear, i.e., only if it has no degree of vagueness? Most ordinary concepts are vague to some extent, but they remain useful to us. The concept of an automobile is useful, but there are hard cases of automobiles where we're not sure whether to say, "Yes, it's an automobile" or "No, it's not an automobile."

Betty: My head hurts. Good night.

Arthur: Good night.

Suppose, as seems reasonable, that sexuality is unchosen. Some people are born homosexual; some are not. (The vast majority—97% or more—are not.) Should we say that those who are born homosexual are unfortunate, just as those who are born with diseases of various sorts are unfortunate? One way to come at this is to ask yourself, if you're a parent, whether you're indifferent about your children's sexuality. Does it matter to you that your children are heterosexual? (I assume that, more than anything else, parents want their children to be happy.) Please note: I'm not asking whether you'll love your homosexual children any less than your heterosexual children. I'm asking whether, other things being equal, you prefer that your children be heterosexual.

Someone might say, "Yes, I prefer that my children be heterosexual, but only because homosexuality is looked upon with disfavor in society; if this were not the case, I'd be indifferent." Really? Seriously? To probe your intuitions, imagine your ideal society, one in which sexuality has the status of eye color. People notice eye color from time to time, but it has no moral salience. We don't discriminate against the green-eyed, for example. Are you saying that you're indifferent about the sexuality of your children in this ideal society—that, quite literally, you'd be willing to flip a coin to determine your children's sexuality? Are you saying that your children's sexuality matters to you no more than your children's eye color?

If thought experiments such as this lead you to conclude that you prefer your children to be heterosexual even where there is no discrimination against homosexuals, why do you prefer it? This may be difficult to answer, since it calls for an unusual degree of introspection. Could it be that this preference is a manifestation of a belief on your part that homosexuality is a misfortune, the proper response to which is pity? By the way, misfortune, like fortune, comes in degrees. Saying that homosexuality is a misfortune isn't to say that it's a grave misfortune, much less that it's the worst thing that could happen to a person. But it is to say that those who exhibit homosexuality, even if closeted, are afflicted.

Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

Greetings! I stumbled across your blog quite accidentally when doing some research and thought I'd answer the questions you were looking for in your post titled "Evil." Please know that I speak from my own particular studies and beliefs and that my personal opinion is not necessarily representative of the church body I'm a member of. How sad to have to say something like that, but I guess it's a necessity these days.

I was intrigued by your questions, and thought it well worth the time to answer them.

You state: I have a question for my theistic readers. How do you reconcile the devastation wrought by the tsunami with your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being?

Me: Well, your omnis are close to what we teach (denomination removed to protect the innocent), but the third isn't one of them. We teach omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. Omnibenevolence hasn't been something that we've addressed to my knowledge, but I'm sure if it was run against the many volumes of theological discussion we read all the time it wouldn't be included. To add to that, and this is where I am constantly studying, I've come to the conclusion that God is these things through "means." I can't say that is a popular opinion with some of my peers, even though I could support my assertion through the Holy Scripture, but the Book of Concord, the exegetical tool we use to read the scriptures does also state that of the three "modes" of God, two we see in "means" and the third "the angels in heaven don't even comprehend."

You state: If God could have prevented the tsunami but didn't, then God's omnibenevolence is called into question.

Me: See above. You do state something very interesting here. If God could. . . . This is the point of contention with my peers. Making statements like this would be put on the same level as my train of thought about means. Those who disagree with this reasoning accuse me of "putting God in a box." If that is the case, then it seems to me that He put Himself there—because that's how we understand Him.

You state: If God wanted to prevent the tsunami but couldn't, then God's omniscience or omnipotence is called into question. You can't explain away the evil by citing free will, for no human being brought about the tsunami. (Surely you don't believe in fallen angels.)

