tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53541890365148378302024-03-27T06:30:46.755-07:00The Opinions (Right or Wrong) of Lee MalatestaLee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-9499557762717827482024-03-02T10:45:00.000-08:002024-03-02T10:45:54.350-08:00Thoughts on identity politics<p>I was thinking about my failed attempt at grad school this morning and remembered a visiting professor who came to give a lecture about al-Farabi. I can't remember which rock star in the field of philosophy of Islamic lands it was but during the Q&A, he was asked about a different scholar who had a very different conclusion about whether or not Farabi was the author of a particular work. The professor's answer was along the lines that this other scholar was entirely wrong but that was forgivable because he had all the right politics.</p>
<p>That reminded me of one of my favorite essays, "Reflections on the philosophy of Hitlerism" by Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas was a French Jew who studied under Edmund Husserl at the University of Freiberg where he also encountered Martin Heidegger just before the latter joined the Nazi party and became rector at the University. The tail end of the essay details the role that identity politics plays in fascism in general and Nazism in particular.</p>
<blockquote><p>Man no longer stands before a world of ideas where he can choose his own truth by a sovereign decision of his free reason; he is already bound to certain truths, as he is bound by birth to all men of his blood. He cannot play with ideas anymore because they come from his concrete being, are anchored in his flesh and blood and share their gravity.</p>
<p>Chained to his body, man is denied the power to escape from himself. Truth, for man, is no longer contemplation of a foreign spectacle, it is a drama in which he himself is an actor. So it is, weighed down by his existence - which contains irreversible givens- that man will say his yes or no.</p></blockquote>
<p>It's notable that Heidegger never recanted of joining the Nazi party. His own philosophy was grounded very much in the same idea that who we are irrevocably determines who we will be. We are overwhelmed by our past and our becoming is set by what has become before.</p>
<p>In contrast to that, Levinas offers that humanity has the miracle of the power of repentance. We are not chained to who we are right now. We can encounter ourselves, our own history, and change the course of our future selves by exercising free will.</p>
<p>But we are being told these days by Q, MAGA types, Christian Nationalists and others that whatever our choices we make according to our own reason it doesn't matter unless we belong to the right tribe. For Christian Nationalists it's not only being American of European descent but also being the right kind of radicalized Christian. For MAGA types, it's being a Trumpist. For Q types, it's being redpilled. Without belonging to the right tribe, our ideas don't matter. If we're not part of the right tribe, we can't possibly be right in any discussion because we're "gay" or we're "deluded". Being who we are, we can never be right or, even if they might agree that we are right like the proverbial stopped clock that's right twice a day, our ideas do not need to be entertained because of who we are.</p>
<p>Like the professor at that lecture. Despite thinking his colleague was clearly in the wrong, he thought his colleague's ideas were at least worth being entertained because he belonged to the correct tribe. And if he belongs to the correct tribe and he has all the right politics, he's at least worth listening to even when he's wrong.</p>
<p>Such a view diminishes human freedom. The capacity for thought and developing ideas resides in all of us and the power of those ideas stems not from who we are but from the very strength those ideas have.</p>
Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-29463810931797344042016-07-04T06:39:00.001-07:002016-07-04T06:39:41.591-07:00Federalist No. 8: Alexander Hamilton's Warning on the Military-Industrial Complex<p>Tucked away in the middle of Federalist No. 8 (paragraph 8, to be precise) lies an interesting observation about the nature of human society, that commercial relations themselves inevitably lead to the creation of a military-industrial complex. This point is an easy one to miss as it is not central to the Alexander Hamilton's overarching theme in the essay. Hamilton brings it in as a historical aside to answer an objection to his central argument, that history teaches us that the proximity of the newly independent states to each other will eventually lead to both internecine warfare between those same states and such a state of constant war will deprive Americans of their newly won freedoms.</p>
<p>Hamilton's main argument plays out in a very straightforward manner. Unless a nation has strong natural barriers to invasion by foreign powers, such as the islands of Great Britain which are physically separated from mainland Europe, the armies of modern nations are able to quickly penetrate and occupy the lands of their neighbors. This naturally leads to overtly martial policies such as standing armies. Once one nation keeps a standing army, neighboring countries then feel obligated to follow suit in case the first nation should use its army offensively. This eventually leads to militarization of the entire continent which, in turn, leads every nation into a constant crisis of security. This perpetual state of fear, in turn, leads to legislative bodies turning over more and more power to the chief executive (whether monarch or elected official) for the sake of expediency in keeping the nation safe in a time of imminent peril.</p>
<p>In making this argument, Hamilton entertains an objection that might be made by some of his interlocutors in the fight to ratify the Constitution, that a constant state of war and security threats might not lead to standing armies and fewer freedoms. There is, after all, the example of ancient Greece and its soldier-citizens. These city-states of ancient Greece, the Antifederalists would argue, not only existed in a state of more or less perpetual war but they also did so without keeping standing armies. Moreover, they were the very inventors of democracy and were the first culture to pursue the very sort of liberty upon which the new nation considered itself to be founded. So why did the city-states of ancient Greece not have standing armies?</p>
<p>Hamilton’s reply to this question is well worth considering. “The means of revenue, which have been so greatly multiplied by the increase of gold and silver and of the arts of industry, and the science of finance, which is the offspring of modern times, concurring with the habits of nations, have produced an entire revolution in the system of war, and have rendered disciplined armies, distinct from the body of the citizens, the inseparable companions of frequent hostility.” Prosperity (“the increase of gold and silver”) and industrial productivity (“the arts of industry”) along with the modern invention of “the science of finance” makes the modern world different in kind than the city-states of yesteryear. The marriage of industrial capacity with the mechanisms of modern finance, he argues, make for the inevitability of “disciplined armies” which are “distinct from the body of the citizens”. In other words, the historical progression of human society has brought the world to a point where a military-industrial complex is a natural outgrowth of society.</p>
<p>Hamilton did not drill down into the specifics, but anyone aware of his studies in the financial realm - his seminal Report of the Bank of England would be presented to Congress within two years of the US Constitution being ratified - and his admiration for the way that the Bank of England allowed the British Empire to fund its vast colonial enterprises can understand why he would be of this particular opinion. A truism that many people do not understand about wealth is that it is less about how wealth is measured not by one’s financial assets but by the assets one controls. 18th century Britain’s permanent debt magnified the financial power of Britain far beyond that of its adversaries giving it the ability to create its formidable standing navy and plow seemingly unlimited funds into the technological research and production of sophisticated weapons of warfare. And given the view of international relations as a war of all against all, creating exactly that sort of symbiosis between finance, industry, and the armed forces was a necessity for Britain to continue to exist.</p>
<p>In his day, Hamilton was hoping that the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean separating newly formed United States of America from its political adversaries to blunt the growth of the military industrial complex. His concern in Federalist 8 was more about a weak federal government hastening such a development because the various states would see each other as military rivals instead of being incorporated into a single union. Less than a hundred years later his concern would come to full fruition as the US Civil War pit north against south to drive earth shattering developments in warfare in a very short amount of time: the Gatling gun, the repeating rifle, submarines, aerial warfare by means of balloons, etc. Nothing drives military advancements as fast as an industrial base in a nation with a strong financial sector and close by enemies.</p>
<p>Two hundred years after the Civil War began Dwight Eisenhower addressed the military industrial complex in his famous 1961 speech. He was a bit off the mark in observing that such a “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.” But he was certainly correct that “The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.” He did not see its growth as a natural development like Hamilton but he did recognize an “imperative need for this development.” Like Hamilton, he was concerned that it would present a danger to American freedoms. He exhorted US citizens that “we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”</p>
Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-29926413948225231432012-10-19T10:52:00.001-07:002012-10-19T11:23:43.962-07:00Tips on How to Read the News<p>The past couple of days, I've seen a number of people linking to an article in <em>The Nation</em> with the headline <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/170644/mitt-romneys-bailout-bonanza">Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza</a>. Most often, the comments accompanying the link were to the effect ``Mitt Romney made 15 million off the auto bailout'' or ``Hypocrisy in action.'' These comments, taken in the context of the actual article, speak to me of poor critical reading skills. So I thought that linking to the article and putting out a few pointed comments would make an interesting lesson in critical reading of the news.</p>
<p>First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I am not a Mitt Romney supporter. I'm pretty soundly in the Anybody but Romney camp. I think a Romney administration will functionally equivalent to a third Bush '43 administration. If you like the trickle down economic theories that lead to the Great Recession and the Neoconservative doctrine of preemptive war that lead us into Iraq and want more of the same, vote for Romney. Nevertheless, I don't support hatchet jobs like Greg Palast's hit piece on Romney in <em>The Nation</em>. The article does have some fantastic information about Elliott Management's hedge funds run by Paul Singer. The investigative journalism done by Palast on that topic is both interesting and relevant. But by making it into a personal attack against Mitt Romney, Palast does us all a disservice.</p>
<p>Disclosures out the way, let me point out that the secondary focus of the article is a really great and detailed examination of a hedge fund engaging in behavior that most people, including myself, find pretty despicable. Even being the second focus of the article, the details take up most of the space. These details boil down down to Elliot Management, through the actions of hedge fund manager Paul Singer, basically held the government and GM hostage through targeted investments in a bankrupt company that was key supplier of parts. The primary focus of the article, which takes up far less ink, is an attempt to tie this despicable behavior of the hedge fund to Mitt Romney with some very emotionally charged language, ``Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook.'' This statement implies that Romney was the one that made the decision to invest in Elliot Management. But then Palast immediately qualifies that assertion that by ``chasing with his own checkbook'', he really meant ``investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust.''</p>
<p>There is a very large disparity between these two clauses of the very same sentence. One clause suggests that Romney himself was actively involved in the investment decision. The other clause states the facts, that the investment was made by a blind trust belonging to Romney's wife, Ann. In other words, in order to arrive at the conclusion that the decision to invest with Elliot Management was from Mitt Romney, the reader has to believe a number of premises that are not supported by anything in the article.
<ol>
<li>Mrs. Romney's blind trust is a ruse and she actually has control over it.</li>
<li>Mrs. Romney, in having control over her blind trust, only makes important investment decisions at Mr. Romney's behest.
</ol>
Or
<ol start="3">
<li>After the fact knowledge about what investments were made in a blind trust is morally equivalent to controlling investments in a supposedly blind trust.
</ol></p>
<p>The first of these is not an exceptionally controversial premise. In the past Mr. Romney himself has actually argued that most people should understand that a blind trust is little more than ruse. (See NPR's treatment <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/20/157119003/just-how-blind-are-blind-trusts-anyway">Just How Blind Are Blind Trusts, Anyway?</a> to put the issue in context.) But the second and and third premises are not only highly controversial but have no support in Palast's article. Without these premises, we cannot arrive at Palast's conclusion, ``Mitt Romney may indeed have wanted to let Detroit die. But if the auto industry was going to be bailed out after all, the Romneys apparently couldn’t resist getting in on a piece of the action.''</p>
<p>(Also note that Palast here introduces a fourth premise that he doesn't actually support, that Mitt Romney wanted the American automotive industry headquartered in Detroit to die. While there is little doubt that Romney thinks that the ``creative destruction'' of the market in laissez-faire capitalism is a good thing in general, this does not in itself in anyway imply that he ``wanted to let Detroit die.'' It could very well be that he thought that letting the market bury Detroit was the least of all possible evils given the past management decisions made by American automobile manufacturers.)</p>
<p>My point here is not that ``The Media'' has an inherent liberal bias. There are plenty of conservative media outlets that are the mirror image of <em>The Nation</em>. My point is that when we read news articles, we should read them with an eye to this sort of detail. This is especially true if the news item uses charged language like Palast uses in his article. Charged language is frequently a signal that the facts being discussed do not have as concrete of a connection to the conclusions of the author as the author would like.</p>
<p>One good method for sorting things out for beginning critical readers is to read news articles backwards, starting with the last paragraphs and working your way back up to the beginning. Typically, but not always, the less biased presentation of the facts comes at the end and if you read that presentation without the framing the facts in the way that the introductory paragraphs frame them, it is easier to decide for yourself if the lede accurately presents the facts.</p>
<p>Another good technique is for the reader to constantly ask if the facts presented not only support the conclusions that the author wants the reader to reach but bring the reader to these conclusions. Are there premises required to reach the conclusion that the article does not present? If the reader accepts all the premises of the author, is the conclusion logically necessary? Are the premises of the author plausible, probable, or well supported? These are all good questions to ask.</p>
<p>Lastly, we should keep in mind that if an author does not support the conclusions presented, that does not mean that the article has no merit. In Palast's article, there is some very fine investigative journalism presented concerning how Elliot Management handled its investments in a key supplier to General Motors. We can find value in Palast's journalism without accepting his conclusions about how this pertains to Romney.</p>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-63214209748065155602010-05-16T13:35:00.001-07:002010-05-16T13:37:40.051-07:00Federalist No. 7 and Alexander Hamilton's Practical Argument for a Strong Union<div>Whereas in Federalist No. 6, Alexander Hamilton based his argument for a strong federal government on philosophical anthropology, in Federalist No. 7 he gives an argument almost entirely based on facts particular to the situation of the fledgling United States of America. He does open with a nod to the Hobbesian anthropology of Federalist No. 6, asserting that a "full answer" to the question is merely to observe human nature and consider that the people of the United States are no different than other people throughout history (¶1). Nevertheless, Hamilton is willing to humor those of his readers who hold that humanity is capable of nobility in addition to reprobation. Hamilton targets that audience with practical considerations over handling four different types of conflict that could lead to war between the states were there not a strong federal government to be the final arbiter: disputes over territory, disputes over commerce, disputes over public debt and disputes over conflicting laws. Left unchecked, these conflicts would embroil the United States into a war between the states. So, as a practical matter, the United States should retain a strong federal government so that its citizenry might live in peace. </div><br /><div>The first of the conflicts over common assets, territorial disputes, Hamilton suggests is "one of the most fertile sources of hostility among the nations" (¶2) and, given the vast unsettled territory held by the United States collectively, would present a rather poignant and immediate problem to the states if there were no federal government which would control that unsettled territory. He points out that were the federal government to be dissolved that there would be immediate dissent between the states over the proper division of unclaimed land because each of the states would have equally good claim to title for the land once held by the (now dissolved) federal government. In fact, he points out that when independence was initially acquired, exactly this problem cropped up and it was solved only by granting disputed lands once belonging to the crown of England to the federal government rather than to individual states.</div><br /><div>But unclaimed lands are not the only type of land involved in territory disputes. Hamilton points out the very real boundary disputes between Pennsylvania and Connecticut and between New York and Vermont in order to question how those disputes could possibly have been settled peacefully without a federal government to adjudicate. Without the coercive force of a strong federal government to require that the individual states accept a resolution, why would the states involve not resort to force of arms to decide the question if they cannot come to an agreement? Or if a third party arbitrator stepped in to help resolve the dispute, if either (or both) of the parties were not satisfied with the outcome, there would be nothing to prevent either side from rejecting the results of arbitration and, further, nothing to prevent one or both sides from turning to force of arms to settle the dispute.</div><br /><div>Just as Hamilton saw assets such as land presenting a cause for friction between the states, he also saw problems with the liability of the national debt. Debt acquired by the fledgling United States during the war for independence presented a unique problem because there was simply no fair way to apportion the debt between the states. For any scheme that might be suggested, Hamilton notes that there are real and honest objections and that these objections are magnified by diverse interests among the various states (¶7). For, as Hamilton observes, some states felt morally obligated to pay off the war-time debt and other states had no interest in making any payment whatsoever. This situation, in Hamilton's view would lead to "hesitation" in payment which, in turn, would invite foreign powers to initiate war as a means to recover the money they loaned to the fledgling republic. Disputes over the handling of libabilities, then, lead not only to conflict between individual states but also potentially lead to war with foreign powers.</div><br /><div>The real heart of the problem, Hamilton argues, consists of two distinct motivating factors. One the one hand there is a very real fear and jealousy on the part of each state of the possibility that other states will increase in size and power and, thus, relatively decrease their own size and power. On the other, within each state are "individuals of influence" (¶4) who have their own private agendas and seek territorial growth in order to satisfy those interests. In each of these cases, the proposed US Constitution provides a damper. Not only does the US Constitution create a form of equality between the states which reduces the concern over the growth of neighboring states, but it creates an unique environment where private interests can pursue their commercial agendas without the need to push individual states toward territorial expansion.</div><br /><div>This point of Hamilton's, that one of reasons that a federal government is necessary is to prevent disputes between individual states from escalating into war, also applies to what Hamilton refers to as "the competitions of commerce" (¶5). Starting from the observation that the states are unequal with regards to natural resources and engines of commerce, Hamilton argues that states which have less would be keenly interested in sharing in the success of nations that have more. The implication he draws from this is that each state would effect its own system of commerce designed to maximize taking advantage of the success of neighboring states (presumably through tariffs, protectionist laws, and etcetera). If this were to happen, something exceedingly interesting would follow. These differing systems of commerce would lead to discontent between the states and end in each state calling "injuries" those things which are the perfectly reasonable acts of sovereign nations.</div><br /><div>The rise of these perceived injuries might begin with individuals within some states pursuing private commercial interests in other states and ignoring large portions of the various commercial laws of those other states. This leads to direct infractions against the commercial laws of those other states. Those states then respond with efforts to halt such infractions. These efforts to enforce the law lead to even greater disparities in the systems of commerce between the states. These disparities would only serve to strengthen the larger states. As an example, Hamilton looks to New York. Left unchecked, New York could (and would) levy import taxes not only on international goods but on the goods of the various neighboring states that desired to use the ports of New York. States like Vermont and Connecticut would end up paying taxes to New York. Over time, this would essentially lead to a tributary relationship with the weaker states paying taxes to the larger states. This, in turn, would lead to competitions for spheres of influence between larger states with smaller states jockeying between this state or that state against other large states. Such relations, in Hamilton's view, would eventually lead to the sort of tensions that lead to war.</div><br /><div>Moreover, these separate systems of commercial law lead to the violation of the rights of citizens in one state by the government of other states. A private contract between two parties might be legal in one state but not in another. If one of these parties is a citizen of a state where the contract is legally void, he or she might appeal to that state to strike down the contract. The violation of such private contracts between the citizens of various states amount to various affronts to the rights of those individuals. Hamilton points out that his readers need to do no more than to consider the various retaliatory laws between Connecticut and Rhode Island as an example of exactly this type of behavior and observes that, `we do not expect a liberal and equitable spirit to preside over the legislators of individual states in absence of Federal checks' (¶9). In Hamilton's view, it is only the threat of the overwhelming force of a federal government that prevents states from trade wars and retaliatory legislation against each other. Absent that threat, he implies that the various states would engage in a patter of trade wars and retaliatory legislation that would eventually culminate into hostile action by force of arms.</div><br /><div>This chain of events, of course, would be entirely avoidable under a strong federal government where a federal court system could address grievances between the state <i>and</i> provide the coercive force necessary to ascertain that the "losing" state both complies with the ruling of the judge <i>and</i> does not seek to redress perceived wrongs through force of arms. The most intriguing element of this argument is that it suggests that natural rights of nations necessarily lead to conflict. It is the suggestion that the particular interests of a given nation will at some point necessarily conflict with the particular interests of other nations. While Hamilton does not develop this argument, the specter of Hobbes is hanging in the background. The Hobbesian state of nature, the war of all against all, may be rectified within a state by the abrogation of some rights (and by `some,' Hobbes would understand "all save for the right to self defense in the face of a direct threat to one's life") from the individual in exchange for the protection of the state (the Leviathan). Yet, in Hobbesian thinking, this state of nature remains at the level of international relations. Hobbes does not provide a mechanism by which various nations can cede their rights to a larger international body in the same way that he presents a mechanism for individuals to cede their rights to the state within a nation. Without explicitly saying so, Hamilton is effectively taking Hobbes to the next level by putting the federal government into the position of the Leviathan with relation to the individual states.</div><br /><div>Further, Hamilton argues that history shows that this is the proper solution to the problem. Prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the various colonies of North America ceded many of their rights as sovereign bodies to the Crown of England (and the other various colonial powers). During and immediately after the Revolutionary War, the newly sovereign states did the same with the fledgling national government. Giving up these rights halted many of the behaviors between the states which would have led to war had they occurred between fully sovereign nations. Consequently, if the federal government were to be dissolved and replaced by a weaker confederation of states, America would find itself engaged in the Hobbesian war of all against all.</div>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-9656820746187214772010-02-10T10:14:00.001-08:002010-02-10T10:19:37.817-08:00Hobbes' Anticipation of Nietzsche's Critique of Science<div><span style="font-size:100%;">One of the most misunderstood aphorisms of the postmodern tradition is Nietzsche's infamous slogan that God is dead. Typically this statement is taken out of the context in which was made and sawn in half to be used solely as evidence of Nietzsche's impiety and, consequently, the basis on which to condemn not only his writings, but the post-modern project in its entirety. But Nietzche's statement about the death of the Deity was less a critique of religion than a critique of science. What Nietzsche was getting at becomes more apparent if one examines the modern critique of religion in Chapter xii of Hobbes' </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">Leviathan</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;">.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">Hobbes begins his account of religion by noting the attributes that separate man from the beasts: to be inquisitive about the causes of things [¶2], to believe that everything that has a beginning has a cause [¶3], and to posit causes from imagination to those events which causes cannot be explained [¶4]. Hobbes claim that the first two of these cause anxiety because no single human being can be so well versed in the facts so as to be completely certain of the future [¶5]. That is to say, he holds that the limits of human knowledge prevent any individual human being from being able to predict the future with certainty and the price of this is a constant anxiety about what the future may hold. This anxiety then becomes a motivation which drives the third tendency above and results in the positing of all sorts of invisible powers and agents [¶6]. These imaginations are then combined with three other factors: the lack of knowledge of why things are the way they are [¶7]; high esteem for that which is feared [¶8]; and mistaking repeated correlation for causation [¶9]. And hence, the seeds for religion are laid.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">Now, Hobbes would make a key distinction here between true religion (Protestant Christianity) and false religions (Paganism and those forms of Christianity he considered to be infected by Pagan practices such as Catholocism). He makes this distinction not based on matters of doctrine but in their approach to the unexplained. For Hobbes, what makes Protestantism reducible to a question of natural science is that he does not hold that Protestant Christianity posits the existence God through the imagination in the same way that imaginary invisible powers such as angels or demons are posited. He also argues that Protestant ministers do not try to use various forms of magic ritual to try to control these invisible powers. Rather, Hobbes holds that Christianity in its pure form reasons to the existence of God in the same way that scientists reason to the existence of natural laws and its adherents are marked by their conformance to the laws of nature rather than the hope of goading God into changing those factors that lie outside of the control of humankind to its benefit.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The importance of this distinction is hard to overstate. In false religion, or superstition, any number of imaginary entities are posited in order to alleviate the natural state of angst in living in an uncertain world. In true religion, or natural science, ultimate causes are posited on the basis of reasons as falsifiable scientific hypotheses. In the former, the adherent attempts to control factors outside of his or her power through appeasing the various imaginary entities thought to be in control of this or that force of nature. In the latter, mankind actually develops control of those forces of nature through coming to understand the real causes of external events. In the former, one might be convinced by others of the reality of this or that invisible entity responsible for this or that natural event. In the latter, one is only convinced through the force of a logical argument combined with empirical evidence.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">This is not to say Hobbes would argue that imagination is not important to the science. Quite the contrary, the imagination is very useful in a Hobbesian conception of science. In a comparison to scientists imaginatively postulating explanations of various phenomena to Rudyard Kipling's whimsical </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">Just So Stories</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;">, David Barash and Judith Lipton explain how this works.