AnalPhilosopher

Two hundred years ago today, the Corps of Discovery, commanded by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, was in its winter quarters at Fort Mandan (near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota). One of the objectives of the expedition, as formulated by President Thomas Jefferson, was pacification of the tribes. On this particular day, a member of the Mandan tribe informed Lewis and Clark that a small party of Mandans had been attacked in the prairie by a large party of Sioux and Arikaras. One man was killed and two others wounded. Four were missing. Several horses were stolen.

Lewis and Clark decided to take the offensive against the Sioux—not so much to punish them for their depredations as to prove their loyalty to the Mandans, some of whom did not trust the whites and had been spreading rumors of an attack. After consulting with the Mandans, it was decided to postpone the punitive expedition until spring. The snow was deep and the air frigid. During the course of his conversation with the Mandan chief, Clark learned that there was particular animosity toward the Arikaras who had been involved in the attack. It was important to Lewis and Clark to make peace between the Arikaras and Mandans, since they were neighbors, so here is what Clark said:

you Say that the Panies or Ricares were with the Sciaux, Some bad men may have been with the Sciaux you know there is bad men in all nations, do not get mad with the racarees until we know if those bad men are Counternoncd. by their nation, and we are Convsd. those people do not intend to follow our Councils— (William Clark, journal entry of 30 November 1804, in The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, ed. Gary E. Moulton [Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1987], 3:246 [italics in original])

Philosophers are too clever by half. When it's asserted that marriage is a childrearing institution, i.e., that the purpose of marriage is to provide for children, the retort is that not all married couples have children—or even intend to upon marrying. This is supposed to refute the assertion.

It does nothing of the sort. What it does is reflect a misunderstanding of the nature of law. Law is necessarily crude. Why do we have a drinking age, for example? Everyone knows that some people under the drinking age are mature, and therefore capable of drinking responsibly. Everyone knows that some people over the drinking age are immature, and therefore incapable of drinking responsibly. Why doesn't the law allow all and only the mature to drink? Wouldn't that be a more defensible rule?

The answer, of course, is that such a rule, whatever its intrinsic merits, is too costly to implement. An age requirement is what lawyers call a bright-line rule. Age is no more objective than maturity; it's just easier to ascertain. There are two possible mistakes here: setting the drinking age too high and setting it too low. The law tries to pick an age that correlates with maturity, an age such that most people above it are mature and most below it immature. The law trades accuracy (or precision) for ease of implementation.

Legal rules, as I say, are crude. They identify classes, not individuals. Lawyers know this and take it into account in their deliberations. Philosophers who are not also lawyers don't know it and (therefore) don't take it into account in their deliberations. We see this in the case of homosexual "marriage." When philosophers discuss the topic, they act as though all possible legal rules are equally easy to implement. Ha! A rule that restricts marriage to heterosexuals is much less costly to implement than one that restricts it to those who have or intend to have children. This is not to imply that all heterosexuals have children (although most do) or that no homosexuals have children (most do not). It's to make a distinction that correlates with what matters but is less costly to implement than alternatives.

Another way to look at it is that there's a difference between a moral argument and a legal argument. Moral arguments need take no account of institutional design, imperfect knowledge, administrative error, or information costs. Legal arguments do. Moral arguments take place in a frictionless world, so to speak. What's interesting is that liberals (including liberal philosophers) seem to understand this distinction in other contexts. They argue, for example, that even if abortion or voluntary euthanasia is wrong, it doesn't follow that it ought to be prohibited and punished by law. By the same token, there are acts (such as overtime parking) that are not wrong (i.e., not malum in se) but that ought to be prohibited and punished by law.

Morality is one thing; law is another. The issue of homosexual "marriage" is about law, not morality. It is about the world as we know it, not the world of philosophers' imaginations. It is about the real world, not some ideal world. Homosexuals are already able to marry, morally speaking. They are already able to marry, religiously speaking. The question is whether their "marriages" should be recognized by law. The answer to this moral question about the law cannot be read off, as certain philosophers appear to think, from the answer to the moral question.

Incidentally, even if I were to concede the force of the retort about childless heterosexual couples, it would not follow that all homosexuals should be allowed to marry. What follows is that all and only those with children should be allowed to marry. This would prevent all but a small percentage of homosexual couples (those with children) from marrying. It would also prevent a small percentage of heterosexual couples (those without children) from marrying. So the worst-case scenario, from the point of view of one who believes that the purpose of marriage is to provide for children, is that some small percentage of homosexuals will be allowed by law to marry.

[W]hat, in the last analysis, makes sense of the conditions of the marital enterprise, its stability and exclusiveness, is not the worthy and delightful sentiments of love and affection which invite one to marry, but the desire for and demands of a procreative community, a family.

(John M. Finnis, "Natural Law and Unnatural Acts," chap. 1 in Human Sexuality, ed. Igor Primoratz, The International Research Library of Philosophy 19, ed. John Skorupski [Aldershot, England: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1997], 5-27, at 23 [italics in original] [essay first published in 1970])

You ought to read this, especially if you eat factory-farmed meat.

My beloved Sophie was born on this date 12 years ago—in a horse barn in Red Oak, Texas. Her father was an English Springer Spaniel. Her mother was a Brittany Spaniel. I brought her home when she was two months old and have hardly been apart from her since. She takes care of me; I take care of her. We've walked—rambled—many thousands of miles together, much of it in the nearby woods. Nothing stops us: not heat, not cold, not rain, not snow, not hail, not wind. We've encountered skunks, raccoons, cows, opossums, rats, squirrels, rabbits, coyotes, birds, lizards, and snakes, not to mention other dogs and the occasional cat. We've soaked up the sunlight on cold winter days. We've traversed the woods by moonlight.

Sophie was struck by a vehicle when she was a pup. Luckily, only her paw was wounded. She made a full recovery. A few years later, she had surgery on her knee, which has been gimpy ever since. She was viciously attacked by a pit bull during one of our walks. Her collar and my intervention saved her life. (I had to have stitches in my hand.) I call her my trooper, because nothing stops her. She's slower now, as I am, but no less enthusiastic. Shelbie, my one-and-a-half year old, keeps both of us young. Happy birthday, Sophie. I love you, stinker.

