Positive Liberty

[This piece references an earlier post titled “Three Arguments.” You may want to start there if you have not already read it.]

In my earlier post, and with only a slight nod to Keith Baker, I suggested that three types of arguments tend to dominate American political discourse today. Almost invariably, we justify our political thoughts based either on the will of the majority; or on some theory of justice, understood as a proper apportionment of reward and punishment; or on pluralism, the idea that life is somehow better (though not necessarily more just) when a country permits many different modes of life to exist simultaneously, whether or not the majority of citizens find those practices particularly moral or well-suited to themselves.

In the comments, Paul suggested utilitarianism as a fourth possible argument, but I am inclined to view utilitarian arguments as particular theory of justice; he suggested much the same.

One implication of my typology above is that the arguments from democracy and from pluralism are not based on a theory of justice, and in general I would indeed argue that they are not. The theory that “the greatest number makes right” is so crude a theory of justice that it hardly merits the title. Indeed, even those who advance arguments from democracy seldom go so far as to put it so flatly.

On the contrary, majorities tend to decide unproblematically only those issues where the side of justice is no doubt present but more or less unclear. The best example of this is the election of representatives, where it is often surpassingly difficult to determine which candidate most deserves a given post. It’s not even a question that we’re used to asking ourselves. Instead, we usually ask which candidate’s ideas best accord with our own particular theory of justice. Then we vote for that candidate–and accept the result whatever it may be. It’s very difficult to see any theory of justice at work in this system.

As to the argument from pluralism, it seems to arise whenever justice becomes impractical or insufficiently telling. There may be strong majorities favoring one practice or another, but enforcing the majority view simply will not work, either because the minority is too entrenched, or the course of action needed to enact majority will is too difficult, or where the question becomes so complex that it can’t be handled in any other way.

For example, is the United States a Christian nation? It is by majority, but it is not by policy. If the United States were made a Christian nation by policy, which religions would count as Christian? Would Mormons be called Christians? Some Christians don’t think that they are. And what about the Native American Church? What about Cao Dai? These messy considerations–and not some systematic theory of justice–are the real foundation of pluralism.

Pluralism exists where justice cannot reach; it also exists beneath justice, where the strict application of justice by something so clumsy as a government agency would do no good.

As I wrote earlier, we do not speak of justice in the question of hairstyles, asking ourselves which style is most deserving or which is most reprobate. Perhaps such styles exist, and some are indeed objectively better than others–but it is generally considered nonsense to talk that way. On the contrary, we seem to recognize that these things are not worth pursuing as matters of public policy, or at least they are beyond the justice that we are called to enforce.

Given these considerations, I now want to look at the way that these strategies play out in the debate over gay rights.

I would argue that the clearest gay rights success of all time has been in the area of housing and employment nondiscrimination. I am not referring, however, to the nondiscrimination laws enacted in various jurisdictions; these have been quite incomplete as they stand, and progress on the legislative front has been slow indeed.

I mean instead the astonishing societal, non-legislative accomplishment: A very solid majority now believes that it is wrong to fire or evict someone merely for their sexual orientation. The spread of this belief has kept many openly gay people both housed and employed, and it is the belief, not the law, that has had the greatest say in these matters. Non-discrimination laws, while admirable in their intent, will have little effect if the public will does not exist to enforce them.

If pressed, I suspect that most people who believe in nondiscrimination would justify themselves by declaring that it was none of their own business what went on in another person’s private life. They might also add that so long as the rent arrived on time, so long as the worker did his job well, then there should be no reason at all to complain.

The first claim–that homosexuality is none of our business–is quite clearly a pluralist argument. Homosexuality may be good or bad, but it is not my place to decide. The second claim appears to be an argument from justice, for justice demands that if all other things are equal, good workers should keep their jobs.

I would suggest, though, that this second claim also implies an argument from pluralism, one that is made almost unconsciously. To understand this view, it is necessary to consider some of the more traditional opinions on homosexuality.