</span></div><blockquote>When it comes to "doing" science, just-so stories are used. It's not that science ends up being such a story, but it nearly always begins as one, emerging from curiosity, questioning, and uncertainty. It then progresses to reasoned conjecture—to asking, "What if?" and "Could it be?"—and then, if the proffered story seems worth pursuing—and is, in fact, pursuable—to validation, or, as the philosopher Karl Popper and his devotees would have it, to invalidation if not true, and to further refinement if it proves productive. Throughout, the enterprise is steeped in wonder—which includes, not coincidentally, both meanings of the word: as an experience of amazement and appreciation ("the wonder of it all") and as an act of imaginative inquiry ("I wonder if the continents moved" or "I wonder if matter is actually composed of tiny, irreducible particles"). [<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/How-the-Scientist-Got-His/63287/" id="a1y1" title="How the Scientist Got His Ideas"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#00CCCC;">How the Scientist Got His Ideas</span></span></a>]</blockquote><div><span style="font-size:100%;">Barash and Lipton echo Hobbes. They present the difference between such though experiments in the scientific method and mere imagination as being twofold. At the psychological level, the motivation of science in its purest form stems from curiosity. At the methodological level, the thought experiments of science are followed by study and experimentation designed to either support or disprove the imagined sources of causation. In contrast, superstition as understood by Hobbes is dependent on anxiety as a motivation and seeks to definitively answer questions rather than to open the doors to future research.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">But what Nietzsche explored that Hobbes did not is the idea that science can fill the role of superstition no less than religion. The positing of this or that scientific explanation for the unknown may be no less superstitious than the positing of this or that invisible entity to explain the same phenomena. To one who has not done the research, there is is no epistemic difference between positing a weakened god of the underworld bringing an unusually mild winter and blaming man made global warming. If one follows the criteria set forth by Hobbes and expanded upon by Barash and Liption, for science to be different in kind from religion, one must have </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">personally</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> followed the arguments and have </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">personally</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> examined the evidence that results in this or that scientific conclusion. If one's opinion on the reality of global warming rests entirely on popular accounts in the news, or even on the direct reports of various scientists, then one's opinion is not actually founded upon on science any more than if one were to base one's beliefs on sermons given from the pulpit. This tendency to rest one's beliefs on the suppositions of others is the foundation of Nietzsche's famous aphorism about the death of God in <i>The Gay Science</i>.</span></div><blockquote>After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave--a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. --And we still have to vanquish his shadow, too [§108].</blockquote><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The first part of this aphorism is legend. It caused an immediate sensation upon its publication much as Hobbes' </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">Leviathan</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> also caused a sensation upon its publication. But lost in the conservative reaction to the brute statement `God is dead' is any serious consideration of what Nietzsche meant by `his shadow.' In the popular discussions of Nietzsche, if the portion of the aphorism about the shadow of God is brought up at all, it is usually conflated with a remnant of religiosity that persists even after all belief in God has passed away. While it is true that in <span style="font-size:100%;">§<span style="font-size:100%;">125 Nietzsche puts into the mouth of his prophetic madman the question, ``What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?'' It is also certain that this later aphorism may be taken to be a rhetorical device meant to imply that the trappings of belief continue even though belief in God itself does not. </span></span></span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:100%;">But if one does follows this route, one has to ignore <span style="font-size:100%;">§<span style="font-size:100%;">109 through <span style="font-size:100%;">§<span style="font-size:100%;">124 in which Nietzsche presents an assault on the anthropomorphism of nature at the hands of scientists and philosophers in addition to religionists. Moreover, one has to neglect that <span style="font-size:100%;">§<span style="font-size:100%;">108 marks the beginning of Book III of </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">The Gay Science</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> and, consequently, is built on the aphorisms of Books I and II. And it is in Book I that mankind is described as being more evil In Nietzsche's day than in aeons past precisely because of the discovery of science [<span style="font-size:100%;">§<span style="font-size:100%;">33]. Further, Nietzsche describes modern science as having been built on three different errors: the hope to understand God; the hope to use science as a tool to perfect humanity; and the view of science as a value-free pursuit of knowledge [<span style="font-size:100%;">§<span style="font-size:100%;">37]. But perhaps the most relevant aphorism to the subject at hand is <span style="font-size:100%;">§<span style="font-size:100%;">46 where the amazement of modern man vis a vis science is explicitly compared to the amazement of men in ages gone by towards superstition.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">To be fair to Nietzsche, he offered more than one critique of science in Book I of </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">The Gay Science</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;">. The critique that this essay is highlighting that the distinction that Hobbes made between science and religion also applies to the acceptance of science itself. But it is also true that Nietzsche went far beyond this critique in his sustained attack on the value of science. Discussion of that further critique, while certainly important, is outside the scope of this essay. What is most relevant to this particular discussion is that, as Nietzsche so accurately observed, many people have placed science into the role that religion used to play and, consequently, those people are no better off than the hordes of the so-called `dark ages' with regards to the certainty of their beliefs.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">Now, one could certainly argue that even if most people still have beliefs formed by hearing various authorities, it is a step forward if those beliefs are founded on the reports of scientists rather than the preaching of religionists. But this step forward is a chimera at best. Regardless of what one's inclination towards any particular issue might be, scientific authorities exist to which one might appeal to confirm one's beliefs. Take the issue of global warming. On one side of the debate </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/04/AR2007020400953.html" id="plal" title="there is an overwhelming consensus that global warming is a man made phenomena"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#00CCCC;">there is an overwhelming consensus that global warming is a man made</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#00CCCC;"> phenomena</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size:100%;">. On the other side of the debate there are allegations that<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#00CCCC;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220" id="paz7" title="the global warming consensus is manufactured"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#00CCCC;">the global warming consensus is manufactured</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size:100%;">. Unless a person is extensively educated on the subject, whether one believes the science of one side or the other has as much to do with the quirks of fate and the forcefulness of rhetoric as it does with the scientific method and the issue of objective truth.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The solution to this dilemma put forth by Hobbes is very clearly expressed by Malcom X in his </span><a href="http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-9399834" id="bqw." title="Advice to the Youth of Mississippi"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#00CCCC;">Advice to the Youth of Mississippi</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size:100%;">:</span></div><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you"re going east, and you will be walking east when you think you"re going west.</span></blockquote><div><span style="font-size:100%;">These words by the man born as Malcom Little and who died under the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz echo the very heart of the Hobbesian and Nietzschean projects. The first step to putting one's beliefs on a sound foundation is to learn to think for one's self and to learn how to evaluate information that comes from other sources. To blindly put one's faith in any authority, whether scientific or religious, is to effectively give that authority control over one's mind. The history of philosophy from Plato's Socrates to Nietzsche's Zarusthra is filled with various takes on this central idea and suggestions as to how best go about equipping oneself to found one's beliefs on a bedrock of certainty rather than on the shifting sands of other authorities.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size:100%;">But an an often overlooked proponent of this same method is Christianity. While the Christian religion is usually perceived as having an epistemology of "faith" by which each succeeding generation believes entirely because it received a tradition from the generation before, Christianity has also had a strong tradition of believers coming to believe on their own terms. The earliest depiction of the necessity of seeking out the evidence on one's own terms is in the Gospel of John which records the skepticism of Nathaniel upon Phillip's report that he had found the Christ. Nathaniel asked, ``Can anything good come out of Nazareth?'' Phillip's response was short and succinct, ``come and see'' (John 1:46). Phillip's appeal was not to an authority, a third party, or even his own witness. Rather Phillip appealed to Nathaniel to come and see for himself, to discover the facts for himself and to use his own judgment in the matter. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:100%;">It is in this vein that Clement of Alexandria, writing in the early third century, pointed out that even children understand the difference between piety and superstition. Piety is something one comes to by seeking understanding. Superstition is something one adopts without critical evaluation in order to alleviate one's anxieties. In some aspects, this is not all that different than Hobbes argument that true piety reduces to the investigation of the laws of nature. Similarly, holding to what scientists say without the capacity to understand why it is that they have reached their conclusions leaves one no less superstitious than the adherents of religion who stop at receiving their faith from others without examining it for themselves. For those who receive science in this fashion, the shadow of God remains.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-32167766059190319952009-08-14T03:03:00.001-07:002009-08-15T08:55:24.848-07:00The Influence of Thomas Hobbes on Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 6<div>In some ways the government of the United States of America is an anachronism, a vestige of pre-modern political ideas from the classical era. But in other ways, much of the sentiment that lies beneath the US Constitution is square in the camp of modernity. Into this latter body of thought falls much of the writing of Alexander Hamilton. More so than John Jay or James Madison, the other two names behind the pseudonym Publius under which the Federalists were first published, much of Hamilton's political writings echo the modern transformation of the political subject epitomized by Thomas Hobbes. These echoes reverberate throughout Federalist No. 6 where Hamilton presents the argument that because human nature is ``ambitious, vindicative and rapacious,'' (¶2) and therefore a strong federal government is necessary to forestall the possibility of a future war between the newly independent colonies of North America.</div><div><br></div><div>Hamilton's argument in Federalist No. 6 is straightforward. After briefly stating his Hobbesian premise regarding human nature and its inherent capacity for violence, he draws out a few perfunctory implications and then immediately turns to addressing objections, using a historical narrative to highlight that objections to his thesis are Utopian rather than realistic. Concluding that objections to his premise do not have foundations in the world as it is, he suggests that it is time to move past such theoretical constructs and pragmatically build a nation on the reality of a human society as it is.</div><div><br></div><div>If human nature is as Hamilton (and Hobbes) describe it, several implications follow and Hamilton briefly states these in the second and third paragraphs of Federalist No. 6. It is absurd to presume that nations will not go to war if they do not have motive to do so. It is absurd to presume that politically unconnected nations which are contiguously connected by geography could peacefully coexist. The reasons for which nations go to war are infinite and consist of motives that can be ascribed to the collective as a whole, to parts of the collective, and to individuals within the collective. As examples of the first of these Hamilton gives motives as disparate as the nationalistic desire for political pre-eminence and the natural desire for peace and safety. As examples of the motives of parts of the nation, he gives commercial interests and factional rivalship. Lastly, he describes the ``private passions'' (¶3) of rulers as possible individual motives for taking an entire nation to war. So while one might be able to categorize the motives for going to war in accordance with the rule of one, the few, or the many, Hamilton asserts that the number of reasons for going to war within each category are innumerable.</div><div><br></div><div>With this foundation laid, Hamilton dives into the chief objection put forth by the ant-federalists, that perpetual peace is a possibility because (a) republicanism tends toward pacifism, (b) commerce tends towards peace, and therefore (c) a commercial republic like the United States will inherently have have a twofold bent towards peace (¶8). Both of these objections by the anti-federalists are frequently echoed not only in the op/ed pages of newspapers today but also in the academic literature. The first of these assertions has come to be known by the political scientists of today as the Democratic Peace Preposition. The second of these was no small part of the basis of US foreign policy from the Eisenhower administration on and was famously presented by Thomas Friendman as the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, that no two countries with where there exists a McDonald's has ever gone to war.</div><div><br></div><div>Hamilton responds to this objection with a twofold counterattack. First, he returns to his estimation of human nature and asks if nations, whether republics or not, are not still comprised of men (¶9). It would seem, that if one buys the Hobbesian estimation of humankind as an inherently violent species, then one cannot escape the conclusion that societies built of such individuals will also be inherently violent. But not content to remain in the world of theory, Hamilton then brings up the second prong of his rebuttal, the history of the world from the ancient days of Greece and Rome up to his day. He lists the constant wars of democratic Greek city states, the wars between Republican era Rome and Cathage, and continues on through history to the various wars of the League of Venice and the designs of Holland. In fact, those who follow in Hamilton's intellectual footsteps into the present maintain <a id="nc-u" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_exceptions_to_the_democratic_peace_theory" title="a list of exceptions to the Democratic Peace Proposition">a list of exceptions to the Democratic Peace Proposition</a>. And as of the writing of this essay there are at least three counter examples to the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict: the US bombing of Serbia in the nineties, the Israeli/Lebanon conflict of 2006 and the Russian/Georgian conflict of 2008.</div><div><br></div><div>Hamilton then points out the role of commerce in the wars of his day. Commercial interests drove conflict between Spain and Britain and between Britain and France (¶14). Hamilton does not refer to Hugo Grotius' /The Free Sea/ but Grotius' seminal work was precisely a defense of war over commercial interests, that if one nation affronts the natural rights of commerce of other nations, those other nations have a right to go to war against the nation affronting their rights. Trade between neighbors, in the Hamiltonian view, does not predispose nations towards peace. Instead, Hamiltonians hold that commerce increases the propensity to go to war. And war is precisely what Hamilton sought to avoid at all costs. While Hamilton does not mention Hobbes' Leviathan, his reasoning is identical. Just as Hobbes argues that the basis of society is that individuals give up some rights in exchange for the sovereign protecting their lives, Hamilton would have the newly independent colonies of North America give up some rights in exchange for a strong federal government to protect them from both outside threats and from each other.</div><div><br></div><div>And this Hobbesian idea is the very conclusion of Federalist No. 6. First, it is time to wake from Utopian idealism regarding the tendency of democracy and commerce to drive nations towards peace. Second, that it is time to work towards pragmatically building a nation that will have an enduring peace in recognition of the facts concerning human nature. Thirdly that `` neighboring nations are natural enemies unless they have a common weakness that forces them to band together into a confederate republic'' (¶20).</div><div><br></div><div>This argument is a powerful one. Its conclusion necessarily follows from its premises. But Hamilton also does not follow his premises to their full conclusion. If it is not possible to change human nature with regards to an inherent disposition towards violence, then a strong federal government is not only a necessity in order to prevent future wars, but that nation must also struggle until it effectively takes over the entire world. For in Hamilton's understanding of the world, it follows that no matter how large a federal union may be, it will have neighboring lands comprised of men who are entirely ``ambitious, vindicative and rapacious'' and, consequently, have designs on toppling the Unites States. Safety in such a world can only be found in in Hobbes' Leviathian once all the world is subject to a single government. Short of that set of circumstances, no nation is safe.</div><div><br></div><div>But perhaps such an interpretation of the ideas latent in Federalist No. 6 overstates Hamilton's view of human nature. Perhaps, rather than a necessary conclusion, he was aiming at a lower target, a conclusion that was more likely than not. Perhaps he would concede that aside from ambition, vindictiveness and racaciousness, human nature can contain virtue, nobility and charity. In this interpretation, Hamilton would be asserting that while it <i>may not be necessary</i> that humanity act in a warlike fashion, but <i>it is most likely the cas</i>e that humanity will act in a warlike fashion. As mentioned above, Hamilton's historical narrative seems to confirm this judgment. But note that just as Hamilton's conclusion still follow, the Hobbseian implications also still follow, just not as strongly. Rather than safety not being certain until such time as there is a singular world government, it is more likely than not that safety will not be had until the Leviathan rules all. What is lacking in Federalist No. 6 are elements like the ones John Jay brought up in earlier papers, that nations and peoples have natural boundaries. The principle put forth by Hamilton for seeking a strong central government knows nothing of such natural limits. And, in fact, the principle put forth by Hamilton is an argument against such limits having real existence save for in the minds of Utopians who do not see human nature for what it is but for what it ought to be.</div><div><br></div><div>Further, one can question Hamilton's assessment that warfare with neighboring lands really is more likely than not. Arguably, Hamilton's interpretation of the historical record is more than a bit suspect on three levels. First, he cherry picks his data by highlighting periods of war without admitting to any periods of peace. For example, the US has not been directly at war with any of its immediate neighbors in living memory. (Although one could argue that US support of the Bay of Pigs is a counter factual.) And Europe has nations such as Switzerland that have not gone to war in almost two centuries. Second his definition of what a republic consists of seems to be rather fungible. To say that the loose confederation of Phoenician city-states that comprised the republican era of Carthage had the same form of government as the rigid hierarchy of republican era Rome is problematic in many ways. (To be fair, the vagueness of the word remains to this day with nations as disparately organized as The People's Republic of North Korea and the United States claiming to be republics.) If one looks at a more strict definition, such as what Fareed Zakariah refers to as <i>constitutional liberalism</i> which is defined as a democracy implemented with certain constitutional mechanisms such as separation of powers and civil rights, then it becomes clear that most of the democracies listed by Hamilton are not very democratic in the modern sense. Lastly, he gives a very shallow treatment of the idea that increased commerce leads to more pacific relations between nations. To say that commerce between nations in general decreases the likelihood of war says nothing over whether a particular commercial issue will lead to a particular war.</div><div><br></div><div>These last two points become exceedingly important in light of current themes in political philosophy that it is not only the raw fact of whether or not democracy exists, but rather the form that democracy takes that makes a country less likely to be involved in a war. Likewise, it is not merely being a commercial nation that leads this or that country to pacific values. Rather, it is only certain types of international commercial concerns that do this. In both cases, the same error is being made. The constitution of a country is being identified entirely as its written constitution and its material economic relationships. This distinction fails to take into account an important observation made by Aristotle. The constitution of the <i>polis</i> is not merely the written rules that govern the organization of the government, but it is also the very real relationships, dispositions, values, and desires of the people.</div><div><br></div><div>Consequently, a student of Aristotle would not be surprised to see the League of Venice go to war. The league, a confederation of city states intent not merely on the exercise of international trade but the domination of said trade to their exclusive benefit, had an aggressive consitutional makeup. Along these lines, some contemporary scholars argue that it is commerce driven by the productivity of a middle class that make countries engaged in trade more pacific. And, likewise, it is only when democracy is formed in nations where the government depends on the people for its existence rather than the other way around that democratization is a pacifying influence. </div><div><br></div><div>But note that even if one does not buy into Aristotle, an interesting question arises. If the League of Venice had not been so commerically oriented, would they have been any less likely to pursue dominion of their neighbors? If not, then what avenue would have been open to them if not force of arms? If the League will still have been aggressive, then to the extent that they turned to trade rather than to arms, it can be fairly said that making commerce a priority did make the League more pacifically oriented than they would have been otherwise. So while Hamilton was almost certainly correct that commerce does not categorically prevent wars between neighbors, may even be the cause for warfare in particular instances, it can also be said that such commerce does make war less likely in general.</div><div><br></div><div>In the end, even if one agrees with the conclusion of Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 6, that a strong federal government is superior to a weaker confederacy, one is still free to reject Hamilton's reasons for coming to his conclusion. If a premise implies a conclusion, the truth of the conclusion does not necessarily imply the truth of the premise. Such is only the case if the conclusion can be true for one, and only one, reason and that reason is the premise. But, on the other hand, if the argument leading to a particular conclusion is unsound, there is no warrant for holding to that conclusion in the absence of other arguments. Fortunately, the Hobbesian argument made in Federalist No. 6 is not the only argument made by the men that stood behind Publius. As unconvincing as Hamilton's anthropology might be on the theoretical side, he put forth some very strong practical arguments elsewhere, such as in Federalist No. 7.</div><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-69403743609639185212009-08-01T13:54:00.001-07:002009-08-01T13:54:14.720-07:00Freedom of movement in the United States<div>Sometimes it strikes me as kind of funny the way that most of us who live in the USA tend to take our freedom of movement within the United States for granted. We freely travel from city to city with little to no interference by the government. Our biggest concern regarding the state is usually getting pulled over and ticketed, and rightly so, for breaking the speed limit. Private concerns, such as other drivers and the distance to the next gas station, are typically far more vivid in our minds. This freedom from government interference in where we go and who we associate with did not come about by accident. It arose as one of the first freedoms sought by early American colonists. The Pilgrims were caught and prevented leaving Britain three times before they escaped first to Holland and then to the new world. In some parts of Old Europe, getting caught without one's papers being in order could result in arrest or worse even if one were not leaving the country but simply walking about the city where one lived.</div><div><br></div><div>But in the American tradition, the conscious decision was made that individuals should not have to seek from the state permission to reside here or travel there. Consequently, as the modern era evolved into post-modernity and the present, the US never adopted the type of national ID card that one sees in much of the world. Nor does the US require individuals to prove to the state apparatus who they are or that they have the right to be here or there. The idea is twofold. Our founding fathers held that the public good is served to a far greater extent by the exercise of such freedoms than it would gain by additional `security' of requiring individuals to register with the state. But this understanding of what benefits the common good is secondary to the conception of certain freedoms being inalienable rights. Even if the public good was not served by the exercise of these freedoms, many (if not most) of the founding fathers would argue that the state has no right to take them away unless a particular given individual violated the social contract by breaking the law.</div><div><br></div><div>Few things strain this American tradition to the extent of having one's home town filled to the brim by policeman in riot gear in preperation for expected protests against a conference on global trade. A year after the 1999 protests over globalization that turned large swaths of downtown Seattle into a tangle of rioting and tear gas, Cincinnati played host to another trade conference, the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue (TABD). With images of shattered store fronts and violent protestors throwing rocks dancing in their heads, the Cincinnati city council and chief of police mobilized a large police presence and filled the downtown streets with police in riot gear.</div><div><br></div><div>For the person I was back at the turn of the millenium, the global trade meeting was a non-issue. I ignored the repeated email warnings at my job that were issued by my employer at the time advising about possible disruptions. I ignored the headlines in the local muckraker rags about massive protests being held. The only thing on my mind at the time was an acute case of bronchitis that left me barely able to stand. After a week filled with uncontrollable coughing fits and the inability to take deep breaths, I called my doctor and she told me to come in that very day so I hopped on the bus to seek out the medical care I needed.</div><div><br></div><div>I had forgotten all about the planned protests. When I got off the bus, I was greeted with the by the sight of clusters of ten and twenty punk rocker types carrying around signs about sticking it to the man and stopping animal testing. (To this day, I'm stiill not quite certain what animal testing has to do with global trade.) Being sick, not having bathed in a week, with my hair standing up and staggering around due to being short of breath, I looked like I fit right in with the crowd. I did my best to ignore the protesters and make my way toward the office building that housed my doctor. More than once I was stopped by a young street punks who asked me where everyone was. It was then that I realized my unfortunate situation and foresaw a problem that was about to unfold. </div><div><br></div><div>As I turned the corner to get to the office building where my doctor's office is located, the same office building complex that the TABD was meeting in, I was faced with a sidewalk filled with iron police barricades and public safety officers in riot gear. But my concerns were allayed by all of the people walking right past the barricades and into the complex. So despite my fears, I crossed the street at the corner (being careful not to jay-walk in front of dozens of uniformed police officers wearing body armor and holding plexiglass riot shields) and moved toward the building door.</div><div><br></div><div>I was greeted by a loud voice, "Hey, you! You can't go in there!"</div><div><br></div><div>`Please,' I asked, `I'm sick. I want to go see my doctor.'</div><div><br></div><div>"No one is allowed in," the police officer said sternly, "Haven't you heard that the TABD is meeting today?"</div><div><br></div><div>It was kind of obvious that the police officer was lying. Even as we spoke, half a dozen people had walked right past us and into the building. The difference between me and them was that those people were wearing suits and ties and I was looked like something a cat had just coughed up.