The RNC & Gun Free
The Republican Party is well known for its consistent support of gun rights and opposition to attempts to impose restrictions on these rights. As such, it might strike some as odd that the gun-loving Republicans are holding their national convention in a gun free zone in Cleveland, Ohio. Though the party might seem helpless in the face of the Secret Service (which banned guns from the Republican national convention in 2012), brave patriots have risen in its defense. A petition to allow open carry at the Quicken Loans Arena during the Republican Party’s national convention has been signed by over 50,000 supporters of the Second Amendment.
While some have suggested that the petition is not the work of true gun-loving patriots but by wily Democrat James P. Ryan, it is well grounded in an interesting moral argument. In any case, to dismiss the moral argument because of the identity of the author would be to fall into a classic ad homimen fallacy. After all, the merit of an argument depends on the argument, not the identity of the author.
The argument used to justify the petition is based in the principle of consistent application—this is the principle that standards must be applied the same way in similar circumstances. Exceptions can be justified, but this requires showing that there is a relevant difference between the applications that warrants changing or not applying the standard.
Not being consistent is problematic in at least three ways. One is that the person or group runs the risk of hypocrisy, which is morally problematic. The second is that inconsistent application is unfair, which is morally problematic as well. The third is that such inconsistent application runs the risk of undermining the justification for the standard, thus suggesting that the standard might not be well supported.
The case for the inconsistency of the Republican Party, the NRA and the three remaining Republican candidates is rather effectively made on the petition site. As such, I will present a rather concise summary of the case.
First, the NRA has argued that gun free zones, like where the convention will be held, are essentially advertising the best places for mass shootings. The NRA consistently opposes such zones—or at least it did. Second, Trump, Cruz and Kasich have explicitly opposed gun free zones. Trump and Cruz have both echoed the NRA’s line that gun free zones are bait for mass shooters. Third, there are the stock arguments made by the NRA and pro-gun Republicans that people need guns to defend themselves—that a good guy with a gun is the only one who can stop a bad guy with a gun. As such, for the Republican Party to hold its convention in a gun free zone with Cruz, Trump, Kasich and the NRA agreeing to this would be a clear act of moral inconsistency. Since they all oppose gun free zones (including, in some cases public schools) they should insist that the same standard they wish to apply to everyone else must also be applied to them. That is, guns must be allowed at the convention.
It could be countered that the Republican Party does back private property rights and, as such, they could consistently say that the Quicken Loans Arena owners have the right to ban guns from their property (though they are just laying out irresistible murder bait by doing so). While it is reasonable to accept that private property rights trump gun rights, the obvious counter is to insist that the convention be moved to a private or public venue that allows guns unless Quicken Loans Arena is willing to change its policy for the event.
Another counter is to note that the Secret Service has apparently insisted that guns not be allowed at the event. The Republicans could thus say that they really want to have guns, but the government is violating their rights by forcing them to ban the guns they so dearly and truly love. That is, if it was up to them the convention would be well armed.
The easy and obvious reply is that the Republican Party and candidates could take a principled stand and insist that guns be allowed. After all, their position on the matter of gun free zones is quite clear—the least safe place to be is a gun-free zone. Presumably the Secret Service is concerned that someone might bring a gun to the convention and try to kill Trump, Cruz or Kasich. Since these three men believe that gun free zones would simply attract assassins, they should be able to convince the Secret Service that they would be safer surrounded by armed citizens and, of course, sign whatever waivers or forms would be needed to make this so. If the candidates and the party lack the clout to make the convention gun friendly, surely the gun-friendly Republican majority in Congress could pass legislation allowing guns to be carried at the convention. This, one might suspect, would be a law that Obama would be quite willing to sign.
If the Republicans do not approach this affront to their gun rights with the same will and tenacity they deploy against Obamacare, one might suspect a hypocrisy regarding their position on guns: doing without gun free zones is fine for everyone else; but the Republican establishment wants the protection of gun free zones. This does not, of course, show that they are in error in regards to their avowed position opposing gun free zones—to infer that would be to fall victim to the ad hominem tu quoque (the fallacy that an inconsistency between a person’s claim and her actions shows her claim is wrong). However, it might be suspected that if the Republican establishment is fine with the convention as a gun free zone, then they have some evidence that gun free zones are not, contrary to their professed view, murder bait and are safer than gun zones.
Body Hacking III: Better than Human
While most of the current body hacking technology is merely gimmicky and theatrical, it does have potential. It is, for example, easy enough to imagine that the currently very dangerous night-vision eye drops could be made into a safe product, allowing people to hack their eyes for good or nefarious reasons. There is also the model of the cyberpunk future envisioned by such writers as William Gibson and games like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. In such a future, people might body hack their way to being full cyborgs. In the nearer future, there might be such augmentations as memory backups for the brain, implanted phones, and even subdermal weapons. Such augmenting hacks do raise various moral issues that go beyond the basic ethics of self-modification. Fortunately, these ethical matters can be effectively addressed by the application of existing moral theories and principles.
Since the basic ethics of self-modification were addressed in the previous essay, this essay will focus solely on the ethical issue of augmentation through body hacking. This issue does, of course, stack with the other moral concerns.
In general, there seems to be nothing inherently wrong with the augmentation of the body through technology. The easy way to argue for this is to draw the obvious analogy to external augmentation: starting with sticks and rocks, humans augmented their natural capacities. If this is acceptable, then moving the augmentation under the skin should not open up a new moral world.
