Anal Philosopher

“The World’s Fastest Man”

2004-08-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

Justin Gatlin of the United States won the men’s 100-meter Olympic final last night with a time of 9.85 seconds. If you watched the race, you heard him described as “the world’s fastest man.” Someone needs to break it to the announcers: He’s not. The world record in the 100-meter dash is 9.78 seconds, set by Tim Montgomery in 2002. His average speed was 22.87 miles per hour. The world record in the 200-meter dash is 19.32 seconds, set by Michael Johnson in 1996. His average speed was 23.15 miles per hour.If we go by average speed, therefore, the fastest man in the world is Michael Johnson, not Tim Montgomery or Justin Gatlin. Perhaps the announcers are talking about top speed rather than average speed. Carl Lewis was clocked at 26.95 miles per hour during one of his 100-meter races at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. I doubt that Michael Johnson reached that speed at any point during his record-breaking 200-meter dash at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. So perhaps the announcers are referring to top speed rather than average speed when they use the expression “world’s fastest man.” But since top speed isn’t routinely recorded, they’re only guessing. I think they simply assume that the best 100-meter runner has a higher average speed than the best 200-meter runner. If so, they’re wrong.For my money, Michael Johnson is the world’s fastest man.

Bertie

2004-05-18T01:37:00.001-07:00

Bertrand Arthur William Russell was born on this date in 1872. Incredibly, he lived until 1970. Not many people know that John Stuart Mill, who died in 1873, was Russell's godfather. Mill and Russell are two of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. Humane Eggs See here for Smallholder's letter about "humane eggs." I found it extremely interesting, and, given my consumption of eggs from "free-roaming" hens, disturbing. The Big Perfect Unit News flash! Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks, a.k.a. The Big Unit (because of his size), just pitched a perfect game against the Atlanta Braves. This is one of the rarest events in baseball. For those of you who don't know baseball (may God have mercy on your souls), this means he retired all twenty-seven batters he faced. Nobody, in other words, reached base, by hit, walk, or otherwise. A fortiori, nobody scored. Congratulations, Randy! Moosewood Here are some recipes from the world-famous Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York (home of Cornell University). I'm hungry just looking at them. Now if only I could cook. . . . Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 6 Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than a few days knows that I care deeply about nonhuman animals. This doesn’t mean I don’t care about humans. It means I don’t care only about humans. Care is not a zero-sum game. Yes, there are conflicts between humans and nonhumans; but there are conflicts between humans and humans. Caring for nonhuman animals means taking them into account in one’s deliberations. It means, at a minimum, not treating them as resources for human use and consumption. It may puzzle some people that I’m conservative. Isn’t concern for animals a trendy liberal idea? How can this Burgess-Jackson guy be both a conservative and a respecter of animals? He must be confused. This must be a vestige of his liberal days. I’m not confused. If you think conservatism is incompatible with concern or respect for animals, you don’t understand conservatism. Conservatism is a political morality. Like any political morality, it is concerned with the relation of individuals to the state. This explains the adjective “political.” Political morality is a subset of morality. Animals, of course, are not moral agents, so they’re not political agents, either. But this just means they fall outside the scope of political morality. It doesn’t mean they fall outside the scope of morality. There are moral patients as well as moral agents. Ah, you say; but isn’t conservatism committed to conserving traditions, and isn’t using and consuming animals traditional? This goes too fast. Yes, conservatism, unlike liberalism, is committed to conserving traditions, but not just any old traditions. Some traditions are worth conserving; others are not. Slavery is traditional in Western culture, but no self-respecting conservative defends slavery. I maintain that using and consuming animals is analogous to slavery. Conservatives should reject both. You might think this is cheating. “How convenient! You pick and choose traditions in accordance with their worthiness.” But this is no different from liberalism. The central value of liberalism is liberty, understood as the absence of constraint. Liberals aren’t anarchists; they believe there are moral limits on the exercise of individual liberty. As the old saying goes, your liberty stops at the tip of my nose. Liberty, to the liberal, is intrinsically good, but it’s not the only intrinsically good thing. Liberals aren’t absolutists about the value of liberty. Nor are conservatives absolutists about the value of tradition. Liberals accord a presumption to liberty. Liberty, it might be said, is innocent until proven guilty. Conservatives accord a presumption to tradition. Tradition is innocent until proven guilty. Just as the presumption in favor of liberty can be rebutted or overridden, the presumption in favor of tradition can be rebutted or overridden. Bullfighting, fox hunting, meat-eating, and rodeos, like human chattel slavery, are traditional. This creates a presumption in their favor to the conservative. But I would argue that the presumption is rebutted or overridden in each case. When is the presumption in favor of tradition rebutted or overridden? When the tradition inflicts harm on others. Conservatives are just as concerned with harm prevention as liberals are. Ah, you say, but animals can’t be harmed. Why not? To harm another is to set back his or her interests. Animals have interests. The main interest any sentient being has is not suffering. Animals also have an interest in life, just as humans do. Life is the precondition for all else of value to the individual: enjoyments, activities, experiences, and, in the case of humans, projects. Animals also have an interest in liberty. Confining animals sets this interest back. Humans harm animals in myriad ways. Please don’t equate conservatism with the views actually held by conservatives. The views of a conservative fall into two categories: essential and accidental. The essential views are those that cannot be subtracted from conservatism without making it a different political morality. The accidental views are those that can be subtracted from conservatism without making it a different political morality. I maintain that lack of concern for animals is an accidental property of conservatism. In some cases, it derives from the religious beliefs of the conservative. But religion is not essential to conservatism. I’m an atheist. I’m also conservative. Logically speaking, I can be both. Please be good to animals. First, do no harm to them. Primum non nocere. Second, do what you can to prevent harm to them. Third, if you have it in you, work to improve their lives. Let’s start a new tradition of compassion, concern, care, and respect for other species. That will be a tradition worth conserving.

Ambrose Bierce

2004-05-18T01:37:00.000-07:00

Scribbler, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911) Reverse Discrimination A reader objected to my use (here) of the term “reverse discrimination.” I explained that the word “reverse” indicates that groups once discriminated against are now being discriminated in favor of. He wrote back testily, saying he wasn’t asking for an explanation. He said it’s discrimination, period. There’s no need to modify the noun. But while there may be no need to modify the noun, there’s no harm in doing so, as far as I can see. Ronald Dworkin entitled one of his essays “Reverse Discrimination.” (See chap. 9 in Taking Rights Seriously [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978], 223-39.) The term appears routinely both in speech and in print. What’s wrong with taking note of the fact that the tables have been turned on those who once benefited from discrimination? What’s wrong with indicating the direction of discrimination? Perhaps the reader thinks the term “reverse discrimination” implies that it’s not really discrimination. But that’s not how modifiers work. A modified X is still an X. Male nurses are nurses, but not all nurses are male. Young dogs are dogs, but not all dogs are young. Reverse discrimination is discrimination, but not all discrimination is reverse. I actually prefer the term “reverse discrimination” to various euphemisms, such as “preferential treatment” and “affirmative action,” for it makes clear that one group of individuals is benefiting at the expense of another. Whether this is justified is another matter (Dworkin says yes; I say no); but let’s be clear about what we’re doing.

"Europa and the Pirate Twins" By Thomas Dolby From The Golden Age of Wireless (1982)

2004-05-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

I was fourteen she was twelve father travelled--hers as well--Europa . . . down the beaches hand in hand twelfth of never on the sand then war took her away we swore a vow that day: we'll be the Pirate Twins again, Europa oh my country I'll stand beside you in the rain, Europa ta république . . . nine years after who'd I see on the cover of a magazine? Europa . . . buy her singles and see all her films paste her pictures on my windowsill but that's not quite the same--it isn't, is it? Europa my old friend . . . blew in from the hoverport she was back in London I pushed past the papermen calling her name she smiled for the cameras as a bodyguard grabbed me then her eyes were gone for ever as they drove her away. Preliminary Report on Vegemite The other day (see here), I mentioned that I had purchased a small bottle of Vegemite at Whole Foods Market. Dr John J. Ray, my polymathic friend Down Under, has been warning me by e-mail that I probably won't like it. Why, I'll show him! But seriously, I like it. I've tried it on saltine crackers and straight from the bottle on the tip of a butter knife. It's powerful but tasty. I may have some Aussie blood in me. What else could explain my love for AC/DC, INXS, Midnight Oil, Icehouse, The Angels from Angel City, Men at Work, and Crocodile Dundee?

Internet Resources for Philosophers

2004-05-18T01:35:00.000-07:00

This week's link is to Aesthetics On-Line. From Today's New York Times To the Editor: In "A Crude Shock" (column, May 14), Paul Krugman describes how the market deals with scarce oil supplies and gives the economist's view of the relevance of statistics like oil consumption per dollar of real G.D.P. But faith in the market and statistics should not obscure the bottom line: this will be the last century of majority fossil fuel use because of the energy demands of an increasing population. Now is the time to make historic investments in efficiency and renewable energy research and development. For the sake of today's children, we need citizenship, self-control, common sense and community spirit to sustain humanity in a world of finite resources. ERNEST R. BEHRINGER Ann Arbor, Mich., May 15, 2004 The writer is an associate professor of physics at Eastern Michigan University. Conservatism Victorious Step back for a moment. Think about long-term social and intellectual movements. Liberalism has been routed. Conservatism occupies the field. Liberalism prevails in certain areas, such as the academy, journalism, and entertainment, but the American people are overwhelmingly conservative, as every survey shows. See here for an interesting column about this phenomenon. As long as liberals defend reverse discrimination, coercive redistribution of wealth, and sexual promiscuity, they will be a minority party in this country. These policies go against the American grain. They might be acceptable in places like Sweden, France, and Canada, but not here. Keep it up, liberals. You're digging your grave.

Samuel Scheffler on Cruelty and Brutality

2004-05-18T01:33:00.000-07:00

As we know all too well, the world can be an unbearably sad place, and people’s astonishing capacity for deliberate cruelty and brutality is one of the most striking things about them. These facts are hardly news outside of philosophy, but on the whole it cannot be said that contemporary moral philosophy has displayed much interest in them. Its focus on questions about the relative motivational importance of reason as compared with sympathetic or benevolent feeling has made it easy for philosophers to neglect the importance of sheer human viciousness: to forget that the desire to harm other people [and animals!--kbj] is one of the most prominent and enduring forces in human social life. (Samuel Scheffler, Human Morality [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992], 136 [footnote omitted]) From the Mailbag The only point that I would disagree with in Mr. Saletan's article [see here] is where he says, "The guards didn't understand Iraq, hated being there, and were under constant assault from Iraqi mortars outside the prison walls. To them, the inmates seemed a foreign enemy." This is (in part anyway) factually incorrect, and it misses what I consider to be a very important point psychologically. The inmates do not "seem" to be a foreign enemy; they ARE the enemy. They are the very people who, before their capture, were firing those mortars and planting the IED's (like the one with sarin in it yesterday). The abuse, while very wrong, was not perpetrated on the innocent. It's very hard to be nice to someone today who was trying to kill you yesterday, and who perhaps succeeded in killing some of your buddies the day before. But to understand is not to condone, and I think a little time in Leavenworth is needed in addition to courts martial. The guilty soldiers need to see the other side of the coin.

Homosexual "Marriage"

2004-05-17T01:32:00.001-07:00

Here is a case (made by United States Senators Orrin Hatch and Jim Talent) for a constitutional amendment to ban homosexual "marriage." As longtime readers of this blog know, I'm on record as supporting the federalist solution, which would allow states to decide for themselves whether to allow homosexual "marriage," but the choice may be between (1) banning homosexual "marriage" everywhere (by constitutional amendment) and (2) forcing it on every state (by judicial ruling). I prefer option 1 to 2 for federalist reasons, to wit: Far more states would disallow homosexual "marriage" than would allow it, so fewer states would be thwarted by 1 than by 2. From the Mailbag I have always used "morality" to refer to codes dictated by religious teachings and "ethics" to refer to that code of conduct that a nonreligious person substitutes for a religious morality. [See here.] Reading the dictionary definitions, I see that other people do not make this distinction. Oh well, personally I like mine better. I come to your site daily and enjoy your entries, especially the definitions by Ambrose Bierce. Though I have The Devil's Dictionary in my library, I don’t get it down very often. The definitions on your site offer just the right amount of constant exposure. America at War This column by David Gelernter of The Weekly Standard is worth your time. (Thanks again to James Taranto for the link.)

Civility

2004-05-17T01:32:00.000-07:00

John Fund of The Wall Street Journal joins the call for civility in our political discourse. See here. In my opinion, Bush hatred is far more intense and widespread than Clinton hatred. Remember: I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, so I would have noticed. (Thanks to James Taranto of Best of the Web Today for the link.) Sullivan’s Misfortune I feel sorry for Andrew Sullivan. I really do. He thinks a law that allows homosexuals to “marry” will validate their relationships, enhance their self-esteem (which he admits is “low”), and integrate them into society. No law can do these things. All law can do--tautologously--is change people’s legal status. It can force agents of the state to do this or that; it can confer legal rights and responsibilities; it can redistribute tangible burdens and benefits. It cannot alter morality, sensibility, religious practice, or custom. Sullivan writes in today’s New York Times (see here) that, as of today in Massachusetts, homosexual couples’ “love and commitment and responsibility” will be “fully cherished for the first time by the society they belong to.” How does legal marriage accomplish that? Is Sullivan suggesting that love without marriage is impossible? That will come as a surprise to the thousands of heterosexual couples who love each other but are not married. And if one’s commitment to and responsibility for another are affected by legal status, then, with all due respect, something was wrong with the relationship to begin with. Law constrains action. It is external. It cannot control how people think or feel. It cannot make A love B or destroy A’s love for B. It can neither generate nor undermine commitment. These things are internal (and extralegal). Sullivan must be incredibly insecure if he needs the imprimatur of the state on his relationship. Is love not love without legal recognition? Is a commitment that is not enforced by the state through law not really commitment? Is legal responsibility the only sort of responsibility? Sullivan invests entirely too much in law. He may be rudely surprised when he finds that altered legal status changes nothing about his love, commitment, or responsibility. Allowing homosexuals to “marry” is not equality, as Sullivan says. It is injustice. Justice requires that likes be treated alike and unlikes differently. Sullivan has never made the case that heterosexuals and homosexuals are similarly situated with respect to marriage, so insisting that extending marriage rights to homosexuals constitutes “equality” begs the question. It is irresponsible, grandstanding rhetoric. Does equality require that humans be able to marry their dogs, cats, birds, or horses? Does equality require that groups of humans be able to marry? Does equality require marriage for children? Sullivan cheapens the concept of equality by applying it so mindlessly and promiscuously. He seems not to have read Aristotle. Law cannot change attitudes. Law cannot mandate respect, esteem, or admiration. Law can enforce tolerance, but it cannot mandate acceptance. Does Sullivan really think that someone who believes that homosexual “marriage” is an abomination will change his or her mind about it simply because the law has changed? Sullivan says the “marriages” about to be effected in Massachusetts are not “gay marriages.” They are, he says, “marriages.” But that’s not something that can be legislated or decreed from the bench. Imagine saying that Joe and Bob are not male nurses; they’re nurses. You can’t make people think and speak a certain way. Joe and Bob had best get used to being called male nurses. The adjective “male” indicates deviation from the norm. But at least they’re really nurses. Homosexual “marriages” will never be marriages. They won’t even be homosexual marriages. They will be homosexual “marriages.” Sullivan had best get used to it.

Canadian Brainlock

2004-05-17T01:31:00.000-07:00

This essay shows how effeminate Canadians have become. A hardy people has become thoroughly feminized. How could Canadian men allow this to happen? Have they no self-respect? Americans must not--and will not--follow their lead. (Thanks to Dan Gifford for the link.) Ambrose Bierce Rebel, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911) From Today's New York Times To the Editor: It was with dismay and horror that I viewed the photo of a cowering Iraqi prisoner menaced by vicious military guard dogs at Abu Ghraib prison (front page, May 10). As an Austrian Jew imprisoned in Dachau and Buchenwald in 1938 and 1939, I was an eyewitness to similar inhumane behavior by sadistic Nazi SS guards. OTTO PERL Teaneck, N.J., May 12, 2004

Robert Paul Wolff on Anarchism

2004-05-17T01:29:00.000-07:00

The myth of legitimate authority is the secular reincarnation of that religious superstition which has finally ceased to play a significant role in the affairs of men. Like Christianity, the worship of the state has its fundamentalists, its revisionists, its ecumenicists (or world-Federalists), and its theological rationale. The philosophical anarchist is the atheist of politics. . . . [T]he slow extinction of religious faith over the past two centuries may encourage us to hope that in time anarchism, like atheism, will become the accepted conviction of enlightened and rational men. (Robert Paul Wolff, "On Violence," The Journal of Philosophy 66 [2 October 1969]: 601-16, at 616) About Me You may have noticed a new link directly to the left of this entry. If you click "About Me," you'll see personal information, a photograph of me in action, a link to my university homepage (which shows, inter alia, my scholarly publications), summaries of recent posts, and blogging data. This last is especially welcome to an anal-retentive person like me. I can't believe Blogger is free. There must be a catch, but in over half a year I haven't figured out what it is. From the Mailbag William Saletan of Slate magazine has an interesting article on why the Stanford Prison Experiment doesn't explain Abu Ghraib. See here. Conclusion: If we blame the situation, the perpetrators are absolved. Matthew http://www.ektopos.com

JusTalkin

2004-05-16T01:28:00.001-07:00

Here is an interesting new blog by a South Carolinian named Steve. Welcome to the blogosphere, Steve! I put a permanent link on the left side of this blog. Peeve #5 What’s the difference between ethics and morality? You don’t know, do you? Join the crowd. Even philosophers don’t use the terms consistently. I’ve heard “ethics” defined as the philosophical study of morality and “morality” defined as the philosophical study of ethics. Some philosophers, such as Bernard Williams, use the term “morality” to refer to a proper subset of ethics. Morality, they say, has to do with obligation (“ligare” = tie or bind, as in “ligament”), whereas ethics concerns what sort of people we should be as well as how we should conduct ourselves (i.e., character as well as action). Very often I see the expression “ethical and moral,” as in “Cloning has ethical and moral implications” or “Torture is unethical, immoral, and illegal.” I doubt very seriously that the author of these sentences has a clear idea of the distinction. In fact, I suspect the author throws both words in just in case there is a difference between ethics and morality (or between the ethical and the moral). It’s cover-your-ass writing. It's disingenuous. Let me lay down the law. Unless you have a clear distinction in mind between ethics and morality, as Williams does (and in which case you’re obliged to share it with your interlocutor), don’t use both terms in a single expression, for that implies (1) that there is a difference and (2) that you know the difference. Pick a term and use it consistently. Don’t fudge. Don’t weasel. Don’t put on airs.

Oops!

2004-05-16T01:28:00.000-07:00

As so often happens, something that began as a post for this blog turned into a column for Tech Central Station. If the editor, Nick Schulz, chooses not to publish it, I'll post it here. Either way, you'll get to read it soon. The title is "Expiating Liberal Guilt." I think you'll enjoy it. The Stanford Prison Experiment A couple of years ago, I came across a reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment, so I read up on it. Today, John Ray reminded me of the experiment in his blog, Dissecting Leftism. Here is a site devoted to the experiment. It will help you understand how good people can do bad things. (It's easy to understand how bad people can do bad things.) Please don't confuse explanation with justification. Explaining why X was done doesn't justify the doing of X. Explanation is factual; justification is normative. They are as different as night and day. Ally One of my favorite bands, Judas Priest, has a song entitled "Don't Have to Be Old to Be Wise" (from British Steel [1980]). This is ambiguous. If it means that there is no correlation between age and wisdom, I disagree. If it means the correlation isn't perfect, I agree. Ally Eskin proves that you don't have to be old to be wise. See here.

