AnalPhilosopher

Like so many others, Ally Eskin is unconvinced that Hillary Clinton is moderating. See here. I guess that means I'll be the only person who foresaw Hillary's conversion to conservatism.

I paid Peg Kaplan to watch the Academy Awards program and give me a report. Here is her report.

My conservative friends think I'm nuts for liking Ralph Nader. Another person I like is former California governor (and now Oakland mayor) Jerry Brown. I just learned while visiting The Right Coast that Governor Brown has a blog. Neat!

Dr John J. Ray, he of many blogs, summarizes his best posts for the week. See here.

See here for Jeff's Ward Churchill Grief-a-Thon.

It seems apparent to the twentieth century mind, as perhaps it did not to the nineteenth century mind, that a system in which everybody is invited to do his own thing, at whatever cost to his neighbor, must work ultimately to the benefit of the rich and powerful, who are in a position to look after themselves and to act, so to say, as their own self-insurers. As we look back on the nineteenth century theories, we are struck most of all, I think, by the narrow scope of social duty which they implicitly assumed. No man is his brother's keeper; the race is to the swift; let the devil take the hindmost. For good or ill, we have changed all that. We are now all cogs in a machine, each dependent on the other. The decline and fall of the general theory of contract and, in most quarters, of laissez-faire economics may be taken as remote reflections of the transition from nineteenth century individualism to the welfare state and beyond.

(Grant Gilmore, The Death of Contract [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974], 95-6 [endnote omitted])

What would you say about a man who, instead of coming out into the open to fight, hid behind a tree and threw rocks at his adversary? You'd call him a coward, right? I hate to say it, but the blogosphere is filled with cowards. It's disgraceful. The other day someone posted an abusive comment on the blog I created for my Ethics students. I replied to it. The student, now forced to register, created a fictitious name and abused me some more. I deleted the blog. One uncivil student ruined it for 79 others.

Many of the comments—and almost all the nasty ones—on The Conservative Philosopher were anonymous. Why is this? Those of us who post on that blog are not anonymous. Readers know everything about us: what we believe, what we value, where we live and work, and even, for those of us who post profiles, what we do in our spare time. If we have the courage of our convictions, why don't our readers? Are they afraid to associate themselves with their ideas? Are they ashamed of their ideas? But why? Are the ideas incoherent? Do they lack rational support? If your ideas are sound, why would you hesitate to take responsibility for them? A real man would say, "Here are my ideas; grapple with them."

Many bloggers blog anonymously. I don't understand this. Don't say you're afraid of retaliation. If you're an untenured professor who fears retaliation, then you should wait until you're tenured before putting your ideas into circulation. Either that or take the risk of retaliation. Courage consists in exposing oneself to personal risk for a worthy cause. If your ideas aren't a worthy cause, then you shouldn't be publicizing them to begin with. W. K. Clifford famously said that if a man has no time to ascertain the grounds for a belief, he should have no time to believe. I would add that if a man cannot take responsibility for his thoughts, he should not express them.

Imagine a world in which there were no anonymous utterances. It would force people to be civil, fair, and charitable; to be responsive to the facts; and to be logically consistent—for the absence of any of these things would constitute a black mark on one's record. Anonymity all but ensures incivility, unfairness, uncharitableness, factual recklessness, and logical inconsistency. Perhaps we bloggers should do everything we can to prevent anonymous blogging, posting, and commenting. If we care about the long-term health and integrity of the blogosphere, we will.

Addendum: Someone pointed out that The Federalist Papers were published anonymously. True. But a few years earlier, 55 men signed their own death warrant: The Declaration of Independence. Which act was more courageous?

To the Editor:

Re "Iraq, Then and Now," by Bob Herbert (column, Feb. 21):

In discussing President Bush's misbegotten war and occupation of Iraq, Mr. Herbert says, "A wiser administration would have avoided that carnage and marshaled instead a more robust effort against Al Qaeda."

Indeed, had this administration chosen a world leadership approach to the 9/11 attack, instead of the politically expedient one, which has resulted in the spread of terrorism, we could have strengthened the international tools that a civilized society should use. These include the international courts, the United Nations and negotiations.

Such leadership would have encouraged other nations to stand firm against worldwide terror, gained their respect and most probably would have reduced the threat.

Thomas M. Stephens
Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 22, 2005

Lap, n. One of the most important organs of the female system—an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males. The male of our species has a rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal's substantial welfare.

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

I don't know why I chose Sunday for my peeves, since I'm usually in a good mood that day. But hey, I'm a curmudgeon; I can summon peevishness. Today's peeve is the misuse of "comprise" for "compose" or "constitute." "Comprise" means contain, embrace, include, consist of, or encompass. Thus, my book collection comprises works of history, law, philosophy, and science. These books compose, constitute, or make up my collection. See the difference? Here's an improper use of "comprise":

A university is comprised of schools and colleges.

Sir:

Your challenge [see here]:

Everyone who believes that Hillary Clinton is an incorrigible liberal should have to answer the following question: What would have to happen­—what would she have to do or say—­to make you believe that she's not a liberal? If nothing could make you change your belief, then it's dogmatic.