At one time, homosexuality was thought to be a grave moral disorder, akin to alcoholism or kleptomania. Indeed, we still find these views articulated on the religious right. Considered as a grave moral disorder, homosexuality stood connected with a constellation of other moral faults; the homosexual was thought particularly apt to fall into these as well. Thus, for most of its recorded history, homosexuality most certainly was thought an indicator of likely job performance: It was only proper to fire a homosexual, because it gave him precisely what he deserved.

It took a remarkable lot of rethinking to make homosexuality irrelevant to job performance. Thus the second claim given above–that good workers deserve to be retained whether they are gay or straight–is in one sense an argument about justice. But for gay workers ever to be considered of a kind with straight workers and therefore meriting the same treatment, a great many people must have shifted their thinking on homosexuality out of the sphere justice–and into the sphere of pluralism. Saying that competent gay workers deserve to keep their jobs is an argument about justice, but it could only be made once the pluralist argument had already been thoroughly established.

Arguments from pluralism have supplied many of the gay rights movement’s most notable successes. And yet they fail to address same-sex marriage because opponents of same-sex marriage can advance an argument of their own from pluralism. It might be stated as follows:

Certainly, the United States can tolerate homosexuals. We are a free country, and we allow for many different ways of life, even if we find a lot of them misguided or dangerous. But marriage is one way of life, and homosexuality is another, and the two are quite incompatible. As pluralists, we will allow you your homosexuality–but you must in turn be pluralists as well, and allow us our marriages undisturbed.

It is a reasonable argument, particularly given that there are almost no well-documented historical instances of same-sex marriage. Homosexuality and marriage would seem to be separate states.

So where do we turn from here? The argument from democracy doesn’t help us much, at least not yet. But as you may have guessed, I consider the argument from democracy to be by far the weakest of the three. Even at its best, the argument from democracy when applied to questions of policy does little more than to justify something that was likely to occur whether right or wrong. But majorities are correct only insofar as they are wise–not insofar as they are numerous. Arguments against same-sex marriage based merely on the fact that most people don’t want it to exist are of no merit whatsoever; arguments in favor of same-sex marriage would be equally empty for the very same reason. Most people in the nineteenth century opposed women’s suffrage, and most people before the civil war supported continuing slavery; out of these dead ends, very little good can come.

So we advocates of same-sex marriage must plead our case from justice. We must argue that our relationships are fundamentally similar to heterosexual relationships, and that the differences that exist are not sufficient to overwhelm the similarities.

It’s not an easy argument. The best historical analogy to our current debate might not be racial integration, but women’s suffrage.

Women’s suffrage proposed treating men and women equally in an area where they had virtually never been treated equally before–and despite their entirely obvious differences. It proposed that beyond the anatomical, some greater and more controlling similarity might be found. Such is our situation, down to the letter.

Arguing for similarity isn’t easy, particularly when same-sex and heterosexual relationships receive such unequal treatment in society. We end up arguing about causes and effects a lot: Are gay relationships less stable by their nature, or do they break up more often because families, churches, and governments do not support them? We also end up arguing about relative degrees of difference: Homosexual relationships don’t have any inherent ability to create childen, but many people in those relationships have children anyway. Are these children fundamentally the same–or are they different?

And there’s always the question we don’t like to talk about: Are their sex lives any different? By nature?

Unlike the successful arguments from pluralism we have made in the past, none of these are easy points to make. I know it’s going to be a terrible letdown at the end of this essay, but I don’t have the answers here. I am absolutely convinced that in its fundamentals, my own relationship has the same essential dignity as a straight marriage. But how to convince a skeptic?

And how did our great-grandmothers do it, anyway?

In the next post on this subject, I plan to discuss some exceptions to the typology I’ve been working with–including one that may offer some help in this dilemma.

Paul Musgrave has a great guest post today at Josh Claybourn’s site. He writes on France’s real foreign policy–as opposed to the caricature of it we usually see in the American media.

Plus, you’ve got to love his title: “The Cheese Stands Alone.”

Rock music is still the most popular genre in the United States. I’ve been told recently that country and hip-hop have both eclipsed it. It might even be true, but I can’t pin down the numbers for it. For the moment, rock would seem to be king.