</div><div><br></div><div>I begged the officer to let me in. I could barely stand. I could barely breath. My head was spinning. I just wanted to see my doctor in the hopes that she could do something to make my illness go away. But my pleas fell on the policeman's ears like seeds on stoney ground. The officer blocking my route was unwilling to even go so far as to escort me to the front desk and call up to verify whether or not I had official business in the building. So I gave up and walked away, staggering around the block, reaching the other side of the complex even as the police officer in question was congratulating himself on stopping whatever nefarious plot he thought I was attempting to hatch. Fortunately, for me the police on the other side of the building were not so diligent in their profiling and I made it inside where I proceeded to visit with my doctor and received a prescription for very strong antibiotics. Over the course of the next few days, I quickly recovered.</div><div><br></div><div>Fortunately, no lasting harm befell me. It certainly isn't difficult to imagine my illness being just a bit worse and me collapsing in the street after the first police officer turned me away. Nor is it difficult to imagine that the officers on the other side of the building mirroring the behavior of the first officer I encountered and turning me away. But that is neither here nor there. Police in the United States more often than not simply do not infringe on the rights of the general public in the way that the first officer I met that day did on mine. I had broken no laws. I had not acted in any way that would have given the police a reasonable suspicion that I was about to commit a crime. I was selected for different treatment simply because of the way I looked.</div><div><br></div><div>And, to be fair, this wasn't the first time something like this has happened to me. Many times in my life, I've been pulled over for no other apparent reason than driving a beat up car through an affluent neighborhood. I've been asked to leave shopping malls for no other apparent reason than I didn't look like the type of person who would buy anything. But here's the rub. All the times I've been profiled have been because of lifestyle choices that I have made. And while I certainly think it un-American to stop a person because of the clothes he or she might be wearing or the lack of grooming he or she might display, there are no small number of people who experience the same thing sort of harassment because of things they did not choose: their ethnic heritage, the color of their skin, the language they speak. In fact, the week after my run in with Cincinnati's finest, I told my story to a young woman who occasionally rode the same bus I did. Upon hearing my plight, she chuckled and informed me that now I knew what it was like to be black and live in America.</div><div><br></div><div>So it is with no small amount of sympathy that I see recent incidents such as the July 2009 arrest of Professor Gates on the very land he owns as abuses of power by the apparatus of the state. When Officer Crowley responded to a 911 call about a possible break-in by asking him to show photo ID to prove that he owned the house he was presently in, Gates became beligerant and argumentative and was eventually led away in handcuffs by Crowley. Whether or not Officer Crowley arrested Gates because Gates is black is neither here nor there. Gates, who has lived a lifetime of police questioning his very right to have the same freedom of movement as all the white people moving about the United States, simply had had his fill and blew his top. Had I not been ill when prevented by the police from seeing my doctor, I might have had the same reaction. And the last time I checked, blowing your stack isn't a crime. It might be counter productive. It might not be a good idea. In fact, it might even be rightly considered to be stupidity. But it isn't something for which one should be arrested and certainly it isn't something for which someone should be arrested for while standing on one's own property.</div><div><br></div><div>Yet, one of the things that gives me hope for America is that the Gates/Crowley affair has blown up into such a media brouhaha resulting in an invitation extended to both men by the president of the United States to share a beer at the White House. Thirty or forty years ago, it probably wouldn't have made the news at all. Fifty or sixty years ago, the unreasonable charges against Gates would probably not have been dropped. Seventy or eighty years ago, Gates probably would have gone to trial, been convicted and served time for the crime of being upset that in his own house, he was asked to prove that he had a right to be there. But this is America. Neither you nor I should have to prove that we have a right to be here, wherever it is that we are. So long as we aren't breaking crimes by our actions, we should be free to live our lives, exercise our freedoms, and pursue our happiness.</div><div><br></div><div>[Portions of this essay were adapted from an earlier piece I published on the web as <i>One World Order comes to the Midwest US</i>.]</div><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-41163486381352364782009-04-06T13:46:00.001-07:002009-04-06T13:47:56.149-07:00Federalist No. 5 and the Natural Propensity to Civil War<div><i>Federalist</i> No. 5 is uniquely interesting among the <i>Federalist Papers</i> in its presentiment of the US civil war. Arguing from his knowledge of the history of the British empire, John Jay presents his case that a strong, central government is less likely to be prone to war and that without a strong, central government, the swarms of the ``<i>Northern Hive</i>'' [his emphasis] would be ``tempted to gather honey in the more blooming fields and milder air of their luxurious and more delicate neighbors.'' Not only does Jay's argument predict the US Civil War but it also explains the modern tendency toward civil war throughout the world following the breakdown of strong governments and their replacement by weak confederacies.</div><div><br></div><div>Jay opens up <i>Federalist</i> No. 5 with a quotation from a letter written by Britain's Queen Anne to the Scottish parliament on the subject of uniting of Scotland and England.</div><blockquote>An entire and perfect union will be the solid foundation of lasting peace: it will secure your religion, liberty and property; remove the animosities amongst yourselves, and the jealousies and differences between our two kingdoms. It must increase your strength, riches, and trade; and by this union the whole island, being joined in affection and free from all apprehensions of different interests, will be enabled to resist all its enemies.</blockquote><div>Jay sets these words of Queen Anne about the benefits of union against the long history of strife between England and Scotland while they were separate nations. While he slyly ignores the subjects of imperialism and domination that were large part of the subtext in which that strife ocurred, he does so for a legitimate reason. By the eighteenth century, Scotland and England were both functional representative democracies and the relationship being addressed by Queen Anne was not an act of imperialism or subjugation. While this does leave Jay open to the criticism the wars between England and Scotland had this no longer extant imperialism at their core, a cursory examination of English history reveals that this was not <i>entirely</i> the case. Jay almost certainly had in mind what modern historians refer to as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms which include the Bishops Wars, the Scottish and English Civil Wars, Cromwell's invasion of Ireland and the Irish Confederate Wars. This series of conflicts, arguably, only halted once there was a strong central government.</div><div><br></div><div>Jay's fear, then, was that a war of this sort would break out in America if a federal mode of government was not established. For as much as he argued in <i>Federalist</i> No. 2 that Americans are united by common cultural, religious, linguistic, and geographic bonds, he also maintains here in <i>Federalist</i> No. 5 that nation states have the most to fear from neighboring countries. He lists three factors that lead him to this conclusion. If two or three confederacies emerged from the thirteen original colonies, it would be natural that each confederacy would have distinct interests which would cause tension among the confederations. Secondly, over time a discrepancy in power and size between the confederacies would develop. Lastly, distant nations which have an interest in keeping America weak would aim to exploit the developing tensions of the confederacies in America.</div><div><br></div><div>While Jay did not spell out all the differences between north and south, he was currently cognizant of the increasingly industrial base of the northern states in contrast to the agrarian southern states. Further, the debates over the question of slavery that ended with the 3/5 compromise in the proposed constitution highlighted the differences between the modes of production in the north and the south. Despite all the factors that led Jay to suggest that America was naturally a united whole, there was certainly no small amount of rancor and jealousy between different blocs of states in early America. Were the states united in a confederacy with each state able to decide its own tariffs and obligated to defend its own boundaries, it is natural that trade wars and border disputes would eventually arise. Without a strong government to force the states to settle these issues through courts rather than through arms, it would be almost inevitable that war would eventually break out.</div><div><br></div><div>But even if a war did not break out over such differences that can only exist between independent nations that border each other, the differences between various blocs of states could eventually lead to war. This would happen as one bloc or the other grew in size and stature so as to be feared by other blocs. Once that happened, Jay holds that the states would begin working against each other's interests.</div><blockquote>Whenever, and from whatever causes, it might happen, and happen it would, that any one of these nations or confederacies should rise on the scale of political importance much above the degree of her neighbors, that moment wouuld would those neighbors behold her with envy and with fear. Both those passions would lead them to countenance, if not to promote, whatever might promise to diminish her importance; and would also restraint them from measures calculated to advance or even to secure her prosperity.</blockquote><div>No longer working as a single nation, these blocs of states would be seeking for the others to fail, or at least to damage them so that the powerful ones were less of a threat. This would escalate the tensions between them, perhaps to the point of armed conflict. These tensions would also be heightened by foreign nations. Distant countries, who lose out as America grew as a commercial nation and began taking part of the sea trade and began producing finished goods in its factories, had an interest in encouraging those very tensions. For if the various confederacies in America were to go to war and weaken each other, Europe would profit. Especially, if America weakened itself to the point where it could be recolonized.</div><div><br></div><div>Four score years later, as various states attempted to secede from the union, war did break out. While the US Civil War is conventionally attributed to the question of slavery, that was certainly not the only question. It is not entirely revisionist, as some would claim, to say that part of the reason the war broke out was the problem of states' rights with regard to the federal government. (Although, ironically, the only significant differences between the constitution of the Confederated States of America and the US Constitution are that the former mandates newly admitted states to allow slavery and specifically disallowed secession, both of which are a weakening of states' rights rather than a strengthening of states' rights.) It is also clear that economics, specifically the differences between the needs of the industrial north and the agrarian south, had quite a bit to do with the desire for secession. </div><div><br></div><div>But note that the US Civil War was only made possible because of the creation of the Confederacy as a distinct political entity from the Union. Without the creation of the Confederacy, the disputes between northern states and southern states could only have been settled through peaceful means: parliamentary maneuvers in the US Congress, law suits in federal courts, publicity campaigns, presidential contests. Whatever the tensions that existed between north and south, it was only the attempt by the south to create an independent nation that brought about actual war. And the war that came about, came about almost exactly in the fashion described by Jay.</div><br><br /><div>And across the globe, this same process is playing out time and again as various strong central governments fail and are replaced by weak confederacies or even entirely independent nations. Success stories, like the division of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, are all too rare. More frequently we have military conflicts in places where the central government was dissolved: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Georgia, Iraq, Kosovo, and Russia. On the one hand, it is true that the areas lack a good deal of the unitive factors of seventeenth century Britain and eighteenth century America. The former Soviet Union was enormously culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse. As was Iraq under Saddam Hussein and as are Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia. But these diversities are not themselves the cause of the conflict, but factors that make the conflicts worse. With the exception of Afghanistan all of these countries enjoyed periods of relative peace when united under strong governments.</div><div><br></div><div>Not that it is a bad thing that the governments in these particular nations failed. The repressiveness of the Ba'athist regime Iraq and the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union created enormous hardship, suffering and death for untold millions. There are few people who genuinely regret the end of these regimes. (Although, admittedly, there are an increasing number of people in those regions nostalgic for ``the good old days.'') However, as the United States and other liberal democracies demonstrate, a strong federal government is quite capable of respecting human rights. The problem presented by these regimes wass not one of a strong, centralized government per se but the problem of having an oppressive regime in charge of the state. The antidote to this is not to abandon a strong, unified government. Rather the antidote is overthrow the oppressive regime and replace it with liberally democratic strong, unified government.</div><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-5216738515560769782009-03-30T17:48:00.001-07:002009-03-30T17:50:31.091-07:00Federalists Nos. 2 through 4: the Argument for a Strong, Centralized Government in America<div>In the first three <i>Federalists</i> after the introductory essay by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay argued that the combination of unity and plurality of a nation, being both one and many, provides for not only a safer and stronger nation, but also for a more temperate and pacific nation. In <i>Federalist</i> No. 2, the argument is presented that America is a natural union and that the shared experience of bleeding together through the Revolutionary War and coming together to voluntarily adopt a constitution has cemented in fact what nature had implied. This argument is extended in <i>Federalist</i> No. 3, where Jay suggests that this unity will make wars far less likely by both reducing the number of just causes for war and by tempering hastily made decisions of individual states by needing to convince all states that war is necessary. This argument is then completed in <i>Federalist</i> No. 4 where Jay notes that just cause for war is most often an excuse rather than a true just cause and that a strongly united nation offers less of a target to other nations looking for an excuse to go to war in order to unjustly enrich themselves.</div><div><br></div><div>While John Jay does not explicitly state <i>e. pluribus unum</i> in <i>Federalist</i> No. 2, the idea that ``out of the many, one'' is certainly its dominant theme. He starts with geography, how America is contiguous. From there he lists the numerous things that bound together the Revolutionary era citizens of America: common descent from European ancestors, a shared language, unity in religion, widespread belief in democratic government, common manners and culture. These geographic and cultural ties were then strengthened by the bonds of fighting and bleeding together in a war for independence. This culmination of union brought about by nature, convention, and history leads Jay to offer up an argument that one does not hear very much in our modern era, that what God has united together, man should not pull asunder. </div><blockquote>This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence than an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.</blockquote><div><div>Notice here, Jay's Aristotelian notion of why government arises. He argues that that the American system of government emerges naturally out of the strong unity of Americans as a people and should reflect the same unity he claims its citizenry so providentially enjoys. This is especially notable given that a large part of the climate in the Revolutionary era favored distrust as <i>any </i>government. Thomas Paine famously opened his pamphlet <i>Common Sense</i> with the observation that society arises because man is good but that government arises because man is evil. </div><blockquote>Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes out happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. ... Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state is a necessary evil.</blockquote><div>Jay's notion of why government arises stands in stark opposition to Paine's. Where Paine, taking after Hobbes, thinks that government only serves to restrain human depravity, Jay holds that government can echo a natural reflection of humanity's goodness. While Jay would certainly admit that government can be warped and tyrannical, and he does just that in some of his reflections on certain foreign regimes in the very <i>Federalists</i> under consideration, his argument in No. 2 implies that he does not think that such wickedness is a necessary part of government. Rather a liberal, representative democracy like the Constitution proposed by Jay and the other federalists does do is show what lies in the hearts of its people when they come together as a unitive whole.</div><div><br></div><div>The coming together as a single people, Jay argues, led to the immediate establishment of a government, albeit one with defects due to the rushed nature of its construction. The strong unity of the people implies the necessity of a strong federal government and, contrary to what the anti-federalists argue, the solution is not to abandon a strong federal government, but to correct the flaws in the hastily constructed Articles of Confederation by replacing them with the proposed new Constitution. In doing so, Jay would have America avoid the sin of destroying the national unity that God has bestowed on the American people and prolong the peace and prosperity to be enjoyed by the American people. For, as Jay details in <i>Federalists</i> Nos. 3 and 4, without a strong federal government, America will face a far greater likelihood of entering into war.</div></div><div><br></div><div><i>Federalist</i> No. 2 lays out the case from a consideration of two aspects of wars with just causes. On the one hand, Jay argues that if America were divided into several confederacies, the individual confederacies would be more likely drawn into wars through allegiances and treaties with other nations. Were one confederacy to make a defense pact with one European power and another to make the same with another European power, the two confederacies might find themselves justly at war with each other even though there is no real dispute. On the other hand, Jay argues that the united nature of America as a whole will temper the passions of single states that might otherwise be motivated to go to war. Noting that pride frequently causes States to justify their own actions and arguing that a federal government would less given to such pride of post hoc justification, Jay offers up some of the abuses of the native peoples of America as an example of the sorts of wars more likely to be fought without a strong national government.</div><blockquote>Such violences are more frequently occasioned by the passions and interests of a part than of the whole, of one or two States than of the Union. Not a single Indian war has yet been produced by aggressions of the present federal government, feeble as it is; but there are several instances of Indian hostilities having been provoked by the improper conduct of individual States, who, either unable or unwilling to restrain or punish offenses, have given occasion to the slaughter of many innocent inhabitants.</blockquote>In retrospect, it is clear that a strong national government at best only delayed US participation in a prolonged series of wars under false pretenses against the native tribes of America and most likely did not even accomplish that much. By the time that the <i>Federalists</i> were being composed in late 1787, the Northwest Ordinance had already been passed earlier that same year and American troops were already engaged combat to drive native American tribes out of areas that were attractive to settlers. A nation, no less than a state and an individual, is clearly subject to being overwhelmed by the passions in pursuing a given policy or even in prosecuting a war. Yet, there is some amount of truth in Jay's argument. An entire nation is harder to rile up than a single state. But what Jay does not consider here is that once riled up, an entire nation has much more vast means by which to impose its will through a state of war. Of course, to be fair, this is not Jay's concern. His rhetoric does not concern the safety of those whom America may face in battle but the safety of Americans.<br><div><br></div><div>Jay's point about the Indian Wars, while unsuccessful at proving his point about an entire nation being roused to war by irrational passions, does illustrate the truth of the topic he considers in <i>Federalist</i> No. 4, that human nature is such that nations are willing to go to war for any reason so long as the ruling powers perceive that there is something to be gained by such an engagement. While Jay does not point out how handsomely America profited from acquiring the territory of its native peoples, he does argue nations have been going to war for such unjust personal enrichment since time immemorial. Sometimes, he goes so far to say, that the personal enrichment even harms the nation as a whole and only benefits the monarch or other ruling party. A strongly united nation offers two chief advantages in such a world as the one we live in, it appears to be a more daunting foe which other nations are less likely to attack, and if it is attacked it can marshal far more resources with which to defend itself.</div><div><br></div><div>Jay suggests we perform a though experiment. Imagine what the history of Britain would have been if the Britain consisted of a loose confederation of Scots, Welsh and English rather than consisting of a strong union under a monarch. Likewise, he invites us to imagine a state of affairs where America consists of thirteen sovereign states each with their own militia, their own border disputes and their own trade conflicts. Such a state of affairs would be very similar, he argues, to the city-states of ancient Greece, a loose confederation, prone to internecine disputes. If attacked, such a regime faces a daunting logistical problem of orchestrating thirteen independent supply trains for thirteen independent militias and negotiating a chain of command among the members of loose confederation. Foreign nations, he points out, will see this disordered state of affairs and act accordingly to take advantage of the situation to further their own interests.</div><div><br></div><div>Historically, Jays argument about strong nations being less likely to be attacked appears to have panned out well for the United States. Admirial Yamamoto's infamous words about Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor serving only to awaken a slumbering giant and to instill within it a ``terrible resolve'' seems to accurately represent the attitude of would-be belligerent nations for much of American history. During the twentieth century when two world wars were fought, much of Africa has entered into war the United States only suffered one attack by another hostile nation. All other assaults on America have been at the hands of non-state actors with little to lose by having their homelands invaded. (In fact, one can argue that the goal of al Qaida's assault on September 11, 2001 was an attempt to get the United States to invade the middle east and provide the impetus for Islamic countries to unite in the face of a common foe. Fortunately, the expected Islamic revolution and united front against The West did not materialize.) The unity and the strong central government of the United States certainly seems to serve the safety of its citizenry very well.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-42452653819469134102009-03-23T11:40:00.001-07:002009-03-23T11:45:39.665-07:00Federalist No. 1 and Political DiscourseWhen John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison first began writing the series of broadsheets that were to become known as The Federalist Papers, they first thing they did was to try to set the tone for political discourse. In one of the most serious and far-reaching debates that the early United States was to face, the form that the national government would take, it was important to these men to not only address the central question but to also highlight the manner in which the debate should take place. This was so because, in a way, the terms under which such debates would occur was the central question to the founding fathers. In the words of Hamilton who penned Federalist No. 1, the question was stark, ``whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice.'' Or is it more the case that we humans are ``forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.'' Hamilton's question is still very relevant. Is society capable of coming together to work out differences in civil discourse or is the resolution of such disputes only to be found through either one side bullying the other and the whims of fate?<br><div><br></div><div>The position of the Federalists, while not precarious, was certainly contentious. They were embroiled in an effort to replace the US national government under the Articles of Confederation with a stronger, more-centralized federal government. Factions opposed to the newly drafted proposal for a new constitution frequently accused Federalists of being would be tyrants who wanted to impose a coercive form of government on the people. Hamilton's response was that the Federalists were not going to stoop to making the same sorts of allegations of the other political parties. He put forth two primary reasons taking the high road. On the one hand, he alleged that his interlocutors were not necessarily bad men but perhaps either had poor judgment or were not cognizant of all of the facts at hand. On the other hand, he conceded that not everyone on his side of the debate was arguing with pure motives. Consequently, he argued that the question of adopting the new constitution should be decided on its own merits rather than on allegations of despotism against either side. But this is an uphill fight in Hamilton's eyes. Human nature, after all, seems to tend towards absurdity on the matter.</div><blockquote>Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has at all times characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.</blockquote><div>Unfortunately, the truth of Hamilton's observation about the eternal tendencies of political parties is still evident two hundred years after he penned Federalist No. 1. On one side of the field pundits such as Ann Coulter and Michael Savage do not hesitate to label those who disagree with them with descriptors such as <i>traitor</i>, <i>faggot</i>, <i>slanderer</i>, <i>appeaser</i>, <i>mentally-ill</i>, <i>godless</i>, and the like. Meanwhile on the other side of the field, Keith Olbermann has regular apoplectic fits of rage on the cable news magazine he anchors as he routinely condemns, not just the actions, but also the motives of his political enemies in segments called ``special comments.'' Worse, hyperbolic and unconstructive remarks of this sort are not restricted to those in the media. Senator Charles Grassley said of AIG company officers that ought to either ``resign or go commit suicide.'' The president of the College Democrats at George Washington university speaks of College Republicans as, ``conservatives who seek to destroy our country.'' Rather than discussing the relative merits of this idea or that idea, conservatives and liberals seem increasingly concerned about impugning the motives of those who disagree with them and crowding out the opinions of those who disagree. </div><div><br></div><div>When, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did when she was the First Lady, we attributes our political woes to a ``vast conspiracy'', there is no room left to debate the substance of the issues at hand. The discussions shifts from the facts that pertain to the case to the motives of the people arguing for this side or that side irrespective of the merits of this side or that side. This makes it exceedingly difficult to discuss important issues at the level of seriousness and nuance in which they should be discussed. When, as at present, the US is facing one of the most severe financial crises since the Great Depression, it would behoove all politicians and editorialists to discuss the pros and cons of various economic theories in light of the historical evidence rather than discoursing by publicly hoping one side fails or tarring one side as socialists. But there is remarkably little discussion over what history can tell us about Keynesian economics, monetarist policy, supply side economics, marginal tax rates and so on. </div><div><br></div><div>The closest thing to a silver lining in this particular cloud is that Hamilton's pessimism seems to not have panned out quite as badly as he suggested it would. Speaking directly to the idea of discussing public policy only in relation to the public good and not getting sidetracked by special interests, he claimed that such was close to being a pipe dream.</div><blockquote>Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected.</blockquote><div>While it certainly is the case that our mass media tends to be more focused on sporting events, the untimely deaths of starlets, and escapades of Paris Hilton and Christian Bale. Sometimes, it may seem on the surface that no serious discussion is going on. But the fact of the matter is that as reprehensible and insincere as some of the political discourse is in the US, judged by historical standards, things are far better than they were. While the RNC may have tried to give the Democratic party a black eye by credentialing Michael Moore at the 2004 national convention in order to try to make him the public face of the Democratic party, a favor which the Democrats are currently trying to return by making Rush Limbaugh the public face of the Republican party, the abrasive and hateful rhetoric being used to day is an order of magnitude less than it was in the early days of our republic. One need only consider the venomous campaign between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams with allegations of pimping, whoring, bigamy, adultery, and drunkenness on the parts of the candidates and their spouses on both sides to see just how far things have come. While there are certainly still partisans that use that sort of rhetoric, those that do tend to be marginalized by their respective parties. </div><div><br></div><div>Whatever progress has been made, however, it has not been enough. Politicians and pundits all along the spectrum are spending far too much time playing to the camera to encourage book sales, Arbitron ratings, and campaign donations rather than fostering a real debate on the pressing issues that face the US. The news media, which makes its money by selling our eyeballs to advertisers, generally plays along because controversy serves up more eyeballs than a staid presentation of a multi-faceted policy debate. We as a nation still have quite a ways to go before we can say that we've reached maturity and, with that maturity, have attained the ability to speak with one another about contentious issues in a manner becoming adults.