The easy and obvious objection is to contend that under the skin is a new moral world—that, for example, a smart phone carried in the pocket is one thing, while a smartphone embedded in the skull is quite another.
This objection does have merit: implanting the technology is morally significant. At the very least, there are the moral concerns about potential health risks. However, this moral concern is about the medical aspects, not about the augmentation and this is the focus of the moral discussion at hand. This is not to say that the health issues are not important—they are actually very important; but fall under another moral issue.
If it is accepted that augmentation is, in general, morally acceptable, there are still legitimate concerns about specific types of augmentation and the context in which they are employed. Fortunately, there is already considerable moral discussion about these categories of augmentation.
One area in which augmentation is of considerable concern is in sports and games. Athletes have long engaged in body hacking—if the use of drugs can be considered body hacking. While those playing games like poker generally do not use enhancing drugs, they have attempted to make use of technology to cheat. While future body hacks might be more dramatic, they would seem to fall under the same principles that govern the use of augmenting substances and equipment in current sports. For example, an implanted device that stores extra blood to be added during the competition would be analogous to existing methods of blood doping. As another example, a poker or chess player might implant a computer that she can use to cheat at the game.
While specific body hacks will need to be addressed by the appropriate governing bodies of sports and games, the basic principle that cheating is morally unacceptable still applies. As such, the ethics of body hacking in sports and games is easy enough to handle in the general—the real challenge will be sorting out which hacks are cheating and which are acceptable. In any case, some interesting scandals can be expected.
The field of academics is also an area of concern. Since students are quite adept at using technology to cheat in school and on standardized tests, it must be expected that there will be efforts to cheat through body hacking. As with cheating in sports and games, the basic ethical framework is well-established: creating in morally unacceptable in such contexts. As with sports and games, the challenge will be sorting out which hacks are considered cheating and which are not. If body hacking becomes mainstream, it can be expected that education and testing will need to change as will what counts as cheating. To use an analogy, calculators are often allowed on tests and thus the future might see implanted computers being allowed for certain tests. Testing of memory might also become pointless—if most people have implanted devices that can store data and link to the internet, memorizing things might cease to be a skill worth testing. This does, however, segue into the usual moral concerns about people losing abilities or becoming weaker due to technology. Since these are general concerns that have applied to everything from the abacus to the automobile, I will not address this issue here.
There is also the broad realm composed of all the other areas of life that do not generally have specific moral rules about cheating through augmentation. These include such areas as business and dating. While there are moral rules about certain forms of cheating, the likely forms of body hacking would not seem to be considered cheating in such areas, though they might be regarded as providing an unfair advantage—especially in cases in which the wealthy classes are able to gain even more advantages over the less well-off classes.
As an example, a company with considerable resources might use body hacking to upgrade its employees so they can be more effective, thus providing a competitive edge over lesser companies. While it seems likely that certain augmentations will be regarded as unfair enough to require restriction, body hacking would merely change the means and not the underlying game. That is, the well-off always have considerable advantages over the less-well off. Body hacking would just be a new tool to be used in the competition. Hence, existing ethical principles would apply here as well. Or not be applied—as is so often the case when vast sums of money are on the line.
So, while body hacking for augmentation will require some new applications of existing moral theories and principles, it does not make a significant change in the moral landscape. Like almost all changes in technology it will merely provide new ways of doing old things. Like cheating in school or sports. Or life.
Body Hacking II: Restoration & Replacement
While body hacking is sometimes presented as being new and radical, humans have been engaged in the practice (under other names) for quite some time. One of the earliest forms of true body hacking was probably the use of prosthetic parts to replace lost pieces, such as a leg or hand. These hacks were aimed at restoring a degree of functionality, so they were practical hacks.
While most contemporary body hacking seems aimed at gimmickry or rather limited attempts at augmentation, there are some serious applications that involve replacement and restoration. One example of this is the color blind person who is using a skull mounted camera to provide audio clues regarding colors. This hack serves as a replacement to missing components of the eye, albeit in a somewhat odd way.
Medicine is, obviously enough, replete with body hacks ranging from contact lenses to highly functional prosthetic limbs. These technologies and devices provide people with some degree of replacement and restoration for capabilities they lost or never had. While these sort of hacks are typically handled by medical professionals, advances in existing technology and the rise of new technologies will certainly result in more practical hacks aimed not at gimmickry but at restoration and replacement. There will also certainly be considerable efforts aimed at augmentation, but this matter will be addressed in another essay.
Since humans have been body hacking for replacement and restoration for thousands of years, the ethics of this matter are rather well settled. In general, the use of technology for medical reasons of replacement or restoration is morally unproblematic. After all, this process is simply fulfilling the main purpose of medicine: to get a person as close to their normal healthy state as possible. To use a specific example, there really is no morally controversy over the use of prosthetic limbs that are designed to restore functionality. In the case of body hacks, the same general principle would apply: hacks that aim at restoration or replacement are generally morally unproblematic. That said, there are some potential areas of concern.
One area of both moral and practical concern is the risk of body hacking done by non-professionals. That is, amateur or DIY body hacking. The concern is that such hacking could have negative consequences—that is, the hack could turn out to do more harm than good. This might be due to bad design, poor implementation or other causes. For example, a person might endeavor a hack to replace a missing leg and have it fail catastrophically, resulting in a serious injury. This is, of course, not unique to body hacking—this is a general matter of good decision making.