It would only make sense, then, that in this important matter we should establish the will of the majority as a matter of law. Because rock music is the most popular, I argue that only rock stations should be allowed on the air. If people want to listen to hip-hop, country, classical, or whatever, they still can do it–but only in the privacy of their own homes. We shouldn’t use the airwaves for something that the largest segment of the population doesn’t even like.

I really hope you’re scratching your head at this point. The truth is that I believe nothing of the sort.

Personally, I subscribe to the argument that we should abolish the FCC entirely:

the FCC exists to dictate what can be said on-air. Each year since the early days of radio, every broadcast station must apply to the FCC for permission to use the airwaves. In exchange for their licenses, broadcasters must promise to serve the “public interest.” Stations that the FCC regards as having failed to do so can be fined, or even shut down, at the FCC’s sole discretion.

The putative justification for the FCC’s regulation of broadcasters is that the airwaves are public property. But just as the government does not own–and so has no legitimate control over–the presses of the New York Times, so it has no business regulating what may be broadcast over airwaves. The airwaves, which would be useless without the transmission networks created by radio and television stations, belong to the individuals and companies that developed them. Broadcasters should not have to plead to the authorities for annual licenses, any more than a homeowner should have to beg for an annual license to use the patch of land he has developed.

It is, of course, quite illegal to propose that only rock stations should be allowed to broadcast. It is a clear violation of the First Amendment and a dreadful idea all around.

And yet the FCC does much the same thing–only so far it’s to a much lesser degree. The agency’s own argument–that the broadcast media are so easily and accidentally accessible that they absolutely must be censored–would seem to fall squarely upon the Internet as well, only so far that hasn’t happened.

While we’re still on the subject of abolishing the FCC, it should be noted that these days the non-broadcast media are just about as accessible as anything on the airwaves. Almost all households have cable TV or an Internet connection, so it can’t be said that we protect (er, censor) the broadcast media for the sake of the innocents among us. If ever there was a time that this double standard made sense (a point that I do not concede)–then that time has surely passed long ago. We should dismantle the entire regulatory (err, censorship) mechanism right now, before it spreads into the new media.

But there’s a reason I want to explore the nonsensical argument I’ve given above about music preferences and public policy. You will probably note that there is something oddly familiar about it:

The people are sovereign. The majority must prevail.

Let’s call this the Argument from Democracy. In many other contexts, we see it all the time, and nothing could sound more plausible. We employ the Argument from Democracy in justifying our selection of elected officials, in holding ballot initiatives and referenda, and in the day-to-day voting of both Congress and the Supreme Court. On issues where the electorate finds it appropriate, the Argument from Democracy virtually settles the issue. On other issues it fails absurdly, as in my radio example above.

If we were to argue seriously against this initiative, there would probably be two different ways of going about it.

The first one would be to answer the will of the people with what might be called an Argument from Justice. In essence, we would say that radio station owners have a right to choose their own programming as a part of their fundamental rights as citizens. These rights inhere in every adult individual, and thus it is unjust to take them away. We may get to this point by various means, but the argument’s payload is substantially the same: In questions of right, the majority most certainly is not sovereign. The Argument from Justice says that rather than listening to the will of the majority, good government must give to the wicked their proper punishment–and give to the good their proper reward. Varying theories of justice propose doing this by varying means; often, as in libertarian thought, the largest part of justice is simply laissez faire. What unites all of these arguments, however, is that the will of the people is not sovereign: However we conceive of it, Justice is.

A second argument against the policy I’ve given above might be termed the Argument from Pluralism. It goes like this: In our society, we make an effort to recognize the value of competing interests. It simply will not do to have one hairstyle for everyone; one size does not fit all. Religions of all types should be left alone, even–or perhaps especially–if you think that they are mistaken.

The Argument from Pluralism presupposes that we don’t have all the answers to life’s big questions. It accepts that there are multiple ends toward which different lives may aim. It looks wherever possible to make space for them all. When we make an argument from pluralism, we do not propose to plumb the fundamental justice of an idea; we merely suggest that the best course of action is to leave it alone.