A Defense of PETA

2004-05-16T01:26:00.000-07:00

Here is a short essay in support of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Letters on Bush-Hating Almost seven months ago, I published a long column on Tech Central Station entitled "The Natural History of Bush-Hating." See here. It generated lots of feedback, both on the site and in the form of e-mail to me. Here are the ninety e-mail messages I received. Some of them, as you'll see, are supportive. Others are hostile. I appreciate both types. Liberalism's Double Standard (Author Unknown) A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself a liberal and favored redistribution of wealth in America. She felt deeply ashamed that her father was a staunch conservative. One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich (the proceeds to be used for welfare programs). In the middle of her diatribe (which was based on lectures she had heard from her leftist professors), she was stopped by her father, who asked how she was doing in school. She replied that she had a 4.0 GPA and let him know that it was tough to maintain. She had to study all the time and could not attend parties like the other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend. She didn't have many college friends because she spent all her time studying. She was taking a more difficult curriculum than they were. Her father listened and then asked, "How is your friend Mary?" She replied, "Mary is barely getting by. All she has is a 2.0 GPA, and all she takes are easy classes; she never studies." She continued: "But Mary is popular on campus. College, for her, is a blast; she goes to all the parties and often doesn't show up for classes because she is too hung over." Her father then asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 from your 4.0 GPA and give it to your friend who has only a 2.0?" He continued: "That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA, and certainly that would be a fair, equal distribution of GPA." The daughter, visibly shocked by the father's suggestion, stammered, "That's not fair! I worked hard for my GPA. I did without, and Mary has done little or nothing; she played while I worked!" The father smiled and said, "Welcome to conservatism." Ambrose Bierce Reverence, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

BlogNotes

2004-05-15T01:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a light blogging day, as you may have noticed. I did a bike rally in Flower Mound in the morning (my fifth of the year), graded Ethics examinations in the afternoon, and attended a commencement ceremony in the evening. I didn’t spend a lot of time at the computer. The weather here in Fort Worth is gorgeous. It’s warm and sunny, but we haven’t experienced high relative humidity yet. I need to mow my front yard this afternoon. I’ll be done grading by Tuesday morning, at which time my fourteen-week summer break begins. (Usually I have fifteen weeks, but I had an extra week during winter break this year.) I’m looking forward to blogging this summer, as well as doing scholarly research and writing. I’m writing an essay entitled “Taking Egoism Seriously.” I hope you visit my blogs regularly and keep those letters coming. Bear in mind that I’m always open to questions. If you have a philosophical question, ask away. I may or may not be able to answer it, but I’ll try. Think of me as Mr Philosophy Person. From Today's New York Times To the Editor: Re "U.S. Training African Forces to Uproot Terrorists" (front page, May 11): Do we learn nothing? We are now fighting in Afghanistan the warriors we trained there two decades ago. How long will it be before the ones we are training in the Sahara turn against us? Why do we go around the globe training our future enemies how better to fight us? MARK GARRETT Maitland, Fla., May 11, 2004 Harlan B. Miller on Philosophical Paralysis The ethical incoherence of our customary treatment of nonhumans has been demonstrated time and again by [Peter] Singer, [Tom] Regan, [S. F.] Sapontzis, [David] DeGrazia, [Evelyn] Pluhar, and others. Almost every member of the American Philosophical Association would agree that all mammals are conscious, and that all conscious experience is of some moral significance. But somehow this has no connection with one’s choice of food. Like the undergraduate who listens to, and actually understands, the refutation of naive relativism, and still writes in the final exam that “no one can judge another person’s morality,” many philosophers suffer from a sort of inferential paralysis. (Harlan B. Miller, review of Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement, by Peter Singer, Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy 110 [January 2000]: 441-3, at 443 [italics in original]) From the Mailbag Hey, your article isn't a philosophical argument, and it doesn't explain or refute liberalism at all--it's a bunch of invective in which the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' are interchangeable (I've seen the same exact things written of conservatives by liberals, except for 'desert' and the extremely simplistic part about greed). Somebody who teaches philosophy really ought to do better than this. If I were a conservative I'd ask you to get off my team--go back to the liberals! With all due respect - JF

From Today's New York Times

2004-05-15T01:21:00.000-07:00

To the Editor: Re "U.S. Training African Forces to Uproot Terrorists" (front page, May 11): Do we learn nothing? We are now fighting in Afghanistan the warriors we trained there two decades ago. How long will it be before the ones we are training in the Sahara turn against us? Why do we go around the globe training our future enemies how better to fight us? MARK GARRETT Maitland, Fla., May 11, 2004 Harlan B. Miller on Philosophical Paralysis The ethical incoherence of our customary treatment of nonhumans has been demonstrated time and again by [Peter] Singer, [Tom] Regan, [S. F.] Sapontzis, [David] DeGrazia, [Evelyn] Pluhar, and others. Almost every member of the American Philosophical Association would agree that all mammals are conscious, and that all conscious experience is of some moral significance. But somehow this has no connection with one’s choice of food. Like the undergraduate who listens to, and actually understands, the refutation of naive relativism, and still writes in the final exam that “no one can judge another person’s morality,” many philosophers suffer from a sort of inferential paralysis. (Harlan B. Miller, review of Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement, by Peter Singer, Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy 110 [January 2000]: 441-3, at 443 [italics in original]) From the Mailbag Hey, your article isn't a philosophical argument, and it doesn't explain or refute liberalism at all--it's a bunch of invective in which the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' are interchangeable (I've seen the same exact things written of conservatives by liberals, except for 'desert' and the extremely simplistic part about greed). Somebody who teaches philosophy really ought to do better than this. If I were a conservative I'd ask you to get off my team--go back to the liberals! With all due respect - JF

Who Says Scholars Are Humorless?

2004-05-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

Dennis R. Delaney, "Federal Guidance: A Middle of the River Approach to Water Conservation," Boston University Law Review 76 (February 1996): 375.Scott R. Sweir, "The Tenuous Tale of the Terrible Termites: The Federal Arbitration Act and the Court's Decision to Interpret Section Two in the Broadest Possible Manner: Allied-Bruce Terminix Companies, Inc. v. Dobson," South Dakota Law Review 41 (1996): 131.Robert Almeder, "Dretske's Dreadful Question," Philosophia 24 (December 1995): 449; Fred Dretske, "Dretske's Awful Answer," Philosophia 24 (December 1995): 459.Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith, "Frog and Toad Lose Control," Analysis 56 (April 1996): 63.Mark Heller, "The Mad Scientist Meets the Robot Cats: Compatibilism, Kinds and Counterexamples," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (June 1996): 333.

Congratulations, Bill!

2004-05-14T01:18:00.000-07:00

I just made my daily visit to Bill Keezer's aptly named blog, Bill's Comments. His posts for the day are, as usual, thoughtful and interesting. Here is Bill's reflection on capital punishment. By the way, Bill just hit 1,000 on his site counter. Congratulations, Bill! You're doing great. You are becoming an important voice in the blogosphere. The word will spread. Keep it up. Mr Mollo Some people have feline companions. I have canine companions. Peg Kaplan has avian companions. Look at Mr Mollo! What a beautiful bird! Thanks for the show and tell, Peg. PETA People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is both loved and hated, both celebrated and excoriated, both supported and opposed. It might be said that those who love PETA do so because they accept its ends, while those who hate it do so because they reject its ends. PETA has a stake in promoting this view, for it diverts attention from the organization’s strategies and tactics. I think the view being promoted is mistaken. There are many people who accept PETA’s ends but reject its means. There are many people who genuinely care about animals and would gladly throw their support behind a reputable organization, but who believe that PETA adopts reprehensible and counterproductive tactics. How do I know this? I teach. I receive letters. I read newspapers. I watch television. I’ve had over twenty years of experience with this issue. I know whereof I speak. Can we agree that it’s wrong to degrade women (or any other group) in order to promote a goal? If so, then we can ask whether PETA’s campaigns degrade women. I believe they do. Can we agree that rational persuasion is superior to manipulation? If so, then we can ask whether PETA prefers the latter to the former. I believe it does. Can we agree that commercialization is bad? If so, then we can ask whether PETA is commercialized. I believe it is. Can we agree that a serious organization, devoted to long-lasting social change, should not rely on celebrity? If so, then we can ask whether PETA relies on celebrity. I believe it does. I’m trying to reach agreement on moral principles so that we can discuss facts. Sometimes I get the feeling that, to PETA, the end justifies the means. If manipulation works better than rational persuasion, then by all means manipulate! If tactic A gets more attention than tactic B, thus getting PETA into the news, then tactic A is preferable to B. If degrading women or cozying up to powerful commercial interests helps animals, then it must be done. I despise this sort of result-oriented thinking. It appalls me. Animals do not benefit, in the long run, from anything but rational persuasion. It particularly galls me to find philosophers supporting PETA. No self-respecting philosopher would manipulate an audience, however important the end. Philosophers are concerned with knowledge, not mere belief. Their objective isn’t to change people’s beliefs but to provide good grounds for belief. This rules out appeals to emotion, for example. It rules out buckets of blood, paint-throwing, rudeness, and other vile, self-defeating tactics. PETA turns off more people than it recruits. I’m convinced of it. Is this good for animals? With friends like PETA, animals don’t need enemies. Philosophers must remain independent. They must avoid affiliation, association, and membership. Philosophers (think Socrates) are devoted single-mindedly to the acquisition of knowledge, which means, among other things, having rational grounds for belief. Nothing must interfere with this objective. The philosopher, as such, would rather not change beliefs at all than change them through disreputable means. Philosophers are deontologists, not consequentialists. Philosophical argumentation is constrained, not free. I call upon my philosophical friends (they know who they are) to sever ties with PETA. Immediately. Regain your lost independence and self-respect. Come home to philosophy. Come back to what attracted you to philosophy in the first place: its integrity, its honesty, and its methodological purity. You can’t be both a philosopher and a shill. You can try to be both, but you can’t succeed at it.

Texasisms

2004-05-14T01:16:00.000-07:00

Until I got to Texas in 1988, I never said “Yeehaa!” Now I say it every now and then, usually while riding my bike. I can’t find an entry for “Yeehaa” in any of my dictionaries. It’s an exclamation. It’s boisterous. It means something like “Yeah!” or “Yowzer!” I might say it, for example, while roaring down the main street of a Texas town, hoping locals will absorb some of my energy and excitement (or at least notice me and wonder about my mental condition). I’ve said it while flying down a hill at forty miles an hour. You don’t say “Yeehaa”; you scream it. It’s visceral. Guttural. It's designed to frighten the dead. Some people pronounce the word “Yeehaw.” There’s a television advertisement for a local window company in which the salesperson says “Yeehaw!” before breaking a pane of glass with a crowbar. It seems inauthentic to me. I probably hear “Yeehaa” two or three times as often as “Yeehaw.” I like the “y” words. I say “Yikes,” “Yowzer,” “Yeehaa,” and “Yastrzemski” all the time. Okay, I made that last one up. I’m in a baseball frame of mind this evening. My adopted Texas Rangers and my home-state Detroit Tigers just started their televised game. All is well in the world. Yeeeeeeehaa! “Buying a World Series Title” It has become fashionable--indeed, all but obligatory--to complain about Major League Baseball’s hierarchical salary structure. Teams such as the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves spend significantly more in player salaries than do teams such as the Florida Marlins and Minnesota Twins. It is said that this hurts the game. Some teams are “out of it” before the season begins. Titles should be won on the field, not purchased by the likes of George Steinbrenner. But having a high-salaried team is neither necessary nor sufficient for winning a World Series title. The Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2000, even though they spent more money than any other team during each of the past three seasons. The most recent winners--the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001, the Anaheim Angels in 2002, and the Florida Marlins in 2003--were not among the biggest spenders. Florida was among the smallest. This isn’t to suggest that money plays no role in how things turn out. Of course it does. There’s probably a correlation, historically, between how much a team spends on salaries and how it fares on the field. I, however, think this is good for the game, not bad. For one thing, it creates underdogs. Everyone outside of New York wants the big, bad Yankees to fall on their faces, and recently they have done so. This is delightful. It’s great to know that a team of young, comparatively underpaid players can topple giants. It's great to see the presumption rebutted, the rule excepted, the norm transgressed. Imposing a salary cap, as the National Football League has done, will damage the game of baseball. It will turn the hated Yankees into just another team. America needs both Goliaths and Davids. It’s part of the morality play that is baseball.

George P. Fletcher on Loyalty

2004-05-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

In acting loyally, the self acts in harmony with its personal history. One recognizes who one is. Actions of standing by one's friends, family, nation, or people reveal that identity. The self sees in its action precisely what history requires it to do. (George P. Fletcher, Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 25) Another Take on The New York Times Here is another take on the bias of The New York Times. Don't take my word or John Podhoretz's word for it; read the stories and editorial opinions of the Times yourself. You'll see what we mean. What's frightening is that there isn't much difference between the stories and the editorial opinions. Both are relentlessly anti-American. Both exhibit hatred of President Bush and of ordinary hard-working, God-fearing, patriotic Americans. From the Mailbag Hi, I recently began reading your blog and really enjoy it. After reading some of your opinions, I wondered if you have ever listened to or read Neal Boortz. You share a lot of the same ideas and beliefs as he does. Coincidentally, so do I. Maybe that’s why I enjoy your blogs so much. I have a blog at http://justalkin.blogspot.com. I’m just starting it, and it’s not nearly as good as yours. It’s mostly just random thoughts at the moment, but you never know where it might end up. Good luck and keep up the good posting.

From Today's New York Times

2004-05-14T01:09:00.000-07:00

To the Editor: "The President and Women" (editorial, May 9) attributes thoughts to me that I do not believe. The Americans who marched in Washington recently to advocate pro-choice policies have every right to do so, just as I have the right to advocate my pro-life position. My remarks on CNN were an effort to find common ground on this divisive issue. I said, and believe, that after Sept. 11 we have been reminded of the precious nature of human life, especially as Americans of all political philosophies and beliefs fight a common enemy in the terror network that assaults the founding conviction of our country, that all individuals were endowed by our Creator with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I suggested that surely reasonable people on both sides of the abortion issue, including a number of my pro-choice friends who also work for President Bush, could agree that we should work to reduce the number of abortions in America through policies like promoting adoption. KAREN HUGHES Austin, Tex., May 10, 2004 Ambrose Bierce Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911) A Sport of Nature I've seen Kiss in concert seven times. I own most of the band's albums. Now I have an additional reason to appreciate the band. Its bass guitarist, Gene Simmons, has a brain. Most celebrities, alas, do not. See here. (Thanks to Dan Gifford for the link.)

They’re Not Like You and Me

2004-05-14T01:07:00.000-07:00

Did you read the New York Times editorial I posted? (See immediately below.) What’s the point of describing Nicholas Berg as “an adventurous and naïve young man”? Why the emphasis on his “defiance” of danger? Is the Times suggesting that he is responsible for his own death? I don’t know why else this would have been included in an editorial opinion, especially one as short as this.Would the Times make a similar suggestion about a young woman who, knowing of the dangerousness of a particular part of town, went there alone, at night, to do business, only to be raped and murdered? You know the answer to this question. The Times is trying to make it seem as though Nicholas Berg deserved to die. He shouldn’t have been where he was, doing what he was, with the motives he had. That he was there on “business” makes him seem rapacious as well as naïve.The Times seems discomfited by the attention being paid to Berg’s death. It diverts attention from what the Times considers the real story, which is the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. But why is one of these stories more important than the other? Oops! I forgot. One story undermines the war effort; the other bolsters it. The Times has been an implacable opponent of the war.The editors of the Times aren’t like you and me. They don’t think the way you and I do. They don’t have the values we (or most Americans) have. They are aliens in our midst. Beware.

From Today's New York Times (Editorial)

2004-05-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Berg's DeathIt's easy to say he should not have been in Iraq, but Nicholas Berg was a type familiar to all danger zones: an adventurous and naïve young man who was perhaps keen to do a bit of business, but keener yet to test himself; old enough to understand the danger, but young enough to defy it. It is impossible not to feel grief, and horror, at his terrible end.The claim of this young American's murderers that they were retaliating for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is a cruel ruse. They killed him out of the same madness that drove their comrades in Al Qaeda to slaughter thousands on Sept. 11, 2001. But this manipulative attempt to establish a moral equivalence between the gruesome execution of Mr. Berg and the torture of Iraqi prisoners is now being mimicked by some hard-core supporters of the American war in Iraq. They are cynically trying to use the images of Mr. Berg to wipe away the images of Abu Ghraib, turning the abhorrence for the murderers into an excuse for demonizing Arabs and Muslims, or for sanctioning their torture.Mr. Berg's parents have legitimate questions for the United States government about how he came to be in Iraqi police custody immediately before his kidnapping, what happened to him there and what knowledge American officials had about his situation. The occupation authority needs to stop passing off those questions to the Iraqi police force, which does not exist other than as an agent of American power. The Berg family deserves answers so they can grieve for their son's death in peace.

Clichés and Mixed Metaphors

2004-05-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

A cliché, according to the Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999), is “a hackneyed phrase or opinion.” That won’t tell you much unless you know what “hackneyed” means. A phrase is hackneyed when it is “made commonplace or trite by overuse.” “Trite” means “hackneyed; worn out by constant repetition.” So a cliché is a phrase (or opinion) that is worn out by overuse or constant repetition. Here is today’s cliché: “hindsight is twenty-twenty.” You’ve heard it a lot, haven’t you? It’s worn out, isn’t it? The idea, I suppose, is that events that have already occurred are clear, whereas those that have not already occurred are not clear. When we look back, temporally, we see what happened. When we look forward, we don’t know what will happen. Things aren’t as stark as all this. We often have a clear idea of what will happen if we act one way rather than another, and sometimes we have no clear idea of what in fact happened. Is it clear what caused the Civil War? Is it clear who killed President John F. Kennedy? If things were always clear, we would not need historians, whose job it is to make sense of the past. If things were always clear, historians would never disagree, which of course they do. Sometimes the expression “hindsight is twenty-twenty” is meant to stifle criticism. For example, suppose a baseball manager walks the other team’s star player (think Barry Bonds) to load the bases in the ninth inning of a tie game. It’s a risky move, since a walk will end the game. Suppose the next batter walks, ending the game. If someone criticizes the manager, it might be said in response that “hindsight is twenty-twenty.” We know, now, what happened; but we didn’t know at the time what would happen. This is confused. We criticize decisions, not outcomes. The manager’s decision to walk the star player is independent of what actually happens. If the move backfires, i.e., if the pitcher walks in the winning run, it doesn’t make the decision wrong; and if it works out, i.e., if the pitcher retires the batter, it doesn’t make it right. Lazy sportswriters and fans ignore this. They shouldn’t. Hindsight may tell us what happened, but it doesn’t mean that decisions are beyond criticism. Dog Lore Like Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), I would not want to live in a world without dogs. With all due respect to my fellow humans, dogs are superior beings. We should strive not for godliness, but for dogliness. Here are some letters written by dogs to God. (Thanks to Jean Robart for the link.)

From the Mailbag

2004-05-13T00:57:00.000-07:00

Hi Keith, Really enjoy your blog. Bought a couple of the books you recommended and am trying to claw my way through the infinite varieties and flavors of utilitarianism. I CAN say that I now see the structures of arguments rather than simply the points being made. Thank you. I'm writing today to let you know of a serious situation with the Boston Globe. They published a picture showing a picture of US soldiers apparently gang-raping Iraqi women. Well, the rape picture was a phony from a US-based porno site and has since been taken down. There is a mea culpa (not for the fakery but rather because the sex act could be seen) on the Globe's website dated 5/13/04. Additionally, worldnetdaily has the story which is still developing. So what? A porno picture that is upsetting some soccer moms in Boston? Not quite. The Arab world is up in arms over these pictures, coming as they do on the heels of the Abu Ghraib ones. The US has demanded that Arab media outlets publish retractions regarding this story but few, if any, have done so. The consequences to our troops in the region can be imagined. What I'm particularly interested in is the way this story got into the Globe in the first place. It seems that some Arab radical took this story (and pictures) and pumped it to a couple of black radical activists in Boston. One, Chuck Taylor, is a city councilman and the other, Sadiki Kambon, seems to be some sort of Al Sharpton clone. They are both associated with various lefty organizations (e.g., ANSWER) from way back when. Now how could a "dynamic duo" like these two have a direct line into the Globe such that a story of such consequence would not be checked prior to publication? It was 10-second google to find the porn site and discredit the pictures. Where exactly is this country going and how the hell did we ever get on this road? Are there really people that hate this country so much they would suspend belief in their neighbors and friends and bring to the public "evidence" that our soldiers are gang-banging Iraqi women? In a time of war? I'm shocked and I'm angry but most of all I'm hurting. I feel like a fool for doing my job, raising my family, paying my taxes while all the time there've been these people burrowing into my world intent on destroying it. That hurts. Just thought you should know. Best of luck and keep on blogging. Detroit, Michigan Ambrose Bierce Pain, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Letters

2004-05-13T00:54:00.000-07:00

I get lots of e-mail, for which I'm grateful. Unfortunately, I can't reply to all or even most of it. If I did, I wouldn't get anything else done, including posting items on my blogs! Right now I have 138 messages in my inbox, many of them in response to my penultimate Tech Central Station column, "Explaining Liberal Anger." My plan is to copy these column-related letters to a Word document, clean it up, and upload it. Then I'll provide a link to it on this blog. The letters, as you'll see, are heartwarming. I've already posted the handful of negative letters I received. Ninety-five percent of the mail I received about the column was favorable. Which brings me to the second letter-related item. I've decided to follow Andrew Sullivan's lead in omitting names from the letters I publish. See here. There's no reason to post names. Recently, two people who sent insulting e-mail to me complained (gallingly) that I posted their letters without permission. If I leave the names off, nobody can complain. Does that sound like a sound policy? Back to grading. From Today's New York Times To the Editor: Re "An A for Effort to Restore Meaning to the Grade" (Public Lives, May 6): I have been a professor of architecture at Pratt Institute for more than 30 years. While architecture students' portfolios are more important than their grades, my colleagues on the Academic Senate often complain about grade inflation. Every year, I make a simple proposal: An A should be defined as "truly outstanding," and truly outstanding should mean that we pin up the work and invite our colleagues to come and see it. If our colleagues say "You asked me to come all the way out to Brooklyn to see this?," that means the work should not have gotten an A. (The process would most obviously apply to graphic projects, but written papers could also be pinned up.) Each year my colleagues on the Senate pause, look at me, and then go back to complaining about grade inflation. JOHN LOBELL New York, May 6, 2004

Economic Dishonesty

2004-05-13T00:51:00.000-07:00

It may not be fair, but presidents get credit for good economies and blame for bad ones, even if they’re not responsible. This is the political equivalent of strict liability in the law. Suppose your goal is to defeat a president. Knowing that we have a strict-liability system, you will do everything you can to make the economy seem bad. This turns out to be remarkably easy to do, especially for the unscrupulous. First, there are many economic indicators: inflation, unemployment, interest rates, budget deficits, trade deficits, &c. Pick the one that’s doing least well. Harp on it. Make it seem the most important indicator. Ignore or downgrade the others. Second, no indicator is ever perfect. We have never had, and never will have, zero unemployment, for example. So you can always plausibly say that things could be better, the implication being that, without the current president, things would be better. Third, there are different methods of measuring things like unemployment and different interpretations of raw unemployment data. You can pick the measurement or interpretation that serves your purposes. If you’ve been reading Paul Krugman’s New York Times columns, as I have, you know that he plays this dishonest game. His objective, which is transparent, is to defeat President Bush. Nothing else matters, not even intellectual honesty. He harps on the worst-performing economic indicators; he emphasizes how far things are from perfection rather than how much worse things could be (in other words, he’s maximally pessimistic); and he cherry-picks his data sources and interpretations. Economics is politics masquerading as science. Paul Krugman trades on public respect for scientists, but he’s as ruthless a political operative as I’ve seen. Don’t trust him. If you read his columns at all, go immediately thereafter to Donald Luskin’s site (see here) for the necessary corrective. David Kelley on Libertarianism The words “liberty” and “liberalism” have a common root, reflecting the commitment of the original or classical liberals to a free society. Over the last century, the latter term has come to represent a political position that is willing to sacrifice liberty in the economic realm for the sake of equality and/or collective welfare. As a consequence, those who wish to reaffirm the classical version of liberalism--those who advocate liberty in economic as well as personal and intellectual matters--have invented a new word from the old root; they call themselves libertarians. Both in doctrine and in etymology, then, partisans of this view define themselves by their allegiance to liberty. Yet they spend most of their day-to-day polemical energies defending property rights and the economic system of laissez-faire capitalism that is based upon such rights. Evidently there is a strong link between liberty and property at work here. (David Kelley, “Life, Liberty, and Property,” in Human Rights, ed. Ellen Frankel Paul, Jeffrey Paul, and Fred D. Miller, Jr. [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986 (1984)], 108-18, at 108)

From the Mailbag

2004-05-13T00:46:00.000-07:00

Professor Burgess-Jackson:It’s nice to see that someone takes pains to point out the more agreeable aspects of life (unlike, say, The New York Times in particular, the mainstream media in general). So, though I agree with the more positive spirit of your post, I find the content of #1 wanting. In the spirit of Dennis Miller, I don’t mean to go off on a rant here, but. . . . In fact, I find the United States Postal Service both despicable and disgusting. Casting aside the broad scope of their utter unreliability, think for a moment on the God-awful incompetence of most of their individual employees. Don’t these guys get Columbus Day off? I mean, come on. COLUMBUS DAY??? And the jingo: “through rain or sleet or snow” or what-the-hell ever? Give me a break. These guys might see “rain or sleet or snow” on the Weather Channel, and that’s about it--but WORK in it? Come on. What do you have to do to become a postal worker anyway? Herd one hundred fools into a room, give them an exam equivalent to the FLE, and then hire all those who fail??? Then too, how many times have you, in the busiest portion of the day, stood in line at the Post Office behind ten or twelve other miserable souls who, like you, wonder why only one of six windows is functioning? Furthermore, there is the private-sector aspect that just bugs the utter hell out of me (and meets, I think, your mention of the thirty-seven cent stamp head-on). Did you realize that UPS and Airborne Express (among others) cannot charge below a certain amount to ship a letter/package because they are not allowed to undercut the USPS? So much for competition.Whew! That felt nice. Take care, and keep up the good work!

