THOUGHT FOR THE NIGHT:

"I'm not sure exactly why that bubbled to the top of the brain, but, then again, I'm never sure why anything does"

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"I don't want to be your sherpa!"

and the close runner up:

"But even these, if they object to forced labor, would oppose forcing unemployed hippies to work for the benefit of the needy."
-Bobby Nozick

NOTE FOR K. GREASE: I did enjoy raisins on a cookie, but, after much consideration, I consider the class I took in symbolic logic to have been much, much worse; at least in stats we had numbers--in logic I had squiggles and letters and instructions like "determine, using truth trees, whether the following set is truth-functionally valid."

WELL: Some quick thoughts on an alternative to Rawls' maximin principle for the distribution of social goods (can you tell what I've been reading lately?):

Rawls sets down as the conclusion which free, equal and rational people would come to in distributing goods as one in which those who would be worst off would be in the best possible position*, on the logic that every person would realize that the worst of person in a society could easily be them, and they'd want to make sure that they'd be as well off as possible.

But it doesn't seem to me that this equally follows. Consider the example of lottery tickets: you might choose not to buy one because you know that the odds of your buying the winning ticket are practically zero. Everyone may well follow this same logic, thus no one buys a ticket because they recognize they have almost no chance of winning. Nevertheless, there is always a winning combination of numbers; it's just something about how the brain processes those extremely small probabilities that makes rationality go astray.

So it seems like you could have a modified maximin principle, in which everything is distributed in a Rawlsian manner, except for what's given to one person, who is given nothing (or, if one wants to argue that this violates a rational person's belief in the inviolability of a person, the minimum necessary for subsistence), and what would've gone to them goes equally to everyone else. This doesn't violate any of Rawls' conditions: everyone would freely agree to it, it's no more a violation of equality than justice as fairness (which isn't an equal distribution), and it's something a rational person might think: the odds of being that person are small in a small society, practically zero in a large one. You could then extend this principle via the paradox of the heap to establish that a group of people in the original position would be willing to accept putting even a large number of people in this minimal distribution of goods.

*though there wouldn't be an equal distribution of goods, because there have to remain some incentives for industry on the part of individuals.

TELEOLOGICAL VERSUS DEONTOLOGICAL THEORIES OF MORALITY: Oh gosh, I bet you're salivating at the prospect of the post to follow:

This is a whole mess of issues that came up as a result of reading John Rawls' Theory of Justice (Rawls is crazy, yes, but he's got nothing on Bobby Nozick). Rawls defines teleological moral theories as the following:

"the good is defined independently from the right, and then the right is defined as that which maximizes the good." (21-22 if you have the 2nd edition)

It follows, Rawls says, that:

"This means two things. First, the theory accounts for our considered judgments as to which things are good (our judgments of value) as a separate class of judgments intuitively distinguishable by common sense, and then proposes the hypothesis that the right is maximizing the good as already specified. Second, the theory enables one to judge the goodness of things without referring to what is right." (22)

He contrasts this with deontological theory:

"By definition, then, [justice as fairness] is a deontological theory, one that either does not specify the good independently from the right, or does not interpret the right as maximizing the good." (26)

The controversial part of this (for me, anyway) comes in Rawls' desire to put such petty little differences as religion away from people behind the veil of ignorance, because, he argues (at least in part), religious moralities are teleological. Which got me thinking: this can't possibly be true, right? Christianity doesn't link the good and the right together (on one interpretation) or, if it does, it only links them by indexing the good to the right, and not the other way around (so the theory couldn't be teleological). In further discussion with one of my housemates, though, something like the following chain of logic came out: if you're a moral realist (as I am), then every act which has a moral status at all has one given to it just as a facet of its very nature or existence, and ethics is then about doing the things which are right and not doing the things which are wrong. But that's a teleological theory: right acts are good because they're right, and we ought to strive for the best possible ends, oughtn't we?

But it also seems like there's a further complication for the Christian moral realist (and possibly also deontologist--er, me): there are two standards of the good, the one that comes from worldly things, and the one that comes from Christianity. So it might end up being the case that the deontologicalness/teleologicalness of Christian ethics depends on which set of standards of the good you're measuring it against: if against those of the world, well, the Christian says that right and good are different things, and one ought to be concerned with maximizing the right, not the good (deontological); if one speaks of Christian goods, then one sees them as the same thing (though one still wants to maximize the good because it's right and not the other way around, though I'm not wedded to this view), and wants to maximize them collectively (teleological).

Anyway, just a set of thoughts, feel free to give your opinion in the comments.

THAT THERE, THAT'S NOT ME: except it apparently is:

You scored as Prep/Jock/Cheerleader.

What's Your High School Stereotype?
created with QuizFarm.com

WELL: Sorry for my troglodyte ways as of late; beginning of the semester, the need to put a new system on my computer, and my need to revisit with some degree of comprehensiveness American political behavior as a field*. More sometime in the future.

*I've come to the conclusion that Americans are racist, bigoted crypt**-fascists***, and that the only hope they have of not being that bad is if it's the case that they're just too ignorant of political matters for those positions to be meaningful. Anyone who can point me to something that contradicts this general trend and can thus restore my faith in democracy is more than welcome to do so.