The Argument from Pluralism may well be a subset of the Argument from Justice as outlined above, particularly if we agree that it is merely doing justice to allow adults to choose among many different courses of action.

Some Arguments from Pluralism don’t really look that way, however. For example, many commentators will claim that they despise pornography, saying that it is wrong or immoral–and yet they would defend the free speech rights of pornographers. It is difficult to see this as an Argument from Justice, because if pornography is immoral, justice alone would dictate that it should be suppressed. When someone claims to dislike pornography on moral grounds and yet defends the pornographer’s right to make it, they are making an Argument from Pluralism.

I submit that in general, almost all arguments in American public policy debates today can be collapsed into one of these three groupings. Almost always they are either Arguments from Democracy, from Justice, or from Pluralism.

I plan to say a bit more about these arguments in the future. Some exceptions do exist, I think, and I’m curious whether you will find the same ones I have. More posts on this topic will be coming later in the week. In the meantime, please discuss.

We at Positive Liberty strive for visual clarity. We know that nothing is more forbidding to a reader than stumbling onto a blog that might just as well have been a page of classified ads.

Well, okay, maybe ten pages on Objectivism is a little more forbidding. But you’ve got to admit, the boxy, blinky, ad-laden layouts really can get on your nerves.

Okay, so… Where do I start? And will that little box in the corner ever stop twitching at me?

You’ve seen their kind before.

Sustained arguments in prose usually suffer under such conditions. Give it just half a chance, and the human eye gets lazy.

To counteract what might be a very serious problem, Positive Liberty has avoided nearly all advertisements, navigation bars, popups, buttons, or other diversions. There are no calendars, book lists, or CD recommendations. And although PL has endorsed John Kerry for President, still we maintain our standards: His campaign will not be getting a banner.

The net result is that Positive Liberty tends to load very quickly–and it should be immediately apparent where the real content begins. We appreciate your focus, and we hope your time is put to good use.

You can imagine, then, what an honor it is to grace the highly selective PL Blogroll. Further, I make it a point to stop by every blog on the roll at least once a day. Where possible, I comment. I consider these blogs my neighbors, and I try to be a good citizen to them all.

Recently, however, I have reached a tipping point: Enough other blogs have linked to me that unfortunately I no longer have time to read everything. I really wish that I could, but it’s simply too much to read.

I have therefore edited the blogroll in an attempt to achieve three often competing goals: brevity, ideological balance, and recognition for the merit of the linked blog. From now on I will rotate worthwhile blogs in and out over time. I tend to think that this setup is also best for the people to whom I’ve linked, because fewer links on the roll mean more attention to each individual item. Long blogrolls tend to be meaningless and visually cluttered, giving little or no benefit to the linker, the linkee, or the reader.

On the other hand, future link suggestions are always welcome. Ideally, these would be thoughtful, essay-oriented blogs by intelligent but comparatively unknown bloggers. Consistently, I have found blogs of this type to be the most worthwhile. Anyone can link to Atrios or Instapundit–and usually, anyone does. But I want sites with substantial and original content–like Mode for Caleb or Paul Musgrave. Conservatives are especially in demand; for some reason, I really don’t have enough of them right now. And if you’re a libertarian, you’re probably going to have to wait–I’m afraid I’ve got too many of those.

Here are some introductions to each blog in the current lineup:

Lefties include

–Alas, A Blog, which discusses feminism, to me the most interesting part of liberal thought.
–Crooked Timber, the well-known academic philosophy and economics blog.
–Temperantia, my blogfather and a frequent commentator on gay issues.
–Mode for Caleb, a promising new blog by another Johns Hopkins history graduate student.
–Where the Dolphins Play, written by Dolphin, a frequent commenter at PL. He is probably as far to the left politically as anyone that I’m likely to speak to.

