Where I've been

My long national nightmare of grading is finally over--so I can once again use my use my time constructively in the creation of blog posts.

Anyway, it's Friday night and I'm going to go celebrate

Christians: Are They the Moral Majority?

As I'm sure most people are aware, Jerry Falwell died last week. I only ever knew him as a famous Christian "spokesman" who said some things that people found embarrassing. That, and as the popularizer of the term "Moral Majority." Phil Nugent points out that this term seems oddly inconsistent with the Southern Baptist culture of Falwell, and with slight differences related to their more individualistic and anti-authoritarian attitude also inconsistent with the normal Evangelical culture of the Northwest. He says:

Having grown up in the rural Southern Baptist culture that Falwell came to represent, and having grown up in it during the last few years before it became fully owned and operated by the Republican Party, I've always believed that there was no way anyone who was really of that culture could have come up with the term "Moral Majority." When I was a child, our preachers and Sunday school teachers (and our teachers plain and simple, because in what I suppose was a violation of law, the teachers in my third and fourth grade classes used to lead us in prayer and Biblical-related discussions, for all the good that it did in my case) didn't tell us we were a part of any majority. Quite the opposite; it was always made clear that only a tiny fraction of the people on Earth at any given time would finally prove good enough to make it to Heaven and see God's smiling-Santa face.

I think this illustrates a couple of the oddities of the religious right's political involvement. Christianity has a long history of seeing itself as the "hidden city," as a separate society within society. This derives from the division between the world of spirit and flesh and goes back all the way to Jesus telling the Pharisees to give to Caesar what is his and to God what is God's. Since this is partially understood in terms of moral and spiritual purity, there is always this sense that the world of flesh--of which the state is a, perhaps the most, powerful manifestation is trying to distract and pull us away from true Christianity. This attitude seems to me to encourage a permanent notion of Christianity as the minority view. It doesn't matter what people say, or even what they do. What is fundamentally of importance is your relationship to God. Since this limits you to solely trusting the few people you know personally, or those who know and engage in the essentially religious (and hence exclusionary) markers of this relationship, there is always a limit on the size of the group that will qualify.

But yet, the Christian right is politically mobilized, and politically mobilized as Christians. They constitute one of the most vocal blocs of one of our major parties. What is the political justification provided for trying to make religious ideas binding on people? Here it became necessary to bring in the idea that actually Christianity constitutes in fact a political as well as religious majority. In other words, it is a re-making of religious ideas over into political and moral ideas. But this seems to provoke a serious tension in how we are meant to treat religion.

Take abortion. Why do Christians try so hard to make it illegal? After all, they know that non-Christians are evil and do evil things. So why are they attempting to prevent them from doing this one? Or, in the popular pro-choice refrain, if they don't want abortion, don't have one. Why should they be worried about the morality of those outside their religious communities? In other words, why is this a legal/political rather than a religious issue for religious people?

It seems to me that the simplest answer is that American Christians have largely adopted forms of reasoning more characteristic of Enlightenment liberalism than strictly fundamentalist ideas warrant. Liberalism characteristically tries to universalize their moral principles and so must treat all humans as essentially equal and indistinguishable. But if we are to treat all humans equally, it seems that we (roughly) must treat all religious beliefs as also being equal as the major religions on offer are not universalizable across all people (Liberal Christianity, which was an attempt to sketch out a picture of this universalized religion, is what led to the rise of fundamentalism).

So to argue against abortion, religious people must step outside their religion and use liberal reasoning against it. And I think the rhetoric is consistent with this claim. After all, according to those against abortion a morally significant human life begins at conception and so a properly universal liberal moral reasoning would include their rights as well. Hence the popularity of the "right to life" as an argument against abortion.

But the concept of a right to life is a creation of Enlightenment liberalism. It is not really to be found in the Bible. For instance, the image of the "vengeful God" of the Old Testament is a result of the passages where God commands the Israelite leaders to kill another nation--sometimes absolutely--even those we would normally consider innocent, such as the woman (non-combatants), children, and even their livestock. In fact, in a startling turn-about, King Saul loses the blessing of God because he decides to spare some of the innocent Amalekites. And as for the New Testament--what little political thought is contained there says nothing about protecting the rights of innocents. It is striking in light of the contemporary political scene that as far as we can tell neither Jesus, nor his immediate disciples felt it was necessary to try to effect social change through political means. In fact, while Jesus had much to say about the society he lived in, his invective was primarily reserved for the religious leadership of his own religion--a very different attitude from that of contemporary Christians.

