AnalPhilosopher

I laughed until I cried reading these comments on President Bush's State of the Union address. Who are these people? They must be past high school, because high-school students aren't interested in politics. But they act (and write) like children. They refer to Republicans as "Repukes" and "Repugs" (or just plain "Pugs"). How creative! They refer to President Bush as "boy king" and "Chimpy." Ouch! They punctuate their comments with little cartoons. By the way, the commenters did not like Tim Kaine's Democrat response. See here. It was described as "weak," "lame," and "ineffective." Many commenters did not like his appearance, especially his "rogue eyebrow." (How's that for superficial?) Some were upset that he's religious. Some were angry that he wasn't angry. Keep that hostility to religion going, leftists. It's a sure-fire way to remain politically impotent.

State of the Union address, n. In American politics, the annual opportunity for the party out of power (usually, but not always, the Democrat) to exhibit petulance, impertinence, and irrelevance.

KBJ:

As I prepare for Dubya's State of the Union speech by readying pen and paper (to list all the goodies that will cost more money), it makes me wonder: 1) Just how much can governments expand before they are OFFICIALLY socialistic? And 2) IF all elected politicians refuse to freeze government spending (please list the exceptions...), is that not an admission that they WANT our country to slide into socialism? Or can we infer (hope?) that at SOME point they will come to their senses and reverse course? Can drug addicts ascertain JUST the right time to stop before becoming addled? Ka-chink!

Will

1. I’m delighted. I supported President Bush’s choice of Harriet Miers and thought she was treated unfairly by conservatives, but I’m just as happy, if not happier, with Samuel Alito. By all indications, he will keep his personal values from influencing his decisions on the Supreme Court. He will show proper deference to the text of the Constitution and to the various statutes that he interprets. He is properly aghast at the idea that foreign law should play any role in interpreting our Constitution. Will he vote to overrule Roe v. Wade? I don’t know. I hope he does, but there are other issues with which I’m concerned. I’m not a one-issue voter. I look forward to next year’s batch of Supreme Court rulings, so we can see what sort of justice we have.

2. There’s something philosophically unedifying about the confirmation process. Perhaps it’s because there are no recognized standards that can provide the basis for rational persuasion. A senator can vote against a nominee simply because he or she doesn’t like the nominee’s values. How many times did you hear it said, during the Senate hearings, that Justice Alito would do this or that on the Court? Senator Kennedy said that Justice Alito would destroy the “progress” that’s been made in various areas of the law. People opposed the judge simply because they didn’t share his values or his approach to judging. Why are those even relevant? Shouldn’t the inquiry be into the nominee’s credentials, experience, temperament, and intellect? By this standard, Judge Alito was eminently qualified. He will make a magnificent Supreme Court justice. Mark my words.

3. There will be a ferocious battle over the next Supreme Court nominee, especially if the retiring justice is John Paul Stevens or Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Justices Souter and Breyer, given their age and apparent health, should be on the Court for a long time.) If my goal were to overrule Roe v. Wade, I would not feel good—yet. Almost certainly, Justices Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, Stevens, and Kennedy will vote against overruling. Replace one of them with another Judge Alito, however, and Roe is gone. President Bush has three more years in office. Nobody knows what the 2008 presidential election will bring. If a Republican is elected and the Senate remains in Republican hands, Roe will be overruled. I expect President Bush to get at least one more nomination. Whether he has a congenial Senate depends on how things go this fall. If you thought the Left was energized by the Alito nomination, you’ve got another thing coming. It’ll be all-out war if Justice Stevens or Justice Ginsburg retires during the next three years.

4. Leftists who are outraged or disappointed by Judge Alito’s ascension to the Supreme Court have nobody but themselves to blame. You have to win a presidential election to nominate justices. Leftists have become so extreme in their choices for president, and so alienated from the American people, that they’ve locked themselves out of power. John Kerry? A liberal from Massachusetts? It’s laughable. Study history. It’s a necessary condition for a Democrat to be elected president that he or she be from the South. It’s not a sufficient condition, as the defeats of Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Al Gore in 2000 show, but it does appear to be a necessary condition. Doesn’t it behoove Democrats to use this knowledge? But they haven’t and, by all indications, won’t. They’d rather lose and whine than choose nominees to the Supreme Court. They’d rather obstruct than govern. Or so it appears from their behavior. If Democrats nominate either Kerry (again) or Hillary Clinton, they will be setting themselves up for another defeat. The first thing Democrats must do to regain power is sever relations with the Bush-haters and America-haters at places like Democratic Underground and Daily Kos. These fanatics are destroying the party’s chance of victory.

5. I hope President Bush puts Justice Alito and his wife in the box with Laura this evening. It would be a fitting tribute.

Leviathan, n. An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole (Thaddeus Polandensis) or Polliwig—Maria pseudo-hirsuta. For an exhaustive description and history of the Tadpole consult the famous monograph of Jane Porter, Thaddeus of Warsaw.

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

To the Editor:

"Spies, Lies and Wiretaps" (editorial, Jan. 29) is an eloquent call to United States citizens to wake up and notice the constitutional crisis in our midst.

Spying on Americans without a warrant breaks current law and sets President Bush above the law. The Bush administration is trying to convince us that it needs to bypass our country's system of checks and balances in order to save us from the terrorists.

But just look at the facts. We already have laws in place that make it easy to spy on terrorists. These laws both make our country strong in the fight against terrorism and uphold the Constitution by requiring warrants.

The Bush administration is wasting precious time and energy fighting to destroy the rights of ordinary Americans rather than using a system that already works. We need to defend our Constitution, our greatest hope in fighting terrorism.

Kathy Rappaport
Santa Fe, N.M., Jan. 29, 2006

Here.

Here is a review of a book about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who is a textualist. He believes that the Constitution means what it says, and that a judge should apply that meaning in adjudicating cases. By the way, there are now five Roman Catholics on the Supreme Court: Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy. There are two Jews (Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) and two Protestants (David Souter and John Paul Stevens). One more thing. I was way off in my prediction that the vote for Judge Alito would be 68-32. It was 58-42. I got a big head after almost nailing the vote for Judge Roberts.

Here. (Taranto persists in writing "National Organization of Women," when the name is "National Organization for Women." I think he thinks he's being subversive. In fact, he's disparaging women by implying that all of them are members of the organization. I wonder how Taranto would like it if people referred to him as "James Toronto.")

This is what it has come to, folks.

How many times have you heard the following argument?

Charity will never replace government. The problem with charity is that it’s unfocused, uncoordinated, and inefficient. Those who have resources to contribute to the needy don’t know who the needy are or where they’re located. If they end up giving at all, they’re as likely to give to those who don’t need the resources as to those who do. Governmental agencies, by contrast, specialize in distributing resources to the needy. They do it efficiently and effectively.

It’s thought that this is an argument for a liberal welfare state vis-à-vis a libertarian nightwatchman state. The problem is that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise. Suppose (for the sake of argument) that private charity is inefficient and ineffective relative to the government. All this shows is that those who wish to donate resources should donate them to the government! If you believe that governmental agencies do a better job than individuals of distributing resources, or, more particularly, that government can do a better job than you can, then by all means cut a check to the government forthwith. It’s simple. When you pay your income tax this April, throw in some extra money. If you’re due a refund, forgo it. Put your money where your mouth is. If other people wish to donate privately, that’s their business. Not everyone believes that the government is the most effective or efficient way to get resources to the needy. Some of us like to target our donations. I, for example, donate to the Humane Society of North Texas.

Here.

See here.

Seventy-two of 100 United States senators voted to invoke cloture (i.e., shut off debate) this afternoon. Only 25 opposed it. That means there will be a vote on Judge Alito tomorrow morning. He will be sworn in as an associate justice shortly thereafter. Anyone with any sense could have foreseen this result, so why did so many Democrats try to filibuster his nomination; and why will so many vote “no” tomorrow? The answer is stupidity. Democrats don’t realize how much they are hurting their chances to regain the presidency. Think about how the typical American views their obstructionist tactics. Samuel Alito is the son of immigrants. His parents worked hard to give him advantages they never had. He studied hard, played by the rules, made sacrifices, and became a judge. Just as he reached the pinnacle of success, a group of angry, hateful leftists stood in his way. They called him names; they impugned his integrity; they questioned his character and values; and they misrepresented his record.

Only a rabid leftist could look at this without wanting to vomit. The typical American imagines his or her child in a similar situation. Your family name would be dragged through the mud. Your child’s reputation would be destroyed. Everything you and your child worked for, all those years, would be for naught. It’s disgraceful.

I said that leftists are stupid. Don’t they realize that their antics are making it even less likely that they’ll regain power? The problem in which they find themselves is of their own making. They no longer understand ordinary Americans. They’ve abandoned any semblance of patriotism. They think the United States is evil. They despise religion, which gives meaning to most people’s lives. They’re beholden to shrill, extreme special interests, such as the abortion industry. They have no plan to protect this country from its enemies. All they do is bitch and moan about President Bush. They have nothing positive to contribute to public discourse. They are relentlessly negative and obstructionist. If they ever want to regain the presidency, they need to shut up immediately, collect themselves, distance themselves from the fanatics on the left, and begin repairing relations with ordinary Americans.

Thank goodness for President Bush. May Justice Alito serve for 30 years on the Supreme Court, and may leftists curse their stupidity every minute of it.

Addendum: The childish Left is not taking defeat well. See here.

The claim of Socialism is that, despite all our discussion of political liberty and legal equality, no real liberty or equality is possible so long as individual incomes show great disparity and economic power can be used to direct the lives of men in the interests of those who possess the power. The interest of political theory in this problem turns on the cures which are proposed. These are notoriously various. Some would require the State to redistribute and equalise private incomes; some would support State ownership and the nationalisation of production and distribution; others, like the orthodox communists, would hold that the State is the tool of those who have vested interest in the maintenance of inequality and that it is therefore absurd to look to the State for remedies. It must disappear in a revolution and be replaced by a system controlled 'from below' by voluntary organisation of the workers and not 'from above'.

(J. D. Mabbott, The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 2d ed. [London: Hutchinson University Library, 1967 (1st ed. 1948)], 104)

Here.

Here is Jeffrey Rosen's essay about judicial memoirs.

There have been only eight posts this month at the Philosophy-of-Biology blog. See here. Five of them are by a student, Charles Alt. It does indeed appear as though the blog is going under. That's too bad. Perhaps the 57 "contributors" were scared off by the Bush-bashing that seems to be a constant theme of the blog. May I make a suggestion? Stick to philosophy of biology. If you hate the president and can't keep it to yourself, write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.

Inauspiciously, adv. In an unpromising manner, the auspices being unfavorable. Among the Romans it was customary before undertaking any important action or enterprise to obtain from the augurs, or state prophets, some hint of its probable outcome; and one of their favorite and most trustworthy modes of divination consisted in observing the flight of birds—the omens thence derived being called auspices. Newspaper reporters and certain miscreant lexicographers have decided that the word—always in the plural—shall mean "patronage" or "management"; as, "The festivities were under the auspices of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Body-Snatchers"; or, "The hilarities were auspicated by the Knights of Hunger."

A Roman slave appeared one day
Before the Augur. "Tell me, pray,
If—" here the Augur, smiling, made
A checking gesture and displayed
His open palm, which plainly itched,
For visibly its surface twitched.
A denarius (the Latin nickel)
Successfully allayed the tickle,
And then the slave proceeded: "Please
Inform me whether Fate decrees
Success or failure in what I
To-night (if it be dark) shall try.
Its nature? Never mind—I think
'Tis writ on this"—and with a wink
Which darkened half the earth, he drew
Another denarius to view,
Its shining face attentive scanned,
Then slipped it into the good man's hand,
Who with great gravity said: "Wait
While I retire to question Fate."
That holy person then withdrew
His sacred clay and passing through
The temple's rearward gate, cried "Shoo!"
Waving his robe of office. Straight
Each sacred peacock and its mate
(Maintained for Juno's favor) fled
With clamor from the trees o'erhead,
Where they were perching for the night.
The temple's roof received their flight,
For thither they would always go,
When danger threatened them below.
Back to the slave the Augur went:
"My son, forecasting the event
By flight of birds, I must confess
The auspices deny success."
That slave retired, a sadder man,
Abandoning his secret plan—
Which was (as well the crafty seer
Had from the first divined) to clear
The wall and fraudulently seize
On Juno's poultry in the trees.
G.J.

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

Here.

To the Editor:

Re Bob Herbert's column:

It is not just the president who is ethically challenged. Our government and citizenry are failing Ethics 101 as they show no awareness of the definition of a lie, and the maxim that a good end does not justify any and every means.

A liar is someone who denies the truth to someone who has a right to it.

Those who gave misinformation to the Nazis to protect Anne Frank and her family were not liars: they were denying the truth to those who had no moral right to it. Candidates for the Supreme Court are now routinely expected to be liars as they deny the truth about their intentions on issues where citizens have a moral right to be informed.

Lubricious terms like "war on terror" and "confidentiality" have become the "ends" that justify any "means," even violations of law and the Constitution.

The broad absence of popular outrage testifies to the general acceptance of these rudimentary ethical errors.

Daniel C. Maguire
Milwaukee, Jan. 26, 2006
The writer is a professor of ethics at Marquette University.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: It's frightening to think that this man teaches ethics. He appears not to know what a lie is.

Here is Richard Posner's post on the Hamas electoral victory.

Michael Kinsley makes his living with words, but he doesn't understand how they work. See here. He thinks all uses of the word "plantation" are the same—as if a word, a symbol, has the same meaning in every context. That's like saying that all uses of the word "nigger" are the same. It's one thing for me, a white man, to use the word "nigger" to disparage a black person. It's quite another for Chris Rock, a black man, to use the word subversively, ironically, hyperbolically, sarcastically, or to build solidarity. I'm entitled to spank my children, but that doesn't mean you are.

Yup.

Jeff Percifield has a little fun with everyone's favorite nut, Cindy Sheehan.

Donald Luskin linked to my post about economics. Thanks, Don!

If it happens and it's bad, it's President Bush's fault. See here.

The most serious problem for moral theory in today's America is not the absence of a mind-independent or otherwise universal or objective moral reality. It is not even international moral pluralism, as dramatized by the case of female genital mutilation. It is moral pluralism within the United States. A left-liberal secular humanist from New York or Cambridge does not inhabit the same moral universe as a Mormon elder, an evangelical preacher, a Miami businessman of Cuban extraction, an Orthodox Jew, an Air Force commander, or an Idaho rancher. These universes intersect at various points, but not at the points that interest many academic moralists.

(Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999], 27-8 [italics in original])

Why is health care a public responsibility? Why is it any different from food, shelter, clothing, or fuel? You're not born into this world with a right to anything. You must provide for yourself. If you can't, then you must hope that others provide for you. If others help you, it is charity. Somehow we have put health care into a special category. Yes, health care is important, which is all the more reason for people to budget for it. See here for a column about President Bush's upcoming State of the Union address, in which he is expected to address the health-care crisis. I hope he stresses that health care is each person's responsibility. If you can't afford health care for your children, don't have children! You have no right to have children, and you certainly have no right to have your children provided for by others.

To the Editor:

Re "Weighing the True Costs and Benefits in a Matter of Life and Death" (Economic Scene column, Jan. 19): Robert H. Frank, taking issue with a recent column of mine in Slate ("Do the Poor Deserve Life Support?"), suggests that helping poor people in the ways poor people prefer to be helped "completely ignores moral emotions like sympathy and empathy." He's got this exactly backward.

Mr. Frank thinks that we should supply more ventilator services to poor people. You can't do that without buying more ventilators. So Mr. Frank's position, in essence, is that if he had a million dollars to spend helping poor people, he'd use it to buy a couple of ventilators. Me, I'd be more likely to buy milk and eggs.

Mr. Frank essentially admits that most poor people would prefer the milk and eggs, but still argues for the ventilators on the grounds that it would make the rest of us feel better.

Ignoring other people's needs to make yourself feel better is the very opposite of sympathy and empathy.

Steven E. Landsburg
Rochester, Jan. 24, 2006
The writer is an associate professor of economics at the University of Rochester.

Abrupt, adj. Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon-shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author's ideas that they were "concatenated without abruption."

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

It's been 10 weeks and a day since I rode my bike. I used to ride all year 'round, but now I ride from early April to late November and spend the rest of the year running. There are exceptions, of course. I always do the West End ride on Super Bowl Sunday, and sometimes I get out with a friend before the rallies begin. Today I rode 39 miles with my friend (and former student) Butch Moldenhauer, who is back from Iraq. The weather in North Texas is gorgeous. I wore a long-sleeve shirt under my jersey, but I didn't really need it. Butch and I had a lot of catching-up to do, so we didn't notice the stiff westerly wind. (Okay, I noticed.) I hope you got out this weekend. Take care of your body—especially your heart and lungs—and it'll take care of you.

Here.

Here.

Amen.

From now on, I will not approve comments (or accounts) by anonymous people. Use your name. Why wouldn't you? You know who I am. Why shouldn't I and others know who you are? I put my reputation and credibility on the line, every day. Why don't you? Take responsibility for what you say. Stand up and be a man (or a woman). Don't be a coward.

It's really quite amazing to see Democrats such as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton rushing to appease the lunatic Left. Don't they realize that for every vote they gain by doing this, they lose two others? Look at how mainstream Democrats are being treated by the fanatics. I realize that the Right has a similar problem, but it doesn't seem to me to be as acute. The thing I keep wondering is whether the extreme Left really wants power. They seem to prefer martyrdom. They'd rather be "right" than alive (i.e., in power). All I know is that it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the Democrat primaries in 2008. If Republicans play their cards right, they could win the 2008 presidential election in a landslide; and whichever party wins in 2008 will have an edge in 2012. The Left appears to want another George McGovern.

Here.

There are two fundamental questions that must be addressed in evaluating whether sex differences in occupational outcomes are at least in part a consequence of biologically influenced psychological sex differences. First, are there observable differences between men and women in traits that influence occupational choice? Second, do any differences that are found have biological underpinnings? The latter question is by far the more hotly disputed one. The dispute, it should be noted, is not between those who attribute observed sex differences entirely to social factors and those who attribute them entirely to biological ones. Instead, the dispute is between those who attribute the differences wholly to social factors and those who believe that biology and culture both play important roles. Thus, the suggestion offered here is not that social factors, sometimes including outright discrimination, are not part of the story. Instead, it is that the whole story cannot be understood without taking biologically influenced sex differences into account.

(Kingsley R. Browne, “Women in Science: Biological Factors Should Not Be Ignored,” Cardozo Women’s Law Journal 11 [2005]: 509-28, at 510)

Here is a review of two new books on philosophy.

Here is Robert Kagan's essay "I Am Not a Straussian."

Here.

1-28-86 There was tragic news today. The space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, killing all seven astronauts aboard—or so it appears. It’ll be days and perhaps weeks before we know what happened and whether any crew members survived. One of the crew members, Christa McAuliffe, is an elementary-school teacher from New Hampshire. She was picked from thousands of teachers across the country to fly on the shuttle, and now she’s gone. I can’t believe it. I heard the news this morning on the radio, then rushed to the television set to watch replays and news reports. There, I saw the liftoff, a short flight, and—boom!—a tremendous explosion. Pieces of the craft flew in every direction as horrified spectators looked on. Among those in the crowd were Christa McAuliffe’s family and students. What a terrible event to have to witness. I sat watching the reports for over an hour. Seldom have I been moved like this by a “distant” tragedy.

One of my previous logic students, Kate Gillow-Wiles, wants to continue with the book that we used [Patrick J. Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic, 2d ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1985); I finished reading this book on 31 May 1986], so I’ve agreed to “tutor” her each Tuesday during the semester. I’m doing it partly because I like talking to Kate and partly because I want to study the rest of the book myself. It doesn’t involve much work—mainly reading and thinking. Today we had a good time sitting out on the [Old Main] fountain and discussing logic and other subjects. In Alvin Goldman’s [Epistemology] seminar, we’re discussing some fundamentals of epistemology, with most of which I’m already familiar [from his Theory of Knowledge course]. Each week we must turn in some comments on the readings.

To the Editor:

Re "Bush Defends His Goal of Spreading Democracy to the Mideast" (news article, Jan. 27):

One has to know what a democracy is and how it functions, and then model it at home, before being convincing in attempts to spread democratic systems.

Furthermore, democracy cannot be imposed on another culture. It must truly be the desire of a particular culture to move in that direction for it to be truly democratic.

The Bush administration has no real concept of how democracy functions, judging by its disregard for the democratic process and human rights. Therefore, its calls to "reform" the Middle East are illegitimate and ludicrous.

Karen Alexander-Brown
Hillsboro, Ore., Jan. 27, 2006

Maiden, n. A young person of the unfair sex addicted to clewless conduct and views that madden to crime. The genus has a wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, beaten out of the field by the canary—which, also, is more portable.

A lovelorn maiden she sat and sang—
This quaint, sweet song sang she:
"It's O for a youth with a football bang
And a muscle fair to see!
The Captain he
Of a team to be!
On the gridiron he shall shine,
A monarch by right divine,
And never to roast on it—me!"
Opoline Jones.

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

Here is an insightful column by Tom Bevan about the self-destructive partisanship of The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Note that he expresses Keith's Law. As more and more people realize how partisan these newspapers are, the credibility of the newspapers decreases. There are two paths to be taken. The first is to reverse course and go back to old-time journalistic standards of objectivity, nonpartisanship, and fairness. The second is to become a left-wing newspaper, pandering to leftist prejudices and propagandizing for the Democrat Party. The New York Times shows no sign of taking the first path, and it may be too late to take it even if it wanted to. (I don't read The Los Angeles Times, so I don't know how far gone it is.)

A couple of readers expressed puzzlement over the quotation from Peter Railton. Let me explain what he was saying. There are two ways a thing can be valued: intrinsically and extrinsically. (The latter is often referred to as “instrumental” value, but that is just one type of extrinsic value.) If I value a thing intrinsically, I value it for its own sake (because of the kind of thing it is). If I value a thing extrinsically, I value it for the sake of something else—either something of which it is a part or something to which it is a means. Most people value friendship intrinsically. This means that they value friendship even if it never redounds to their benefit. Scientists will tell you, if asked, that they value knowledge intrinsically. This means that they value knowledge even if it never produces anything useful in the way of technology. Basic research is research conducted with no eye toward practical applications. Often, as a matter of fact, basic research results in useful technology; but it may not. It may simply help us understand the world.