The Rocket

2004-05-12T23:59:00.000-07:00

My baseball friends may laugh at this, but I think Roger Clemens will win thirty games this year. With last night's victory, he's 7-0. His team, the Houston Astros, is flying high with a 21-11 record. At this pace, Clemens will win 35.4 games (okay, thirty-five). Why is thirty victories achievable? First, Clemens plays for a team with a superb offense, so he'll get lots of run support. Second, he's rarely hurt. He'll start every fifth day all season. Third, he's gritty. What do you expect? Like Nolan Ryan and Lance Armstrong, he's a Texan. This state produces men, not wimps. William H. Gass on Bibliophilia In the ideal logotopia, every person would possess his own library and add at least weekly if not daily to it. The walls of each home would seem made of books; wherever one looked one would only see spines; because every real book (as opposed to dictionaries, almanacs, and other compilations) is a mind, an imagination, a consciousness. Together they compose a civilization, or even several. (William H. Gass, “In Defense of the Book: On the Enduring Pleasures of Paper, Type, Page, and Ink,” Harper’s Magazine 299 [November 1999]: 45-51, at 47) Wimps and Barbarians I’m speechless. This essay by Terrence O. Moore gets to the heart of our difficulties. It may be the best thing I’ve ever read, and believe me, I’ve read some good stuff.

Religion and Animals

2004-05-12T00:45:00.001-07:00

If you're religious (or even if you're not), please visit this site and read what it says. Think about the spirit as well as the letter of whatever religious text you deem authoritative. Ask yourself whether you're doing right by your fellow creatures in your god's eyes. Free-Range Eggs See here for my new source of free-range eggs. Gratification #1 This weekly feature, which I hereby inaugurate, is designed to offset the negativity (peevishness) of “Peeves” (see here for the latest peeve). Just as there are things that annoy me, there are things that please me. It would be imbalanced to write about the former without writing about the latter. I strive for balance in my life. Do you complain about postage rates? I don’t. I have always thought it a bargain--maybe the best bargain there is--to be able to mail something across the country for thirty-seven cents or less. (I remember five-cent stamps!) If you’ve studied history, as I have, you know how unreliable mail service was--and how long it took to get a letter to someone. History provides context. It’s mind-boggling to me how efficient the United States Postal Service is. I can put a letter in my mailbox in Fort Worth, Texas, on Monday morning and get it into my mother’s hands in rural Michigan by Thursday morning. Many people complain about postage rates. It’s a common refrain, one I’ve heard for years. I don’t get it. What’s their standard? How much is acceptable? A quarter? A dime? Should it be free? (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.) Thirty-seven cents is nothing! Please keep things in perspective.

Uncommon Good Sense

2004-05-12T00:45:00.000-07:00

Ally Eskin says here what no man could say without being labeled (by feminists) a misogynist. Feminists can't call Ally a misogynist (can a woman hate herself?), but they can and will call her a traitor to her sex. Note the implication: that all women think alike. Ally proves that feminists don't speak for all women. Thank you, Ally. I hope there are many more women like you and that they begin to speak out. Feminism has done a great deal of harm to women (some of which I've catalogued in this blog), not least of which is making them feel like victims. This is ironic, of course, for feminism claims to empower women. Ha! It turns them into whiny, dependent, vulnerable children. In my opinion, legally available abortion has given men more, not less, power over women. Think about it. Think like an economist. The Corps of Discovery On 14 May 1804, two hundred years ago this Friday, the Corps of Discovery, headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, pushed off from Camp Dubois on the east side of the Mississippi River. It would be two years and four months before the Corps, minus one man (Charles Floyd), would return to St Louis, by which time many Americans had given them up for dead. I'll be reading the journals of Lewis and Clark in real time for the third time. If you'd like to join me, acquire the journals as soon as possible. See here or here for the paperback edition, which is cheaper than the cloth version. Here, to pique your curiosity, is a story about the expedition from yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Incidentally, I'll be teaching a course on Lewis and Clark this fall. See here for the publicity flier. By the time the course begins in late August, the Corps of Discovery will be well up the Missouri River. By the time it ends, in early December, the Corps will be settled in for the winter at Fort Mandan (near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota).

Bush-Hatin' Paul

2004-05-12T00:44:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman began yesterday's New York Times column with this sentence: "Didn't you know, in your gut, that something like Abu Ghraib would eventually come to light?" What he meant, of course, is "Didn't you hope, in your gut, that something like Abu Ghraib would eventually come to light?" To Krugman, everything bad that happens is President Bush's fault, and nothing good that happens is President Bush's doing. Princeton University must be very proud of its two Bush-hating "scholars," Paul Krugman and Peter Singer. James Madison, who attended Princeton (see here), is rolling over in his grave. posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 5/12/2004 01:55:48 PM Ambrose Bierce Pig, n. An animal (Porcus omnivorus) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911) Peter Singer It's been almost five years since Peter Singer, a native Australian, began teaching at Princeton University. He is a polarizing figure in my discipline (philosophy). Here is a story about the controversy surrounding Singer's appointment at the staid Ivy League school. Here is a follow-up essay by Jeff Sharlet in the same publication. Here is the reader feedback. Enjoy! By the way, Singer's new book examines the ethics of President Bush. See here. I have not read the book, so I cannot comment on it one way or the other. I suspect I will not like it. While I share Singer's Darwinism, I reject his Leftist values. See here.

From Today's New York Times

2004-05-12T00:43:00.000-07:00

To the Editor: Re "The President and Women" (editorial, May 9): To shrink national women's issues to a morning-after pill or abortion rights offends many women. George W. Bush knows what women want, starting with his No Child Left Behind program. Move on to lower taxes for families to spend and save money as they see fit. Women want to improve life, liberty and equality for themselves and the families they love. Professional women are no less professional. I don't want Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, distracted from the war on terror to secure foreign women's reproductive rights. And I'm not offended that Karen Hughes, the president's adviser, said that particularly after 9/11, Americans value every single life. America's strong, capable, thoughtful adult women are insulted by notions that our political persuasions are monolithic. President Bush had the temerity to place women in influential government positions not to advance special interests but because they are "the best man for the job." Enough of this morning-after business. JULIE FAIRCHILD Dallas, May 11, 2004 From Today's New York Times To the Editor: It baffles me how "In Abuse, a Portrayal of Ill-Prepared, Overwhelmed G.I.'s" (front page, May 9) seems to suggest that the prisoner abuse stemmed from a lack of training and leadership. Do we really need to be taught not to commit such atrocities? As an American, I'm offended at the suggestion and quite honestly find it preposterous that without some particular military training or supervision my fellow citizens lack the moral intuition not to strip prisoners and pile them on each other for a good laugh. There is undoubtedly a need to find an explanation for these crimes, but to attribute them to overburdened and inexperienced G.I.'s is ludicrous and rich fodder for an ever-increasing hatred of America in the Arab world. MOHAMMED SHAHEEN Cambridge, Mass., May 9, 2004

From Yesterday's Dallas Morning News

2004-04-11T03:40:00.000-07:00

The "sin tax" is a great concept--raise money for something most people agree is good (say, schools) by taxing something most people agree is bad (say, tobacco).A "sin tax" being kicked around Austin right now involves, among other things, raising taxes on cigarettes, adult entertainment--and soft drinks.But why stop there?Aren't there other things that we'd all like to see taxed into oblivion? Here are some modest proposals:Cellphone use: A per-minute tax for people who talk while driving. And while we're at it--a fee for annoying ring tones that go off in public.Guys who peel rubber: Measure the tread mark, charge by the inch. Double after 9 p.m.Small children in R-rated movies: The rate increases 1 percent for each dirty word they learn.Cursing in public: Police could carry around a coffee can and collect a quarter per expletive, just like Mom used to do with Dad.Low-rise jeans: Because they make everyone look fat, even the skinny girls. Remember, the idea of a "sin tax" is supposed to be for your own good.Plastic grocery bags: Print the name of the store on them, tax the store for each one caught in a tree limb or fluttering across a vacant lot.Car salesmen: Forget raising taxes on cars--let's go after the guys who TALK THIS LOUD in their own commercials. (Additional fees may apply; title and license charges not included; your mileage from this idea may vary.)"Free" chips and salsa at restaurants: Actually, we like chips and salsa. So let's tax stale chips and tepid salsa. Probably cooked up by some Northerners--let's tax them, while we're at it, unless they know that when we ask for HOT sauce down here, we mean it.People who bring 13 items in the "12 items or less" checkout lane: Charge per excess item.Reality programs on TV: Stations that air more than one hour per night would have to make a donation to PBS.Silly ideas from politicians, and journalists who write endlessly about them: The rate rises depending on how much each report raised the average reader's blood pressure.Texas Living staff

Who Says Scholars Are Humorless?

2004-04-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

Leslie A. Johnson, "Settled Insanity Is Not a Defense: Has the Colorado Supreme Court Gone Crazy?" University of Kansas Law Review 43 (October 1994): 259. Ian M. Rose, "Barring Foreigners from Our Airwaves: An Anachronistic Pothole on the Global Information Highway," Columbia Law Review 95 (June 1995): 1188. William Ewald, "Comparative Jurisprudence (I): What Was It Like to Try a Rat?" University of Pennsylvania Law Review 143 (June 1995): 1889. Grantland M. Clapacs, "'When in Nome . . .': Custom, Culture and the Objective Standard in Alaskan Adverse Possession Law," Alaska Law Review 11 (December 1994): 301. Kent D. Streseman, "Headshrinkers, Manmunghers, Moneygrubbers, Nuts and Sluts: Reexamining Compelled Mental Examinations in Sexual Harassment Actions Under the Civil Rights Act of 1991," Cornell Law Review 80 (May 1995): 1268. posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson 4/11/2004 07:21:21 PM The 1984 Detroit Tigers Steve Stone, who played Major League baseball for many years, is an announcer for the Chicago Cubs. During today’s game, which I watched on WGN, he perpetuated a myth about the 1984 Detroit Tigers that I want to destroy. Stone said that the 1984 Tigers were the only team to have won a divisional title in the first forty games of a season. (Teams play 162 games.) The Tigers began the 1984 season an incredible 35-5, which is a winning percentage of 87.5. It’s hard enough to win seven of eight games. The Tigers did that for five consecutive eight-game blocs! So far, I have no gripe. But Stone then added that the Tigers played “.500 ball the rest of the way.” In other words, they lost as many games as they won. This is not even close to being the case. The Tigers finished the 1984 season 104-58, which is a winning percentage of 64.1. If you do the subtraction, you find that the Tigers were 69-53 for the final 122 games of the season. That’s a winning percentage of 56.5. A team that won 56.5% of its games for an entire season would win 91.6 games. Sometimes that’s enough to win a divisional title! Contrary to Stone’s suggestion, the Tigers played superb baseball all season. Their season didn’t go from miraculous to mediocre; it went from miraculous to magnificent. And it didn’t end with the regular season, either. They swept the Kansas City Royals in three games in the American League Championship Series and defeated the San Diego Padres in five games in the World Series. Fittingly, they won seven of eight postseason games to match their early-season pace. Here’s a summary of the season: 35-5 (87.5%) (first forty games) 69-53 (56.5%) (remaining 122 games) 104-58 (64.1%) (regular-season total) 111-59 (65.2%) (regular season plus postseason) Don’t mess with my Tigers. It’s been twenty years since they won a World Series. Twenty years makes a man ornery. Ambrose Bierce Sheriff, n. In America the chief executive officer of a county, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Texas Weather

2004-04-10T03:22:00.000-07:00

Every year, between the months of March and November, I participate in bike rallies. I’ve done as many as thirty-one rallies in a year. For the past few years I’ve averaged about twenty-two. A bike rally is an event for bicyclists. For example, today there was a rally in Lancaster, a town south of Dallas. I’ve done it several times. I got up, drove 34.7 miles to Lancaster, walked to the registration area, picked up my packet, and returned to my car to prepare. By 8:50, ten minutes before the start, hundreds of bicyclists were lined up on a side street waiting to be loosed on the unsuspecting residents of Lancaster and surrounding towns.Rallies are not races, although some of them have a monetary prize for the first person to finish. Most people show up to ride, not race. They ride for health, for enjoyment, for the camaraderie, and because they want to get outside. You see every sort of person at bike rallies: old, middle-aged, and young; male and female; black, white, Asian, and Hispanic; tall and short; heavy and thin. You see tandems, recumbents, and ordinaries. A bike rally is a microcosm of society.I used to hammer at every rally. (I’ve done 326 of them--counting today’s--since 30 September 1989.) To hammer is to ride hard, all the time. Every hill is a personal challenge. You get out of the saddle to climb it, or, if you’re descending, get into your best tuck position to get your speed as high as possible. (I’ve gone as fast as fifty-two miles per hour.) Hammering gets old after a while, although I’ve never tired of riding in packs or pace lines. There came a point when I wanted to have fun rather than torture myself. It helped that I had taken up marathon running (in September 1996, at the age of thirty-nine). This served as an outlet for my competitiveness. Bicycling became a social event--a chance to see and talk to my friends, to enjoy the countryside, and to experience small-town Texas life. (Every rally goes through many small towns, often down their main streets.)Unlike some sports, bicycling takes place in all kinds of weather. I’ve ridden in oppressive heat (one hundred degrees Fahrenheit and more) and in frigid cold. I’ve ridden on calm days and in gale-force winds. I’ve ridden in sunshine and in rain. I’ve even ridden in hail. Only if the roads are ice-covered is the event canceled (for obvious reasons). Actually, no sooner did I type these words than I remembered the Fort Worth bike rally of May 1995. The night before, a devastating hailstorm struck the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Many cars and house roofs were destroyed. When I got to the rally site the next morning in my hail-damaged Grand Am, I learned that the rally had been canceled. Evidently, there was too much debris--including tree limbs--on the roads. I’m still driving the hail-damaged car, by the way. It’ll be fifteen years old in August.Today’s rally began under sunny skies. The forecast since at least Monday was for storms. Even today’s newspaper forecast storms. My friends and I laughed at the incompetence of the weather forecasters. But they were right. An hour or so into the ride, the sky clouded up. Then the wind picked up. It was a northerly wind, too, which meant cold, dry air. I grew increasingly cold as I pedaled. Rain began to fall, but only for a few minutes. I hadn’t expected the change in the weather or I would have worn a long-sleeved shirt under my jersey. The wind was the worst part. It was brutal. My pace slowed to a crawl. People were putting their bikes into “sag wagons,” which is an admission of defeat. I just concentrated on turning the pedals over. I knew from experience that all bad things must come to an end, and this one, mercifully, did.I didn’t bother partaking of the festivities on the town square. I rode straight to my car, packed up, and headed for home. The sky was dark and ominous. We went from spring to winter during the course of a four-hour ride. That’s Texas for you. Ordinarily, it’s so hot at the end of a rally that I turn the car’s air-conditioner on. Today I fired up the heater. It was good to get home and take a hot shower, followed by a long nap. Sad to say, but this may have been my slowest rally ever. It was a difficult sixty-one miles. But I had fun. I’ve already filtered out the pain. I’ll be back in Lancaster a year from now, ready for more of that strange admixture of suffering and joy that every bicyclist loves.

Hitchens on Burke

2004-04-09T03:21:00.000-07:00

Here is a review, by the indefatigable Christopher Hitchens, of a new critical edition of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Enjoy! posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson 4/9/2004 07:44:44 PM Paul Weiss on Sport "Sport" has no clear, commonly acknowledged use. It is reasonable to suppose that it covers whatever is dealt with in the sports pages of newspapers and magazines. But these also contain reports on bridge and chess, which it would be odd to call "sports." * * * Hockey demands bodily exertion. Like every other sport, it tests what a rule-abiding man can bodily be and do. Though chess also has rules, and these have a history, and though a masterly game makes considerable demands on the stamina of the players, chess is not a sport because it does not test what a man is as a body. Mind and body more or less reverse their roles in these two cases. In hockey judgment and determination are subservient to bodily achievement, but in chess the body is used only to make possible a more effective judgment and determination. (Paul Weiss, Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry [Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971 (1969)], 132, 142-3) Ambrose Bierce Self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Chess Is Not a Sport

2004-04-09T03:19:00.000-07:00

A few days ago (see here), I described Bart Giamatti’s taxonomy of play. Giamatti defined “contest” as a competitive game. There are, he said, two types of contest: intellectual and physical. Physical contests are sports. I wrote that chess and checkers exemplify the category of intellectual contests and that baseball and bicycle racing exemplify the category of physical contests (sports). To my surprise, three or four people wrote to say that chess is a sport. (See here, for example.) They said that it requires endurance and that it causes an elevated heart rate and perspiration. I assume they would say the same about marathon Monopoly, Scrabble, checkers, or card-playing sessions. Is high-stakes poker a sport? I’m sure it gets the players’ hearts racing. Monopoly and card-playing are not sports, and, with all due respect to my correspondents, chess isn’t, either. The tone of the letters suggests that classifying chess as an intellectual contest rather than as a sport is insulting. But why? What’s wrong with intellectual contests? Dividing contests into those that are intellectual and those that are physical isn’t to rank them in a hierarchy, any more than to divide humanity into male and female is to rank them in a hierarchy. Two things can be different but equal. Baseball is better than chess, but not because it’s a sport. What I actually said in my post, as Matthew S. Mullins of Ektopos pointed out in my defense, is that there are two types of contest: those that are purely intellectual and those that are both intellectual and physical. Every physical contest has an intellectual component or dimension, so defining a category of purely physical contests would create an empty category. I suppose it’s also true that any intellectual contest has a physical component or dimension. We’re embodied beings, after all. Any competition is going to affect one’s body. Playing cards all night requires endurance. Tense moments in Scrabble, checkers, or bridge make one sweat and cause one’s heart rate to increase. So where do we draw the line? How physical does a contest have to be to count as a sport? Different people will draw the line in different places, depending, perhaps, on which physical attributes they think are most important. Is it strength? Speed? Quickness? Endurance? Agility? It’s an abuse of language to call chess a sport. It’s not an abuse of language to call golf a sport, although I consider golf a borderline case and am inclined to classify it as an intellectual contest. Chess is not even borderline. It’s a paradigmatic nonsport. Indeed, I would consider it a defect in any taxonomy that it classifies chess as a sport, just as I would consider it a defect in any taxonomy that it classifies bicycle racing as a nonsport. Bill's Comments Bill Keezer is discovering his inner blogger. See here for his latest provocative posts. I hope you're visiting his blog on a regular basis. The best blogs, like the best teachers, both edify and entertain. Thanks I'd like to thank all the people who sent birthday greetings. I wasn't fishing for greetings, but I'll take 'em.

From Today's New York Times

2004-04-09T03:17:00.000-07:00

To the Editor: I applaud Princeton University for trying to rein in grade inflation (news article, April 8). But its proposed quota for A's (35 percent of all grades, down from 47 percent) will not address the underlying problem. Where college grades used to be critical only for those going on to graduate or professional schools, now students applying for jobs send transcripts to potential employers. The result is students badgering instructors to raise their grades, and faculty and graduate assistants trying to help their students' prospects. If college career offices stopped encouraging students to make their grades part of the job-hunting process, perhaps students would stop credentialing themselves and get back to the business of learning. AMANDA I. SELIGMAN Glendale, Wis., April 8, 2004 The writer is an assistant professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Intellectual Dishonesty Paul Krugman is trying to have it both ways. He wants to blame President Bush when economic indicators are down, but not praise him when they're up. See here. But then, liberals have never been known for their honesty, have they? The thing you must remember about liberals is that, for all their talk of principle, they're result-oriented. The end justifies the means. To achieve their social-engineering goals, they must have power; and they will do whatever it takes, including lie, to get that power. Take my word for it: I used to be one of them. I know how they think.