The word "blog" has entered the lexicon. See here.

To the Editor:

To the people trapped in red state families: Come to California. You won't have to be ashamed of being gay, your uterus won't be the property of the state or the minister, science is not anathema to God, France is still our oldest ally and our Constitution is not to be altered for cheap political gain.

Welcome to all the downtrodden masses from behind the red curtain. California loves and accepts you exactly as you are.

Nancy Koprowski
Laguna Beach, Calif., Nov. 28, 2004

This week's link is to Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind.

Hello one and all
Was it you I used to know
Can't you hear me call
On this old ham radio
All I got to say
I'm alive and feelin' fine
Should you come my way
You can share my poison wine

CHORUS:
No marigolds in the promised land
There's a hole in the ground
Where they used to grow
Any man left on the Rio Grande
Is the king of the world
As far as I know

I won't take your bread
I don't need your helping hand
I can't be no savage
I can't be no highwayman
Show me where you are
You and I will spend this day
Drivin' in my car
Through the ruins of Santa Fe

CHORUS

I'm reading last year's papers
Although I don't know why
Assassins cons and rapers
Might as well die

When you come around
No more pain and no regrets
Watch the sun go brown
Smoking cobalt cigarettes
There's no need to hide
Taking things the easy way
If I stay inside
I might live 'til Saturday

CHORUS

Pleonasm, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.

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

Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

I just spent a few hours reading through your blog (found through Donald Luskin, one of my favorites) and some of your recommended links. First, let me just say I was already thinking of abandoning my own blogging because I just don't invest the time or thought into my posts that can compete, if you will, with the thoughtful words of so many others. Thanks for convincing me I was RIGHT! But I'm going to continue my less-serious rants anyway, and just enjoy the writing of you and others.

A couple of thoughts. . . . Why do you care what the blowhards at Crooked Timber think or say about you? Your thoughts and writings stand on their own merit. Who cares if they act like poo-flinging monkeys? I wouldn't even acknowledge them. Let them send you their steaming piles in email—they'll give up when you don't dignify them with a response. Liberal adolescent punks, indeed.

Which brings me to my next thought. I tend to (unprofessionally) psychoanalyze people based on their politics. Intelligence really doesn't have anything to do with political thought, as you've noted. I am sure, though, that psychology has everything to do with it. Why is it that some people become liberal (leftist) vs. conservative? I could be rude and say it's because leftists haven't emotionally matured beyond adolescent rebellion, and I don't think I'd be too far off-base. But lacking the educational and practical background to firmly state it as provable, I'll just go on my years of observation. There's been talk of left-brain/right-brain correlation to right-wing/left-wing ideology, and there's something to be said for that. Isn't it noteworthy, though, that in almost all of these leftists, anti-establishment thought abounds? It reeks of teenagers backsassing teachers, parents, the law—anyone more powerful than they are. Teenagers also have a tendency to be overly idealistic, as though "Utopia" were possible. And what do leftists say? They rage against the powerful. They complain as though nothing is EVER good enough, despite not looking at things in comparison to the alternatives. This isn't to say that we (conservatives) are complacent or should be, it's simply a question of idealism vs. reality. (There's that left/right brain thing.)

Leftists also, like adolescents, claim "nuance" as their own because of their moral relativism. However, they don't "get" the nuances of an argument such as yours as in "dog voting." (I'd post that thought to Crooked Timber, but my eyes bleed when I'm forced to watch monkeys like them. I just don't bother engaging them.) It's all or nothing to them—no "slippery slope" exists, no analogies need apply. Anything of the sort seems silly to them, which makes them—the all-knowing—think of us as "stoopid." Of course, they also think we're stupid because we simply don't agree with their open-minded, free-thinking views. And THAT is incredibly juvenile.

OK, I'm cutting myself off on that before I get long-winded on stuff that's just yanked out of my head.

Anyway, thanks for a great read. I've got you blogrolled and subscribed!

Beth Cleaver
My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

I don't know whether to be pleased or distressed—or something in between—by the link on The Daou Report. See here. Peter Daou, the author of the report, worked for John Kerry. Then again, readers are readers, whether they come from the Right or the Left. To those who arrived here via The Daou Report, welcome. Let me warn you, before you proceed, that I'm a conservative. I voted for President Bush. But I'm also a demi-vegetarian, an atheist, a philosopher, a lawyer, a baseball fan, a headbanger, a runner, a bicyclist, an ethical egoist, a moral subjectivist, and an erstwhile liberal and feminist. See my essays "My Journey to Conservatism" and "My Escape from Ideology" (on the left side of the blog) for an account of my political trajectory.

Philosophical discourse tends to be abstruse, arcane, ethereal, and pedantic. But there's no reason it can't be mundane or quotidian. Philosophy is a set of skills, not a body of knowledge. The skills—analysis, criticism, argumentation, methodology—can be applied to any topic, from the nature of time and space at the most abstract to the difference between wanting and needing, or being careless and being carefree, or doing something by mistake and doing it by accident. Today I was stumped by the following. I saw a young man on campus who was wearing leg coverings that came to mid-calf. Are they long shorts, I wondered, or short pants? What do you think? Defend your answer.

Eleven days ago (see here), I posted a letter from my friend Joanna Lucas in which she criticized me for feeding meat-based products to my canine companions, Sophie and Shelbie. Joanna wrote:

Do my obligations towards the animals (or humans) in my care entitle me to harm the animals (or humans) who are not in my care? Specifically, does my obligation to give my dog Louie a good life entitle me to cause suffering and death to Michele's cow, Sherman?

I just remembered it.

Sometimes,
I think that every time I
remember something new, I
have to forget something old—
as if my memory buffer is
full.
But, I finally remembered it. It
was right on the tip of one of my
brain
nerve
cells.
My molecular structure is such that I
don't have many
K's.