</div><div><br></div><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-28230560870353100402009-03-16T11:52:00.001-07:002009-03-16T11:52:56.161-07:00The Pilgrim Critique of Plato's Republic<div>When the Pilgrims first came to the New World, their economic structure was originally very close to that of the state socialism of the former Soviet Union. Being a private company with shares of the company equally distributed between the families that sailed to the New World aboard the Mayflower, the Pilgrims initially organized their settlement along very egalitarian lines. (The most notable exception being the servants of the families well off enough to own them.) With the survival of their community at stake, every family gained a share of the produce harvested from the fields, the game brought back by hunters and trappers, the goods traded by the native Narragnsetts, and the debts racked up by the new community as they purchased goods from the European traders. </div><div><br></div><div>This communal mode of organization served the Pilgrims well at first, especially when they ran into grave difficulties such as the great sickness of 1620. With disease striking the entire community and over half dead, ``that of 100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remained,'' that any survived at all is largely a function of the entire community pooling all of their resources [Bradford, William. <i>Of Plymouth Plantation</i>. Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1952), 77.]. Each family gave according to their abilities and took according to their needs, so to speak. Yet the Pilgrims soon found this radically communal situation to untenable over the long term. Once the great sickness had passed, people began to make excuses so as to avoid labor in the common fields. This, predictably, led to low yields at harvest which created a new crisis of shortage of food.</div><div><br></div><div>The solution to this new crisis by the Pilgrims was partial privatization of farming sometimes around the year 1623. Every family was given a plot of land on which they could grow as much as they could and keep the harvest for use by only their own household.</div><blockquote>So they began to think h ow they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have through great tyranny and oppression.</blockquote><blockquote>This experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. [<i>Ibid</i> 120-21.]</blockquote><div>Bradford's main point, of course, is to highlight the increase in productivity and willingness to work that came about by using private rather than communal plots of land for farming. The governor did not have to resort to force or punishment to goad those who formerly complained of being ill or otherwise occupied into working. The enticement of keeping the fruits of one's own labor was motivation enough to bring about a far larger harvest. And for the Pilgrims, such bounty meant the ability to live through the winter. Yet, we should also note that the Pilgrims did not entirely abandon the collective model in other areas. Nor did they give the plots of land they worked to the households to hold in perpetuity. Inheritance of the land was explicitly denied.</div><div><br></div><div>Criticism of Plato's <i>Republic</i> was not new to the Pilgrims. Aside from several works contemporary with the colonization of the New World such as Jean Bodin's <i>de Republica</i>, Plato's pupil Aristotle criticized the <i>Republic</i> on the grounds that collective farming will inherently lead to an increase in conflict within the community, ``if both in the enjoyment of the produce and in the work of production they prove not equal but unequal, complaints are bound to arise between those who enjoy or take much but work little and those who take less but work more'' [<i>Politics, </i>1263a]. Plato goes on to argue that Plato's attempt to redefine `mine' to mean `ours' results in what later authors would call `the tragedy of the commons.' When everything is common to all, no one person feels the responsibility that comes with ownership to the same extent as when `mine' actually means `mine.' Further, Aristotle claims that Plato made this mistake because he mistook the city for the family writ large. Seeking to make the relations that exist within the family the same as the relations between citizens, Aristotle argues, Plato fundamentally misunderstood what it means to be a city.</div><div><br></div><div>And even Plato himself moved away from the radical communism of the <i>Republic</i> in his later work on politics the <i>Laws</i>. In the <i>Laws</i>, the Athenian Stranger (whom some suggest is Socrates) architects a city where every household owns two plots of land, one close to the city and another on the outskirts and are free to use these plots as they see fit contributing a certain portion to city in the form of taxes. In this system, rather than the extreme egalitarianism of the <i>Republic</i>, society was modeled in four bands with each band having a floor and a ceiling with regards to wealth. Households that fell under the floor would be subsidized by the city. Households that exceeded the ceiling would have excess goods confiscated.</div><div><br></div><div>So Plato was obviously aware that his idealized city in the <i>Republic</i> was not without problems which would materialize if anyone used it as the model for an actual city. And in fact we have to ask if the <i>Republic</i> is even meant to be taken as a blueprint for a city. In the beginning of Book II of the <i>Republic</i>, Socrates posits that the city is a macrocosm of the soul and that, since a city is larger than a man, it will be easier to see what justice is in a city than it is to see what justice is in the individual soul. So if justice can be found in the thought experiment of an ideally ordered city, then perhaps the interlocutors of the dialog might be able to better understand justice in the soul. Hence, it would appear that the idealized city of the <i>Republic</i> is not meant to be a model city which can be used as a guideline for a political constitution. Rather, it is supposed to be a though experiment by which we who read it can follow in order look inside our own souls. The radical unity of the city that Plato proposes in the <i>Republic</i> is supposed to be the model for the unity that ought to obtain within our own souls rather than a model for an actual city.</div><div><br></div><div>Which leads to an interesting question. If the political life of a city really is analogous to the soul and if the radical unity of pure communism is untenable in actual political life, does that not imply the soul can also suffer an excess of unity? In the Platonic tradition, especially in the Neoplatonic school of thought, the unity of the soul plays such a role of tremendous importance. But in the experience of the Pilgrims, and that of countless others over the last twenty-five hundred years since the <i>Republic</i> was written, is that aside from unity, a city also needs diversity. By the end of the late Colonial period in the US, the Federalists gave explicit voice to this idea in their conception of political life consisting of competing interests reaching a public good by each pursuing their own private goals. Does the soul of a human being, then, need an analogous level of diversity in order to be healthy or would such a split within the soul be schizophrenic? Or, rather, does this point out to the failure of Plato's idea that the constitution of a city tells us something of the constitution of the soul?</div><div><br></div><div>Those questions are not easy questions to answer. Searching for answers to them invariably leads to more questions. All these years after Plato's <i>Republic</i> and Aristotle's <i>Politics</i>, there is still no unproblematic definition of what political life entails, its relation (or lack thereof) to the human soul, or even what it means to be a city. That there are no completely satisfying answers to these questions should not inhibit us from searching for them. For in searching for these answers, we do find answers to unexpected questions. Take the Pilgrims as an example. If they thought through the implications of Plato's <i>Republic</i> perhaps in those early years they would not have repeated his mistake regarding an extreme form of communal production of food. They may not have been any wiser about political life but at least their bellies would have been more full.</div><br /><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-39045203698557338592009-03-09T11:20:00.001-07:002009-03-09T12:50:16.266-07:00A Phenomenonological Account of Why Christianity Cannot Accept Gay Marriage<div>Many years prior to being ordained the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England, Rowan Williams gave a very interesting talk on the issue of human sexuality in front of a predominantly gay and lesbian audience, <a href="http://www.igreens.org.uk/bodys_grace.htm">The Body's Grace</a>. One of the first things that struck me was that the language Williams used was almost entirely phenomenological. Rather than formulating his argument in terms of deductive reasoning starting with Scriptures and Tradition as premises, Williams structured his argument in the philosophical language of Edmund Husserl who is the father of what is known today as the phenomenology. </div><div><br></div><div>That Williams' argument is phenomenological is easy to miss if one has not been exposed to writings in the phenomenological tradition. Every day words such as `presence,' `absence,' `bracketing,' `intentionality,' `perception,' and `identity' take on subtle differences from normal usage when used in a phenomenological context. Yet, filling in the meaning of many of these words from the phenomenological tradition makes Williams' argument fairly simple to follow. Once we do this, the strengths and weaknesses of Williams' treatment of the issue become much more readily apparent. To his great credit, Williams main point about what he refers to as the grace of the body is apodictic. If one understands his argument, its truth should be evident. Apodicity aside, however, his point is not adequate, it is neither a full nor complete depiction of human sexuality. </div><div><br></div><div>A key concept to understand before analyzing Williams' argument is the idea of bracketing. Phenomenology differs from most other approaches to philosophy because it considers the process of human perception of the world as a two way street. In the phenomenological attitude we bracket the world, we set ourselves apart from it in a manner of speaking. We do this in order to get a clearer idea of how things work, so that we can understand that our perceptions of the world are part of a manifold. On the one hand, they are given by that which is outside of us. But on the other hand, they are also created through our own cognitive processes. In the words Monsignor Robert Sokowloski when we bracket the world, ``we look <i>at</i> what we normally look <i>through</i>'' [Sokolowski, Robert. <i>Introduction to Phenomenology</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.]. When we do this, we perceive both our perceiving the world as a given and creating the world as an object of perception.</div><div><br></div><div>We need to keep in mind when we do this, that we are not simply creating our own reality. There are two sides of the coin that make our conception of the world into a complete whole. Only when we perceive reality as it exists in a manifold of the world as both given to us and in the cognitive structures through which we apprehend the world as given to us that our intention of the world is complete. If we focus entirely on our cognitive structures under our conscious and unconscious control to a certain extent, we miss the world as given to us. If we focus entirely on the world as given to us, we miss the structure through which we give the world meaning. And to make things more complex, we only know truth when these two different ways of looking at the world correlate.</div><div><br></div><div>It is in this twofold manifold of reality that Williams brings up the subject of human sexuality as depicted in the novels of Paul Scott. The character in the novel that Williams wants to use to address his point, Sarah Layton, is both given a sexual identity through her travails and eventually comes to perceive her own sexual identity through self discovery. I have not read the novels in question, but from Williams' treatment, it seems as if Sarah is straight rather than gay in Scott's novels. So it is important at this point to not conflate Sarah discovering her sexual identity with that idea that in doing so, she discovered that she is gay. From my reading, such is not implied. Williams starting point is not the question of homosexuality as sexual identity but the more basic notion of sexual identity is something both created by the subject and given by the world. Identity, which includes sexual identity, is part of the manifold of what it means to be human.</div><div><br></div><div>The above is the apodictic portion of Williams' argument, the reality of the discovery of an individual's sexuality as part of that person's identity. Williams does not address just how great of a mistake neglecting this issue has become within most Christian circles. To reject the notion that the sexuality of gay people is part of who those individuals are as human beings is to reject them for who they are. The manifold of identity is comprised of a tremendous number of factors. Some of these factors are given to the individual: genetics; the balance of hormones in the mothers womb during gestation; upbringing; accidents; and so on. Other factors are created by the individual: how a person perceives and interprets various events; feelings; emotions; cognitive structures; and the like. Who we are as human beings is found only in our identity in this manifold. To reject part of what is that manifold is to reject the reality of the identity of that individual.</div><div><br></div><div>Williams ends his discussion of Sarah with her comprehension of herself as a giver of sexual pleasure to others. While he does not explicitly link this to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and relationship of the triune Godhead to creation, it seems to me that he certainly trying to imply such a link when he states the following. </div><blockquote>The whole story of creation, incarnation and our incorporation into the fellowship of Christ's body tells us that God desires us, as if we were God, as if we were that unconditional response to God's giving that God's self makes in the life of the trinity. We are created so that we may be caught up in this; so that we may grow into the wholehearted love of God by learning that God loves us as God loves God. </blockquote><div>The parallel that Williams sets up illustrates that Sarah's discovery of her own sexual identity, no matter how founded in immorality it may be, echoes the relationship that creatures are designed to have for their creator. Consequently, Williams seems to be saying that Christians have no standing to reject Sarah's sexual identity as a real discovery of the grace of God regardless of whether or not her identity as a sexual being falls within the traditional norms of Christianity. By extension, then, he seems to be implying that Christians certainly have no standing to reject the love of two gay partners for each other as expressed in a life long commitment. He is effectively suggesting that such love, to a far greater extent than Sarah's illicit affairs, necessarily illuminates the partners involved with the grace of God. Their love for each other brings them into greater understanding of the triune God.</div><div><br></div><div>As controversial as it may be in many conservative circles, I think that Williams' argument up to this point is undeniable. It is an argument about who we are as individuals and how we come to be that way. Unfortunately, shortly after this point in his talk, Williams moves away from a phenomenological method to one of historical overview and textual analysis of the Old and New Testaments. Rather than speak of the further implications of the human person, and the human family, being a reflection of the Holy Trinity, Williams goes on to critique a fair number of the traditional interpretations of the Holy Scriptures and deftly points out some of the problems that present themselves to theologizing about sexual identity. While calling for a new theology of the body's grace, he neglects the very tools he used in the first part of the essay to uncover some of the meaning behind human sexual identity. These same tools are at his disposal to offer such a theological account.</div><div><br></div><div>The first step in moving beyond the textual analysis and historical critique presented by Williams is to consider Sarah's discovery of her sexual identity as a giver of pleasure to others as not only part of her identity as a whole human being but also as part of her whole sexual identity. If we were to take this one aspect of Sarah's sexual identity and conflate it for the entirety of her sexual identity, we would have a very lopsided point of view of what it means to be a sexual being. Likewise, if we were to mistake Sarah's sexual identity for the whole of her being, we would have a very lopsided view of what it means to be human. To be fair, Williams journey into the Old Testament to discover what Holy Writs says about the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs as sexual beings is something of an attempt to do this. Williams failing is not the textual analysis he does so much as the purpose to which he puts his textual analysis. He does not apply the results of his analysis either to Sarah as a sexual being or to Sarah as a human being.</div><div><br></div><div>I would hope that no great controversy would be generated if I suggest that Sarah's journey into her sexual identity in Scott's novels does not represent the fullness of what a sexual identity <i>ought</i> to be. While I have absolutely no qualms in observing that her experiences have led her into an experience through which she can better understanding the love that Christ has for humanity within Christianity, it is also the case that Sarah's understanding of that Holy Mystery will not be as complete and full as it would be if her discovery of her sexuality had occurred in the context of a more full and loving relationship. Sarah's discovery of grace, as it were, is one of a lesser good. It is a good that lacks some aspect of goodness that ought to be manifest in her discovery of her sexual identity. This does not mean her discovery of her self is not genuine or that it is false. But it does mean that her discovery of herself is not full and is not whole. </div><div><br></div><div>In fact, the events of her discovery of self put a limiting factor on that which she is able to discover. It is only by moving beyond the sorts of relationships she has had, that Sarah will be able to discover the full depth of her own humanity. This incomplete experience of grace presents an obstacle to Sarah in two ways, one limiting her in actuality and the other limiting her in potentiality. If she mistakes her actual partial understanding of grace for all of grace, she will never actually take the next step into the fullness of grace. If Sarah presumes that the partial way that she has experience grace is the fullest extent to which she is capable of experiencing grace, she will never realize that she has the potential to step beyond what she has already experienced into the fullness of grace. Without denying that Sarah's understanding of her sexual self is real, and without denying that her sexual experience helped bring her to greater state of grace from a lesser state of grace, we can assert that her understanding of herself is incomplete and a hindrance to her further spiritual growth.</div><div><br></div><div>In this context, I would argue that it should be clear that a life long commitment between two same partners would be a clearly superior context in which to discover and engage one's sexual identity than the experiences of Sarah. (Which I think is Williams' reason for using the example of Sarah to start with. But I could be wrong on that.) Such a relationship would offer many positive aspects of sexuality that Sarah's multiple relationships in Scott's novels lacked. And inasmuch as homosexual relationships offer much more positive aspects, they more fully reflect divine grace. But, even though they are a fuller and more complete good than many other forms of sexual union, in the Christian tradition such relationships are unable to be as complete and full as those desired for human beings by the Creator.</div><div><br></div><div>The text on which this tradition is made appears in the Old Testament, the Gospels and the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. In the words of Christ, ``Ye read, did ye not, that the One Who made them from the beginning `made them male and female,' and said, `On account of this a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be into one flesh?' Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh'' [Matthew 19: 4-6]. These words of Christ, quoting the book of Genesis, are referred to by Saint Paul in his letter to the Ephesians when discussing how the relationship between husband and wife is a mystery through which we can begin to experience the relationship that Christ has with the Church. The words of the Apostle pertaining to the mystery of the relationship between God and humanity are commented on by Saint Symeon the New Theologian.</div><blockquote>Truly, therefore, this mystery is great--and beyond great!--and so it will always be, because the same sort of communion, and union, and intimacy, and kinship, which the woman has with the man and the man with the woman, such--understood in a manner adequate to God and as transcending our reason--is the relationship which the Master and Maker of all has with all the Church, and with a single Woman: blamelessly, ineffably, inseparably, and individibly united to her, being and living with her as with the one whom He loves and holds dear. Thus in turn the Church, united to her most dear God, joins herself to Him as the whole body to its own head. [St. Symeon the New Theologian, ``The Church and the Last Things,'' On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Col. I, First Discourse, VII.]</blockquote><div>One can certainly argue, and many do, that there is nothing within Saint Symeon's analysis that prevents same-sex relationships from approaching the level of heterosexual relationships. But men and women obviously differ in biology and this biology presents the possibility of relationships between man and woman that are not possible between man and man or between woman and woman. In fact, if there were no substantial difference between the sexual union possible in heterosexual relationships and those possible in homosexual relationships, there would be no reason to be homosexual, homosexuality would add nothing of substance to a person's sexual identity. The argument that there is no difference in kind between sexual relationships between straights and gays is contradicted by the fact that being gay or straight is a substantial part of an individual's sexual identity.</div><div><br></div><div>Frequently, this difference between gay and straight relationships is reduced to the idea of reproduction. In his textual analysis, Rowan Williams took note of this and objects that if procreation becomes the primary, or even sufficient, focus of a sexual relationship that it harms our understanding of the relationship between husband and wife and, consequently, our understanding of the relationship between God and humanity and between the persons of the Trinity. But Williams does not sufficiently address the fullness of the proposition. He does not distinguish between the difference in relationships that occur because of the possibility of procreation rather than the necessity of procreation. Sexual union between man and woman, after all, does not necessarily result in reproduction but only the possibility of reproduction.</div><div><br></div><div>Further, Williams does not directly address whether or not the possibility of reproduction is part of why the union between man and woman is used by as a symbol of the love that Christ has for the Church. If we move back to the relationship of love between the three persons of the Holy Trinity, we can see that this love offers the possibility but not the necessity of generation. The overabundance of love that overflows into creation is an act of will, not an act of necessity, by the Godhead. This aspect of the relationships between the persons of Trinity, the possibility of generation, simply does not exist between two people of the same sex. </div><div><br></div><div>But we also need to be careful to not make a mistake. If we were to take the generative act as the entire basis of the difference between the persons of the Trinity we would be making exactly the error of which Williams warns us. If the relationship between the persons of the Trinity differs by more than simply the possibility of generation, then it follows that the man and woman as material beings differ materially in more ways than the possibility of procreation and that those differences tell us something about the Godhead. Men and women in the Christian tradition are made male and female not simply to be able to procreate but to reflect the differences between the persons of the Holy Trinity.</div><div><br></div><div>So in conclusion, from the Christian point of view, even a committed, lifelong relationship between two homosexuals do not offer the potential experiential fullness of grace that marriage between man and a woman does. While it is true that marriages between men and women often fall short of what they ought to be, the marriage itself is not a barrier to what the married partners can experience and come to understand about the grace of God. Sexual relationships between people of the same sex, then, are sinful in the original sense of the word, they fall short, they miss the mark. For Christians to recognize same sex unions as the full equivalent of marriage would be an affront to one of the chief mysteries of the Christian faith. Putting such relationships at the same exalted level as marriage would be a hindrance to the spiritual progress of both those involved in the relationship and those marriages between man and woman where the participants now inform their understanding of their own relationships based in part upon same sex unions. Because it would do damage to the understanding of marriage not only between the participants in the relationship but also in the understanding of marriage of all those who are married in the Church, it would damage the understanding of the love of God of all.</div><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-15097278324588283522009-03-02T18:06:00.001-08:002009-03-02T18:06:33.450-08:00Freedom of Religion in the Myth of the Pilgrims<div>Virtually every school aged child in the US is taught at an early age that the desire for the freedom to worship as the conscience dictates motivated the Pilgrims to brave a perilous ocean journey and come to the new world. And it is true that the Puritans left England in search of the freedom of religion. But that they found that freedom in Holland is generally not taught. Nor are the reasons for leaving Holland for the new world generally given. The freedoms that the Puritans sought in the new world were more economic in nature than religious and, in fact, they felt that Holland had too much religious freedom. In some ways, the Pilgrim flight to the new world was a flight <i>from</i> religious freedom.</div><div><br></div><div>The persecution of the Pilgrims in 17th century England is certainly hard to understate. Many of their members were imprisoned for their beliefs. Quite frequently charges were trumped up against them. It took them three attempts to even leave the country as at that time British subjects could not leave the country without permission of the crown. The first time they were stopped by the authorities. The second time they were betrayed by the captain hired to smuggle them out of the country who turned them into the authorities for a bounty while keeping all of their belongings. On the third attempt, they finally were able to leave the country and settle in Holland where they began a life of manual labor. While the Pilgrims did find the freedom to worship according to their own consciences in Holland, their economic choices were severely limited. Between language difficulties and Dutch laws regarding vocational occupations, the Puritans found that the only jobs open to them were ones of physical labor.</div><div><br></div><div>In his tome on the Pilgrim experience, <i>Of Plymouth Plantation</i>, the eventual governor of the Pilgrim colony William Bradford gave four reasons that the Puritans decided to emigrate from Holland to the new world. Their life of physical labor was difficult, so much so that many of the Puritans ``preferred and chose the prisons in England rather than this liberty in Holland with these afflictions'' [Bradford, William, <i>Of Plymouth Plantation</i>, Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 1952), 24.]. Further, this life of manual work ill-suited to a congregation increasing in age whose servants and children would not remain in such conditions. And under such conditions, in a place where the practitioners of other Christian sects tended to celebrate on Sundays with games and festivities rather than keeping it holy in somberness and sobriety in line with Calvinism, the Puritans were fearful that their children would abandon their faith for the ways of the native Hollanders or even to leave the community to join the English army. Lastly, the Puritans wanted to spread the Gospel to the remote parts of the world and the Americas were seen as such.</div><div><br></div><div>These four conditions can really be broken down into three: economic freedom, a religiously united community of the <i>correct</i> form of Christianity, and the opportunity to proselytize. From Bradford's account, it would appear that the economic freedom was the chief concern. As stated above, the life of manual labor that was open to the Puritans in Holland was so hard that some preferred English prisons. Those that remained in Holland also feared that they would not be able to keep up with the grueling physical work as they grew older. Further, They were also concerned that servants would abandon their masters and, even more importantly, that children would leave their parents. So rather than residing in a religiously pluralized nation where some other faiths might be more attractive to the children of the Puritans, the Pilgrims desired a home where there was only one religion, their own, enforced by the coercive power of the government. This religiously united community could then serve as a base from which to proselytize the native peoples of the Americas.</div><div><br></div><div>This fear that the Puritans had for the marketplace of religion and culture turned out to be well placed. Samuel Morison makes a note in his edition of Bradford's <i>Of Plymouth Plantation</i> that the ``fear of the Dutch `melting pot' was well taken; for the offspring of those English Puritans who did not emigrate to New England or return to England became completely amalgamated with the local population by 1660'' [Ibid, 25]. The twin engines of economic hardship and religious freedom threatened the very viability of the Pilgrim community as a community. It became clear to them that true freedom of religion was a threat to the their ability to preserve their way of life in the generations to come.