John E. Hare on Ethics and Christianity

2004-04-08T03:15:00.000-07:00

Writing from the perspective of traditional Christianity will already make [my] project suspect to much of the audience I would like to reach. I intend the book for two groups and their intersection: both for those who call themselves Christians, or at least take the claims of Christianity seriously, and for those interested in the academic study of ethics. This makes the project problematic, since many of those who fall into the second group find the attitudes and commitments of the first group incomprehensible or, if comprehensible, entirely unattractive. From the perspective of the academic study of ethics, it can seem that belief in traditional Christianity is possible for the uneducated, perhaps even desirable; but that for those who are fully alive to the movement of thought over the last two hundred years, it is no longer a serious option.I believe, however, that a strong case can be made that this attitude within academic philosophy has led to a bad misreading of the great philosophical texts on which academic philosophy depends. I have an advantage here from an accident of my education. I did Greats at Oxford, in which the syllabus took a leap from Aristotle to Frege; and then a Ph.D. in the Classical Philosophy programme at Princeton, in which I read nothing between Aristotle’s medieval commentators and Bradley. ‘Modern’ philosophy is therefore something I have read on my own, directly from the primary sources. I have been constantly struck by how often the Christian content of these sources has been ignored by the standard interpretations in the secondary literature. This is notably true of Kant, as I shall try to show. His system does not work unless he is seen as genuinely trying to ‘make room for faith’. Failure to see this has led to heroic measures, either excising portions of text as not properly ‘critical’, or attributing his views to a desire to appease the pious sentiments of his faithful manservant. What is true of Kant is also true of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, and even Hume. We are given a reading of modern philosophy that leads from its birth in the new science of the sixteenth century to its maturation in the death of God and the death of metaphysics. Descartes is seen as an incipient atheist, bringing in God not because of personal faith but to appease the Church. Large sections of Leviathan, where Hobbes talks about the will of God, are ignored as though they were inessential to the project of the whole. In Bertrand Russell’s critical exposition of the philosophy of Leibniz, God appears in none of the five original axioms. Hume is seen at the end of the Dialogues as insincere in portraying Philo’s change of heart. It is no doubt tempting, if you cannot take Christianity seriously yourself, to interpret your favourite philosophers as sharing this distaste; but it leads to a distortion of the texts. Those engaged in the academic study of ethics ought to try the experiment of seeing what the world looks like from the perspective of traditional Christianity, even if merely to understand their own tradition. This book can be seen as such an experiment.(John E. Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance, Oxford Studies in Theological Ethics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 2-3)

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

2004-04-07T03:14:00.000-07:00

I’m forty-seven years old today. Every year, when my birthday comes around, I whine about not wanting to get older. It’s not fair, I say. I refuse to get older. Who set things up this way?But life is not fair. It’s not unfair, either. It just is. We’re born; we plod along; we die. If we’re lucky, we have fun along the way. If we’re really lucky, as I am, we get to spend our days doing exactly as we please. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to ensure that I’m not dreaming. You mean they pay me to read, write, think, and teach? I would do all but the teaching part for free. (Don’t tell the dean!)When I was twenty, I would have thought someone forty-seven years of age old. But now that I’m forty-seven, I think twenty-year olds are children. They know nothing; they’ve experienced nothing; they have no perspective on even their own small region of spacetime. And yet they think they know everything. It’s funny, really. As you age, you realize how little you know and how little you’ll ever know. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t try to learn, only that you should be humble about it. Learn what you can; accept your limitations.If I’m lucky, I’ll have another thirty years in this vale of tears (to use Jeremy Bentham’s term). The first thirty years of my life seemed to take forever, probably because there were so many big events along the way. High-school graduation, the first job, the first car, college, graduation from college, law school, the bar exam, graduate school, the Ph.D. dissertation, the first job. Once I got tenure, the temporal slide began. The past ten years have gone by in a flash. My life, like Immanuel Kant’s, is filled with pleasant routines. Every day is full. I have never been bored for a minute in my life. But now that all the big events are over, there’s nothing to stop the flow of time. If twenty years ago seems like yesterday, then tomorrow is 2024 and the day after that 2044.I envy theists, for they believe that life is eternal. I’ve never believed that and couldn’t if I tried. I have a finite amount of days. I believe I value each of them more than any theist does for the simple reason that they’re finite. If you have an infinite amount of something, how valuable can it be? Water is more valuable in Arizona than in Michigan. Nor do I believe that this mundane life is preparation for something greater. It’s all I have. But it’s enough. More than enough. I’ve had a wonderful life. If I die tonight, do not mourn for me. Celebrate. Celebrate my demise if you must, but celebrate.

From Today's New York Times

2004-04-07T03:13:00.000-07:00

To the Editor:Re "Tracking Terrorist Bankrolls" (editorial, April 4):Ending terrorist financing is a top priority for President Bush. The president's budget includes a more than 16 percent increase for the Treasury Department and a 5 percent increase for Internal Revenue Service criminal investigation activities. In fact, more than 400 special agents and more than 200 investigative analysts will be added for I.R.S. criminal investigations in 2005 alone.The global campaign to find and seize terrorists' blood money uses the strengths of multiple agencies strategically. The interagency team, which includes the Treasury, State, Justice, Defense and Homeland Security Departments, the intelligence community, the F.B.I., federal regulators, and state and local authorities, has achieved many successes.President Bush has made the battle against terror financing a front-burner issue worldwide and has led a global coalition in the identification and disruption of terrorist financing networks around the world. As a result, America is safer and more secure from those who would harm us.ROBERT NICHOLSAsst. Secretary for Public AffairsDepartment of the TreasuryWashington, April 5, 2004

From Today's Dallas Morning News

2004-04-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

France and Germany are the big cheeses of what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has described as "Old Europe." An undiplomatic phrase? Perhaps. But judging by the current state of affairs in both countries, the designation "old"--as in crabby, feeble and resistant to change--is apt. The governments of President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder are dealing with widespread public discontent, stemming in large part from persistently high unemployment and sluggish economic growth. Yet the public remains stubbornly defiant in the face of attempts to rein in generous social spending by the vast welfare state bureaucracies. The French and the Germans no longer can afford their welfare states, yet they can't bring themselves to abandon them. There's a French word for what grips both nations: malaise. It's a word commentators used to describe the speech that Jimmy Carter delivered to a national TV audience in July 1979--an address that recognized the crisis of confidence then paralyzing America. There's a straight line from the malaise speech to the election of Ronald Reagan 16 months later, which restored America's self-confidence and brought about painful but necessary reforms (as Britain had embraced earlier with the election of Margaret Thatcher). We will see if there are any Reagans or Thatchers in France and Germany. In the meantime, we Americans should learn the lessons of our allies' crises. In an era of globalization, reality will wash away economic and social structures that seemed permanent. If France and Germany don't find ways to embrace reform and arrest decline, they will write one more lesson into the history books: Old nations never die; they just fade away. Ambrose Bierce Friendship, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Morality and Self-Interest

2004-04-07T03:06:00.000-07:00

Most of us experience morality as a burden. It constrains our actions. It tells us either not to do what we’d like to do or to do what we don’t want to do. Morality is like a parent, a boss, or a drill sergeant: stern, demanding, unforgiving. For better or for worse, we cannot escape it. Making moral judgments is in our nature, and having moral judgments made about one--or one’s actions--is inescapable. We are hard-wired to think in terms of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust. We are moral animals.Every now and then, however, morality and self-interest converge. It’s wonderful--and remarkable--when they do, as this snippet from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows:By and by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls’ room the door was open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she’d been packing things in it--getting ready to go to England. But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in there and says:“Miss Mary Jane, you can’t a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can’t--most always. Tell me about it.”So she done it. And it was the niggers--I just expected it. She said the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn’t know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn’t ever going to see each other no more--and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:“Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain’t ever going to see each other any more!”“But they will--and inside of two weeks--and I know it!” says I.Laws, it was out before I could think! And before I could budge she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again!I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m a-going to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to. (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [Toronto: Bantam Books, 1981], chap. XXVIII, pp. 179-80 [italics in original] [originally published in 1884])Huck could not believe that doing the right thing and doing what was in his interest converged in this case. It was “strange and unregular.” Well, here’s another case. Becoming a vegetarian (or moving in that direction by eliminating certain animal products from your diet) is both the right thing to do and the prudent thing to do. By ceasing to eat meat, you both refuse to participate in an oppressive institution and improve your health. You can become a vegetarian both for the sake of the animals (the moral reason) and for your sake (the prudential reason).I hope nobody thinks meat-eating is healthy. If you do, then you have not been keeping up with the science of nutrition. Not only is meat-eating not healthy; it’s unhealthy. It sets back your interest in health, and therefore your ulterior interest in a long, happy life. See here for a statement by the American Dietetic Association, which is a nonpartisan organization. Live clean. Do right. Vegetarianism accomplishes both.

Still Learning

2004-04-06T03:02:00.000-07:00

This is a test. Until tonight, I was unable to get curved quotation marks, accents, and other special symbols in my blog entries. I have two ways to compose: (1) in a Microsoft Word document, using the copy-and-paste function to transfer the text to Blogger; and (2) in Blogger. I know how to insert accents in a Word document, but when I pasted the text to Blogger, the accented letters appeared as trash. The same happened with the curved quotation marks that I use in Word documents. What I ended up doing is turning off the curved-quotation-marks function in every blog entry I composed, then turning it back on afterward. Needless to say, this was annoying and time-consuming. Tonight I decided to do something about it. I began by asking John Ray, who has been so helpful to me during the past five months. John mentioned tinkering with the settings in Blogger. When I went in, I saw that my encoding was set to “Universal (Unicode UTF-8).” There were many other choices, but only one looked promising: Western (Windows-1252). To make a long story short, I changed the setting and tried copying accents and curved quotation marks to Blogger. It worked! Thanks, John. Here, as a further test, are some special symbols: cliché raison d’être vis-à-vis 10° Fahrenheit 89¢ 7¾ feet I hope they come through! Richard Rorty on Philosophy To drop the notion of the philosopher as knowing something about knowing which nobody else knows so well would be to drop the notion that his voice always has an overriding claim on the attention of the other participants in the conversation. It would also be to drop the notion that there is something called "philosophical method" or "philosophical technique" or "the philosophical point of view" which enables the professional philosopher, ex officio, to have interesting views about, say, the respectability of psychoanalysis, the legitimacy of certain dubious laws, the resolution of moral dilemmas, the "soundness" of schools of historiography or literary criticism, and the like. Philosophers often do have interesting views upon such questions, and their professional training as philosophers is often a necessary condition for their having the views they do. But this is not to say that philosophers have a special kind of knowledge about knowledge (or anything else) from which they draw relevant corollaries. The useful kibitzing they can provide on the various topics I just mentioned is made possible by their familiarity with the historical background of arguments on similar topics, and, most importantly, by the fact that arguments on such topics are punctuated by stale philosophical cliches which the other participants have stumbled across in their reading, but about which professional philosophers know the pros and cons by heart. (Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979], 392-3 [italics in original])

Struggling with SpamBlocker

2004-04-06T03:01:00.000-07:00

I thought I had my spam problem solved. The other day I downloaded and installed the newest version of EarthLink's SpamBlocker, which has a challenge-response feature. But it doesn't work just as I want it to, so I've disabled it. Here's the problem. I have twelve names in my Outlook Express "contacts" list. I like to keep this list simple. It has the names of people to whom I write often, such as my mother and my bicycling friends. Anyone on the "contacts" list who writes to me gets through without having to do the challenge-response thing. If you're not on the "contacts" list, your e-mail to me gets stored in the "suspect email" folder on EarthLink's server. I can see how many messages are in this folder by clicking the SpamBlocker logo in Outlook Express. Suppose I see that there's a message and go to EarthLink's server to see what it is. It's from X, one of my blog correspondents. What I'd like to do is say, "Let this person's mail get through to me." But all I can do is say, "Let it get through to me and add the person to my 'contacts' list." I don't want to add everyone to my "contacts" list! I want to keep it simple. My only alternative is to click "Send message to inbox without adding person to 'contacts' list." You guessed it. The next time X writes to me, he or she has to do the challenge-response thing again. Do you see my predicament? I want to let certain people's messages get through to me, but not by adding them to my 'contacts' list. Maybe I'll write to EarthLink. It seems like a simple thing to change, and I'll bet I'm not the only person who dislikes this feature. By the way, I apologize to those of you who had to respond to a challenge more than once. It's my fault, since I didn't add you to my "contacts" list. To make things worse, I lost several e-mail messages this afternoon. I thought I sent them to my inbox, but they disappeared. If you sent something to me, please resend it. Tax Cuts Steve Headley has an interesting post on tax cuts over at Texas Conservative. I agree with Steve that tax cuts stimulate economic growth. It's common sense. But we must not lose sight of an important principle, to wit: People are entitled to the fruits of their labor. So there are two arguments for tax cuts: the consequentialist argument, which says that tax cuts have good consequences, and the deontological argument, which says that people have a right to retain the fruits of their labor even if this does not have good consequences, indeed, even if it has bad consequences. Suppose it is shown that tax cuts do not stimulate economic growth. This undercuts only the consequentialist argument. I wish the Bush administration would articulate the deontological argument. It's important. The Bush administration has done a poor job in general of articulating its principles, explaining its policies, and justifying its decisions. The case for war in Iraq, for example, is manifold. There are at least five good reasons to have gone to war, no one of which is necessary but any one of which is sufficient. The administration made far too much of the so-called weapons of mass destruction. Now it's paying the price for that single-mindedness. The lesson is simple: Don't put all your justificatory eggs in one basket.

Construction

2004-04-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

I chuckled when I read this post by Bill Keezer over at Bill's Comments. I, too, like watching things being built. Just today I watched from the third floor of my office building (Carlisle Hall) as workers prepared the foundation of a new campus building. Years ago, I had a bird's-eye view of the Chemistry Building going up. For a while I was looking down, then straight across, then up. I'm mechanically incompetent, so every building seems to me to be a miracle. posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson 4/6/2004 07:07:05 PM From Today's Dallas Morning News Re: "Terrorists prefer Bush," by John Godbey, Thursday Letters. John Godbey opines that George Bush "will keep the flames of hatred against America burning in the Muslim world." Mr. Godbey doesn't get it. The Muslim world does not need George Bush to engender hatred against America. They teach it in their schools every day. If John Kerry gets elected president, the Muslims won't hate us any less; they will just respect us less. William L. Haralson, Richardson Ambrose Bierce Truth, n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Meat-Eating and Rape

2004-04-05T02:59:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I stopped eating red meat (beef, pork, venison, &c) in early 1981. I gave up turkey, as planned, on the last day of 1981. Since then, the only animal products I've ingested are chicken, fish, and eggs. (I've been allergic to dairy products since 1972.) A couple of years ago I stopped eating chicken. More recently still, I ruled out eggs from confined hens. As of today, the only animal products I ingest are (1) fish and (2) eggs from free-roaming hens. Do I live up to my moral standards? No. But I'm close, and that should count for something. A few years ago, in correspondence with several philosopher friends, I was taken to task by one of them for continuing to eat chicken and fish. He couldn't believe I hadn't gone all the way (cold turkey, whole hog). He said it was preposterous for me to think I was doing well. "Imagine someone saying that he commits only an occasional rape," he said. The implication, of course, is that rape is unacceptable. It's not good enough to reduce the number of rapes one commits (unless the reduction is to zero). One virtue of my friend's analogy is that it brings individual animals into the picture. The flesh one eats comes from individual animals, not from a species, a population, or a collection. Each rape is an affront to the dignity of a distinct person. Each act of consuming steak, hamburger, or a chicken leg is an affront to the dignity of a distinct animal. We tend to think of chicken as a mass term, like peanut butter, but it refers to body parts of individual chickens. My friend's criticism stung me, and it has bothered me ever since. Am I no better than the rapist who "cuts back" on the number of victims? Does my sense that I'm doing better than most people and better than I once did rest on sand? Am I deluding myself? I don't think I'm deluding myself, and I hope I'm not deluding myself by thinking that I'm not deluding myself. Suppose I were a rapist, and suppose I had been raping five women a month for many years. If I cut back to two women a month, I'd be doing better than I was. There are fewer victims. Clearly, I should not be raping at all, but raping twenty-four women a year is morally better than raping sixty a year. Would my friend disagree? He would probably say, "You shouldn't be raping any women!" But I can agree with that without giving up my belief that I'm doing better now than before. The two judgments--one comparative and one noncomparative--are compatible. My friend seemed unwilling to address the comparative claim. He's a purist. To him, there are just two choices: (1) rape at will and (2) don't rape at all. By analogy, (1) eat as much meat as you want, of whatever types you want, and (2) don't eat meat at all. There's a lot of purism (my term) in the animal-liberation movement. Anyone who hasn't purged animal products from his or her diet is viewed with skepticism (at best) or animosity (at worst). I wonder why this is. Why not celebrate each incremental movement toward veganism? After all, most of us grew up eating meat. Is it reasonable to expect people to eliminate animal products from their diets overnight, or even over the course of a year? There's a learning curve, for one thing. Vegetarian diets require new cooking skills and a better understanding of nutrition. There's also this brute fact: People enjoy the taste of meat. Perhaps they shouldn't (if that makes sense), but they do; and we're talking about changing lifelong habits. Dietary habits are especially difficult to change, since food plays such an important role in our rituals and identities. (I'll write about that in another post.) If you're a vegan, like my friend, be reasonable. Rape is abominable. But it's better for one woman to be raped than for two to be raped. This doesn't justify or excuse the rape; it simply compares two states of the world in terms of the individuals that compose those states. Eating only fish is better than eating all meats. Eating only eggs from free-roaming hens is better than eating just any eggs. It seems like common sense, but then, philosophers are not long on common sense. From the Mailbag Thanks to Matthew in his post of 4/5 for letting readers know where to find Smullyan's version of the philosopher's dream. I didn't get it from Smullyan. I got it by word of mouth, and (although I may be mistaken) I believe that it was current before 1983. Matthew thinks that I used the story to dodge the issue. What issue was that? The post I was responding to [see here] didn't contain any arguments, only opinions. But, as I used to tell my students, unsupported opinions have (as Russell was wont to say) all the advantages of theft over honest toil. Len Carrier

Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) on the Role of Philosophy

2004-04-05T02:56:00.000-07:00

There are many branches of methodical inquiry into the different departments of the world. There are the mathematical sciences, the several natural sciences, and there are the humane or human studies of anthropology, jurisprudence, philosophy, the linguistic and literary studies, and history, which last embraces in one way or another most of the others. There are also many disciplines which teach not truths but arts and skills, such as agriculture, tactics, music, architecture, painting, games, navigation, inference, and scientific method. All theories apply their own several principles and canons of inquiry and all disciplines apply their own several principles and canons of practice. These principles were called by Professor [Robin George] Collingwood [1889-1943] their 'presuppositions'. In other words, all employ their own standards or criteria by which their particular exercises are judged successful or unsuccessful. Now it is one thing intelligently to apply principles; it is quite another thing to step back to consider them. A scientist who ceases for a moment to try to solve his questions in order to inquire instead why he poses them or whether they are the right questions to pose ceases for the time to be a scientist and becomes a philosopher. This duality of interests may, as history shows, make him both a good philosopher and a better scientist. The best philosophical theories of mathematics have come from mathematicians who have been forced to try to resolve internal puzzles about the principles of their study, a philosophical exercise which has sometimes led to the origination of new mathematical methods and has often led to the origination of illuminating philosophical views. Every genius is the inventor of new methods and he must therefore be some sort of a critic of principles of method. Professor Collingwood [Ryle's predecessor as Waynflete Chair of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University] was an historian who was puzzled about the canons of historical research. He wanted not only to explain certain historical processes and events but also to elucidate what sort of a thing a good historical explanation would be. Nor was this a purely domestic or technological interest. For to see what is an historical explanation, is, among other things, to see how it differs from a chemical, mechanical, biological, anthropological, or psychological theory. The philosopher may, perhaps, begin by wondering about the categories constituting the framework of a single theory or discipline, but he cannot stop there. He must try to co-ordinate the categories of all theories and disciplines. The problem of 'Man's place in Nature' is, roughly, the problem of coordinating the questions which govern laboratory researches with the questions governing the researches prosecuted in libraries. And this co-ordination is done neither in libraries nor in laboratories but in the philosopher's head. Professor Collingwood saw more clearly, I think, than did his most eminent predecessors in the philosophy of history that the appearance of a feud or antithesis between Nature and Spirit, that is to say, between the objectives of the natural sciences and those of the human studies, is an illusion. These branches of inquiry are not giving rival answers to the same questions about the same world; nor are they giving separate answers to the same questions about rival worlds; they are giving their own answers to different questions about the same world. Just as physics is neither the foe nor the handmaid of geometry, so history, jurisprudence and literary studies are neither hostile nor ancillary to the laboratory sciences. Their categories, that is, their questions, methods and canons are different. In my predecessor's word, they work with different presuppositions. (Gilbert Ryle, Philosophical Arguments [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945], 3-4 [this essay is Ryle's Inaugural Lecture as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy, delivered before the University of Oxford on 30 October 1945]) Ambrose Bierce Edible, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911) Greenie Watch Dr John J. Ray ("You can call me Ray; you can call me J.; you can call me R. J.; you can call me J. Ray"), my polymathic friend Down Under, has a new blog devoted to the politicization of the environmental movement. See here. (I've also added a permanent link to the left, in, fittingly, the green area.) Sadly, science often takes a back seat to politics when it comes to understanding and protecting the natural environment. John is a no-nonsense defender of science and common sense. Please visit his new blog. He says he will post to it daily. John's main blog, of course, is Dissecting Leftism. Your day is not complete without a liberal dose of the conservative Dr Ray. From the Mailbag Dr. Carrier might wish to provide a citation for his philosopher dream story [see here], as the original author probably deserves credit. It comes from Raymond Smullyan's 5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies (St. Martin's Press, 1983). The story is "A Universal Philosophical Refutation." You can find it here. I found the book to be an interesting and funny read. By the way, another nice dodge of the issue by Carrier. Matthew @ Ektopos http://www.ektopos.com

From Today's New York Times

2004-04-05T02:54:00.000-07:00

To the Editor:Re "TV Shows Take On Bush, and Pull Few Punches" (front page, April 2):Like most people, I watch less and less network TV because of the violence and sexual content; these attacks on the president just give me another reason to flip over to something less offensive.Frankly, I don't believe that TV writers should be attacking the president, regardless of party. Not because he is above reproach, but because I believe that this gives a writer a forum in which to express his opinion (almost always liberal).And contrary to comments about presenting both sides, I haven't seen Hollywood do that in its TV shows.Why can't these producers and writers just put together entertaining programs and leave the politics to the news media and opinion makers? Middle America is turned off by Hollywood types' using their positions to influence public opinion.With the networks struggling to retain their shrinking audiences, you would think that they would want to avoid offending people and work on making programs of interest.