The current conservatives are

–Josh Claybourn, who is probably famous enough that he doesn’t need me to promote his site.
–Irreverent Probity, who seems a bit to the right of Mr. Claybourn and is a useful counterweight to Dolphin, mentioned above.
–Paul Musgrave, whose conservatism I sometimes have reason to doubt. But not in public. Oh, wait…

Libertarians and their kin include

–The Light of Reason, which has explained in surpassing detail why the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake.
–Dispatches from the Culture Wars, which often comments on church/state separation, creationism, and religious fanaticism.
–Farkleberries, which uses a dubious name to hide its amusing and civil-libertarian commentary.
–The Fly Bottle, which has a curious name but a great deal of thought-provoking philosophical content.
–Improved Clinch, which has the best name of any blog (except maybe for Absinthe & Cookies).
–and Jon Rowe, who unaccountably uses his own name. Still good stuff.

Objectivists, who are in a class by themselves

–Noodle Food, whose creator I have known online since 1994 but never met in person.

Single-issue bloggers

–Ex-gay watch, which is more or less self-explanatory.
–Drug WarRant, which is the same but on a different subject.
–A Journey Through Time, which is a non-partisan, generally non-ideological discussion of events in history with links to historical information on the web.

I do hope that in making these changes to the blogroll I haven’t stepped on anyone’s toes.

Will Wilkinson has recently published two critiques of the philosophy of Ayn Rand; they are entitled “A First and Second Letter to a Young Objectivist.” (If you are not familiar with Ayn Rand, this post may still be interesting, but it will certainly be hard to follow.)

I’ve wrestled with Objectivism for a long time–longer, perhaps, than most would think is good for me. I knew I’d met my future husband after giving him a copy of Atlas Shrugged and watching him react to it. At one time I would have described myself as very, very close to taking the plunge and calling myself fully an Objectivist. It’s a designation that carries considerable weight: Among supporters of the Ayn Rand Institute, deeming oneself an Objectivist is commonly understood to denote full agreement with all of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. I’ve since backed away from this designation.

And you can spare me the jokes about poisoned kool-aid. I’ve heard them all before.

Among well-known thinkers, Rand remains the closest to what I actually believe, the closest to what I try to practice in real life. I am not, however, an Objectivist, and I know that among Objectivists, merely being “close” is often the most contemptible state of all. Even so, I try hard to think things through my own way and not to be intimidated by Objectivists on the net. One of their number who is always intelligent and never intimidating is Diana Hsieh, of the excellent blog Noodle Food. I wish I could say that all self-styled Objectivists were of her caliber.

Among those who have not put their lips to the chalice, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that Will Wilkinson has had difficulties similar to mine. His “First Letter” is about free will and determinism. He writes,

I consider the argument for libertarian/ indeterminstic/ incompatibilist free-will to be among the most embarrassing in the Objectivist corpus. Actually, I’ll frame the argument as one against determinism, which isn’t the same as establishing the truth of libertarian free-will. The [Objectivist] argument as I understand it goes like this:

(1) If we have direct, first-person, introspective experience of self-initiated action, then determinism is false.

(2) We do have this kind of experience.

So,

(3) Determinism is false.

It really is as bad as it looks. The first premise is the sort of obnoxious false alternative that Rand was generally good at sniffing out. If we flip the conditional we get: If determinism is true, then we don’t have direct, introspective experience of self-initiative action. Why not BOTH determinism and experience exactly as we know it? Why not think a deterministic world can produce any first-person experience you can think of, even the experience of deliberation, choice, and intentional control?

I suspect that Objectivists would have difficulty with Mr. Wilkinson’s argument because to them it would probably sound as though he were claiming that free will is either an illusion or an epiphenomenon. I would disagree, but let’s continue.

If pressed to defend (check) the first premise, Objectivists like to say something to the effect that free-will is axiomatic. Why? Because the experience of agency (or “volition” if you like) is direct and self-evident, and implicit in every act, including the denial of free will. But, of course, that argument addresses only the antecedent. I want to know why I should accept the whole conditional. What is supposed to be the connection between the antecedent and the consequent? The question is: Why think introspection provides any evidence whatsoever about the nature of causation, as opposed to evidence for the existence of an instance of causation, or conveys any information at all about the relative merits of determinism or indeterminism?