Me: See, here's what happens. The last comment that finally gets me accused of downright heresy is stating "God does the best He can with what He has." Of course, hearing some of my peers preach, I do indeed feel that He has little to work with at times. In discussing the incarnation, though, it does indeed seem that Christ really did the best He could with what He had. For example, criticism came His way from John the Baptist. John, sitting in jail, expected (like everyone else at the time) that when the Messiah came that He would overthrow those in charge and run the Earth. It wasn't Christ's fault that John's expectations weren't met; it was John's. Now again, I don't beat him up for thinking such things. I couldn't say I would've done any different, but it's not a matter of God failing man; it's a matter of man failing man with his own expectations. By the way, I do believe in fallen angels—when you are in the ministry, you're attacked from all sides. I've seen stuff that I wouldn't have believed, nor been able to explain, had I not believed they exist.

You say: Do events like this shake your faith? If not, why not? If death and destruction on this scale don't make you doubt the existence of your god, what would?

Me finally: The short answer is no. The longer answer is that they almost affirm it, just because they show just how screwed up everything is. I'd love to say that God comes down to make everything all good with how we live our everyday lives, but I don't believe that on His "to do" list involves personally watching me every step of the way. I'm His, but that means more that I will have an eternal resting place in Him, rather than I'm not going to stub my toe when I get up from my desk. God doesn't cause these bad things to happen, and you know what? I'm sure He sorrows from seeing His own get hit by the blade of the big blender that is our world. But He's come to make everything right—and for now, He's doing the best He can with what He has. Until then, I believe . . . because if I don't, what hope do I have?

I hope that answers those questions for you. I'm not sure completely of your background, but I will certainly look some more at your page and see what other tidbits you have to offer. Take care!

In Him,
Jason Reed

To the Editor:

No wonder the airlines are in financial trouble. The holidays are some of the most lucrative times for businesses. The Post Office prepares and handles the rush. U.P.S. and FedEx prepare and handle the rush.

This would be a lucrative time for the travel industry as well, if it would prepare and could handle the rush. Where are all those high-priced C.E.O.'s? What on earth are they doing for their salaries?

The problems weren't unforeseeable: neither the computer meltdowns nor the manpower shortage. Not even the weather.

This is a colossal management failure.

William Orndorff
St. Louis Park, Minn., Dec. 28, 2004

John Pike has a long post about homosexual "marriage" here.

Dr Bill Vallicella has posted some comments on my recent post entitled "Evil." See here.

Our study of nature may reveal processes with which we cannot interfere, but whose further consequences we may learn to avoid by learning where and when they will occur. We may come to learn when comets will appear, volcanoes erupt, or earthquakes strike, without (yet) being able to initiate or prevent these; but whose further consequences we may be able to influence. Knowledge of when and where earthquakes are likely to occur gives us the opportunity deliberately to cause, negligently to risk, or, alternatively, intentionally to prevent suffering and death caused by earthquakes, e.g. by taking the risk of building on areas subject to earthquake, or by making the effort to mobilize the human race to avoid in future the consequences of a major earthquake.

(Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998], 187)

One of my longtime readers wrote to say that he doesn't conceive of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Therefore, he can account for evil by citing God's limited nature. This is fine. Atheists account for evil by denying God's existence. I posed the problem of natural evil (see here) for those theists (Christians, for example) who believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god. Some theists, such as Richard Swinburne, believe that this problem can be solved and not just avoided; and even my longtime reader can try to solve the problem, although, for him, it will be an intellectual puzzle rather than an attempt to avoid inconsistency.

Rack, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem.

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

The latest post at Left2Right, on relief for tsunami victims, has garnered 89 comments. See here. Permit me a thought. If all the people who are complaining about how little the United States government is donating were to give one dollar, the problem would be solved. Why is coercion our first resort rather than our last? Doesn't voluntary giving have moral worth, whereas coerced giving doesn't, and doesn't that matter?