Intrinsic and extrinsic value are not exclusive. A given object can be valued by a given person in both ways. We value our friends not just for their own sake but because they are useful to us. Friends use each other. We value knowledge not just for its own sake but because it helps us control our world. Some things have only extrinsic value. The money in my wallet has no intrinsic value (significance) to me. I value it because—and only because—of what it can get me, such as the bananas I bought today. There are exceptions. Have you seen framed dollar bills in business establishments? The first dollar one earns has sentimental value, which is why it is taken out of circulation. By framing it, one announces to the world that it has acquired intrinsic value. It still has extrinsic value, of course, since it could be taken out of the frame and spent.

So there are two types of value, or valuation: intrinsic and extrinsic. A given object can be valued in both ways, in neither way, or in one way but not the other. Note that different people can value the same object differently. I value my baseball cards both intrinsically and extrinsically. They are not mere resources to me; they are precious objects. Their value (to me) transcends their usefulness. Someone else might value them only extrinsically, or not at all.

Do not confuse the type of value one assigns to a thing with the extent of the value. The former is qualitative, the latter quantitative. A thing has absolute value to a person if he or she would not allow anything to be traded for it. You might say that its value—to that person—is infinite. A thing has nonabsolute value to a person if he or she would allow something to be traded for it. You might say that its value—to that person—is finite. (There are degrees of finiteness.) I value my baseball cards intrinsically, but I do not value them absolutely. Put differently, they have intrinsic but not absolute value to me. In an emergency, I would sell them. Most people do not value their friendships absolutely, which is why friendships sometimes end. Nobody, to my knowledge, values knowledge absolutely. Imagine what that would mean. It would mean that nothing—literally nothing!—may interfere with its pursuit. If gaining knowledge requires human sacrifice, so be it. Many scientists are perfectly happy to sacrifice animals for knowledge. This doesn’t mean they assign no value to animals. It means they assign less value to the animals than they do to knowledge.

Many people, especially in the Roman Catholic tradition, assign absolute value to innocent human life, which is why they say that it is wrong directly (i.e., intentionally) to kill an innocent human being. They value innocent human life for its own sake (i.e., they value it intrinsically) and they won’t allow it to be traded or sacrificed for any other goods. If you assign absolute value to innocent human life, then you will oppose even voluntary active euthanasia. You will also oppose abortion, infanticide, and suicide (including physician-assisted suicide). But you need not oppose capital punishment, killing in self-defense, or killing in a just war, since in these cases the human being who is killed is not innocent. The prohibition against taking innocent human life doesn’t apply in these cases. This isn’t to say that it’s morally permissible to do these things, for there may be other reasons to forbear. It just means that the prohibition in question doesn’t apply.

Here is what Railton wrote:

It might be objected that one cannot really regard a person or a project as an end as such if one’s commitment is in this way contingent or overridable. But were this so, we would be able to have very few commitments to ends as such. For example, one could not be committed to both one’s spouse and one’s child as ends as such, since at most one of these commitments could be overriding in cases of conflict. It is easy to confuse the notion of a commitment to an end as such (or for its own sake) with that of an overriding commitment, but strength is not the same as structure. To be committed to an end as such is a matter of (among other things) whether it furnishes one with reasons for acting that are not mediated by other concerns. It does not follow that these reasons must always outweigh whatever opposing reasons one may have, or that one may not at the same time have other, mediating reasons that also incline one to act on behalf of that end. (Italics in original.)

All Railton is saying is that valuing something intrinsically is not the same as valuing it absolutely. The former refers to the kind of value one assigns to a thing—what Railton calls “structure.” The latter refers to the weight of the value—what Railton calls “strength.” I can value my spouse, child, or friend intrinsically without valuing him or her absolutely.

One more thing. It would be a mistake to think that there are just two possibilities: Either value innocent human life absolutely or value it (merely) extrinsically. That’s a false dichotomy. One can value human life intrinsically and nonabsolutely. That is, one can value it for its own sake (because of the kind of thing it is), but be willing to trade it for some greater good. Since valuation is a matter of degree, one can value human life very much without valuing it absolutely. For example, I might be unwilling to kill an innocent human being in order to save 10 innocent human beings but willing to kill an innocent human being in order to save 1,000 or 1,000,000 innocent human beings. Being willing to sacrifice an innocent human being does not make my valuation of innocent human beings extrinsic; it makes it nonabsolute.

Addendum: The view that there is only one intrinsically valuable thing is called monism. The view that there is more than one intrinsically valuable thing is called pluralism. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), for example, held that happiness (which he defined as pleasure and the absence of pain) is the only intrinsically valuable thing. This view is called monistic hedonism. To Mill, there are other valuable things besides happiness, but all of them are either parts of happiness or means to happiness. In other words, there are lots of valuable things. One of them—happiness—is intrinsically valuable. All the others are extrinsically valuable.

Addendum 2: The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value is independent of the distinction between objective and subjective value. Even a subjectivist about value (such as me) can distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic value.

This is a wonderful development. Economics is a social science. Qua science, its aim is to acquire knowledge. The job of an economist is not to supply society's ends but to describe various means to whatever ends society has. The economist's job is not to make policy; it is to make policymaking rational. The economist's job is not to tell people what to value; it is to help them realize their values. Philosophy is structurally the same as economics. The economist is equipped to tell others which bundles of goods are accessible. The philosopher is equipped to tell others which sets of beliefs are consistent. Economics is constrained by the laws of supply and demand. Philosophy is constrained by the law of noncontradiction. Philosophy is cognitive economics.

To the Editor:

For a page that has repeatedly condemned the nasty state of national politics, your exhorting of Democrats to grind the Senate to a halt to block the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., an undisputably qualified jurist, because you believe that he differs with your politics, is nothing less than shameful (editorial, Jan. 26).

A majority of Republican senators voted to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg, perhaps the most liberal voice on today's Supreme Court, to replace Byron R. White, one of the two justices who dissented in Roe v. Wade, because Judge Ginsburg, regardless of her politics, was professionally qualified.

No one ever expected The Times to recommend that Democrats accord the same respect to Judge Alito's impeccable résumé.

Endorsing a filibuster, however, rather than simply a vote against Judge Alito, is not just the embodiment of the nastiest kind of political warfare, but shows a breathtaking disregard to the effect such action will have on the future of judicial appointments in our country.

Robert D. Lister
Watchung, N.J., Jan. 26, 2006

Here is some common sense from John J. Miller.

Here.

Mausoleum, n. The final and funniest folly of the rich.

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

Here.

[I]t is important to note that this picking and choosing among scientific theories by people who have no scientific competence is characteristic of public-intellectual work, and political debate more generally, rather than anything peculiar to Bork or to the Right. The Left believes steadfastly in evolution and in the statistical evidence linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer and other diseases, but turns skeptical when confronted with the application of the theory of evolution to differences between the sexes and to homosexual orientation, or with statistical evidence indicating racial differences in intelligence.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 286)

John Kerry is pandering to the lunatic Left. Does anyone doubt that he is running for president in 2008? His strategy is clear: get to the left of the other candidates—especially Hillary Clinton—in order to win the nomination. But what will he do if he gets the nomination? He'll be crushed. If he weren't driven by ego, he'd accept the fact that the American people rejected him. Ted Kennedy accepted it.

Addendum: Here is an example of the lunatic Left to which Kerry is pandering. Notice that her "argument" against Judge Alito makes no reference to his qualifications, temperament, or experience. He doesn't share her values, so he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court. But what should we expect from someone who has studied only mathematics and philosophy?

Philosophy today gets no respect. Many scientists use the term as a synonym for effete speculation. When my colleague Ned Block told his father that he would major in the subject, his father's reply was "Luft!"—Yiddish for "air." And then there's the joke in which a young man told his mother he would become a Doctor of Philosophy and she said, "Wonderful! But what kind of disease is philosophy?"

(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature [New York: Viking, 2002], 11)

1-26-86 I had a record-breaking day on my bike. First, I got going forty-two miles an hour, which broke my previous mark of forty-one. Second, I did not get off the bike for the entire ride: 40.1 miles. This may be the first time that I’ve done that. But I failed to reach the fifteen-mile-per-hour average speed mark by one second. One second! I ended up with a gross average speed of 14.94 miles per hour. Oh well, I’ll break the mark many times in the weeks to come. The weather today was beautiful: sunny, warm, and a temperature in the high seventies [degrees Fahrenheit]. But the wind was extremely strong. I have a new tire and tube on the back of my bike. The old one was good for 1926 miles. Not bad, huh? I’ll be pleased if the new tire gets as much mileage.

The much-ballyhooed Super Bowl was held today. The Chicago Bears, a big favorite, demolished the New England Patriots, 46-10. I watched only the end of the game because of my ride. Now football is over for another year and baseball is on my mind. Spring training will begin in less than a month.

Rubbish, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies, literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions lying due south from Boreaplas.

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

Here is a terrific essay by Joseph Epstein. What he says supports Keith's Law. I've been reading newspapers on a daily basis since about 1970, when I was 13 years old. I read The Detroit News until August 1983, when I moved to Tucson. It had an excellent editorial page and wonderful sports writers (Joe Falls and Jerry Green). Even though Tucson had two newspapers, I read The Arizona Republic out of Phoenix on the ground that it would do the best job of covering statewide and national news. During my year at Texas A&M University from August 1988 to August 1989, I read The Houston Chronicle. It left no impression on me. For the past 16 years, I've had the misfortune to read The Dallas Morning News. Its editorial page is awful. Its sports writers are illiterate morons. Luckily, I have the Internet. The bias in The New York Times, which is e-mailed to me every day, is striking and shocking. One expects opinions to be expressed on the editorial page, but the Times's bias extends to its analytical pieces and, even more outrageously, to its news stories. There is no doubt in my mind that the decrease in newspaper readership nationwide is caused by bias. Who wants to be manipulated? Who wants to be told what to believe and do? Just give me the goddamned facts straight and let me decide what to make of them. Is that too much to ask? To the reply that that makes journalism boring for journalists, I reply, "Then why did you go into that profession? You should have become a preacher, a moralist, or a politician." Imagine someone becoming a judge and then complaining that he or she wants to make policy. If that's what you want, become a legislator. Have we lost all sense of role and responsibility? Does every job become whatever one wants it to be?

Here.

a winter palace
from the arabian nights
white waves on an ocean
gems from a golden age

life in your new world
turning round and round
making some sense
where there's no sense at all

no promises
but if you should fall

stars die in the silence
of arabian nights
wind washes the seasons
in these days of a golden age

life in your new world
turning round and round
making some sense
where there's no sense at all

no promises
but if you should fall

I could give you more
than just the shape of things
break every word
begin it all again
your name on a white sheet
pure lace shot with passion
but as love lies
bleeding in your hands

heaven sends you
no promises
of arabian nights
no white waves on an ocean
no gems from a golden age

life in your new world
turning round and round
so make some sense
where there's no sense at all

I give you
no promises
but if you should fall

no promises
but if you should fall
you fall

no promises
but if you should fall

no promises
but if you should fall
you fall

life in your new world
as it turns round and round

no promises
but if you should fall

Former ambassador Felix Rohatyn makes a curious argument. In interpreting the expression "cruel and unusual punishments" in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, he says, judges should look to Europe for guidance. That's the conclusion. The premise seems to be that it will make for better relations between Europe and the United States. Gee. What else should we do in order to improve relations? The French would love for us to impeach President Bush. The Belgians would like us to butcher more horses for their plates. The Germans would be delighted if we stopped making cars. All of them would be happy if we didn't send bicyclists to the Tour de France and other stage races. Reductio ad absurdum. Europeans are squeamish and guilt-ridden about capital punishment because they abused it for so long. They're barbarians. We Americans put people to death because, and only because, we value innocent human life. That Europeans don't value it is their problem, not ours.

Addendum: The two greatest thinkers in European history, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), one a deontologist and the other a consequentialist, one a Prussian and the other an Englishman, both liberals, supported capital punishment. Rohatyn must think they're unenlightened. What a joke.

Power Line weighs in on Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects. I might add that I like John McCain and would be happy to have him as my president. He was my senator when I lived in Tucson. But McCain will be 72 years old on election day in 2008 and would be 76 by the time his first term ended in January 2013. Remember the talk that Ronald Reagan was too old, at 69, to be president? It would come up again with McCain. Then again, Reagan was almost 78 years old when he left office in January 1989. If McCain served only one term, he would be 76 when he left office. He would be 80—two years older than Reagan—when he left office after a second term.

To the Editor:

Two Op-Ed articles about abortion, both written by men. What is wrong with this picture?

Sandra Sizer
Boston, Jan. 22, 2006

The New York Times is frightened—frightened!—by the prospect of Samuel Alito on the United States Supreme Court. See here. That shows how far left the newspaper is. Samuel Alito is about as mainstream a judge as there is. One wonders whether anyone but a rabid leftist could please the Times. By the way, the Times has become somewhat of a reliable anti-authority in the realm of judicial nominations. If the Times is frightened by X, then X can be assumed to be well-qualified, decent, and fair. Those who want a law-abiding Supreme Court can rest easy this day.

Here is a good blog.

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column. Here is Peg Kaplan's blog. By the way, why is "Peg" a nickname for "Margaret"?

Here.

The lunatic Left is boycotting Chris Matthews. Why? Because Matthews had the audacity to compare Osama bin Laden to Michael Moore. (Matthews said that bin Laden's latest screed sounded like something Moore would say.) In leftist circles, evidently, Moore is untouchable. See here for the childish antics of The Democratic Underground. Note that they love Keith Olbermann. For now. Olbermann had better be careful what he says, or he'll be boycotted, too.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you're familiar with Keith's Law. It says that authoritativeness is inversely proportional to partisanship. The more partisan one is, the less authority one has. Here is an example of it. The American Bar Association is biased in favor of liberalism and against conservatism. Its ratings of judges reflect this bias. See here. I don't put any stock in what the ABA says about a judicial nominee, and neither should any United States senator. The ABA's ratings should be ignored.

Addendum: I was a member of the ABA for a year or so when I was a young attorney. It struck me as a useless organization. Speaking of useless organizations, I was a member of The American Philosophical Association for many years—until the idiots running the organization politicized it. (See here.) By taking partisan positions, the ABA and the APA destroyed their credibility and their authority. They did not obey Keith's Law.

It is a source of frustration to brilliant people to be unable to persuade their intellectual inferiors, and a natural reaction is to seek more time to persuade, knowing they can out-argue their duller colleagues. What they may not realize is that reasoned argument is ineffectual when the arguers do not share common premises and—what turns out to be related—that people do not surrender their deep-seated beliefs merely because they cannot match wits with the scoffers. (And thus, as I said, Robert Bork’s brilliance did not disarm his opponents.) In such situations the principal effect of arguing is, as Thurman Arnold noted and a subsequent psychological literature confirms, to drive the antagonists further apart—or at least to cause them to dig in their heels and clutch their beliefs closer to their chests.

When premises for decision are shared, instrumental reason can generate conclusions that will convince all participants and observers; and collective deliberation may be extremely valuable in deriving conclusions from common premises. The process is kept honest by empirical verification: the airplane of novel design either flies or it does not. But in most constitutional disputes, consistent with my emphasis on their political character, the disputants are not arguing from common premises. One disputant thinks the public safety more important than the rights of people accused of crime; the other thinks the opposite. One views the actions of the police through the lens of a potential victim of crime, the other through the lens of a person wrongfully accused of crime. One worries about subtle forms of sexual harassment; the other (invariably male) worries about being falsely accused of harassment. One considers affirmative action naked discrimination; the other considers it social justice and political necessity. One considers the banishment of religion from public life a sacrilege and a moral disgrace; the other fears that religion will penetrate and subvert government, turning the United States into a theocracy unless the government has no truck whatsoever with religion; a third fears that entangling religion with government hurts religion. One views abortion from the standpoint of the hapless fetus, the other from the standpoint of a woman forbidden to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. One values the states as laboratories for social experimentation; the other regards state government as provincial and local governments as little better than village tyrannies. One holds James Bradley Thayer’s view of judicial review; the other holds Justice Brennan’s.

(Richard A. Posner, "The Supreme Court, 2004 Term—Foreword: A Political Court," Harvard Law Review 119 [November 2005]: 31-102, at 73 [footnote omitted])

See here.

Here is Brian C. Anderson's column about freedom of expression.

Here.

To the Editor:

A headline in the Jan. 22 Week in Review, "Why Not a Strike on Iran?," sent a shudder through me. Are we now in the process of making permissible a national debate on whether to use military force against that country?

Wittingly or unwittingly, are we now being led to think the unthinkable, that it might be O.K. to start a war with a country that has not presented any direct threat to us either on our own soil or overseas?

Moreover, the pattern to what can only be labeled the cranking up of the political propaganda machine is sickeningly familiar in the last few years. First in Iraq: international law and the approval of the United Nations are deemed to be dispensable, as we invade that country in the name of national security.

Then, after revelation after revelation that our country has in fact been involved in the torture of prisoners, we issue legal opinions that torture is permitted under certain necessary conditions.

Then, caught in extensive illegal wiretaps that invade the privacy of ordinary citizens, the president justifies it in the name of fighting terrorism.

In each case, there is a sickening feeling that some orchestration of the debate is going on, all in the name of national security.

Where are the whistle-blowers, in and out of government, who can unmask this "grave and gathering threat" to our own democracy and bring us back into the global family of nations?

(Rev.) Richard W. Gillett
Pasadena, Calif., Jan. 22, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This person's being a reverend (preacher, minister) has nothing to do with the content of the letter. Perhaps Mr Gillett is hoping that people infer moral authority from theological authority, in which case he is encouraging people to commit a fallacy.

Olympian, adj. Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his appetite.

His name the smirking tourist scrawls
Upon Minerva's temple walls,
Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,
And marks his appetite's abuse.
Averil Joop.

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

Here.

Here.

Television, n. 1. A system for reproducing on a screen visual images transmitted (usu. with sound) by radio waves. 2. An evil made necessary by baseball.

Here.

To the Editor:

It is impossible not to agree with William Saletan that abortion is bad. Contrary to the popular belief, it is not a judgment forced on us by the "Christian right"; it is not even a religious issue per se, merely that of basic fairness, decency and humanness.

No cultures known to mankind, including non-Christian and pre-Christian ones, would have allowed the mere thought of killing a new life in the mother's womb.

With life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as core rights, the right of a fetus to be born clearly trumps the mother's liberty to choose otherwise.

Alas, discussion is of no use. The solutions offered by Mr. Saletan will lead to nowhere for a very simple reason: abortion is far more than a "choice" as professed by its advocates; it is the only ace card of the feminist establishment in asserting power in the face of male "chauvinist" dominance, and it will fight tooth and nail to the last to preserve it.

Andre Huzsvai
Boston, Jan. 22, 2006

Maybe Canadians have brains, after all. You have to be pretty stupid to be a socialist. See here.

Consul, n. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

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

Philosophy is essentially a middle-aged man’s game, though certain philosophers (notably Plato and Kant) have put up their best performances when they were well past middle life. Those of us who are not Platos or Kants are well advised to retire gracefully before they have too obviously lost their grip. Medical science would almost have made the world safe for senility, if physics had not made it unsafe for everybody; and there are far too many old clowns arthritically going through their hoops, to the embarrassment of the spectators:—

From X’s eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Y expires a driveller and a show.

My younger colleagues would have no difficulty in substituting appropriate constants for the variables in these lines. Moreover, though philosophies are never refuted, they rapidly go out of fashion, and the kind of philosophy which I have practised has become antiquated without having yet acquired the interest of a collector’s piece:—

New forms arise, and different views engage,
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.

So this veteran now definitely makes his last bow as a professional performer, though he may occasionally make a graceful appearance “by request” at a matinee for charity.

Cambridge, 14 December, 1956

(C. D. Broad, “A Reply to My Critics,” in The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 10 [New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1959], 711-830, at 829-30)

Ed Feser is involved in a debate about the metaphysical foundations of conservatism. See here.

Here is Shelby Steele's column about Hillary Clinton. Please read it.

Here is James Taranto's column on abortion. Judging from the subtitle, Taranto is a fan of Rush, the Canadian power-rock trio.

Here.

Here.

It might be objected that one cannot really regard a person or a project as an end as such if one's commitment is in this way contingent or overridable. But were this so, we would be able to have very few commitments to ends as such. For example, one could not be committed to both one's spouse and one's child as ends as such, since at most one of these commitments could be overriding in cases of conflict. It is easy to confuse the notion of a commitment to an end as such (or for its own sake) with that of an overriding commitment, but strength is not the same as structure. To be committed to an end as such is a matter of (among other things) whether it furnishes one with reasons for acting that are not mediated by other concerns. It does not follow that these reasons must always outweigh whatever opposing reasons one may have, or that one may not at the same time have other, mediating reasons that also incline one to act on behalf of that end.

(Peter Railton, "Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality," Philosophy & Public Affairs 13 [spring 1984]: 134-71, at 141 [italics in original])

1-23-86 Thursday. I was all set for a DUI trial this morning, but after arguing some pretrial motions, the client, Chuck S., decided to change his plea to “no contest.” One of the charges against Chuck was “exhibiting speed.” I argued that, according to the statute, the police officer must put the defendant’s speed on the citation. In this case, the officer didn’t. At first, Judge Kelly Knop denied my motion, but several minutes later, after taking a recess, he came out and announced that he had changed his mind. “Counsel,” he said, “the consensus of the judges is that you’re right and I’m wrong. I’m gonna grant your motion to dismiss the ‘exhibiting speed’ charges.” What a surprise! I also won two other motions having to do with the exclusion of trial testimony. The client, however, really didn’t want to sit through a one- or two-day trial, so we talked over the prosecutor’s offer and decided to plead “no contest.” Chuck was quite happy with the result.

Also in court today, Judge Carmen Dolny commented that she enjoyed my Bar Briefs columns. “How do you think of all those things?” she asked. “Oh, I’ve been saving examples of writing errors for several years,” I said, blushing. The client who was standing next to me must have been wondering what in the world was going on. But the judge was definitely “on my side,” so he couldn’t have been upset.