Given the wealth of evidence from the cognitive and brain sciences, there is ample reason to doubt that introspection is in general a reliable means of correctly identifying the goings on in one’s own brain, or even of correctly identifying the mental state one is actually in at the moment of introspection. So it’s really rather fantastic that the introspective experience of intentionally focusing or paying attention to something (the Objectivist’s favorite example of volition) is, at the same time, a direct experience of indeterministic causation. But that seems to be the Objectivist claim[…]

The Objectivist may often be heard to argue that one cannot deny free-will without assuming it. But this begs the question[…] On the basis of our experience of volition, we are licensed to the conclusion that we can make things happen and that we have a certain kind of control over ourselves. We are not licensed to any beliefs about the ultimate character of causation. I cannot open my mouth and with my measured breath intentionally deny that I can make things happen and have a kind of control over myself without assuming what I have denied. I can, however, consistently deny indeterminism because no information about indeterminism is made available to me in my experience of my denial.

I’ve often had doubts in this area as well: As Mr. Wilkinson states above, Objectivism seems to hold that the introspective experience of free will proves that the universe is indeterminate, ie, that the universe does not always yield the same results given the same starting conditions. And yet from where I stand there are at least six significant problems with this argument.

Mr. Wilkinson’s essay illuminates three of them: First, arguing from introspection to indeterminism is a non sequitur because introspection is demonstrably unreliable as a means of understanding brain function. Second, arguing that free will is axiomatic begs the question. Interestingly, this could also be demonstrated by a Turing program that argues vigorously in favor of its own axiomatic free will–or, for that matter, one that argues quite spiritedly against it. The first proposition would not make sense coming from an entity that we knew not to possess free will; in the case of the second, we could not sensibly say that the machine’s vigorous insistence on its own lack of free will somehow proved that it did have free will.

Third, there remains the possibility of compatibilism, the philosophical notion that genuine free will can indeed exist in a deterministic universe. Objectivism rejects compatibilism, seemingly without considering it. But Wilkinson writes,

denying indeterminism has nothing to do with denying free will. I don’t know whether determinism or indeterminism is true. Although I’d be interested to find out, I doubt that it matters to anyone not a physicist or metaphysician. The metaphysical question simply has nothing to do with the questions of whether I can make choices, intentionally control my own actions, or be responsible for the effects of which my actions are a cause. I can make choices, be in control, and be responsible. This is, I believe, darn near to self-evident. And that’s all having free will amounts to.

I agree entirely. I plan to post soon an attempt at describing how free will can indeed exist in a deterministic system and how determinism does not preclude moral responsibility.

The fourth problem I have had with free will and determinism in Objectivist philosophy is something that Wilkinson has not addressed, perhaps because its solution would be obvious to someone who knows more philosophy than I do. But it has always struck me that positing an indeterminate universe seems to conflict with another Objectivist axiom, namely that “A is A,” that things are themselves–and that they are not simultaneously other things besides themselves.

To have identity in the Objectivist sense seems to imply determinism–and to exclude indeterminism. If an identical existent could produce two different outcomes, then hasn’t it been both A and not-A all along? Aren’t its properties somehow governed by the arbitrary? Hasn’t it contained an “A nature” and a “not-A nature” simultaneously and in the same sense?

As it happens, this question is similar to the arguments that I have sometimes seen Objectivists make against the more speculative claims of theoretical physics. Objectivists are often critical of the notion than an existent can be both in a given position and simultaneously not in that same position, or that existent can temporarily be in two positions at once. Likewise, they doubt that Schroedinger’s Cat can be indeterminately both dead and alive. This contradicts for them the notion of “A is A.” If free will can similarly go from a given starting condition to two or more separate, entirely unpredictable outcomes, then free will would seem to suffer from much the same critique, at least from Objectivists.

Now, I’m not knowledgeable enough in theoretical physics to say much one way or another on this subject, but given how indeterminism over there seems to violate “A is A,” the determinist compatibilism that Mr. Wilkinson suggests above would seem to be a much better metaphysical foundation for Rand’s theories on volition and ethics. Add in compatibilism, the notion that determinism is an entirely separate question from free will, and most of the remaining difficulties vanish.

But this is not Objectivism. It is a hybrid Wilkinson-Kuznicki argument. Still, I am convinced that it is superior to Rand’s original at solving the problem Rand set out to solve.

