Obsidian Wings

Galston On Rawls (Wonkish)

by hilzoy

As I wrote last night, I have been reading John Rawls' undergraduate thesis. Having almost finished it, I wanted to say a few words about William Galston's article on it, because I think it's wrong in several respects. 

Rawls' thesis was written during a period in which he was intensely religious, and it shows. His first basic presupposition is that "there is a being whom Christians call God and who has revealed Himself in Christ Jesus". (Having been an undergraduate in the same department at the same institution forty years later, I tried to imagine turning in a thesis with this basic presupposition. My head exploded.) Galston notes this, and writes:

"If it turns out that early faith commitments constitute the unexpressed but indispensable basis of Rawls's thought, then one may wonder whether there are other grounds on which those of different faiths, or no faith at all, can affirm the validity of his conception of justice as fairness."

This is true. But it's not clear, to me at least, why one might think that Rawls' early Christianity, which he had abandoned long before he published A Theory Of Justice, would turn out not just to illuminate that work (which it does), but to be indispensable to it -- to call into question the extent to which non-Christians could accept it. For that to be the case, the arguments in TJ would have not just to be informed by Rawls' experience of religion, but to require religious presuppositions. And it's not clear why one would think that that is true.

Galston's main example is this:

Kids In The Back Seat

by hilzoy

The Washington Post has a story about people who accidentally leave their kids in the car, where they die from the heat. I often say that things are worth reading, but this one is more than usually so: for the detail, the understanding, the neurological explanation for how this could happen even to loving and attentive parents, the stories of how, incomprehensibly, the parents who do this go on living. It's really, really good, and really, really tough to read. But it's worth it.

I remember the first time I heard about someone who had done this. I have a vivid imagination, and the idea of a child slowly baking to death in a carseat, of the moment when the parent realized what he or she had done, of all the moments of apparent normalcy that preceded it, of how you could possibly try to live with the knowledge that you had done that, or (a quite different form of torment) that your spouse had -- one ghastly detail after another kept unfolding in my mind, each of them revealing new and unexpected dimensions of horror. But for all that, I know that I cannot begin to imagine this.

A molecular physiologist quoted in the Post story explains how it happens:

"The human brain, he says, is a magnificent but jury-rigged device in which newer and more sophisticated structures sit atop a junk heap of prototype brains still used by lower species. At the top of the device are the smartest and most nimble parts: the prefrontal cortex, which thinks and analyzes, and the hippocampus, which makes and holds on to our immediate memories. At the bottom is the basal ganglia, nearly identical to the brains of lizards, controlling voluntary but barely conscious actions.

Diamond says that in situations involving familiar, routine motor skills, the human animal presses the basal ganglia into service as a sort of auxiliary autopilot. When our prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are planning our day on the way to work, the ignorant but efficient basal ganglia is operating the car; that's why you'll sometimes find yourself having driven from point A to point B without a clear recollection of the route you took, the turns you made or the scenery you saw.

Ordinarily, says Diamond, this delegation of duty "works beautifully, like a symphony. But sometimes, it turns into the '1812 Overture.' The cannons take over and overwhelm." (...)

The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant," he said. "The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it's supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted -- such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back -- it can entirely disappear."

I believe this now, as I sit here writing this post. I do not think I would be able to believe it if I had left my child to die. In that situation, I don't think that all the neurological evidence in the world would convince me. But, as I said, I can't imagine.

***

Here's one detail from the article: 

"For years, Fennell [head of a group called Kids and Cars -- ed.] has been lobbying for a law requiring back-seat sensors in new cars, sensors that would sound an alarm if a child's weight remained in the seat after the ignition is turned off. Last year, she almost succeeded. The 2008 Cameron Gulbransen Kids' Transportation Safety Act -- which requires safety improvements in power windows and in rear visibility, and protections against a child accidentally setting a car in motion -- originally had a rear seat-sensor requirement, too. It never made the final bill; sponsors withdrew it, fearing they couldn't get it past a powerful auto manufacturers' lobby."