Them Wacky Academics

2004-04-05T02:53:00.000-07:00

Professors do a funny thing. When they list their academic affiliation on their curriculum vitae (CV), they put "Current Position." The implication is that it's temporary. It screams out, "I don't plan to be at this embarrassing place for long!" It says the person in question is better than the job he or she has. It expresses frustration, envy, even resentment. Imagine some other applications of this principle:Current residence.Current citizenship.Current crime record.Current wife (or husband).There does seem to be a lot of mobility within the professoriate. Everyone is on the make and on the move, trying to climb the ladder to the top. Ambition reigns. Status rules. Not in a top-twenty program? Get going! Not yet a star professor? You're not working hard enough! The professor's mantra is "Have Ph.D., will travel." The impolite name for this is "mercenary."I once fell victim to this onward-and-upward mentality. It's engrained in graduate students. Then, one day, I asked why I would want to go anywhere else. I'm happy where I am. I have all the research-related resources I need; I have great colleagues (including our secretary, Billie); I have a reasonable teaching load; I get all the courses I want to teach, when and where I want to teach them; and I like the campus facilities. As if all this weren't enough, I'm delighted with the nonacademic aspects of my life. I live west of the Mississippi (which, perverse as it sounds, means a lot to me); I have a warm-weather climate, which makes for mild winters; I have all the athletic opportunities I want; and, not insignificantly, the cost of living is low (Texas has no state income tax).It amazes me when people uproot their families and leave their friends to get an incrementally higher-paying or more prestigious job. Some professors move across country. Some move several times in a decade. Thank goodness I got that questing out of my system long ago. I'm content with what I have. Are you?

Apology

2004-02-21T04:13:00.001-08:00

I apologize to those of you who wrote to me but haven't received a reply. I really do like to hear from readers (some of whose letters I post), and I certainly read every letter I receive, but replying to them takes time. I'm sure that I could spend half of each day responding to letters. But that would leave little time for the other things that I need and want to do, such as prepare for my courses, write scholarly essays, read, run, play with my girls, and write blog entries. Something has to give. I'm afraid it's correspondence. The other day my inbox had swollen to more than 100 letters. Every day more were added. I kept thinking I'd start to answer them, perhaps at the rate of ten a day, but finally I gave up and deleted them. I did read every letter, so if you wrote to me, thank you. Richard Wolin on Jurgen Habermas on 9-11 Habermas's cosmopolitanism is, I think, too rigid. His rather pristine view of humanitarian intervention risks foundering on the question: how should one proceed in the event that multilateral institutions break down? One could argue that the German and French refusal to join the anti-Iraq coalition was less principled than the Anglo-American military intervention--which, after all, targeted for removal one of the twentieth century's most bloodthirsty and insidious tyrants. In September 2002, Gerhard Schroeder parlayed a brazen and thankless anti-Americanism into a semi-miraculous electoral triumph. Across the Rhine, Jacques Chirac took careful note of the domestic political gains to be won from playing the anti-American card. Since their first priority was the eminently "realist" goal of setting limits to American geopolitical reach, France and Germany were happy to let Saddam's brutal regime off the hook, thereby forsaking--or so one might argue--the precepts of humanitarian intervention that had been put to such outstanding use in Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor. Nor should one forget that in Kosovo, in order to forestall genocide, NATO was compelled to act in the absence of a Security Council resolution--to act unilaterally. On that occasion it was Russia that played an obstructionist role by threatening to block U.N. approval through use of its veto power. Sometimes liberal nationalism is the fallback position for a dysfunctional multilateralism. (Richard Wolin, "Kant at Ground Zero," review of Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, ed. by Giovanna Borradori, The New Republic: A Journal of Politics and the Arts 230 [9 February 2004]: 25-32, at 30)

From Today's New York Times

2004-02-21T04:13:00.000-08:00

To the Editor: Re "Gay Marriage in the States" (editorial, Feb. 18): I hear the question asked over and over again: How would gay marriage have any negative impact on traditional marriage? Gay marriage devalues the holy institution of marriage even further than it has been devalued by public policy errors like no-fault divorce. Marriage is a special relationship between a man and a woman that has served the good of society throughout history. Gay marriage redefines marriage as something less than an unalienable right ordained by nature, and nature's God. Marriage is a public institution created for the good of society, not a private institution created for self-fulfillment. If I have an ounce of gold and the government suddenly announces that sandstone will now be called gold and valued equally, what will happen to the value of my gold? It will crash, and so will the economy. So will it be with gay marriage. Marriage will be further devalued, and so will our entire social order. (Rev.) BILL BANUCHI Executive Director New York Christian Coalition Newburgh, N.Y., Feb. 18, 2004 The Nader Factor If Ralph Nader runs for president, and I sincerely hope he does, it's all over for the Democrats. Give them credit; they're smart enough to know it. See here. By the way, The Nation, which is edited by the apparatchik Katrina vanden Heuvel, is pleading with Ralph not to run. See here. What grovelers! If Ralph has any self-respect, he'll ignore this self-interested entreaty. Here is his reply. posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson 2/21/2004 02:40:44 PM Prediction There's going to be an awful backlash against homosexuals because of antics like this. Expect to see not only an amendment to the United States Constitution, but amendments to many state constitutions. Americans are an understanding and generous people, but they don't take kindly to lawlessness. Justice for William H. Pryor Jr One thing I love about President Bush is his steely resolve. It's a Texas trait, one that I'm sure he picked up in the oilfields. Yesterday, as you may have heard, President Bush appointed Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which sits in Atlanta. (See here.) This is long past due. Senate Democrats have been filibustering some of President Bush's judicial nominations,which is an unprecedented display of arrogance. (It will come back to haunt the Democrats. Mark my words.) Instead of caving in to the Democrats, President Bush made a recess appointment. A few weeks ago, he did the same with Charles W. Pickering Sr of Mississippi, who will serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which sits in New Orleans. Democrats say that Pryor is incapable of keeping his personal beliefs and values (he's Catholic) out of the chambers. Is it only Republicans (or Catholics) who suffer from this malady? What a bunch of hypocrites the Democrats are! Thank you, President Bush, for standing your ground. It's one reason so many of us admire you. Now where's Miguel Estrada?

S. F. Sapontzis on Animal Liberation

2004-02-20T04:07:00.000-08:00

Apparently, many people are offended when animal liberationists draw analogies between animal liberation and the various human liberation movements. For example, Leslie Francis and Richard Norman assert that "the equation of animal welfare with genuine liberation movements such as black liberation, women's liberation, or gay liberation has the effect of trivializing those real liberation movements," and Richard A. Watson adds that "Singer's claim that the struggle against the tyranny of human over nonhuman animals is a struggle as important as any of the moral and social issues that have been fought over in recent years is insulting to past and recent victims of moral and social oppression."

Unfortunately, it is not immediately obvious what makes a liberation movement "genuine," "real," or "as important as" other, certified liberation movements. If we were to judge by the number of suffering individuals involved, then the animal liberation movement is clearly more serious than any human liberation movement. We kill approximately five billion mammals and birds annually in the United States alone. That is many times the number of women and people of color in the United States. If we are to judge by how fundamental the interests being violated are, then once again, liberating animals is very serious business, since they are routinely tormented and mutilated in laboratories, are denied any sort of normal, fulfilling life in factory farms, and have their very lives taken from them in a vast variety of situations. Women and minorities do not suffer such routine, fundamental deprivations. If we are to judge by the moral, legal, cultural, and individual life-style changes that would be occasioned by the success of the movement, then once again, animal liberation is at least as serious an issue as the extension of equal rights to minorities and women. Liberating animals would directly affect our eating habits, clothing preferences, biomedical research industry, sporting business, and land use, thereby changing our current way of life at least as pervasively as have the civil rights and women's liberation movements.

(S. F. Sapontzis, Morals, Reason, and Animals [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987], 84-5 [endnotes omitted])

Remembering David Bloom (1963-2003)

Does anyone besides me miss David Bloom? He was a brave man, doing the job he loved. Here is his journalistic colleague, Jonathan Alter. The images of Bloom riding on a tank, covered with dust, and reporting from the battlefield in his flak jacket, will be with me always. I hope his wife and daughters are doing well. They have reason to be proud.

Ambrose Bierce

Outcome, n. A particular type of disappointment. By the kind of intelligence that sees in an exception a proof of the rule the wisdom of an act is judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be judged by the light that the doer had when he performed it.

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

Zell Miller

2004-02-20T04:06:00.000-08:00

Dr John J. Ray, my polymathic friend Down Under, has a link to this essay by Georgia Senator Zell Miller on his site. It's worth your time. It's refreshing to see that not every Democrat is driven by hatred, envy, or rabid partisanship. By the way, Miller is a Marine. The following is taken from his Senate website:

Zell Miller credits the Marine Corps for turning his life around as a young man. He had dropped out of Emory University and landed in the drunk tank for a night in 1953 when he decided to sign up for a three-year enlistment in the Marines. Miller did his 12-week boot camp at Parris Island, SC, followed by time at Naval Training Station in Great Lakes, IL and the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, NC. By the end of the three years, he had earned the rank of sergeant and was an Expert Rifleman. Miller went on to become a history professor, mayor of his hometown of Young Harris, Georgia, a state senator, lieutenant governor for 16 years, governor for eight years and now, a U.S. senator.

"My experience in the United States Marine Corps steered me onto the path of success. The Marine Corps instilled in me honor, courage and commitment--core values that have sustained me through thick and thin,'' Miller said in a public service announcement he taped for the Marine Corps in 2001.

Semper fi!

From the Mailbag

I'm a born & raised Okie who's currently transplanted to Washington DC. I first read your articles on Tech Central Station, whither I'd followed a link from andrewsullivan.com.

Thank you, Dr. Burgess-Jackson, for sharing your mind with all of us. I really feel, in becoming a regular reader of AnalPhilosopher, that I'm getting a vigorous university humanities course FOR FREE. I've never taken a philosophy course, but appreciate the way you make the art of thinking, arguing, and critically reading accessible, inviting, and honest. Verily, this must be what it was like to sit with the great Athenian thinkers--only 'ya had to be there'.

May traffic to your site(s) burgeon. Please continue to educate, illuminate and entertain!

John Parker

Run, Ralph, Run!

2004-02-20T04:03:00.000-08:00

Fox News is reporting (here) that Ralph Nader will announce his candidacy for the presidency this weekend--as an independent. This is great news, not only for those of us who admire him personally (I voted for Nader in 1996 and 2000), but for President Bush, our commander in chief. You can be sure that Nader will be viciously attacked by Democrats, who hold him personally responsible for the 2000 defeat of Al Gore. (That's nonsense, of course. Nader was not and is not beholden to the party.)

Nader will receive votes from disaffected Democrats as well as independents like me. James Taranto reports today (here) that some Dean supporters are indicating an unwillingness to support the Democrat nominee. Some of them will undoubtedly vote for Nader, either out of spite toward the nominee (John Kerry or John Edwards) or in order to increase Howard Dean's chances in 2008. A Bush victory this fall will mean a wide-open race for president in 2008. It could be Howard Dean against Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination. The screamer versus the schemer. Things do be getting interesting!

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re "And Now There Are Two" (editorial, Feb. 19):

By whittling down a broad array of candidates and choices to two men who are all but interchangeable, the primary process has deprived people of a true choice. This has taken place in a small number of mostly rural states, with populations smaller than a single county in many of the more populous states yet to hold primaries.

While I will stay interested in the process and outcome of this campaign, I am unhappy that a tiny number of voters in the early primaries and caucuses had such a disproportionate effect on the shape of the campaign. Voters in the so-called Super Tuesday states have every right to be angry about being co-opted from the process.

RICK LEBEAU
San Diego, Feb. 19, 2004

Humor

2004-02-20T04:02:00.000-08:00

This is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. It took a while, but I think I'm composed enough to write. Thanks to Robert Hessen.

posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson 2/20/2004 02:06:20 PM

From the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed.

Yankee, n. and a.

Also Yankey, Yanky, pl. Yankies.

The two earliest statements as to its origin were published in 1789: Thomas Anburey, a British officer who served under Burgoyne in the War of Independence, in his Travels II. 50 derives Yankee from Cherokee eankke slave, coward, which he says was applied to the inhabitants of New England by the Virginians for not assisiting them in a war with the Cherokees; William Gordon in Hist. Amer. War states that it was a favourite word with farmer Jonathan Hastings of Cambridge, Mass., c 1713, who used it in the sense of 'excellent'. Appearing next in order of date (1822) is the statement which has been most widely accepted, viz. that the word has been evolved from North American Indian corruptions of the word English through Yengees to Yankees (Heckewelder, Indian Nations iii. ed. 1876, p. 77); cf. Yengees.

Perhaps the most plausible conjecture is that it comes from Du. Janke, dim. of Jan John, applied as a derisive nickname by either Dutch or English in the New England states (J. N. A. Thierry, 1838, in Life of Ticknor, 1876, II. vii. 124). The existence of Yank(e)y, Yankee, as a surname or nickname (often with Dutch associations) is vouched for by the following references:

1683 Cal. St. Papers, Colon. Ser. (1898) 457 They [sc. pirates] sailed from Bonaco..; chief commanders, Vanhorn, Laurens, and Yankey Duch. 1684 Ibid. 733 A sloop..unlawfully seized by Captain Yankey. 1687 Ibid. (1899) 456 Captains John Williams (Yankey) and Jacob Everson (Jacob). 1687-8 MSS. Earl of Dartmouth in 11th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm. App. v. 136 The pirates Yanky and Jacobs. 1697 Dampier Voy. I. iii. 38. 1725 Inventory of W. Marr of Carolina in N. & Q. 5th Ser. X. 467 Item one negroe man named Yankee to be sold.

Cf. also 'Dutch yanky' s.v. yanky.

A. n.

1. a. U.S. A nickname for a native or inhabitant of New England, or, more widely, of the northern States generally; during the War of Secession applied by the Confederates to the soldiers of the Federal army.

b. By English writers and speakers commonly applied to a native or inhabitant of the United States generally; an American. Applied occas. to a ship (cf. Frenchman, etc.).

2. [ellipt. use of the adj.] The Yankee language, the dialect of New England; loosely, American English generally.

3. Whisky sweetened with molasses. local U.S. colloq.

4. pl. Stock Exchange slang. American stocks or securities.

5. A name for various special tools of American origin, or of ingenious design. (Cf. Yankee notions in C.)

6. = Yankee jib in sense C. b. below.

7. Horse-racing. A composite bet on four or more horses, composed of doubles, trebles, and one or more accumulators.

B. adj. a. That is a Yankee; pertaining to or characteristic of Yankees (often with the connotation of cleverness, cunning, or cold calculation); loosely, belonging to the United States, American.

b. Used of or in reference to the language or dialect: cf. A. 2.

C. Comb., etc. a. gen., as Yankee-like, -looking adjs.

b. Special combinations and collocations. Yankee bet Horse-racing = sense A. 7 above; Yankee gang, name in Canada for a special arrangement of gang-saws (see quot.); Yankee jib (topsail), a large jib topsail used in light winds, set on the topmast stay; Yankee-land, the land of Yankees, New England; loosely, the United States; Yankee notions [notion 9b], small wares or useful articles made in New England or the northern States; Yankee State, a nickname for Ohio.

Hence Yankee v. (rare), trans. to deal cunningly with like a Yankee, to cheat; Yankeedom, the realm or country of Yankees, the United States of America; Yankees as a body; Yankeyess, a depreciatory term for an American woman; Yankeefied (-faId) ppl. a., made or become like a Yankee; characteristic of a Yankee; Yankeeish a., resembling a Yankee (whence Yankeeishly adv., like a Yankee); Yankeeism, Yankee character or style; a Yankee characteristic or idiom; Yankeeize v., trans. to make Yankeeish, give a Yankee character to; Yankeeness, Yankee character.

Dialect

Andrew Sullivan has a link to a neat site. Take the twenty-question test and see what your dialect is. Feel free to tell me; I'm curious. Here's mine: "39% (Yankee). A definitive Yankee." I grew up in Michigan; what can I say? But I got to Texas as fast as I could.

From Today's Dallas Morning News

2004-02-20T03:58:00.000-08:00

Re: "Jersey Girls," the Fashion!Dallas cover story in yesterday's Texas Living.

So this is The Dallas Morning News' idea of "fashion": the big color photos of the teenage girls? The clear message is: "It's hip to look like a drugged-out, hostile jerk. Show how callous and hardened you are; quit looking like a decent, pleasant girl."

What's the point? Who poses these girls, urging them to look sullen if not trashy? Why isn't someone with good judgment and common sense involved?

If your Fashion!Dallas editor thinks these pictures are so good, take them out on the street and ask passers-by: "How would you feel if your daughter or sister or niece looked like these pictures?" You'll hear words like "disgusted," "ashamed" and mostly "worried." No, not their clothes--the looks on their faces, the character and personality they reflect. If my daughter had ever worn expressions like this, I'd have been deeply worried, for her sake. Does anybody on your Fashion!Dallas staff have a daughter?

What's the point? What's the message?

William R. Wilson, Dallas

Sexist and Nonsexist Literary Practices, Part 11

One final note: throughout this book I shall use the colloquial plural pronouns 'they' and 'their' in impersonal contexts, in place of the masculine singular 'he' and 'his' required by strict English grammar. I believe that grammar needs changing in this respect, since it contrives to give the appearance that only men ever do or think anything worth mentioning.

(Peter Carruthers, Human Knowledge and Human Nature: A New Introduction to an Ancient Debate [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992], viii)

Reader Mail

2004-02-20T03:56:00.000-08:00

Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

Like you I read Andrew Sullivan. For me this happens almost every day. I enjoy his point of view on most topics; gay marriage being the exception. I have come to the conclusion that he is blinded on this issue. I enjoyed your post today because it clearly points out the speciousness of Andrew's posted argument.

The funny part is I agree with the goal of legalizing gay marriage! I'm just really turned off (unpersuaded) by his particular arguments. Indeed, the other peculiar thing is that Stanley Kurtz, whose position on this issue I generally disagree with, summed up Andrew's current position pretty effectively when he posted this:

"As best I can discern it, this is Andrew Sullivan's position on gay marriage: 1) I am willing to argue as if it matters whether gay marriage undermines marriage or not. But if it is shown that gay marriage really does harm marriage, that is irrelevant. Gay marriage is a civil right, and must be granted regardless of its effect on the institution. 2) I am willing to argue as if I expect and prefer to see gay marriage adopted slowly and legislatively on a state by state basis. But if gay marriage is imposed by the courts in Massachusetts, and if that kicks off a process of nationalization, that is irrelevant. Gay marriage is a civil right, and must be granted, even if it is imposed on the nation by a few liberal judges. 3) I am willing to argue as if I believe in the democratic process and respect for law. But if gay marriage is forced on the nation through a campaign of civil disobedience, that is irrelevant. Gay marriage is a civil right, and must be granted, even if it is undertaken in clear violation of the law, and in clear violation of the will of the people of California as expressed in a legally binding democratic referendum."

Thanks for your post on this issue today, it sheds some much needed light on the issue and the process for resolving it.

Regards,
Steve

Brian Leiter Gets His Comeuppance

I hope all of my readers followed my advice over the past few days to read Edward Feser's brilliant two-part essay on academia at Tech Central Station. Feser, a philosopher, had the temerity--the sheer effrontery--to depict and challenge the leftist domination of the academy. Naturally, this drew out the left-wing nuts, such as the self-promoting, status-obsessed Brian Leiter. Today, Leiter and his fellow do-gooders get their comeuppance. See here. Feser takes them apart, demonstrating not only their hypocrisy but their malice, arrogance, dogmatism, spitefulness, and bigotry. (Remember: I was one of them. I know.) The response to his essay by the trendy lefties, none of whom could hold a job in the real world, shows exactly what academia is like, thus, however inadvertently, proving Feser's thesis. Thank you, Professor Feser, for speaking the truth, which, judging from their responses, Leiter and his ilk can't handle. Godspeed.

Welcome to the Blogosphere

I received a nice letter from this new blogger. Thanks!

Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) on John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

2004-02-19T03:37:00.000-08:00

He was loyal to movements, to causes, and to parties, but could not be prevailed upon to support them at the price of saying what he did not think to be true. A characteristic instance of this is his attitude to religion. His father brought him up in the strictest and narrowest atheist dogma. He rebelled against it. He embraced no recognized faith, but he did not dismiss religion, as the French encyclopaedists or the Benthamites had done, as a tissue of childish fantasies and emotions, comforting illusions, mystical gibberish and deliberate lies. He held that the existence of God was possible, indeed probable, but unproven, but that if God was good he could not be omnipotent, since he permitted evil to exist. He would not hear of a being at once wholly good and omnipotent whose nature defied the canons of human logic, since he rejected belief in mysteries as mere attempts to evade agonizing issues. If he did not understand (this must have happened often), he did not pretend to understand. Although he was prepared to fight for the rights of others to hold a faith detached from logic, he rejected it himself. He revered Christ as the best man who ever lived, and regarded theism as a noble, though to him unintelligible, set of beliefs. He regarded immortality as possible, but rated its probability very low. He was, in fact, a Victorian agnostic who was uncomfortable with atheism and regarded religion as something that was exclusively the individual's own affair.

(Isaiah Berlin, "John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life," chap. 4 in his Four Essays on Liberty [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969], 173-206, at 203-4 [essay originally published in 1959])

Humor

This story will crack you up. (Thanks to James Taranto of OpinionJournal for the link.)

Scruton on Kant on the War in Iraq

Roger Scruton is the author of Kant in Oxford University Press's Past Masters series. He believes (as I do) that Immanuel Kant--whom Simon Blackburn describes as "the greatest philosopher of the last three hundred years"--would support the war in Iraq. See here for the argument. (Thanks to Robert Hessen for the link.)

Begging the Question

2004-02-19T03:36:00.000-08:00

Andrew Sullivan wrote the following in his blog (see here):

What this debate may be coming down to is that, under almost any rational understanding of equal protection, civil marriage has to be extended to gay couples. That's why court after court has ruled thus. But popular feeling among at least a plurality of voters holds that marriage for gays is abhorrent to them, a threat to marriage itself - or, in the words of Laura Bush, "very, very shocking." Given equal protection guarantees, the only viable option, then, for those opposed to marriage rights for gays is to change the constitutions - state and federal - to carve out an exception to equality under the law. So that the U.S. and state constitutions would say: Every citizen is equal under the law, except when it comes to gays marrying. Or, more bluntly: all people are equal but some people are more equal than others. And this Orwellism we put into the founding document of the country. That may emerge as the choice we face.

Neither the moral principle of equality nor the constitutional doctrine of equal protection under the law requires equal treatment. They require equal treatment for similarly situated individuals. If the individuals in question are differently situated, then they can and should be treated differently. This is basic stuff, folks. It goes back to Aristotle. The issue, therefore, is whether there are relevant differences between heterosexual and homosexual marriage. If there are, then equality requires different treatment. If there are not, then equality requires the same treatment.

You'll notice that I used the word "relevant." There are really two debates going on: a legal debate and a moral debate. The legal debate asks whether there is a legally relevant difference between heterosexual and homosexual marriage. The moral debate asks whether there is a morally relevant difference. We should not assume that the answers to these questions will be the same. It may be that there is no morally relevant difference between the two types of marriage but that there is a legally relevant difference. Or there could be a morally relevant difference but no legally relevant difference. Not everything immoral is or should be illegal, and not everything that is or should be illegal is immoral. Law and morality are distinct institutions, even if they mutually influence each other.

Andrew Sullivan and other proponents of homosexual marriage should stop begging the question against their interlocutors. To assume that the moral principle of equality (or the constitutional doctrine of equal protection under the law) requires homosexual marriage is to assume, without argument, that there are no morally or legally relevant differences between homosexual and heterosexual marriage. But that's precisely what needs to be established. I, for one, am skeptical that it can be established. Indeed, I believe that it cannot. There are both morally and legally relevant differences between the two types of marriage. Since Sullivan is trying to change the status quo, the burden of persuasion is on him.

In another post of this date (see here), Sullivan uses the expression "discrimination against gay couples." But "discrimination" is ambiguous. It means either discrimination on the basis of irrelevant traits or discrimination on the basis of relevant traits. Only the former is objectionable. The latter is not only not objectionable; it is constitutive of rationality! But then we must ask which traits are relevant and which irrelevant. We are back to the same issue--the key issue in this debate; the issue Sullivan is evading. Sullivan's use of rhetoric and fallacy to move his readers is philosophically distressing and personally insulting. It demonstrates a lack of respect for his readers' intelligence. It also suggests that he hasn't thought things through.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

"Amazon Glitch Unmasks War of Reviewers" (front page, Feb. 14) has finally revealed the laissez-faire practices of Amazon.com's reviewing system. The article deals mostly with fiction, however. But in the world of nonfiction, any competing author can post a review, negative or positive, and lie about the content or veracity of a reference book.

This has turned the review sections into bizarre, vitriolic chat rooms, which may entertain but ultimately do not help the customer make a good purchase.

And when buying a textbook where one is relying on facts, the wrong choice can have serious results.

MICHAL SHAPIRO
New York, Feb. 14, 2004

Dr Dean's Demise

Howard Dean's campaign for the presidency is over, thank goodness. At least for this year. He'll probably be back in 2008. He's too young, too ambitious, and too convinced of his own rectitude to retire from the political scene. I should say up front, and for the record, that I was wrong in predicting a Dean-Edwards ticket. See here. Like many others, I was taken in by his success in raising money via the Internet. Early on, however, I dismissed his campaign as pie in the sky. See here. I should have stayed with my original judgment. In case you're interested, The New York Times weighs in here on the Dean phenomenon.

Argumentation and Demagoguery

2004-02-18T03:29:00.000-08:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say that there are two kinds of people in the world and everyone else. But seriously, I'm starting to think that in politics, there really are two kinds of people: those who reach out to the unconvinced, hoping to persuade them (rationally) to come around, and those who preach to (and seek to rile) the converted.

I got to thinking about this while watching Hardball this evening. One of the guests was Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation. She has always struck me as excessively, even hysterically, partisan. Like Ann Coulter, she uses manipulative rhetoric and plays fast and loose with the truth. They are intellectually dishonest. I can't imagine anyone listening to either of them and being persuaded. That is to say, I can't imagine anyone who doesn't already agree with them coming around to their position as a result of what they say. It's not just their manner, which is smug and obnoxious; it's that they don't even try to find out what their interlocutors believe. In order to persuade you of proposition p, I must show you that p follows from something else you believe and are unwilling to give up. If anything, vanden Heuvel and Coulter alienate the undecided.

So why do they act as they do? Why would they act in a way that is calculated to turn people away from them? That's perverse! I think it's because they're not trying to persuade. They're trying to motivate. They want people to share their anger and resentment toward others. (Why they're angry and resentful is a question best left to therapists.) They want their readers/listeners to feel like part of a crowd instead of thinking things through for themselves. They want to rile the converted.

This, of course, is the essence of demagoguery: appealing to the basest instincts of the mob. As any sociologist will tell you, the intelligence of a mob is less than the sum of the intelligences of its members. It's shameful. It's disgraceful. Vanden Heuvel, Coulter, and their ilk have coarsened our political discourse and poisoned our minds. They want us to view our political adversaries as enemies. I'm sorry, but as much as I disliked Bill Clinton personally and disagreed with (many of) his policies, he was not my enemy. Nor, despite the hateful rhetoric of vanden Heuvel et al., is George W. Bush any American's enemy.

An Answer to My Question About Peter Singer

2004-02-18T03:22:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon, Professor.

Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog. I'd return the favor, but I see that you do not have commenting software on yours.

Re the Bestiality post...I would assume that Singer doesn't object as long as the animal is not hurt or "protesting" in some way. But, as you know, he's really weird. :-)

I think also he's trying to make the point that you can't object to sex with animals on cruelty grounds if you think it's okay to stuff them in cages, kill them and eat them. You can't object via a cultural relativity argument, as some cultures (apparently) have engaged in it. You can't object via a "people have souls" appeal to religion because we also have bodies, bodies that are very similar to animal bodies. A Kantian "people have dignity" argument fails because we do other things that counter our alleged dignity.

So, why does this sexual taboo stand when so many others have fallen? I don't think Singer actually answers the question. He simply wants to show that there isn't a good argument against it.

Paula

Ambrose Bierce

Esoteric, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds,--exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.

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

Philosophy of Sex

2004-02-18T03:20:00.000-08:00

Few nonphilosophers would know this (although some might suspect it), but there's a substantial and sophisticated body of literature on the philosophical dimensions of sex (as in sexual intercourse). This should come as no surprise, since sex is an important aspect of human experience. One of my published essays, on statutory rape, was reprinted in a philosophical anthology entitled Human Sexuality, edited by Igor Primoratz (Aldershot, England: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1997). Part I of this anthology, on "The Nature of Human Sexuality," contains essays on sex and procreation, sex and love, sex as a language, plain sex, and sexual perversion. Part II, on "Issues in Sexual Morality," contains essays on homosexuality, prostitution, sexual harassment, and rape. Primoratz, who is a first-rate analytic philosopher, is the author of Ethics and Sex (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), which I reviewed (favorably) in the Journal of Applied Philosophy. Another excellent work, by perhaps the foremost philosopher of sex in the English-speaking world, is Alan Soble's Sexual Investigations (New York and London: New York University Press, 1996). You may wish to visit Soble's website, which is loaded with intellectually provocative material. If you're interested in something less academic than this, see here.

The New York Times on Homosexual Marriage

In an editorial of this date (see here), The New York Times supports a federalist approach to homosexual marriage. Let each state decide how to define "marriage." What the Times doesn't discuss, however, is the possibility (probability?) that the United States Supreme Court will force every state to recognize homosexual marriage. Am I alone in being concerned about this? Am I cynical (or overly cynical) in thinking that the Times secretly hopes for such a ruling?

From Today's New York Times

2004-02-18T03:19:00.000-08:00

To the Editor:

I am a longtime admirer of Thomas L. Friedman. I disagree, however, with his advice to Senator John Kerry relative to our Army in Iraq, which is summarized in his final line: "We will not run" (column, Feb. 15).

This determination to stand and fight is tempting to political leaders. The trouble with this appeal is that brave young Americans do the bleeding and dying--not the political leaders who committed them to a mistaken war. Terrorists are killing American soldiers in Iraq because our Army is in Iraq. I hope that President Bush, with the help of the United Nations, will find a way to return Iraq to the Iraqis and bring our Army home.

Paradoxically, on the same page as Mr. Friedman's column is a column by Maureen Dowd detailing how Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted criminal Iraqi exile, snowed the neoconservatives in the Bush administration into believing that the American Army could walk into Iraq unopposed and that he would be an ideal replacement for Saddam Hussein.

Replacing Saddam Hussein with Ahmad Chalabi would be comparable to replacing Jack the Ripper with Al Capone. Such a development is not worth risking the death of one additional American.

Thousands of young Americans bled and died in Vietnam to keep a series of political frauds in power in Saigon. Let's not go down that road again, claiming all the while, "We will not run." How about a compromise? Let's walk out of Iraq.

GEORGE MCGOVERN
Marco Island, Fla., Feb. 16, 2004
The writer was the Democratic candidate for president in 1972.

Once More into the Breach

2004-02-18T03:16:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about blogging is its immediacy. Scholarly publication is frustratingly slow. But immediacy has its downside. Things get posted before they're ready. In terms of thoughtfulness, blogging lies somewhere between e-mail and scholarly publication. It's more thoughtful than e-mail, but less thoughtful than scholarly publication. My blog entries are like second drafts. I write them, then go back over them to correct errors. Sometimes, as you know, I get things wrong or don't say things well. Mea culpa.

Yesterday, in my entry entitled "Andrew, Andrew, Andrew," I proposed a constitutional amendment to the effect that no state is required to recognize another state's marriages. I thought this would achieve the federalist result I seek. But UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, to whom I sent the entry, said it would not. Suppose the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids discrimination on the basis of sex (or sexual orientation) in marriage law. This would mean that each state must thenceforth recognize homosexual marriage. My proposed amendment would not stop that.

It took me a while to figure out what Professor Volokh was saying, in part because his messages were so short. He's right, of course. So let me try again. I hope you see what I'm trying to accomplish. Qua federalist, I believe that each state should decide for itself how to define "marriage." If Massachusetts wants to allow homosexual marriage, it should be able to do so. If Texas wants to disallow homosexual marriage, it should be able to do so. I haven't argued for (or defended) federalism; all I've done is draw out its implications for homosexual marriage. Here's an amendment that ought to do the trick:

Each state shall decide for itself how to define "marriage," except that no state shall require that the parties to a marriage be of the same race.

I was tempted to stop after the first occurrence of "marriage," but that would open the door for states to prohibit heteroracial (sometimes called "interracial") marriages. (I'm not saying that any state would, but it could.) It might be asked why a federalist would object to a state law banning heteroracial marriages. Is a federalist, as such, committed to viewing Loving v. Virginia (1967) as a mistake? I don't think so. There's a morally and constitutionally relevant difference between heteroracial, heterosexual marriage (on the one hand) and homosexual marriage (on the other). Heteroracial, heterosexual couples are capable of procreating. Homosexual couples are not.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires equal treatment (by states) of similarly situated individuals. It does not require equal treatment of those who are differently situated. Since homoracial and heteroracial heterosexual couples are similarly situated with respect to procreation, to which there is a fundamental right (according to the Supreme Court), the amendment requires that they be treated equally. But heterosexual and homosexual couples are differently situated with respect to procreation, so the amendment does not require that they be treated equally.

Please don't say that not all heterosexual married couples procreate (or intend, upon being married, to procreate). I've addressed that objection. See here. The law, unlike morality, must draw lines. The line between homosexual and heterosexual is no more arbitrary, legally speaking, than is the line between people under twenty-one years of age and people twenty-one years of age or older with respect to the drinking of alcohol. The second part of my proposed amendment simply ensures that Loving v. Virginia, which struck down bans on heteroracial marriage, remains in effect.

James Rachels (1941-2003) on Ethics

2004-02-18T03:14:00.000-08:00

Ethics is the subject that attempts to provide directions for conduct: Should a manufacturer advertise a product as being better than it is? Should a lawyer suppress evidence that tends to show that his client is guilty? Should a physician help a dying patient who, because of constant misery, wishes to end his life sooner? And so on, endlessly.

Ethical theory, on the other hand, concerns itself with questions about ethics. These questions divide naturally into two categories. First, ethical theorists want to know about the relations between the various reasons and principles we use in justifying particular moral judgments. Can they be fitted together into a unified theory? Can these diverse principles be reduced to one ultimate principle, which underlies and explains all the rest? Much of modern moral philosophy has consisted in the elaboration of such theories: egoism, Kantianism, and utilitarianism, each purporting to have discovered the ultimate principle of ethics, are the most familiar.

Second, there are questions about the status of ethics. Are there any objective truths in ethics which our moral judgments may correctly or incorrectly represent? Or are our moral judgments nothing more than the expression of personal feelings, or perhaps the codes of the societies in which we live? Often it is helpful in dealing with such issues to analyze the meaning of moral concepts--to examine what is meant by such words as 'good', 'right', and 'ought'.

Twenty years ago the prevailing orthodoxy among English-speaking philosophers was that ethical theory, but not ethics itself, is the proper concern of philosophy. Philosophers, it was said, are theoreticians, not ministers or guidance counselors. The more radical philosophers even excluded what I have called the "first part" of ethical theory from their purview; they restricted their attention entirely to the analysis of moral language. The result was a body of literature which seemed, to those outside academic circles, curiously empty and sterile.

Today this attitude has been almost completely abandoned; the best writing by moral philosophers combines ethical theory with a concern for specific moral issues. Part of the reason for this change is that the traumas of the past two decades--especially the protest movements against racism, sexism, and the Vietnam war--forced philosophers to rethink their role in society. But there is a deeper reason, internal to philosophy itself. The rejection of ethics was the result of a preoccupation among philosophers during the first half of this century with understanding the different kinds of inquiry. Science, mathematics, religion, and ethics are very different from one another, and, as philosophers tried to sort out the differences, the idea took hold that philosophy's distinctive contribution is to analyze and clarify the concepts used in each area. It was an appealing idea, with ample historical precedent. After all, the patron saint of philosophy, Socrates, had conceived of his work mainly as an investigation into definitions; and the great figures such as Aristotle and Kant had appealed, at key points in their work, to linguistic considerations for support. Philosophers, then, were to study not ethics but only the language of ethics. That philosophers are not ethicists seemed as natural a conclusion as that philosophers are not scientists or mathematicians.

By the mid-1960s, however, it was becoming clear that the recognition of differences among kinds of inquiry does not require that they be pursued in isolation from one another. Indeed, separation may not be desirable or even possible. (One cannot do physics without mathematics.) Today philosophers generally do not recognize sharp boundaries between their own work and work in other areas. Thus W. V. Quine, whom many consider the most eminent living American philosopher, regards his work as continuous with that of theoretical science. Links between current philosophy and psychology, linguistics, and computer science are everywhere apparent. The reuniting of ethical theory with ethics, then, is merely a part of a larger movement within philosophy, to bring back into proper relation the disparate inquiries.

(James Rachels, "Can Ethics Provide Answers?" chap. 1 in Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory, ed. David M. Rosenthal and Fadlou Shehadi, vol. 1 of Ethics in a Changing World [Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988], 3-24, at 4-5 [italics in original] [essay originally published in 1980])

Reader Mail

Dear Professor:

Actually, the quote comes from James Anthony Froude, the British historian, describing the marriage of Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane, who fought bitterly and constantly.

I have been a faithful reader of your Blog since it was first linked by Volokh, often visiting three times a day to see what new gems you have unearthed or generated yourself. Thanks. Now that I have made contact with you, I shall occasionally send you items of interest.

Robert Hessen
Senior Research Fellow
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305

Animal Legal & Historical Center

2004-02-18T03:06:00.000-08:00

Philosophers are interested in the moral status of animals. Lawyers are interested in their legal status. If you're interested in either of these--or both, as I am--please visit Animal Ethics, which has several useful links. Today I added a link to law professor David Favre's Animal Legal & Historical Center, which will eventually contain the text of all statutes and judicial opinions about animals. It's an ambitious but eminently worthy project. The site accepts tax-deductible donations, if you're so inclined. Thank you for your hard work in behalf of animals, Professor Favre!

Readership

2004-02-18T02:53:00.000-08:00

This blog had 2,110 site visits in the past week (Wednesday morning to Wednesday morning). That's an average of 301.4 visits per day (none of them me). I finally broke the 300 barrier--and I did it without a Tech Central Station column, which usually boosts my readership significantly. My most recent column appeared on 29 January, nearly three weeks ago. Thank you for reading my blog. I get nothing out of it except satisfaction. I enjoy writing, whether it's about philosophy, politics, music, or baseball. As I'm fond of saying, if it's worth doing or thinking about, it's worth writing about. Even writing is worth writing about. I suppose even writing about writing is worth writing about. Please excuse my rants. Ranting is cathartic. I'll try to keep the rant-to-analysis ratio low, but it'll never be zero.

Who Says Scholars Are Humorless?

2004-02-02T02:26:00.000-08:00

J. Christopher Maloney, "Content: Covariation, Control and Contingency," Synthese 100 (August 1994): 241.

H. Holcomb III, "To Bet the Impossible Bet," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 36 (October 1994): 65.

O. K. Werckmeister, "Kafka 007," Critical Inquiry 21 (winter 1995): 468.

Ian Welsh, "Letting the Research Tail Wag the End User's Dog: The Powell Committee and UK Nuclear Technology," Science and Public Policy 21 (February 1994): 43.

Richard Wincor, "Unrest on the Frontiers of Copyright," Communications and the Law 16 (September 1994): 83.

From Today's New York Times

2004-02-02T02:15:00.000-08:00

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman ("Red Ink Realities," column, Jan. 27) says "the ultimate goal" of conservatives "is to slash government programs that help the poor and the middle class, and use the savings to cut taxes for the rich."

This is a pejorative way of describing the desire to allow people to keep their own money.

Redistribution of wealth is not one of the truths the Declaration of Independence held to be "self-evident."

BARRY FREEDMAN
Los Angeles, Jan. 28, 2004

From Today's New York Times

2004-02-02T02:14:00.000-08:00

To the Editor:

Re "Georgia Takes On 'Evolution' as 'Monkeys to Man' Idea" (news article, Jan. 30):

I have always been amazed at the ability of the Christian right to bully educators into diluting the teaching of evolution and promoting so-called creation science in public school classrooms. I suspect that part of the reason for this is a misappreciation of the importance of evolution by the general public.

Evolution is not an isolated concept that can be expediently omitted from a high-school biology syllabus. Rather, it is the single unifying concept of modern biology. It unites all areas of biology, from ecology to physiology to biochemistry and beyond. Without it, students are denied a framework to understand how these different areas are related and interdependent.

Can you imagine asking a physics teacher to cover everything except Newton's laws?

Maybe soon a small group of reactionaries will persuade a school board to teach students that apples do not fall to earth because of gravity, but because of some mystical phenomenon that can neither be studied nor understood.

ALBERT E. PRICE
New Haven, Jan. 30, 2004
The writer is a research fellow, department of cell biology, Yale University School of Medicine.

An Open Letter to President George W. Bush

2004-02-02T02:12:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush:

Let me begin by saying that while I did not vote for you in 2000, I have never been more proud to be an American than during your three years as president. I sincerely hope that you have five more years in which to lead and serve this great country. But certain aspects of your presidency trouble me. Since I am in no sense your adversary (much less your enemy), I hope that the criticisms I make herein are taken to heart rather than dismissed out of hand. My aim is to help you, not hurt you.

The first thing that troubles me about your presidency is your failure to articulate the grounds of some of your social policies. The core value of conservatism, as you know, is self-sufficiency. Each of us is responsible for providing for his or her material needs. I am not my brother's keeper. My brother is my brother's keeper. Americans are a hard-working, honest, generous people. They are more than willing to lend a hand to those in need, but they resent having their hard-earned wealth taken from them and distributed to others by governmental functionaries. Making one person work for another is slavery, which is a moral outrage. If "slavery" strikes you as too harsh a term for this, then perhaps "theft" will do.