The Conservative Philosopher is celebrating its first anniversary. See here.

The New York Times is opposed to Judge Samuel Alito for purely political reasons. See here. The man is eminently qualified to serve on the United States Supreme Court—as qualified as anyone who has ever served on the Court. What more is there to say?

Addendum: The Times has no substantive reason to oppose Judge Alito's nomination, so it resorts to rhetoric. It uses the terms "radical" or "radically" four times. It uses the word "extreme" once. It uses the word "fringe" once and "outlandish" once. Judge Alito is contrasted with the "centrism," "cautiousness," and "pragmatism" of Sandra Day O'Connor. Manipulative rhetoric is the first refuge of a scoundrel. If a rational case could be made against Judge Alito, rhetoric (especially of the abusive sort) would be unnecessary.

To the Editor:

It was significant to read about the discovery of a specific gene that leads to extra risk for Type 2 diabetes and that the gene is carried by more than a third of Americans ("Gene Increases Diabetes Risk, Scientists Find," front page, Jan. 16).

Genes form a biological blueprint that is largely reactive in nature, and the TCF7L2 gene was apparently quiescent during most of our evolution.

What has changed? Our cellular environment and our genes evolved in a milieu of nutrient-dense foods. Today our cellular environment has been modified—polluted, if you wish—by the unprecedented and excessive consumption of refined sugars and carbohydrates.

A gene that was probably insignificant for hundreds of thousands of years is most likely one of many that have been awakened by modern eating habits.

Jack Challem
Tucson, Jan. 16, 2006
The writer is the author of a book about nutrition.

Repentance, n. The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment. It is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not inconsistent with continuity of sin.

Desirous to avoid the pains of Hell,
You will repent and join the Church, Parnell?
How needless!—Nick will keep you off the coals
And add you to the woes of other souls.
Jomater Abemy.

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

Here.

Sometimes I wonder whether the Left wants power. It seems to prefer carping, bitching, whining, wailing, complaining, and attacking to governing. In short, it loves the role of kibitzer. Can you imagine the rabid, America-hating Left getting behind someone like Hillary Clinton? Molly Ivins came out against her the other day. Why? Because Hillary hasn't been against the war in Iraq from the outset. She's not pacifistic enough. There are times when I'm running or bicycling when I have to choose between being in the right and being alive. I may have the right-of-way, but if I take it, I'll be struck by a wayward motor vehicle. I'm sorry, but I'd rather be alive than in the right, if I can't be both. The Left appears to prefer being pure to having power. It would rather go down in flames with another George McGovern than put up with someone who thinks that war is sometimes the answer. It's going to be an interesting couple of years, that's for sure.

My goal in life is to make this list.

Peg Kaplan is mad as hell about misapplication of the term "white trash," and she's not going to take it anymore. You go, girl!

I keep seeing the word “gaming” instead of “gambling” in reference to things like poker, roulette, and blackjack. The word “gambling” must have acquired certain unfavorable or derogatory connotations in order to be changed by those in the “gaming” industry. What might they be? Well, “gambling” connotes risk-taking. Gamblers risk losing their wealth, which is bad. “Gaming,” by contrast, connotes game-playing. Who doesn’t like playing games? Games are light, entertaining, and enjoyable. They are played in safe, open environments. They are diversions from the serious affairs of life. Gambling is heavy, serious, and potentially destructive. It is conducted in dangerous, secretive places. It can be addictive. Games are innocent. Gambling is fraught with peril. Can you think of any other connotations that might have led to the change? By the way, if “gaming” lacks unsavory connotations that “gambling” has, it’s only a matter of time before “gaming,” too, acquires those connotations. Think of how “obese” has become just as derogatory as “fat,” which it was meant to replace. When “gaming” becomes as derogatory as “gambling”—and it will, unless our attitudes toward the activity change—the “gaming” industry will find another word.

Many of my students have gone on to great things, from the practice of law to the practice of medicine to the performance of music. Twenty years ago, I taught a special group of people in an Introduction to Philosophy course at The University of Arizona. They taught me as much as—if not more than—I taught them. They also touched me, emotionally. It was one of the two best courses I've ever taught (the other being at Texas A&M University). One of the students in that course at UA was Michael Gulezian, with whom I have kept in touch over the years. Michael is funny, smart, talented, and sweet. See here for his website.

Under war conditions it does happen that men help each other as fellow-citizens, that they feel that they are engaged on a single task, and that, in the face of that task, individual self-seeking and local or petty ambitions are swept away. Wherever this happens, it is good. Even in war, however, this goal is too high for common humanity. These ideals of service and fellowship are never felt by more than a part of the population, and even in them seldom survive the early moments or the crisis of a war, before the inevitable disillusion sets in.

(J. D. Mabbott, The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 2d ed. [London: Hutchinson University Library, 1967 (1st ed. 1948)], 93-4)

I just discovered this blog post by University of Michigan law professor Don Herzog. Don is a bright man, but he's missing the point. All President Bush was saying is that Harriet Miers would be a judge, not a legislator. Legislators make value judgments. Judges enforce the value judgments of others: either the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution, if it's a constitutional case, or legislators, if it's a statutory case. Surely Don knows the difference between adjudication and legislation! Unfortunately, some judges (and law professors) appear not to know the difference. They confuse politics with law.

To the Editor:

In "First, Do More Harm" (column, Jan. 16), Paul Krugman talks about the rise in obesity among Americans and their propensity for acquiring diabetes as a result.

One reason the diabetic has survived to the point where the devastations of the disease come to the fore is the ability of American physicians, researchers and pharmaceutical companies to get him or her to that point. In the 1930's the epidemic would have resulted in death long before amputation was necessary.

A recent article published by the journal Health Affairs—from the Rand Institute, with Dana P. Goldman as the lead author—suggested that long-term monetary savings were minimal with early preventive treatment. Whether it be for foot care or for amputation later on, similar monetary expenses will occur, but the latter may be for another disease later on in the newly extended life.

So Mr. Krugman's rationale for berating the health care system's current choice of ministrations paid for may be misplaced and anecdotal.

What is accomplished for the diabetic, and correctly so, is the wonderful improvement in quality of life that comes with care of the local ravages of the disease.

Robert A. Scher, M.D.
Huntington, N.Y., Jan. 18, 2006
The writer is president, Medical Society of the State of New York.

Leftists are control freaks. Though they preach diversity, they cannot tolerate it; and they do not like decentralized, dispersed, or multiplied authority. If Roe v. Wade is overruled, the issue of abortion will devolve to the states, where it belongs. I view this as desirable. This second-year law student views it as "chaos." One person's federalism is another person's chaos.

I did a spoof of the Democrat presidential candidates two years ago today. See here. A couple of the links have gone bad, but you get the idea.

Here.

Frankalmoigne, n. The tenure by which a religious corporation holds lands on condition of praying for the soul of the donor. In mediæval times many of the wealthiest fraternities obtained their estates in this simple and cheap manner, and once when Henry VIII of England sent an officer to confiscate certain vast possessions which a fraternity of monks held by frankalmoigne, "What!" said the Prior, "would your master stay our benefactor's soul in Purgatory?" "Ay," said the officer, coldly, "an ye will not pray him thence for naught he must e'en roast." "But look you, my son," persisted the good man, "this act hath rank as robbery of God!" "Nay, nay, good father, my master the king doth but deliver Him from the manifold temptations of too great wealth."

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

Here.

Today's New York Times Magazine contains an interview with the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. See here.

The 2008 presidential campaign has begun. See here. I can't believe that anyone can wrest the Democrat nomination from Hillary Clinton. She seems fated to be the party's standard bearer. What's interesting is that she is despised by the America-hating, pacifistic Left. See here. Will the Left come around? We'll see. It may prefer being "right" or "pure" to having power. I think many leftists (such as Brian Leiter) are afraid of power, since power brings responsibility. They would rather taunt and jeer from the sidelines than do the hard, serious, grown-up work of governing.

1-21-86 Tuesday. I’ve now attended both of my seminars. Yesterday I met with Henning Jensen in the ethics seminar and today I met with Alvin Goldman in the epistemology seminar. Both seminars promise to be fun and interesting. Henning, as I may have reported elsewhere in these pages, looks for all the world like a European aristocrat. [He was born in Denmark.] He has lean features, protruding cheekbones, a full head of white, wavy hair, and always wears elegant clothing. When I first saw him, in August 1983, I was intimidated. I thought that he would be terribly stuck up. How wrong I was! Henning is the nicest, politest, most down-to-earth person you’ll ever meet. We’ll be discussing consequentialism in his seminar this semester, and I expect to learn a lot. [I remember very little about this seminar. Ironically, the topic of consequentialism is now one of my favorites. Perhaps I wasn’t ready for it, intellectually. I remember wondering why anyone thought Samuel Scheffler’s book The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) was any good. Now I view it as a classic. Henning, by the way, will be 80 years old in a couple of months, which means he was almost 60 when I took his seminar. He retired from The University of Arizona in 1991.]

This is my third course, but first seminar, with Alvin Goldman. I feel that I know him fairly well, although on a superficial level. [Isn’t that contradictory?] In any event, we’ll be working on Alvin’s favorite subject in the seminar: epistemics. This, as Alvin defines it, is “interdisciplinary epistemology.” The first part of the course will explore primary and secondary epistemics, or the study of individual cognitive states and processes, while the second part of the course will focus on tertiary epistemics, or the study of social processes. We’ll even be discussing some legal issues in there. That’s nice. Maybe I’ll write a [term] paper on some legal subject, if only to keep my interest up. [My term paper was published as “An Epistemic Approach to Legal Relevance,” St. Mary’s Law Journal 18 (1986): 463-80. I thanked Alvin on the first page. Alvin later cited my essay in The Journal of Philosophy, which, needless to say, flattered me.] By the way, David Cortner is in the seminar, so we should have an interesting time talking epistemology this semester.

Does anyone read the book reviews on Amazon.com? I don't. People use them to make personal attacks. See here for the sad story of Kate O'Beirne, who is the author of a new book that is critical of feminism. She is being vilified by "reviewers" on Amazon.com.

As you may have surmised, I love this blog. I would write in it even if I had no readers. Luckily for me, I have more than a thousand readers a day, according to Web-Stat.com. This also gives me a sense of responsibility. Think about what that means. I must be responsive to (1) the facts (for I will be called to account for any error I make), (2) logical consistency (an inconsistent set of beliefs must contain at least one falsehood), and (3) you. Without readers, a writer such as me would be, well, Paul Krugman! Speaking of whom, has anybody heard a peep from him? The New York Times has so insulated him from his critics that he may as well not exist. (Hmm. If a leftist falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does he or she make a sound?)

The constant resort to the rhetoric of objectivity and realism in debating moral issues has been cited as evidence for moral realism. This mistakes rhetoric for reality. It is the equivalent of treating as evidence for the existence of God the fact that believers talk about God as existing. We dress up our preferences and intuitions in universalistic language to give a patina of objectivity to a subjective belief or emotion.

(Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999], 20-1 [footnote omitted])

Longtime reader Will Nehs of Wisconsin sent some images (and gave me permission to post them). Here is the view from his house this morning (click to enlarge):

Here is the intrepid Riley in front of an Aldo Leopold bench that Will made:

Here is Riley on the porch of the house in warmer weather:

Here is the house:

I hate you, Will.

Leftists are so overcome with hatred for President Bush that they've lost sight of what it means to lie. Suppose the forecast for today is sunshine, but instead it rains. Leftists would shout at the meteorologist, "You lied!" Or even: "You lied; people got wet."

To the Editor:

Osama bin Laden has released another tape ("Bin Laden Warns of Attacks in U.S. but Offers Truce," front page, Jan. 20).

After more than 3,000 people died on 9/11, President Bush vowed to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." More than four years later, he is still making tapes.

Saddam Hussein is in jail, but there is no evidence that he had anything to do with 9/11 or that he had any weapons of mass destruction.

More than 2,200 American troops have died in the war in Iraq.

What is wrong with this picture?

Why didn't the Bush administration capture Osama bin Laden before starting a war with Iraq?

Jerry T. Johnson
Bloomington, Minn., Jan. 20, 2006

Here.

Accord, n. Harmony.

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

This has got to be the stupidest editorial opinion I've ever read.

Lawrence H. Summers should be ashamed of himself for caving in to the anti-science zealots on Harvard's campus. He said nothing objectionable. See here for a defense of the view that "innate sex differences . . . partially account for women's low levels of representation in certain scientific fields."

Addendum: Here, in case you didn't read it at the time, is the transcript of Summers's remarks. That anyone would be outraged by it shows the extent to which people are in the grip of feminist ideology.

Somebody needs to say it, so I will. The Republican Party is the masculine party and the Democrat Party is the feminine party. “Masculine” doesn’t mean male, although it’s correlated with maleness; there can be, and are, mannish females. Nor does “feminine” mean female, although it’s correlated with femaleness; there can be, and are, womanish males. Masculinity and femininity are ways of being, thinking, and feeling. Republicans think and feel like men. Democrats think and feel like women. Republican policies are manly. Democrat policies are womanly. This is not to disparage either party, only to describe their difference.

In 1982, Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan published In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1982). She found that there are two moral “voices”: the masculine and the feminine. The masculine voice speaks in terms of rules, rights, and justice. It emphasizes separation, independence, and self-sufficiency. The feminine voice speaks in terms of roles, responsibilities, and care. It emphasizes connection, interdependence, and community. Gilligan never said that every male speaks in the masculine voice or that every female speaks in the feminine voice, but those are the tendencies. Perhaps everyone speaks in both voices to some extent, with only the proportions differing. In other words, it’s a spectrum, with extremely masculine on one end and extremely feminine on the other. Men cluster at the masculine end, women at the feminine end.

The positions of the Democrat Party are, by and large, feminine positions. It wants cradle-to-grave insurance against all of life’s contingencies and misfortunes. It abhors violence. It wants to reform, not punish, criminals. It wants to moderate, regulate, and control competition in the marketplace. It believes that talking is the best means to resolving conflicts. It believes that money is the solution to every social problem, and therefore that big government, which collects and distributes the money, is best. It believes that children who act up need more love, not punishment.

The positions of the Republican Party are, by and large, masculine positions. It believes in property rights, individual liberty, and personal responsibility. It believes that people are inherently evil and must be given a self-interested reason to conform to the law. It wants to punish criminals, not reform them. It wants a strong national defense to protect Americans against evildoers in other countries. It believes that prosperity is a function of initiative, hard work, and moral character, not government intervention. It believes that children should be disciplined when they break rules.

This hypothesis about the parties explains why academia is overwhelmingly leftist. Academia is a nonconfrontational, safe, secure, communal setting—unlike, say, law, commerce, or the military, which are comparatively ruthless. It attracts feminine thinkers. It’s not that academia causes professors and students to be leftists; it’s that feminine thinkers—male and female—are attracted to both leftism and academia. Masculine thinkers are drawn to commerce and other fields, where risks and rewards are great and competition stiff.

I’ve been in academia since 1975, when I began my undergraduate studies at The University of Michigan-Flint. Take my word for it: The overwhelming majority of male professors are effeminate. It’s laughable to think that they could have succeeded in any other setting, especially one that requires initiative, competitiveness, strategic sensibility, or physical strength. Some could have, undoubtedly, but the vast majority could not. These latter are honorary women in a distinctly feminine environment.

20 January 2006, 8:39 P.M. Alan: You're the only person I know who'll enjoy this. When was the word "consequentialism" first used? Michael Slote says in his Becker & Becker entry that it was (probably) first used by Anscombe in her 1958 essay ["Modern Moral Philosophy"]. I think she used it in print before that. I'm compiling an annotated bibliography of R. M. Hare. (See here.) On 14 February 1957, Anscombe's BBC talk entitled "Does Oxford Moral Philosophy Corrupt Youth?" was printed in The Listener. A week later, Hare replied in a letter. On 28 March, both Anscombe and Hare published letters. Hare says in his letter that Anscombe hasn't defined "consequentialism." I scoured both Anscombe's talk and her letter; she doesn't use the term. I infer that I'm missing an Anscombe letter, between 21 February and 28 March. If I'm right, then Anscombe used the word "consequentialism" in print in 1957, a year before her famous 1958 essay. I wish I could examine these issues of The Listener, but I've been acquiring items through interlibrary loan. I can't very well ask someone to "look for letters by Anscombe in the following issues." Anyway, it's a testable hypothesis. I hope one day to test it. Are you back in New Orleans? kbj

I do not in the least wish to deny that moral judgements are sometimes used non-evaluatively, in my sense. All I wish to assert is that they are sometimes used evaluatively, and that it is this use which gives them the special characteristics to which I have drawn attention; and that, if it were not for this use, it would be impossible to give a meaning to the other uses; and also that, if it were not for the logical difficulties connected with the evaluative use, the other uses could be analysed naturalistically. Ethics, as a special branch of logic, owes its existence to the function of moral judgements as a guide in answering questions of the form 'What shall I do?'

(R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952], 172)

My law-school buddy, Stephen Xavier Munger, is 50 years old today. Happy birthday, old man! It seems like just yesterday that we started law school. I sat near the front in the middle row; Steve sat behind me. We became friends eventually and helped each other during our years in law school. When my car wouldn't start, Steve would pick me up. When Steve's wouldn't start, I would pick him up. When one of us was broke, the other would lend him money. We studied together for exams, although, truth be told, we usually ended up arguing about philosophical matters instead of going over our outlines. (I won all the arguments.) Neither Steve nor I wanted to stay in cold-weather Michigan. I went off to Arizona to study philosophy in August 1983. Steve moved to Atlanta a couple of years later to practice labor law. Steve has been running since his teens. I started running at the age of 39. Steve's body is worn out. Mine is young and firm. I guarantee that I can whip his ass, especially now that he's a senior citizen.

I find it hard to believe, but it's been 25 years to the day since Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president. I was 23 years old and had just started my fourth semester of law school at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. The following day, I would begin a clerkship for a local law firm (Kutinsky, Davey, and Solomon, P.C.). I used to joke that Ronald Reagan and I began working on the same day. Here is what I wrote in my journal on 20 January 1981:

Ronald Reagan was inaugurated this noon as the 40th president of the United States. Jimmy Carter has flown back to Plains, Georgia, for retirement (presumably). But the big news of the day is that the hostages have been released from Iran. I don't know all the details, but at last I knew they had exited Iranian airspace and were en route to Algeria. It is too bad that this, Ronald Reagan's biggest day, was overshadowed by this hostage situation. But the Carter administration put on a mighty effort the past month or so to get them out. It appeared to be Carter's last-gasp attempt to save face historically.

I was ambivalent about Reagan at the time. I liked his fiscal conservatism, since I was a libertarian, but I despised his religiosity and his social conservatism. Little did I know that I'd be a conservative a quarter of a century later. Better late than never.

Addendum: Here is Reagan's first inaugural address.

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Here.

To the Editor:

Since Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have continued to play the fear card to their political advantage. They have become fearmongers—big time.

They have made Americans less safe by turning Iraq into a magnet, where anti-American recruits from all over the Middle East can go to kill Americans. Now, they believe that fear-obsessed citizens will buy into their belief that they should be allowed to break the law by wiretapping ordinary Americans without warrants.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney preach freedom at the same time that they are limiting our freedoms. They took us to war under false pretenses; why should we trust what they say and do?

Paul L. Whiteley Sr.
Louisville, Ky., Jan. 18, 2006

Emancipation, n. A bondman's change from the tyranny of another to the despotism of himself.

He was a slave: at word he went and came;
His iron collar cut him to the bone.
Then Liberty erased his owner's name,
Tightened the rivets and inscribed his own.
G.J.

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

I’m reading Zell Miller’s book A Deficit of Decency (Macon, GA: Stroud & Hall Publishers, 2005). Miller, as you may recall, is the lifelong Democrat (from Georgia) who gave the keynote address at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Afterward, he got into a spat with Chris Matthews while appearing on Hardball. Matthews hammered away at Miller’s claim that John Kerry would protect the American people with “spitballs.” Finally, exasperated by Matthews’s obstinacy, Miller said, with obvious disgust, that it’s too bad dueling is no longer allowed.

The reaction to Miller’s speech was swift and furious, at least among Democrats. They dismissed Miller as “angry,” “hateful,” and “deluded.” Even today, Miller is mocked on such programs as Saturday Night Live, where one of the actors, playing Miller, screams until his face turns red. (See here for clips.) Other people, including me, thought the speech was magnificent. I wrote of Miller: “I love this man.” He became my hero that evening. He’s a loyal, courageous, patriotic American. That he loves baseball and dogs is a bonus.

I wasn’t aware of the breadth and depth of anger toward Miller until I read the quotations in his book. Journalists, politicians, and pundits from all over the country lambasted him. Why? I think it’s because they knew, deep down, that he was speaking the truth. John Kerry had indeed been working meticulously to cultivate an image as a hawk. Miller showed that Kerry had voted against every major weapons program. That’s what led to the “spitball” comment. Another factor is that Miller is a turncoat. Nobody likes a turncoat. Even today, the name “Benedict Arnold” is uttered with disdain. Miller knew the Democrat Party inside out, and he was turning away from it in a very public way. Actually, that’s not correct. Miller insists that he hasn’t changed at all. The party turned away from him and other patriotic Americans. The Democrat Party has become the party of wimps, wafflers, and whiners.

Miller’s speech signaled the end of the road for John Kerry. The mainstream media had been giving him favorable coverage throughout the campaign, hoping that he would defeat President Bush. That’s why Chris Matthews played the advocate rather than the journalist that evening. He was as outraged as any Democrat by Miller’s speech. I’m glad Miller stood up to him. Matthews is a punk and a bully. Miller is an American hero. Long live Zell Miller!

Addendum: Just for the heck of it, I typed “Brian Leiter Zell Miller” into Google. I wanted to see whether Leiter had written about Miller. Sure enough, he has. See here. I can’t stop laughing. Leiter thinks Miller is a lunatic. Leiter is the lunatic’s lunatic. Leiter also thinks Miller’s speech hurt the Republicans. Ha! It destroyed John Kerry, almost single-handedly. Leiter’s analyses of American politics are as ill-considered and ridiculous as his philosophical analyses. The man is as nutty as a fruitcake.