Can you imagine being the lobbyist who went to work against that? Or the executive who decided to hire that lobbyist? How would you explain to yourself, let alone to others, that you have deliberately tried to block a measure that would prevent infants and toddlers from being cooked alive in cars? Unless adding a sensor would cause some truly horrific problem for the car, it's hard to see how you could look yourself in the mirror. 

Race Since The 80s

by hilzoy

Matt Cooper has a really interesting post at TPMDC, on the difficulty of explaining to people who weren't around (or old enough) at the time just how different, and more troubled, race relations were like in the 80s and early 90s. He asks: "Why is America's racial atmosphere less poisonous than it was then?" And he offers a few answers: the drop in black crime and teen pregnancy, the disappearance of issues like school busing,the mainstreaming of hip-hop, Bill Clinton's ease with African-Americans and Bush's cabinet picks. Josh Marshall adds: "American mass culture found a more useful scary other: Arabs and Muslims. That's a key thing that isn't pretty but I think is also true." 

Since I seem to be around the same age as Cooper, I thought I'd offer a few more possibilities, which I've put below the fold.

No, Blacks Did Not Destroy Gay Marriage

by hilzoy

Finally, we have a good analysis (pdf) of the levels of African-American support for Proposition 8. Guess what? It probably wasn't nearly as high as the exit polls suggested:

"Surveys conducted just before and just after Election Day found much smaller differences in support for Proposition 8 between African Americans and voters as a whole than did the NEP exit poll. The NEP result should thus be treated as an outlier that overstates black support for Proposition 8." (p. 9)

That's higher than Californians as a whole, but:

"As shown in Figure 4, African Americans are more religious (as measured by frequency of attendance at religious services) than any other racial or ethnic group of California voters. (...) As shown in Figure 5, controlling for frequency of religious attendance helps explain why African Americans supported Proposition 8 at higher levels than the population as a whole. Among Californians who attend worship at least weekly, support for Proposition 8 was nearly uniform across all racial and ethnic groups. Among those who attend worship less than weekly, majorities of every racial and ethnic group voted "no" on Proposition 8. The differences that remain among groups are not statistically significant at the 95% level of confidence."

So despite all the brouhaha after the election, it turns out that African-Americans' level of support for Prop 8 was not as high as reported, and is moreover almost entirely explained by their levels of church attendance.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, is mad, as well he should be. I am too. Obviously, even one homophobe, whether white, black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, or Martian, is one too many. But so is one person who blames blacks for the passage of Proposition 8 before the facts are in. Ta-Nehisi:

"There are people in my business who took to the highest hills to decry the betrayal of black Californians, and to this day, are giddily noting that blacks sunk marriage equality in California, who foist the failure of marriage equality on seven percent of the electorate . I will not speculate on their motives. But let's see how loudly they address this study. Let's see how much ink we see spilled revisiting those assumptions. Or will it be on to the next calamity, where the blacks--or the Arabs, or the Latinos--can be trotted out and blamed for the failings of others. For the failings of us all."

Annals Of Self-Deception

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"In an interview conducted earlier this month by his sister, Doro Bush Koch, Mr. Bush said he wanted to be remembered "as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process.""

""I came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values," Mr. Bush said. "And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values; that I was a President that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them. I surrounded myself with good people. I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions.""

"But he said he wanted to be known "as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor; that led an effort to help relieve HIV/AIDS and malaria on places like the continent of Africa; that helped elderly people get prescription drugs and Medicare as a part of the basic package; that came to Washington, D.C., with a set of political statements and worked as hard as I possibly could to do what I told the American people I would do.""

Well, I would like to be remembered as a defensive lineman for the Cincinnati Bengals. Whose wish is more unlikely, I wonder?

Baffled

by hilzoy

Sometimes I think I will never understand today's conservative movement. Case in point:

"IN A WIDE-RANGING INTERVIEW aboard his campaign plane this morning, John McCain said that he is open to choosing a pro-choice running mate and named former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as someone who merits serious consideration despite his support for abortion rights. (...)