These are difficult questions. Many early Christians, and some of the more libertarian type Christians I knew growing up had the view that Christians should not be involved in government or politics at all--but rather should keep themselves separate from the dirty doings of the world. Other seem to think that religion and politics are both good and necessary things, but should be kept as separate as possible. Others, and this is more characteristic of the religious right, try to combine the two. I am not sure that they are very successful.

Mistaken for Hegel

John Moe's take on the Republican candidates.

Giuliani and terrorism

I sometimes struggle to understand the average Republican perspective on an issue. I can understand the logic behind their denial of reproductive freedom. I can understand why many of them feel it is necessary to claim that homosexuality is sinful or are afraid of losing their cultural identity through immigration. However, I find myself bemused by what seems at times the most common Republican response to Islamic-based terrorism.

I don't think that the average Republican is consciously racist towards Arabs. However, since most racism plays at the unconscious level that tells us little about the reality of their attitudes. In general, if we wish to treat all peoples equally it is necessary to engage in self-examination. I would like to assume that this is not an exclusive characteristic of the liberal mindset. But sometimes Republican rhetoric gives me cause to wonder.

The most recent example of this was in the Republican primary debate last Tuesday. There were two main highlights--the advocacy of torture (albeit by other names) by most of the field, and Giuliani's outrage at Congressman Paul's claim that we should seek to understand the motivations of those who are attacking us.

I will admit that I find it astonishing that we need to argue that torture is immoral as I considered the repudiation of such practices one of the distinguishing marks of Western liberalism. However, I will acknowledge that many countries with authoritarian leanings have felt that the so-called pragmatic benefits make it worthwhile (and we have certainly become more authoritarian since the terrorist attack of 2001). But I honestly do not understand how a responsible public figure arguing that he is best qualified to lead our country can be willing to claim that the reason that we were attacked on 9/11/01 was simply, or only, because they "hate us for our freedoms."

It is perhaps possible that some Saudi Arabs do "hate us for our freedoms." However, to claim that that alone is an adequate motivation for an entire civilization threatening movement is transparently absurd. If they do "hate us for our freedoms," it behooves us to ask us why they resent the fact that we are free. It is true that the citizens of the U.S. have many opportunities that are not open to other people around the world. But why is it that it was in the Middle East that this inspired a movement of people willing to sacrifice their own lives in protest against these freedoms?

Some have suggested that it is because Muslims dislike the idea of freedom in general. Let's suppose this was true. Then why would they resent the U.S.? The U.S. best partner in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, by no means a free or democratic state, while our greatest enemy has been Iran, which is one of the more democratic (albeit with a strangely theocratic flavor) countries in the Middle East. So shouldn't Al Quaeda be then supporting our attempts to weaken the Iranian government?

However, even more importantly, to seriously claim that Muslims do not desire themselves to be free is to ascribe an attitude to them that even their holding it would defeat the American notions of government. The U.S. Constitution is based on the notion that ALL humans have certain inalienable rights, one of which is liberty. Thus, to claim that these entire groups of humans in fact do desire to live without freedom would be to claim that the U.S. ideals of government should be given up.

No. What must be done is to attempt to understand why it is that some groups have grown to resent the U.S. Acknowledgement or understanding of the causes of resentment is not the same as claiming that this resentment is justified (as any parent should know). And that is why Giuliani's attempt to paint Congressman's Paul remarks as claiming that the U.S. "invited" these attacks is completely false.

This is not that difficult. Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda did not just appear out of nowhere in 2001. They had been claiming for years that the U.S. should be punished for having troops in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there had been clear resentment because of the bombing of Iraq for the previous ten years (as noted by Paul).

It is occasionally a temptation to treat our political or military opponents minds and attitudes as completely ineffable. This is convenient for us, because it prevents us from having to worry whether we are acting in manners that justify their actions or whether we are doing things that might be viewed as provoking violent responses that, when directed against us, we will immediately condemn. But, giving in to that temptation comes at the price of losing the liberal ideas of human rights and, furthermore, of giving up intellectual respectability for the ideas we replace it with.

Update: Daniel Larison has, as usual, a thoughtful conservative rebuttal to the notion that we were or are attacked because of our freedoms.

Update 2: To be a clearer about one of my points. Western democracy arose from the Enlightenment assumption that all people desire to be free. If you give up this belief, which is what Giuliani seems to do, then we have no justification for any intervention in international affairs (which some conservatives would welcome) and challenge whether the U.S. federal government has the authority to rule over its citizens. Philosopher types can and do argue these points, but I would be, to say the least, disconcerting for one of the major parties to espouse such a rejection of core American ideals.