Addendum 2: Here is my reaction to Zell Miller's keynote address.

Brian Leiter has all the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. See here.

Here.

To sum up, [G. E.] Moore and [W. D.] Ross said duty was objective. To know whether a man had done his duty or done what he ought, one need know only the facts about the situation and the actual consequences of his action. One need know nothing at all about his beliefs and motives. I have argued, following [H. A.] Prichard (on factual beliefs), [E. F.] Carritt (on moral beliefs), and my own nose (on motives), that in order to know whether a man has done his duty one must know:

(a) his beliefs about the situation (not the facts about it)

(b) his beliefs about the consequences of his action (not the actual consequences)

(c) his moral beliefs

(d) his motive

(e) what he set himself to do (not what he actually achieved).

(J. D. Mabbott, An Introduction to Ethics [Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969], 61 [first published in 1966])

Bad news for feminists and other leftists: Men and women differ. See here. Of course, anyone with any common sense knew that. Only the ideologues didn't.

Oyster, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.

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

Here.

To the Editor:

"The Imperial Presidency at Work" (editorial, Jan. 15) underlines the abuses of power by this president and his collaborators. He has made a colossal mess. The administration is hopelessly mired in its own egregious shortcomings: forcing an unnecessary war, violating our privacy, parsing the definition of torture, squandering our budget surplus, defiling our reputation in the world and wrapping itself in the flag to cover its mendacity.

We have been frightened into giving up our wealth, our liberties and our children's very lives for "security."

If this is still to be a republic of the people, by the people and for the people, we must reclaim it. We must turn away from this cesspool of mistakes, corruption and scandal so we can once again take pride in our nation as a place that honors liberty, diversity, privacy, free speech, respect for the less fortunate and, above all, esteem for the truth.

John H. Sucke
Houston, Jan. 18, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Mr Sucke has a short memory. Just 14 months ago, we the people reelected George W. Bush.

Here.

As you probably know, high-school football is important in Texas. (That's an understatement.) The other day, The Dallas Morning News ran a story—it had the feel of an exposé—that showed that high-school football coaches have significantly greater incomes than high-school teachers. Well! This elicited both defenses of the "disparity" and attacks on it. But why should anyone expect coaches and teachers to earn the same salary? These are different tasks that call for different skills. There are different markets for coaches and teachers, just as there are different markets for administrators and teachers. Does anyone think that a school district would overpay a coach, just for the sake of overpaying? Coaches get what the market will bear and no more. Good coaches are scarce relative to demand. Good teachers are plentiful relative to demand. Because of this, good coaches can command a high salary. Good teachers cannot. Where's the story? What's the problem?

My conservative friends hate me for it, but I’ve tried to like Hillary Clinton. I really have. Whenever she takes a stand in favor of strong national defense, I want to support her, even vote for her. But then she takes a leftist flier. What is going on with this woman? In some respects she is conservative; in some respects she is moderate; in some respects she is a true-believing leftist. I saw part of her “plantation” speech yesterday on television. Only a leftist could have come away from it with any fondness for her. She was shrill, angry, intemperate, and scary. Her voice was piercing; she wagged her finger as if to scold those who disagree with her; she played to the emotions of the crowd. Perhaps I judge her differently because she’s a woman. I’m probably not the best judge of that. I do know that when I see Al Gore or Howard Dean giving similar speeches, I think the same thoughts.

If Hillary is trying to be all things to all people, she is going to fail. She’s going to have the Left no matter what, so if she has any hope of being elected president, she must move to the right. She must moderate not only her views, but her manner. Speeches such as the one she gave yesterday will not be forgotten by moderates or rightists. That speech reminded us that she cannot be trusted to represent all Americans. I thought of a good word for her today while running: “harpy.” Here is the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed.:

harpy

1. Gr. and Lat. Mythol. A fabulous monster, rapacious and filthy, having a woman’s face and body and a bird’s wings and claws, and supposed to act as a minister of divine vengeance.

b. A conventional representation or figure of a harpy, as in Heraldry.

2. transf. and fig. A rapacious, plundering, or grasping person; one that preys upon others.

3. The harpy-eagle.

4. The moor-buzzard, Circus æruginosus.

5. The harpy-bat, q.v.

6. attrib. and Comb., as harpy advocate, breed, fury, grin, lawyer, pettifogger, race, raven; harpy-footed, harpy-like adjs.; harpy-monument, a monument found at Xanthus in Lycia, on which are figures resembling harpies.

Hence harpyian (erron. harpeian, harpyan) a., belonging to or characteristic of a harpy.

Henceforth, it’s “Hillary the Harpy” in this blog.

The taboo on human nature has not just put blinkers on researchers but turned any discussion of it into a heresy that must be stamped out. Many writers are so desperate to discredit any suggestion of an innate human constitution that they have thrown logic and civility out the window. Elementary distinctions—"some" versus "all," "probable" versus "always," "is" versus "ought"—are eagerly flouted to paint human nature as an extremist doctrine and thereby steer readers away from it. The analysis of ideas is commonly replaced by political smears and personal attacks. This poisoning of the intellectual atmosphere has left us unequipped to analyze pressing issues about human nature just as new scientific discoveries are making them acute.

(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature [New York: Viking, 2002], x)

Here.

To the Editor:

Re "Wider Fight Seen as Alito Victory Appears Secured" (front page, Jan. 14):

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s sheer intelligence and deeply respectful manner made for a powerful presence at his confirmation hearings. He refused to be drawn into emotional confrontations. He was concise and unerringly polite, his detractors shrill and a little panicky in comparison.

If I were senior management in the Democratic Party, I would be worried about how the hard-ball approach played with the wider audience.

Margaret McGirr
Greenwich, Conn., Jan. 14, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: In the New York Times story to which I linked, David Kirkpatrick makes a mistake. He says that Senator Kent Conrad (of North Dakota) is one of the signatories to the Memorandum of Understanding. He is not. The seven Republican signatories are John McCain, Lindsey Graham, John Warner, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Mike DeWine, and Lincoln Chafee. The seven Democrat signatories are Joe Lieberman, Robert Byrd, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Daniel Inouye, Mark Pryor, and Ken Salazar. I wrote to the Times the other day, but I have yet to see a correction. Maybe the Times can't be bothered to get facts right.

Did Ted Turner say that Christianity is "a religion for losers"? What the hell could that possibly mean? I've been laughing about it all day.

Here.

Here.

Indifferent, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.

"You tiresome man!" cried Indolentio's wife,
"You've grown indifferent to all in life."
"Indifferent?" he drawled with a slow smile;
"I would be, dear, but it is not worth while."
Apuleius M. Gokul.

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

A couple of readers misunderstood my post on tenure, so I must not have expressed myself clearly. Let me try again. Different people want different things. Some people want to make as much money as possible and are willing to give up things like security and autonomy to get it. They take jobs on an at-will basis, which means they can be fired or released at any time. They take jobs that are dirty, dangerous, or require lots of travel. Other people, such as me, want security, autonomy, and stability. When I was a young man, I looked around at what was available and decided I wanted the package that contained security and autonomy. I decided to forgo a career as a practicing lawyer to be a professor. I didn’t know for sure that I’d be tenured, but I was confident that I would be and determined to work hard to make it happen.

If universities want good people, they have to pay for them. But what they pay depends on what the good people want. If lots of good people are like me and want security and autonomy, a university will not have to pay them as much—in dollars. They are “paid” with tenure (i.e., job security). It’s a quid pro quo. Each gets what it wants at a price it’s willing to pay. I get the security and autonomy I value; the university gets my services for far less—in terms of money—than it would otherwise have to pay.

Now take away tenure. It throws the system out of whack. People such as me would practice law or go into business instead of teaching and writing. The university loses a lot of good people to commerce, industry, government, and the professions. It ends up with people who can’t get other work. In fact, it ends up with high-school teachers. If that’s what you want, fine. I don’t think it’s what society wants. The system we have is in equilibrium.

Another thing to bear in mind is this. The tenure system keeps turnover to a minimum. Without it, people would be coming and going every year, just as they do in the business world. Look at me, for example. I’ve been at UTA since August 1989, and I expect to be here another 20 years. It’s my home. I’m loyal to it. Would I care about UTA if I were a hired employee, fireable at will? Nope. I’d do my job and nothing more. I’d be a clock-puncher. Tenure creates loyalty, continuity, identity, stability, and stature. Do we want universities to be run like businesses? Believe me, they wouldn’t be universities if they were. They would be teaching factories.

I’m surprised by the resentment toward tenured professors. If you want tenure, do what it takes to get it, and be prepared to pay a price for it in salary. I’ve made my bargain. It’s a mistake to look at me and say, “He’s got something—job security—that I don’t have, and that’s not fair.” You’re forgetting that I made choices and sacrifices that you didn’t make! Imagine taking a job that requires a great deal of travel, but which you don’t particularly like. You’re well paid for it and view it as a bargain. Now suppose you tire of it and go to your employer to complain. Your employer will say, “Wait a minute; that was our deal. Without the travel, you take a cut in salary” (or else “We have to have someone to travel, so we’ll have to replace you with someone who’s willing to travel”). This is just an application of the dictum that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Figure out what you want; bargain for it. That’s what I did.

By the way, there are two issues here, not just one. One issue is whether my own bargain may be upset. It may not. Even if tenure is abolished, those of us with tenure are safe, for it would have to be prospective only (for legal and moral reasons). To get rid of us, a university would have to buy us out, at a price we’re willing to accept. The other issue is whether tenure is the best system, all things considered. I don’t particularly care about this second issue. If society wants its universities to be run like high schools (or businesses), it’s entitled to have them. Just don’t expect to have both good people and no tenure. One way or another, society pays.

Addendum: Kevin Stroup asks: “Why should anyone be given the position of job-for-life?” Answer: Because I bargained for it. Nobody made UTA offer me tenure. Kevin could just as well have asked: “Why should anyone be paid more than $10,000,000 per year in salary?” Answer: Because he or she bargained for it. Do you not like capitalism, Kevin? If you want tenure, go get it. Just don’t expect to get it without paying a price for it. I was (and am) willing to pay the price. Evidently, you’re not. That’s fine! That’s how capitalism works!

Addendum 2: I thought of an analogy to the tenure system. As many of you know, Alex Rodriguez (“A-Rod”) is the highest-paid player (by far) in Major League Baseball. A few years ago, Tom Hicks of the Texas Rangers contracted to pay him $252,000,000 for 10 years of play. The contract is guaranteed, so if A-Rod suffers a career-ending injury, he receives every penny. This is a common arrangement in Major League Baseball and other sports. Wouldn’t it be silly for someone to complain that A-Rod has job security? A-Rod is so valuable that he can command security. If you want him to play for you, you must pay what he demands. Why should he settle for a series of one-year contracts when he can get a 10-year guaranteed contract? That’s how the market works. Make yourself valuable; then make demands. If you’re as good as you think you are, your demands will be met. Tenure is simply the way universities attract talent. They know that professors value security and autonomy as well as money, so they offer a package that contains all three. I’m sure A-Rod could have commanded far more money if he chose one-year contracts. Perhaps he would have to be paid $30,000,000 per year instead of $25,200,000 per year without the 10-year guarantee. Do you see the point? Don’t begrudge people for striking bargains. Get out and strike your own bargain!

Addendum 3: My friend Joe makes a good point in the comments. Tenure can, and sometimes does, produce laziness and irresponsibility. But that’s the cost of it, as far as the university is concerned. To get tenure, you must demonstrate over a six-year period (typically) that you are a productive scholar and a conscientious and effective teacher. But there’s no guarantee that you’ll continue to be productive and conscientious after you’re tenured. Most people stay productive and conscientious; some (a distinct minority, I think) do not. By the way, the same problem exists in any long-term contractual arrangement. Athletes who sign multiyear contracts have been known to slack off. Ownership is aware of this and takes it into account in making offers. People who are attentive and loving during courtship have been known to slack off after marrying. Should we abolish marriage? Incidentally, Joe, Raytheon is lucky to have loyal and hard-working employees such as you.

1-17-86 . . . The most embarrassing thing happened today. I’m supposed to teach in the Economics Building on Mondays and Wednesdays, and in the Social Sciences Building on Fridays. Today is Friday, the first day of class, but for some reason I thought that it was Monday—a natural day on which to begin a semester, right? So I went to the Economics Building and found only two students. We waited for about twenty minutes for others to show up, and finally parted. I went over my syllabus briefly and answered a few questions. When I got to the Philosophy Department office, Ann Hickman and Lois Day asked where I had been. I said that I had been to my class but that only two students bothered to show up. They then gave me the bad news: I was in the wrong place. My students were upstairs, in the Social Sciences Building. My heart sank. I rushed upstairs, but only one person was there. He said that everyone had waited and then left. What an embarrassing incident! What am I going to say to my students Monday when I show up to teach?

Here is an insightful essay about Noam Chomsky. The key paragraphs are as follows:

Research on the psychology of radical activists helps us to understand this mismatch between Chomsky's ideas and his personal style. In the 1970s, Stanley Rothman and Robert Lichter administered Thematic Apperception Tests to a large sample of "new left" radicals (Roots of Radicalism, 1982). They found that activists were characterized by weakened self-esteem, injured narcissism and paranoid tendencies. They were preoccupied with power and attracted to radical ideologies that offered clear and unambiguous answers to their questions. All of these traits can be found in the work of Chomsky and other anti-imperialist intellectuals.

Leftist activists are prone to believe that their own thinking is rational and objective, while that of their opponents is distorted and biased. This is clearly true of Chomsky. He write[s] long historical and analytical tomes, full of facts [and] figures. He speaks softly and maintains a veneer of scholarly objectivity. Yet no one can miss the bitter anger just beneath the surface. As Larissa MacFarquhar observes in her brilliant essay on Chomsky, he "chooses to believe that his debates consist only of facts and arguments, and that audiences evaluate these with the detachment of a computer. In his political work, he even makes the silly claim that he is presenting only facts—that he subscribes to no general theories of any sort. His theories, of course, are in his tone—in the sarcasm that implies 'this is only to be expected, given the way things are.'" ("The Devil's Accountant," The New Yorker, March 31, 2003)

One of the most common critiques of leftist intellectuals, especially Karl Marx and his followers, is that they claim to be objective, scientific observers, although their work oozes anger. They also studiously avoid offering alternatives to the policies they are criticizing, expending all their energy on attacking the enemies they blame for all the world's problems.

When I read this, I think of Brian Leiter, the angry little man in Austin. He is paranoid, dogmatic, deluded, and obsessed with power, like his idol, Chomsky. Note that neither of them argues for anything in the conventional sense. What's the point of arguing when you're right (obviously) and everyone who disagrees with you is a "moron," a "villain," or "depraved"? Query: Has Leiter consciously emulated Chomsky, perhaps as a way of drawing attention to himself, or was he drawn to Chomsky because he felt an affinity for the old man's paranoia and anger?

Must, v.aux. 1. Be obliged to. 2. Would, if you loved me.

To the Editor:

You write that "no one has yet come up with any very good ways of deflecting Iran from its nuclear course." But it is obvious that Iran seeks a bomb principally to counter the barely concealed ambition of Bush administration hard-liners to force "regime change" there.

After seeing what has happened in Iraq, and listening to the "axis of evil" rhetoric, any patriotic Iranian military leader must be advising his government that only a bomb will deter the United States.

As long as we refuse to deal with this paramount reality, efforts to deflect Iran cannot succeed. The only way to slow or stop this momentum is for the United States to conclude a convincing nonaggression treaty with Iran, finally accepting Iranians' ability to determine their own destiny.

William S. Kessler
Seattle, Jan. 13, 2006

Here.

Although not a right-wing monopoly, the literature of national decline does have a right-wing bias. Conventional conservatives, as distinct from libertarians, use the past as the benchmark for judging the present, while liberals tend to be utopian and thus to compare the present against an imagined future. . . . The liberal paints a roseate future, the conservative a roseate past, and both a dismal present, so that the curve is downward for the conservative but potentially upward for the liberal.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 284)

Grape, n.

Hail noble fruit!—by Homer sung,
Anacreon and Khayyam;
Thy praise is ever on the tongue
Of better men than I am.

The lyre my hand has never swept,
The song I cannot offer:
My humbler service pray accept—
I'll help to kill the scoffer.

The water-drinkers and the cranks
Who load their skins with liquor—
I'll gladly bare their belly-tanks
And tap them with my sticker.

Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools
When e'er we let the wine rest.
Here's death to Prohibition's fools,
And every kind of vine-pest!
Jamrach Holobom.

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

Here.

Judge Richard Posner has some reflections on tenure here. To my mind, he misses the most important argument for tenure: Without it, nobody would go into academia. We professors get paid in security and autonomy, not in dollars. Take away the security and either people stay away or you must pay them significantly more. Take me, for example. I could be earning ten times my professorial salary by practicing law. (I'd now be in my 23d year of practice.) I prefer security and autonomy to money.

Here are some of my favorite bloggers (in no particular order):

Dr John J. Ray (Dissecting Leftism)
Steve Rugg (JusTalkin)
Peg Kaplan (what if?)
Jeff Percifield (Beautiful Atrocities)
Ally Eskin (Who Moved My Truth?)
Dr Bill Keezer (Bill's Comments)
Dr Bill Vallicella (Maverick Philosopher)
Michelle Malkin (Michelle Malkin)
Donald L. Luskin (The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid)
Norm Weatherby (Quantum Thought)
Kim du Toit (The Other Side)
Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit)

If you think I'm missing a good blogger, let me know.

Cosmopolitans point to the ubiquity of cultural change in support of their openness to cultural innovation and their hostility to ideals of cultural purity. As we have seen, this often creates the impression that cosmopolitanism is insensitive to the claims of tradition. Yet to insist that cultures are always in flux is not to deny the very existence of distinct cultural traditions, and to oppose the idea of cultural purity is not to deny that allegiance to a particular cultural tradition can ever make sense. In fact, a proper appreciation of the ubiquity of cultural change should make it easier to see that genuine allegiance to a tradition can never be just a matter of blind adherence to past practices, but must always involve decisions about how earlier values and practices can best be applied in novel circumstances and about the form in which those values and practices can be extended and projected into an uncertain future. By highlighting these facts, cosmopolitan insights about the ubiquity of cultural change should promote sympathy for a certain kind of traditionalist project. The sort of project I have in mind would be concerned not with the purity of a cultural tradition but with its integrity. More specifically, it would be concerned with the question of how the integrity of a tradition can be maintained, and what would count as maintaining it, given the inevitability of cultural change, and given the mutual influence that diverse cultures are bound to exert on each other in an ever more densely interconnected world.

Those whose traditionalism takes this form will think it important to identify and perpetuate the values and practices on whose continuity the integrity of their tradition rests. At the same time, however, they will be prepared to reconceive those elements of the tradition that are no longer credible as they stand but which admit of illuminating reinterpretation; to abandon elements of the tradition that have come to seem unacceptable and which resist reinterpretation; and to promote the intelligent selection and incorporation into the tradition of new ideas and practices whose inspiration may be drawn from external sources, but which can be embraced without doing violence to the integrity of the tradition, and can instead serve to enrich it. This is, if you like, traditionalism with a cosmopolitan inflection. It affords a model of traditional engagement that incorporates the central insight of cosmopolitanism about culture, and, to the extent that it is viable, it suggests that the repertoire of cosmopolitan responses to the claims of tradition can extend beyond mere toleration.

(Samuel Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], 128-9)

It's been a mild winter in North Texas. Not only has the temperature been higher than normal; it's been dry. There has been no rain in almost a month. Wildfires have been burning throughout the region. I'm sure lakes are low. A minute ago, I read my journal of 24 years ago. I was in law school in Detroit at the time. I wrote that the temperature was -10º Fahrenheit. The wind-chill factor was -60º. So what did I do? I went for a two-mile walk in the howling wind! I wrote that it was invigorating to be outside in such frigid air. During my walk, I helped extricate a vehicle from a snowbank. Having lived in Arizona and Texas for more than 22 years (since August 1983), I can no longer stand the cold. Thirty degrees is about all I can take, even bundled up against it. Right now, an hour and a half past sunset, it's 63º. When I got back from my 4.3-mile run earlier in the day, it was 71º. Too hot! We're supposed to get a cold front before morning, which is good. I want to use my fireplace. Speaking of winter, I've had a relaxing 30-day break. Spring courses begin in the morning. I'm teaching two sections of Ethics and one section of Philosophy of Law this semester, having taught Logic and Social and Political Philosophy in the fall. I'm looking forward to teaching my students right from wrong.

I just discovered this blog while visiting Michelle Malkin's site. By the way, The New York Times has been caught staging a photograph to turn people against the war in Iraq. See here. Is there anything the Left won't do to make President Bush look bad?

Here.

See here.

Martyr, n. One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.

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

Here.

To the Editor:

Your series of articles about the diabetes epidemic makes frequent note of the overwhelming connection between obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

Many appear to fear that a serious look at our overfat nation will lead to legislative limits on food choice. So great is our worry that we do nothing when there are a host of steps to try.

We can insist that our schools introduce nutrition education early. We can agitate for the return of gym class to school schedules. We can establish a nationwide program to encourage physical fitness, as we did during the Kennedy years.

Physician educators can ensure that medical schools provide nutrition training for new doctors.

Together, we can pressure insurance providers to provide incentives for healthy behaviors and to cover preventive services. We can ban food advertising to children. We can do all of this, but only if we can first admit that the profligate food culture we love is actually killing us.

Barbara Berkeley, M.D.
South Russell, Ohio, Jan. 11, 2006

See here.

Everyone has heroes. Martin Luther King Jr is one of mine. He was born on this date in 1929, which would make him 77 years old. By all rights, he should be alive and well. See here for photographs. See here for King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." If this letter doesn't move you to tears, you aren't wired properly. I get choked up every spring when I read it aloud to my Ethics students.

No recent scientist has done more for mankind than Louis Pasteur. Yet even in his work it is the fire of truth which in the end impresses us, and we may recall that no scene in his life reveals greater joy in achievement than his early discovery of the dissymmetry of tartaric crystals, the one discovery of his life which had no practical end to serve. No doubt the traditional Cambridge toast, 'Here's to Pure Mathematics! May she never be of any use to anybody', goes too far, but it enshrines sufficiently clearly the truth that the primary aim of the thinker is not to do good to his fellow-men.