"I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party," McCain said. "And I also feel that--and I'm not trying to equivocate here--that Americans want us to work together. You know, Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don't think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out."

McCain's comments came in response to a question about comments he made to several reporters during the Republican primary season. During that exchange, McCain was asked whether New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg would make a good running mate. McCain offered strong words of praise for Bloomberg but said that Bloomberg's position on abortion--he is also pro-choice--would make it difficult to choose him as a vice presidential candidate.

In the interview this morning, McCain suggested that Ridge would be more palatable to social conservatives than Bloomberg.

"I think it's a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a -- albeit strong -- but just it's a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that. Far moreso than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues.""

I'm trying to figure out by what logic supporting gay rights might seem worse than supporting abortion rights. Last time I checked, people who were pro-life thought that abortion was murder. People who are gay, by contrast, might be (to conservatives) immoral sodomites, but worse than murderers? How? Saying they're a threat to the family doesn't work: accepting this for the sake of argument (since I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who's opposed to both abortion rights and gay rights), can being gay possibly be a worse threat to the family than allowing parents to legally kill their children?

I mean: how could a disagreement about abortion rights be just a disagreement, while a disagreement about gay rights is somehow orders of magnitude more serious?

I don't get it.

An Old, Old Story

by hilzoy

Isaac Chotiner at The Plank found -- well, read it for yourself:

"A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war."

Definitely. Because of all the parts of Dark Knight where the filmmakers had real scope for artistic choices, what the Bat Sign looks like is obviously at the top of the list.

But it gets worse: Andrew Klavan, who wrote this, moves from surreal stupidity to moral philosophy.

What's For Lunch?

by hilzoy

Ezra Klein points out this startling fact from the PB&J Campaign:

"Each time you have a plant-based lunch like a PB&J you'll reduce your carbon footprint by the equivalent of 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions over an average animal-based lunch like a hamburger, a tuna sandwich, grilled cheese, or chicken nuggets. For dinner you save 2.8 pounds and for breakfast 2.0 pounds of emissions.

Those 2.5 pounds of emissions at lunch are about forty percent of the greenhouse gas emissions you'd save driving around for the day in a hybrid instead of a standard sedan.

If you have a PB&J instead of a red-meat lunch like a ham sandwich or a hamburger, you shrink your carbon footprint by almost 3.5 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions."

As they note, you'll also conserve 133 gallons of water, and save 24 square feet of land from deforestation. In addition, you won't be contributing to the moral and environmental nightmare that is factory farming, or contributing needlessly to the world's food shortage.

And that's just lunch.

Reducing your consumption of meat doesn't have to involve becoming a complete vegetarian, any more than reducing your consumption of fuel has to mean selling your car. Every little bit helps.

Keeping Your Moral Bearings

by hilzoy

I just wanted to say something prompted by the comments to the last post. Publius can undoubtedly stick up for himself. But I note that all he asked was: is he missing something when he is disgusted at the thought that this guy is getting a hero's welcome? He did not say any of the following:

(a) What his reaction was to "the Israeli pilots when they returned from the air raid in 2006 that killed not one but 34 children", and the welcome they received.

(b) That there either was or was not a "moral difference between direct murder (as committed by Mr. Kuntar) and indirect murder (as committed by the IDF)".

(c) That he either is or is not equally disgusted by "Americans [who] regard the torture and murder of Iraqis and Afghans by American soldiers as nothing much of a crime."

(d) "That it's especially surprising or disgusting that the Lebanese regard as a hero a man who spent 29 years in an Israeli jail, because he committed murder." (Emphasis added.) Or, for that matter, that it's surprising at all.

Despite that fact, people felt compelled to make assumptions about his views on these questions, and to criticize him for what they imagined he must think.