(1) Praise President Bush's tax cuts and suggest further cuts were desirable.
(2) Advocate personal accounts for social security.
(3) Argue for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, support a ban on partial birth abortion.
(4) Support a constitutional amendment establishing marriage as between a man and a woman.
(5) Endorse the NRA's defense of the Second Amendment and make strong pro-gun statements, denounce the Brady bill.
(6) Denounce attacks on religion and attempts to remove religious symbols from public spaces.
(7) Praise the Patriot Act, argue for its extension and strengthening.
(8) Stress what sort of people are actually covered by the Geneva Accords and state the truths of why those at Guantanamo are not.
(9) Criticize liberal bias in the media and at universities, criticize the feminist hysteria stimulated by the president of Harvard.
(10) Denounce her own plan to socialize US medical care and 1/7 of the economy and vow that she will never support any other socialized medicine proposals, single payer plans, etc.
(11) Denounce so-called 'election finance reforms' which limit political speech.
(12) Switch parties . . . after all, most conservatives are members of the Republican party which most closely of the two major ones embodies conservative views.

See here for my short post about Lawrence Summers.

I want to say that science, history, and so on, are concerned with finding out what the world is like, whereas in ethics we are concerned with what to do about the world. Thus in deciding whether abortion is right or wrong we are not finding out facts, but deciding what to do about the facts or what to encourage others to do about them.

(J. J. C. Smart, Ethics, Persuasion and Truth, International Library of Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984], 94)

To the Editor:

Re "Justices Accept Case Weighing Assisted Suicide" (front page, Feb. 23):

Shame on the Bush administration for trying to overturn Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law.

I'm still haunted by the final months of my mother's life. A terminal brain tumor spread to her spine, causing such agony that eventually even morphine could not relieve it. The tumor stripped this brilliant, talented woman of her independence and competence as she lingered in unimaginable pain—the very horror she (and we) begged her doctors to spare her.

President Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales say they believe in individual freedom, self-reliance and self-determination, but to curry favor with conservative extremists they would force thousands of people to suffer as my mother did.

I hope the Supreme Court is more compassionate.

Ginny Yingling
Maplewood, Minn., Feb. 23, 2005

I have never watched the Academy Awards program; nor will I be watching this evening's version. It's a sickening display of affluence, fashion, and celebrity. No wonder people around the world hate Americans. We must seem excessively shallow and vain.

Read this editorial opinion from today's New York Times. What does morality require of us as individuals? One school of thought has it that each of us is morally obligated to assist the starving and suffering in distant lands. Another has it that, while it would be a good thing, morally, to render assistance, it is not required. The first says, in effect, that justice requires assistance. The second says that it's a matter of charity. What do you think?

By the way, there are two types of responsibility: positive and negative. Positive responsibility is responsibility for what one does. Negative responsibility is responsibility for what one allows. If there is responsibility here, it would seem to be negative in nature.

Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

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

As usual, Harvey Mansfield nails it. See here. (Thanks to Carol Platt Liebau for the link.)

When a life-centered view is taken, the obligations and responsibilities we have with respect to the wild animals and plants of the Earth are seen to arise from certain moral relations holding between ourselves and the natural world itself. The natural world is not there simply as an object to be exploited by us, nor are its living creatures to be regarded as nothing more than resources for our use and consumption. On the contrary, wild communities of life are understood to be deserving of our moral concern and consideration because they have a kind of value that belongs to them inherently. Just as we would think it inappropriate to ask, What is a human being good for? because such a question seems to assume that the value or worth of a person is merely a matter of being useful as a means to some end, so the question, What is a wilderness good for? is likewise considered inappropriate from the perspective of a biocentric outlook. The living things of the natural world have a worth that they possess simply in virtue of their being members of the Earth's Community of Life. Such worth does not derive from their actual or possible usefulness to humans, or from the fact that humans find them enjoyable to look at or interesting to study.

(Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], 12-3)

Every theist should have to answer the following question: What would have to happen to shake your faith that God exists? If nothing could shake it, then it's dogmatic. Everyone who believes that Hillary Clinton is an incorrigible liberal should have to answer the following question: What would have to happen—what would she have to do or say—to make you believe that she's not a liberal? If nothing could make you change your belief, then it's dogmatic. To my knowledge, I'm the only person who believes Hillary is becoming more conservative. Many of my blogging friends think I'm nuts. See here for Steve Rugg's take.

Somebody needs to say it, so I will: Hunter S. Thompson was a lunatic. Would you want him as your neighbor? Would you want your child to be like him? I didn't think so.

To the Editor:

In talking to reporters alongside President Vladimir V. Putin this week, President Bush declared that "democracies have certain things in common—a rule of law and protection of minorities and a free press and a viable political opposition" (front page, Feb. 25). He then expressed "concerns about Russia's commitment in fulfilling these universal principles."

Only diplomatic tact could have kept Mr. Putin from reminding Mr. Bush of the hundreds of prisoners who are caged at Guantánamo and other United States prisons without hope of release or even a fair trial.

Mr. Putin also refrained from reminding Mr. Bush of White House memos declaring the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners to be irrelevant, or of Justice Department memos justifying torture. The Russian leader could have asked how, under the rule of law, federal prosecutors can deny someone suspected of terrorism the right to confront his accusers or even to know the evidence against him.