</div><div><br></div><div>Those who are familiar with the story of the Pilgrims might object that the settlement at Plymouth did have freedom of religion. After all, in response to the accusations by preacher John Lyford that they only allowed those of their sect to settle, Bradford wrote that the Pilgrims, ``were willing and desirous that any honest men may live with them, that will carry themselves peaceably and seek the common good, or at least do them no hurt'' [Ibid, 153]. But this reply from Bradford neglects that freedom of conscience at Plymouth was a very Hobbesian affair. Honest men and women might be able to believe whatever they want, but if they did not conform their actions to Puritanism, they were punished. </div><div><br></div><div>For example, on Sundays men were sent out to search all the places where it was common for people to socialize and anyone caught there rather at the Sunday morning service was forcibly brought to the service. As another example, when some complained that they ought not have to work on Christmas as it was a Holy Day, the day was given off but when some began feasting and playing games to celebrate rather than observe the day in solemn Puritan fashion, they were forcibly put back to work. In <i>Of Plymouth Plantation</i> one can further read the theological complaints lodged against this preacher or that minister as they were driven from the community. Throughout the work, one thing becomes very clear, that freedom to worship for the Pilgrims meant the freedom to worship <i>in the correct fashion as defined by the community</i> rather than the freedom to worship according to one's own conscience.</div><div><br></div><div>But one thing the Pilgrims did find in the new world was economic freedom. While the first years were incredibly difficult and over half of the original colonists died, the Puritans did eventually establish a community which thrived economically and in which their children could be ensured a somewhat secure future. That the search for and attainment of economic freedom did not make into the mythos of the Pilgrims taught to every American school child is a bit ironic. The myth that America was a land of economic opportunity and had streets literally paved with gold would eventually become known throughout the world. But rather than emphasize that aspect of the Pilgrim experience, what gets emphasized is the historically unsupported claim that what the Pilgrims sought in the new world was religious freedom. </div><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-37364934772106284632008-12-07T12:14:00.001-08:002008-12-07T12:27:16.605-08:00Seeking Justice in the City; Seeking Justice in the SoulThe twentieth century scholar of political philosophy Leo Strauss famously noted that ``no bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred. [Strauss, Leo. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0226777014?tag=theopirigorwr-20&camp=15041&creative=373501&link_code=as3"" title="The City and Man">The City and Man</a>. University Of Chicago Press, 1978] A more apt description of the world the Christian of the modern era finds himself in is hard to come by. The modern era has seen virtually every form of government imaginable, monarchies of varying degrees, dictatorships of every flavor imaginable, oligarchies, republics, kleptocracies, and democracies. Representing every possible political and social ideology, none of these regimes have managed to fundamentally change the human person. After all is said and done, evil still lurks in the heart of every man.</p><br /><p>Recognizing that this evil exists offends us as Christians. Seeing evil done violates our sense of justice. ``Its just not right,'' we say to ourselves. We become saddened and disappointed. Sometimes we despair. But sometimes we try to fix things and make them right. This last response is the driver for finding new modes of government by the Christian. But the cardinal problem is not the mode of government, but what lies in the hearts of both the governed and governors. Malice, evil and hatred are not problems that political science can conquer. Political science may be able to manage the consequences of evil, injustice, to a greater or lesser extent but political science can never root out malice, evil and hatred from the human condition.</p><br /><p>So this desire by the Christian to bring injustice to an end can never be fulfilled. At best it can only be given a taste of justice if a mode of government can be found that manages evil to a great extent. Far more likely, however, is that it will be frustrated. And at worst, if a particularly poor mode of government is attempted, it will result in far more injustice. When the last of these obtains, the mode of government which is an attempt to make society into a flourishing and complete whole, only succeeds in making a society less of what it ought to be.</p><br /><p>This same struggle goes on in our very souls. As Christians we sense that we are somehow not complete. We long to be made whole. We desire to have an abundant life, to act in a fashion worthy of creatures made in the image and likeness of God. And, through the grace of God, we can begin to approach such a mode of being. The difficult part, however, is that this process will not be made complete until judgment day. Until then we will be frustrated by our own thoughts, words, actions and choices. We will also be frustrated by events outside of our control. We must struggle through a world that is fundamentally broken by the bad choices of thousands of generations.</p><br /><p>This desire to be made whole sometimes lead to frustration, especially in light of Orthodox teachings about God. The prayers sung by the priest during the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom present a challenge to the Christian whose longing remains unfulfilled. The Prayer of the First Antiphon reveals God in the plenitude of His power.<blockquote>O Lord our God, whose might is incomparable, whose glory is incomprehensible, whose mercy is infinite, and whose love of man is ineffable, do thou thyself, O Master, in thy tenderheartedness look down upon us and upon this holy house, and grant us and those who pray with us thy rich mercies and compassion.</blockquote>Then in the Prayer of the Second Antiphon, the relationship of the Christian to God is revealed. <blockquote>O thou who hast bestowed on us these common and accordant prayers, and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy name, thou wilt grant their requests, fulfil even now the requests of thy servants as is expedient for them, granting us in this present age the knowledge of thy truth, and in that to come, life eternal. </blockquote>In the divine liturgy, God is first revealed as being a good God of infinite mercy and then Man is revealed as the object of Gods mercy and that God grants the requests of Christians, as may be expedient for them.</p><br /><p>That teaching, at least for me, is a hard teaching. To know that God will grant all of our prayers, all of of our hopes and dreams, but only inasmuch as they are expedient for us as individuals, inasmuch as they are appropriate for us fulfilling our purpose in the divine economy, is to know that there there is a certain sense in which we live in the best of all possible worlds. In this world, whatever struggles and challenges we are presently going through as Christians, those challenges and struggles are the exact challenges and struggles that God in his infinite wisdom and immeasurable mercy sees most likely to bring us to perfection as human beings created in His image and likeness. The frustrated longing we feel to create justice is sometimes unfulfilled because either the way we would bring this justice about is not proper or the `just' end that we seek is not so just after all. Our longing to be fulfilled in these situations is simply not part of Gods plan and is not to be.</p><br /><p>There is clearly a danger that this view can lead to despair, especially when our present struggles and challenges seem almost too much to bear. But it need not. As human beings, we have to face that we are not always cognizant of Gods plan. Outside of an angelic visitation or direct experience of God, we cannot know with certainty whether our attempts to bring about justice will conclude in the end that we seek. We do not know if God is testing our resolve. We do not know if God is throwing up obstacles to get us to switch our course. We can only pray and hope and seek to become more fully the image and likeness of God, to become closer to the perfect man. And there come times when we must accept that those things which we long for will not be given to us. For me, those are the hardest times of all, when I must recognize that this longing inside of me is going to remain unfulfilled in this life and I must be content to wait until the next to be made whole.</p>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-12677695477637092622008-12-01T09:39:00.001-08:002008-12-01T09:43:07.968-08:00Thoughts on Vampires and Salvation<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px">I have a confession to make. I am a sucker for vampire movies, especially ones that take a more traditional view of the undead. (I am also a sucker for zombie movies, but that is neither here nor there to the subject at hand.) I have always found it fascinating that in most variations on the vampire legend the question of eternal damnation becomes separated from the question of the will. Outside of a few rather interesting treatments, one does not choose to become a vampire but is made into a vampire unwillingly. While the plot arc of many vampire movies revolves around the salvation of a soul through choice, that choice is almost always made by a third party hero who chooses to save the victim and quite frequently who does so through some sort of self sacrifice. Salvation, in most forms of the vampire mythos, becomes a passive act outside of the will of the person whose soul is imperiled. Rather the soul becomes a mere trophy in a cosmic battle of good and evil.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px"><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px">I am not a vampire purist. I do not hold that there is any one true vampire fable by which all others should be judged in terms of how vampires are created, are capable of being killed, and so on and so forth. Two popular treatments do bother me: Anne Rice's <i>Vampire Chronicles</i> and Stephanie Meyer's <i>Twilight Series</i>. But it is not the lore contained within those so much as the way that vampires are made into heroes rather than villains. I do prefer the old fashioned treatments but some takes on the myth such as Richard Matheson's <i>I am Legend</i> were certainly done well and offered quite a bit of food for thought as explorations of what it means to be human. But as of the immediate present, I am not interested in exploring what it means to be human so much as what it means for a human to find salvation.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px"><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px">The interesting thing to me about the traditional myth of the vampire is how it seems to have morphed in the popular imagination from being a punishment, originally some evil doers were damned to roam the earth after death as penalty for heinous sins committed while alive, to being a state conferred by seeming chance as a particular vampire becomes enamored of a particular victim and chooses to make that victim into a vampire. In the oldest folk tales, becoming a vampire may not have been a choice, but it was at least the result of choices that were made by the person who would later become a vampire. By the time Bram Stoker wrote <i>Dracula</i>, even that element of choice had disappeared. By the time movie studies started adapting vampire myths, becoming a vampire became something almost mechanical, a victim was bitten once or thrice --depending on which novel, story or film-- and that was that, the victim became a vampire. The only real choices involved were the choices of the hero fighting against the creatures of the night to save their victims not only from death but from eternal damnation.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px"><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px">I would argue that this mechanical view of the workings of some sort of anti-grace is at least somewhat the result of a quasi-Calvinistic view of the world. In this system of strict double predestination, souls are chosen to be one of the elect or one of the damned from the dawn of time and the choices one makes have no role in bringing about one's salvation or damnation but only reflect the choice that has already been made by God. Similarly in vampiric lore, the choice is made not by the victim but by either the progeny of the devil himself (the vampire) or by the agent of God (the hero). The vampire and the hero lock in combat over the soul of the victim. The victim has no say, no choice. Whichever side is stronger in a test of wills wins the soul. The modern myth of the vampire is a akin in many ways to a deistic, dualistic Calvinism. On the one hand, the vampires have free reign of the world (at least at night) and have superhuman power and untold wealth. On the other hand, the heroes are very human, have limited resources and only have access to grace through relics (crosses, holy water, and things of this nature) which act in a very mechanistic fashion. The vampire myth is usually devoid of miracles, angels and saints. Humans are almost entirely alone in a world controlled by evil.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px"><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px">In some ways, I think this view is a product of industrialized society where most people feel trapped by circumstances. One cannot control where one is born or what resources one has while either growing up or making one's way in the world. Iit is true that there are some Ross Perots and Bill Clintons that are born into relative poverty and become massively wealthy or politically powerful (or both). But for the most part people born into families without the means to send them to college will not go to college and remain in the same social and economic status into which they were born. Without having connections in business and industry, it is difficult to find a good paying job. Without the means to spend four year or more earning a degree, it is difficult to get any job. Where people end up in life often seems predetermined. For many, it is hard to see how choices matter at all. Because of this, it is easy for most people to identify with the victim of the vampire. While we long to be able to make the choices of the hero, we feel trapped by a world controlled by powerful creatures of evil and that our only hope is to be rescued by a hero who has the agency and will that we lack.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px"><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px">Many people tend to approach religion the same way. Taking the view that our very salvation is entirely out of our control, many go through the motions of life waiting for a hero to pull them out of their existential misery. What they do does not seem to have any real meaning as the choices they make seem ultimately outside of their control. The world seems to them to more the playground of evil. God, if a God exists, does not get involved but lets the devil rule the world with only the odd hero or heroine with the strength of will to resist. And those that do resist usually end up being sacrificed in some way. The final destination of their souls seem to them to be outside of their own control and, most likely, will be beaten down by the forces of evil. Heroes, after all, are in short supply in world run by the evil and the powerful.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px"><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px">Such a view, of course, is far afield of the doctrine of the soul taught by the oldest and most ancient forms of Christianity. (Although, one could make the argument that it is very close to some of the views of a few different early groups of heretics.) Not only does orthodox Christianity hold that the God along with the angels and saints take an active interest in the world, but it also teaches the moral agency of every person who is created in the image and likeness of God. The apostle Paul used the word <i>synergoi</i> (1 Corinthians 3:9, usually translated as `fellow workers') to describe Christians in relationship to God. In the orthodox Christian world view, all people are (or at least have the potentiality to be) the hero of the vampire movie rather than the victim. </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px"><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px">If we find ourselves as the victim of the vampire waiting to be saved through the agency of someone else, it is only because we refuse to make our own choices not because we are unable to make our own choices. This is not to say that Christianity does not teach that we do not need divine grace in order to work out our salvation. Working out our salvation according to the Gospel rests upon the facts of the incarnation, crucifixion, death, resurrection and ascension of the God-made-man Jesus Christ. But grace does not appear in our lives as an action hero physically battling the forces of darkness to save our souls. Rather, it is this grace that allows us to make the choices that lead us to being that very hero as a fellow worker of the Divine. Unlike the victim in a vampire movie that lies waiting to be bitten or for the hero to drive a stake through the vampire's heart, we have the choice to either accept or reject the advances of the vampire. We cannot choose whether or not evil is present in our lives be we can choose whether or not we will actively take part in that evil or whether or not we will try to stand our ground in the cosmic battle for justice in our souls.</div><div><br /></div>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-86062885836658421572008-11-24T08:01:00.001-08:002008-11-24T08:03:48.943-08:00A Thanksgiving Reflection<div>In his last sermon before his death Father Alexander Schmemman made a very bold claim, ``Everyone capable of thanksgiving is capable of salvation and eternal joy.'' Bold as this claim may be soteriologically, it is far bolder as an insight into human nature. For we all, by virtue of being created in the image and likeness of God, are created with the capacity to be thankful. We all have the ability to receive the blessings we are given with gratitude, to look those who provide us with the things we want and need in the eye and be thankful. Sometimes we give voice to our thanks. Sometimes we do not. Either way, receiving what we have been given thankfully is something that happens in our hearts and souls, not in our words or deeds. When the words and deeds do come it is because of what first happens in our hearts. If they do not come, it doesn't necessarily mean that our hearts are hard. (Although, it may mean just that.) It may just mean that we are unable or unwilling to express the interior gratitude that we feel.</div><div><br />But one of the amazing things about the human condition is that we can change who we are. While we are all created in the image of God, we are also creatures with souls and bodies whose thoughts, words, and deeds affect who we are in our hearts. Our choices shape us no less certainly than the breath of God that first animated each of us in our mother's womb. When we center our minds on the virtues, our words are virtuous and predispose us to act virtuously. When we center our minds on vice, our words are harsh, spiteful, envious, lustful and predispose us to act shamefully in a manner unbecoming creatures who were created in the image of God.<br /><br />Over time these choices that we make shape us and mold us for good or for ill. The third century Christian mystic Origen of Alexandria observed that ``The sun, by one and the same power of its heat, melts wax indeed, but dries up and hardens mud: not that its power operates one way upon mud, and in another way upon wax; but that the qualities of mud and wax are different, although according to nature they are one thing, both being from the earth.'' This wondrous capacity for choice can bake our hearts like hardened mud in the heat of the sun or soften our hearts like molten wax in those same rays of warmth. How we all choose to use our capacity as the children of God determines whether we have a heart of mud or a heart of wax. How we direct our thoughts, what words we say, what actions we take all shape us and determine just what our interior disposition is.<br /><br />This interior disposition is entirely the difference between heaven and hell. For the rays of invisible light that are the energies of God are inescapable. God is present everywhere and in all things. God does not punish the sinful by hiding Himself nor reward the blessed by gracing them with His presence. Rather, as Doctor Alexander Kalomiros states in his essay <i>River of Fire</i>, the ``attitude of the logical creatures toward this unceasing grace and love is the difference between paradise and hell.'' For those creatures ``who love God are happy with Him, those who hate Him are extremely miserable by being obliged to live in His presence, and there is no place where one can escape the loving omnipresence of God.'' In this life in a world that has been corrupted by generations of bad choices, we can never perfectly experience the love of God. But we can taste it. We can catch glimpses of it here and there. To those who make their hearts into wax, this is joy. To those who make their hearts into mud, this is horror. Come judgment day, this foretaste will be amplified by the removal of all corruption. Doctor Kalimiros continues:<br /><blockquote>The Light of Truth, God's Energy, God's grace which will fall on men unhindered by corrupt conditions in the Day of Judgment, will be the same to all men. There will be no distinction whatever. All the difference lies in those who receive, not in Him Who gives. The sun shines on healthy and diseased eyes alike, without any distinction. Healthy eyes enjoy light and because of it see clearly the beauty which surrounds them. Diseased eyes feel pain, they hurt, suffer, and want to hide from this same light which brings such great happiness to those who have healthy eyes.<br /></blockquote>So to repeat the words of Father Schmemman, ``Everyone capable of thanksgiving is capable of salvation and eternal joy.'' Being thankful tells us that our hearts are not completely hard. Being thankful tells us that we are still capable of receiving love. Allowing this inner gratitude to bubble up out of our hearts and into words and deeds shapes us into new creatures more likely to accept love from not only God but also from our brothers and sisters. Embracing this thankfulness is not only our very salvation but gives us a taste of heaven in this life. To be thankful is to become more fully the likeness of Deity itself, to be join into the ecstatic union with the Godhead in this life.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-38237711880849167492008-11-17T05:23:00.001-08:002008-11-17T05:25:10.547-08:00The Inherent Unfairness of a Flat Tax<div>In the 2008 US election cycle, one of the largest policy distinctions was between the John McCain's proposal to keep the top marginal income tax rate either at current levels or to cut it further and Barrack Obama's plan to increase the top tax bracket. Obama's plan raised hackles in some quarters and met with the criticism that his tax proposal was essentially socialist, being an income redistribution engine designed to spread the wealth of those who worked hard to get where they are to those who haven't worked so hard. Many commentators have claimed that this state of affairs is claimed to be unjust. But a system of marginal tax brackets, the bedrock of income tax system in the US for almost as long as the US has had a federal income tax, was not pulled out of thin air or implemented to punish those who are successful. Rather, the marginal tax in the US stems from a basic principle of economics, the concept of diminishing marginal utility that is shared by every school of economics from Austrian to Neo-Classical save for the minority of schools that stick to a labor based theory of price setting such as the Marxist and Neo-Ricardian schools. As such, to claim that a marginal system of taxation is inherently unjust is to both undermine the basis of modern economic theory and, if that theory is correct, argue against the premise that the the income tax system should model the way the world actually works.<br /></div><br /><div>The background of the criticism of Obama's plan is that the US tax code is overly complicated, obtuse, perplexing and in need of reform. No one seriously disputes this. But time and again, the idea also surfaces that that in order for an income tax to be fair, it must be a flat tax, that the same tax rate (and not merely the same tax system) must be equally applied to everyone subject to it. If someone paying tax on <i>x</i> dollars pays a lower effective rate than someone paying taxes on <i>x + n</i> dollars, the argument goes, this is unfair. Worse yet, the opponents of a system of marginal tax brackets argue, the tax is not only unfair, but it stifles the economy of the country as a whole because the tax code ends up punishing success. If working harder to make more money results paying a higher tax rate, those who would work harder may be demotivated to do with the net effect that most workers work less hard and productivity suffers. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>But the assessment of a marginal tax system as being inherently unfair ignores its basis in modern economic theory. The US tax system is built on system of marginal tax brackets because of the principle of marginal utility. This principle underlies supply/demand price theory upon which free markets are predicated. The principle is not a complicated one. The idea is that the first unit of a given good does not have the same value to the consumer as subsequent units of a good. While in most cases the value of additional units <i>decrease</i>, there are some situations where the additional value <i>increases</i>. (The decreases are usually in situations where the consumer approaches a tipping point. For example a person with one dollar who needs ten dollars to buy a particular good may not value an single additional dollar very highly until that person gets to nine dollars.)</div><div><br /></div><div>The traditional textbook explanation, created by economist <span style="color:#333333;">Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk<span style="color:#000000;">, deals with bags of grain. Imagine a pioneer with five bags of grain. The first is used by him as sustenance. Without the calories present in one bag of grain, he would starve to death. The second bag is also consumed by him so that he might not just live but also have the strength to work. While it is important for the pioneer to work, it is secondary to survival. The third bag is used as feed for other livestock so that the pioneer might have variation in diet. While important, it is less important than either having the strength to work or to survival itself. With the fourth bag, the pioneer makes whiskey which has certain uses but is less important than the product of the bags that were already consumed. With the fifth bag, the pioneer feeds some pet parakeets. Now if the pioneer had to give up a bag of grain, he would not curtail all the purposes to which he put the grain. He won't eat less, stop feeding the chickens or stop making whiskey. Rather he would choose to give up the use which was least valuable to him, feeding the parakeets. This is the principle of decreasing marginal utility, that for most things, every additional unit is less valuable to the owner than the subsequent unit.</span></span><br /></div><br /><div>But what happens if the grain of the pioneer is being taxed per bag? It is clear that any tax on that first bag will be far more injurious to the pioneer than the tax on subsequent bags of grain because if the farmer had only one bag, the tax would affect his very ability to stay alive. A tax on the second bag, while still very injurious in that it affects the pioneer's very ability to work, is not as harmful as a tax on the first bag. A tax on the third bag is less injurious still and by the time we get to the fifth bag, any tax on the grain becomes a very small amount of injury to the one paying the taxes. Now, even if the tax on the fifth bag of grain were exorbitantly high, it would be less injurious to the pioneer than any amount of tax on the first bag of grain. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The US tax system is structured to reflect this truth of the value of income to the earner. Most US taxpayers pay close to no tax on their first ten thousand dollars of income. For the 2008 tax year, even a single person with no dependents and no deductions pays only 10% on the first eight thousand dollars of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) which doesn't include the standard deduction or any non-taxable income such as pre-tax FICA, retirement and health care contributions. This is because this is the income that is needed for mere survival. A person making slightly more money will then pay 10% tax on that first eight thousand dollars of AGI and 15% tax on AGI between eight and thirty-two thousand dollars. So the money needed not to just survive but needed to buy necessary to work and the like is taxed at a slightly higher rate. AGI above thirty-two thousand dollars but below seventy-eight thousand dollars, the money needed not just to live or to work but to have a pleasant life, is taxed a bit higher at 25%. And so we go through all the tax brackets until we get to the highest at AGI earned above three hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars, money which is certainly not required for the necessities of life but which goes to making life more pleasurable, which gets taxed at the highest rate of 35%. To claim that there is some inequality in this money being taxed at the same level as the lowest tax bracket is to claim that it harms the tax payer to lose 35% of every dollar earned well above three hundred and fifty some thousand dollars as it does to lose 10% of the first eight thousand dollars earned. Such is a ludicrous allegation, especially since someone making enough money to be in this tax bracket still only pays 10% on that first eight thousand dollars of AGI. After all, no matter what one's AGI is, one pays the same amount of tax on every dollar within a given tax bracket.<br /></div><br /><div>But some might still disagree over this assessment of fairness. But consider that the principle of marginal utility is what underlies the demand curve in the Austrian school of economics and what underlies the indifference curve which in turn underlies the demand curve in Neoclassical schools of economics. Given that the demand curve is half of what determines equilibrium prices in a free market, the allegation that the principle of marginal returns leads to injustice is akin to the claim that free market economics is either fundamentally unjust or somehow does not model reality. But clearly most proponents of a flat tax reject the ideas that the free market does not work or is inherently unjust. Rather they assume that the free market model is predicated on the way that human beings actually behave. If so, the principle of marginal utility is fundamental to human nature and the claim that a tax system based upon this principle is unfair is to claim that human nature <i>ought</i> to be different than what it is. It is perhaps illustrative that most of the countries in the present day that use a flat tax are former Soviet Bloc nations such as Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, Russia and the Ukraine. Most of these countries retain large vestiges of their socialist past and have not yet made full market reforms in many areas. <br /></div><br /><div>One thing that the above mentioned countries with flat taxes do have in common is a phenomenal economic growth rate which may seem to support the assertion by flat tax proponents that a flat tax leads to higher economic growth. The problem, however, is that these countries are not moving from a marginal tax system to a flat-tax system but, rather, are moving to market systems with a flat tax on income from a state owned system of production where the state confiscated virtually all wealth and ran virtually all industry. An increase in productivity, then, is hard to tie specifically to a flat-tax rather than market reforms in general and the new possibility of large numbers of people earning money. Further, if a flat-tax lead to an increase in economic productivity, one would expect that those times in recent US history where the tax code was the flattest would have seen the largest percentage increases in productivity in the US. But the history of the eighties and nineties belies this. In real GDP per capita, the Clinton and Reagan administrations saw similar increases and the increases in both were dwarfed by those under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Given that the tax code was the flattest, and taxes in general far lower, during the Reagan administration, one would expect the Reagan administration to have presided over the largest increase in productivity. But it did not, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations did. The historical numbers seem to indicate that the flatness of income tax has little to no effect on the over all economy. What it does greatly affect is the ability of the government to finance itself. Both the budget deficit and the national debt soared under the Reagan tax cuts.