I think this is not just wrong, but dangerous. It's wrong because, as we should all have learned by now, unless you think that a blogger is obliged to write about absolutely everything, in every post, it does not make sense to infer from the fact that someone does not mention X that he does not care about X, let alone that he actually approves of X. This is exactly the same mistake that people make when I write about torture, and they reply: but what about all the evil things al Qaeda does? Why haven't you spent the same amount of time on them? I am not obliged to write about everything there is. I tend not to spend a lot of time arguing that terrorists are bad because I assume that most people agree that they are. (Likewise, I do not spend a lot of time trying to convince people that it's good to have friends, or that child molestation is wrong. And that's not because I don't believe those things.)

It's dangerous because it's very hard to keep your moral bearings if you cannot just take it to be obvious that smashing a kid's head against a rock is a bad thing, and that people who applaud people who smash kids' heads against rocks are making a deep moral mistake. It might be an understandable moral mistake -- the kind people make in one or another form of extremity -- but it is a mistake nonetheless.

Over the last seven years, I have been horrified to see how many people in my country have somehow managed not to see why torturing people is just wrong. I assume that part of the reason why they feel the way they do is because they think: if you get all concerned about the rights of terrorists, or of people who have been accused of being terrorists, then you "must" somehow be on their side; and if you are on their side, then you are not on the side of your country, or of the people who jumped to their deaths on 9/11. Since they assume that thinking that torture is wrong is not something you can do regardless of sides, and regardless of how strongly you feel about terrorism or how much you love your country, they then feel compelled not to think that it is wrong.

And once you lose your ability to think: wait, torture is just wrong, then you have lost your moral bearings.

I don't see any difference between their eagerness to leap to conclusions about the motives and general political views of people who condemn American torture, and eagerness to leap to conclusions about people who condemn an obviously grotesque act by someone in Lebanon. None at all. One sort of leaping is more commonly found among people I disagree with on other issues, and the other is more commonly found among my natural allies, but both are, I think, just wrong.

If any good is to come of the last seven years, it will only be because people try to figure out what went so horribly wrong, and how we can both repair the damage and avoid ever making the same kinds of mistakes again. And one way not to make those mistakes is to never, ever let ourselves become convinced that you cannot criticize something that is obviously wrong without adopting a whole host of other views that you might find reprehensible. Torture is wrong. It doesn't matter whether or not Cheney's or Addington's motives were pure, whether they thought they had the best interests of the country at heart, whether what they did was comprehensible in the aftermath of 9/11, and so on: it was wrong. Likewise, smashing kids' heads -- four year old kids, not (say) thirteen year olds, who might possibly be mistaken for combatants -- is wrong. It doesn't matter whether the person who did the smashing was justifiably angry about his treatment at the hands of Israel; this is wrong. And just as the people who feted Lt. Calley were wrong, so are the people who treat someone who smashed a kid's head in as a hero. It is very much worth asking why all these people did these things, and that will affect what specific kind of wrong we think they did, and the extent to which we think there are extenuating circumstances. But they will not affect the fact that all these things are wrong.

It's very hard to keep our moral bearings if we allow ourselves to lose hold of basic moral facts, or feel that we somehow must protest when someone simply states one. That's what happened to significant chunks of the right. Those of us who are on the left should not imagine that it cannot happen to us. And looking back over the last seven years should make us think: I will do whatever it takes to ensure that I do not, some day, find that I have become a liberal analog to those conservatives who get mad at people because they oppose torture. Not getting mad at people because they think it's wrong to treat people who smash kids' heads in as heros would be a good start.

***

Just in case anyone thinks that this post has something to do with my views on Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, etc., here are some links to things I wrote during the war in Lebanon: at the very beginning, Bush's ME policy in pictures, more, possibly the clearest of the lot, afterwards. Plus, my first and only pledge drive. If anyone wants to argue that I'm saying what I say only because I take some side or other, these might be useful in figuring out what that side is.

UPDATE: How could I have forgotten this post?

Happy Fourth Of July

by hilzoy

Lincoln's Lyceum Address, 1838:

"We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them--they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their's was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it?--At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. (...)

At the close of that struggle [the Revolution], nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or brother, a living history was to be found in every family-- a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related--a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.--But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls. They are gone.--They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more.

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.""