I wish Mr. Putin had raised these questions, because like many Americans, I would like to know the answers myself.

Rachelle Marshall
Stanford, Calif., Feb. 25, 2005

Addendum: Kevin Stroup wrote to say that some or all of the individuals being detained by the United States are not prisoners of war under the terms of the Geneva Convention. See here. Read Article 4 of the Convention and make up your own mind.

Blackguard, n. A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box of berries in a market—the fine ones on top—have been opened on the wrong side. An inverted gentleman.

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

Oliver Pancheri, "Is There Light at the End of the Carpal Tunnel? Compensation for Workers with Cumulative Trauma Disorders Under Theories of Accident and Occupational Disease," Idaho Law Review 35 (1999): 377.

Rex R. Schultze, "Reading, Writing and Ritalin: The Responsibility of Public School Districts to Administer Medications to Students," Creighton Law Review 32 (February 1999): 793.

John Leubsdorf, "Using Legal Ethics to Screw Your Enemies and Clients," Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 11 (summer 1998): 831.

Peter Jeremy Smith, "Commas, Constitutional Grammar, and the Straight-Face Test: What If Conan the Grammarian Were a Strict Textualist?" Constitutional Commentary 16 (spring 1999): 7.

Teresa A. Rice and Jon A. Souder, "Pulp Friction and the Management of Oregon's State Forests," Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation 13 (1998): 209.

Suppose I install a floodlight on my property to ward off burglars. If the light illuminates my neighbor's yard, he or she benefits from my action even though I pay the cost. Economists call this a positive externality. It's also called free-riding. Canadians have been free-riding on the United States for decades. See here for the latest example. I, for one, don't want my tax dollars benefiting Canadians, who have less sense than they do daylight.

Heather MacDonald writes about USC law professor (and former Michael Dukakis campaign chief) Susan Estrich here.

Dr Larry J. Sabato sizes up the Democrats for 2008 in this interesting column. Note what he says about Hillary Clinton: Her senatorial voting record is not as left-wing as many people think. My only qualm about having her as my president is that it would mean Bill is back in the White House. Interns beware!

There is also a general source of resistance to the very idea that there can be such a thing as a misspelled word, a grammatical mistake or a word used in the wrong sense. A common slogan is 'You can't stop the language from changing'. It is true enough that one should not even want the language not to change; but it is we who change it, and it is up to us how fast it changes and whether it changes for the worse or for the better. In a literate community, like our own, the language does not comprise only the words spoken in conversation or printed in newspapers: it consists also in the writings of past centuries. An effect of rapid change is that what was written only a short time ago becomes difficult to understand; such a change is of itself destructive. It cannot be helped that Chaucer presents some obstacles to present-day readers; but I have been told that philosophy students nowadays have trouble understanding the English of Hume and Berkeley, and even, sometimes, of nineteenth-century writers. That is pure loss, and a sure sign that some people's use of English is changing much too fast.

(Michael Dummett, Grammar & Style for Examination Candidates and Others [London: Duckworth, 1993], 8-9 [italics in original])

Here is the online version of The Texas Observer. Note the slogan: "Sharp reporting and commentary from the strangest state in the Union."

Bill Keezer thinks Hillary Clinton is only pretending to be conservative. See here. Am I only pretending to be conservative? Wasn't I at least as far left as Hillary just two years ago? Didn't 9-11 change many people? Isn't a neoconservative a former liberal? Let's listen closely to Hillary for the next four years. Is that too much to ask? Many people have made up their minds that she can't change. That seems awfully dogmatic. Give the woman a chance to grow.

Ed Feser asks whether philosophy can be polemical. See here.

To the Editor:

I suppose we think it's bizarre that a century ago women wore dead birds on their hats and it was considered the height of fashion (Editorial Observer, Feb. 22). Yet look around, and you'll find women strutting down the avenue wrapped in the skins of dead mammals. The brutal feather trade is gone, but the brutal fur trade lives on.

Jane Shakman
Ossining, N.Y., Feb. 22, 2005
The writer is grass-roots coordinator, Westchester Animal Rights Activists.

Kleptomaniac, n. A rich thief.

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

Paul Krugman's partisanship continues. See here. Krugman has no evidence of a connection between the Bush administration and USA Next, but he's convinced there's a connection. How's that for sober social science? The irony, of course, is that Krugman has bent over backward to deny a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. He finds connections where he wants to find them and fails to find them where he doesn't want to find them. The man is a joke. That The New York Times doesn't realize this shows how detached it is from reality.

Addendum: Here is Donald Luskin's commentary on Krugman's column. Krugman and Luskin should always be read together, in that order. Krugman spreads disinformation; Luskin corrects his errors.

Jeff gives us the lowdown on Jose Canseco. See here. I'll always remember Jose as the man who headed a fly ball out of the park.

Televangelist Gene Scott is dead. See here. I saw his show a few times. There was something captivating about it. (Thanks to Logical Meme for the link.)

I hate to sound mean, but somebody needs to say it. Pope John Paul II (see here) and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist (see here) are hurting their respective institutions by remaining in office long past the day when they could perform their duties. Either they're stupid and don't realize the harm they're doing or they're selfish. Whatever happened to departing gracefully and letting a new generation take over?