As with health and medicine in general, it is generally preferable to go with a professional rather than an amateur or a DIY endeavor. Also, the possibility of harm makes it a matter of moral concern. That said, there are many people who cannot afford professional care and technology will afford people an ever-growing opportunity to body hack for medical reasons. This sort of self-help can be justified on the grounds that some restoration or replacement is better than none. This assumes that the self-help efforts do not result in worse harm than doing nothing. As such, body hackers and society will need to consider the ethics of the risks of amateur and DIY body hacking. Guidance can be found here in existing medical ethics—such as moral guides for people attempting to practice medicine on themselves and others without proper medical training.
A second area of moral concern is that some people will engage in replacing fully functional parts with body hacks that are equal or inferior to the original (augmentation will be addressed in the next essay). For example, a person might want to remove a finger to replace it with a mechanical finger with a built in USB drive. As another example, a person might want to replace her eye with a camera comparable or inferior to her natural eye.
One clear moral concern is the potential dangers in such hacks—removing a body part can be rather dangerous. One approach would be to weigh the harms and benefits of such hacking. On the face of it, such replacement hacks would seem to be at best neutral—that is, the person will end up with the same capabilities as before. It is also possible, perhaps likely, that the replacement attempt will result in diminished capabilities, thus making the hack wrong because of the harm inflicted. Some body hackers might argue that such hacks have a value beyond the functionality. For example, the value of self-expression or achieving a state of existence that matches one’s conception or vision of self. In such cases, the moral question would be whether or not these factors are worth considering and if they are, how much weight they should be given morally.
There is also the worry that such hacks would be a form of unnecessary self-mutilation and thus at best morally dubious. A counter to this is to argue, as John Stuart Mill did, that people have a right to self-harm, provided that they do not harm others. That said, arguing that people do not have a right to interfere with self-harm (provided the person is acting freely and rationally) does not entail that self-harm is morally acceptable. It is certainly possible to argue against self-harm on utilitarian grounds and also on the basis of moral obligations to oneself. Arguments from the context of virtue theory would also apply—self harm is certainly contrary to developing one’s excellence as a person.
These approaches could be countered. Utilitarian arguments can be met with utilitarian arguments that offer a different evaluation of the harms and benefits. Arguments based on obligations to oneself can be countered by arguing that there are not such obligations or that the obligations one does have allows from this sort of modification. Argument from virtue theory could be countered by attacking the theory itself or showing how such modifications are consistent with moral excellence.
My own view, which I consistently apply to other areas such as drug use, diet, and exercise, is that people have a moral right to the freedom of self-abuse/harm. This requires that the person is capable of making an informed decision and is not coerced or misled. As such, I hold that a person has every right to DIY body hacking. Since I also accept the principle of harm, I hold that society has a moral right to regulate body hacking of others as other similar practices (such as dentistry) are regulated. This is to prevent harm being inflicted on others. Being fond of virtue theory, I do hold that people should not engage in self-harm, even though they have every right to do so without having their liberty restricted. To use a concrete example, if someone wants to spoon out her eyeball and replace it with a LED light, then she has every right to do so. However, if an untrained person wants to set up shop and scoop eyeballs for replacement with lights, then society has every right to prevent that. I do think that scooping out an eye would be both foolish and morally wrong; which is also how I look at heroin use and smoking tobacco.
Body Hacking I: Aesthetics
Back in my graduate school days, I made some extra money writing for various science fiction and horror gaming companies. This was in the 1990s, which was the chrome age of cyberpunk: the future was supposed to be hacked, jacked, and bionic. The future is now, but is an age of Tinder, Facebook, and cat videos. But, there is still hope of the cyberpunk future: body hackers are endeavoring to bring some cyberpunk into the world. The current state of the hack is, to be honest, rather disappointing—but, great things arise from lesser things and hope remains for a chromed future.
Body hacking, at this point, is fairly minor. For example, some people have implanted electronics under their skin, such as RFID chips. Of course, my husky also has an implanted chip. As another example, one fellow who is color blind has a skull mounted device that informs him of colors via sounds. As one might imagine, body hacks that can be seen have generated some mockery and hostility. Since I owe cyberpunk for a few crates of ramen noodles and bags of puffed rice, I am obligated to come to the defense of the aesthetics of body hacking.
While some point out that philosophers have not given body hacking the attention it deserves and claim that it is something new and revolutionary, it still falls nicely under established moral systems. As such, body hacking is a new matter for applied ethics—but does not seem to require a new moral system or theory to handle it. This can, of course, be disputed. However, I will address the moral concerns about the aesthetics of body hacking by the simple application of established moral theory.
The aesthetic aspects of body hacking fall under the ethics of lifestyle choices, specifically those regarding choices of personal appearance. This can be shown by drawing easy and obvious analogies to established means of modifying personal appearance. The most obvious modifications are clothing, hairstyles and accessories (such as jewelry). These, like body hacking, have the capacity to shock and offend people—perhaps by what is revealed by the clothing or the message sent by it (including literal messages, such as T-shirts with text and images). Unlike body hacking, these modifications are on the surface, thus making them somewhat different from true body hacking.
As such, a closer analogy would involve classic cosmetic body modifications. These include hair dye, vanity contact lenses, decorative scars, piercings, and tattoos. In fact, these can be seen as low-tech body hacks—precursors to the technological hacks of today. Body hacks go beyond these classic modifications and range from the absurd (a man growing an “ear” on his arm) to the semi-useful (a person who replaced a missing fingertip with a USB drive). While concerns about body hacking go beyond the aesthetic, body hacks do have the capacity to elicit responses similar to other modifications. For example, tattoos were once regarded as the mark of a lower class person, though they are now general accepted. As another example, in the past men (other than pirates) did not get piercings unless they were willing to face ridicule. Now piercing is passé.