We live in a land of opportunity. There is no reason other than laziness for anyone to be destitute. Nobody should have to work to provide for the lazy. I am not suggesting that everyone begins life with equal resources. Some people are fortunate; others are not. But misfortune is not injustice. Injustices must be rectified. Misfortunes are only to be regretted. There are countless examples of immigrants and impoverished Americans pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. It may be difficult, but it's not impossible. The greater the challenge, the more satisfying it is to meet it. The message you need to convey at every opportunity is that everyone in this country is expected to be self-sufficient. Governmental assistance must never be more than temporary, and it should always be the basis for shame.

I believe a message of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility would resonate with the American people, the overwhelming majority of whom are industrious and optimistic. It would inspire (and perhaps strike fear into the hearts of) the lazy as well as reinvigorate the productive. You should hold up to public scrutiny the success stories: immigrants who worked long hours to start a business and who managed, through hard work and sacrifice, to send their children to college; children of working-class parents who became professionals; children from broken homes who were mentored by teachers or neighbors and who made something of themselves. It takes a lot of effort to be poor in this land of opportunity. You, as the president, should do everything you can to promote self-sufficiency. It is not just the core conservative value; it is the core American value.

One of the geniuses of our society, and the main explanation of its success, is its commitment to markets. Free, open markets, both within and between nations, are the engines of prosperity. Every intervention into the market by an agent of the state undermines its efficiency and thwarts productivity. Every intervention takes food out of someone's mouth. But ordinary people are not trained in economics. The principles of supply and demand must be explained to them in terms they can understand. If I were president, I would sponsor weekly or monthly roundtables on economic issues. I would employ the best teachers in the nation for this task. You should have no trouble finding volunteers. The aim of the roundtables would be to get people to see the centrality of markets to our way of life--and their indispensability to our future prosperity.

Another troubling feature of your presidency, if I may be so bold as to point it out, is the secrecy with which it operates. I don't know why things are done so secretly. Ours is supposed to be an open government. You should be forthright not only about the grounds of your policies but about how policy decisions are made. Your secrecy antagonizes many people who would otherwise support you, and it positively enrages the opposition. You should not write this latter group off. They may never vote for you, but if you can moderate their frustration and anger, it will eliminate certain obstacles now placed in your way. Please reach out to the critics, even the unfair ones. Our society is deeply divided. One half is willing to go to the wall for you; the other half, if you believe its rhetoric, would like to see you dead. Nobody benefits from this state of affairs. Indeed, it harms all of us. I believe many Americans are desperate for civility, reasoned discourse, and moderation.

One thing I love about the law is that it is concerned with appearances and not just reality. It's not enough for a lawyer to avoid impropriety. Lawyers are expected to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. The reason is simple: Law, as an institution, requires the confidence of the people. But this rationale applies to politics as well as to law. Agents of government, especially those at the highest reaches, must avoid even the appearance of impropriety. I believe you have violated this principle by awarding noncompetitive contracts to corporations such as Halliburton. Do you know how this looks to ordinary Americans? Even those of us who support you see it as shady and unseemly. It looks as though you are rewarding your friends. I have no idea whether Halliburton would win the contract it has been granted in a fair and open competition. The point is that no competition was held, so we will never know. You must correct this. Appearances matter.

For many months now, you have taken a beating on the war in Iraq. There is no reason for this. The war was justified on many distinct grounds, from protecting Americans from a "gathering threat" to stabilizing the Middle East to punishing a mass murderer (thereby deterring other would-be tyrants) to liberating a people. History will judge you kindly for this war, as many of us already do. What's ironic is that liberals, not conservatives, used to defend humanitarian intervention. Now they appear to care only for Americans. Liberals have grown selfish and complacent. You must make the humanitarian case for war. You must show that humanitarian intervention is in keeping with, and not a deviation from, American values. It doesn't matter whether humanitarianism was your motive (or one of your motives) in going to war. Motives are not justifications. What you did and why you did it are separate questions. I'm not for a moment suggesting that you had disreputable motives in going to war. I'm saying that even if you did, it would have no bearing on whether the war was just.

As for the much-discussed weapons of mass destruction, you need to come clean about the intelligence failures that led to your belief that Iraq had them. Perhaps some will be found, but you should prepare for the eventuality that they are not. You should explain to the American people the difference between a belief being true and its being justified. These are different concepts. Just as a person can have an unjustified or unreasonable true belief, he or she can have a justified or reasonable false belief. It's pretty clear that you believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that you acted on this belief. The belief may turn out to be false. But that doesn't mean you were unjustified or unreasonable in believing it. By all accounts, you had ample reason to believe that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, if not nuclear weapons. You acted on the basis of the information you had at your disposal. That is all a rational person can be expected to do. You should ask your critics what they would have done with the information you had.

At this point things get complicated. While your reasonable belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction may explain and justify your decision to go to war, it does not release you from holding your underlings responsible. You're the president. Your cabinet members answer to you. Evidently, your advisers provided you with false information about Iraq's weapons capacity. You must find out why you got bad intelligence information and make immediate changes in personnel and policy to prevent it from recurring. Do not conflate the two issues. Admitting that you got false information and cleaning house as a result of it is not to admit to having unreasonable beliefs about Iraq's weapons. Nor does it in any way undermine the legitimacy of the war. These are, as I say, distinct issues. You must convey their distinctness to the American people, who are fair-minded, intelligent, and understanding. Until you do this, your critics will have their way with you. Demagogues never make distinctions, even simple ones. If you don't make the relevant distinctions, nobody will (except a few sympathetic philosophers, such as me).

As a lifelong student of American politics, including its history and philosophy, I know that it can be much more than it is. Politics is the process by which citizens work out their collective destiny. It is a noble undertaking. It is not war. It is dialogue. The aim of politics should be to persuade, not to coerce or manipulate. I know that you are an honorable man. Honorable men would rather lose by playing fairly than win through unfairness or duplicity. One thing I admire about you is that you have principles. You stand for something. This has not always been the case with our presidents. Please use your bully pulpit to articulate your principles, many of which, such as self-sufficiency, I share. Show the American people how these principles apply in their lives. Inspire them. Bring out the best in them. If you lose the 2004 presidential election, so be it. You will have lost honorably. It will be a magnificent moral victory, not only for you, but for the American people and this great nation.

Cordially,

Keith Burgess-Jackson

Richard Robinson on Democratic Mediocrity

One of the dominant themes in the propaganda for a candidate for the presidency of the U.S. is usually the assertion that he is no better than the average citizen, that his home and education were mediocre, that his present tastes and companions are very ordinary, that he is, in one of their favourite phrases, 'as common as an old shoe'. Democracy has a definite tendency to discourage recognition and reverence for all the better kinds of superiority, as [John Stuart] Mill himself recognizes. . . . As E. M. Forster wrote in his Two Cheers for Democracy, democracy encourages the cult of mediocrity, and fosters vulgarity by making mass approval the supreme arbiter.

(Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964], 240-1)

Dale Jamieson on Beef Addiction

2004-02-01T02:06:00.000-08:00

The addiction to beef that is characteristic of people in the industrialised countries is not only a moral atrocity for animals but also causes health problems for consumers, reduces grain supplies for the poor, precipitates social divisions in developing countries, contributes to climate change, leads to the conversion of forests to pasture lands, is a causal factor in overgrazing, and is implicated in the destruction of native plants and animals. If there is one issue on which animal liberationists and environmentalists should speak with a single voice it is on this issue.

(Dale Jamieson, "Animal Liberation Is an Environmental Ethic," Environmental Values 7 [February 1998]: 41-57, at 46)

Ambrose Bierce

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

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

Finding Your Presidential Soulmate

Andrew Sullivan had a link to this website the other day. If you answer a few questions, you'll see which of the eight presidential candidates (President Bush and the seven dwarfs, er, Democrats) shares your values. It's fun. Try it. In the interest of full disclosure, here's how my values match up with the candidates':

George W. Bush: 100%
Joe Lieberman: 92%
John Kerry: 76%
John Edwards: 74%
Wesley Clark: 73%
Howard Dean: 61%
Al Sharpton: 53%
Dennis Kucinich: 47%

These results ring true to me, so I think the instrument is sound. By the way, it's "dwarfs," not "dwarves," so don't give me hell about that.

The West End Ride

2004-02-01T02:04:00.000-08:00

Rituals give our lives depth and meaning. Somehow they slow the passage of time. One of my rituals is the annual West End Ride sponsored by the Greater Dallas Bicyclists. It's not like the two dozen or so bike rallies I do every year. Instead of everyone driving to a certain town to begin riding, everyone converges on a particular place to eat and then returns to the starting point. (Some wimps ride back in motor vehicles.) Riders come from all over the Metroplex. (The Metroplex, for those who don't know, is the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area.)

The West End Ride is always on Super Bowl Sunday. I don't know why; it just is. I did my first West Ender in 1990, a few months after moving to the Metroplex. Today's ride was my thirteenth in fifteen years. The weather is usually bad, but that's half the fun. Today it was chilly, overcast, and drizzly (foggy) at the start. The streets were wet, but nobody was in a hurry. Thirty-four hardy souls left Bicycles, Inc. (known colloquially as Bikes Inc.) in Arlington for the twenty-three mile trek to Dallas. Here is an image of Greg Shugart and me (I'm in the red Gore-Tex jacket) just before the start. Do we look cold? Actually, it wasn't bad, especially once we got moving.

If you've never been to Dallas, you should visit some day. It has a magnificent skyline. Here you can see the tall buildings enveloped in fog. The image gives you an idea of what the riding was like. There are many restaurants in the West End, which is a refurbished part of down (I believe it was once a warehouse district). My friends and I always eat at The Spaghetti Warehouse, which has superb sourdough bread. I eat out only once or twice a year, so you can imagine how much I enjoy it. This year, for the first time, there was a buffet. All you can eat for thirteen dollars. I ate far too much bread for someone who had twenty-three miles yet to ride.

Sure enough, my friends showed up. They appreciate rituals as much as I do, if not more. Here, from the left, are Sheila and Julius Bejsovec, yours truly, Mike Sweeney, and Joe Culotta. The image was made by Andrew, whose surname escapes me at the moment. (Sorry, Andrew.) Joe is the man who got me into marathon running in 1996. Thus, he is responsible for bringing a great deal of pain into the world. I hate you, Joe.

How to Lecture

2004-01-31T02:03:00.000-08:00

A colleague forwarded a link to this essay by William Germano on how to give a scholarly lecture. I gave two public lectures in 2003: one on "The Virtues and Vices of Lewis and Clark" (28 March) and one on "Our Millian Constitution: The Supreme Court's Repudiation of Immorality as a Ground of Criminal Punishment" (2 October). The full version of the latter will appear soon in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy.

Political Correctness Run Amok

2004-01-31T02:01:00.000-08:00

I don't get it. No sane person denies that there are dog breeds. See here. Why, then, is so much energy invested by so many intelligent people in denying the existence of human races? See here. They are analogous. If dog breeds exist, then human races exist (and for the same reason). If human races do not exist, then dog breeds do not exist. Even more astounding is that PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) affirms the existence of dog breeds while denying the existence of human races. Does PBS even realize how silly it looks? And to think that my hard-earned income is taken from me against my will to fund this nonsense. (Thanks to my colleague, Denny Bradshaw, for bringing the dog link to my attention. He is not responsible for this harangue!)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Catching my eye in "Where's the Apology?" (column, Jan. 30) was how Paul Krugman embraces the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report (could anyone expect such a group to support a war?) while rejecting Lord Hutton's report vindicating Tony Blair.

I find it fascinating to watch Mr. Krugman blast the Bush administration for using politicized intelligence (or "cherry-picking," which seems to be the left's buzz word of the week) by using the same tactic.

TIMOTHY CORKERY
Hingham, Mass., Jan. 30, 2004

The New York Cynical Times

2004-01-31T02:00:00.000-08:00

A cynic questions other people's motives. A cynic refuses to accept the stated reason for an action, preferring instead to find an ulterior motive. When cynics get carried away, they become conspiracy theorists. They find plots, intrigue, duplicity, and disingenuousness at every turn. Nothing is as it appears. Everything is concerted for disreputable--and sometimes nefarious--purposes.

A certain degree of cynicism is healthy and appropriate, but, like anything, it can be carried too far. The New York Times has gotten to the point where everything President Bush does is for an ulterior motive, usually to promote his electoral prospects. Please. Give the man credit. Evaluate what he does and forget why he does it. For one thing, you don't know why he does it. You're only speculating. Here is the latest example of excessive, gratuitous cynicism by what used to be a great newspaper but is now merely an apologist and propagandist for the Democrat party.

Bernard Williams on Counterproductive Tactics

Some utilitarian writers aim to increase a sense of indeterminate guilt in their readers. Peter Singer is an example, and in his book Practical Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), he is evidently more interested in producing that effect than he is in the theoretical basis for it, which gets very cursory treatment. As moral persuasion, this kind of tactic is likely to be counterproductive and to lead to a defensive and resentful contraction of concern.

(Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985], 212

Edward O. Wilson on Biophilia

2004-01-30T01:54:00.000-08:00

The critical stages in the acquisition of biophilia have been worked out by psychologists during studies of childhood mental development. Under the age of six, children tend to be egocentric, self-serving, and domineering in their responses to animals and nature. They are also most prone to be uncaring or fearful of the natural world and of all but a few familiar animals. Between six and nine, children become interested in wild creatures for the first time, and aware that animals can suffer pain and distress. From nine to twelve their knowledge and interest in the natural world rises sharply, and between thirteen and seventeen they readily acquire moral feeling toward animal welfare and species conservation.

(Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002], 137-8)

Skewering Paul Krugman

Donald Luskin is, as usual, dead-on. See here.

My Polymathic Friend Down Under

I'm proud to call Dr John J. Ray my friend, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I learn from him every day. He didn't just help me with my blog, getting nothing in return; he's an honorable, honest, and kind man. See here. Do we agree on everything? Don't be silly. If we did, we'd be one person, not two. But we agree on a lot, including many of the most important things. Keep up the good work, John. I hope I send a few readers your way.

From Today's New York Times

2004-01-30T01:52:00.000-08:00

To the Editor:

Re "Dump Cheney Now!," by Maureen Dowd (column, Jan. 29), and "Report on Iraq Case Clears Blair and Faults BBC" (front page, Jan. 29):

Many politicians and others have been quick to judge the Bush and Blair administrations for leading their countries into an unnecessary war and are accusing both of manipulating intelligence. But based on the David A. Kay report and the Hutton inquiry in Britain, it appears that the two leaders acted on the intelligence information presented to them at the time.

Although in hindsight this intelligence may prove to be partly or completely erroneous, the president and the prime minister have a duty to protect their citizens. Had they stood idly by, they would have failed in this responsibility.

WILLIAM D. LOWN
Bronxville, N.Y., Jan. 29, 2004

The Much-Maligned but Indispensable Second Amendment

Here is a magnificent resource for students of the Second Amendment, by law professor Eugene Volokh.

Reader Mail (Name Withheld by Request)

don't give me the lecture, but - i ate a steak last night. (i'm on that south beach diet.)

I LOVE animals ....... we have pet birds, and i cannot tell you how smart my cockatiel . . . is.

i can imagine that, in one sense, it IS irrational for me to eat meat, because of how much i love animals and i KNOW that at least animals like birds and dogs & cats DO have feelings & intelligence, etc. but - i still eat beef & pork & chicken.

i've read what you have written about vegetarianism........ but i don't think i will change. irrational, perhaps. but - i feel better eating some meat protein

Peter Singer on the Role of the Philosopher

2004-01-30T01:51:00.000-08:00

It is sometimes said, though less often now than it used to be, that philosophers have no special role to play in public affairs, since most public issues depend primarily on an assessment of facts. On questions of fact, it is said, philosophers as such have no special expertise, and so it has been possible to engage in philosophy without committing oneself to any position on major public issues. No doubt there are some issues of social policy and foreign policy about which it can truly be said that a really expert assessment of the facts is required before taking sides or acting, but the issue of famine is surely not one of these. The facts about the existence of suffering are beyond dispute. Nor, I think, is it disputed that we can do something about it, either through orthodox methods of famine relief or through population control or both. This is therefore an issue on which philosophers are competent to take a position. The issue is one which faces everyone who has more money than he needs to support himself and his dependents, or who is in a position to take some sort of political action. These categories must include practically every teacher and student of philosophy in the universities of the Western world. If philosophy is to deal with matters that are relevant to both teachers and students, this is an issue that philosophers should discuss.

Discussion, though, is not enough. What is the point of relating philosophy to public (and personal) affairs if we do not take our conclusions seriously? In this instance, taking our conclusion seriously means acting upon it. The philosopher will not find it any easier than anyone else to alter his attitudes and way of life to the extent that, if I am right, is involved in doing everything that we ought to be doing. At the very least, though, one can make a start. The philosopher who does so will have to sacrifice some of the benefits of the consumer society, but he can find compensation in the satisfaction of a way of life in which theory and practice, if not yet in harmony, are at least coming together.

(Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 [spring 1972]: 229-43, at 242-3)

Ambrose Bierce

Reasonable, adj. Accessible to the infection of our own opinions. Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.

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

Follow-up Mail from My New Friend in Wisconsin

2004-01-30T01:50:00.001-08:00

Keith:

Jesus.

As a child my mother would correct my English until finally "It was he" actually sounded O.K. (I think I was 35...:) To this day I shudder involuntarily when I hear "It don't matter" or "It was him." Old habits die hard. Like a monkey hitting his red light to get fed. (Ah, we Psych. Majors...) (Skinner, no less, from UW-Madison...and his little monkeys hugging stuffed mothers...) In the end, as with lawyers seeking expert witnesses, "authorities" can assuage any position we culprits desire. Then again, we Anal-Retentive types like things "just so." Likely my best course should have been to shut up and get a life.

I am reminded of a televised basketball game between Duke and Wake Forest recently when as the camera panned the rabid fan section there stood a proud student with a sweatshirt emblazoned with: FUCK DUKE. Simple. Eloquent. To the point. And doubtless his parents were proud as punch to have his paunch fed into the nation's homes. Indeed, standards are in flux, sir. As I recently heard purported, grammar is what's OUT there. If everyone says, "It is him," It IS him!!!

Any Ayn Rand in your past?

Best, Will

Reader Mail (Reprinted by Permission)

2004-01-30T01:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Keith

Thank you for posting the letter from the UTA alumna or alumnus on religious belief. I find in it several common confusions about the relationship between reason and faith. I'd be curious to know what you think.

First, the writer says that most things in the Bible don't have a scientific explanation. But isn't it true that we all believe many things without a scientific reason for doing so? For instance, much of what we believe we accept on the testimony of authorities we regard as reliable, whether our parents, or historians, or legislatures. One might even include our memories among the authorities we sometimes trust. What is more, as we grow and learn, we refine our criteria for trusting authorities, such that we decide that some authorities are to be trusted on certain subjects or under certain circumstances, but not on other subjects or in other circumstances. Any realistic account of belief formation must take these phenomena into account, and yet so often people who think of themselves as scientifically minded overlook the role that testimony plays in their beliefs. If we exclude this category of belief formation from rationality, then most of us lead largely irrational lives even in this scientific age, and those (if indeed there are any) who do restrict their beliefs to what can be scientifically verified probably lead very impoverished lives. Perhaps you can tell that I recently read Plantinga's essay "Reason and Belief in God". In fact, that essay incited my renewed interest in philosophy.

Second, the writer seems to take a reductionist line in the way he suggests that science mitigates against religious faith.

If science truly confines itself to natural phenomena as its base of data, it is then never in a position to apprehend supernatural phenomena (if there are any). Strict science can never say whether its failure to observe supernatural phenomena is due to the fact that there aren't any such phenomena, or to its own epistemological blind spot. When scientists encounter phenomena they cannot explain in terms of current science, they are obliged to assume that there are yet undiscovered scientific explanations for the phenomena, and to pursue those explanations under that assumption. Since I believe in a God who with few exceptions governs the universe according to the natural laws he established, I believe that this assumption is largely warranted, but it is nonetheless an assumption.

To illustrate the problem with this sort of argument against religion, Wittgenstein is said to have used the example of a group of researchers studying the fish in a pond. Using a net with a 2" mesh to drag the pond, they conclude that there are no fish smaller than 2" in the pond. (see http://www.christian-thinktank.com/what.html).

I do see two ways in which science can be used to argue against religious faith:

(1) it can be used to point out inconsistencies in revelation regarded as authoritative, thereby suggesting that the revelation is fallible and doesn't deserve credence (or as much credence as it claims);

(2) it can be used to suggest that there is no need to resort to God as an explanation for the natural universe, thus paring God away with Occam's razor.

There are probably other approaches from science that can plausibly be used to argue against religious faith, but these are the two that occur to me now. (1) has more promise in my mind, as there is the hope of uncovering inconsistencies that cannot be reconciled. However, many Christians consider their understanding of the Bible fallible even while they consider the Bible infallible. Thus, they are always open to improving their understanding of scripture, and it may be that arguments of the type of (1) will incite them to refine their interpretations rather than give up their faith (and it may be that this applies to believers in other religions as well). Still, (1) does have some hope of falsifying a religion. (2) seems to me worth little if the religion being criticized asserts that God ordained natural law, and that he accomplishes his will through its natural outworking as well as through whatever supernatural means he chooses. In that case, (2) seems to me rather to amount to a criticism of how particular adherents of the religion have understood the relationship of God to his creation, and unless those adherents' understanding of that relationship is the only one consistent with the faith in question, then (2) is of no force against that religion.

I think you are correct that very few people are swayed by the classical arguments [ontological, cosmological, teleological] for and against religious faith.