<br /></div><br /><div>The way that there is no apparent relationship between the flatness of income tax productivity in the US can be easily be explained by the principle of marginal utility. It may be true that paying higher taxes on incomes in higher brackets might lead workers to view each additional dollar of income as less valuable. But the principle of marginal utility suggests that rational economic agents will already view each additional dollar in income as less valuable than the previous dollar of income. It is not clear that the decrease in utility of additional dollars of income in a marginal income tax system is any more demotivating than reality itself. The fact of the matter is that most workers have always felt that additionally earned dollars, even though less valued than previously earned dollars, have been worth pursuing. A proper marginal tax system will never reach the 100% tax rate and, consequently, always allow a earner to be better off by earning one additional dollar, even if they move to the next tax bracket. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>So in conclusion we see that a tax system built upon marginal tax brackets as presently used in the US is the most just in that it harms each individual taxpayer the least. It taxes the income needed the least the most and it taxes the income needed the most the least. To claim that this state of affairs is unfair is to allege that one of the fundamental suppositions behind setting prices in a free market is likewise unfair. Further, the claim that a marginal tax system hampers US productivity simply is not justified by the history of increases in real GDP in recent US history relative to the increases and decreases in the flatness of the US tax system. Why this is so is explained by the principle of marginal utility, workers are already expecting less value in each additional dollar earned. The two largest arguments for a flat tax, then, fail to be persuasive on either the basis of economic theory or the empirical data from the economic history of the US. Rather, the US should maintain its present tax system based on marginal brackets with tax reform being applied to those areas that really do need to be reformed: confusing, byzantine regulations; perverse incentives; tax brackets that disproportionately affect the upper-middle class. Ronald Reagan's goal of a tax return that can be filled out on a single post-card sized form is possible with a marginal tax system. The only thing that makes a marginal system different from a flat system in that regard is the use of a look up table rather (if I make <i>x</i> dollars, I pay <i>y</i> taxes) rather than multiplying <i>x</i> dollars by <i>y</i> percent.</div>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-33518602937390598562008-11-10T04:43:00.001-08:002008-11-10T19:22:40.130-08:00Why Does the One of the Most Religious Countries in the World Have One of the Most Liberal Abortion Policies in the World?<div><span style="font-size:100%;">Recently I was on the campus of the Catholic University of America and walked past a display of 4,000 small flags each set about a foot apart on some green space. A sign near by stated that each flag represented one of the four thousand children aborted by their mothers in the US every day. That number is a hard number to comprehend without such an image right before one's eyes. But it also brings up an interesting paradox. The United States is clearly one of the most religious nations in the western world by almost any measure, yet our abortion policies are more liberal than almost anywhere else in the developed world. But this paradox is not a contradiction. The status </span><span style="font-size:100%;">quo</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> of such liberal abortion laws benefits both of the two major political parties in the US by helping to energize their respective bases which disincentivizes both parties from taking any practical action by either reforming abortion laws or taking pragmatic steps to reduce the perceived need for abortions despite what their respective party platforms might say.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The Republican Party's behavior on abortion exemplifies the behavior of the king's first son in one of Jesus' parables of the two sons in the vineyard. When asked to go work in the vineyard, the second son ``answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.'' Outlawing abortion has a been a plank of the Republican party platform since the Supreme Court first overturned a blanket ban of abortions in Roe v. Wade. Since then, the Republican Party has controlled the presidency for twenty years, both houses of Congress for ten years, the majority of Supreme Court justices for sixteen years, and the </span><span style="font-size:100%;">trifecta</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court for four years. Yet not only has Roe v. Wade not been overturned but no federal law has been passed to put any limits on abortions within the guidelines available for doing such under Roe v. Wade. Outside of policy set within the executive branch, for example whether or not abortions can be performed by US Military hospitals, there has been virtually no change with regards to US policy with regards to abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided regardless of how many branches of government that the GOP has controlled.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;">However much the Republican Party might fit the parable of the two sons, the Democratic Party is certainly not its counterpart. Unlike the `good son' of the parable who ``said, I will not: but afterward he repented and went,'' the Democratic has consistently said that it is categorically behind a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. Despite the refrain from many Democratic politicians that they want to make abortion safe, legal and rare, almost all of the Democratic effort on the abortion issue has focused on the legal aspect. Factions within the Democratic Party, such as Democrats For Life of American (</span><span style="font-size:100%;">DFLA</span><span style="font-size:100%;">), have consistently tried to get legislation to the table to put into place policies that would reduce the number of abortions without making it illegal but have not been able to get any traction within their own party. For that matter, they've not even been able to get any traction within the Republican Party. One would expect an internal faction that disagrees with an important plank of its own party to be marginalized but it is not so clear as to why the policies that </span><span style="font-size:100%;">DFLA</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> would like to see enacted as law don't get any consideration from across the aisle.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The political advantage gained by the Democratic Party in unequivocally supporting a woman's right to choose is obvious. In the last two election cycles, South Dakota, one of the most conservative states in the union, emphatically voted down two different attempts at instituting an almost complete statewide ban on abortion. There is a very large segment of the population that supports the legality of abortion and the Democratic Party has been trying to tap into that population ever since Roe v. Wade was decided. One can speculate that the party leadership thinks this segment of support is so important that it is unwilling to entertain policies such as the 95-10 initiative put forth by </span><span style="font-size:100%;">DFLA</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> as any positive action in attempting to reduce the number of abortions might be construed on the part of some pro-abortion groups as the Democratic Party getting soft on the issue.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;">But what is harder to explicate is why the Republican Party has not used the power that it had to attempt to limit abortions so far as it can. As an acquaintance of mine acutely observed in a casual discussion, the GOP has taken an all or nothing approach to the subject and are entirely unwilling to compromise. One would have thought that, at minimum, that the GOP would have sought out European style policies that restrict late term abortions save in exceptional circumstances such as the life of the mother so that the US was no longer the only nation in the western world that has virtually no restrictions on abortions. While exact numbers are hard to come by, the best estimates put the rate of third trimester abortions at 1.4% of all abortions meaning that a ban on late term abortions save for when the health of the mother was in question might prevent thousands of abortions every year. Or failing that, one would have expected them to at least reach out to </span><span style="font-size:100%;">DFLA</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> to implement policies designed to reduce abortions even if they are not banned. But the fact of the matter is that, save for a few administrative policies dictated by the executive branch, there has been no positive action by the Republican Party. The consequence is that although the national abortion rate has fallen every year since its peak in 1992, there has been no significant difference in the reduction of abortions with regards to which party has controlled the White House, Congress or the Supreme Court.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The conclusion that I am tempted to draw from the present state of affairs is that the leadership of the GOP believes that it benefits from the status </span><span style="font-size:100%;">quo</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> and, therefore, places no importance on the anti-abortion plank of the party platform. If the GOP were able to get a constitutional amendment passed that outlawed abortion or if the GOP were able to bring US abortion policies in line with those of the western world, the GOP would lose the time, energy and support of a large number of single issue voters. So long as the preachers and pastors of the religious right continue to conflate with supporting Democratic candidates with death itself, the GOP reaps very large gain from very little investment. This brings to mind the way operatives like Jack </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Abramoff</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> would refer to his lobbying clients as troglodytes while taking vast sums of money from them and doing little in return. But at least with </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Abramoff</span><span style="font-size:100%;">, he was only cashing in on the hopes of his clients to make money. Today's GOP is exploiting the desire of the religious right to save the lives of innocents.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;">One can argue that the Republican Party has been active at the state level in the battle to prohibit abortion because US law is not only legislated at the federal level. Over three-fifths of US states have some sort of limitation on late term abortions in line with European legislation (although some of these bans are unenforceable because they are contrary to the Roe v. Wade). One of the most misunderstood facts about Roe v. Wade is that the decision does not make the practice of banning abortion unconstitutional; it makes the </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">unconditional</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> banning of abortion </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">prior</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> to the point of viability of the fetus unconstitutional. Nevertheless even where abortion is limited by law, those laws are seldom enforced and even if they were strictly enforced, relative freedom of travel in the US merely makes abortions in states where there is a ban slightly more difficult to obtain as travel to another state is required. So long as abortion without limitation is legal within the US in some state, banning abortions at the state level is effectively meaningless from the perspective of attempting to stop abortions as a whole.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The silver lining in the dark cloud of the two major parties in the US exploiting the status </span><span style="font-size:100%;">quo</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> for their own benefit is that the number of abortions performed every year in the US has been in constant decline since its peak as mentioned above. While the Democratic and Republican Parties are jockeying for position, the rest of the US is slowly coming to understand that abortion is not the only option. The mood of the country seems to be changing. Whereas in the eighties, hit movies like </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">Fast Times at </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Ridgemont</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> High</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> and </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">Dirty Dancing</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> presented abortion to be the best (or even only) choice to young, unwed women, today's films aimed at youth like </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">Knocked Up</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> and </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">Juno</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> celebrate the choice of young women who find themselves pregnant and decide to carry the pregnancy to full term. So perhaps there is hope that as the new generation comes of age and enters political life that those who really believe in life will work to transform both parties. Somewhere between the extremes of abortion being legal for any reason at any time and abortion never being legal at any place for any reason, there is room for both sides to come together to work out something better than what we have now. Few, after all, would argue that abortion is a </span><i><span style="font-size:100%;">good</span></i><span style="font-size:100%;"> thing. Even those who argue that abortion should be completely unrestricted concede that a world where there was no need to have an abortion would be a better place.</span></div>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-81307263030924564522008-10-16T07:48:00.001-07:002008-10-16T07:51:56.464-07:00Gay Marriage and Arguing Religious Points from Non-Religious Premises<div><font size="3">One of the interesting aspects of the recent Connecticut Supreme Court case Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health (</font><i>Kerrigan</i><font size="3">) was the way that part of the argument against allowing gay marriage consisted of the religious doctrine that marriage is exclusively a relationship between one man and one woman and that this argument was attempted to be presented in non-religious terms. On the one hand it is tempting to brand such attempts as trojan horses which are entirely subterfuges designed to get particular religious views into the public discourse. But on the other hand, regardless of whether or not the argument is being presented entirely for religious reasons, it is the argument itself that must be considered rather than the motivations of the people putting forth the argument. In this particular case, the claims of the biological argument put forth by Patricia and Wesley Galloway in an </font><i>amicus curiae</i><font size="3"> brief and written into the dissenting opinion by Justice Peter Zarella clearly show some of the limits of attempts to argue for religious doctrine on the basis of non-religious premises.</font></div><br /><div><br><br /></div><br /><div><font size="3">In </font><i>Kerrigan</i><font size="3">, the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned Connecticut's civil union statute because of its language explicitly defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman</font><font size="3">. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the case was the fact that some of the third parties filing </font><i><font size="3">amicus</font></i><font size="3"> briefs argued on the basis of biology rather than religion that gay marriage was not part of the social, historical and legal traditions upon which US law is based. (This view was recently spotlighted in the New York Times article </font><a id="s7:2" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/nyregion/12marriage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin" title="Using Biology, Not Religion, to Argue Against Same-Sex Marriage"><font size="3">Using Biology, Not Religion, to Argue Against Same-Sex Marriage</font></a><font size="3"> by Ray Rivera and Christine Stewart.) The secular argument argument put forth is perhaps most concisely expressed by Justice Zarella in his dissent. <br /></font><blockquote><font size="3">The latter conclusion [that marriage is defined exclusively as being between one man and one woman is inherently discriminatory against gays and lesbians] is based primarily on the majority’s unsupported assumptions that the essence of marriage is a loving, committed relationship between two adults and that the sole reason that marriage has been limited to one man and one woman is society’s moral disapproval of or irrational animus toward gay persons. Indeed, the majority fails, during the entire course of its page opinion, even to identify, much less to discuss, the actual purpose of the marriage laws, even though this is the first, critical step in any equal protection analysis. I conclude, to the contrary, that, because the long-standing, fundamental purpose of our marriage laws is to privilege and regulate procreative conduct, those laws do not classify on the basis of sexual orientation and that persons who wish to enter into a same sex marriage are not similarly situated to persons who wish to enter into a traditional marriage. The ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has its basis in biology, not bigotry. If the state no longer has an interest in the regulation of procreation, then that is a decision for the legislature or the people of the state and not this court. [Zarella, P., </font><a id="omy1" href="http://www.jud.ct.gov/external/supapp/Cases/AROcr/CR289/289CR152G.pdf" title="Dissenting Opinion of Justice Zarella"><font size="3">Dissenting Opinion in Kerrigan et. al. v. Commissioner of Public Health</font></a><font size="3"> ]</font></blockquote><font size="3">It is tempting in some ways to simply dismiss this argument as sophistry of sorts, to claim that Zarella one of the religionists that the Islamic philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi would describe as ``convinced of the validity of their own religion beyond any doubt, hold the opinion that they should defend it before others, show it to be fair and free it of suspicion, and ward off their adversaries from it, by using any chance thing'' [al-Farabi, Abu Nasr, The Enumeration of the Sciences, tr. Najjar Fauzi, M. in Medieval Political Philosophy ed. Lerner, Ralph and Mahdi, Muhsin, p. 30.]. Such dialectic theologians, al-Farabi, says, ``would not disdain to use falsehood, sophistry, confounding, and contentiousness'' because they divide non-believers into two groups: enemies and the simple minded. With regards to enemies, ``it is admissible to use falsehood and sophistry to ward him off''' and with regards to the simple minded, ``it is admissible to use falsehood and sophistry to make man seek his well-being.'' And, to be fair, I am not altogether convinced that Justice Zarella might not belong in that general category of believers that would use any means necessary.</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">But on the other hand, I think there is some value in investigating Zarella's claim on its own merits. First, regardless of any motives that may or may not lie underneath the way that Zarella put forth the argument, whether it is true or not doesn't really depend on those motives but on the argument itself. While I will concede that there are times when motives do have something to add to a discussion of a particular topic, I am not convinced that this is one of those times. Second, I think that examining this particular argument illustrates something interesting about a topic I have touched on earlier, what methods (if any) are appropriate for a Christian to bring their values and beliefs into public discourse. (See the article </font><a id="pkp:" href="http://doxos.blogspot.com/2008/03/argument-for-allowing-religion-to.html" title="An Argument for Allowing Religion to Influence the Secular State"><font size="3">An Argument for Allowing Religion to Influence the Secular State</font></a><font size="3">.) Consequently, I do not think it prudent to immediately lump Zarella in with the groups like the more fundamentalist intelligent design cabals that seeks to use intelligent design as a way to get young earth creationism into public schools.</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">So, let's examine Zarella's twin claims that ``the long-standing, fundamental purpose of our marriage laws is to privilege and regulate procreative conduct'' and that the ``ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has its basis in biology.'' These two claims have similar shortcomings. They conflate the part with the whole in inflating one aspect of the traditional view of marriage into its sole purpose. They neglect that from the biological and historical perspectives, the redefinition of marriage as between </font><i><font size="3">one</font></i><font size="3"> man and </font><i><font size="3">one</font></i><font size="3"> woman is a relatively late breaking idea in public discourse. They do not consider that marriage was a social understanding long before it was a legal arrangement and, consequently, the legalities of marriage will always trail the social understanding of marriage.</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">Through most of human existence, and even through most of human history, monogamy was relatively rare. Most societies were built on a polygamous social structure and, while some eras stood out for being predominantly monogamous, we can not realy say that biology teaches us us that marriage is the union of </font><i><font size="3">one</font></i><font size="3"> man and </font><i><font size="3">one</font></i><font size="3"> woman. At best, biology can teach us that marriage is the union of </font><i><font size="3">at least one</font></i><font size="3"> man and </font><i><font size="3">at least one</font></i><font size="3"> woman. The teaching that marriage is the union of </font><i><font size="3">one </font></i><font size="3">man and </font><i><font size="3">one</font></i><font size="3"> woman would have to wait until various religions and schools of philosophy made popular the notion that the household built around a single man and a single woman was the atomic unit of society. But even then, procreation did not always play an essential role in the theology. For example, in the creation story in the second chapter of the book of Genesis states that woman was created as a helpmate for man to create a new unity without specifying that the purpose of that unity is reproduction. Consequently, it isn't clear that procreation is the sole or even the primary purpose of marriage so much as companionship.</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">But by the advent of Aristotle, who argued that the nuclear family was the atomic unit of the city precisely because it takes both man and woman to procreate, things had changed a bit. But even in Aristotle, procreation is not the sole purpose of marriage. For Aristotle, the household needs the unique natural talents of both men and women in order to prosper. While it is true that procreation is certainly an element of the relationship between husband and wife, it certainly is not clear that this is the purpose for which marriage regulations were created in ancient Greece. During this same era, Judaism certainly began to develop a consistent philosophy of the central role of family and, by the time Christianity arrived on the scene, it found itself the heir to two very strong natural law traditions that put procreation very close to the center of the marriage relationship. Consequently, we cannot unequivocally side with Justice Zarella that biology informs the ancient definition of marriage. It certainly did to some extent inasmuch as biology influenced the understanding of religion and philosophy of just what it meant to be human. But even there, biology does not put a quantitative limit on the understanding of marriage or even suggest that a marriage where procreation is not possible is not valid. Nor does the history of marriage suggest that laws concerning what it means to be married came about because of issues of procreation.</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">The other problem with Zarella's view is that in the modern era, procreation has long ceased to be tied to marriage. On the one hand, widespread use of birth control, and even voluntary sterility, has made procreation a chosen option rather than a probable outcome for married couples. At present, it is entirely unremarkable in most of the US for a married couple to never concieve. On the other hand, an increasing use of artificial means of conception has eliminated the need for man and woman to come together within sexual union at all in order to produce progeny. Not only are single parents unremarkable in this day and age but single parents who are not parents through sexual union are unremarkable. Consequently, we must conclude that western society has largely decided that reproduction is neither the exclusive domain of marriage nor the reason for which marriage exists.</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">The outcome of this is that Zarella will find few individuals who do not share his views that are convinced by his argument. The reason is simple. When attempting to convince the other justices of his view, he did not rely on that which is (a) self-evident, (b) in-evidence, or (c) the conclusion of a demonstration built on premises that fit one of those three criteria. Rather, Zarella began from an interpretation of history that was arguable at best and tried to impose the lessons of that history upon those who did not subscribe to his view. This is exactly the wrong way to go about bringing religion into public discourse and it is no surprise to me that Zarella was unable to convince the other justices of the Supreme Court of Connecticut.</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">To argue for the imposition of this or that religious belief in the public forum, the place to start is with premises that are accepted by all (or at least most). As mentioned above, in a country where it is thought by increasing numbers of people that it is both normal to be childless in marriage if one should so choose and normal to have children outside of the bounds of marriage, arguing that the biology of procreation is the primary purpose of marriage is going to fall flat. Consequently, someone who wants to make the argument against gay marriage needs a different starting point. Just what that starting point might be, I do not know. A culture whose unique identity began with a document declaring three inalienable rights of `life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' does not seem to have a lot of room for opponents of gay marriage to bring a coherent argument into the public discourse. (For an argument about how US views of liberty bring about legal gay marriage as its end see </font><a id="adax" href="http://doxos.blogspot.com/2008/06/gay-marriage-as-one-of-many-ends-of.html" title="Gay Marriage as One of the Many Ends of Modernism and Examination of the Tension Between Church and State"><font size="3">Gay Marriage as One of the Many Ends of Modernism and as an Examination of the Tension Between Church and State</font></a><font size="3">.)</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">The best candidate I can think of is a long term project to put the family back at the center of society rather than the individual. This project would not start with arguing biology in court cases on individual rights. Rather, it would start with trying to change the way people look at society itself. If one could get the majority of Americans to view their families rather than themselves as the fundamental building block of society, then one would have room to argue for a specific definition of marriage that put concerns about procreation at the center of its purpose. But even then there is a problem. To argue that procreation is at the center of marriage does require the nuclear family to be the fundamental building block of society but it is not clear to me that the former necessarily follows from the latter. A family centered society is a precondition for the development of the argument but is not in and of itself sufficient to entail the necessity of the conclusion of the argument.</font></div><div><br></div><div><font size="3">In the end, my advice to those who want to formulate public policy based on religious principles that only a minority of Americans share is to get busy educating the next generation. Before a nation is ready to accept a minority religious view, it must first have its collective mind changed on secular principles which lead to that same view. While admittedly this approach can be taken by extremists who don't really care about whether or not their views are true in the eyes of secularists, I think it will result in a more vigorous and honest public discourse if all the parties involved get the premises that actually underly their views out on the table for examination. An honest and open dialog is not only a good mechanism towards moving towards a better understanding of truth, it is also a good way to engage fellow citizens as persons. Having these discussions is not only educational but is also unifying in that it increases the bonds of friendship between citizens.</font></div><br /><br>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-20132820972499820872008-10-08T07:56:00.000-07:002008-10-08T07:57:46.153-07:00Is it Really a Choice? The Libertarian Myths of Choice and Coercion as Applied to Labor and the Social Contract<p>One of the aspects of Libertarianism that is frequently difficult for the uninitiated to wrap their heads around is the notion of inviolable rights of Libertarianism (life, liberty, property) being negative rights and not positive rights. For example, the right to property is not a right to own a certain amount of property, or even any property at all. Rather, it is a right of an individual not to not have others take any property that has been justly acquired. The view that all rights are negative rights leads to counter-intuitive judgements such as the assertion that to-work or not-to-work is a choice of the individual regardless of whether or not there are any actual jobs. But intuitiveness aside, the most interesting aspect of considering choice in this fashion is that it seems to lead to an inconsistency with regards to the way that Libertarians view governments such as the US that compel the paying of taxes. It can be argued that, as the US is a government based on Social Contract theory which most Libertarians accept, the Libertarian can choose not to accept the contract and, consequently, nothing that the US government does to a particular Libertarian can be construed as coercion so long as the Libertarian has the ability to decline accepting the contract.