Warren Farrell has a new book about the wage gap between men and women. See here. (Thanks to Grant Brown for the link.)

Writers are made, not born. As I explained to my Ethics students this morning upon returning their take-home examinations, writing is a difficult craft, perfected through trial and error. As I transcribe my journal entries of 20 years ago on a real-time basis, I realize how imperfect my writing has been. Certain errors recur. For example, I wrote "forego" instead of "forgo," as in "I chose to forego lunch." Why did I make this mistake? I was probably thinking of "foregone," as in "foregone conclusion." But "forgo" and "foregone" have nothing to do with one another. To forgo is to abstain from or go without. A thing is foregone when it is previous or completed. I may also have confused "forego" (precede in time or place) with "forgo" (abstain from). At any rate, I learned the difference. Better late than never.

To the Editor:

Re "Testing New Ban, Britons Run With the Hounds" (front page, Feb. 20):

Likening the ban on fox hunting with dogs in Britain to the end of a tradition should in no way mitigate the barbarity of this practice.

Just as slavery was once a tradition whose abolition was decried by many, so, too, is the vicious fox hunt another tradition that the world could surely do without.

Matthew A. MacDonald
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Feb. 20, 2005

Addendum: One of my readers sent a link to this.

Prerogative, n. A sovereign's right to do wrong.

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

If you like speculation about Supreme Court appointments, as I do, you'll like this. In case you're wondering, I like Michael W. McConnell.

Much has been written about which character in David Hume's Dialogues—Philo, Cleanthes, or Demea—represents him. Each character has had his proponents. It's even been argued that Hume is a composite of the characters. I don't think any of the characters represents Hume. Hume, like me, was tone-deaf to religion. To him, the debates about the existence of God were intellectual exercises only: fascinating, but ultimately fruitless. I believe he simply had fun with the characters and their arguments. If anyone represents Hume, it's Pamphilus, the narrator of the Dialogues.

Indian food.

Leibniz, Reid, Brentano and many other philosophers have held that, by considering certain obvious facts about ourselves, we can arrive at an understanding of the general principles of metaphysics. The present book is intended to confirm this view.

One kind of philosophical puzzlement arises when we have an apparent conflict of intuitions. If we are philosophers, we then try to show that the apparent conflict of intuitions is only an apparent conflict and not a real one. If we fail, we may have to say that what we took to be an apparent conflict of intuitions was in fact a conflict of apparent intuitions, and then we must decide which of the conflicting intuitions is only an apparent intuition. But if we succeed, then both of the intuitions will be preserved. Since there was an apparent conflict, we will have to conclude that the formulation of at least one of the intuitions was defective. And though the formulation may be imbedded in our ordinary language, we will have to say that, strictly and philosophically, a different formulation is to be preferred. But to make it clear that we are not rejecting the intuition we are reformulating, we must show systematically how to interpret the ordinary formulation into the philosophical one. The extent to which we can show this will be one mark of our success in dealing with the philosophical puzzle. Another will be the extent to which our proposed solution contributes to the solution of still other philosophical puzzles.

The present book is concerned with such puzzlement and, in particular, with philosophical questions that arise when we reflect upon ourselves. It could be said, therefore, to be an exercise in 'analytic philosophy', since it is not concerned with philosophical speculation. But it differs from the works of some contemporary analytic philosophers in presupposing that philosophy is to be taken seriously and hence that it requires, in Russell's phrase, a considerable amount of honest toil. And it differs from the works of other analytic philosophers in taking seriously certain things we have a right to believe about ourselves.

I assume that we should be guided in philosophy by those propositions we all do presuppose in our ordinary activity. In saying we have a 'right to believe' these propositions, I mean that, whether or not they are true, they are all such that they should be regarded as innocent, epistemically, until we have positive reason for thinking them guilty.

(Roderick M. Chisholm, Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study, Muirhead Library of Philosophy, ed. H. D. Lewis [LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1976], 15-6)

Dr John J. Ray of Brisbane, Australia, is my blogospheric godfather (the term is ironic, since we're both atheists). I hope you're reading John's blog every day. It's amazing how much work he puts into it. See here, for example.

The Bush administration is trying to prevent Oregon from allowing its citizens to kill themselves. See here. This is an affront to federalism. States should be able to do as they please on such matters.

By the way, this is what it means to be nonpartisan. Unlike Paul Krugman, who is relentlessly partisan, I sometimes disagree with President Bush and with the Republican party. I sometimes agree with the Democrat party. The trouble with partisans is that they can't be trusted. Ask yourself whether Krugman would say that President Bush did something right even if he thought it. Ask yourself whether Krugman would say that the Democrats did something wrong even if he thought it.

To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof claims that "there's plenty of evidence" that contraception-based sex education works ("Bush's Sex Scandal," column, Feb. 16). Well, not exactly.

Of the 29 experimental studies that examined the effectiveness of contraception-based sex education programs in delaying sexual intercourse, promoting the use of contraception and preventing pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, some found positive effects, some found no effects and some even found negative effects.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of the effectiveness of contraception-based sex education programs.

One of the few programs that did reduce pregnancies through contraception, the Children's Aid Society-Carrera, did so by injecting young women with Depo-Provera. But injecting teenage girls with Depo-Provera does nothing to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

One thing is clear. Abstinence is the only 100 percent effective means of preventing both pregnancy and S.T.D.'s. Why, then, is it such a "scandal" that we tell our young people this simple truth?