Forgive my impertinence (or maybe it's naiveté), but someone needs to start a groundswell of opposition to "on the ground," so I will. I hear or see this silly expression nearly every day. It is moving like a ground fire through newsrooms, boardrooms, and bureaucracies. Reporters are said to be "on the ground" in Indonesia. The Pentagon is said to be putting more troopers (or boots) "on the ground" in Iraq. Where else would reporters or troopers be but on the ground? In the air? Underground? Why do I think that reporters or troopers hovering in a helicopter would still be said to be "on the ground"? What's wrong with "on the scene" or "at the site," anyway? People who use "on the ground" should be grounded, or even, in the style of Soylent Green, ground up. They are breaking no new ground; nor are they gaining ground on their linguistic superiors. If anything, they are losing ground with this groundless usage.

We all experience . . . the perplexities that arise in the intimacies of personal intercourse. The more remote relations of society also present their troubles. There is much talk of "social problems." But we rarely treat them as problems in the intellectual sense of that word. They are thought of as "evils" needing correction; as naughty or diabolic things to be "reformed." Our preoccupation with these ideas is proof of how far we are from taking the scientific attitude. I do not say that the attitude of the physician who regards his patient as a "beautiful case" is wholly ideal. But it is more wholesome and more promising than the persistence of the prescientific habit of anxious concerns with evils and their reform. The current way of treating criminality and criminals is, for example, reminiscent of the way in which diseases were once thought of and dealt with. Their origin was once believed to be moral and personal; some enemy, diabolic or human, was thought to have injected some alien substance or force into the person who was ailing. The possibility of effective treatment began when diseases were regarded as having an intrinsic origin in interactions of the organism and its natural environment. We are only just beginning to think of criminality as an equally intrinsic manifestation of interactions between an individual and the social environment. With respect to it, and with respect to so many other evils, we persist in thinking and acting in prescientific "moral" terms. This prescientific conception of "evil" is probably the greatest barrier that exists to that real reform which is identical with constructive remaking.

(John Dewey, Individualism: Old and New [New York: Capricorn Books, 1962 (1930)], 163-4)

1-2-85 . . . In the afternoon I took a walk around the woods [near my parents' house in rural Michigan]. Gary walked with me part of the way, but when I decided to go all the way to the ponds on Rupprecht Road, he went back to the house. The snow was deep, there was a hard layer of ice covering everything, and the sun was shining. It was a perfect day, at twenty-six degrees [Fahrenheit], for exploring and "reminiscing" with myself. I had warm clothing on and my camera slung over my shoulder. The first place I went was to Wayne Brown's old house—or rather, to the area behind his old house. I don't know the present occupants, so I kept my distance. Much has changed in that area. The plot of land on which we had once played baseball is now the site of sand piles, and there is a new pond farther south than the old one. I stopped several times for pictures. The sun shone brightly off the ice-covered trees and bushes.

From that part of the woods I went directly to the ponds near Rupprecht Road. The ponds are actually just excavations made by the sand company. As children, we fished, explored, and skated there, despite its illegality. The sand company would be liable for injuries to trespassers if it failed to warn them of the danger, but I've never seen warning signs. On this occasion, I didn't expect to see any agents of the company. In fact, I saw no sign of anyone. The snow was clear and smooth and there was a quietness to the atmosphere that bordered on the eerie. I expected to see signs of animal life [I think I meant mammalian animal life], but all I saw were occasional birds. Even so, the views were spectacular. I walked from one end of the property to the other, finally garnering enough nerve to walk on the ice. Falling through would have been a tragedy, and several times I heard deep cracking sounds as I walked, but I moved slowly and softly and managed to survive. By the time I had completed my circuit the sun was setting and it was getting cold. I took some eighteen pictures this afternoon.

Dave Barry just announced that he will no longer write his widely syndicated humor column for The Miami Herald. See here. I understand burnout, so I hope this is all it is. Come back soon, Dave! We need you to lighten our days.

I have a question for my theistic readers. How do you reconcile the devastation wrought by the tsunami with your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being? If God could have prevented the tsunami but didn't, then God's omnibenevolence is called into question. If God wanted to prevent the tsunami but couldn't, then God's omniscience or omnipotence is called into question. You can't explain away the evil by citing free will, for no human being brought about the tsunami. (Surely you don't believe in fallen angels.) Do events like this shake your faith? If not, why not? If death and destruction on this scale don't make you doubt the existence of your god, what would?