After all, I'm almost thirty, and running
out of memory. I wonder
what I had to forget to remember
"Billy Squier."

Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows that I admire and respect Judge Richard A. Posner. I've said that if I were stranded on a desert island and could have the works of only one author, I would choose either R. M. Hare (the late British moral philosopher) or Richard A. Posner. Posner writes faster than I read. He writes books faster than most academics write articles. He's read everything—or so it seems. He writes beautifully, too. Worst of all, he does it while holding down a federal judgeship. One of the highlights of my life was being cited in the fifth edition of his book Economic Analysis of Law. That he read something I wrote, much less cited it, was mind-boggling.

Recently, Judge Posner sat in for Lawrence Lessig when the latter took a hiatus from blogging. It was fascinating to see Posner write in real time. Today, to my absolute delight, I learned (from Eugene Volokh) that Posner and his former University of Chicago colleague Gary S. Becker (a Nobel Prize winner in Economic Science) are starting a blog. See here. This is a significant event in the history of the blogosphere, one that gives it instant credibility, respectability, authority, and cachet. Guys sitting in their living rooms wearing pajamas indeed! It also raises the average blogger intelligence by at least one percent. Bookmark the blog. You won't be disappointed.

To the Editor:

Re "Data on Deaths From Obesity Is Inflated, U.S. Agency Says" (news article, Nov. 24):

While the exact numbers may be in doubt, we know that obesity raises the risk of nine different cancer types. An estimated 90,000 cancer deaths each year could be prevented if Americans maintained a healthy weight.

We are also certain that overconsumption of junk food and sedentary lifestyles are a dangerous path to other life-threatening diseases.

In a city like New York, where nearly half of public elementary school children are overweight or obese, we can't afford to get distracted by disputes over how fat we are. We need to spend less time crunching numbers and more time doing crunches.

Donald Distasio
Chief Executive
American Cancer Society of New York and New Jersey
New York, Nov. 24, 2004

To the Editor:

The controversy over the number of deaths from obesity is misplaced. Few, if any, people die from obesity directly, but a vast number of people die from various complications and conditions that are aggravated by obesity.

We should try to estimate the reduction in life expectancy and the degradation of the quality of life of individuals from this condition.

Healthy eating and a modest amount of exercise are the keys. Increasing the availability of affordable nutritious food, particularly in poorer neighborhoods, will go a long way toward solving the problem.

Samprit Chatterjee
Bronxville, N.Y., Nov. 25, 2004
The writer is a statistician working on health policy issues.

Hey there,

Way to stereotype all Canadians, and then pass judgment on us as a whole. [See here.] That's specifically what so many Americans have objected to: Canadians passing judgment on America, based on the assumption that all Americans are as superficial and as unintelligent as the select few who opt to open their mouths and embarrass themselves.

Oh, and just for the record, I don't like Bush, I do like America, I also like Americans, I and most other Canadians DON'T want the help of your military, we DON'T want to get bombed for associating with you and supporting your silly power trips, and as far as becoming a territory: no worries, as soon as you kill off your army by invading every country in the middle east, we'll call in the native Americans and defeat you as easily as we did the last time you tried that shit. You've already demonstrated your limited patience, so why not show the effectiveness of your limited intelligence before calling it a day.

I'll be waiting on the northern side of our border, for all the sensible Americans to either give you and your kind the boot to Iraq, where you can live in your lovely aftermath, or else decide you aren't worth the bother, and flee to Canada, where we respect diversity and promote peace, not war. We'll be waiting.

You seem like an intelligent person, so why stoop to such lows?

Sincerely,

Darcy
(a proud Canadian)

Note from AnalPhilosopher: On 14 September 2007, I received an e-mail message from Darcy requesting that I remove his or her name from this post, which turns up in a Google search. I wrote back to say that he or she should have thought of that before sending such a scurrilous message. In our next round of e-mails, I wrote: "You need to make a public apology to me." I then received this:

Hello Keith,

I regret, and apologize for, the email that I wrote on November 24th in response to your blog post Free Riding and Foul Dealing. Although each is entitled to his or her own opinion, I expressed mine in an inappropriate and hypocritical manner, resorting to personal attacks rather than appealing on the basis of logic and reason.

Although I have no direct means of posting this apology in any public forum, please feel free to include it as a comment on your website, or in the archived comments of the article in question.

Sincerely,
Darcy

I would ask that, if acceptable to you, this email and my previous comment be marked as from an anonymous source. -D

I accept Darcy's apology, and have, accordingly, removed Darcy's surname from the post. Whether that removes the post from a Google search, I don't know. I don't control Google.

Bob Hessen pointed out that filmmaker Ken Burns gave the commencement address at Yale University this past May. I tracked it down. See here.

Read this. Then thank your lucky stars—again—that President Bush was reelected.

Political correctness is alive and well on college campuses. See here.

Canadians are free riders. They want all the benefits of being our neighbor, especially national defense, but don't want to pay any of the costs. Instead of expressing gratitude for all that we do for them, they mock us. Now, incredibly, certain Canadian law professors want to prosecute President Bush for war crimes. See here. With this sort of behavior, it's only a matter of time before we invade Canada and make it a territory. American patience is not unlimited. (Thanks to Dan Gifford for the link.)

I gravitate to witty, intelligent people, which is why I enjoy Robert Hayes's blog. See here.