Wade F. Horn
Asst. Secretary,
Administration for Children and Families,
Dept. of Health and Human Services
Washington, Feb. 18, 2005

Technicality, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused a neighbor of murder. His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder." The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.

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

I had a friend in graduate school who adored Robert Fripp and deplored Robin Trower. He would not like this:

Robin Trower is one of the very few English guitarists that have mastered bends and wobbles. Not only has he got inside them, with an instinctive knowing of their affective power, but they went to live inside his hands.

It is the rare English guitarist who has been able to stand alongside American guitarists and play with an equal authority to someone grounded in a fundamentally American tradition.

Trower has been widely criticised for his influences. This has never bothered me. I toured America in 1974 with Ten Years After top of the bill, King Crimson [Fripp's band] second, and Robin Trower bottom. The chart positions were the opposite: TYA in the Billboard 160s, Crimson in the 60s, and Trower climbing remorselessly through the top twenty. Nearly every night I went out to listen to him. This was a man who hung himself on the details: the quality of sound, nuances of each inflection and tearing bend, and abandonment to the feel of the moment. He saved my life.

Later, in England, he gave me guitar lessons.

Robert Fripp, Wiltshire, England, November 19th 1996

This week's link is to Sartre Online.

Addendum: Gopi Sundaram sent a link to The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook.

Reading, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and humor in slang.

We know by one's reading
His learning and breeding;
By what draws his laughter
We know his Hereafter.
Read nothing, laugh never—
The Sphinx was less clever!
Jupiter Muke.

To the Editor:

Re "Our Friends, the Torturers," by Bob Herbert (column, Feb. 18):

The most disturbing thing about the 2004 presidential election was that a significant majority of voters believed that the Republican Party represented "values."

Yet under the Republicans' rule, we have become a nation that demonizes entire groups of its own citizens, abandons the poor to fatten up the rich and wastes resources while polluting the environment in total disregard of the future of our own children.

As if these weren't bad enough, now we see the trashing of the most important pillar of our democracy: the presumption of innocence and the rejection of cruel or unusual treatment.

It is easy to buy a "Proud to Be an American" bumper sticker at the dollar store. What is hard is ensuring that the "values" we are proud of are not abandoned.

If they are, then we have surely lost the "war on terror."

Bob Rosenbluth
Lincolndale, N.Y., Feb. 18, 2005

Conservatives should get used to the expression "President Clinton," because we're going to be saying it for at least four years starting in 2009. But it's not so bad. Hillary Clinton is not the liberal many people imagine. See here. James Taranto is exactly right. Just as liberals hurt their cause by hating President Bush so much, conservatives will hurt their cause by hating Hillary Clinton. Hatred is not argumentation; it is a substitute—and a poor one—for argumentation.

Suppose a national newspaper offered me the chance to write a semiweekly column on any topics I please. What would you think if I wrote about the same topic every time? Worse, what if I attacked a particular person every time? Wouldn't you begin to think that I'm obsessed with that person? But this is precisely the situation of Paul Krugman, who writes for The New York Times. Column after column, week after week, month after month, year after year, he attacks President Bush. See here for today's assault. I have never seen Krugman say anything even remotely flattering about the president. Nor has he said anything even remotely critical about any Democrat.

There are two hypotheses to explain these facts. The first, which we might call the Omnimalevolence Hypothesis, is that President Bush is always wrong, whether in foreign affairs or in domestic policy, and that Democrats are always right. The second, which we might call the Partisanship Hypothesis, is that Krugman is partisan. He literally doesn't see the good done by the administration. Nor does he see defects in Democrats. It's as if he's wearing glasses that allow only bad things to enter when he directs his attention to President Bush and only good things to enter when he directs his attention to Democrats. What a waste of precious newspaper space.

I think Hillary Clinton is coming around to conservatism. See here. To those who scoff, remember this: I, probably alone among pundits, predicted that Andrew Sullivan would support the Democrat candidate for president.

Those of you who have been reading The Conservative Philosopher know that I disabled the comments function the other day. It had become a headache. There are people out there who have nothing better to do with their time than take potshots at others. I have never seen so many fallacies committed in my life as I did in the comments. It got to the point where I dreaded reading them. Three-quarters of the comments were personal in nature. Instead of addressing what the author wrote, the writer would attack the character or intelligence of the author. What's the point of that?

I had to kick one of the bloggers off the blog. He should never have been on the blog to begin with, since he doesn't have a Ph.D. or a D.Phil. degree in philosophy. I made a mistake letting him in. As it turned out, he has many problems. From the very beginning, he was telling me how to run the blog. I don't even know him! He seemed obsessed with me. The other day, for example, I said that if the North Koreans attack us (with nuclear weapons), we should incinerate them. He said I was advocating genocide. Perhaps he didn't notice the word "if." When I pointed this out, he complained that I was making serious "factual and moral errors." I have no idea what he was talking about. It seemed designed to insult me, nothing more. Conversing with him was like talking to a wall. He also seemed outraged that I'm an atheist. He found God some time back (glory hallelujah!) and can't believe that someone else—a conservative, no less—hasn't. But there's no necessary connection between theism and conservatism. That these things are important to him doesn't make them connected.