You write that some people find belief in a god and an afterlife comforting, and that they can't or won't face up to their mortality. While this is doubtless true, it doesn't seem to me to offer a complete explanation of religious faith, nor a cogent critique of it. Perhaps you didn't mean it that way. Some people believe a particular faith is true in spite of finding the idea of accountability to God frightening. These people might find the idea of annihilation at death more comforting than the thought of a final judgment. But I think that psychological explanations and critiques of religion (e.g. that it arises from some weakness of character in the believer) suffer from a more fundamental problem: they have no bearing on the truth claims of the religion (unless the religion makes claims about the psychological state of each and every person who professes that faith). Many of the central claims of Christianity are historical, e.g. that God brought about the redemption of his people through the atoning death of Jesus on the cross. Even if we claim that 95% of professing Christians believe solely because they derive comfort from that belief (and I don't claim that), that claim still does not touch the central claims of the Christian faith. The psychological argument against religious faith is a kind of ad hominem fallacy it seems to me.

This email has gone on long enough--much longer than I intended. I hope it hasn't been too tedious. I welcome any comments, criticisms, and suggestions, however brief. Thanks again for your interesting weblog.

Chuck Bearden

Reader Persnicketiness

2004-01-30T01:48:00.000-08:00

I received the following e-mail message this morning (referring to my entry on R. M. Hare):

"Later, when I saw a picture of Hare, I realized it was him." HE! Will Nehs, Oconomowoc, WI

Thanks for writing, Will. I'm not a perfect writer (nobody is), but in this case I stand my ground. Here is Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 388-9:

it is I; it is me. Generally, of course, the nominative pronoun (here I) is the complement of a linking verb (this is she) (it was he). But it is me and it's me are fully acceptable, especially in informal contexts: "both forms, 'It is I' and 'It is me,' are correct--one by virtue of grammatical rule, the other by virtue of common educated usage." Norman Lewis, Better English 186-87 (rev. ed. 1961). And, of course, those with even a smattering of French know that It's me answers nicely to C'est moi. Good writers have long found the English equivalent serviceable. . . . Similar problems arise in the third person, as in it is him.

The thing stays! Bryan Garner is my authority on such matters.

Postscript: I need some coffee. I had "persnicketyness" instead of "persnicketiness" in my title. The Oxford English Dictionary (2d ed.) set me straight.

Richard Mervyn Hare (1919-2002)

2004-01-29T01:46:00.000-08:00

R. M. Hare died two years ago today at the age of eighty-two. I have learned as much philosophy from him as from any other person, living or dead--and I expect to continue learning from him for as long as I live, since I have still not read everything he wrote. Over the years I had occasion to write to Hare several times. He always wrote back, busy as he must have been. His letters were warm and encouraging. In one letter he said that he despaired of the way philosophy was being conducted in the United States, but that my letter made him think that all was not lost. Needless to say, I was flattered. Later, I sent a chart of metaethical theories to him. He replied by sending a copy of his Axel Hagerstrom lectures (subsequently published as Sorting Out Ethics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997]) and remarked that my chart was almost identical to his.

I never met Hare, but I'm pretty sure I saw him at an American Philosophical Association meeting in Atlanta in December 1989. As I entered an elevator in the conference center, I saw an elderly, distinctive-looking man approach. (Hare would have been seventy at the time.) I noticed his unruly hair. Later, when I saw a picture of Hare, I realized that it was him. I wish I had known, if only to introduce myself and tell him how much he had meant to my philosophical development. If I were stranded on a desert island and could take books by only two authors, they would be Richard A. Posner and R. M. Hare. My mind would never want for nourishment.

Addendum: Here is a memoir of Hare by one of his students, John Randolph Lucas. Here are links to many of Hare's writings. Here is a link to the web page of Hare's only son, John E. Hare, who was recently appointed Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at the Yale University Divinity School. Here is a bibliography that I painstakingly compiled over a period of many years.

Students for the Second Amendment

I'm proud to be the adviser of this student organization. Please visit its website. I hope students at other universities are as vigilant in protecting their Second Amendment rights as they are in protecting their First Amendment rights.

Barry Holstun Lopez on Winter Herons

2004-01-29T01:45:00.000-08:00

One winter evening in New York he had had dinner with a classmate from Amherst, on 56th Street. When they emerged it was to find it had been snowing. They were dressed for it. They were full of food and wine and did not care to get away anywhere. They stood on the corner of 54th and Park and talked. The falling snow obliterated their footprints and left them standing in a field of white illuminated by a street lamp before the friend finally caught a cab uptown. He watched the cab until it was only red taillights. He did not want to hurry away. In the chilled air and falling snow was some universal forgiveness and he did not want to disturb it. He stepped slowly off the curb, headed south.

Overhead, above the surface of the pool of light cast by the street lamps, the canyon of the wide avenue disappeared into darkness. He had walked only a few blocks when he realized that birds were falling. Great blue herons were descending slowly against the braking of their wings, their ebony legs extended to test the depth of the snow which lay in a garden that divided the avenue. He stood transfixed as the birds settled. They folded their wings and began to mill in the gently falling snow and the pale light. They had landed as if on a prairie, and if they made any sound he did not hear. One pushed its long bill into the white ground. After a moment they were all still. They gazed at the front of a hotel, where someone had just gone through a revolving door. A cab slowed in front of him--he shook his head, no, no, and it went on. One or two of the birds flared their wings to lay off the snow and a flapping suddenly erupted among them and they were in the air again. Fifteen or twenty, flying past with heavy, hushing beats, north up the avenue for two or three blocks before they broke through the plane of light and disappeared.

(Barry Holstun Lopez, "Winter Herons," in his Winter Count [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981], 15-25, at 23-4)

Five Things That Came As a Shock to Me

2004-01-29T01:44:00.000-08:00

1. Jimmy Carter's election in 1976.

2. Law school.

3. Prices in New York City.

4. The politicization of academia.

5. The depth and breadth of Bush-hatred.

From Today's Dallas Morning News

2004-01-29T01:42:00.000-08:00

Re: "Christianity, capitalism," Saturday Letters, by Patrick Holloway, who argues that works, not words, reveal true faith.

OK, I've had it; this is enough! Christianity is not socialism, and Christ never gave anyone authority or even a hint that it was OK to steal from one person in order to give to someone else; book, chapter and verse, please! (Before anyone brings up the communal living of the saints in Acts as justification for socialism/communism, let us remember that this was a voluntary action by local Christians, for a specific purpose, under the Apostles' guidance. Not a form of government practiced by the masses and enforced by the gun of government. And, even here, the sanctity of the disposition of private property was upheld.)

Christ told the rich young ruler to sell what he had and give to the poor. He did not tell him to use the power of government to plunder his neighbor and to then give to the poor. Christianity is, was and shall always be a personal religion. We do good and seek to convince others to do good but we have no right to force them to do so.

Thomas Jefferson noted the self-evident truth that the government is created by the people and draws its just powers from them. If we can't steal, we can't give our government the right to do it for us. Plunder is plunder, regardless of the cause or the plundering agent.

Democrats use force to tax me to give to whoever will vote for them. Republicans use force to tax me and give to whoever will vote for them. Neither is the work of God.

David R. Calvert, Weatherford

My Escape from Ideology

2004-01-29T01:37:00.000-08:00

My eighteenth Tech Central Station column is up. See here. Thank you, Peg Kaplan, for the constructive criticism.

Ambrose Bierce

2004-01-28T01:34:00.000-08:00

Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion--thus:

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; therefore--
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.

This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

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

Conservative = Selfish and Cruel

2004-01-28T01:32:00.000-08:00

Capitalism is the engine of prosperity. If liberals really cared about the poor, as they claim to, they would promote capitalism, not try to thwart it. Sometimes I think liberals prefer everyone being poor to some being affluent. Please read this. It will open your eyes to liberal obtuseness. (Thanks to Peg Kaplan for the link.)

Vindication!

2004-01-28T01:30:00.000-08:00

I have a new hero tonight: Dr David Kay. His report shows that President Bush acted on the best information available in going to war in Iraq. That some of the information turned out to be false is no reflection on President Bush. What is he supposed to do, go to Iraq personally to see whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Any president, whether Democrat or Republican, must rely on intelligence gathered by various agencies. That's exactly what President Bush did. The focus now should be on why the intelligence was defective. That is cause for alarm. It should concern every American. Whatever went awry must not be allowed to recur.

In a better world, President Bush's critics would take a deep breath. They would ask not whether what President Bush believed was true, but whether it was reasonable for him to believe it. David Kay is saying that it was. I honestly believe that the incessant charges that President Bush "lied" about weapons of mass destruction will backfire on those who make them. Americans have a deep and abiding sense of fairness. They will imagine themselves in the White House with the information President Bush had at his disposal and ask what they would have done. I believe they will conclude that they would have done exactly what President Bush did. President Bush is an honorable man whose primary motive in going to war in Iraq was to protect Americans from a "gathering threat." Liberating the Iraqi people from a sadistic tyrant was a secondary (but important) motive, as was promoting democracy and liberal values in the Middle East.

Thank you, Dr Kay, for telling the truth--and for risking the wrath of the Bush-haters. I'm sure Paul Krugman will have nasty things to say about you Friday morning in The New York Times. Mark my words. Anyone who is not the enemy of Krugman's enemy, President Bush, is Krugman's enemy.

Political Rhetoric

2004-01-28T01:29:00.000-08:00

One reason I was drawn to politics early in life (it was my major field of study as an undergraduate) is that I've always been interested in language. What it is; how it's used; how it's abused; &c. Language is a powerful instrument. Those who understand it and know how to use it have power over others. Politics is about power--who has it, what forms it takes, how it's acquired and lost, what is and ought to be done with it, and so forth--so naturally most politicians are adept with language. Rhetorical ability helps them gain power, and, having gained it, helps them solidify, ramify, and retain it. Newt Gingrich, for example, is one of the most gifted rhetoricians this nation has produced. His speeches and writings should be study manuals for aspiring demagogues. Here are two examples of political rhetoric:

1. At least twice in the past couple of weeks I heard someone describe President Bush as "prancing about in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier." Not wearing a flight suit, mind you; not walking around in a flight suit; but prancing in it. When said of a horse, to prance is to raise the forelegs and spring from the hind legs. When said of a person, to prance is to "walk or behave in an arrogant manner" (The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide). Arrogance is bad, obviously, so the word "prance" is evaluative (prescriptive) as well as descriptive. It simultaneously tells the reader what President Bush did (the descriptive part) and condemns him for doing it (the evaluative part). The evaluation is implicit rather than explicit.

2. A great deal has been spoken and written about whatever it is that Howard Dean did nine days ago in what was supposed to have been his concession speech in Iowa. Some jokers have called it the "I Have A Scream" speech. At least the humor there is obvious. But a letter writer to today's Dallas Morning News describes what Dean did as a "squeal." He says Dr Dean squealed in order to thank and motivate his many young volunteers. Interesting word, no? Piglets squeal. Children squeal with delight. This term domesticates what many people saw as an intemperate, vulgar, and frightening outburst.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with rhetoric, even political rhetoric. An educated, informed electorate would see through it and perhaps even be amused by it (as I am). Unfortunately, not everyone is educated and informed. Rhetoric is used because it works. It engages the heart rather than the brain. It bypasses the rational faculty, thereby disrespecting ("dissing") the person. I've said for many years, only half kiddingly, that nobody should be able to vote without having taken my Critical Thinking course, or at least having read my coauthored (with the late Irving M. Copi) textbook, Informal Logic, 3d ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996). Learn logic. Don't be hoodwinked and bamboozled by the Al Frankens and Newt Gingriches of the world.

From Today's New York Times

2004-01-28T01:28:00.000-08:00

To the Editor:

Since the early 1990's, complaints about student disengagement have become common. Rhonda Garelick's contribution ("Career Girls," Op-Ed, Jan. 24) is clarifying, for it reveals just how political this complaint is.

How dare students in her class reject feminism! The outrage, that students in a French class would rather discuss French subjects than sit through left-wing criticism of the president's foreign policy!

Professor Garelick is correct: there is a generation gap. There is a reason campus antiwar protests feature more gray-haired professors than students.

But the generation gap is not a problem to be solved. Students should not be forced to believe what their professors believe, but must be free to explore their own ideas.

JOSHUA GALUN
Washington, Jan. 24, 2004

To the Editor:

As a current college student, I have sat in many classes over the last three semesters in which professors have deviated from their syllabuses to discuss other issues, most frequently, the war in Iraq.

I can well understand what Rhonda Garelick (Op-Ed, Jan. 24) describes as campus apathy, but I would like to suggest a different reason for it: the students actually like their career plans and are happy with the way our society is structured.

Many of them agree with our government's decision to drive Saddam Hussein from power.

But none of us appreciate it when instead of learning material that we pay dearly to learn, we are forced to listen to a teacher's personal opinions.

BARRY VERSTAENDIG
Plainview, N.Y., Jan. 24, 2004

Worm-Free

2004-01-28T01:26:00.000-08:00

I would have sworn that I (my Compaq Presario computer) had the latest e-mail worm. (See here for the story.) When it comes to keeping my computer free of viruses, worms, trojans, and other critters, I'm borderline obsessive. I run Norton SystemWorks's LiveUpdate every night before turning the computer off. I refuse to open attachments. I use all the tools provided to me by Windows XP, Norton, and EarthLink. But the other day I received an e-mail message from a long-lost cousin in Michigan. It had an attachment. I guess I thought (hoped) it was a picture, so I clicked it. After that, strange things began to happen.

First, I received more spam than usual. Second, I began getting undeliverable-mail messages from people to whom I had not sent e-mail. Third, I received messages from ISPs saying that an e-mail message I had "sent" was infected and could not be delivered to its "intended" recipient. I would have wagered a hundred dollars or more that I had the e-mail worm described in the Times story.

Nope. An hour ago I went to the Symantec website and downloaded a removal tool for the worm. I did everything it said, including turning off my Internet connection and temporarily disabling System Restore. I waited twenty minutes or so for the tool to scan my computer. It said it did not find the worm. (It was looking for a particular worm, not just any worm.) I suppose I should be happy, but I wanted to kill the critter. As for why those strange things were happening to my computer, I don't know. They may have been signs that other people's computers were infected. Please protect yourself! If you have unprotected computer sex, you are having sex with every computer with whom your computer's companion has had sex.

Advocacy Journalism

2004-01-28T01:23:00.000-08:00

Here is a textbook example of advocacy journalism, i.e., opinion-writing in the guise of a news report. Sadly, it comes from what used to be a respectable newspaper, The New York Times. Notice that the worst interpretation is put on every statement made by President Bush. Every motive is questioned. Nothing can be what it appears. Despicable.

Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that a state recognize or give legal effect to marriages other than those between one man and one woman.

2004-01-28T01:17:00.000-08:00

This amendment would not only disable the Full Faith and Credit Clause; it would prevent any state or federal judge from holding that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause or Equal Protection Clause confers a right of homosexual marriage analogous to a right to abort a fetus. In other words, it leaves the matter to the states. This, and not the Federal Marriage Amendment, is the amendment a federalist should support.

2. Federalists are proponents of states' rights. They believe that states should be free to experiment (i.e., do as they please) in the realm of public policy. But states are composed of judiciaries as well as legislatures. What if the highest court of a state rules that its constitution requires homosexual marriage? The people of that state, by hypothesis, will not have voted on the matter, but it wasn't imposed on the state by the United States Constitution, either. What should a federalist say about this?

I believe a federalist should remain silent. The constitution of a state presumably reflects the will of the people of that state. It is the job of the state judiciary to interpret that document. If state judges interpret the document in a way that the citizenry of the state opposes, the citizens have two forms of recourse. First, they can amend their constitution to nullify what was done. Second, they can replace the judges, either by electing different ones (if judges are elected) or by electing a governor who will appoint new ones (if judges are appointed). These acts may be time-consuming, costly, and cumbersome, but they are not impossible.

Federalism is not identical to majoritarianism. These doctrines should not be conflated, even though they sometimes are. A majoritarian insists that homosexual marriage be left up to the people, acting through their elected representatives. It is not (he or she says) a matter for judges to decide. A federalist, however, remains neutral as between the legislative and the judicial branches of state government.

When we put everything together (see the previous two posts), we get the following as the federalist position on homosexual marriage:

1. Oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment and all other proposals that would prevent states (such as Massachusetts) from allowing homosexual marriage;

2. Support a constitutional amendment such as the one set out above, which prevents state or federal judges from forcing homosexual marriage on unwilling states (such as Texas); and

3. Take no position on how state-court judges interpret state constitutions. In other words, let the various state legislative and judicial processes work.

NRO on FMA

2004-01-28T01:15:00.000-08:00

Here, for curious readers, is an argument for the Federal Marriage Amendment (by the editors of National Review Online). The FMA, as I have argued several times (okay, ad nauseam) in this blog, violates federalist principles. Suppose I had to choose between position 1 and position 2 in my previous post. In other words, suppose I could not have the federalist result (position 3). Which would I choose? I would choose position 1. I would rather prevent all states from allowing homosexual marriage than force all states to allow it. So my ranking is 3 > 1 > 2. Position 3 is well ahead of the others. Position 1 is preferable (though not by much) to position 2.

Why do I prefer 1 to 2? Because at this time, only a few states wish to allow homosexual marriage. (My evidence for this is that only two states--Vermont and Massachusetts--have seriously entertained it.) Not allowing these few states to allow homosexual marriage is less of a violation of federalist principles than forcing all the remaining states to allow homosexual marriage. The fewer infringements of federalism, the better. Of course, if things were to change and most states wanted to allow homosexual marriage, I would prefer position 2 to position 1--for the same federalist reason. Fortunately, I don't have to choose between 1 and 2. Both are vastly inferior to 3.

Andrew Sullivan's (Blind) Faith

2004-01-28T01:09:00.000-08:00

Terry Eastland (see here) has joined the crowd of legal experts/commentators who worry that state or federal courts (or both) will use the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution to impose homosexual marriage on every state. I have expressed this worry many times in this blog. (See here, for example.) I'm a federalist. I believe that each state's citizens should decide for themselves whether to allow homosexual marriage. I have no problem whatsoever with states such as Massachusetts allowing it, but I don't want Texans (for example) to have no choice about whether to allow it. Let the people decide!

Andrew Sullivan, who is a bright man but not a lawyer, is confident to the point of certitude that no court will ever apply the Full Faith and Credit Clause to mandate homosexual marriage. Then why does he oppose a simple constitutional amendment that would disable the clause (i.e., make it inapplicable to homosexual marriage)? He continues to bash the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), but that amendment is not in accordance with federalist principles. The FMA would prevent any state (even Massachusetts) from allowing homosexual marriage. It would prevent it even if the vast majority of citizens of a state wanted it! If Sullivan is a federalist, as he sometimes suggests he is, he should endorse a weaker amendment that would, in effect, allow states to either allow or disallow homosexual marriage, as they see fit. Federalists both oppose the FMA and support the amendment I described.

Let me summarize. There are three positions on homosexual marriage:

1. No state should be able to allow it (i.e., it should be disallowed everywhere, even in those states--e.g., Massachusetts--in which a majority of citizens want it).

2. No state should be able to disallow it (i.e., it should be allowed everywhere, even in those states--e.g., Texas--in which a majority of citizens don't want it).

3. Each state should decide for itself whether to allow it.

Sullivan rejects 1 (which would be the result of the FMA) and implies that he accepts 3 (the federalist position); but he refuses to endorse an amendment that would preclude 2. I think he really holds position 2. That is to say, he secretly hopes that state and federal judges use the Full Faith and Credit Clause and other constitutional provisions to mandate homosexual marriage throughout the nation. It would be nice if Sullivan would clear this up for his large readership, but he refuses to engage my arguments. The closest he has come to an engagement is telling me "You're wrong." Oh well, at least he replied.

Bertie

2004-01-27T01:07:00.000-08:00

Bertrand Arthur William Russell died on 2 February 1970, almost thirty-four years ago. He was ninety-seven. Russell's godfather, believe it or not, was John Stuart Mill. Russell was born in 1872. Mill died in 1873. In 1957 (the year of my birth), when Russell was eighty-five years old, he wrote a preface to a collection of his essays being edited by Paul Edwards. Here is the beginning of the second paragraph of the preface:

There has been a rumor in recent years to the effect that I have become less opposed to religious orthodoxy than I formerly was. This rumor is totally without foundation. I think all the great religions of the world--Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism--both untrue and harmful.

(Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, ed. Paul Edwards [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957], v)

If you'd like to read Russell's 1927 essay "Why I Am Not a Christian," click here. If you'd like to read the entry on Russell in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (by A. D. Irvine), click here. If you'd like to take a virtual tour of The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University, click here. If you'd like to see some images of Russell, click here.

Lisa Mighetto on the Tension Between Hunting and Conservation

2004-01-27T01:03:00.000-08:00

Theodore Roosevelt was the best-known proponent of wildlife conservation in his day. He was also the nation's most famous hunter. Today, many animal lovers would find that a strange and unappealing combination. Indeed, among environmentalists, it is becoming increasingly fashionable to be against hunting. Although sportsmen are included in such organizations as the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, and Earth First!, they are continually criticized by other members. One of the most aggressive groups to oppose hunting is The Fund for Animals. Its members actually meet sportsmen in the wild, in the hopes of convincing them to refrain from killing animals. This tension is not new; in the United States, organized protests against blood sports emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hunting, however, is not antithetical to conservation. A hundred years ago, much of the groundwork for the protection of wildlife was laid by sportsmen. Their call for conservation was conveyed through a variety of hunting journals, including American Sportsman, Forest and Stream, Field and Stream, and American Angler--all of which were founded in the 1870s and 1880s. Some hunter-conservationists were particularly concerned about birds; the Audubon Society was founded by a sportsman.

(Lisa Mighetto, Wild Animals and American Environmental Ethics [Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1991], 27)