**Obviously, I meant "crypto-fascist." I have no idea what a "crypt-fascist" would be (people who hold their political rallies in cemetaries? The official political party of vampires?)

***Actually, upon further reflection, I've come across an interesting line of thought in the survey response/political knowledgability literature which suggests both that some of the negative conclusions in Campbell et al, Converse and that school of thought**** are artefacts of the weirdness of trying to map peoples' political attitudes using survey questions, as well as the confusedness of peoples' political orientation (which does not equate to their being ignorant or uninformed about policy questions, just that they are beseiged by a rather large number of considerations). Also, my brief conclusion from my time with tolerance literature is that the very additions which make it a more empirically accurate measure make it a normatively meaningless concept, about which more later (perhaps).

****Sometimes known as the "Michigan School," but I'm trying to protect my alma mater by casually slandering them in a meta-footnote rather than in the actual text of a post itself.

LINK: Marc Cooper on the weirdness of the Democratic Party:

"What happened today is that the Democrats made the usual waffling fools out of themselves. And unless you are some sort of fanatical reader of the lefty press and actually believe there was some sort of conspiracy in Ohio, you probably saw the Dems today as little more than sour-grape obstructionists bent on sullying the mostly ceremonial re-election of the President and of scapegoating their defintive November loss on same vague and undefined Republican plot."

LINK: Having taken an undergraduate class in a polisci department on the judiciary, I can pretty much confirm that Dan Drezner is right about this, though Dara also took the same class in a different semester and thus might be able to comment further.

LINK: I've never read one of those looney-bin threads before, so this brought on a mixture of shock and amusement.

LINK: This is a worthy goal for an evangelical

IS AMERICANISM THE SUCCESSOR TO PURITANISM? Here's my little attempt to respond to Joe's question about this article from a recent issue of Commentary. The short answer to this particular question is no. To wit:

"Does that make it impossible to believe in a secular Americanism? Can you be an agnostic or atheist or Buddhist or Muslim and a believing American too? In each case the answer is yes."

then there's this interesting bit:

"Few believing Americans can show, nowadays, how Americanism’s principles are derived from the Bible. But many are willing to say that these principles are God-given. Freedom comes from God, George W. Bush has said more than once; and if you pressed him, I suspect you would discover that not only does he say it, he believes it. Many Americans all over the country agree with him. The idea of a “secular” Americanism based on the Declaration of Independence is an optical illusion."

The article then proceeds as Mr. Gelernter cites and discusses the many references to the role of God and the status of America as the new Israel. I don't want to imply that I doubt this is correct: certainly, Christian belief of a particular kind* features prominently throughout our nation's history. But part of the Christian story about how principles of the dignity of man, etc, goes is that the truth of all these propositions is available outside the context of Christianity. Thus Romans 2:14-15:

"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by natue the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.
Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts mean while accusing or else excusing one another."

Which is why the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence are 'self-evident': because you can either find them fully confirmed in the Bible or you can apply reason to your own conscience: either way, you get the same result. It's this, the duality of justifications which can always run alongside one another, which defines Americanism: the fervent belief that one's principles are right, no matter what the source, and that's it's arriving at the right answers, however one gets there, that matter.

So it may be the case, in fact, that Americanism is hated at least in part because of the perception of its Christian basis, but this can only be half the story: it can explain why people might dislike us, but so long as we cling to the same intermediate set of ideas--rule of law, equality and dignity of man, etc--we should be producing the same policy goals, right?

The real difference may be in what Mr. Gelernter calls "American Zionism." Again, he may be descriptively correct in where Americans get this particular belief from; nevertheless, it's still the case that one can create this belief from a whole different set of propositions (Marxism is based on nothing if not the 'Zionist' impulse that the things that are good for people in one situation are good for people in all situations, but you'll not find a hint of religion there). The real dividing line seems to be over whether or not the set of principles that define liberalism are universally applicable. I think this provides a slightly better descriptive account of why the sides are drawn up as they currently are, though goodness knows I've simplified and left a lot out. Feel free to go crazy in the comments.

*I don't know that I'd say it was Puritanism per se that led to these beliefs; in fact, it was probably the organization of their church governments more than anything else. If you look at the list Mr. Gelernter presents:

"Puritanism was shared by people of many faiths, at any rate within Protestant Christianity. You could find Puritans in Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches, and in Baptist and Quaker churches; some Puritans never left the Episcopalian or Anglican church, and eventually you could find Puritans in Methodist churches, too. Later, as I have noted, you could even find them in Unitarian churches—despite Unitarianism’s dramatic disagreements with other forms of Protestantism."

One thing you'll note is that they all (with the exception of the Anglican church, and, perhaps, the Methodist church, though I couldn't say) adopt either the Presbytery or the Congregation as the seat of church government. My guess if one were to look at how this demographic played out over time, there'd be a strong and early advantage to congregationalist churches. This is to say, to make a longwinded footnote stop sometime soon, I suspect that the political consequences of church government issues are immediate, and the consequences of moral issues come afterward.