Anyway, good riddance. As I say, I should never have let him on the blog. I also had a problem with someone I kicked off The Ethics of War blog many months ago. Evidently, he still resents this, because he attacked me personally in the comments section of The Conservative Philosopher. I finally banished him from the site. This young man is only a student of philosophy (at a third-rate university). He has much to learn about charity, professionalism, and civility. I will be very surprised if he gets a tenure-track job in philosophy.

All in all, the comments were a bad experience. I have told my fellow bloggers that if they don't like my decision to disable the comments, they are free to leave the blog. Several of them have already written to me to say that I did the right thing and that they want to stay on. This is heartening. Now I know why most serious bloggers don't allow comments. They're far more trouble than they're worth. Live and learn.

To the Editor:

I am a gay man living with H.I.V. who tested positive in 1985, and who survives thanks to the drug cocktail. Two quotes in the article leave me appalled. A Lambda Legal Defense spokesman, Jon Givner, finds "public health vigilantes . . . pretty scary." Why doesn't he find the sexual terrorists infected with H.I.V. and behaving with murderous disregard as scary?

Walt Odets, a psychologist and AIDS author, calls public health intervention "a witch hunt." Why doesn't he recognize the demons of self-destructive sex practices and drug use that are devastating lives and fueling the perception of gay men as dangerous to society?

Larry Kramer is right: enough with excuses and ditching responsibility. Gay men have no one to blame but themselves for this evolving health mess, and no one who deliberately risks the lives of others has the right to confidentiality.

The drug-resistant strains of H.I.V. are not the problem. It is amoral indifference that is virulent and scary.

Harry E. Adamson
Philadelphia, Feb. 15, 2005

Itch, n. The patriotism of a Scotchman.

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

Michael Kinsley must be doing something right if he has both Bill O'Reilly and Susan Estrich after him. See here.

As someone who's just recovered from influenza, I feel qualified to comment on the expression "flu-like symptoms." The expression is nonsensical. It should be "flu symptoms." A symptom is a sign of something. Doctors identify diseases by their symptoms. If my patient complains of achiness, fever, coughing, a runny nose, and fatigue, I suspect influenza, for these are symptoms of influenza. They may be symptoms of some other disease as well, so I cannot be sure that my diagnosis is correct. Medical diagnosis is an art, not a science.

Flu symptoms are signs of influenza. So what could it mean to speak of "flu-like symptoms"? If the symptoms are those of influenza, then they're flu symptoms, not flu-like symptoms. This is true even if the diagnosis is of something other than influenza, for, as we saw, two diseases can have the same symptoms. People must think that if they call the symptoms "flu symptoms," they are committing themselves to a diagnosis of influenza. But this is to confuse the sign with the thing signified.

To the Editor:

It occurred to me that if companies are having so much trouble trying to find ways to make snacks without trans fat, they should just stop making them.

The world would be a much better place if there were fewer unhealthy snacks. Maybe then, the growing population of obese Americans would opt for snacking on fruits and vegetables instead of crackers and cookies soaked in bad fats.

I'm a runner and was lucky enough to have a doctor friend who warned me long ago of the dangers of margarine and other hydrogenated fats. Education is important, but maybe just eliminating the temptation is a smarter move.

Almost every weekend I see many runners who work so hard to keep fit and healthy reward themselves with the free doughnuts offered after a race. All the races in the world and the training required to complete them won't undo the damage caused by that blob of unhealthy grease and refined sugar.

Vera C. Stek
Somerset, N.J., Feb. 14, 2005

Dear Anal(ytic) Philosopher,

I am a frequent reader of your own blog and the recently-launched Conservative Philosopher. I blog from Austin in the persona of "Dilys Dinosaur" at a site called G as in Good H as in Happy (Good&Happy), the subject of which is happiness in general as well as whatever catches my eye. I try to sidestep explicitly political material, other than occasional a- and be-musement, since plenty of people are tackling the more divisive matters.

A bit of a words-wonk, I raised a language-usage point from Kurt Anderson's article, When Good News Feels Bad. Mark Liberman of the University of Pennsylvania and others at Language Log expanded the inquiry, which touches on the logic of exacting or constrained decision alternatives. The question may speak only tangentially to conservatives per se, but in case your CP crew would like to take a look at it, here are the URL's in sequence, the second one (the linguists') a bit longer and pithier than the other two. My query about whether this might be a pop-academic paper topic comes at the end of the third.

I'll be interested to know if philosophers/logicians find this particular language&logic-based issue intriguing, or if it's old news. Thanks for the place you've opened in the blogosphere for this sort of discussion.

Regards, "Dilys"

Degradation, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.

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

Two attitudes are possible: one, that the world is an absolute jungle and that the exercise of coercive power by rulers is only a manifestation of this; and the other, that it is both necessary and right that there should be this exercise of power, that through it the world is much less of a jungle than it could possibly be without it, so that one should in principle be glad of the existence of such power, and only take exception to its unjust exercise.