To the Editor:

How tragic that despite the clear feasibility of American-made fuels, even including discarded deep fryer grease ("On This Freedom Ride, Fuel Comes From the Fryer," news article, Dec. 27), the key branches of our federal government lack the political will to abandon petroleum in favor of renewable, agriculturally based energy sources.

What purpose does it serve to procrastinate shifting to practical alternatives to Persian Gulf crude oil, except perhaps for Congress to appease the omnipotent oil lobby?

Until the United States elects a Congress and an administration that are willing to defy the energy status quo, we can expect stories about individuals finding ways to successfully use materials like cooking grease as motor fuel to be obscure oddities rather than real-world steppingstones to practical replacements to finite, increasingly expensive fossil fuels.

Steven A. Jensen
Palmerton, Pa., Dec. 27, 2004

The New York Times, which opposed the war in Iraq with an intensity that called its patriotism into question, is calling for greater recruitment by the Army and the Marines. See here.

Peter Singer and Richard Posner are two of our most prominent public intellectuals. Posner has a real job (federal appellate judge) that keeps him grounded, whereas Singer, a philosopher, takes flights of intellectual fancy. Posner is a pragmatist. Singer is a consequentialist. Both can (and do) claim John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) as a forebear: Posner for Mill's classical liberalism (see On Liberty [1859]) and Singer for Mill's utilitarianism (see Utilitarianism [1861]). (This, better than anything, shows the tension in Mill's thought.) Here is Singer's review of Posner's latest book: Catastrophe: Risk and Response. (Thanks to Bob Hessen for letting me know that the review was going to appear, or else I might not have found it.) By the way, if you're interested in the moral status of animals, as you should be, you will enjoy this dialogue between Singer and Posner.

Diagnosis, n. A physician's forecast of disease by the patient's pulse and purse.

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

It's heartening to see African-Americans come to the defense of Bill Cosby, who has spoken the truth about the pathologies of the black community. See here. One reason Cosby and his defenders are vilified is that they allow whites like me to point to them as speaking the truth. No white person could say what Cosby said without being called a racist. But Cosby's not a racist. The things Cosby is talking about are race-neutral. Raise your children properly—with respect for authority, proper speech, good study habits, and discipline. These aren't white things; they're human things that are essential for success in life.

Thoroughgoing libertarians are willing to tolerate nearly any resultant distribution of goods in order to preserve the liberties of a social order based on private ownership. Socialists are willing to restrict or eliminate almost any form of private ownership in order to achieve justice in distribution. But it has become increasingly evident over the last century that advocates of a compromise between libertarian and socialist extremes lack a principled consensus about what they will or will not tolerate. My object here is to make a contribution toward such a principled consensus.

In particular, I shall argue against anti-property theorists that private property rights, while not natural rights in any meaningful sense, are none the less justifiable by several independent lines of argument. Indeed, I shall urge that within certain significant constraints, people ought to be free to acquire and keep whatever and as much as they want. Against libertarians, however, I shall argue that there are significant constraints on legitimate acquisition and ownership rights, that these constraints become increasingly stringent as scarcity increases, and that we now need redefinitions of the sorts of private ownership rights we allow. Finally, against the zeal of some reformers and some legal theorists who discuss the law of 'takings,' I shall argue that any overriding of an existing property right must either be with the right-holder's consent or else be accompanied by just compensation. In consequence, where just compensation is impossible, and consent cannot be obtained, no overriding of the right is justifiable.

(Lawrence C. Becker, Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations [Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977], 1-2 [italics in original])

Hi, I ran across your blog while "surfing" and, while I don't have a Ph.D. degree, I feel that your argument against this particular example of the slippery-slope argument [see here] was badly thought out.