Why stay in Iraq?

Some war-supporters have suggested that regardless of whether our initial decision to conquer Iraq was justified now that we are there and have created a mess we should stay there. There are usually two justifications given:

1) Iraq is the main "front" of the war on terror, so we should keep our troops fighting there to prevent terrorists from attacking the U.S. Call this the "they'll follow us home" argument.
2) The U.S. military is the only thing preventing Iraq from falling into complete chaos. If we left, full-scale civil war would break out between the warring factions in Iraq, perhaps even leading to genocide.

Okay. I don't view these as being of equal merit. The first argument seems to me fairly silly, and while the second argument raises legitimate worries it seems pretty unlikely that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is actually the proper response to worries about genocide. However, the point I want to make here is that these two arguments are in tension (if not quite explicit contradiction) with each other.

The first argument appeals to traditional American privilege in war--we always fight somewhere else (at least for the last 140 years). This has many effects, but one is that U.S. civilians do not have to bear the brunt of war in the same way other civilians do. Thus, U.S. industry is not bombed, U.S. civilians walking to the store do get killed. Yes, war is still awful, and our soldiers still die every day, but the negative effects are an order of magnitude different from that suffered by the citizens of the country providing the battlefield. The assumption of this privilege is doubtless part of the reason that the WTC Center attacks were so shocking to U.S. citizens.

However, the claim that if we leave Iraq the terrorists will follow us home relies on the notion that these future terrorists are attacking the U.S. not in order to get them to leave Iraq, but as part of some larger "Global War on Terror" (cue Giuliani's tired "they hate us for our freedoms" line.). But that means that the conflict in Iraq is directed against the U.S. and so is not inherently tied to issues around American hegemony in the Middle East. So Iraq in providing a battleground is doing a favor to the U.S. by giving us a country other than our own to tear up in fighting terrorists.

But if that is our motivation for staying in Iraq, it seems disingenuous to also claim that we are staying in Iraq for the Iraqi people's own good. We certainly do not want terrorists to attack the U.S. But if we think that terrorists have to attack something, and so it is better that we provide U.S. targets for them to attack in Iraq, then the second argument would seem to become false. After all, the clear implication of the first argument is that if we left Iraq they would then be able to start attacking the United States directly because they wouldn't be tied down fighting in Iraq. But what then of the claim that if we leave the fighting will get even worse in Iraq? Wouldn't that just mean that the terrorists would be even more tied down in Iraq?

At heart these arguments are based on contradictory motivations. The argument claiming they'll follow us home is claims that it is better that someone else (i.e. the Iraqi's) suffer U.S. citizens. The argument that we should stay in Iraq to protect them from sectarian conflict claims that it is better that the U.S. pay a price (dead soldiers and trillions of dollars) if it will prevent more Iraqi deaths. I am not sure how you can make these compatible.

Quasi-Realism Intro Pt. 1

I've been reading Simon Blackburn on ethics recently. He is primarily interested in questions about the nature of moral claims rather than which moral claims are actually correct. So he isn't so much presenting a moral system as describing how moral systems or theories operate. For instance, people who believe that people act only out of selfishness (not Blackburn's view), are telling us something about the nature of moral claims, but they are not saying of any particular action that it is right or wrong, or that we should or shouldn't do it. On the other hand, a Kantian might tell us that we shouldn't lie because it is an action that is logically inconsistent (or ununiversalizable).

Blackburn is a projectivist, which means that he believes that our moral claims, beliefs, or attitudes are based on our sensibilities rather than any kind of external law or reason. This is a view that is popular with many naturalists because of the difficulty in deriving a moral imperative, an "ought," from some fact about the world alone. For instance, it seems like a morally admirable thing to help support those less well-off. But why? For a naturalist anything that exists can be described (broadly speaking) by science. But it is difficult to see how we can describe a natural fact which necessitates an action without first appealing to some human desire. So it seems that these desires end up being the basis for action. And furthermore, these desires are ultimately things we accept (for what might be good reasons, but still, explanation comes to an end somewhere). We have an innate desire to preserve our own live, and this is not a desire that is particularly amenable to rational reasoning.

One of the major problems with this viewpoint is that it seems to leave truth out of the picture. If our moral claims are ultimately based on our sensibilities, then when I make a moral claim I am not describing some fact about the world, but rather expressing a particular emotion or stance towards life. Thus, if I say that slavery is immoral I am not expressing a belief in a proposition that can be checked for truth against the world, but relating something about my own stance and priorities. However, there ends up being many problems with understanding the meaning, however construed, of moral terms if we cannot talk about them being true or false in a way that connects to our ordinary use of the terms.