[D]ogma is not the exclusive preserve of governments and corporations. There is religious dogma, and social dogma (such as neoconservatism), and political dogma not limited to the governing parties. Today there are academic dogmas as well, such as those of the cultural Left, the Austrian school of economics, and the followers of Leo Strauss. Intellectuals, moreover, often flock together; in fact very few of them are truly untamable individualists in the tradition of Socrates, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Camus, and Orwell. Nor is there any necessary virtue in an oppositional stance; it depends on what one is opposing. Intellectuals' oppositional reflex has frequently led them into an unthinking, and during the communist era a disastrous, rejection of the attitudes and values of their fellow citizens.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001], 30-1 [footnote omitted])

Some of you may remember the trouble I had with EarthLink DSL Internet access several months ago. The modem stopped working, probably because of a storm, but no technician could figure out what was wrong. Instead of sending me a new modem, EarthLink gave me the runaround. Finally, exasperated, I went over to Charter, which supplies my cable-television access. The installation took only a couple of hours on 6 August. I'm pleased to say that I've had no trouble whatsoever in the more than 16 weeks that I've used Charter. It's lightning quick, reliable, and reasonably priced. This is not an advertisement for Charter. Okay, it is. But I'm not being paid for it and have no financial or other interest in the company. I simply believe in sharing the wealth—in this case, information about a high-quality product. Goodness knows I complain when things go badly. Integrity compels me to issue praise when things go well.

Dr John J. Ray of Brisbane, Australia, has many blogs. His main blog is Dissecting Leftism, which I read every day. You should, too, if only to stay abreast of the stupidity, inaccuracy, inconsistency, incivility, and duplicity of the Left. Another of John's blogs is Political Correctness Watch. This is where John, well, watches the PC crowd. If we don't watch them, we can't hold them accountable for their actions; and if we don't hold them accountable, they'll be emboldened to do even more damage to our culture. Keep up the good work, John!

Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.

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

11-28-84 If Sigmund Freud [1856-1939] was right, then each of us has an unconscious as well as a conscious life. Sometimes, I get a glimpse into my unconscious life. [The unconscious is, by definition, inaccessible. I should have said "preconscious," for that is accessible.] When I do, here's what I see. I see a person who craves attention, who wants to be published in order for others to hear about and think about his ideas. That is why I write letters, letters to the editor, journal entries, and academic articles, and that is why I rejected the practice of law. Practicing lawyers seldom receive attention from the public or from others within the profession. Academic lawyers, however, do receive this attention. I have gravitated toward philosophy because it provides my best chance of gaining the attention that I crave.

Isn't this bizarre? Here I am, in effect, psychoanalyzing myself—hypothesizing about what makes me tick at the most basic level. These thoughts ran through my head last night as I waited for the bus, so I deemed it important enough to put them down for posterity. There seems to be a grain of truth to what I say, don't you think? But I honestly don't know what to do about it. For whatever reason, I do crave attention; I love seeing my name in print. I want to be thought of as an intelligent, problem-solving person. Is this a bad thing? On the one hand, it seems awfully superfluous [I think I meant trivial]; but on the other, it seems to be as genuine and legitimate a goal as any. Some people crave power; others crave pleasure of one sort or another. I happen to crave attention from my peers. In that, I suspect, lies power and pleasure. And so on I go, aware of my unconscious motivations (is that a contradiction?), but unwilling to change them. I am happy with my life. As I said the other day, I'm just a writing, publishing machine. Perhaps some day I'll change my aspirations, but, for the moment, I'm hanging on to them.

If you're looking for some Sunday-evening reading, you can do much worse than this. I particularly recommend Hudson's Tanner Lecture from 1997 entitled "The Life of the Mind," which appears in PDF format. Just click and read. You're welcome.

Sometime in the past year, I began hearing television journalists and talk-show hosts interrupt their guests by saying, "We will have to leave it there." This is elliptical for "Stop talking; we have to go to commercial." I realize that television news programs are profit-making enterprises, but shouldn't there be leeway for the completion of thoughts? I've had many invitations to appear on television. I've been contacted by Hannity & Colmes and by John Kasich's Heartland. I've also been asked to appear on radio programs. I decline all of them. Yes, I watch television, but always with a sense of frustration and disappointment. It puts profit before integrity, entertainment before education. Let the arguments and analyses conclude naturally; don't make them fit artificial time slots.

As a matter of intelligence, one can see (even without being a saint fully open to and in tension towards God) that, once one has rejected the call of a human value as it is directly and immediately involved in the form of one's action, and substituted a delicate calculus of foreseeable consequences, one has started down a road that makes it not merely one's right but indeed one's duty to participate in numberless killings and other violations of basic values. For as every concentration camp executioner and abortion clinic doctor can quite honestly say: If I don't do it, someone else, as a practical certainty, will; and after all, he may have even fewer scruples and kill more people than I would, and I have a wife and children who would go to ruin if I lose my job; so, much is gained and nothing is lost if I 'do my duty'. All that is lost, in fact, is that vertical perspective in which I am summoned to love the basic values where they directly and immediately fall under my choice by reason of the form of my choice, and am summoned not to abandon them on the basis of a calculation that is doomed to partiality and arbitrariness because I am not God.

(John M. Finnis, "Natural Law and Unnatural Acts," chap. 1 in Human Sexuality, ed. Igor Primoratz, The International Research Library of Philosophy 19, ed. John Skorupski [Aldershot, England: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1997], 5-27, at 19 [footnote omitted] [essay first published in 1970])

The second of my three blogs is celebrating its first anniversary. See here.

To the Editor:

Re "When Every Child Is Good Enough" (Week in Review, Nov. 21):

Educators want all students to believe that they can be successful, even if they aren't star athletes or valedictorians. But when students aren't actually working to their highest individual potential, hollow praise leads to poorer performance.

Some of my gifted middle-school students believe that if they turn something in, it must be great, even if it is messy, misspelled or partly completed.

Last year, after I read one student's exceptional essay to the class, other students told me that it made them feel bad because I had singled her out for recognition.

Fostering self-esteem is vital, but praising students for mediocre work and minimal effort will not help them become successful adults. It only inflates their egos and denies students the experience of receiving meaningful recognition for their true gifts and hard work.

Jill Molloy
Durham, N.C., Nov. 21, 2004

Influence, n. In politics, a visionary quo given in exchange for a substantial quid.

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

Liberals, as a class, are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, probably because they spend more time emoting than cogitating. (Remember: I was a liberal for 20 years; I know the liberal mind inside and out.) Do you think it's an accident that people become more conservative as they age? It's because wisdom comes with age. You can supply the missing premise.