Because the aesthetics of body hacking is analogous to classic appearance hacks, the same ethics applies to these cases. Naturally enough, people do vary considerably in their ethics of appearance. I, as veteran readers surely suspect, favor John Stuart Mill’s approach to the matter of the ethics of lifestyle choices. Mill argues that people have the right to interfere with liberty only to prevent a person from harming others—a rather reasonable standard of interference which he justifies on utilitarian grounds. Mill explicitly addresses the ways of life people chose: “…the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow; without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.”
Mill’s principle nicely handles the ethics of the aesthetics of body hacking (and beyond, but I will get to that in a later essay): body hackers have the moral freedom to hack themselves even though such modifications are regarded as aesthetically perverse, foolish, or wrong. So, just as a person has the moral right to wear clothing that some would regard as too revealing or dye his hair magenta, a person has the moral right to grow a functionless ear on his arm or implant blinking lights under her skin. But, just as a person would not have a right to wear a jacket covered in outward facing needles and razor blades, a person would not have the right to hack herself with an implanted strobe light that flashes randomly into people’s eyes. This is because such things become the legitimate business of others because of the harm they can do.
Mill does note that people are subject to the consequences of their choices—not interfering with someone’s way of life does not require accepting it, embracing it or even working around it. For example, just as a person who elects to have “Goat F@cker” tattooed on his face can expect challenges in getting a job as a bank teller or school teacher, a person who has blinking lights embedded in his hand can expect to encounter some challenges in employment. Interestingly, the future might see discrimination lawsuits on the part of body hackers, analogous to past lawsuits for other forms of discrimination. It can also be expected that social consequences will change for body hacking, just as it occurred with tattoos and yoga pants.
One final point is the stock concern about the possible harms of offensive appearances. That is, that other people do have a legitimate interest in the appearance of others because their appearance might harm them by offending them. While this is worth considering, there does not seem to be a compelling reason to accept that mere offensiveness causes sufficient harm to warrant restrictions on appearance. What would be needed would be evidence of actual harm to others that arises because the appearance inflicts the harm rather than the alleged harm arising because of how the offended person feels about the appearance. To use an analogy, while someone who hates guns has the right not to be shot, he does not have the right to insist that he never see guns or images of guns.
The discussion has shown that body hacking that does not inflict harm to others falls nicely under the liberty to choose a way of life, provided that the way of life does not inflict harm on others. But, as always, a person who strays too far from the norm has to be aware of possible consequences. Especially when it comes to dating and employment.
I’m not moving to Canada even if Trump is elected
Americans have a habit of threatening to move to Canada if a presidential election does not go their way; however, few actually follow up on this threat. While I am worried that Trump might be elected President, I have not made this threat and have no intention of leaving should the Trumpocracy come to pass. While some of my reasons are purely practical, I also have philosophical reasons. Getting to these will, however, require a short trip through some other issues.
When I was much younger, I was into politics and dreamed of holding political office. This dream gave way to cynicism about American politics and the embracing of anarchism and then apathy. I got better, though.
When I was an anarchist, I decided not to vote. This was based on the anarchist principle that voting is both ineffective and entails acknowledging the legitimacy of the oppressive system. When I became apathetic, I did not vote on the basis of an analogy to picking a movie. As I saw it, picking between candidates was like picking between bad movies. The rational choice, it would seem, would be not to pick any: vote none of the above. I accepted this until I had a revelation while watching a movie I did not like while on a date. Elections, it turns out, are like being on a movie date when only bad movies are playing. Since you are stuck going to a movie, you need to pick among the bad choices. The goal is not to pick what you like—since all choices are bad. The goal is to pick the least bad option. In the case of elections, you are stuck with the results if you vote or do not vote. If all the options are bad, you can still try to avoid the worst option by voting for the least bad. If all options are identical in badness, then you could avoid voting at all or use an alternative method. In my case, I often vote for the one that most resembles an animal I like or vote against the one that most resembles a creature I dislike.
There is, however, a downside to voting when you regard all the options as bad: you have become part of the process and are a party to the crimes of the person you voted for—should that person win. On the plus side, if you helped the lesser evil win, then you deserve kudos for preventing a greater evil.
One problem with becoming part of the voting process is that this would seem to acknowledge the legitimacy of the process (assuming one is not compelled to vote). This would seem to commit the voter to accepting the results of a fair election. Since it looks like it will be Trump vs. Hillary, when I vote for Hillary it would seem that I am accepting the voting process. This would seem to entail that when Trump wins, I have to accept that he is my president. This is required by consistency: if Hillary wins, I would expect those who voted for Trump to accept this result. This, of course, assumes that the election was fair—if it was rigged, then that is another matter.
Locke addressed this matter—he was well aware that the losing side in a vote might be tempted to refuse to go along. Locke’s response to the problem was to point out that doing this would tear apart the system and send us back to the state of nature. As such, he reasoned, we should follow the majority in regards to voting. This, of course, leads to the problem of the tyranny of the majority, something that could be used to argue that one should not accept the election of a person who will engage in such tyrannical behavior. My own view is that the election should be accepted on the basis of majority rule. However, the tyrannical, immoral, or illegal actions of an elected official should not be accepted. So, if Trump wins the 2016 election fair and square, then he would be my president. If he started implementing his various absurd, immoral, illegal and perhaps even unconstitutional harebrained schemes, then I would certainly not accept these schemes. This opposition would be based in part on Locke’s view of tyranny and in part on John Stuart Mill’s discussion of the tyranny of the majority. The gist of both is that a ruler acts wrongly if he uses the power of office in a way that is not for the good of the people or imposes on the liberty of others without the justification that it prevents harm to others.