(J. D. Mabbott, The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 2d ed. [London: Hutchinson University Library, 1967 (1st ed. 1948)], 72)

Here is your Sunday evening reading.

Here.

Ribroaster, n. Censorious language by oneself concerning another. The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious writers of the fifteenth century—commonly, indeed, regarded as the founder of the Fastidiotic School.

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

To the Editor:

Re "Waging a War We Could Be Proud Of," by Nicholas D. Kristof (column, Jan. 10):

There is nothing I support more than the elimination of extreme poverty. And there is nothing I support less than a hypothetical United States-led Global War on Poverty, given the incompetence of our current administration. Hasn't the war on Iraq taught us that "humanitarian intervention" is a cheap pretense for occupying geopolitically significant countries with large oil reserves?

I propose that we spend an exponentially greater percentage of our national income on overseas development assistance and other relief efforts, contingent on nonpartisan organizations such as Unicef or Oxfam having oversight of the expenditures because they believe in accountability—a concept seemingly foreign to our president. It would also help if we put an additional "poverty relief" tax on the richest, but that seems too wishful given the Bush administration's penchant for giving huge tax breaks to those who need them least.

Deena Guzder
Washington, Jan. 11, 2006

I received a nice letter from a law professor this evening. See here.

Here is Tom Graffagnino's latest poem.

Here.

President Bush's greatest legacy will be a law-abiding federal judiciary. Since the 1960s, the United States Supreme Court has been out of control, reading its values into the Constitution, ignoring the intentions of the framers, disregarding the balance of power, trampling on states' rights, disrespecting American traditions, and allowing Congress to get away with murder. Ours is a limited government, not a Nanny State. The Court should strike down every statute that is not clearly within the scope of Congress's power. If the Court would enforce the Constitution as written, it would force Congress and state legislatures to be responsible. Lawmakers have been evading difficult issues by throwing them into the courts. See here for a New York Times story about President Bush's legacy. I hope President Bush gets at least two more Supreme Court appointments. Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are due to retire. By the time President Bush leaves office three years from now, Stevens will be almost 89 years old and Ginsburg almost 76.

Addendum: Here is the best part of the Times story:

"George Bush won the election," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat. "If you don't like it, you better win elections."

There's the rub. The American people don't trust Democrats to govern. See here for a taste of Democrat wit, wisdom, and intelligence. Do you want people like this running your government? Would you feel comfortable entrusting your children and grandchildren to them?

Addendum 2: Read these comments. Some of the commenters think Judge Alito's wife was merely pretending to cry. And look at the viciousness of the comments. Then again, why should we be surprised? Brian Leiter is a highly educated man, but he's just as vicious, if not more so. What is it with leftists and incivility? Why do they act like petulant children?

Michelle Malkin has a roundup of news and stories on Iran, which is becoming Threat Number One to world peace. Thank goodness we have a president who understands that there are evil people in the world and that the only way to stop them is to kill them. These are evildoers, my friends. They want to kill you and your family. The Left mocked President Bush for using that expression (as well as "axis of evil"), but is it not appropriate? Let's see how long it takes for Noam Chomsky and his ilk to blame the United States or Israel for Iran's evil designs. What do they propose? Talking?

R. M. Hare (1919-2002) is one of my favorite philosophers. Read this and you'll see why.

Here.

Joe Gelman has a new blog. It looks terrific. I will add it to the blogroll.

Precisely what does it mean for someone to be a “liberal” as opposed to a “conservative”? I am reminded of the late Justice Potter Stewart’s despair of defining “pornography.” “I know it,” he famously remarked, “when I see it.” After a number of failed attempts, I similarly despair of defining the terms “liberal” and “conservative.” In one sense of the term, I know a “liberal” when I see one. Teddy Kennedy is a liberal. So is Mario Cuomo. Their “liberalism” is opposed to the “conservatism” of, say, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan. “Liberals,” in this sense of the term, defend large-scale government-run health, education, and welfare programs. They support redistributive taxation policies. They favor affirmative action programs for women and minorities and call for the revision of civil rights laws to prohibit discrimination based on “sexual orientation.” They may support the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex relationships. They certainly support legalized abortion and the government funding of abortions for indigent women. They oppose the death penalty.

There is, however, another sense of the term “liberal.” In this sense, a “liberal” is someone who believes in religious freedom, political equality, constitutional democracy, the rule of law, limited government, private property, the market economy, and human rights. This is the “liberalism” of the American Founding and of the Constitution of the United States. For convenience, let me refer to this type of liberalism as “old-fashioned liberalism” and the liberalism of Kennedy and Cuomo as “contemporary liberalism.” Of course, a contemporary liberal may also be an old-fashioned liberal. But, it is worth contrasting these two senses of liberalism because many people who are liberals in the old-fashioned sense reject key elements of the contemporary liberal agenda. Indeed, many people who are today thought of as “conservatives” or “neo-conservatives”—myself included—are old-fashioned liberals.

(Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001], 232)

To the Editor:

Perhaps the Republicans are winning with tactics to divide us into separate camps. Reason is not part of the argument for "the masses"; the tactic is to attract strong passions on issues that will determine votes. The greatest of these is the use of religious divides.

No grays remain in the political arena of 21st-century America: it's black-and-white that wins votes!

Democrats are still appealing to thinking Americans, winning over the vanishing breed of "intellectuals" and losing the people concerned with morals to the party of the corporate world.

What's needed to compete are more great sound bites.

Jan Guardiano
Fort Myers, Fla., Jan. 12, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This letter shows why Democrats are powerless. Indeed, one expression in the letter shows why: "the people concerned with morals." Are Democrats nihilists? Has it come to that? And by the way, Guardiano has it exactly backward. It's leftists who emote. Their little hearts bleed even for mass murderers. In their zeal to do good, they ignore desert, responsibility, fairness, and tradition. It's rightists who do the cogitating.

Here is what effeminate academics such as Brian Leiter don't understand.

Majesty, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America.

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

I’m astounded by people’s ignorance of what tolerance is. In many quarters, the word “tolerant” is used to mean “nonjudgmental” or “open-minded.” To tolerate others, in this use, is to be understanding, sympathetic, nonjudgmental, accepting, and open-minded. But tolerance is none of these things. Indeed, it is incompatible with them. I tolerate you if and only if

1. I believe that you are in the wrong; but
2. I forbear from harming you.

If I didn’t think you were in the wrong, I couldn’t tolerate you! “Tolerate” means put up with, leave alone, or suffer to exist. It has “in spite of” built into it. I can tolerate you in spite of your false beliefs; I can tolerate you in spite of your personal badness; I can tolerate you in spite of your stupidity; I can tolerate you in spite of your immoral conduct. If I didn’t believe any of these things, I wouldn’t be tolerating you. I would be accepting, embracing, or affirming you.

What’s the difference between tolerance and toleration? Tolerance is a personal quality, a disposition to forbear from harming those who are (believed to be) in the wrong. Some people have it and some don’t, and those who have it have it to different degrees. Those who lack the quality are said to be intolerant. Toleration, by contrast, is a practice or principle of tolerating certain actions or beliefs. (Notice that there is no practice or principle of intoleration.) Americans have a practice of religious toleration, for example. We disagree fundamentally about religious matters, and always have, but we tolerate each other. We put up with each other. We agree to disagree. In some parts of the world, there is no religious toleration, i.e., no practice of tolerating those of different religions. Religious toleration is a great (and fragile) achievement of the West. It allows people of different faiths, or no faith at all, to live together in peace. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which derives from the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (drafted by Thomas Jefferson), institutionalizes religious toleration. As an atheist, I benefit every day from religious toleration. Some theists—including some of my friends!—believe that I’m going to burn in hell forever, but they suffer me to exist. Hell, they even socialize with me. What a world.

The next time you hear someone say, “I’m a tolerant person,” you should reply, “So you think those you tolerate are wrong, eh?” Chances are, the person will look at you funny. This shows that he or she misunderstands the concept.

There is now a fifth addendum to my post on free will and determinism. See here.

Are you tired of lobbying? Do you think it obscene that lawmakers get free trips, meals, and other perks? Sign a petition here.

Here.

Here is an excellent column (by Daniel Henninger) about the Alito nomination. Do the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee realize what damage they have done to their party? They came across as petty and childish. Judge Alito, by contrast, seemed serious, mature, and dignified. He will make a wonderful Supreme Court justice. By the way, I predicted that Judge John Roberts would be confirmed by a vote of 77-23. It was 78-22. I predict that Judge Alito will be confirmed by a vote of 68-32. Thirteen of the 45 Democrats, and all 55 Republicans, will vote for him.

To the Editor:

"Judge Alito, in His Own Words" (editorial, Jan. 12) joins other critics in complaining that Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. has tended to favor "big corporations" against "the 'little guy.'"

Could it be possible that in most of the cases Judge Alito heard, the law was on the side of the corporation? Would you really be more comfortable if he had instinctively backed the little guy, no matter what the facts of the case were?

The portrayal of large corporations as evil incarnate and of "little guys" as innocent victims may be sound leftist theology, but I would expect more of a Supreme Court justice.

Frederick Van Veen
Kennebunkport, Me., Jan. 12, 2006

If you had any doubt that the editors of The New York Times will say or do anything to further their leftist agenda, consider this. The Times says the following in today's editorial opinion:

Judge Alito's assertions that he will keep an open mind on Roe are little comfort. With nearly 70 percent of Americans saying in a recent Harris poll that they would oppose Judge Alito's confirmation if they thought he would vote against constitutional protection for abortion rights, he was not likely to say at his hearings that he would do so. Few nominees would be so brave or foolhardy.

This is a blatant misrepresentation of the Harris poll. Here is the poll question:

"If you thought that Judge Alito, if confirmed, would vote to make abortions illegal, would you favor or oppose his confirmation?"

There is no evidence that 70% of the American people oppose overruling Roe v. Wade, for that would merely return the issue to the states, many of which would continue to allow abortions. The Times makes it appear as though there are just two possibilities: (1) abortion is allowed by law everywhere and (2) abortion is prohibited by law everywhere. Perhaps if these were the only two choices (as the poll question makes it seem), 70% of Americans would support the former. But these are not the only two choices. Can you say "dishonest"? Can you say "the end justifies the means"?

Addendum: I'd like to thank Eugene Volokh for linking to this post. If you've never been here before, welcome. Take a look around and, if you like what you see, come back. Let me comment on Eugene's post. For a poll to be meaningful, it would have to list all of the possibilities, since it can't be assumed that respondents know what it means to "overrule Roe v. Wade." Probably many people think that overruling Roe means making abortion illegal at all stages of a pregnancy. There are three possibilities:

1. Abortion is prohibited in every state (a Human Life Amendment regime).
2. Abortion is allowed in every state, up to a certain point in a pregnancy (the Roe regime).
3. Each state decides how to deal with abortion (the overruled-Roe regime).

Wouldn't it be interesting to see where things break down, if people got to choose one of these three? I suspect no more than 30% of respondents would choose 2. My criticism of the Harris poll is that it ignored the third possibility. My criticism of The New York Times is that it relied on this flawed poll question to assert that 70% of respondents would choose 2 if all three choices were given. That's a non sequitur.

Here.

Righteousness, n. A sturdy virtue that was once found among the Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque. Some feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it into several European countries, but it appears to have been imperfectly expounded. An example of this faulty exposition is found in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic passage from which is here given:

"Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to the letter of the law. It is not enough that one be pious and just: one must see to it that others also are in the same state; and to this end compulsion is a proper means. Forasmuch as my injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty to estop as to forestall mine own tort. Wherefore if I would be righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful, in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself refrain."

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

Here.

Don't let Jeff Percifield catch you writing in a library book.

It took me a while, but I finally figured something out. As you may know, I’ve complained in this blog repeatedly about people replying to “Thank you” with “Thank you.” The correct reply to “Thank you” is “You’re welcome.” But what if both people are getting something out of the exchange? Suppose I go on The O’Reilly Factor to promote my new book, Maybe It’s a Snake. At the end of the segment, having given me the last word, Bill O’Reilly says, “Thanks for coming on, professor.” I reply, “Thank you.” He’s thanking me for coming on his show, which makes money for him. I thank him because he allowed me to promote my book. Quid pro quo. Still, I should have said, “You’re welcome; and thank you for having me on,” to which he should reply, “You’re welcome.” Each of us has received something of value, so each of us should thank the other for it. Each should then say, “You’re welcome.” Am I wrong?

It is no longer open to debate that ideology (which I see as intermediary between a host of personal factors, such as upbringing, temperament, experience, and emotion—even including petty resentments toward one's colleagues—and the casting of a vote in a legally indeterminate case, the ideology being the product of the personal factors) plays a significant role in the decisions even of lower court judges when the law is uncertain and emotions aroused. It must play an even larger role in the Supreme Court, where the issues are more uncertain and more emotional and the judging less constrained.

(Richard A. Posner, "The Supreme Court, 2004 Term—Foreword: A Political Court," Harvard Law Review 119 [November 2005]: 31-102, at 48-9 [footnotes omitted])

U.S. 297,895,645
World 6,491,026,072

00:04 GMT (EST+5) Jan 13, 2006

Compare these figures to those of two years ago today (here). The population of the United States has increased 1.8% in the past two years. The world population has increased 2.3% in the past two years. Two years ago, there were 20.6 nonAmericans for every American. Now there are 20.7 nonAmericans for every American.

In case you missed them the first time around (two years ago today), here are some spam haikus.

Kate O'Beirne has a new book about feminism. See here for a review.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re "But Enough About You, Judge; Let's Hear What I Have to Say" (front page, Jan. 11):

Do Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Patrick J. Leahy really think that they are helping their party's cause by pontificating before the cameras, hardly giving Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. a chance to answer their questions, when they ever get around to asking one?

It's bad enough that the best they can come up with are questions about the judge's membership in a conservative college alumni group, his views on abortion back in 1985 and a perceived conflict of interest in a mutual fund case. But do they also have to make fools of themselves and the party they represent?

As a Democrat, I'm embarrassed. My only consolation is that the hearings take place during the daytime, when most people are at work and unavailable to have their time wasted, like Judge Alito's.

Robert J. Inlow
Charlottesville, Va., Jan. 11, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: I watched about an hour of yesterday's hearing (in replay) before going to bed last night. It was sickening. The senators yakked away to no purpose; Judge Alito gave uninspired, uninformative answers. Not one minute of it was intellectually stimulating. What's the point of this charade, other than to let senators get on television? This image sums it up.

Here is my running commentary on today’s editorial opinion by The New York Times:

Some commentators are complaining that Judge Samuel Alito Jr.’s confirmation hearings have not been exciting, but they must not have been paying attention. We learned that Judge Alito had once declared that Judge Robert Bork—whose Supreme Court nomination was defeated because of his legal extremism—“was one of the most outstanding nominees” of the 20th century. We heard Judge Alito refuse to call Roe v. Wade “settled law,” as Chief Justice John Roberts did at his confirmation hearings. And we learned that Judge Alito subscribes to troubling views about presidential power.

Judge Alito was praising Judge Bork’s scholarly and judicial brilliance. The Times can’t see this, since it’s result-oriented. All that matters to the Times—and to other leftists—is that a judge produce the right results, and Judge Bork wouldn’t have. To the Times, the end justifies the means.

Those are just a few of the quiet bombshells that have dropped. In his deadpan bureaucrat’s voice, Judge Alito has said some truly disturbing things about his view of the law. In three days of testimony, he has given the American people reasons to be worried—and senators reasons to oppose his nomination. Among those reasons are the following:

Note the cheap shot about Judge Alito’s voice. What the hell does that have to do with anything? He’s a judge, for God’s sake, not a politician or an entertainer.

EVIDENCE OF EXTREMISM Judge Alito’s extraordinary praise of Judge Bork is unsettling, given that Judge Bork’s radical legal views included rejecting the Supreme Court’s entire line of privacy cases, even its 1965 ruling striking down a state law banning sales of contraceptives. Judge Alito’s membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton—a group whose offensive views about women, minorities and AIDS victims were discussed in greater detail at yesterday’s hearing—is also deeply troubling, as is his unconvincing claim not to remember joining it.

Many reputable scholars think there is no constitutional right to privacy. The Times thinks there is. Reasonable people can (and do) differ about such things. As for Judge Alito’s membership in CAP, is he responsible for everything done by the organization or by any of its members? Is the Times responsible for the war in Iraq, simply because it’s an American newspaper? Can’t there be dissenters from organizational policy? This is guilt by association.

OPPOSITION TO ROE V. WADE In 1985, Judge Alito made it clear that he believed the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He had many chances this week to say he had changed his mind, but he refused. When offered the chance to say that Roe is a “super-precedent,” entitled to special deference because it has been upheld so often, he refused that, too. As Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, noted in particularly pointed questioning, since Judge Alito was willing to say that other doctrines, like one person one vote, are settled law, his unwillingness to say the same about Roe strongly suggests that he still believes what he believed in 1985.

What in the world is a “super-precedent”? I’m a lawyer, and I’ve never heard of such a thing. Precedents, as such, are to be respected, but the respect is not absolute. If it were, then Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) could not have been overruled three years ago in Lawrence v. Texas. What more is there to say? The Times wants Judge Alito to vow never to overrule Roe v. Wade. He can’t make such a vow; nor can any reasonable person expect him to.

SUPPORT FOR AN IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY Judge Alito has backed a controversial theory known as the “unitary executive,” and argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he installs illegal wiretaps. Judge Alito backed away from one of his most extreme statements in this area—his assertion, in a 1985 job application, that he believed “very strongly” in “the supremacy of the elected branches of government.” But he left a disturbing impression that as a justice, he would undermine the Supreme Court’s critical role in putting a check on presidential excesses.

What makes a theory “controversial”? That it’s controverted, in the sense of not universally shared? Thank goodness for controversy! Is Darwinism controversial? Yes, since it’s controverted. A theory that’s not controverted is a dogma, not a theory. If Judge Alito can’t persuade four other justices to subscribe to his theory of presidential power, then it doesn’t matter that he subscribes to it. The Times is hysterical, and I don’t mean funny.

INSENSITIVITY TO ORDINARY AMERICANS’ RIGHTS Time and again, as a lawyer and a judge, the nominee has taken the side of big corporations against the “little guy,” supported employers against employees, and routinely rejected the claims of women, racial minorities and the disabled. The hearing shed new light on his especially troubling dissent from a ruling by two Reagan-appointed judges, who said that workers at a coal-processing site were covered by Mine Safety and Health Act protections.

If the law is in favor of “big corporations,” then, to avoid lawlessness, a judge must rule in favor of “big corporations.” Is the Times suggesting that judges should ignore the law in order to secure particular results?

DOUBTS ABOUT THE NOMINEE’S HONESTY Judge Alito’s explanation of his involvement with Concerned Alumni of Princeton is hard to believe. In a 1985 job application, he proudly pointed to his membership in the organization. Now he says he remembers nothing of it—except why he joined, which he insists had nothing to do with the group’s core concerns. His explanation for why he broke his promise to Congress to recuse himself in any case involving Vanguard companies is also unpersuasive. As for his repeated claims that his past statements on subjects like abortion and Judge Bork never represented his personal views or were intended to impress prospective employers—all that did was make us wonder why we should give any credence to what he says now.

If I had to believe either Judge Alito or The New York Times, I’d go with Judge Alito in a heartbeat. The Times’s record of distortion, fabrication, and partisanship is clear. It has long ago lost the benefit of the doubt. Judge Alito has given me no reason to disbelieve him.

The debate over Judge Alito is generally presented as one between Republicans and Democrats. But his testimony should trouble moderate Republicans, especially those who favor abortion rights or are concerned about presidential excesses. The hearings may be short on fireworks, but they have produced, through Judge Alito’s words, an array of reasons to be concerned about this nomination.

The Times and other leftists should practice saying “Justice Alito,” because they’re going to be saying it for the next 30 years.

Anyone who has read Brian Leiter’s blog knows that he is opposed to the war in Iraq, but does anyone know why? On what ground does he oppose it? What is his principle of justified war? A principle (or theory) is a sorting device. If my principle is that only defensive wars are justified, then I’m sorting wars into two types: those that are defensive in nature and those that are not defensive in nature. My hypothesized principle says that only wars of the first type (but not necessarily all of them) are justified.

Suppose I state a principle of justified war. You’re entitled to criticize it as either too broad or too narrow (or both). If you say that it’s too broad, you’re saying that it justifies too many wars. If you say that it’s too narrow, you’re saying that it justifies too few wars. For example, suppose I adduce the principle, mentioned above, that only defensive wars are justified. You will say, “Keith, wasn’t the war by the United States against Nazi Germany justified? That wasn’t a defensive war. We weren’t attacked by Germany.” There are three things I can say in response to your criticism. First, I can show (argue) that it was, in fact, a defensive war, despite appearances and despite received wisdom. This will involve clarifying the concept of a defensive war. Second, I can admit that it wasn’t a defensive war and infer from my principle that the war against Nazi Germany was unjustified. This is a case of bullet-biting, since presumably it’s painful for me to say that the war against Nazi Germany was unjustified. Third, I can admit that it wasn’t a defensive war and either abandon or revise my principle. What you’re saying, in effect, is that the following set of propositions is inconsistent:

1. The war against Nazi Germany was not a defensive war.
2. The war against Nazi Germany was justified.
3. Only defensive wars are justified.

I can avoid inconsistency by denying any of the three.

Leiter has said in his blog that he has no interest in trying to persuade people. That’s fine. But doesn’t he have an obligation, qua philosopher, to display the grounds of his moral judgments? There are two possibilities: first, he has no grounds (in which case he can be accused of arbitrariness or dogmatism); and second, he has grounds but won’t display them to his readers. As for why he would be reluctant to display the grounds of his judgments, there are various reasons. One is that he dislikes criticism. If he displays the grounds of his judgments, he runs the risk that the grounds are inadequate and that he will be revealed as a sloppy thinker. Another reason is that he hasn’t given the matter enough thought to be able to articulate the grounds. To which I say: If you haven’t given a matter enough thought to be able to articulate the grounds for a judgment, you have no business making a judgment.