</p><br /><p>Negative rights are most easily construed by considering that such rights are freedoms ``from'' something, not freedoms ``to'' do something. The classic Libertarian example of this is a person starving to death still has the right to life. The right to life does not entail some third party coming along to provide aid to a person in dire need. Rather, the right to life simply entails no third party will take another's life and that no third party will steal the food of someone and cause them to starve to death. Additionally, negative rights are seen by Libertarians as things that can be given up by the right holder. For example, a person who is starving to death and has food may freely exchange that food to a third party in exchange for money no matter how perverse the outcome for the staving person. According to Libertarians, individuals <em>always</em> have the capacity to contract exceptions to their rights with other individuals. In this way both wage labor and civil government become possible in Libertarianism. In wage labor, individuals part with the output of their labor in exchange for money. In civil government, individuals give up certain freedoms in exchange for security. In both cases, the giving up of rights needs to be voluntary or else the exchange is a violation of an individual's rights.</p><br /><p>Now, in part because because I am a Christian and in part because I am something of an Aristotelean, I would argue that the right to work is a positive right. I believe that there is both something mystical and something very natural about labor. A human being who does not have the opportunity to engage in labor to some extent lacks some of the externalities that are needed to be fully human. But that claim is neither here nor there to the Libertarian. Regardless of the fact that human beings need food and shelter to survive and labor is the chief mechanism by which those things can be attained, the Libertarian holds that the right to work is a negative right, individuals can choose to work or not to work but they have no right ``to'' be given a job. If there are no jobs available and an individual has no capital to start a business, Libertarian holds that neither society nor any other individual has an obligation to give that individual food or shelter as the choice to work is always a choice regardless of external circumstances.</p><br /><p>One might expect a similar outlook on civil government in Libertarian circles. But for the most part, Libertarianism seems to take the opposite approach and assert that when any state which infringes any of the rights held to be inviolable by the Libertarian, there is coercion involved. But under Social Contract theory, individuals are not coerced into giving up certain freedoms in exchange for security. To argue that any particular government is coercive, is to argue that there is no real choice involved in the social contract. But it seems to me that if an individual is truly free to reject all job offers but still have a choice with regards to whether or not to work, then an individual also has to be free free to reject all present states and still have a choice with regards to living under coercion or not. After all, any state that allows its residents to freely leave cannot be said to impose itself through force on those very residents. As freedoms are negative rights it follows that no individual has a positive right to a particular form of government. Further, Libertarians allow the giving up of rights through contracts, so long as individuals are free to walk away from the social contract, by permanently leaving the country for example, that government cannot be said to be coercive to the Libertarian any more than an employer who refuses to offer a job to someone who is unemployed and starving to death.</p><br /><p>So we must conclude that Libertarian has no ground to brand as coercive any state as unjust except for those states which deny their populace the ability to leave its boundaries. In the Libertarian view, the North Korean would certainly be an unjust regime. A country such as Singapore, where one can be arrested for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, would be a just regime because its citizens are free to reject the social contract by emigrating elsewhere. Someone who wants to be a member of a banned religious movement in Singapore does not have a positive right to do so from the Libertarian perspective but a negative right to do so. That right, the right to join certain religious movements, is a right that is voluntarily given up by the Singaporean and a right that can be taken back by a decision on the part of the individual Singaporean to rescind the social contract by emigrating elsewhere.</p><br /><p>Now let's be clear, this judgement that a repressive state can be <em>entirely</em> just seems to me to be absurd. (Libertarianism doesn't lead any room for shades of grey. Either a state infringes on inviolable human rights or it does not.) But notice where the absurdity comes from, the view that particular human rights are negative. The problem is not my application of all human rights being negative rights rather than positive rights but the very assertion that all human rights are negative rights. After all, the Libertarian conclusion about wage labor being truly free is no less absurd. It just is not as obvious because <em>at present</em>, jobs are relatively abundant in the US. There are relatively few people in the US starving to death or even suffering a significant case of malnutrition so we do not see, like we did during the Great Depression, widespread hunger and significant numbers of people dying from starvation. Part of this, undoubtedly, is from government funded relief programs and part of this, undoubtedly, is also due to the superior financial condition of the country. But when push comes to shove, if it can be truly said that workers have a choice about whether to work or not in any nation where their food and shelter is not guaranteed then to be consistent we also have to apply that metric to civil liberties and conclude that any any regime which allows its subjects to leave cannot be unjust.</p><br /><p>Libertarians, then, if they hold to their view of all human freedoms being negative rights and accept Social Contract theory, have no basis on which to criticize the US government for being coercive. At best, they can critique the US system on a practical level and say that `the US government would do well to build more freedoms into the law.' And I, for one, would actually agree with that limited statement. But few Libertarians restrict themselves to this more limited critique of the US. Instead, most Libertarians claim that because the US infringes on key individual freedoms that Libertarians hold as inviolable, the US is a coercive regime and, as such, is inherently unjust. In doing so, the Libertarian is inconsistent. For the Libertarian to be consistent, either some theory of politics other than the social contract needs to be adopted or it must be conceded that at least some human rights are positive rights. And as for me, I adopt the latter.</p>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-33076739582669770612008-10-02T06:19:00.000-07:002008-10-02T06:20:25.720-07:00The Unchristianness of Libertarianism<p>The United States of America is, and always has been, a land of contradictions with regards to the marketplace of ideas. The US public is very fond at holding contradictory views of one sort or the other. One good example is the number of Christians, both liberal and conservative, that hold to Libertarianism as a political philosophy without recognition that the core principles of Libertarianism run contrary to the core principles of Christianity. While it may be true that ethical praxis that some Libertarians attach to their philosophy does not directly contradict the ethical praxis of Christianity as epitomized in the Golden Rule, the fact is that Christianity is far more than adherence to the Golden Rule and at a fundamental level, the tenets of Christianity are contradicted by the tenets of Libertarianism. Be this as it may, Christianity certainly has a different role for freedom. Rather than material freedom being an inviolable human right as in Libertarianism, moral freedom alone is a necessary but mitigated good subservient to other goods in Christian anthropology. Further, Libertarianism holds that any state which violates inviolable human rights such as political liberty is inherently unjust. But this tenet of Libertarianism contradicts not only the anthropology of Christianity but also what little political philosophy is explicitly stated in the New Testament.</p><br /><p>Libertarianism tends to mean slightly different things to different people. Within the confines of this essay, I will follow Robert Nozick in defining Libertarianism as adherence to four principles but I will also add a fifth. The four principles Nozick applies to Libertarianism are:(1) every human person has an inviolable right to life; (2) Every human person has an inviolable right to freedom; (3) Every human person has an inviolable right to property; (4) Any government that infringes on any of these rights is inherently unjust. The principle I would add is: (5) a state that minimizes infringement on these inviolable human rights is both possible and a goal worth pursuing as it's attainment would be an improvement over any state that regularly violates any of these human rights.</p><br /><p>Christianity also means different things to different people. And, in fact, the what it means to be Christian is a far more controversial topic than what it means to be Libertarian. Those who self identify as Christians span a large spectrum of beliefs ranging from the very liberal to the very conservative with regards to deciding the role of Holy Writ in the Christian Experience, exactly which works of the New Testament qualify as Scripture, and what (if anything) outside of the Bible can be considered a valid part of Christianity. For the purposes of this essay, I will only consider forms of Christianity that can trace themselves through history to the apostolic age with an unbroken succession. I will defer the above questions to the traditional answers of those forms of Christianity.</p><br /><p>Some who would claim that Libertarianism and Christianity are compatible do so with the claim that there is nothing that is in Libertarianism that contradicts the either the three key commandments of the Gospels (The Golden Rule, The New Commandment to love each other as Christ has He loved his followers, and the exhortation to love God above all else) or the Decalogue. Let's assume that this is the case even though it is arguable that both the Golden Rule and the New Commandment is not compatible with the principles of Libertarianism. But the question remains of whether or not these three key commandments and the Decalogue are the only principles of Christianity. I would argue that Christianity is larger than it's praxis, the exercise of its moral teachings. After all, few would argue that Buddhism and Islam are compatible with Christianity on the basis that the five-fold path and the Five Pillars respectively are compatible with the Golden Rule and the Decalogue. Christianity also includes a distinct anthropology which implies a distinct political philosophy which includes the inherent justice of regimes which violate the human rights accorded by the Libertarian as inviolable.</p><br /><p>Freedom, after all, is not the summum bonum of Christianity. Christianity does not even accord freedom as an inviolable right. Rather some freedoms (not all freedoms) are presented as a necessary efficient cause to finding the full and abundant life which Jesus of Nazareth claimed to bring to his followers. A writing attributed by Saint Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain, probably mistakenly, to Saint Anthony the Great puts the matter succinctly, ``Regard as free not those whose status makes them outwardly free, but those who are free in their character and conduct.'' [Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, Phillip and Ware, Kallistos (tr.), The Philokalia: The Complete Text Compiled by Saint Nikodimis of the Holy Mountan and Saint Makarios of Corinth Volume I. Faber and Faber, London. 1979. p. 332.] The point is that Christianity does not view physical and political freedom as necessary conditions for the human person to attain the fullness of humanity. Rather these sorts of freedoms are akin to physical exercise, of some limited value (I Corinthians 7:21, I Timothy 4:8), but certainly not ends unto themselves and certainly not inviolable rights.</p><br /><p>But could not one argue that if Christianity sees <em>some</em> value in freedom that the Libertarian view of maximal human freedom does not contradict this? One could, but then one would be wrong. There are many things compatible with Christianity in limited degree that are contrary to Christianity when sought for their own ends: the sex act, consumption of alcohol, physical exercise. All of these things are good insofar as they serve as means to a virtuous end and not as ends into themselves. For example, the sex act is only good when it serves to unite husband and wife into a unity. To say that the sex act is an inviolable human right and its maximization leads to a human being made more human is to distort its value as <em>part</em> of what it means to be human. The consumption of alcohol is good when used medicinally or to celebrate special events such as the wedding at Cana. But the consumption of alcohol is neither an inviolable right nor something that the Christian should seek to maximize. So too, freedom.</p><br /><p>Presented as such, this leads to a rather obvious objection. If material and political freedom are not necessary for an abundant life, does it not follow that Christianity allows use of humans beings as means to some ends (as living tools) rather than treating them as ends unto themselves? To some extent, yes, this conclusion is justified. But let us consider this conclusion in light of the fact that wage labor does the same thing. The capitalist uses workers as means to make a profit. The difference between slavery and wage labor (with respect to using human beings as means to an end rather than treating them as ends unto themselves) is not a difference of kind but a difference in extent. One can argue that the slave has no choice but to work while the wage laborer chooses to work, but this choice is illusory unless the wage laborer either lives in a society where material needs are guaranteed or one views the choice to die of starvation or exposure as a rational choice. It is, in effect, the same choice as the slave has to either work or be beaten or killed.</p><br /><p>There is also a fundamental contradiction between the way that Christianity and Libertarianism view the injustice of a state that infringes on life, liberty or property. The Libertarian views such such states as inherently unjust <em>because</em> of this infringement. The classical Christian view does concede that there is a sense in which <em>all</em> governments are unjust but it also goes on to say that government is a just response to a irrational situation. Augustine of Hippo noted that the cosmos consists of a rational order where the higher rules over the lower: rationality rules over irrationality; God rules over man; the intellect rules over the passions. When this natural order is upset, as when man usurps the role of God and rules over other men, it is fair to say that there is a sense in which an injustice occurs. But this injustice is seen as a rational action for an irrational state of being, the fallen nature of mankind. Inasmuch as humanity imperfectly reflects the image and likeness of God, civil government is justified so long as it keeps temporal order. In other words, the Christian could concede that something akin to Libertarianism would be the ideal form of government in an world absent the fall from Paradise but that human nature as it is in the world <em>requires</em> a different sort of government.</p><br /><p>While it took until Augustine to fully develop this view, it is also present in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul wrote that civil government exists in order to keep temporal order (Romans 13). Consequently, inasmuch as a government is able to keep civil order, it is justified in the mind of the Christian regardless of whether or not it respects the rights that the Libertarian sees as unjust. What the Libertarian sees as an argument to justify the regime, the Christian can only see as a mistaken argument about what the best regime might consist of. In a way this parallels the difference between classical and modern political philosophy. Most classical philosophy took government as a given and argued about its best form. Most moderns argue that government needs a sound basis in order to be valid. The view presented in the Bible, and held to by most Christians through most of history is the former, that we can argue about the best form of government but that all governments are both inherently unjust in a certain sense but fully justified in another so far as they keep civil order.</p><br /><p>This view of course will immediately raise a in the minds of most people. On the one hand, if all governments are inherently unjust in a certain sense, does that mean that we have to hold that Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union under Stalin had just regimes? As much as it pains me to concede that this question must have an affirmative answer, it does. But is a very qualified affirmative answer. Inasmuch as these regimes did keep civil order, they were just. But it is clear that much of the disorder of the Stalinist and Hitlerian eras was perpetrated by the state. And it must also be said that inasmuch as the state perpetuated civil disorder, they were also unjust. Unlike some qualities, justice is not a binary property. Instead it exists on a spectrum.</p><br /><p>The astute reader may also find another objection in the above distinction between arguing for the state's validity and arguing for the best form government given a pre-existent state. We live in a democracy, so is it not possible that a Christian could believe that Libertarianism is the best form of government and pursue democratic channels to make the US a more Libertarian society? This is certainly a possibility and many Christians hold this very belief. But it must be said that, as argued above, the tenets of Libertarianism do contradict key tenets of Christianity. Libertarianism takes a view of liberty that is exaggerated from the point of view of the Christian. Libertarianism also, by not taking into account the fallen nature of humanity, levels the charge of being inherently unjust at regimes that the Christian sees as inherently just. Consequently, the Christian Libertarian is being pulled in two different directions by two different, incompatible systems of belief. As such, the Christian Libertarian exemplifies the American tradition of holding to contradictory beliefs. At least in that sense, Christian Libertarians are true Americans.</p>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-37464927985918112008-06-23T11:39:00.000-07:002008-10-16T07:10:11.773-07:00Gay Marriage as One of the Many Ends of Modernism and as an Examination of the Tension Between Church and State<p>In 1776 when the founding fathers of the the United States of America drafted a Declaration of Independence, they inserted a truly revolutionary assertion, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'' Written at a time when modernism was flowering throughout the western world and the order of old Europe was beginning to melt away, it makes explicit a radically transformative idea: that the individual is the irreducible particle of society. Prior to the modern era, the atomic unit of society was considered to be the family or some extension thereof such as the clan or the tribe or, in a few notable cases, some sort of religious grouping such as the Church or the Umma. But in all cases, society was founded on what was thought to be the smallest unit capable of effectively reproducing society. Unlike oak trees where a a single acorn, given enough time and all requisite material needs, can repopulate a forest, human beings need a male and a female to come together in sexual union to reproduce. For this reason, among others, marriage between a man and woman has held a special place in every ancient and medieval society throughout recorded history. In such societies talk about a same-sex union on par with marriage would have been an abusurdity. A gay couple, incapable of sexual reproduction, is unable to reproduce society. But when, as in modernism, the atomic unit is the individual and reproduction is no longer seen as an essential part of what makes society a society, it follows that what makes the relationship between man and woman called marriage unique is no longer an important consideration. Rather than the reproduction of society, what lies at the core is the an individual's life, the freedom of an individual to do as he or she pleases and the ability of an individual to pursue that which makes him or her happy.</p><br /><p>In a world where ``nothing new is under the sun'' the emergence of gay marriage as an innovation is nothing short of astounding. While homosexual acts and relationships have certainly been recorded, and even tolerated, by various societies in both the ancient and medieval eras, there is no historical evidence that any society before the modern era accepted the life long commitment between two people of the same sex as moral, legal or economic equivalent to marriage. Admittedly, ancient Greece and Rome did have something of a tradition of pederastry. After all, Parmenides apparently kept Zeno as his <em>paidakai</em> well into Zeno's middle age. It is also true that various cults used homosexual acts as part of their rituals and in some ancient cultures ritual sodomy of the conquered by the conquerors was widespread. But none of these homosexual relationships or acts of homosexual behavior, whether consensual or not, are ever portrayed in the written record as anything approaching the relationship of marriage.</p><br /><p>The largest reason for this, I suggest, is the understanding of most societies that reproduction was both vital to its own continuance and an understanding that this continuance was an unequivocal good. Religious prohibitions against homosexual behavior, regardless of context, occur in the Holy Writ of most religions. In some religions, such as Judaism, these prohibitions occur alongside prohibitions against various forms of birth control such as coitus interruptus. The most obvious inference is that reproduction was seen as an essential part of marriage and, in turn, marriage and family was seen as essential to the survival of society. By the Hellenistic era, this view was given the most clear voice by Aristotle. Just as an acorn is required to develop into an oak tree, a family of husband and wife is necessary to develop into society. Just as an oak tree reaches its fullest potential in a forest, humanity reaches it's fullest potential in society. Society, then, is the final end of what begins in the family.</p><br /><p>This view, explicitly or implicitly, has driven most of the western world's understanding of marriage up through the modern era. It wasn't until the dawn of the modern era that the family, or one of its various extensions, was replaced by the individual as the irreducible unit of society. In modernism society no longer exists to continue itself, but rather is created by the agreement of various individuals out of self interest in that society will help the individual survive (Hobbes) and live a more pleasant life (Locke). No longer is society a necessity for the development of the human person. Rather society is contingent choice made by individuals. Once society becomes an option rather than a necessity, the sort of relationship that reproduces becomes an option rather than a necessity; the type of union of between man and woman that ends in reproduction becomes optional.</p><br /><p>We see this change not just in regards to the way marriage is viewed with regards to gay people, but also with regards to the way that marriage between members of the opposite sex are viewed. Procreation within marriage has become a question of preference rather than being seen as a essential part of what it means to be married. Marriage itself becomes an option to the adult member of society rather than an expectation for most members of society. Marriages have become easier to dissolve and the expectation that people will remain married long enough to raise children to adulthood has dissolved. No longer having the meaning that it once did, marriage becomes something new, a commitment arrived at entirely for reasons of romantic love, which has as its basis the idea of society as a collection of individuals rather than a unity of human nature. Once one has accepted the modern understanding of society, gay marriage will eventually follow as there is no basis within the modern understanding of society itself by which one can reject the idea of two people of the same sex marrying each other. Any opposition must come from an older (or different) understanding of society, one that does not accept the individual as the atomic unity of society.</p><br /><p>In the US, the most widespread view of the family rather than the individual as the atomic unit of society is that offered by Christianity. It should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of religion that most forms of Christianity firmly resist the implications of atomic individualism such as gay marriage. Aside from the language in the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans that echos the language of natural law used by Aristotle, Christianity's anthropology is rooted in the idea of the completion of the human person in the unity of male and female as a symbol of the way that Christ and the Church will be united on the last day. If anything is surprising about the relationship between Christianity and gay marriage, it is the increasing number of Christian denominations that have embraced the practice. These Christian sects that have embraced the idea of marriage between two people of the same sex, it would seem, have embraced the idea of human liberty being the highest human good.</p><br /><p>But that Christianity, with some exceptions, has an anthropology fundamentally opposed to accepting any relationship between two people of the same sex as fundamentally equivalent to marriage says nothing about the how Christians should view the acceptance of such relationships by the state. Unlike some religions, the most ancient, and most ingrained, political philosophy espoused by Christianity, to render unto God what belongs to God and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, implies that Church and State are two very separate entities. There is no clear and indisputable imperative within Christianity to form the state into the likeness of the Church. When Christianity first became an official state religion in the late Roman era, it was only because the Roman empire had first become Christian. And even then, it was not until much later that Christian norms began to become the law of the land. Speaking of this dichotomous early Christian political philosophy, Remi Brague wrote, ``the cities of God and the cities of the devil are two sorts of comportment, not two political entities; the city of men is to be guided by moral rules, at times inscribed in the law, but their organization does not derive from a religious law.'' [Brague, Remi. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FLaw-God-Philosophical-History-Idea%2Fdp%2F0226070786&tag=theopirigorwr-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">The Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea</a>. Trans. Cochrane, Lydia. The University of Chicago Press. 2007. p. 37.] While conflating the `cities of men' with the `cities of the devil' probably errs in being too Augustinian, Brague's central point that Church and State were not only considered to be two separate entities, but were considered to be two separate <em>kinds</em> of entities cannot be overstated.</p><br /><p>This analysis gives rise to a question of no small importance. <em>What relevance does the way that the state runs its affairs have to Christianity?</em> Rather than offering this as a rhetorical question with an implied answer of `<em>nothing</em> (or `<em>everything</em>) as various groups would have, I think it important to notice that neither the Christian scriptures nor the oldest traditions of Christianity directly address this question. Rather than being a question with an obvious, unequivocal answer, it is a question fraught with nuance and shades of gray. Further, even if the question is answered with some sort of affirmative, it then leads to the inverse question. <em>What relevance does the opinion of Christianity have to the state in a liberal democracy like the US?</em> While the answer to this question is probably not as clear cut as many secularists would like, it is certainly more clear cut than the former question. As discussed above, regardless of what Christians may think, the moral and political liberalism that underlies the US constitution ends with no sound reason by which gay marriage can be rejected as illicit. To deprive same-sex couples of seeking out marriage would be to deny them the pursuit of happiness on their own terms.</p>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-31114049643907122752008-04-28T07:41:00.000-07:002008-04-28T20:08:43.399-07:00America, the Frightened Fortress<p>Fortress America, one of the safest places on the globe with respect to external military threat, is presently embarked on a foreign policy overtly based on the notion that its very existence is imperiled by foreign enemies. Whether because the political leaders of the US truly believe that grave, existential threats imperil the nation or whether this is merely an appeal to those Americans who believe they are persecuted, one cannot deny that large segments of the US do feel threatened even though decades have passed since the US has faced any foreign enemy capable of inflicting serious harm by force of arms. Rather, the most serious threats to the safety of US come from within from homegrown terrorist and radical groups and a policy of exporting American soldiers to other countries where they make easy targets for those few groups that do want to kill Americans. The solution is difficult, if not impracticable. When a large segment of the population that makes decisions based on fear in a nation whose leaders are freely elected public officials, the only tenable solution is to offer a stronger, more powerful narrative in the marketplace of ideas.</p><br /><p>This feeling, that of being insecure, that affects so many US citizens is somewhat baffling to me. Unlike other countries, like Israel, the US is bordered by friendly nations, counts most (if not all) of the most powerful countries in the world as its military allies, and has a military apparatus capable of reducing any other nation on earth to rubble. So I find it exceedingly odd to see sentiments expressed by American politicians, preachers, pundits, and citizens that could have come from the lips of an Israeli. In a recent interview with Israeli Novelist Jeffrey <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Grossman</span> in <em>The Atlantic</em>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Grossman</span> gave voice to part of Israel's existential dilemma, ``Our army is big, we have this atom bomb, but the inner feeling is of absolute fragility, that all the time we are at the edge of the abyss'' [Goldberg, Jeffrey. <em>Unforgiven</em>. The Atlantic Monthly. May, 2008. Vol. 30. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Nbr</span>. 