LINK: If these two crazy kids can't make it work out, what hope do the rest of us have?

HAHA: TNR:

"Yes, the gay marriage debate energized the Republican base this year, but it's not like some fledgling army of evangelicals has arisen to plot the confiscation of your "Sex and the City" videos."

LINK: Interesting post from Brownie at Harry's Place on the importance of still identifying with the left. I share the Christopher Hitchens view on this, that one shouldn't fight hard over a term; rather, one should get the arguments right and not worry about the rest.

I say this in part because I recognize that I've developed a few generally conservative principles over the last few weeks and months. Nevertheless, I'm trudging through Homage to Catalonia, and the political sections don't seem entirely foreign to me (I can't quite manage to buy into the bits on socialism as a formal political system, but I think I'll always remain a socialist insomuch as I believe that the material, moral and spiritual problems that occur singly and commonly in mankind are society's to solve, collectively (I'm just agnostic on the question of whether the government should be doing that collective solving)), and I can still read and largely appreciate Trotsky, Irving Howe and Mary McCarthy, rightists none of them.

But then again, I found myself over break reading the letters section of The Nation, and I realized they were on all the same topics people had written letters about four years ago: electoral fraud, the idiocy and evilness of Bush, the stupidness of red state voters, the encouraging signs for progressive candidates in local elections, the possibility of a resurgence in the labor movement. It's a bit depressing to see that nothing much has changed for them in the last four years, even about the way they think on issues.

WELL: I come at the issue Norm speaks of here from a rather different perspective (what with being Christian and all), but it seems to me that the three courses he outlines for ways in which the religious can respond to catastrophe are not at all exhaustive, nor would they hit on the most common Protestant arguments in this area: I think the basic idea can be summarized shortly as the belief that for God to intervene constantly in order to prevent any ill from falling on anyone would be to deny man free will, but moreover to say that to think of things this way is to claim a status for mankind as innocent that it certainly has never done much to deserve

(as Max von Sydow says in Hannah and Her Sisters: "You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question "How could it possibly happen?" is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is "Why doesn't it happen more often?"")

this isn't to rob what happens of its tragic character or (when the catastrophe involves people doing violence to other people) its moral character, but merely to say that, men being what they are, and the world being what it is, we are perpetually stuck with this sort of thing.

LINK: Norm speaks of things of which this is an example.

LINK: I love me a good Joy Division reference, so this post worked well for me. Also:

'"Drivers will be forced to slow down and establish eye contact with pedestrians because they will no longer be able to assume that they have right of way". Wrong. Drivers will always assume they have right of way. On the roads, Darwinism rules.'

LINK: Brill, and convinces me (as if I needed further evidence) in the unassailable hipness of TMFTML.

QUOTE: Hitch (via SIAW):

"Reflecting on where the rot set it, I have come to the temporary conclusion that much of the "Left" was forced by events to adopt a status-quo position. Thus, it neither really opposed nor welcomed (with some exceptions in both cases) the historic anti-Communist revolution of 1989. It sat on its hands during the Balkan conflict. It could find no voice in which to discuss the urgent challenge of holy war. When it came to Iraq, you could even hear leftists saying that an intervention might "destabilize" the region: a suggestive choice of term from supposed radicals, suddenly sounding like Kissinger Associates.



Much the same has become true on other fronts, with people essentially saying, on things like Social Security; just leave it the way it is. Even the environmental movement seems to resent modernity and be nostalgic for agrarianism. I'm perhaps over-speculating here, but another trope of "anti-Americanism" could be one that resents the United States as the country par excellence of disturbing change and innovation and, via regime-change, of revolution. The Right often makes a version of this mistake, as with stem-cell research and Buchanan-type isolationism and nativism. But the Left is really doomed if all it wants is a quiet life."

LINK: You could not possibly make this up. (link from Joe)

QUOTE: Jean Amery, At the Mind's Limits:

"When I stand by my resentments, when I admit that in deliberating our problem I am "biased," I still know I am a captive of the moral truth of the conflict. It seems logically senseless to me to demand objectivity in the controversy with my torturers, with those who helped them, and with the others, who merely stood by silently. The atrocity as atrocity has no objective character. Mass murder, torture, injury of every kind are objectively nothing but chains of physical events, describable in the formalized language of the natural sciences. They are facts within a physical system, not deeds within a moral system. The crimes of National Socialism had no moral quality for the doer, who always trusted in the norm system of his Fuhrer and his Reich. The monster, who is not chained to conscience by his deed, sees it from his viewpoint only as an objectification of his will, not as a moral event."

and also:

"Whoever is, in the broadest sense, a believing person, whether his belief be metaphysical or bound to concrete reality, trascends himself. His is not the captive of his individuality; rather he is part of a spiritual community that is interrupted nowhere, not even in Auschwitz. He is both more estranged from reality and closer to it than his unbelieving comrade. Further from reality because in his Finalistic attitude he ignores the given contents of material phenomena and fixes his sight on a nearer or more distant future; but he is also closer to reality because for just this reason he does not allow himself to be overwhelmed by the conditions around him and thus can strongly influence them."

AH: It's a good day to be back.