So, if Trump gets elected, he will be my president. I will stay here—and will certainly do what I can to oppose his likely attempts to do awful, immoral, and illegal things. Oddly, I think that the Republican controlled congress will be on my side in most of these matters.
Trump, Violence & Protests
Donald Trump has a talent for bringing out strong emotions in people, thus it is that some protest his rallies dressed as penises and other folks punch protestors and reporters. While Trump’s ideas have little or no philosophical merit, the situations arising at his rallies do raise interesting philosophical concerns about violence and protesting.
Some of Trump’s rallies have been marked by violence, including alleged attacks on protestors and even members of the conservative press. While Trump often seems to praise and encourage violence against protestors and even the media, the official line is that protestors should be handled by law enforcement and not attacked by Trump supporters. This official line is the correct moral line—the use of violence against non-violent protestors is not warranted, even if they are insulting, disruptive or annoying. The justification for this position is easy enough. While a political rally can be a place of heightened emotions, being a supporter of a candidate does not grant a person a special status that allows them to inflict violence on a protestor. The moral relation between the people is the same as it would be anywhere and just as merely being disruptive or even insulting does not warrant physical assault anywhere else, it does not warrant it at a political rally. This applies whether the rally is for Democrats or Republicans and regardless of the ideology of the protestor.
While there are certainly those who think that protestors (or reporters) they dislike should be punched in the mouth, such punching is not warranted in civil society. After all, while self-defense can be used justly against unwarranted physical attacks, one cannot justly claim that physical violence is warranted as defense against a protest, even if it is annoying, insulting or disrupting. This is because, to borrow from John Locke’s justification of self-defense, such protesting does not put one at risk in regards to life, liberty or property.
Naturally, a person has every right to counter protestors with words—to argue against them and perhaps even to respond to their shouts and taunts with shouts and taunts. That said, it is worth considering the possibility of fighting words—an insult so provocative that a person is warranted in responding with physical violence. This could be justified on the grounds that such an attack inflicts emotional harm that warrants a response with physical harm. This could be developed, perhaps, by considering the harms that alleged to be inflicted by hate speech. If it is accepted that words, images and such can do real harm, then there would seem to be a potential avenue leading to justifying a physical defense against a verbal offense.
The counter to this is that words, images and such are just that—they are not physical attacks and no matter how vile or provocative they are, they cannot do real harm. Or, they cannot do enough or the right sort of harm to warrant a physical defense.
It might be pointed out that harmful words and images do seem to warrant a physical response. For example, threats and non-physical bullying can be regarded as crimes that warrant action be taken against the offender. This point leads quite nicely to my next point of discussion, which is the right of Trump and any other candidate to be able to freely conduct their events and employ law enforcement to keep protestors from disrupting these events.
An immediate objection to even such a suggestion is that protestors have a right to free expression—they have every right to protest even at a private rally. This does have considerable appeal and I certainly agree that there is a right of protest that falls under a broader right of expression. It is, in fact, my support of free expression that causes me to support the seemingly ironic position that Trump and other candidates have the right to have disruptive and insulting protestors removed from private rallies by law enforcement. This is on the condition that the protestor is actually disrupting the event to a degree that it meaningfully interferes with the free expression of the candidate (or other speaker).
The reason, which is rather obvious, is that sufficiently disruptive protestors are infringing on the free speech of the candidate—they are endeavoring to drown out her voice with their own, which cannot be justified on free speech grounds. It could, however, be justified on other moral grounds (such as by using a utilitarian approach) but this matter goes way beyond the scope of this short essay. In any case, an appeal to free speech cannot justify protests that interfere with free speech.
In contrast, if a protestor protests in a manner that does not significantly interfere with the candidate’s free expression, even if the act of protest is annoying or even insulting (like wearing a provocative penis hat at a Trump rally), then the protestor’s right of free expression would warrant this expression. There is, of course, the practical matter of sorting out what degree of disruption warrants a removal of a protestor on the grounds he is violating the right of free expression of a candidate or other speaker.
While the right of free expression can be used to justify ejecting protestors, property rights can also be brought into play. If an event is being held on private property and is not open to the general public, then those in charge of the event have the right to control access. Even if the event is open to the public, those in charge have a right (or even responsibility) to act to ensure the integrity of the event. This is the same right that justifies excluding people who do not have tickets from concerts and also justifies movie theaters in removing people who insist on being excessively loud and disruptive. It is also the right that justifies having people removed from a class if they engage in behavior that makes teaching impossible, such as flipping over a desk and screaming at the professor.
This sort of property right is, like all rights, not absolute and moral arguments could be advanced that would justify protests that seem to violate property rights. For example, the terrible consequences of not protesting might warrant the protest as might the evil of what is being protested.
In light of the above discussion, Trump has the right to free expression; but protestors who do not violate this right also have the right to protest without fear of violence.