It is so clear that the world is less of a jungle because of rulers and laws, and that the exercise of coercive power is essential to these institutions as they are now—all this is so obvious, that probably only Tennysonian conceptions of progress enable people who do not wish to separate themselves from the world to think that nevertheless such violence is objectionable, that some day, in this present dispensation, we shall do without it, and that the pacifist is the man who sees and tries to follow the ideal course, which future civilization must one day pursue. It is an illusion, which would be fantastic if it were not so familiar.

In a peaceful and law abiding country such as England, it may not be immediately obvious that the rulers need to command violence to the point of fighting to the death those that would oppose it; but brief reflection shows that this is so. For those who oppose the force that backs law will not always stop short of fighting to the death and cannot always be put down short of fighting to the death.

(G. E. M. Anscombe, "War and Murder," chap. 6 in her Ethics, Religion and Politics, vol. 3 of The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981], 51-61, at 51 [essay first published in 1961])

See here for Jeff's list of "fun things to do in the Bay area."

See here for my post about the difference between liberals and conservatives.

This is funny.

Peg Kaplan is out working instead of writing in her blog. See here. By the way, congratulations, Peg, on reaching the 30,000-visitor mark.

Tom Chatt is rethinking his diet. See here.

I'm grading Ethics exams this weekend. It's dreadful business, and not just because I have to read the same answer over and over again. My students can't write. They have no earthly idea what an apostrophe is for. They omit them when they're necessary and include them when they're not. They misspell words, including ordinary words; they confuse like-sounding words, such as "their," "there," and "they're"; they don't know how to use hyphens; they use singular verbs with plural nouns (and conversely); they write "can not" instead of "cannot" and "all together" instead of "altogether"; they write "arguement" and "judgement"; and so on.

How did they get to college with these woeful writing abilities? It's tempting to blame their elementary, junior-high, and high-school teachers, but they and their parents must bear responsibility. Have they ever done any writing? If not, why not? Why were they not required by their parents to write on a daily basis? Like anything else in life, to become proficient at writing, one must practice. I've written something every day of my life since at least the age of 15. On many days I have written thousands of words. Please don't say that I'm an egghead. I've lived a full, rich life. I've watched my share of television; I've been athletic and outgoing; I was a musician; I've worked as a manual laborer; and I've socialized. But among these activities, I left room for developing my writing skills.

What are these students going to do when they get out into the working world? Nearly every job I can think of, and certainly all high-paying, high-status jobs, require literacy. But if they can't write at 18 or 22, how are they going to write at 24 or 30? And what employer is going to allow them to learn on the job?

To the Editor:

Now that Lawrence H. Summers's remarks about the shortage of women in the sciences and engineering are public, his infuriating notions about what he condescendingly calls women's "legitimate family desires" may finally get as much attention as his speculations about "intrinsic" differences in male and female aptitude.

Dr. Summers opined that the primary reason women are underrepresented is that a "much higher fraction of married men" than married women were willing to work 80-hour weeks to attain "high powered" jobs.

Well, if that's true, why is it true?

It is not that men give up their "legitimate" family desires. It's not that women aren't willing to work 80-hour weeks. Rather, men can still rely on women to hold the family together while they pursue their high-intensity careers.

Once again, Dr. Summers is blaming the victim.

Nancy Brockway
Boston, Feb. 18, 2005

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Why are men able to rely on women to hold the family together?

I don't know about you, but I like to do one thing at a time and do it well. See here.

Laziness, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

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

Paul Moore, "Physician-Assisted Suicide: Does 'The End' Justify the Means?" Arizona Law Review 40 (1998): 1471.

Reuel E. Schiller, "The Strawhorsemen of the Apocalypse: Relativism and the Historian as Expert Witness," Hastings Law Journal 49 (April 1998): 1169.

Michael Levine, "Rational Emotion, Emotional Holism, True Love, and Charlie Chaplin," Journal of Philosophical Research 24 (1999): 487.

"Telemedicine: How an Apple (or Another Computer) May Bring Your Doctor Closer," Cumberland Law Review 29 (1998): 173.

David Wyss Rudge, "Taking the Peppered Moth with a Grain of Salt," Biology and Philosophy 14 (January 1999): 9.

The Texas State Historical Association produces The Handbook of Texas Online. Click one of the letters and take a tour! For example, click "M" and then "Marfa Lights."

I heard that she's back in town
Heard she's been seen around
I hear she gets
what she wants everytime
I know what she put you through
I know what you'd like to do
Cause I lost my heart
to her sometime ago
So come on
Wipe your tears away
It's all that you can do
A broken heart never mends
Crying tears til the very end
At home on the boulevard
Cheap whiskey and tarot cards
Man she's outrageous
She wants the best in life
Sugar daddies with agin' wives
She's expensive everything she does
So come on
Wipe your tears away
It's all that you can do
A broken heart never mends
Crying tears til the very end
She knows what it must be like
Living in paradise
If you ain't got money she don't wanna know
I know what she put you through
I know what you'd like to do
I lost my heart to her sometime ago
So come on
Wipe your tears away
It's all that you can do
When you've got a broken heart
Come on
Wipe your tears away
It's all that you can do
Oh yeah

Happy 44th birthday, Moira. I hope the years have been as good to you as they have to me. My broken heart hasn't healed yet, so I suppose it never will.