One of the most common mistakes made by philosophers is to conflate persuasion, which is necessarily interpersonal and public, with defense of one’s judgments, which can be intrapersonal and private. To defend a judgment is to state its grounds, even if nobody else shares them. It’s a matter of displaying the structure of one’s beliefs or values. Whether anyone else has the same structure is irrelevant. You’re showing that your belief-set is coherent, and therefore rationally defensible. To persuade, by contrast, is to show one’s interlocutor that judgments he or she already makes commit him or her to some further judgment. Persuasion is necessarily ad hominem in the nonfallacious Lockean sense. It is a matter of drawing out the implications of another person’s principles or beliefs, even if the one doing the drawing out doesn’t share those principles or beliefs. This is why an atheist such as me can persuade a Christian, for example, to abstain from meat.

When Leiter says he has no interest in persuading others, he is saying that he won’t take the time to discover the beliefs or values of others and to show them that they are committed to further beliefs or values. This is understandable, since (1) there are many others with divergent beliefs and (2) time is finite. But surely Leiter can take the time to elaborate his own belief-set! How hard can that be? If the war in Iraq is wrong, as he appears to believe, then he should be able to articulate the principle from which that judgment follows and let his readers criticize it. And let’s be clear about what a principle is. A principle, by its nature, makes no reference to individuals. Leiter’s principle cannot, therefore, make reference to President Bush, whom he appears to despise. His principle cannot be, for example, that a war is justified only if it is not waged by President Bush. To say that the war in Iraq is wrong is to say that any war with relevantly similar properties is wrong, whether prosecuted by a Republican or prosecuted by a Democrat.

Here.

If you think Brian Leiter is an anomaly, think again. His viciousness is typical of the Left. See here.

Out-of-Doors, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.

I climbed to the top of a mountain one day
To see the sun setting in glory,
And I thought, as I looked at his vanishing ray,
Of a perfectly splendid story.

'Twas about an old man and the ass he bestrode
Till the strength of the beast was o'ertested;
Then the man would carry him miles on the road
Till Neddy was pretty well rested.

The moon rising solemnly over the crest
Of the hills to the east of my station
Displayed her broad disk to the darkening west
Like a visible new creation.

And I thought of a joke (and I laughed till I cried)
Of an idle young woman who tarried
About a church-door for a look at the bride,
Although 'twas herself that was married.

To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand
Ideas—with thought and emotion.
I pity the dunces who don't understand
The speech of earth, heaven and ocean.
Stromboli Smith.

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

Ed Feser has a new post at The Conservative Philosopher.

As strange as it may sound, I read several books at once. I think of them as genetic lines. One line—the main line—consists of 10 pages a day of some book. As soon as the current book is done, I replace it. This assures me of reading one long (300-page) book a month. Other lines consist of two, four, or six pages a day. Once my required reading is done for a given day, I have the option of doing additional reading, either in the form of books or in the form of articles. And then there are the Lewis and Clark journals, which I read 200 years after the fact, every day, however long the entries. In the language of morality, I have both obligatory and supererogatory reading.

Today I finished a mainline book: William H. Shaw, Contemporary Ethics: Taking Account of Utilitarianism (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). At 311 pages, it took a month to read. I read much of it in the meadow near my house in glorious sunshine, with Shelbie playing nearby. The book is superb. Shaw is an excellent philosopher and a wonderful writer. I can count the occasions on one hand in which he is unfair to those he criticizes. His defense of utilitarianism is thorough and detailed. But nothing he says in the book will persuade someone who is not already a utilitarian. It certainly didn’t move me. (I’m an egoist.) But this doesn’t make the book pointless, as you might think. First, not everyone’s mind is made up. Someone who is searching for a normative ethical theory may find Shaw’s elaboration of utilitarianism compelling (or at least attractive). Second, Shaw does a good job of showing that utilitarianism is coherent. That means more than consistent. To say that a theory is consistent is to say that it’s not self-contradictory, i.e., that it’s possibly true. That’s not saying much. To say that a theory is coherent is to say two things: first, that it’s consistent; and second, that its components are mutually reinforcing. Utilitarianism has something to say about every aspect of the moral life, from the goodness of states of affairs to the rightness of individual actions to the justification of rules of action to the goodness of motives and character to the justification of laws, practices, and institutions to the worthiness of personal ideals. Probably no normative ethical theory has been as fully developed as utilitarianism.

Ironically, this theoretical sophistication is a weakness as well as a strength. Utilitarianism had an edge to it in Jeremy Bentham’s day. It was used to criticize and reform—not merely to provide a justification for—prevailing laws, customs, and institutions. Critics pointed out that utilitarianism had untoward implications, such as justifying punishment of the innocent. In their zeal to reply to these objections, utilitarianism was modified, refined, supplemented, qualified, and, in the end, domesticated. By the time you finish Shaw’s book, you realize that nothing counts against the theory! It justifies all or most conventional rules, rights, a presumption in favor of liberty, virtues, character traits, and many other elements of commonsense (deontological) morality. What started out as a revisionary—indeed, revolutionary—theory ends up as a conservative theory. Much the same has happened to legal positivism over the years. It used to have teeth. Now, having been qualified to death, it’s virtually indistinguishable from natural-law theory.

That said, you should read Shaw’s book. I consider him one of the finest moral philosophers working today. You will learn much about contemporary ethics by reading it. Whether you end up as a utilitarian isn’t important. It’s what you learn about utilitarianism—and its theoretical rivals—that’s important.

There is now a third addendum to my post on free will and determinism. See here.

It’s comical to see leftists react to their powerlessness. Remember: Leftists have programs, such as redistributing wealth, that cannot be implemented without governmental power. But how can they get power when the majority of Americans don’t share their values? The Left has circumvented the democratic process during the past half century by using courts—mostly federal courts—to implement their radical agenda. But now the federal courts are changing. Nine of the past 14 presidential elections (and seven of the past 10) have been won by Republicans. Without activist judges, the Left’s program is worthless. That, I think, explains the frustration and rage leftists are expressing during the hearings on Supreme Court nominees. They’re in a bind. They can’t win at the polls, and they’re losing the judiciary. There are only two ways for leftists to regain power: first, by changing their values (which means no longer being leftists); and second, by changing the American people. I don’t see the American people coming to endorse pacifism, personal irresponsibility, wealth redistribution, sexual libertinism, or secularism.

By the way, frustration causes aggression. Do you think it’s an accident that the Left is so hateful, angry, and violent? When you’re powerless, and there’s no prospect of gaining power, you lash out. Read Brian Leiter’s blog; you’ll see what I mean. He acts like a petulant child.

Houseless, adj. Having paid all taxes on household goods.

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

Here.

Here.

Richard Allen Posner, one of my favorite authors, is 67 years old today.

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman ("The New Red, White and Blue," column, Jan. 6) leaves one important country off his list of "petrolist states," nations with regimes that betray the economic welfare, civil liberties, health, education and security of their citizens in pursuit of profits for oil companies and their allies: us.

Harry Brod
Cedar Falls, Iowa, Jan. 6, 2006

Here is how leftists reason:

1. Everything bad that happens is President Bush's fault.
2. The mine disaster is bad.
Therefore,
3. The mine disaster is President Bush's fault.

See here.

The New York Times is furious that the attempt to bork Judge Samuel Alito is failing. See here. If the leftists at the Times could get a president elected, they wouldn't have to suffer so.

The liberal faith . . . is an indefensible, sentimental, and destructive falsification of reality. It makes wishful thinking into a political program. It blinds itself to the obvious fact that some people are morally better than others and that some are morally worse. It ignores the historical record that testifies to widespread wickedness. The liberal faith absurdly denies that the good deserve better than the wicked. It deflects criticism by specious moralizing that accuses critics of immorality. It arrogates to itself the moral high ground by pretending to champion the welfare of the poor, the needy, and the unfortunate, while pursuing policies that refuse to face the causes of their misery and make it impossible to improve their lot. It fosters evil and wickedness by failing to acknowledge that their prevalence is caused by human vices; that unjust institutions result from human wickedness and that they merely encourage, but do not cause, preexisting vices; and that the remedy is to create and protect institutions that limit the indiscriminate pursuit of human possibilities. It is a faith that ought not to be held.

(John Kekes, Against Liberalism [Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997], 209)

Here is my prediction from two years ago today. Ten months before the 2004 presidential election, I got three of the four candidates right. But that's not saying much, since it was a foregone conclusion that President Bush would run again; and while it wasn't a certainty that Dick Cheney would be his running mate again (remember the talk about replacing him with someone younger, healthier, and more exciting?), odds were that he would be. Like many others, I read too much into Howard Dean's early success at fund-raising. But hey, I got the Edwards part of the ticket right!

Here.

Something has been bugging me since I began blogging more than two years ago. It’s about time I examined it. You may have noticed that I sometimes say “in my blog,” as in “I wrote such-and-such in my blog,” while at other times I say “on my blog,” as in “I posted Bruce’s solution on my blog.” Which is correct?

I think the answer depends on how one conceives a blog. The word “blog” comes from “weblog,” so a blog is a log of a certain type—one that appears on the World Wide Web. What’s a log? My Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999) defines “log” as “any systematic record of things done, experienced, etc.” A ship’s captain, for example, keeps a log (in the form of a logbook). You’re reading my log right now. What would a ship’s captain say? I suspect the captain would say, “I wrote such-and-such in my log,” not “I wrote so-and-so on my log.” So “in” seems correct.

But that’s just one conception of a blog. Another is that it’s a bulletin board. What do we do with bulletin boards? Why, we post things on them. On them. Not in them. When I say that I posted Bruce’s solution on my blog, therefore, I’m thinking of my blog as a bulletin board, not as a record of things done, experienced, etc.

All of which is by way of saying that both expressions—“in my blog” and “on my blog”—are correct. When I treat my blog as a record of things done, experienced, etc., I use the expression “in my blog.” When I treat it as a bulletin board, I use the expression “on my blog.” Confused? You won’t be after tonight’s episode of Soap.

Lettuce, n. An herb of the genus Lactuca, "Wherewith," says that pious gastronome, Hengist Pelly, "God has been pleased to reward the good and punish the wicked. For by his inner light the righteous man has discerned a manner of compounding for it a dressing to the appetency whereof a multitude of gustible condiments conspire, being reconciled and ameliorated with profusion of oil, the entire comestible making glad the heart of the godly and causing his face to shine. But the person of spiritual unworth is successfully tempted to the Adversary to eat of lettuce with destitution of oil, mustard, egg, salt and garlic, and with a rascal bath of vinegar polluted with sugar. Wherefore the person of spiritual unworth suffers an intestinal pang of strange complexity and raises the song."

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

Here.

Yesterday I posted a dilemma. I just added Bruce Russell's solution. See here.

To the Editor:

John Tierney ("Male Pride and Female Prejudice," column, Jan. 3) suggests that improvements in the educational level and purchasing power of women may lead to greater spinsterhood.

As a historian of marriage, I would underline that for most of history, spouses who were dependent upon the husband's financial resources had far less latitude to make personal choices, including whether to leave a failed marriage.

The power to chose a compatible mate or remain single (and happy) is a cause for celebration for both women and men.

Joanne M. Ferraro
San Diego, Jan. 6, 2006
The writer is a professor and chairwoman of the history department, San Diego State University.

Here.

There is now a second addendum to my post on free will and determinism. See here.

Bork, v.t. Abuse; belittle; lie about; demonize for political gain. A tactic of those who cannot persuade.

I may think tipping is a bad practice and am inclined to refuse to tip (accepting the bad service which results as the price I pay for my principles). But when it is pointed out to me that the fact that the practice is general has resulted in the waiter being paid a minute wage or the car-park attendant no wage at all, I may revise my views.

(J. D. Mabbott, An Introduction to Ethics [Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969], 47 [first published in 1966])

Here is Judge Richard Posner's post about the economics of Indian casinos.

One of my readers, Sam, has started a blog. See here. I had a lot of help from other bloggers (especially Dr John J. Ray) when I got started a couple of years ago, so I like to be helpful to those now entering the blogosphere. Good luck!

You never reverse direction on any running course. For example, I have run my 3.1-mile course more than 400 times—always counterclockwise.

Law professors are expert in law. They are not moral experts. Nobody is a moral expert. So what are we to make of this—a letter signed by several hundred law professors? They say they oppose Judge Samuel Alito's appointment to the United States Supreme Court. But why? Is it because he's incompetent? Is it because his knowledge of the law is inadequate? Is it because he lacks the requisite analytical, argumentative, or critical skills? The answer comes at the end of the letter (before the names): These law professors don't like his values. They think he will make the country "less equal and less free." That these people are experts in law (I give them the benefit of the doubt) has nothing to do with whether anyone should share their values. What a disgraceful document! These law professors are trying to parlay their legal expertise into moral influence. They are trying to fool people into inferring moral authority from legal authority. They are suborning fallacy.

To the Editor:

Although the original motivation behind the 22nd Amendment might have been a mean-spirited attack on Franklin D. Roosevelt, limiting the president to two terms is still an excellent idea. The presidency is the most powerful position in the country, and the term limit on that office helps enforce the idea that we are a republic.

Indeed, in a country where we love political legacies—is there any doubt that another Kennedy or Bush candidate would receive widespread support simply because of the name?—a lack of term limits could be dangerous. The country might get complacent and elect the same families over and over, creating a de facto hereditary monarchy.

Michael A. Burstein
Brookline, Mass., Jan. 5, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This writer is confused. We already allow the same families to be elected "over and over." Each of several Kennedys—John, Robert, and Edward, for example—could have served eight years as president. We've already had two Bushes as president, and may yet have a third (Jeb). We've already had a two-term Clinton, and could have a second (or even a third, if Chelsea is so inclined). Limiting the president to two terms in office has nothing to do with how many members of a family can be president. Is somebody proposing a ban on the number of members of a family who can serve?

Magnitude, n. Size. Magnitude being purely relative, nothing is large and nothing small. If everything in the universe were increased in bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been. To an understanding familiar with the relativity of magnitude and distance the spaces and masses of the astronomer would be no more impressive than those of the microscopist. For anything we know to the contrary, the visible universe may be a small part of an atom, with its component ions, floating in the life-fluid (luminiferous ether) of some animal. Possibly the wee creatures peopling the corpuscles of our own blood are overcome with the proper emotion when contemplating the unthinkable distance from one of these to another.

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

There is now an addendum to my post on free will and determinism. See here. I plan at least two more addenda, so if this sort of thing interests you, stay tuned.

Here.

Ted Kennedy is a national embarrassment. His lies helped prevent Judge Robert Bork from being seated on the Supreme Court. This must have emboldened Kennedy, because he's trying it again. See here.

Suppose I'm wondering whether to close the gate so that my horse, which I value, and which I want to stay enclosed, doesn't escape. What (if anything) is wrong with the following reasoning?

1. Either the horse will escape or it's not the case that the horse will escape.

2. If the horse will escape, then closing the gate is to no avail.

3. If it's not the case that the horse will escape, then closing the gate is unnecessary.

Therefore,

4. Either closing the gate is to no avail or closing the gate is unnecessary.

The inference is valid (it's an instance of constructive dilemma); the first premise is necessarily true; and the second and third premises seem true; but the conclusion seems false, for it implies that I have no reason to close the gate. Something has to give. What?

Addendum: Here is Bruce Russell's solution of the dilemma, from 10 years ago today:

10 JAN 1996 16:29 . . . For (2) to be true, it must be read as:

(2*) If the horse will escape if the gate is closed, then closing the gate is to no avail.

But then (3) will be false. It doesn't follow that closing the gate is unneces­sary if it's not the case that the horse will escape if the gate is closed. For (3) to be true, it must be read as:

(3*) If it's not the case that the horse will escape if the gate is left open, then closing the gate is unnecessary.

But then (2) will be false. It doesn't follow that it is to no avail to close the gate if the horse will escape if the gate is left open. (1) can be read as (1a), which will make (2) true but (3) false:

(1a) Either the horse will escape if the gate is closed or it's not the case that the horse will escape if the gate is closed.

Or it can be read as (1b), which will make (3) true but (2) false:

(1b) Either the horse will escape if the gate is left open or it's not the case that the horse will escape if the gate is left open.

(1) is elliptical and ambiguous for either (1a) or (1b). There is no univocal reading of (1) which makes both (2) and (3) true. So either one false premise or equivocation. Sound good?

Bruce was my professor at Wayne State University many years ago. He gave me permission to post this. Here are some of Bruce's essays.

Higher education encourages feelings of superiority. Moral philosophers, who invariably today hold a doctoral degree, are not immune from such feelings, which are exacerbated by their knowing that their work is neither highly valued by society nor highly remunerated. They may reciprocate society’s contempt. They may come to feel that its moral code should not bind them, that instead society should adopt, or at least condone, the moral philosopher’s moral code. Normally this code will be the code of the philosopher’s immediate social milieu, or “set,” rather than either an “objective” order of goodness (for there is none) or the expression of profound individual insight.

The moral codes of academic philosophers tend in fact to be at once nonstandard and hackneyed, predictable, and seemingly unexamined. The liberals favor abortion rights à outrance, women’s rights, greater equality of incomes, and a mild socialism. They disapproved of Soviet-style communism, but very quietly, with maybe a soft spot for East Germany, or Cuba, or Yugoslavia—or even Mao’s China. They are internationalists, multiculturalists, environmentalists, sometimes vegetarians. They are against capital punishment, and so it might be said of them unkindly that they pity murderers (and penguins, and sea otters, and harp seals) more than fetuses. They support the theory of evolution when the question is whether creationism should be taught, but reject it when the question is whether there is a biological basis for any of the differences in attitude or behavior between men and women. . . . They believe that people are prone to wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance, rationalization, hyperbolic discounting (shortsightedness), false consciousness, and all sorts of other cognitive disabilities that make market choices and folk beliefs lack authenticity; but they do not consider the effect these disabilities are likely to have on the power of academically directed moral deliberation to engender moral improvement. They are secular (or deist) and therefore consider sexual practices morally indifferent and fear the Religious Right. They are politically correct, and they vote Democratic.

(Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999], 75-6 [footnote omitted])

Here.

People are eating themselves to death. See here. Is there any other species besides Homo sapiens whose members self-destruct by overeating? I'm not aware of any. And yet, we're the big-brained animals, the ones who can reason, the ones with free will, the ones who are responsible. Ha! Paul Krugman and other leftists want to make health care an entitlement, and you can be sure they will not allow personal responsibility for one's health problems to be taken into account in allocating care. So those of us who (1) exercise and (2) control our food intake will end up subsidizing those who are lazy and stupid. I'm sorry, Paul, but I'm not responsible for anyone else's health. If you want to subsidize laziness and stupidity, feel free to do so, but don't try to force me to do the same.

For some ungodly reason (okay, laziness), I allow Working Assets to provide my long-distance telephone service. Each bill comes with what are called "Citizen Actions." I quoted one recently on Judge Samuel Alito. (See here.) Here's another one, from the same bill:

Block the Bush Plan to Gut the Clean Air Act

The White House never tires of devising dishonest legislation that does the opposite of what its title implies. Like Clear Skies, which makes our air dirtier. Or Healthy Forests, which invites loggers to cut more trees. To the list of Bush oxymorons we may add the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA now spends much of its time finding ways to undermine laws that protect the environment. Recently the agency announced plans to dismantle the New Source Review program of the Clean Air Act and allow old, dirty power plants to dodge emission standards.

Urge EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson at 202/272-0167 to drop his plan to gut the Clean Air Act. Don't let old power plants spew tons more pollution. Or check the box below to send a CitizenLetter.

Precious, isn't it? What the author doesn't realize (or won't say) is that there are different means to the same end. We could clean the air by shutting down factories; but that would come at significant cost to other values. One reason leftists can't get elected is that their policy prescriptions elevate one value—equality—above others. Legislation is about taking all relevant values into account and giving each its proper weight. Conservatives are much better at doing this, which is why they're governing.

As some of you know, this is the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. I'm reading the journals in real time for the third time. (It takes more than three years for a reading.) Today, for instance, I read the entries for 8 January 1806. I read the journals for many reasons, not least of which is that they record a great adventure. Who doesn't love an adventure? Who does not secretly wish to have gone along with the captains? Today, for instance, William Clark and a small party (including Sacagawea and her baby) reached the top of Tillamook Head on their way to see a beached whale. Sacagawea was not originally chosen, but she protested that she had come a long way and would be disappointed not to see the ocean or the whale. Clark, ever the gentleman, relented and allowed her to go, despite the danger. Meriwether Lewis remained at Fort Clatsop with the rest of the party. In today's entry, he comments on the smoking habits of the natives. You won't want to miss it, for it's right out of Blazing Saddles. See here for today's entries.

To the Editor:

Joseph Laconte is right that "politics can't usher in the kingdom of heaven."

Jesus in particular predicted endless calamities in human history; the Christian creed looks to "life everlasting," beyond death, for perfection.

But the New Testament, like Hebrew scripture, condemns the enrichment of the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

Jesus commands service to the hungry, the stranger, the unclothed, the sick, the imprisoned—"the least of these my brethren."

Which politics is more consonant with biblical teaching: the Republicans' redistribution of wealth to the already rich, or the Democrats' effort to keep benefits that protect the health and dignity of the poor?

Frederick A. Smith
Garden City, N.Y., Jan. 3, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: The Bible is replete with condemnations of wealth (see here), but I missed the part about coercion. Jesus advocated voluntary relinquishment of wealth, not coercion by the state. He was making a moral appeal, not propounding a political philosophy or a theory of government. The more wealth individuals are allowed to retain, the more charitable—Christlike—they can be.

Here is my running commentary on today’s New York Times editorial opinion entitled “Judging Samuel Alito”:

Judicial nominations are not always motivated by ideology, but the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito certainly was. President Bush’s previous choice to fill Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, was hounded into withdrawing by the far right, primarily because she appeared to hold moderate views on a variety of legal issues. President Bush placated Ms. Miers’s conservative critics by nominating Judge Alito, who has long been one of their favorites.