One common liberal mistake is imputing bad motives to opponents. How many times have you heard it said, by a liberal, that those who oppose homosexual "marriage" are prejudiced (or bigoted)? I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard it. But stop and think. If opposition to homosexual "marriage" is rooted in prejudice, why isn't support for homosexual "marriage" rooted in prejudice? If opposition is based on hatred of or aversion to homosexuals, why isn't support based on love of or attraction to homosexuals? Why the asymmetry?

Liberals might reply that only prejudice can explain opposition. They think that no good case against homosexual "marriage" can be made, so opposition to it cannot be based on reason; it must be based on emotion. But this begs the question against the opponent of homosexual "marriage." The issue is whether there are reasons against revising the traditional understanding of "marriage"; the liberal cannot simply assume, without argument, that there are not. Liberals beg lots of questions. It saves them from having to do the hard work of arguing.

Another common liberal mistake is confusing liberty with power. Even bright people, such as Wisconsin philosopher Harry Brighouse, make this mistake. The other day, Brighouse wrote that I endorse coercion by citizens of states but not by judges. He was talking about homosexual "marriage," and specifically about my federalist position on that topic. He was implying that my position is either arbitrary or inconsistent.

Brighouse is confused if he thinks not allowing homosexuals to "marry" constrains their liberty. Marriage is an institution. Certain people are empowered by law to participate in that institution. People who are not allowed to participate do not thereby have their liberty limited; they simply lack a legal power. Compare this to laws that prohibit and punish homosexual conduct. These laws constrain liberty. They're coercive, since they threaten individuals with criminal punishment for their violation. Criminal laws say "Do this (or don't do this) or else." Marriage laws say "If you qualify for this institution, you are allowed—but not required—to participate in it." The difference between powers (or abilities) and liberties is one of the oldest and most important in legal philosophy. If Brighouse isn't aware of it, he's not the philosopher I thought he was.

My federalism doesn't commit me to the absurd idea that I don't mind coercion by the people of the states. We're not talking about coercion. We're talking about empowerment. My view is that, with respect to participation in the institution of marriage, the people of a state have the moral and legal right to decide. If the people of Massachusetts want to allow homosexuals to participate, fine. I've said that many times in this blog. But if the people of Texas want to limit marriage to heterosexuals, they're entitled to do so.

It might be objected that all I've done is change the question. Instead of "Do the citizens of a state have a right to limit the liberty of homosexuals?" the question becomes "Do the citizens of a state have a right to deny the power of marriage to homosexuals?" But there is no reason why one must give the same answer to these questions. I can answer no to the first question and yes to the second without contradicting myself. Putting people in jail is far more serious than denying them a power. The former, therefore, requires far more than the latter in the way of justification. (There is, to use Joel Feinberg's term, a presumption in favor of liberty. There is no presumption in favor of universal participation in every institution.) Also, marriage is a bundle of benefits as well as burdens. The citizens of a state have a right to decide who is eligible for those benefits.

Someone wrote to complain about my use of "homosexual," as in "homosexual 'marriage.'" He said it's not the term used by homosexuals, the implication being that I should use whatever term they want. This was news to me. Has anyone else heard such a thing? Ordinarily, I'm sympathetic to complaints like this. It's why I use "African-American" rather than "black," although I continue to use "black" in certain contexts.

But what's the reason for the request? If "homosexual" were offensive to almost all homosexuals, as "nigger" is to almost all blacks, that's one thing. But if homosexuals (some? many? most?) merely prefer something else (what?), that's not a powerful enough reason to change my usage. Suppose I preferred to be called "master," "lord," or "philosopher-king" rather than "professor," on the ground that these other titles enhance my self-esteem. Would that give anyone a reason to comply? Will you call me these things if I ask you to?

As everyone knows, words—symbols, signs, linguistic entities—acquire associations and connotations. The word "fat," for example, has negative emotive meaning as well as descriptive meaning. (That is, it both disparages and informs.) It acquired negative emotive meaning because—ta da!—people don't want to be fat. It's widely considered unfortunate, even a sign of poor character, to be fat. The negativity of the signified rubbed off on (or transferred itself to) the signifier, as it were. The word "obese" was coined to avoid the negative connotation of "fat." Unfortunately for the obese, that word, too, has acquired a negative connotation (maybe a more negative connotation). As long as fat people are despised or disfavored, words used to describe them will have negative emotive meaning.

If "homosexual" has acquired a negative emotive meaning, it would suggest that homosexuality is despised or disfavored. We can predict, therefore, that, unless attitudes toward homosexuality change, any word that replaces "homosexual" will eventually take on its negative emotive meaning. It's only a matter of time. As for me, I need much more evidence of offensiveness to change my usage. I'll change when the vast majority of scientists change; how's that?

To the Editor:

Contrary to Nicholas D. Kristof's suggestion, most American evangelical Christians are not like Islamic fundamentalists. Like the co-authors of the "Left Behind" series, evangelicals may believe that there are consequences for unbelief, but they do not believe that governments should enforce those consequences. This difference is rarely noted.

Many Muslim fundamentalists would use the coercive powers of government to force compliance with their religious beliefs.

Such comparisons are typical of a mainstream media that does not understand (and often mocks) the religious beliefs of many Americans.

Darin Lowder
Arlington, Va., Nov. 24, 2004

Speaking in terms of women's rights, people sometimes say things like, "Well, it's her life you're talking about too, you know; she's got a right to her own life, her own happiness." And the discussion stops there. But in the context of virtue theory, given that we are particularly concerned with what constitutes a good human life, with what true happiness or eudaimonia is, this is no place to stop. We go on to ask, "And is this life of hers a good one? Is she living well?"

If we are to go on to talk about good human lives, in the context of abortion, we have to bring in our thoughts about the value of love and family life, and our proper emotional development through a natural life cycle. The familiar facts support the view that parenthood in general, and motherhood and childbearing in particular, are intrinsically worthwhile, are among the things that can be correctly thought to be partially constitutive of a flourishing human life. If this is right, then a woman who opts for not being a mother (at all, or again, or now) by opting for abortion may thereby be manifesting a flawed grasp of what her life should be, and be about—a grasp that is childish, or grossly materialistic, or shortsighted, or shallow.