You say that depriving Gay Americans of a constitutional right such as marriage is not a logical causal action for the stated "slippery-slope" consequences; branding for easy identification and eventual internment. First of all, I hope you didn't fail to recognize that this is obviously a facetious article. Secondly, even if it weren't, your argument would still be full of holes. You make the mistake of calling marriage "an important social institution" when in fact it is a constitutional right. You also see a difference between depriving an individual of a right and actively harming said individual; this difference is negligible or non-existent. You even go so far as to say, "The former withholds a power or a benefit; the latter inflicts harm by depriving individuals of bodily integrity (in the case of branding) and liberty (in the case of internment)." It seems obvious to me that inflicting physical or ideological harm by depriving someone of bodily integrity or liberty is one and the same.

Hindsight is 20/20, and the fact that we have history to answer these "theoretical" questions for us should really make you wonder what slippery slope your intellectual exercises are leading YOU down. The State of America is no joke to those living outside of it, I can only hope that the process already begun by your "president" will be stopped before you reach a terminal velocity. The slope is shallow, but you are gaining speed.

PS. If you were trying to foster true discussion instead of pontificating your intellectual excellence, you would have comments enabled on your blog.

Sincerely Yours,
Scott Kurtz

To the Editor:

President Bush's immigration proposal has nothing to do with compassion; it is an outrageous effort to give business interests something they have been after for years—the ability to replace high-wage American workers with low-wage foreign workers, without the inconvenience of having to relocate their operations to another country.

John Brock
Staten Island, Dec. 29, 2004

I bought my first DVD player a couple of weeks ago. I just knew that I wouldn't be able to get it working. Gadgets don't get along with me. To my surprise, I did. I watched Alien the first night and Legends of the Fall the second. On the third night, the DVD player didn't work. I was dumbfounded. I had done nothing to harm it, so why wouldn't it work? Surely Sophie and Shelbie hadn't done anything. To make things even more bizarre, the VCR worked. Why would one device work but not the other? When I read the manual, it said that the composite connection I was using wasn't as good as other types of connection, so, not thinking clearly, I ordered a new DVD player with a better connection.

In the meantime, I kept trying to get the DVD player to work. I thought it might be a bad cable (but then why would the VCR work?), so I drove to Radio Shack this morning to buy a good one. It still didn't work. This afternoon, while watching a football game, I decided to flip through the television manual searching for clues. I'll be damned if I didn't figure it out. The manual said something about the television having a better progressive scan than the DVD player. I jumped up, went to the DVD player, and noticed a button labeled "PROGRESSIVE." I pushed it. The DVD player worked.

Can you believe it? Somehow I pushed the "PROGRESSIVE" button after watching Legends of the Fall and before trying to watch the third movie. I came very close to smashing the DVD player. It would have been ever so satisfying. Just the thought of it felt good. But I kept thinking that I would need the VCR, since the new DVD player doesn't have a VCR player in it. Anybody need a DVD player? (Just kidding. Since the new one will have a superior connection to the television, I'll use it for my DVD viewing and the other device for my VHS viewing.)

By the way, the Samsung manual for the DVD player is all but useless. Who writes these things?

I'd like to wish my readers a happy, healthy, and hangover-free new year.

Peripatetic, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution—they knew no more of the matter than he.

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

David P. Leonard, "Rethinking Rethinking," Journal of Contemporary Law 24 (1998): 291.

Jeanne S. White, "Beating Plowshares into Townhomes: The Loss of Farmland and Strategies for Slowing Its Conversion to Nonagricultural Uses," Environmental Law 28 (1998): 113.

Eric T. Juengst, "Groups as Gatekeepers to Genomic Research: Conceptually Confusing, Morally Hazardous, and Practically Useless," Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 8 (June 1998): 183.

Andrew Koppelman, "Dumb and DOMA: Why the Defense of Marriage Act Is Unconstitutional," Iowa Law Review 83 (October 1997): 1.

Bill Brown, "How to Do Things with Things (A Toy Story)," Critical Inquiry 24 (summer 1998): 935.