Blackburn attempts to solve this problem by proposing a view he calls "quasi-realism." This position marries projectivism with a Wittgenstein-influenced view of language. Wittgenstein claimed that our language is made up of distinct, but interlocking discourses he called "language games." What he meant is that the concepts that we use in a particular language game are understood and make sense only relative to that language game. Thus, science is a language game that talks about some parts of the world in scientific (naturalistic) terms. However, we can talk about the world in other ways as well--for instance, in religious terms, or aesthetic or ethical terms. It would however be a mistake to try to reduce the meaning of religious words to what they would mean when talking in scientific terms. Any attempt to do this would fail because the we only understand the family of religious terms that we use in relation to other religious terms. If you try to interpret them in, for instance, ethical terms you will be making an error--misunderstanding how these words are meant to be used.

Blackburn takes this notion and says that while naturalism is true we can still talk about the truth of ethical and moral terms as well. We just have to be careful to not transport the understanding of truth as scientific truth into the ethics language game. This is the basic notion: if you ask moral questions or make moral statements you are engaged in the moral questions language game. That means that these words have meaning, and can even be said to be true or false (keeping in mind that this is not meant to refer to some object--"goodness"--that we meet in the natural world), and in fact we can do all the things with moral language that we ordinarily do. This has to follow, because if we ordinarily do it, that means there is some kind of meaning when we ordinarily do it, and the only confusion we had was when we thought that it had to refer to something in the world outside of us. But in fact, since, he claims, the way in which we are set up to respond morally to the world is through our emotional and attitudinal responses, those end up being the determining factors on the meaning of these terms.

So, is this an adequate story of what we are talking about when we talk about morality?

Trusting government

Ryan asks me in comments:

As someone who seems to have confidence that his developing views [on politics] are important and matter, how do you maintain the zeal to put forth your argumemts with optimism? do you believe that this system can be saved? And if so, on what basis?

I think Ryan is mainly accurate in describing my current attitude towards political issues. I am more zealous, more enthusiastic, and more optimistic about politics than I've probably ever been in my life. Part of my enthusiasm is simply the result of developing a more coherent political philosophy rather than the hodgepodge of ideas and attitudes I had previously tried to mash together. Also, my zeal is a result of my increasing optimism--it's easier for me to get excited about something in which I think we can make real progress. However, probably the most important element is that the substantive political and moral ideas I now hold demand of me a greater appreciation of the importance of political life.

While I've always been politically involved, I think my earliest influences (primarily from my father) was a Reaganesque distrust of "big government." I took Thoreau as a model, especially such slogans as, "That government governs best, which governs least." Because I had such a strong distrust of government my political ideology was always defensive--always a matter of trying to prevent the government from usurping more of our civil liberties (my involvement in anti-abortion activities was the exception--but still defensible on Millian harm principles). Unfortunately, this defensiveness meant that political involvement could only be somewhat exhausting and easily provoke bitterness.

This began to change when I left Christianity. The form of religion that I had grown up in viewed general human society with great suspicion and so based the reasons for action in the supernatural commands of God rather than the ordinary world that human experience. So I began to realize that I would have to change my attitudes towards towards the communities in which I lived. The result was the development of an ethic explicitly based on human experience and needs rather than divine prerogatives. It was but a short step to the further realization that politics was simply morality in a communal space, i.e. normal human experience, and so just as important as the religious motivations that had previously driven me.

That is probably the biggest reason why I have become more passionate about politics. I began to become more optimistic about politics and the constructive role of government in general as I began to realize how much of my childhood distrust was the result of Republican propaganda and prejudice. I was worried about individual liberties and freedom being constrained by the government and convinced of the inevitable incompetence of any government program.

Two things changed this attitude. One was my growing awareness that the government was only one way in which you could lose your liberties. I began to see that in fact the priorities of the large corporations often run counter to the interests and liberties of their employees or customers. So the government could have a positive role in constraining the power of capital. Furthermore, I began to realize that contrary to what I had previously thought, the government not only could do some jobs better than private industry. For instance, Social Security was and still remains much more effective in achieving the goals of old age security than anything that private industry has achieved on its own. Perhaps even more noteworthy is the comparison between the VA hospital system, which is almost universally regarded as the most successful health care program in the country even though it actually spends less money than most private insurance programs.

So overall I would say that I gained a political viewpoint which grants a positive role for government in American society.