(Rosalind Hursthouse, "Virtue Theory and Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 20 [summer 1991]: 223-46, at 241 [footnote omitted])

If you like Miles Davis, you'll love this.

Have you ever been around a group of adolescent boys? Separately, they're timid, even cowardly, but put them together and they become brave. They taunt passersby. Each member of the gang tries to impress the others with his bravado. This intensifies the taunting while strengthening the bonds of the gang. The taunting may metamorphose into violence, since no individual feels responsible for his actions. The intelligence of a crowd is less than the sum of the intelligences of its members.

Liberal academics are furious that they lost the presidential election. They're powerless. They don't even control Congress. The federal courts are being remade in President Bush's image. Liberals tried but failed to persuade Americans to support their candidates. Americans were not impressed. The frustration and anger in liberal quarters is palpable. It manifests itself in personal attacks on those designated as enemies. Special venom is reserved for fellow academics who don't subscribe to liberalism. They are heretics, blasphemers, traitors, infidels. It's simply assumed that if you have academic credentials, you're a liberal. I know: I used to be one.

If you think I'm making this up, read the posts and letters at Crooked Timber. Note the ganging up. Note the attempt to build solidarity within liberalism by attacking outsiders, such as me. Note the snide, condescending comments. Note the lack of decency, civility, and common sense. Note the illogic. These are people who are sworn by their universities to seek truth. They don't give a damn about truth. They participate every day in what Roger Scruton calls "the joyous work of falsehood." All they care about is power, and right now they don't have any. It's comical to watch them lash out. Keep it up, gang. You'll continue to alienate the very people you need to persuade.

David Harmer, "Securing a Free State: Why the Second Amendment Matters," Brigham Young University Law Review (1998): 55.

Richard W. Painter, Kimberly D. Krawiec, and Cynthia A. Williams, "Don't Ask, Just Tell: Insider Trading After United States v. O'Hagan," Virginia Law Review 84 (March 1998): 153.

Katharine Costenbader, "Damning Dams: Bearing the Cost of Restoring America's Rivers," George Mason Law Review 6 (spring 1998): 635.

Eric K. Klein, "Dennis the Menace or Billy the Kid: An Analysis of the Role of Transfer to Criminal Court in Juvenile Justice," American Criminal Law Review 35 (winter 1998): 371.

Daniel G. McBride, "Guidance for Student Peer Sexual Harassment? Not!" Stanford Law Review 50 (January 1998): 523.

This is nuttiness. This is nuttiness educated.

Bill Vallicella, the desert doctor, continues his superlative blogging. See here. I guarantee that you will learn something—probably a lot.

See here. Whenever I need a good laugh, I go to Democratic Underground.

Here is Carol's Thanksgiving post.

Bill Keezer is multi-talented. See here for some of his poetry.

Things are looking up for fetuses. See here. Does anyone else find it odd that liberals, who profess to be concerned for the vulnerable, treat the fetus as an object? This is just one of many liberal inconsistencies.

Election day was a good day for individual rights and for public safety. See here.

Not all Canadians have gone soft in the head. See here. (Thanks to Dan Gifford for the link.)

The girl from all those songs
Who made everything feel right
She came in like an angel, into your lonely life
And filling your world with light
Oh, and everybody told you "you're oh so lucky"

Curtains part revealing a country scene
Clothed in green and brown
Evidence of autumn
And recent rain
On a winding lane, a byway
Walking on that road is a certain girl
In all the world the one
Guaranteed to move you and turn your head
When all's been said and done

The girl from all those songs
Who made everything feel right
She came in like an angel, into your lonely life
And filling your world with light
Oh, and everybody told you "you're oh so lucky"

The night is clear but cool
Ooh maybe dawn is breaking as you turn to find her gone
Then you see the note
Ooh you cannot believe it
And you think you'll go insane . . .

But that was many years ago
And though the pain is dim
A something still remains
Though you hardly can recall
Her face or form
Her memory lingers on
Ooh she made everything feel right
She came in like an angel (in like an angel),
Into your lonely life (into your life)
And filling your world with light
Oh and everybody told you "you're oh so lucky"

This week's link is to Bayou Bob's Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch.

Those of you who don't work or study at a university may not know what goes on there. See here for an example of academic discourse. It's snide, sneering, condescending, smug, and personal. These are the equivalent of punks on a street corner. Their sole objective is to impress each other with their wit, their loyalty to the liberal cause, and their animosity toward outsiders (read: conservatives). I call them liberal punks. They're a dime a dozen on college campuses. They wouldn't last a minute in a real job.

Asperse, v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.

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

See here for Dr John J. Ray's dissection of another leftist.

To the Editor:

"Many Women Say Airport Pat-Downs Are a Humiliation" vividly brought back the shame and anger I felt when subjected to this. I'm glad to know it's my very precautions to avoid triggering the metal detector (top with built-in shelf bra—no underwire) that made me a target; I'll wear a sweatshirt next time, though my first choice will be to drive or take the train.

As to the notion that "travelers have the right to seek a private area," my request to at least turn my back to the terminal crowd was refused, so I felt keenly the eyes of others as I was being groped with my arms outstretched—and there's no other word than "groped" for having one's breasts palpitated in public.

"We don't want another Russia to happen" was the justification Patti LuPone's screener gave? I couldn't agree more, but it's the police state where petty functionaries wield power maliciously that I fear more than an airplane bombing.

Meredith Parsons McComb
New York, Nov. 23, 2004

To the Editor:

As a middle-aged man, I was recently singled out, asked or told to take off my belt, shoes, glasses, coins in my pocket, cellphone and watch. Then I, too, was patted down, not once, but twice, then the magical wand came out to see if it could find explosives or whatever.

No, I don't wear a bra, but I did feel conspicuous, and it took far longer than necessary. But my flight from Houston to Kansas City arrived on time and my weekend wasn't ruined because I chose to appreciate the task of the inspectors: not one death because of negligence.