How does the Times know what motivated President Bush? The American Bar Association just gave Judge Alito its highest rating. Why not be charitable and assume that the nomination was motivated by a desire for judicial excellence? Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the nomination was motivated, at least in part, by ideology. What’s wrong with that? Weren’t Bill Clinton’s nominations motivated by ideology? Did the Times object? And why does the Times assume that Judge Alito will seek to implement his personal values? Just because he’s conservative doesn’t mean his conservatism will affect his judging. John F. Kennedy was Roman Catholic. Was he bound to let his religion influence his actions as president? Can’t people set their personal views and values aside in order to do a job? Don’t we expect that of referees, umpires, scholarly reviewers, judges, journalists, interviewers, scientists, and public servants? By the way, do you think the Times would be calling Harriet Miers “moderate” if she were still the nominee?

Judge Alito’s confirmation hearings begin tomorrow. He may be able to use them to reassure the Senate that he will be respectful of rights that Americans cherish, but he has a lengthy and often troubling record he will have to explain away. As a government lawyer, he worked to overturn Roe v. Wade. He has disturbing beliefs on presidential power—a critical issue for the country right now. He has worked to sharply curtail Congress’s power to pass laws and protect Americans. He may not even believe in “one person one vote.”

We must distinguish between the legal rights we have and the legal rights we ought to have, under the Constitution. There are three possibilities: (1) we have more legal rights than we ought to have (in other words, the Court has invented rights); (2) we have fewer legal rights than we ought to have (in other words, the Court has ignored rights); and (3) we have no more and no fewer rights than we ought to have. Why does the Times assume the second or third possibility? Many Americans think the first possibility is actual, i.e., that the Court has invented legal rights. If so, then this should be corrected forthwith. That Americans cherish rights that they ought not to have (under the Constitution) is irrelevant. As for what Judge Alito said or did as a “government lawyer,” that is neither here nor there. Different roles have different responsibilities. Rational, conscientious people discharge their role responsibilities and don’t confuse roles. Imagine treating your children the way you treat your colleagues, friends, or students! Finally, whether Judge Alito’s beliefs on presidential power are “disturbing” depends on one’s theory of government. I happen to think his beliefs are just right. And if Congress passes laws that are outside its constitutional authority, any judge, not just Judge Alito, should strike them down.

The White House has tried to create an air of inevitability around Judge Alito’s confirmation. But the public is skeptical. In a new Harris poll, just 34 percent of those surveyed said they thought he should be confirmed, while 31 percent said he should not, and 34 percent were unsure. Nearly 70 percent said they would oppose Judge Alito’s nomination if they thought he would vote to make abortion illegal—which it appears he might well do.

What should the White House do: express doubts about the confirmation? That’s absurd. So people are split on Judge Alito. Is that a surprise? The country is split on all manner of moral matters. As for the poll question about abortion, the Supreme Court lacks the power to “make abortion illegal.” If the Court overrules Roe v. Wade, each state will decide what to do about abortion. The issue will be returned to the people of the states, where it should have stayed. How can such a biased poll question be taken seriously, much less cited as a premise?

If President Bush had chosen a pragmatic, mainstream conservative like Justice O’Connor to fill the seat, these confirmation hearings would be a breeze. But now, the Senate has a duty to delve into the many areas in which Judge Alito’s record suggests he is an extremist, including:

Why should President Bush take the “breezy” or easy way out? He’s been elected twice. He should do what he thinks right, not what will generate the least resistance. He should appoint judges who share his constitutional philosophy. Did Bill Clinton choose “pragmatic, mainstream liberals”? Did the Times criticize him because he didn’t?

ABORTION Judge Alito has not only opposed Roe v. Wade, he has also worked to overturn it. When he applied for a promotion in the Reagan administration in 1985, he wrote that he was “particularly proud” of his legal arguments “that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” In meetings with senators, Judge Alito has talked about his respect for Roe, but he has said nothing to discourage his supporters on the religious right who back him because they believe he will vote to overturn it. The American people have a right to know, unambiguously, where Judge Alito stands on Roe.

Again, different roles. As for the so-called right to know, Judge Alito cannot and should not comment on Roe in particular, since he will almost certainly be called upon to decide whether it should be overruled. Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t answer such a question, and I don’t recall the Times taking her to task for it.

PRESIDENTIAL POWER The continuing domestic wiretapping scandal shows that the Bush administration has a dangerous view of its own powers, and the Supreme Court is the most important check on such excesses. But Judge Alito has some disturbing views about handing the president even more power. He has argued that courts interpreting statutes should consider the president’s intent when he signed the law to be just as important as Congress’s intent in writing and passing the law. It is a radical suggestion that indicates he has an imperial view of presidential power.

Forget about the Bush administration, which has only three more years. The question is about presidential power vis-à-vis that of the other branches of government. Does anyone really think that a sitting Supreme Court justice would cede power to a president? And what’s wrong with considering a president’s intent? A law cannot be passed without a president’s approval. Why should Congress’s intent be considered but not the president’s?

CONGRESSIONAL POWER While Judge Alito seems intent on expanding the president’s power, he has called for sharply reducing the power of Congress. In United States v. Rybar, he wrote a now-infamous dissent arguing that Congress exceeded its power in passing a law that banned machine guns. As a Reagan administration lawyer, he argued that Congress did not have the power to pass the Truth in Mileage Act to protect consumers from odometer fraud.

Ours is a limited government. By any reasonable standard, Congress has exceeded its authority in many areas. It’s about time we had a Supreme Court that enforced the Constitution. The Times wants a large, active, intrusive government, even if no such beast was contemplated by the framers of the Constitution. Many problems dealt with by Congress belong to the states.

ONE PERSON ONE VOTE Judge Alito said in his 1985 application that he had become interested in constitutional law as a student partly because of his opposition to the Warren court’s reapportionment rulings, which created the “one person one vote” standard. He seems to still have believed as a 35-year-old lawyer that these cases, which made legislative districts much more fair, came out the wrong way.

The Warren Court ran roughshod over the Constitution. Its excesses are well known and ripe for reversal. As for whether the Court’s reapportionment cases promoted “fairness” or democracy, that’s a matter for debate. The Times simply assumes that the answer is yes.

There are other areas—including civil rights, sex discrimination, the environment and criminal law—where Judge Alito’s record appears extreme. The Senate should question him closely on all of them.

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.

The Senate should also explore Judge Alito’s honesty. According to a senator he met with, he tried to dismiss his statement about the Constitution’s not protecting abortion as merely part of a job application, which suggests he will bend the truth when it suits his purposes. Judge Alito has said he does not recall being in an ultraconservative group called Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which opposed co-education and affirmative action. That is odd, since he boasted of his membership in that same 1985 job application. The tortuous history of his promise to Congress to recuse himself in cases involving the Vanguard companies, which he ultimately failed to do, should also be explored.

No New York Times editorial opinion would be complete without an accusation (or imputation) of dishonesty. And look who’s talking! The Times is well known for “bend[ing] the truth when it suits [its] purposes.” Can you say “pot” and “kettle”?

Judge Alito’s nomination is often presented as an abortion rights showdown, but it is much more than that. Those who care about the broad range of rights and liberties that Americans now have, and about honesty in government, should tune into the hearings starting tomorrow—and call their senators with their reactions to what they hear.

I agree with the last part of this. Call your senators—especially if one of them sits on the Judiciary Committee.

Addendum: I'd like to thank Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post. See here. I hope the PowerBlogs server can handle the InstaLanche! (I'm sure it can.) If you're here for the first time, welcome. Enjoy your stay.

Addendum 2: Professor Bainbridge deconstructs the Times's editorial opinion here. Ann Althouse does the same here.

Here.

I advocate vegetarianism as something which “underpins, makes consistent, and gives meaning to all our other activities on behalf of animals” (Animal Liberation, p. 171). I remain convinced that for those concerned to change the situation of animals in our society, vegetarianism is of real practical importance. It provides an irrefutable answer to the oft-repeated claim that we need factory farms to feed our growing population. It allows the animal welfare campaigner to defeat ad hominem attacks, for instance: ‘How can you object to killing seals when you eat pigs and calves?’ By eliminating one’s personal involvement in the production of animals for food, it makes it easier to take a detached view of the animal industry, and to avoid compromising the interests of the animals with one’s own interest as a consumer of animals. Calling on the public not to buy the produce of factory farms can be an important part of a campaign against factory farming. It holds out a threatening prospect to farmers—one which is beginning to be noticed in farming magazines—and it enables those who support the campaign against factory farming to make a personal commitment which goes beyond signing petitions and writing letters to their elected representatives. One cannot convincingly ask others to do this if one does not do it oneself. (Unless one eats animal flesh in secret—which hardly seems worth the hypocrisy and risk of discovery involved.)

(Peter Singer, “Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 9 [summer 1980]: 325-37, at 336-7)

Wine, n. Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madame[,] is God's next best gift to man.

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

Here.

To the Editor:

In "Question for Alito: What About One Person One Vote?" (Editorial Observer, Jan. 3), Adam Cohen depicts questioning the one-person-one-vote principle as "a radical position," and suggests that perhaps Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. is "an elitist" and "antidemocratic."

And yet Justices Felix Frankfurter and John Marshall Harlan—no "radicals"—both expressed deep misgivings about the Warren Court's mid-1960's apportionment decisions. The Constitution said nothing about mathematically equal districts. And the Warren Court, they argued, was actually making the country less democratic by intruding on the powers of elected legislatures and stripping the definition of representative government down to population equality, neglecting the importance of group interests, defined by geography, community, social class, race and ethnicity.

Nevertheless, one person one vote is now settled law, as Judge Alito has said. Mr. Cohen argues that a Justice Alito might be able to "forge a conservative Supreme Court majority to overturn the reapportionment cases." The notion that either he or any other members of the Court would now move to undo the reapportionment revolution is fanciful—and irresponsible.

Abigail Thernstrom
Lexington, Mass., Jan. 6, 2006
The writer is vice chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Arrest, v.t. Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.

God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.—The Unauthorized Version.

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

Here.

Here.

I began teaching courses of my own in January 1984, when I was a 26-year-old graduate student at The University of Arizona. My first course was Introduction to Philosophy, and the book I chose was Joel Feinberg’s Reason and Responsibility, then in its fifth edition. (It’s now in its 12th; see here.) I covered material from each of the book’s six parts:

1. Reason and Religious Belief.
2. Human Knowledge: Its Grounds and Limits.
3. Mind and Its Place in Nature.
4. Determinism and Free Will.
5. Responsibility and Punishment.
6. Self-Love and the Claims of Morality.

Some of the parts were harder than others, given my background. Thank goodness Joel wrote long, detailed introductions to each part. His introduction to the part on determinism and free will was particularly helpful, since I had never studied the topic in any formal way. Here is how Joel stated the “dilemma of determinism” (on page 328):

1. If determinism is true, we can never do other than we do; hence, we are never responsible for what we do.

2. If indeterminism is true, then some events—namely, all human actions—are random, hence not free; hence, we are never responsible for what we do.

3. Either determinism is true or else indeterminism is true.

4. Therefore, we are never responsible for what we do.

According to Joel, the hard determinist views this as a sound argument, and therefore accepts the conclusion. The soft determinist rejects the first premise and is not, therefore, committed to the conclusion. The libertarian rejects the second premise and is not, therefore, committed to the conclusion. The third premise is necessarily true, given how “determinism” and “indeterminism” have been defined, so nobody can reject it. Joel then supplied readings for each of the three doctrines. Soft determinism was represented by Walter T. Stace; libertarianism was represented by C. A. Campbell and Richard Taylor; and hard determinism was represented by John Hospers.

Although Joel’s introduction helped structure my thinking and teaching for many years, I’ve never been happy with it. There are too many distinctions and “isms.” First, there is the distinction between determinism and indeterminism. Second, there is the distinction between compatibilism and incompatibilism. Third, there are the doctrines of hard determinism, soft determinism, and libertarianism. Isn’t there a simpler way to present this material? I always knew there was, but until today, I couldn’t figure it out. I figured it out while running.

Consider the following three propositions:

1. All actions are caused.
2. Some actions are free.
3. No actions are both caused and free.

These three propositions are inconsistent. Any two of them entail the falsity of the third, as you can see by depicting any two of them on a Venn diagram. For example, suppose that all actions are caused (proposition 1) and that some actions are free (proposition 2). Then some actions are both caused and free, which contradicts proposition 3. Suppose that some actions are free (proposition 2) and that no actions are both caused and free (proposition 3). Then some actions are not caused, which contradicts proposition 1. Finally, suppose that all actions are caused (proposition 1) and that no actions are both caused and free (proposition 3). Then no actions are free, which contradicts proposition 2.

Since the three propositions are inconsistent, everybody must reject at least one of them. Those who reject the first proposition are known as libertarians (which means something different from what it means in political philosophy). Those who reject the second proposition are known as hard (“nonreconciling”) determinists. Those who reject the third proposition are known as soft (“reconciling”) determinists. Each doctrine has its adherents. Famous libertarians include Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, and, more recently, Roderick Chisholm. Famous hard determinists include Benedictus de Spinoza, Baron d’Holbach, Clarence Darrow, and, more recently, Ted Honderich. Famous soft determinists include Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and, more recently, John Martin Fischer.

Why is there disagreement? Who do some people reject the first proposition, some the second, and some the third? Keep in mind that there is a cost to accepting or rejecting a proposition. If I accept a given proposition, I will be required, on pain of inconsistency, to accept other propositions, and I may not want to accept some of these. Also, if I accept a given proposition, I will be required, on pain of inconsistency, to reject other propositions, and I may not want to reject some of these. Each of us is trying to form a consistent, mutually reinforcing set of beliefs. There is no reason why everyone must arrive at the same set. There can be more than one consistent, coherent—and therefore rationally defensible—set of beliefs.

Many people would like to accept all three of the propositions, but since they can’t, they have to decide which one can be rejected with least cost. (Compare shopping for an automobile. Everyone would like to have a new automobile and the money it would cost to have it, but since they can’t have both, they have to decide which they would rather have.) Libertarians would rather give up the belief that all actions are caused than give up either the belief that some actions are free or the belief that no actions are both caused and free. This does the least damage to the libertarian’s web of belief. Hard determinists would rather give up the belief that some actions are free than give up either the belief that all actions are caused or the belief that no actions are both caused and free. Soft determinists would rather give up the belief that no actions are both caused and free than give up either the belief that all actions are caused or the belief that some actions are free.

Another useful feature of this approach, besides its simplicity, is that it shows very clearly that each pair of doctrines has something in common as well as something different. Libertarians and hard determinists share a belief that no actions are both caused and free (i.e., both accept proposition 3). Libertarians and soft determinists share a belief that some actions are free (i.e., both accept proposition 2). Hard determinists and soft determinists share a belief that all actions are caused (i.e., both accept proposition 1).

Perhaps the best feature of this approach is that the doctrines can be depicted on Venn diagrams. I can’t display them here, but you’re free to draw them yourself.

Addendum: Each of the three doctrines that I’ve described—libertarianism, hard determinism, and soft determinism—can be understood as the conjunction of three theses. Here is libertarianism:

L1. Some actions are free.
L2. No actions are both caused and free.
L3. Some actions are not caused.

Here is hard determinism:

H1. All actions are caused.
H2. No actions are both caused and free.
H3. No actions are free.

Here is soft determinism:

S1. All actions are caused.
S2. Some actions are free.
S3. Some actions are both caused and free.

Note that L2 and H2 are identical. They express incompatibilism. S3 expresses its denial, compatibilism. Note that H1 and S1 are identical. They express determinism. L3 expresses its denial, indeterminism. Two of the three doctrines—libertarianism and hard determinism—incorporate incompatibilism. Two of the three doctrines—hard determinism and soft determinism—incorporate determinism. Make a two-by-two box diagram, with “compatibilism” and “incompatibilism” on the left side of the diagram (from top to bottom) and “determinism” and “indeterminism” across the top (from left to right). Soft determinism is in the northwest quadrant of the diagram; hard determinism is in the southwest quadrant; and libertarianism is in the southeast quadrant.

(If somebody can make a diagram like this for me, so that I can store it on my hard drive, post it on my blog, and insert it into a student handout, I would appreciate it. I don’t know how to use Excel, or whatever software would allow such a thing.)

Addendum 2: Can more than one of the three doctrines be true? The answer is no. Let me prove it. Suppose libertarianism is true. Libertarianism is the conjunction of three theses:

L1. Some actions are free.
L2. No actions are both caused and free.
L3. Some actions are not caused.

If libertarianism is true, then all of these theses are true. But if L1 is true, then H3 is false; and since H3 is one of hard determinism’s three theses, hard determinism is false. Moreover, if L2 is true, then S3 is false; and since S3 is one of soft determinism’s three theses, soft determinism is false. Thus, if libertarianism is true, then both hard determinism and soft determinism are false.

Now suppose hard determinism is true. Hard determinism is the conjunction of three theses:

H1. All actions are caused.
H2. No actions are both caused and free.
H3. No actions are free.

If hard determinism is true, then all of these theses are true. But if H1 is true, then L3 is false; and since L3 is one of libertarianism’s three theses, libertarianism is false. Moreover, if H2 is true, then S3 is false; and since S3 is one of soft determinism’s three theses, soft determinism is false. Thus, if hard determinism is true, then both libertarianism and soft determinism are false.

Finally, suppose soft determinism is true. Soft determinism is the conjunction of three theses:

S1. All actions are caused.
S2. Some actions are free.
S3. Some actions are both caused and free.

If soft determinism is true, then all of these theses are true. But if S1 is true, then L3 is false; and since L3 is one of libertarianism’s three theses, libertarianism is false. Moreover, if S2 is true, then H3 is false; and since H3 is one of hard determinism’s three theses, hard determinism is false. Thus, if soft determinism is true, then both libertarianism and hard determinism are false.

What this shows is that if any of the three doctrines is true, the others are false. In other words, at most one of the doctrines is true. The next question is whether at least one of the doctrines is true.

Addendum 3: Must at least one of the three doctrines be true? The answer is no. To prove it, I must describe a coherent state of affairs—just one—that falsifies all three doctrines. Here is one:

R1. No actions are free.
R2. Some actions are not caused.

That this is a coherent state of affairs can be seen by depicting the two theses on a Venn diagram. Let us call this doctrine “randomism,” since it entails

R3. Some actions are neither caused nor free.

(A random action is one that is neither caused nor free.) Randomism holds (among other things) that there are random actions. The first thesis of randomism, R1, contradicts L1 and S2; so if R1 is true, then both libertarianism and soft determinism are false. The second thesis of randomism, R2, contradicts H1 and S1; so if R2 is true, then both hard determinism and soft determinism are false. Thus, if randomism is true—and it’s logically possible that it is—then none of the other three doctrines is true. This shows that libertarianism, hard determinism, and soft determinism do not exhaust the possibilities. They are mutually exclusive, but not jointly exhaustive. That is to say, no more than one of them can be true, but all of them can be false.

Addendum 4: One of my readers, Adam Handwork, made two beautiful diagrams for me. See here. Thanks, Adam!

Addendum 5: One of my readers, David, left the following comment on the original post:

The libertarian requires an additional thesis. He must submit that it is not the case that all uncaused events are random. I’m sympathe[t]ic to the libertarian position but this seems to be the hardest move for libertarians to make.

I assume that the “events” David mentions are actions. David says, therefore, that the libertarian is committed to this:

It is not the case that all uncaused actions are random.

That’s logically equivalent to this:

Some uncaused actions are not random.

What does “random” mean? Most philosophers take it to mean neither caused nor free. If an action is caused, then it’s not random. If it’s freely chosen, then it’s not random. If this is what David means by “random,” then he’s saying that the libertarian is committed to this:

Some uncaused actions are either caused or free.

But an action cannot be both uncaused and caused, so this reduces to:

Some uncaused actions are free.

But that just says that there are actions that are free but not caused, which follows from L1 and L2. So the proposition David says must be added to my definition of libertarianism is already there.

You'd have to be blind (or blinded by ideology) not to notice that college and professional basketball are dominated by African-Americans. I was just watching the LSU-Connecticut game. All 10 of the players on the court were black. Even five of 10 would call for an explanation, since blacks make up only 12% of the population; but 10 of 10? What's going on? Somebody explain this.

Democrats, with the backing of leftist organizations such as the ironically named People for the American Way, are gearing up to oppose the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court. See here. Speaking of the confirmation hearing, which will begin soon, have you read this essay by Ronald Dworkin? Read it and come back.

Back? Dworkin loves to accuse others of not having a "constitutional philosophy" (sometimes he calls it a "theory"). He made this accusation of Judge Robert Bork and he recently made it of Judge (now Chief Justice) John Roberts. You can expect him to make it of Judge Samuel Alito. Indeed, he says as much in the linked essay: "[The Senate Judiciary Committee] should demand to know the new nominee's constitutional philosophy." But every judge has a constitutional philosophy, however inarticulate or inchoate it may be, just as every individual has a moral theory, however inarticulate or inchoate it may be. It's just that most judges don't have the constitutional philosophy Dworkin likes.

Here's what Judge Alito should do during the confirmation hearing. He should say that he's a Dworkinian. He should say that he endorses Ronald Dworkin's constitutional philosophy, according to which the judge's job is to formulate a theory of the pertinent body of law and then apply it to the cases. Dworkin could hardly complain about Judge Alito's not having a constitutional philosophy if he has Dworkin's! Aha, you say; then he'd be a leftist like Dworkin. Not at all. Dworkin's constitutional philosophy doesn't entail leftism. If it did, it wouldn't be a constitutional philosophy, which is designed to "provide a filter, or protective screen, between [a judge's] politics and his judgment about what the law requires." A judge can easily formulate a theory of the law that justifies decisions that Dworkin, qua leftist, would reject. I won't go into the details of Dworkin's constitutional philosophy here. I've written about it in my Ph.D. dissertation, among other places. Suffice it to say that two judges applying Dworkin's constitutional philosophy could reach diametrically opposed results in just about every case that came before them.

Addendum: Dworkin is notorious for begging questions. Here is Judge Richard Posner:

What Dworkin claims to be describing is not one approach among many, but "theory." Anyone who does not subscribe to his conception of how judges should decide cases is a member of "the anti-theory army," along with "the post-modernists, the prestructuralists, the deconstructionists, the critical legal students, the critical race scholars, and a thousand other battalions" of that army. Dworkin's polemic against the appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court accused Bork, an influential constitutional theorist, of having "no constitutional philosophy at all . . . He believes he has no responsibility to treat the Constitution as an integrated structure of moral and political principles." Dworkin equates theory to philosophy to treating the entire Constitution, and through justificatory ascent the entire body of American law, as "an integrated structure of moral and political principles."