4. pp32-51. p.37]. In a country where only half of the bordering nations recognize their right to exist in a region where the popular sentiment seems to be remove Israel from the map, such a statement is made in the context of a very real threat. Yet, this statement could easily have been made by an American. Despite the fact that there is presently no country in the world that poses a serious military threat to the US and despite the fact that the US possesses the atom bomb and a delivery system capable of delivering it anywhere on the planet, large numbers of US citizens live their lives in the fear that an attack by foreign enemies is imminent.</p><br /><p>But in reality, the largest threat by violence faced by Americans is other Americans. In the FBI 2002/2005 report on terrorism states that from 2002 to 2005, the overwhelming majority of terrorist incidents were perpetuated by domestic rather than foreign terrorists. It is not those outside our borders that threaten us but those inside our borders. </p><blockquote>Twenty three of the 24 recorded terrorist incidents were perpetrated by domestic terrorists. With the exception of a white supremacist’s firebombing of a synagogue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, all of the domestic terrorist incidents were committed by special interest extremists active in the animal rights and environmental movements. The acts committed by these extremists typically targeted materials and facilities rather than persons. The sole international terrorist incident in the United States recorded for this period involved an attack at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport, which claimed the lives of two victims. [FBI. <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/terrorism2002_2005.htm">Terrorism 2002/2005</a>.]</blockquote> Yet it is events of 9/11 and a handful of terrorist plots attributed to individuals allegedly associated with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">al</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Quaeda</span> that stands out in the minds of many Americans who somehow forget the long history of terrorism committed by Americans on their own: Eric Rudolf's bombing of the Olympics, Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Murray Federal building in Oklahoma City, Theodore <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Kaczynski's</span> mail bombings, the as yet uncaught culprit behind the Anthrax mailings in 2001.<p></p><br /><p>Yet, 9/11 looms in political discourse in the US in a way that these domestic threats do not. A large part of this is undoubtedly the sheer magnitude of death that resulted from this heinous crime and the shock of removing a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">sizable</span> landmark from the New York City skyline. But that the victims of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Osama</span> bin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Laden's</span> plot to fly airplanes into skyscrapers exceeded Timothy McVeigh's plot to build a truck bomb by an order of magnitude has more to do with the McVeigh's relative lack of access to funds and people willing to take part in a suicide attack. Were McVeigh a billionaire like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Osama</span> bin Laden, it is not unforeseeable that he could have constructed a plot as large and as damaging as 9/11. Further, 9/11 was a rather exceptional even that will not repeated in our lifetimes. Now that US citizens understand what could result from a plane being hijacked, never again will airline passengers allow a few men armed with razor blades to take over a plane. What is more important to focus on is that, despite his stated intent and the fact that he remains at large with apparent freedom of movement through the mountains that divide Afghanistan from Pakistan, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Osama</span> bin Laden has been either unable or unwilling to organize another attack on American soil since 2001 while various domestic groups have launched dozens.</p><br /><p>Part of the view that US is under continued threat undoubtedly comes from the American experience. In large part the US was settled by those who fled religious and political persecutions. It is fair to say that the American experience, and the American religious experience, has been formed among other factors by the traditions of those who were killed for who they were and what they believed. From those who were raised in the Anabaptist tradition, persecuted in Europe both by other Protestants and by Roman Catholics, to the Puritans and Roman Catholics, quite a few of the original 13 colonies were settled by those fleeing persecution. Even though American style Christianity is now the dominant form of religion in the country and our very constitution warrants freedom of conscience, large numbers of Christians in the US believe that they are a persecuted minority and it is precisely these Americans who make up the largest group of those most likely to express fear of foreign attack and be willing ``to fight them over there so that we do not have to fight them here.'' Clearly, not all Christians in the US are maintain this belief. But many do and those that do seem to be controlling most of the discourse over war and terrorism in the US in this post 9/11 world.</p><br /><p>This view is fundamentally paradoxical. On the one hand, it tends to lead to a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Hobbesian</span> style of political theory where the government is given the power to tread over virtually every other right in the name of security. But on the other hand, it sets up an inherent distrust of that very government which wants to take away the right to freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. Part of the dilemma can be seen in some of the very groups resorting to force of arms to act out their ideology: white supremacists and Christian extremists are both groups that argue that the US has very real foreign enemies capable of doing very real harm to the US and yet they are the ones attacking their fellow citizens, or even their own government. By promoting the message of fear, these groups are feeding the authoritarian trend in US politics that will lead to the very thing that these groups fear.</p><br /><p>Worse, this situation is presently being exacerbated by politicians that appeal to fear. A good example is Hillary Clinton's `3 AM' television ad that tries to lock the viewer into thinking that his or her sleeping children are under immanent and immediate hostile threat. Ads like this serve only to reinforce the fear that is already far too widespread in US culture. We watch talking heads on the television explain how dire the current threats to the US are. We hear the radio addresses of the Bush '43 administration that talks about how the war on terror is a threat to our very existence. We hear justice department officials and members of the US Congress argue that it is necessary that we lay down our right to privacy so that the government can protect us from immediate danger. We hear these messages for one reason alone, regardless of whether the politicians in question believe it is the truth, it works. When people are scared, or even only subconsciously nervous, they turn to those who make them feel safe. An incumbent politician is easily able to position his or herself as the protector in a time of grave peril and create an astonishingly powerful image in the minds of voters. A challenger who is rejoining that it just is not true, that the danger just is not as grave as the incumbent portrays it, even if correct, is unable to compete with the powerful image of the would be protector. And in a society where ideas are formed freely in the marketplace, the power of an image is sometimes far more important than whether or not that image is accurate.</p><br /><p>On the Science Progress blog, admittedly in a very different context, Chris Mooney made the very same point regarding the persuasive power of the narrative and images in the marketplace of ideas. </p><blockquote>From Michael Crichton’s <em>State of Fear</em> to Stein’s <em>Expelled</em>, there is nothing to prevent the most awful, misleading drivel from reaching and influencing mass audiences. There are no standards. There is no filter. And the truth is not just automatically going to win in the competition of ideas when the playing field tilts against it. [Mooney, Chris. <em>Hearts and Minds</em>. <a href="http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/04/hearts-and-minds/">Science Progress</a>. Accessed April 27, 2008.]</blockquote> The key observation Mooney makes is that ``the truth is not just automatically going to win in the competition of ideas.'' Various ideas bounce around in the heads of the American public and the ones that are true are not necessarily going to win simply because they are true. Rather, the ideas that win will do so because they are powerful images that tell a compelling narrative.<p></p><br /><p>So, in the end, our best hope is for a generation of politicians, pundits, preachers and journalists capable of telling the American story from a position of strength rather than from a position of fear. Those who would use the rhetoric of America being under siege need to be crowded out of the marketplace of ideas by a powerful narrative of a strong US which at present has no enemies capable doing it serious military harm. With strong allies along our northern and southern borders and oceans to the east and to the west, those few countries and organizations that do want to do the US harm face a large logistical problem of even getting to the US, let alone doing serious harm when they get here. We have no real reason to fear for our very existence. And while the future is always uncertain and we may someday once again face a military foe who does threaten our way of life as Americans, for the present, in the words of Walt Kelly, `we have met the enemy and he is us.'</p>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-38191695804646146362008-04-21T06:10:00.000-07:002008-04-21T06:20:22.621-07:00The Problem with a Loving God in Neoplatonic Monotheism<p>This past Thursday I had the pleasure to attend a talk by Reverend David Meconi, SJ titled <em>Traveling without Moving: Love as Ecstatic Union in Plotinus, Augustine and Dante</em>. Father Meconi, assistant professor of theology at Saint Louis University, delivered a very nice speech that began with the classical Greek idea of love as presented in Sappho and then moved through how that idea influenced three very notable thinkers, Plotinus, Augustine, and Dante, and how that idea of love was deficient in each of the earliest presentations do to their incipient Neoplatonism in a manner that was corrected by in the poetry of Dante. In Plotinus, love is defined as traveling without moving, the human being becoming defied by love for love itself. Augustine picks this up by defining saying that we move not by walking but by loving the other but only to the extent that our love for the other is love for the other because of the divine principle within that other. Dante perfects this notion of love being true motion by saying that the human heart is where love really occurs and where this motionless motion deifies the lover by his or her love for the beloved, changing both lover and the beloved in a new kind of person, a unity of souls. For those interested in the history of ideas, the talk was certainly intriguing. Yet it itself overlooked two key factors: the rediscovery of Aristotle in western Europe and the influence of Islamic mysticism, especially with regards to the Sufi interpretation of Persian love poetry.</p><br /><p>Meconi began his talk by describing the Greek understanding of love epitomized by the poet Sappho. This understanding of <em>eros</em> understands love to be simultaneously both sweet and bitter, consisting of the lover desiring the beloved (the sweetness) combined with the understanding that the lover is not the beloved (the bitter). The lover, in this view, desires to be the beloved as an epic line of Sapphic poetry says that in the sun the lover melts and oozes into the pores of the beloved. To love something, according to the Greeks, is then to desire <em>to be</em> that something while, at the same time, being frustrated that one is not that something.</p><br /><p>Plotinus, the third century founder of Neoplatonism, took Sappho's understanding of <em>eros</em> and applied it to the Platonic tradition by which God and the divine forms alone have real existence. Love, in Plotinus, is the motion of an individual soul to its source and reality in the divine. The divine, in the Platonic tradition, is the only real good. What is material can never itself be good but can only be like what is good. Consequently, as Meconi pointed out in his talk, Plotinus necessarily divides <em>eros</em> into two types: heavenly and worldly. Heavenly love is a chaste love, is beauty itself. Worldly love, satisfied with emotion and complacent with the beauty in the images of forms rather than the beauty of the forms themselves, is a secondary sort of love that weighs down the soul and prevents it from becoming deified.</p><br /><p>In this view, we seek love because we are not content with ourselves. Those of us that seek out worldly love, however, are deluded as we look for love in individual beings rather than seeking out love itself. The true lover must be alone to seek out true love qua love rather than being distracted by materiality. Material <em>eros</em>, at best, can only be <em>like</em> love but can never <em>be</em> love. As such, it can only serve to bind us further to material existence rather than help us to return to God. Love itself is a good, but love of another material being obscures from us the vision of God. In the end, love in this system leaves us with the inability to love our neighbor. Love for one's neighbor, a central part of Christianity, becomes a hindrance to salvation rather than salvation itself.</p><br /><p>The next step towards an authentic view of love according to Meconi lies in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, who according to his own memoir was heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, translated the ideas of love presented by Plotinus into a system with a trinitarian God and, in doing so, allowed for a very important expansion of the idea of what love is. Whereas Plotinus viewed God as a single person, Augustine viewed God as three persons. The prototype of love, the triune Godhead, then, admits of a love of persons for other persons that cannot be admitted to in a purely Neoplatonic system where God is a single monad. Love in the Plotinian system is necessarily an auto-erotic love, God can only love Himself. But if God consists of three persons, as in the Holy Trinity of Augustine, the love of the three persons of the trinity for each other allows for a genuine love of one person for another. More specifically, the trinitarian system of Augustine breaks down love into three parts: lover, love, beloved. The lover is the Father; the love is the Holy Spirit; the beloved is the Son. All three parts are necessary for love to be complete.</p><br /><p>So, as Meconi points out, our love can only be true if it is between persons rather than for an abstract form of love qua love as in Plotinus. Rather than the love of created beings being a mistake, Augustine thought that love of the other person was a rung on the ladder to to the love of God himself. But this is only true of the love of certain beings in Augustinian thought. If a created being loves a created being below itself on the divine hierarchy, it will draw itself down. The love of earth, for example, will make the lover into earth. But the love of other persons, persons created in the image and likeness of God, makes the lover into God. Love of the other, according to Augustine, deifies the individual rather than weighing the individual down.</p><br /><p>But, as Meconi points out, certain affinities between Augustine and Plotinus remain. For Augustine, while every opportunity to love the other is an opportunity to love God, every opportunity to love the other is also a temptation. Unless the love of the other points to God, it is the love of creation rather than the love of the Creator. Augustine himself wrote that it was not his mother who cared for him but God working through his mother. Consequently, it is not the love of others as individuals that points to God, but the love of God <em>in</em> other individuals. A man who loves his wife for who she is as anything other than the image of God has fallen into temptation and, loving the creature rather than the Creator, has become an idolater of sorts. In the Augustinian version of Neoplatonism, created beings are still unable to love other created beings except inasmuch as they are loved because they reflect God. The love of one's neighbor as one's neighbor, in this way of thinking, is an invitation to idolatry rather than an echo of the love of God.</p><br /><p>The antidote to this way of looking at the love of creatures, according to Meconi, presents itself in the form of the poetry of the early fourteenth century poet Dante Alighieri who defined love, <em>amore</em>, as the union of the soul between the lover and the loved. In this view, not only do we all desire to be love, but we all long to be loved `the most' as it is only where we are perfectly loved that we find our own perfect individuation. It is our very love for other creatures qua creatures that transmute us into saints and our love for particular individuals is transmuted into universal love. This is most clearly seen in that it is Dante's love for Beatrice, not his love for God, that gives him wings. Here Dante takes a step not taken by Augustine or Plotinus, the human person participates in his own salvation.</p><br /><p>But Meconi also observes that Dante clearly warns that this creaturely love needs be chaste. In the second ring of hell, populated by courtly lovers whose sole damning crime is to love each other, at first presents a puzzle to Dante. Only once Dante begins to grasp that these lovers are traitors to true love because their love is not truly for the other but turned inwards. These lovers don't desire the other for the sake of the other but because of the way that the other makes them feel. True love, the unity of the soul of two persons, isn't merely becoming the other but becoming a new kind of person <em>with</em> the other. The deification brought about this love isn't to cease being a human person as it is in Plotinus and Augustine but is to become a new <em>kind</em> of person.</p><br /><p>Unfortunately, I don't think the line from Augustine to Dante is as clear as the line from Plotinus to Augustine. As mentioned above, Augustine himself admits to Neoplatonism prior to his conversion to Christianity and it is clear from his writings that there is a sense in which he never abandoned that school of thought. But while it would be a very difficult argument to make that Dante was unaware of Augustine, it also isn't clear that Dante is either any sort of Neoplatonist or that Dante drew heavily on the work of Augustine. Admittedly, I may not see the connection due to my relative ignorance of the Dantean corpus. But it is also possible that Dante drew on sources other than Augustine and that if there is a connection to Augustinian though it is a negative connection. After all, unlike most of the <em>Doctors</em> of the Roman Catholic Church prior to Dante, Augustine does not appear in the <em>Paradisio</em>.</p><br /><p>One possible missing link can be found in Thomas Aquinas. Writing in the midst of the rediscovery of the works of Aristotle by the west, Aquinas inherited an Aristotelian system of metaphysics rather than the Platonic model that underlies Augustine. In Aristotle, what is material can, itself, be good as it reaches the fullness of its final form. This closes the tremendous gap of the Platonic model of Plotinus and Augustine where what is created can only be <em>like</em> what is good. Even though Augustine, as a matter of dogma, accepted the goodness of creation, it seems to me that his theory of love betrays something of an inconsistency. The love of others, in Augustine, is only genuine inasmuch as it is directed not at the individual but at the divine within the individual. Augustine's metaphysics puts his acceptance of dogma at odds with his writings on love.</p><br /><p>But this same inconsistency isn't found in Thomas Aquinas or the other late medieval writers who followed Aristotle other than Plato. And in fact, Dante appears to echo Aquinas in some places. For example, Aquinas didn't consider beauty to be a formal (or, consequently, final) cause. In his talk, Meconi observed that Dante taught that while the forms extend from God (the first cause) that beauty extends from secondary causes in the divine hierarchy. This understanding of beauty, along with the appreciation of created beings qua created beings being valid objects of love, seems more in line with the Aquinean understanding of Aristotle than it does the Augustinian understanding of Neoplatonism.</p><br /><p>Another possible missing link is the Sufi interpretation of the Persian courtly love tradition. While the hand of Plotinus lies heavy on some of the earliest Sufi poets, by the tenth and eleventh centuries, the courtly love poem with the unrequited love of a lover pining away, never to be sated, for his beloved was frequently used as an image for the desire of the individual to be made one with God. That the love of a created being could point to the love of God seems much closer to Augustine's reformulation of Neoplatonism than the pure Neoplatonism of Plotinus. And with the growing interaction between western Christendom and Islam by Dante's age, it is quite plausible that Dante was exposed to a good deal of the Sufi tradition of love poetry. But again, my own personal lack of knowledge concerning Dante's life prevents me from developing this possibility further. And, to be fair, it would seem that Sufi mysticism necessarily must run into the same problem as Augustine inasmuch as it remains Neoplatonic. An unmoving God that has a singular person (or perhaps it would be better to say a single God that is beyond all personhood) does not make sense as a prototype for love, especially in the Greek tradition where love is the desire of the lover to become the beloved. But on the other hand, the Christian east through which Muslim thinkers discovered Plato never lost Aristotle and by the Islamic thinkers of the tenth and eleventh century such as Ibn Sina and al-Farabi were, indeed, heavily influenced by Aristotle.</p><br /><p>But in the final analysis, despite the problem of possibly not showing the entire chain linking Dante backwards through time to Plotinus, Meconi does do a very nice job of pointing out the incompatibility of the Christian idea of love and Neoplatonism. If Meconi is correct, Augustine, in being such an influential figure, put western Europe on the wrong track for close to a millennium with his misguided Neoplatonism. And despite Dante's corrective influence within the Church of Rome, Augustine's influence is still heavily seen in the Calvinism and Lutheranism of the Reformation that, at times, seems to reflect a very Neoplatonic view of matter. (Consider the principle of the total depravity of man outside of the Church that underlies classical Calvinism.) Having accepted the rule of the Holy Scriptures alone, Calvin and Luther still interpreted those same scriptures very much in the tradition of Augustine. Consequently, their understanding of the love of creation is closer to Augustine than to Dante and, like the Church of Rome, they failed to understand what it means to love their neighbor as their neighbor.</p>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5354189036514837830.post-35527700793031344092008-04-07T06:16:00.000-07:002008-04-07T06:20:04.424-07:00Whatever Happened to Shame?<p>I have always found that one of the more interesting aspects of Plato's <em>Laws</em> to be his suggestion that some matters are better controlled by shame than by written legislation. And while from time to time, various states do attempt to use the power of shame, it is usually in conjunction with the coercive force of the state rather than by shame alone. And, indeed, in a pluralistic and democratic world, it would seem to be very difficult to mount a national campaign over certain activities being shameful as the various factions, interests, religious groups and political parties all define for themselves just what things are shameful. Hence, the state loses the power of this tool and is left with only the sub-optimal tool of coercive force which may create more harm than good in the attempt to enforce moral behavior.</p><br /><p>Speaking specifically of certain types of sexual activity Plato argued that custom and unwritten law were better at preventing the acts in question than promulgated laws which carry the coercive force of the state. <blockquote>For if shame made their indulgence rare, the infrequency would weaken the sway over them of this mistress. So let it be the custom laid down in habit and unwritten law, that among them it is noble engage in these activities if one escapes notice, but shameful if one doesn't escapee notice--though they are not to abstain entirely. Thus our law would come to possess a second-rank standard of the shameful and the noble, a second-rank correctness, and those whose natures have been corrupted--whom we proclaim to be ``weaker than themselves''--being one tribe, would be surrounded and forcibly prevented from disobeying the law by three tribes.<br/><br/>Which are these?<br/><br/>Reverence for the gods, and also love of honor, and being desirous not of bodies but of the beautiful characteristics of souls. These things that have now been said, perhaps as if in a myth, are prayers; if they should come to pass they would bring about by far the best effects in all the cities [Plato. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0226671100?tag=theopirigorwr-20&camp=15041&creative=373501&link_code=as3">The Laws</a>. Trans. Pangle, Thomas. University of Chicago Press. 1980. cf. 841b-c-c]. </blockquote> My intent here isn't to argue for the code of sexual ethics presented in this passage and the context in which it is found. Instead, I would like to draw attention to the way that Plato is condescending to human nature here with the implicit admission that some things will be done regardless of whether or not they are licit and that the best way to combat these things through public policy is by mores, religion and tradition rather than through making the acts in question illegal. Understanding that it is more important to have the people at large respect the law, Plato is declining to make a crime out of an activity that a large portion of the people will undertake regardless of its legality in the hopes that this activity can be curbed through the three societal pressures of religiosity, honor and the love of what is beautiful.</p><br /><p>And certainly, history teaches us that when the state criminalizes an activity which most citizens think just, the result is to both make lawbreakers out of ordinary citizens and to breed disrespect for not only the legislative body which passed the law but also for law itself. This is precisely the lesson of the Prohibition era in the US. While the consumption of alcohol on a per capita basis had been steadily declining during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, largely as the result of preaching and temperance leagues unaffiliated with the state, consumption remained flat through the years of Prohibition and only began to decline again once Prohibition was over. The numbers plainly show that Prohibition did not have its desired effect of reducing alcohol consumption. Worse, were it not for Prohibition, a vast number of US citizens would not have turned to organized crime as vendors of first choice and organized crime would not have been further legitimized in the minds of the everyday citizen. A similar, but not identical, incident took place in South Dakota in late winter of 2006. The state legislature passed and the governor signed into law the most sweeping ban of abortion in the US since Roe v. Wade. But by the following fall, the measure had been put on the ballot as a referendum and was overwhelmingly voted down by the people of South Dakota. The citizenry, as it were, appeared to feel that abortion, no matter how morally wrong, ought to be legal. The end result of this attempt by the state to legislate morality was only to weaken respect for the governing authority.</p><br /><p>If criminalization of immoral acts, then, is self-defeating as Plato suggested and history seems to confirm in some situations, it seems as if the state has little recourse. After all, Plato's idealized regime in the <em>The Laws</em> had an advantage that most governments of liberal democracies do not, complete control over religion. Whereas Plato could suggest that the ruling regime dictate the tenets of the various religious cults, modern liberal democracies necessarily do not get involved in the affairs of any religious institutions organized by the citizenry. This presents a very large obstacle to use of shame by the government as a social tool to implement policy. A democracy, a veritable city of cities where there is the presence of every possible moral system, does indeed lack a mechanism by which the state can effectively use shame alone as a tool to alter the behavior of its citizens. The citizens alone, to the extent to which they belong to different religious sects or cultures, decide what is shameful and what is noble. The end results is a large pool of different understandings of what constitutes shameful behavior. From very traditional morality in conservative blocs to the promotion of hedonism and profligacy as being manly or virtuous rather than shameful, one can find every definition of shame imaginable in a large democracy. And in many cases, those behaviors which the state has an interest in defining as shameful can be found being exulted as noble behavior.</p><br /><p>But it also true that the US, and many other nations, have made widespread use of shame in conjunction with (rather than in lieu of) criminalization. From the public stockades and tarring and feathering of early America to more recent efforts such as plastering the faces of fathers who are delinquent in paying child support on billboards, there has certainly been an effort to use shame to good effect in conjunction with criminal law. And while there have been some successes on this level, there have also been notable failures such as the media campaign to link drug use with terrorism shortly after 9/11 and the ''this is your brain on drugs'' media blitz of the 1980s that mostly served as fodder for parody and satire. The use of shame on its own has been remarkably absent from public discourse. The only campaign I can think of is the `buy American' campaign sponsored largely by labor unions rather than the state in the late eighties and early nineties which sought to use societal norms to support American workers over the workers of foreign nations. Government involvement with this campaign was largely absent.</p><br /><p>Consequently, outside of permutations of the use of coercive force, the state in a modern liberal democracy has very limited potential for the use of shame as a tool to shape its citizens. The state does not have control over a singular national religious cult for in a real democracy, a large number of religious cults exist independently of the state. The state does not have control over public opinion of what deeds are shameful, for in the marketplace of ideas there exists a multiplicity of various notions of what acts are noble and what acts are shameful. The state is limited to spending money on advertisements in the hopes that its plea will be heard above the cacophony of voices pushing and pulling the citizens towards one end or the other. The only times where the state is unequivocally heard above the din of competing voices are those places where the state uses its power of coercive force or in those rare situations where the state is able to design a marketing campaign that is superior to the various campaigns designed by the multitude of factions, sects, cultures, subcultures.</p>Lee Malatestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18146389804219517447noreply@blogger.com0