Trumping Populism
I think that Trump would be awful as a President. While I could grind through my ideological, moral and philosophical disagreements with him, my main practical concern is that he would simply be rather bad at the job. The first reason is that he has no experience in political leadership. While he has run a business (with many failures), being a business leader is rather different from being a political leader. To use an analogy: I have years of experience teaching philosophy but this does not qualify me to teach, for example chemistry or even a subject closer to philosophy such as history. The second is that Trump has not presented any developed plans or proposals and the ones he has advanced are patently absurd. The third is that Trump seems to lack even a basic understanding of critical matters such as international law, international events, the rules governing the military and so many more things. While Trump makes sweeping claims that bring cheers, he does not seem to accept that he is making claims that are untrue and while not logically impossible, are practically impossible. In sum, Trump is not qualified or suitable for the office.
As much as it pains me, Trump does deserve some praise for what he has managed to do. First, he has made the Republican party live what it has become, in full view of the voters. Second, he has launched a successful campaign against the political establishment by appealing to the people. While I disagree with Trump, it is good to see a complacent political machine knocked off balance. If only we could see something similar happen to the Democrats. To be fair, Bernie has been trying to kick the machine and I think it might have shuddered just a bit.
Third, he has captured a bolt of the lightning of American anger and fear; thus giving voice to the rage of those who have long been ignored. I think that he is getting people to turn the right anger in the wrong direction, but he speaks for those who have been effectively abandoned by the current system to a degree that none of the other Republicans can match.
Fourth, he has energized American participation in politics to a level that has not been seen in a long time. Currently, he has energized the Republicans but there is a chance he will energize Democrats and Independents to vote—most likely against him. He has made more people care about politics and has even, I must concede, made people believe that it is worth getting involved. While I certainly hope that he does not succeed, I must commend him for getting so many out of the pit of apathy that has become the norm in American politics.
It is worth considering that Trump does not deserve much credit for this. It could be that people were ready to reject the establishment and motivated to become politically active and Trump just happened to be the guy that got the attention. That said, somebody has to be the guy (or gal) that the voters rally behind. Trump is, no matter what one might think of him, that guy.
It has been claimed that Trump cannot beat Hillary or Sanders; that the polls show he will lose in the general. As others have pointed out, Trump was never supposed to get this far. So it is unwise to count him out. Trump actually does have a path to the White House.
First, Trump needs to keep the remaining candidates in the race so that they keep splitting the vote. If he can do this, he is likely to keep ahead of all the others. Second, Trump needs to be ready to fight it out at the convention. If he does not get the automatic win, the Republican establishment might try to rob him—which would be a disaster for the party in many ways. Third, Trump needs the usual low voter turnout among those who are likely to vote for the Democrat. While Sanders has an enthusiastic group of supporters, they tend to be the folks who are not reliable voters. Also, to be honest, neither Hillary nor Bernie are really lighting the base on fire—though Bernie does have some devoted folks. So, there will probably be the usual weak turnout of Democrats—unless they are set afire by fear of Trump. Fourth, Trumps needs a high voter turnout among the folks who will vote for him. Trump does not need to win a majority of registered voters—he just needs a majority of the minority who actually vote. Trump can, I think, do this—he has enthusiastic supporters who have turned out to support him. They will almost certainly vote in the general election. Put simply, Democrat apathy + Trump enthusiasm= President Trump. As always, the beauty of democracy is that it is the best political system for giving us what we deserve.
Cannot Dump the Trump
As of March, 2016 Donald Trump has continued as the leading Republican presidential candidate. Before his string of victories, Trump was regarded by most pundits as a joke candidate, one that would burn out like a hair fire. After his victories, the Republican establishment and its allies launched a massive (and massively expensive) attack on Trump. So far, this attack has failed and the Republican elite have been unable to dump Trump.
It would be foolish to claim that Trump’s nomination is inevitable. But, it would be equally foolish to cling to the belief that Trump will be taken down by the establishment or that he will gaffe himself to political death. While I have examined how Trump magnificently filled a niche crafted by the Republican party, in this essay I will examine why Trump can probably not be dumped.
As I have argued before, the Republican party is largely responsible for creating the opening for Trump. They have also made it very difficult for attacks on Trump to succeed. This is because the party has systematically undermined (at least for many Republicans) the institutions that could effectively criticize Trump. These include the media, the political establishment, the academy, and the church (broadly construed).
Since about the time of Nixon, the Republican party has engaged in a systematic campaign to cast the mainstream media as liberal and biased. This has been a rather effective campaign (thanks, in part, to the media itself) and there is considerable distrust and distaste regarding the media among Republicans. Trump has worked hard to reinforce this view—lashing out at the media that has enabled him to grow so very fat politically.
While this sustained demolition of the media has paid handsome dividends for the Republicans, the Republicans who oppose Trump now find themselves a victim of their own successful tactic: Trump is effectively immune to criticism coming from the media. When attacked, even by conservative media, he can simply avail himself of the well-worn Republican talking points. This result is exactly as should be expected: degrading an important public institution cannot be good for the health of a democratic state.
While modern Republicans have preached small government, the party firmly embraced the anti-establishment position in recent years. In the past, this approach has been rather ironic: well-entrenched Republicans would wax poetically about their outsider status in order to get re-elected to term after term. While the establishment no doubt hoped it could keep milking the inconsistent cow of outside insiders, Trump has taken advantage of this rhetoric against the established insiders. This time, the insiders are the Republicans.
This provides Trump with a readymade set of tools to counter criticisms and attacks from the Republican establishment—tools that this establishment forged. As such, Trump has little to fear from the attacks of the establishment Republicans. In fact, he should welcome their attacks: each criticism can be melted down and remade as support for Trump being an anti-establishment outsider.