This is persuasive definition with a vengeance.

(Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999], 116 [citation and footnotes omitted])

Look at the headline of this New York Times story about the economy. Does it seem to you, as it does to me, that the Times wants things to go poorly in the economy? It turns even good news into bad news. God forbid the economy should have lost jobs! As for why the Times wants things to go poorly in the economy, all I can think is that it makes President Bush look bad. A robust economy would make him look good. The Times does not want President Bush to look good or be successful.

Addendum: The Times sometimes changes its headlines, so let me get the headline down here: "U.S. Gains 108,000 More Jobs, but Pace of Growth Slows."

Addendum 2: The story itself is rife with bias. Here's a summary: "The economy seems to be doing well, but it's really not; and even if it is doing well, it's not because of President Bush; it's in spite of him." Does the Times realize how ridiculous it has become?

[I]t is better to have some principles, even if they sometimes lead to decisions which we regret, than to be morally adrift.

(R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952], 73)

Here is an interesting story about polygamy. How many of you would like to have more than one spouse? Wouldn't that double your trouble?

Here.

Congratulations to the Texas Longhorns, who won the BCS title this past Wednesday. I thought USC would win easily. Some of you may not know this, but UT won the most recent College World Series. Even the UT basketball team is highly ranked. It was ranked as high as second (behind Duke) and is now 15th, with a 10-2 record. If the basketball Horns win the NCAA title in a couple of months, it will be an unprecedented (I'm sure) sweep of the major NCAA titles.

To the Editor:

To this displaced New Orleanian, the West Virginia mining tragedy feels eerily like a rerun. The lies, the ineptitude and the betrayal have a sickeningly familiar feel. Failed levees then, a company with more than 200 safety violations now. Fantasy statements about real people's realities.

The outrage is the same. Classist disregard of the common people who carry the soul of this country and do our everyday, productive work threatens the social fabric and assaults our most basic values.

Profiteering, exploitation and self-serving protective maneuvering are not the moral high ground from which the powerful can help create a better world. Arrogance, greed and indifference threaten to destroy us now as they have throughout history.

Will we learn? Will we stand strong together to demand the valuing of human life? This seems to be our only hope. As Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Today, the divide is class.

Ann Patteson
Southampton, N.Y., Jan. 5, 2006

Here.

Ignoramus, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.

Dumble was an ignoramus,
Mumble was for learning famous.
Mumble said one day to Dumble:
"Ignorance should be more humble.
Not a spark have you of knowledge
That was got in any college."
Dumble said to Mumble: "Truly
You're self-satisfied unduly.
Of things in college I'm denied
A knowledge—you of all beside."
Borelli.

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

See here.

1-5-86 Sunday. I’m back on track with my forty-mile Sundays. The sprocket of my bike broke on 8 December, which meant that my streak of twenty-eight consecutive rides went down the drain. I missed 15 December because the bike was down, and then spent the next two Sundays (22 and 29 December) in Michigan or on my way from Michigan to Tucson. But this is the first Sunday of 1986, and already I’m back on track. I need to average twenty-five miles per Sunday during 1986 to break my 1985 mileage record. I’m bound and determined to do it. [I rode 2,808.1 miles in 1986—more than double my 1985 total of 1,324.8 miles. That’s an average of 54 miles per week.]

The weather was not the best today, but then, what should I expect? It’s early January. In Michigan, or most any other place, I wouldn’t be riding at all. The temperature reached sixty-seven degrees [Fahrenheit] this afternoon and I felt a handful of raindrops as I pedalled [sic; should be “pedaled”]. The skies were overcast for most of the day, except when I neared the apartment. It was extremely windy on the way home from the cave [Colossal Cave]. Nonetheless, I had a good day, from a statistical point of view. My gross average speed was 13.11 miles per hour (three hours, three minutes of riding) and my top speed for the day was thirty-three miles per hour. I love the new odometer. The new sprocket also performed admirably. I detected no looseness or play, even when I pushed hard on the pedals. Here’s to a good year of riding!

Here is a blog for your consideration. I will add it to the blogroll.

Dr John McWhorter argues in his new book (Winning the Race) that the black community in the United States suffers from "victimhood." See here. This seems right to me. If you believe that your plight is inescapable, you will not try to better yourself. You will whine, point fingers, and dig yourself into an even deeper hole. What's sad is that so-called leaders of the black community, such as Jesse Jackson, perpetuate the image of the black victim. Why do they do this? Because there's money in it. These so-called leaders are getting rich at the expense of their own people.

Here.

HRP: What is the feminist revolution and what's wrong with it?

Mansfield: The principle of it is that men and women are equal in the sense of exchangeable. Anything a man can do, a woman can do. And anything a woman can do, a man can do. This is an extremely radical principle which has never been tried by any human society. Most of the feminists are moderates. A moderate feminist is one who believes that it's possible for a woman to have a family and a career, and a radical feminist denies that and is more or less openly opposed to the family. This revolution I do not think can succeed, because it denies natural differences that cannot be repressed. So it will lead to and has already produced a good deal of frustration—in both sexes. Women will never succeed in being men, in being as successful in occupations which require aggressiveness as men are. And so, realizing this, or half-realizing this, they are trying to change the nature of those occupations to fix it so that aggressiveness counts for less.

(Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., “Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.: The Question of Conservatism,” interview by Josh Harlan and Christopher Kagay, The Harvard Review of Philosophy 3 [spring 1993]: 30-47, at 43)

To the Editor:

Adam Cohen treats as a matter for dismay Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s sympathy for the losing side in the historic reapportionment cases that established one man one vote as the law of the land.

What the courts decided in those cases 40-odd years ago was that less populous counties and legislative districts could not, as they had previously done, enjoy the privileged representation that less populous states can and do still enjoy by electing two United States senators each.

This has to do not just with voting rights but also with evolving, and legitimately debatable, ideas of local and state autonomy.

Along with most of what Mr. Cohen calls the "legal mainstream," I approve of those decisions. But I don't approve of treating disagreement with them as a dangerous or unacceptable idea. I don't support Judge Alito's nomination, because I think his views on executive power are dangerously out of line with the Constitution, but I would like to register a protest against one more apparent litmus test being proposed in a forum where more nuanced reasoning would have been appreciated.

Will Crutchfield
New York, Jan. 3, 2006

Peg Kaplan's day was made. See here.

Let's have some fun. Please use all of the following words in a single sentence:

medal
metal
meddle

And now these three:

pedal
petal
peddle

Creativity and humor will be rewarded!

Addendum: If you can use all six of these words in a single sentence, you are truly gifted.

Addendum 2: Mr Grouchy Pants added a word I forgot: mettle. Good for you!

Addendum 3: One of my favorite albums is Pink Floyd's Meddle (1971). I suppose it's a play on "metal," as in "heavy metal"—even though the album is not metal, much less heavy metal. The album might be called "heavy meddle."

Medal, n. A small metal disk given as a reward for virtues, attainments or services more or less authentic.

It is related of Bismark, who had been awarded a medal for gallantly rescuing a drowning person, that, being asked the meaning of the medal, he replied: "I save lives sometimes." And sometimes he didn't.

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

I have seen no evidence—not one whit—that President Bush lied about anything connected to the war in Iraq. To lie, one must utter a proposition that one believes to be false, with intent to deceive. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that President Bush lied. Suppose he wanted public support for the war in Iraq and knew that he could get it only by saying things he believed to be false, such as that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

What is supposed to follow from the fact that he lied? There are three positions one can take on the morality of lying:

1. Consequentialism. Lying is not intrinsically wrong. That an act is a lie is morally irrelevant. Each act is to be evaluated on the basis of its consequences. If a particular lie has the best overall consequences, then it is right. Otherwise, it is wrong.

2. Moderate deontology. Lying is intrinsically wrong. That an act is a lie is morally relevant. But other things, such as well-being, are also morally relevant. In a given case, a lie can be justified if enough good is produced thereby.

3. Absolute deontology. Lying is intrinsically wrong. That an act is a lie is morally relevant. No amount of good consequences can justify a lie.

Moderate deontology comes in degrees, since one can set the threshold in different places. One person might require a great deal of good to justify a lie, whereas someone else might require significantly less. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was an absolute deontologist. In his view, one must never lie, no matter how much good will come of it. Even if the only way for me to prevent a murder is to lie, I must not lie. Even if the only way for me to prevent a destructive war is to lie, I must not lie.

Are the people who have been chanting “Bush lied!” absolute deontologists? I can’t believe that they are. So even if they’re right that President Bush lied, they have more arguing to do. They must show that not enough good was produced to justify the lie. To do this, they must lay out the long-term consequences of President Bush’s lie and compare those consequences to the best alternative. I have seen no attempt to do this.

Here.

Pat Buchanan says we should talk to the Iranians rather than destroy their nuclear capacity. See here. Talking to those bent on your destruction is always an effective strategy. Having listened to Pat for many years, I don't think he cares about the Israelis.

I heartily concur with this column by George F. Will. I'm ashamed to say that Myles Brand, the president of the NCAA, was my metaphysics professor at The University of Arizona.

One of my readers predicted it: The mainstream media, he said, would blame the mine disaster on President Bush. See here.

Here is an organization devoted to defending life, faith, and family. I shall add it to the blogroll.

Here is an essay about the recent court case in Pennsylvania.

USC 49, Texas 17. Reggie Bush runs wild.

Addendum: It's halftime. Texas leads, 16-10. I can't believe how sloppily USC has played. Reggie Bush made a bonehead play when he tried to lateral the ball after a long gain. Matt Leinart has done nothing well, much less spectacular. He looks dazed and confused. Texas got a free touchdown. Worst of all, USC failed to make many tackles. Tackling is basic. If you miss a tackle, you deserve to lose.

Addendum 2: Texas won, 41-38. At least it was close. I expected a blowout.

Here.

See here.

Here.

I believe that controversies about policy almost always involve tradeoffs between competing values, and that science is equipped to identify the tradeoffs but not to resolve them.

(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature [New York: Viking, 2002], ix)

Salamander, n. Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water.

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

Here.

To the Editor:

Re "The Year of Domesticity" (column, Jan. 1):

David Brooks is both right and terribly wrong. That parenting and home life are incredibly important for many reasons, some of which vitally affect issues of national import, doesn't make the repetitiousness and insularity of housework, or the drudgery of changing thousands of diapers, less mind-numbing.

Nor is that fact changed by his supposed "gotcha!" example that being an associate at a large law firm can be inhumane and less likely to form the source of happy memories than the raising of children.

I can speak to this, as I've had both experiences.

Believe me, at any given moment, I'd rather be writing (or reading) an interesting Op-Ed column than changing a dirty diaper. And the joys of talking or reading to my 3-year-old do not lessen the enormous relief of a steady diet of stimulating adult interaction.

The answer is not just getting more men to share equally in housework and child-rearing, but to make it financially and otherwise possible for parents to have both experiences.

Eileen B. Hershenov
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Jan. 1, 2006

Michael Ruse, who has been described by a biologist as "a very confused fellow," describes me as "appalling," which means shocking, unpleasant, or bad. Gee. All I did is point out that the Philosophy-of-Biology blog appears to be going out of business. I stand by my claim. All those "contributors," but only 10 posts in December.

Addendum: Here is another biologist who says that Ruse is confused.

Addendum 2: I can see why it's biologists who say that Ruse is confused. Ruse has no scientific credentials. See here. He literally doesn't know what he's talking about.

It goes without saying that elegiac reverence about older cultural forms can be as dangerous—and as silly—as triumphal optimism about newer ones, partly because each attitude needs to repress some banal but important truths: about the inevitability of change in the one case, and about the inescapability of the past in the other. It also goes without saying that the stances people take on matters of tradition and cultural innovation are legitimately dependent on variations in individual temperament and outlook. For all I know, they may be dependent on variations in birth order, genetic make-up, or social class. Yet these considerations themselves suggest, what should in any case be evident, namely, that it is as undesirable to have a political philosophy that rests on contempt or indifference toward the past as it is to have one that rests on anxiety or insecurity about the future. And if the challenge for communitarians and traditionalists is to counteract the impression that they sometimes violate the second of these provisos, the challenge for cosmopolitans is to counteract the impression that they sometimes violate the first.

(Samuel Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], 126)

Here.

Filibuster, n. 1. The obstruction of progress in a legislative assembly, esp. by prolonged speaking. 2. The means that is justified by the leftist end of keeping highly qualified appointees off the federal bench. 3. Progress.

How influential are blogs? Here is an interesting essay by political scientists (and bloggers) Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell.

See here.

To the Editor:

The lesson you want business leaders to learn from the Enron debacle is "that sometimes excessive greed doesn't pay" ("Enron Rears Its Head Again," editorial, Dec. 29)? The lesson they understand quite well is that it obviously pays handsomely, most of the time, without the risk of going to jail, and it will continue to do so.

What we could do, however, to strike a blow at greed is increase the marginal tax rate to capture most of the undeserved, astronomical earnings of business leaders. We might also tax corporate earnings at a higher rate if corporations choose to reward executives with salaries and bonuses exceeding a certain percentage of earnings.

Because these salaries and bonuses typically have no relationship to performance or merit, but are, practically speaking, decisions by managers to reward themselves at the expense of stockholders, I cannot see any legitimate argument against such measures. Now, policies like these might deliver a lesson on greed that even executives could learn.

Jack Archer
Santa Fe, N.M., Dec. 29, 2005

Body-snatcher, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker. The hyena.

"One night," a doctor said, "last fall,
I and my comrades, four in all,
When visiting a graveyard stood
Within the shadow of a wall.

"While waiting for the moon to sink
We saw a wild hyena slink
About a new-made grave, and then
Begin to excavate its brink!

"Shocked by the horrid act, we made
A sally from our ambuscade,
And, falling on the unholy beast,
Dispatched him with a pick and spade."
Bettel K. Jhones.

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

Notice the difference between

1. that gay-cowboy movie

and

2. that gay cowboy movie.

Speaking of which, has anyone seen this movie? It hasn't showed up in the top-ten lists. Is this one of those movies that the high-brow critics love but ordinary people hate?

Here.

It’s one thing to be indifferent to religion. It’s another to be hostile to it. I’ve always been an atheist. I was an atheist when I was a leftist and I’m an atheist now that I’m a rightist. If there’s a religious gene, I don’t have it. Like David Hume, I’m tone-deaf to religion. Even if I wanted to believe in a supreme being, I couldn’t. I could no more believe in God than I could believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny.

But that’s just me. I don’t assume that everyone is like me. Many people are devoutly religious, and I respect them. I’m what William Rowe calls a “friendly” atheist. Qua atheist, I believe that there is no God (and that I’m justified in so believing); but qua friendly atheist, I believe that a person can be justified in believing in God. If you (the reader) believe that God exists and I believe that God does not exist, then one of us is right and the other wrong, since the propositions are contradictory. But even though we can’t both be right, we can both be justified in our beliefs. Truth is not justification. One can have a justified false belief just as one can have an unjustified true belief. How can both theism and atheism be justified? Easy. The world as we experience it is compatible both with God and without God. As philosophers of science would put it, belief is underdetermined by data (or experience). There are, of course, unfriendly atheists, just as there are unfriendly theists. I may even have been unfriendly earlier in my life, but now I’m not.

Which brings me to my subject: Why are leftists hostile to religion? The hostility takes different forms, from denying that theism can be justified (epistemic hostility) to trying to drive religion out of public life (legal or social hostility) to discriminating against theists in one’s personal or professional life (personal hostility). The debate over Design Theory is just one manifestation of hostility. I cannot for the life of me see the harm in teaching high-school students that some scientists and philosophers of science believe that the best explanation of natural phenomena makes reference to a designer. The opposition to such a harmless proposal is so vociferous that it requires an extraordinary hypothesis to explain it. Something more than truth is at stake. Leftist dogma is at stake.

Let me take a stab at explaining the hostility. The following remarks, like much else in this blog, are meant to be tentative. Leftists are hostile to religion because leftism competes with religion for the same cognitive and affective space. The leftist project of engineering society is thwarted by strong opposing norms such as those embedded in Christianity. At every turn, religion stands in the way of “progress.” Want to normalize homosexuality? Christians believe homosexual conduct is sinful. Want to destroy the sanctity-of-life doctrine so as to promote abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia? Christians believe that every human life, qua human life, is precious. Want to teach sex education in public schools? Christians believe sex education is for parents, not for teachers. Want to end war? Christians believe that there are worse things than death, such as being subjugated. Want to “rationalize” criminal punishment? Christians believe in individual responsibility, desert, and retribution. Want to make abortion freely available as a means of birth control? Christians believe it’s murder.

It’s no surprise that Karl Marx, the father of modern leftism, called religion “the opium of the people.” When you’re competing for a scarce resource, such as the hearts and minds of the populace (proletariat), you tend to view your competitors as enemies, and the appropriate attitude toward enemies is hostility (or ridicule). When your project of engineering society depends on securing the loyalty of the masses, you must destroy all rival loyalties, by rational persuasion if possible, by manipulation, coercion, and force if necessary. The end justifies the means. As the Left sees it, if it can destroy religion, it will occupy the field. God help us if this should ever occur.

What are we to say, then, of the one right which remains to us, the right not to be interfered with in one's self-regarding actions? This is the theory of John Stuart Mill, but we must not dismiss it as absurd for that reason only.

(J. D. Mabbott, The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 2d ed. [London: Hutchinson University Library, 1967 (1st ed. 1948)], 59 [footnote omitted])

To the Editor:

Re "In Pursuit of Unhappiness," by Darrin M. McMahon (Op-Ed, Dec. 29): What is happiness? It's a question that I suspect Plato and Aristotle tried to answer.

Subsequent generations in any case didn't benefit because to this day nobody knows what it is or at least what it consists of. And therefore happiness can never be an objective. It is a dividend, and the only people who worry about being happy are the unhappy ones.

In fact, if you feel happy, the best thing to do is avoid admitting it. Because it won't last, and if you do acknowledge its presence, the awful god Nemesis will quickly change things.

Terence O'Flanagan
Rockville Centre, N.Y. Dec. 29, 2005

Here.

Wall Street, n. A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven. Even the great and good Andrew Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the matter.

Carnegie the dauntless has uttered his call
To battle: "The brokers are parasites all!"
Carnegie, Carnegie, you'll never prevail;
Keep the wind of your slogan to belly your sail,
Go back to your isle of perpetual brume,
Silence your pibroch, doff tartan and plume:
Ben Lomond is calling his son from the fray—
Fly, fly from the region of Wall Street away!
While still you're possessed of a single baubee
(I wish it were pledged to endowment of me)
'Twere wise to retreat from the wars of finance
Lest its value decline ere your credit advance.
For a man 'twixt a king of finance and the sea,
Carnegie, Carnegie, your tongue is too free!
Anonymous Bink.

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

Here is Ed Feser's post on private property and justice.

Here.

Here is the syllabus for my upcoming Philosophy of Law course. So far, 36 students are enrolled. The course is capped at 40.

My friend Peg Kaplan up in frigid Minnesota is messing around with photographs. See here.

I'd like to wish my stepfather Jerry (seen here on Christmas day) a happy 65th birthday. He's a New Year's baby, born in 1941. Not that he reads this blog or anything, but my mother does (at least she says she does). I talked to Jerry on the telephone yesterday. He's been making Pontiac motor cars such as my 1989 Grand Am for several decades, but not for much longer. Retirement is imminent. The fish in the Great Lakes had better watch out. Jerry's father Cal recently celebrated his 89th birthday. Imagine being 65 years old and having 24 years to go! Hell with 65; I'll take the additional 24.

[W]omen's technology-driven emancipation has brought in its train a high divorce rate, a low marriage rate and high age of first marriage, a high rate of abortion and of birth out of wedlock, a low birth rate, an increase in fertility problems that has contributed in turn to an increased rate of innovation in reproductive technology, and a profound change in sexual morality, including greatly increased tolerance of homosexuality.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 250-1 [footnote omitted])

Fort Clatsop is built, and it's still raining almost all day every day. What a dreary environment! After many months of not keeping a journal, Meriwether Lewis resumes journal-writing today, probably because a new year has begun. Perhaps being a more faithful journalist was one of his New Year's resolutions. Here are the entries for this date. Note the wistfulness of Lewis's entry. He is obviously homesick. Remember: He left Pittsburgh on 31 August 1803, more than two years ago. The Corps of Discovery left St Louis, the gateway to the West, in the spring of 1804. Since then, it has lived off the land, with few creature comforts. Note also the detachment orders. It's easy to forget that the Lewis and Clark expedition was a military expedition. This isn't to say that everything was done with military precision or in strict accordance with military law; but from time to time Lewis and Clark reminded the men that they were enlistees, not mere fellow travelers.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. Here is his essay from today's New York Times Magazine.

The average high temperature in Dallas/Fort Worth during December was 60.0º, but the variation was enormous. We had highs in the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s. It reached 89º on the third of the month. Five days later, the high was 32º. It's a wonder we're not sick all the time.

To the Editor:

Because the purpose of a university education is to learn how to research, analyze, defend or disprove a particular hypothesis or idea, college students' assumptions should be challenged in class ("Professors' Politics Draw Lawmakers Into the Fray," news article, Dec. 25).

For two years, I was one of three Democrats in a conservative M.B.A. class of 135. In almost every discussion my classmates derided me for my "knee-jerk liberalism."

Did I complain to the professors? Did I call my elected representatives to investigate? No.

In many respects, this was worse than being challenged by the faculty, because in addition to disagreeing with my philosophy, some classmates ostracized me socially.

Nevertheless, I studied and thought about the issues and learned how to defend my ideas logically to a hostile class. Are conservative students so fragile that they need to be protected from views contrary to their own?

Maureen Clyne
Portland, Ore., Dec. 25, 2005

See here.

I hope 2006 finds all of you—my dear readers—happy and well. I had a safe, happy, and successful 2005. I did 27 bike rallies, read lots of interesting books and articles, wrote much (including in this blog), enjoyed another baseball season, delighted in Lance Armstrong's seventh Tour de France victory, taught several dozen bright-eyed students how to think (but not what to think), and took care of my girls (who reciprocated by taking care of me). May 2006 be just as prosperous!

Here.

Platitude, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-morality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.

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

Here.