I say to those people who take offense to thorough searches at airports: Drive, rent a car, stay at a motel, and above all keep the economy booming by choosing to be irritated at the new reality of the 21st century. Islamic radicals are waging war against the civilized world.

Ignorance and whining, complaining and griping are plainly for the uninformed. I will work with the airport inspectors. They aren't perverts, and they, too, are probably embarrassed about the same issue.

As for me, I want to arrive, alive.

M. Lee Gunter
League City, Tex., Nov. 23, 2004

My third blog, The Ethics of War, is celebrating its six-month anniversary. See here.

Acting rightly is difficult, and does call for much moral wisdom, and the relevant condition of adequacy, which virtue theory meets, is that it should have built into it an explanation of a truth expressed by Aristotle, namely, that moral knowledge—unlike mathematical knowledge—cannot be acquired merely by attending lectures and is not characteristically to be found in people too young to have had much experience of life. There are youthful mathematical geniuses, but rarely, if ever, youthful moral geniuses, and this tells us something significant about the sort of knowledge that moral knowledge is. Virtue ethics builds this in straight off precisely by couching its rules in terms whose application may indeed call for the most delicate and sensitive judgment.

(Rosalind Hursthouse, "Virtue Theory and Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 20 [summer 1991]: 223-46, at 231 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

Several people have written in the past few hours to tell me that there's a reply to my posts about homosexual "marriage" somewhere in cyberspace, the implication being that I'm obligated to respond to it. I don't have time to respond to every critic, much less the uncharitable ones, much less the nasty ones. Does Peter Singer respond to even 1% of his critics? Did John Rawls? If they did, they'd never get any work done. David Hume didn't respond to any critics. Was that a failing on his part? My rule is simple: Reply only to those who are personable (but certainly not to all of them, for time is limited). When I read something, including e-mail, I stop reading as soon as the author gets sarcastic or insulting. If you want me to read your prose, you must be kind and respectful. Is that too much to ask?

The point of my post (see here) was that critics should focus on my arguments or analyses, not on me. Isn't that what we teach our undergraduates? If my conclusion doesn't follow from my premises, say so and explain why. Leave me out of it. If my analyses are defective, say so and explain why. Leave me out of it. Don't say that I have bad values, for all you can possibly mean by that is that you don't share them. (Value is subjective.) The posts I saw on Crooked Timber yesterday are personal and vicious. I don't recognize many of the names on that site, so I don't even know whether they're philosophers, but if I may give them some advice, they should think about their reputations and about how their personal attacks reflect on their disciplines. They are acting like punks on a street corner instead of the professionals they claim to be.

By the way, I've written voluminously about homosexual "marriage" on my blog. I've also linked to many fine essays by Canadian law professor Margaret Somerville. At least one of us, in all likelihood, has answered the critics' questions, if only they'd take time to look.

Hello Professor Burgess-Jackson,

In your blog, you wrote: "There is no doubt in my mind that [Sophie and Shelbie] would be significantly less happy, maybe even unhappy, if I fed them a vegetarian diet."

I'm not sure that you are right. If dogs are anything like people, then switching the dogs to a vegetarian diet would—at worst—make them unhappy for a relatively short while. Psychologists who study happiness in humans find that people generally have a specific "set point," and their level of happiness does not usually deviate much from that set point. Changes in life circumstances have only a transient effect on happiness. For example, lottery winners become much happier shortly after they win the lottery, and paraplegics become much less happy in the months after their accident. But within about a year, the lottery winners and the paraplegics are back to their previous, baseline-level of happiness. Here's the specific reference: Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and R. Janoff-Bulman, "Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36 (August 1978): 917-27.

Other studies also support this principle. Psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman (based at the University of Pennsylvania) discusses some of this research in his recent book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).

Anyway, back to your Sophie and Shelbie: I suspect that they probably wouldn't enjoy being vegetarians at first, but they'd adjust fairly quickly and would be none the worse for wear (assuming, of course, that the vegetarian diet had the necessary nutritional and caloric content).

Incidentally, I'm a vegan, but my cat is not. So I suppose I'm a hypocrite.

Kindest regards,
Alex Chernavsky

The folks at Crooked Timber are having fun at my expense. See here. What's interesting (and ironic) is that nobody at the site engaged my argument. In the insular world of liberalism, argumentation is unnecessary. One mocks conservatives; one doesn't engage their arguments. Perhaps this explains liberalism's failure in the public arena.

Few classicists have doubted that homosexuality occupied a prominent and respected position in most Greek and Roman cities at all levels of society and among a substantial portion of the population. Indeed familiarity with the literature of antiquity raises one very perplexing problem for the scholar which will not have occurred to most persons unacquainted with the classics: whether the dichotomy suggested by the terms "homosexual" and "heterosexual" corresponds to any reality at all. Terms for these categories appear extremely rarely in ancient literature, which nonetheless contains abundant descriptions and accounts of homosexual and heterosexual activity. It is apparent that the majority of residents of the ancient world were unconscious of any such categories.

This fact is disturbing. How can a dichotomy so obvious to modern society, so morally troublesome, so urgent in the lives of many individuals, have been unknown in societies where homosexual behavior was even more familiar than it is today? It is not as if indifference in sexual matters produced a general dearth of distinctions about erotic interests. Most other terms for sexual acts or predilections are in fact based on distinctions recognized and named in Greece or Rome ("pedophilia," "narcissism," "incest," "fellatio," etc.).

The answer to this question appears to relate less to the incidence or reality of homosexuality than to the perception of it. Awareness of grounds of distinction appears to follow on the desire to distinguish. The issue of who is "black" or "colored" or "mulatto" is only vexing to societies affected by racial prejudice; such differentiations, if present, are much looser in cultures not concerned to categorize people by skin color. To non-Christians, the standard Christian division of the world's religions into Christian and non-Christian must seem pointless and silly: why not categorize religions on the basis of some other criterion (e.g., mono- or polytheistic, mystical or theological, eschatological or present-oriented)? Majorities, in other words, create minorities, in one very real sense, by deciding to categorize them. Left-handed people may be statistically less numerous in all human societies, but they are really a minority only where manual preference takes on social significance and people make it their business to categorize their countrymen on that basis.