While there were some significant conservative intellectuals and scholars, the Republican party has made a practice of bashing the academy (colleges, universities and intellectuals in general) as being a foul pit of liberalism. There has also been a sustained campaign against reason and expertise—with Republicans actually making ludicrous claims that ignorance is better than knowledge and that expertise is a mark of incompetence.
This approach served the Republicans fairly well when it came to certain political matters, such as climate change. However, this discrediting of the academy in the eyes of many Republican voters has served to protect Trump. Any criticism of Trump from academics or intellectuals can be dismissed with the same rhetorical weapons deployed so often in the past by the same Republicans who now weep at the prospect of a Trump victory. While the sleep of reason breeds monsters, the attack on reason has allowed Trump to flourish. This should be taken as a warning sign of what can follow Trump: when the rational defenses of society are weakened, monsters are free to take the stage.
While the Republican party often embraces religion, this embrace is often limited to anti-abortion, anti-contraception and anti-gay matters. When religious leaders, such as Pope Francis, stray beyond this zone and start taking God’s command to love each other as He loves us seriously, the Republican party generally reacts with hostility. Witness, for example, the incredibly ironic calls of the Republicans for the Pope to keep religion out of politics.
In general, the Republican party has been fine with religion that matches a conservative social agenda and does not stray into positive ethics of social responsibility and moral criticism of an ethics of selfishness (what philosophers call ethical egoism). Straying beyond this, as noted above, results in hostile attacks. To this end, the party has taken steps to undermine these aspects of religion.
One impact of this has been that Trump is able to use these same tools against religious and moral criticisms. He has even been able to go head-to-head with the Pope, thus showing that even religion cannot oppose Trump. Interestingly, many evangelical leaders have condemned Trump—although their flocks seem to rather like him. Since the conservatives like to cast the left as being the foe of religion and ethics, there is considerable irony here.
In addition to taking advantage of the systematic degrading of critical institutions, Trump can also count on the fact that the methods used against him will most likely be ineffective. Some pundits and some establishment members have endeavored to use rational argumentation against Trump. Mitt Romney, for example, has presented a well-reasoned critique of Trump that is right on the mark. Trump responded by asserting that Romney would have been happy to blow him in 2012.
The argumentation approach is not working and will almost certainly not work. As Aristotle argued, the vast majority of people are not convinced by “arguments and fine ideals” but are ruled by their emotions. In fact, all the people are ruled by emotions some of the time and some of the people are ruled by emotions all the time. As such, it is no surprise that philosophers have established that reason is largely ineffective as a tool of persuasion—it is trumped by rhetoric and fallacies (that is, no logic and bad logic). Bringing logic to an emotion fight is a losing proposition.
There is also the fact that the Republican party has, as noted above, consistently bashed intellectualism and expertise—thus making it even less likely that reasoning will be effective against Trump in regards to turning his supporters against him.
Political commitment, like being a sports fan, is also more a matter of irrational feeling than of considered logic. Just as one is unlikely to get a dedicated Cubs fan to abandon her team via syllogisms, one is not going to turn a Trump supporter by logic. Ditto for Sanders and Hillary supporters. This is not to say their supporters are stupid, just that politics is a not a game of logic.
Since Trump is effectively immune to argumentation, his opponents might try to use rhetoric and emotion against him. His Republican opponents face a serious challenge here: they are simply not as good at it as Trump. Trump has also managed to get the battle for the nomination down to the level of basic cable stand-up comedy or a junior high locker room: dick jokes, blow job innuendo, and other presidential subjects. Trump is a master, albeit short-fingered, vulgarian. Only fellow masters and fools go up against a master vulgarian in vulgarity. While Rubio has tried some stand-up against Trump, he cannot match the man. Cruz and Kasich also lack what it takes to get into the pit with Trump and if they do, it will simply be a case of grabbing a fecal-baby (like the metaphorical tar baby, but worse).
One avenue is to avoid the pit and employ high road rhetoric and emotion against Trump. Unfortunately, the Republican contenders seem utterly inept at doing this and Trump is quite skilled at throwing rhetorical feces on anything that catches his eye. As such, it seems that Trump will not be dumped. What remains to be seen is whether or not these factors will be as effective in the general election against Hillary or Sanders. Assuming, of course, that Trump gets the nomination.
Voting for the Lesser Evil
While Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are currently the leading candidates for their respective political parties, there is considerable dislike for both of them. Many of my conservative friends express true horror at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Some have expressed a willingness to vote for a Democrat over Trump. Others have said they would either write in a name or not vote at all.
My liberal friends are less horrified, but many of them express the view that Hillary Clinton is evil and, not surprisingly, tend to back Bernie Sanders. B. York, who argues that Hillary would be the lesser of two evils relative to Trump, asked me to address an important moral question about the upcoming election: “is there value in supporting the lesser of two evils?” As I was asked to put aside the facts of the issue (that is, whether Hillary is really the lesser evil or not) I will focus on this issue in general terms and leave the bashing and defending for others.
While there is a multitude of approaches to ethics, the two that fit the best here are consequentialist ethics and action ethics. I will consider each in turn.
While there are many forms of consequentialist theories of ethics, they all share the basic principle that the action that should be taken is the one that maximizes positive value for the beings that are morally relevant. A consequentialist has to specify the measure of value as well as define who counts (this is defining the scope of morality).
This view has considerable intuitive appeal: if something has positive value (like cake), then having more of it seems preferable to having less. Likewise, if something has negative value (like cancerous lesions), then having less of it seems preferable to having more. People also seem to intuitive accept that there are entities that count more or less. For example, we tend to value our fellow humans more than we value mosquitoes.