So public intellectuals may be "marginal" after all, but not in the dangerous sense in which Socrates found himself marginalized. This is not to deny the existence of censorship and discrimination in American universities. But nowadays the victims tend not to be academic public intellectuals, simply because most academic public intellectuals are liberal. Today's censorship is mainly of the "political correctness" variety, which rules out frank discussion of race, ethnic, and gender differences and of sexual orientation. There is a decided degree of intolerance of conservative, but not of liberal or even extreme left-wing, views and speakers, while the covert but widespread discrimination in favor of blacks and women in faculty hiring constitutes a diffuse but cumulatively significant discrimination against white male academics.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001], 60 [footnotes omitted])

Willis Cheng is a 17-year-old from Maryland.

Here is Billy J's post on the morality of eating animals.

Brian Leiter linked to an interesting new blog this morning. See here.

To the Editor:

Having read "Bush's Sex Scandal," we beg to disagree. My wife (a pediatrician) and I (a family physician) agree wholeheartedly with President Bush about abstinence-only. And quoting anything from the Alan Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood is tainted, given that they make a living off promoting contraception and abortion.

In our practice, we see kids put on contraception all the time (not by us, as we will not prescribe contraceptives)—it simply encourages them to be promiscuous. And condoms are hardly 100 percent effective against pregnancy or disease.

At any rate, we support the president's abstinence-only education as proactive and more forward-thinking than Planned Parenthood's party line.

Dave McCann, M.D.
Colquitt, Ga., Feb. 16, 2005

Hash, x. There is no definition for this word—nobody knows what hash is.

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

Paul Krugman is furious at Alan Greenspan for supporting President Bush's plan to give individuals greater control over their retirement. See here. Notice Krugman's modus operandi. If you're on his side on a policy matter, he never so much as criticizes you. If you're not, he vilifies you, impugns your integrity, and questions your intelligence. Greenspan isn't just wrong; he's evil. Ask yourself a simple question: Who is more trustworthy, Greenspan or Krugman?

Robert Pearson has some thoughts about Ayn Rand on the occasion of the centennial of her birth. See here. By the way, I'm often asked what I, a credentialed philosopher, think of Rand. To the extent that she was a philosopher at all, she was a bad one. But that's okay. I understand she was a good novelist.

To the Editor:

Re "Rocket Fails to Launch in Test Run" (news article, Feb. 15):

Our current system of missile defense—known as "mutually assured destruction"—has worked flawlessly night and day for half a century. It promises nuclear annihilation for any country that attacks us with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Yet the Bush administration persists in its efforts to spend a reported $50 billion over the next five years on a new system that has failed to work even in carefully planned tests. In other words, the president would inflict $50 billion of damage to our economy without our enemies having to fire a shot.

This system fails the most basic test: the test of logic.

Howard Tomb
Brooklyn, Feb. 15, 2005

See here for my post about conservatism and fox-hunting.

Arsenic, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn.

"Eat arsenic? Yes, all you get,"
Consenting, he did speak up;
"'Tis better you should eat it, pet,
Than put it in my teacup."
Joel Huck.

Peggy Noonan discusses bloggers here. I think a distinction needs to be made between bloggers who convey information and those who traffic in opinion or analysis. You will never find breaking news on AnalPhilosopher, for example. But you will find analysis of current events and lots of opinion. We already segregate newspapers into news stories, analysis, and editorial opinion. Why should the blogosphere be any more monolithic?

I'm listening to Hannity & Colmes as I work at the computer. The guests just now were college students involved in a protest against military recruiters. There are reports that bottles or other items were thrown at recruiters. Both Alan Colmes (the liberal) and Sean Hannity (the conservative) asked the students to repudiate the throwing of objects. No student would. Instead, they said (repeatedly), "That's not the issue." Then they changed their tune, implying that no objects were thrown. They said that if objects were thrown, the throwers would have been arrested.

How stupid can someone be? These students had a chance to earn credibility immediately by condemning the object-throwing. Instead, the audience was left to wonder whether they would allow anything that they thought advanced their cause. If I were in their position, I would say, very clearly, "Yes, I emphatically condemn the use of violence against person or property. Those who engage in such violence are not part of our movement; they harm our movement." If I weren't sure that objects were thrown, I'd speak conditionally: "I don't know whether objects were thrown, but if they were, it was wrong. Our group has no room in it for hooligans."

The Left appears not to care about persuading. If it did, it would repudiate extremists and try to appeal to those whose minds are not made up. By refusing to repudiate extremists, the Left alienates the middle. That's just stupid. Whatever you think of Peter Singer, he at least has enough sense to repudiate violence in behalf of animals. It's counterproductive. If you care about something, you care about means as well as ends.

President Bush should make it clear to the North Koreans that if they attack the United States, their people, their culture, and their land will be incinerated. It will be as if they never existed.

Addendum: Here is an encyclopedia entry on nuclear strategy. Many younger readers may not realize that the policy of the United States was to threaten the Soviet Union with massive retaliation for a nuclear attack. I'm advocating the same thing with respect to North Korea, Iran, and other nations with nuclear capabilities. They must understand that attacking us will result in their destruction.

In this article, I defend the intuition that there is something morally special about torture that distinguishes it from most other kinds of violence, cruelty, or degrading treatment. Torture is all these things, of cour