In the ancient world so few people cared to categorize their contemporaries on the basis of the gender to which they were erotically attracted that no dichotomy to express this distinction was in common use. People were thought of as "chaste" or "unchaste," "romantic" or "unromantic," "married" or "single," even "active" or "passive," but no one thought it useful or important to distinguish on the basis of genders alone, and the categories "homosexual" and "heterosexual" simply did not intrude on the consciousness of most Greeks or—as will be seen—Romans.

(John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980], 58-9 [footnote omitted])

A brouhaha has erupted over the supposed bisexuality of Alexander the Great. See here. What a silly debate! The Greeks had no concept of bisexuality—or of heterosexuality or homosexuality, for that matter. The salient distinction for them was between active and passive. In sexual intercourse, one was either the penetrator (active party) or the penetratee (passive or receptive party). The sex of the individuals didn't matter. The penetrator (necessarily a male) had high status; the penetratee, whether male or female, had low status. It was acceptable for a male to be the passive partner, provided it was a temporary stage of his life. When he became an adult, he would be properly masculine (active). See John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980).

To the Editor:

For the life of me, I cannot understand what is the "incredibly noble thing" that Thomas L. Friedman is referring to in his column: "We are actually doing nation creating. We are trying to host the first attempt in the modern Arab world for the people of an Arab country to, on their own, forge a social contract with one another."

To me, it looks as if we're violently imposing our will on a country that never asked for our help and, as a result, is now in worse shape than before we rode to the rescue.

Christine Happel
Seattle, Nov. 21, 2004

I'd like to wish my American readers a happy Thanksgiving. Those of you who are religious will no doubt thank your deity. Atheists such as me will thank other human beings, past and present, whose hard work and sacrifice made my comfortable life possible. I'm particularly grateful to my parents for giving me the most important gift of all: self-esteem. Without it, nothing else would have been achievable. If you'd like some reading about the original Thanksgiving, see here.

My conservative friends won't want to hear this, but liberals are not committed to moral relativism. What is moral relativism, anyway? Let me give an analogy. Motion is relative. Right now, as I sit at the computer, I am motionless relative to the computer monitor on which these words appear. But I'm in motion relative to the cars that pass by on my street. I'm motionless relative to the earth, but in motion relative to the sun and other planets. Since motion is relative, any statement that some object is in motion has an implied reference. It always makes sense to ask, in response to a claim that object O is in motion, "relative to what?"

Moral relativists believe that rightness and wrongness are relative to something. What this something is differs. Cultural relativists believe that rightness and wrongness are relative to cultures. If a particular action is deemed right in my culture, then it's right. To say that an action is right is to say that it's deemed right in the speaker's culture. Note that moral relativists believe that moral judgments are either true or false; but what makes them true or false is their conformity to a culture's beliefs or practices, not to something culturally transcendent.

The opposite of moral relativism is moral absolutism. This is the view that rightness and wrongness are not relative to anything, including cultures. Absolutists believe that certain actions are right (or wrong) everywhere and always. If it's wrong to lie, then it was wrong for Socrates to lie, it's wrong for me to lie, and it will be wrong for someone in 22d-century China to lie.

You don't have to be religious to be a moral absolutist. Nor is there any reason a liberal can't be a moral absolutist. Anyone who believes in human rights, for example, is a moral absolutist. Think about the concept. To say that there are human rights, such as a right not to be tortured, is to say that there are certain ways human beings must be treated—wherever and whenever they are. It is to attach moral significance to a biological property. Human rights are rights that aren't created by government and don't depend on government for their existence or maintenance. Most liberals believe in human rights. A fortiori, most liberals are moral absolutists.

But you don't have to believe in rights in order to be a moral absolutist. This is just the deontological version of absolutism. Utilitarians such as Peter Singer are also moral absolutists. Their standard of right and wrong applies everywhere and always. It is not relative to any culture, time, place, or person. The right thing for Socrates to have done was to maximize overall utility. The right thing for me to do is to maximize overall utility. The right thing for a 22d-century Chinese person to do is to maximize overall utility.

Philosophers, most of whom are liberals, are overwhelmingly absolutist when it comes to morality. (There are exceptions, such as Princeton's Gilbert Harman.) Unless they are confused, which is doubtful, this shows that liberalism is compatible with moral absolutism. There is plenty wrong with liberalism, in my view; but it's not wrong because it entails moral relativism. Conservatives should attack liberalism directly, not by trying to link it to moral relativism.

Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic Church feasts are "movable" and "immovable," but the celebrants are uniformly immovable until they are full. In their earliest development these entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead; such were held by the Greeks, under the name of Nemeseia, by the Aztecs and Peruvians, as in modern times they are popular with the Chinese; thought [sic] it is believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were light eaters. Among the many feasts of the Romans was the Novemdiale, which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.

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

I recently discovered yoga. See here for some classic yoga postures.

Choosing a favorite blogger is like choosing a favorite child. But if I had to rank bloggers in terms of how much I like their work, Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities would be near the top of the list. See here for an example of his rapier wit and intelligence. Among Jeff's many virtues is that he loves baseball. Among his many vices is that he likes the Oakland Athletics.

How many things are both good and good for you, both interesting and in your interest? Not many, unfortunately. One of them is Sunsweet Cherry Essence Dried Plums.

Peg Kaplan recently passed the 20,000 mark for blog visits. Ally Eskin recently passed the 15,000 mark. Congratulations to both of you! It seems like only yesterday that you got started.

Bridget Johnson wonders why Hollywood has been silent about the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim. See here. What's the puzzle? Hollywood despises only one thing: America.

The term 'naturalistic fallacy' was introduced by G. E. Moore [1873-1958], and it can be questioned whether it is either naturalistic or a fallacy. Nevertheless, I have a strong propensity to argue that th