Perhaps the best known example of consequentialist ethics is utilitarianism of the sort professed by John Stuart Mill. According to Mill, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Mill is rather generous in terms of who counts—happiness should be brought to “…all mankind and so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.”
A significant competitor to utilitarianism of the sort advocated by Mill is ethical egoism—this is a consequentialist approach in which each person limits the scope of morality to himself. Ayn Rand, a favorite of the Tea Party and Paul Ryan, is perhaps the best known ethical egoist. As she saw it, each person should act from selfishness.
As should be expected, a consequentialist approach would provide an easy way to make a moral argument in support of voting for the lesser evil. Doing so would make it more likely that the least harm would be done to those who matter morally. As such, voting for the lesser evil would be the least bad choice. It would also be the rational choice—at least under the stock definition of rationality that focuses on maximizing value (which is simply a consequentialist position).
There are two main alternatives to voting for the lesser evil (aside from voting for the greater evil) on the assumption that an election has only two truly viable candidates. At the presidential level, this is a reasonable assumption—the election is effectively locked down by the Republicans and Democrats. One option is to not vote at all. This has the consequence of reducing the chances that the candidate you regard as the lesser evil will win, thus microscopically increasing the chance that the one you regard as the greater evil will win. As such, a failure to vote is effectively choosing the greater evil.
The second option is to vote for a third candidate you regard as non-evil who will not win. This could be a real third party candidate on the ballot or a write in candidate. The consequence of this is about the same as not voting—it is effectively choosing the greater evil if you would have otherwise voted for the lesser evil. It can be argued that some positive result might arise from voting for a third candidate—it might make a statement headed by whoever is elected (but probably not) or encourage a third party to run in the next election to challenge the chokehold of the two party system (but probably not). In light of the above, the ethical vote is to vote for the lesser evil—assuming the consequentialist approach. If there actually is a non-evil third candidate that could win, then the choice is obvious: vote for that candidate.
While a voter who decides to vote based on consequences would have selected her moral approach to the decision, the voter would still need to decide on a measure of value, estimate which candidate would do the least damage, and sort out who she thinks counts. Any two consequentialist voters could make radically different assessments. For example, a voter who is concerned about all Americans would probably assess Trump and Hillary differently from a person who is only concerned about white Americans. As another example, a Wall Street voter who places the most value on maximizing her profits would certainly assess the consequences of voting for Trump differently from those of voting for Hillary.
While the consequentialist approach is intuitively appealing, there is also some weight to the view that some actions are just wrong (or right), regardless of the consequences. Those who accept action ethics hold, as Kant claimed in the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, that “the moral worth of an action is not in its expected effect nor a principle of action motivated by its expected effect.” Put roughly, the action itself is good or bad. So, if a person chooses an action that is good, “this good is already present in the person and there is no need to wait for it to appear in the result.” Likewise, bad actions are already bad and are not bad because of harmful consequences.
While this could be debated, voting in favor of a candidate one regards as evil would seem to be a morally wrong act, albeit a very weak form of wrongness. This assumes that supporting evil is evil. This seems reasonable and an analogy can be drawn to the legal notion of aiding and abetting a criminal. Voting for an evil candidate is aiding them, thus making one a party to their crimes.
Voting for the lesser evil would be less evil than supporting the greater evil; but would still be an evil action. Fortunately, a person can avoid supporting even the lesser evil by not voting or casting a vote for someone who is not evil. As such, if a person regards the only viable candidates as evil, then the right thing to do would be to not vote for any of them—thus avoiding the risk of becoming a party to their evil.
This can, however, be countered by pointing out that one of the two viable evils will win the election, so the voter should vote for the lesser evil. This is similar to situations in which doing something wrong is justified on the grounds that someone else would do it or do something even worse. For example, consider a common fictional villain move: the villain offers the hero a choice between killing one person or “making” the villain kill many people. While a consequentialist approach would generally favor killing the one, choosing the lesser evil would still appear to be an evil action. The hero is, obviously, not to blame for the villain killing the many—that is all on the villain. Likewise, if a voter decides to not vote for any evil and the greater evil is elected, the responsibility lies on the candidate for being evil and those who supported the greater evil.
The criticism can be raised that making the moral choice of not voting for any evil would be the wrong choice if it helps the greater evil win the election. This criticism is, not surprisingly, almost always based on consequentialist considerations: the choice was wrong not because the person supported evil, but because the voter’s failure to back the lesser evil contributed to greater evil. Going back to the villain example, the choice not to kill the one person was wrong not because the hero killed the many, but because his choice resulted in the death of many rather than one.
My own moral view is that voting for a person I regard as evil is an evil action. However, in the case of politics I have to think of more than just myself and my moral choice—I must also consider what will happen to others. As such, I am willing to bear the tiny burden of voting while holding my nose to try to protect others from what I regard as a greater evil. So, it is wrong to vote for even the lesser evil, but worse not to. As is to be expected, the lesser evil is the lesser evil. So, my advice is that if your regard the two candidates as evil, vote for the one you think is the lesser evil.
If you think they are equal in their evil, do not vote for either. Going back to the villain example, if the villain offers two equal evils (the hero kills everyone or the villain kills everyone) then choosing neither evil is the best choice: everyone is dead either way, but at least the hero is not a murderer if she refuses to murder. In the case of the candidates, if both are equally evil, then voting for either would be worse than not voting for either. This is because the evil of your choice would be added to the evil of the candidate being elected, thus creating more evil.
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