The fifth difficulty concerns the existence of an indeterminate universe. Let us grant that the universe is indeterminate after all; let us grant that identical starting conditions can produce more than one final outcome. It does not seem to follow from any of this that the existence of various outcomes arising from the same initial conditions demonstrates human free will–not any better, at least, than the latter can prove the former. If my choices were subject to the rolling of dice, then would they be more free, or less? And if randomness is not the appropriate metaphor to describe the indeterminate universe, then what is it? How else are we to understand a process of outcome differentiation that occurs through no discernible outside influences? Remember, introducing any difference into one instance of the two otherwise identical iterations of an indeterminate-universe experiment invalidates the experiment. The starting conditions must be absolutely identical, and the possible outcomes must be different.

The sixth difficulty concerns the lack of an indeterminate universe–or at least, the lack of a readily observable indeterminism. Aside from introspecting on human free will, what other evidence is there for the indeterminacy of the universe? Please don’t say that quantum physics is the basis of indeterminism. It may well be so–but in the context of human free will, I will merely refer you back to difficulty #5 and ask how quantum physics is supposed to liberate my will in any way greater than subjecting it to the roll of a die. I will also refer you back to “A is not-A” and to all the difficulties that that brings.

It becomes suspicious indeed when human free will is the only indeterminate phenomenon observable anywhere in the universe. It’s not impossible, but it looks terribly Cartesian or even just plain animist. It looks inelegant and even superstitious.

I’m not saying that I couldn’t be won over to the Objectivist position, but it would seem that these six arguments offer serious obstacles to it, and all six of them would have to be answered effectively before I could agree with the notion that free will can be verified–and indeterminism can be established–through introspection alone.

Mr. Wilkinson’s second letter is about human sociability. Its argument is not quite so rigorous, but in some ways it impresses me still more. I quote:

Objectivism advertises itself as a “philosophy for living on earth.” Objectivism rejects the theory/practice dichotomy and holds that a true philosophy, that is, Objectivism, is a necessary instrument to a successful, happy life. The clear implication is that a consistent, integrated practitioner of Objectivism ought to be more successful and happy than people who do not espouse and practice Objectivism. However, one need only leave the house to see thousands of happy, well-adjusted people who know nothing of Objectivism, and one need only attend an Objectivist conference to observe a depressingly high ratio of the awkward, alienated and unhappy to the well-adjusted and happy.

Indeed. Wilkinson’s observation here strikes me as an enormous breach in the Objectivist worldview. Now, I must admit I’ve never met a single person in real life who describes himself as an Objectivist–but I have met plenty of people who were indisputably happy. I suppose an Objectivist might claim that I’ve never seen what true happiness looks like, but the degree of cynicism needed to sustain such an idea is almost unbelievable. Further, the Objectivists that I have encountered on the net seem no more happy than the non-Objectivists I have met in the same context–and quite often the Objectivists seem considerably less so, even (especially?) when surrounded by their fellows.

The fact that most successful, happy people are not Objectivists, and in fact espouse philosophical opinions opposed to Objectivism, ought to give Objectivists pause. But it doesn’t. Why not?

Because Objectivism rejects the theory/practice dichotomy, it makes a falsifiable empirical prediction. Depending on the correct interpretation of the Objectivist standard of value, Objectivism predicts that Objectivists should either live longer or have happier (more successfully flourishing) lives than non-Objectivists.

Wilkinson clearly shares my weakness for constantly interweaving disparate intellectual threads. At least three distinct arguments seem to be taking place simultaneously here, and I’m afraid I have to disagree with parts of each of them.

First, Objectivism says nothing at all about a longer life. It does, however, promise the adherent the best chance at a more fully flourishing human life, a life that is more appropriate to man as the rational animal. Such a life need not be longer, and I am sure that Rand was aware of possible trade-offs: Many of the heroes in her fiction most certainly risk their lives to achieve their values.

Empirically, though, we might expect an Objectivist life to be more materially successful. This is a difficult sociological puzzle, however, because people who take up Objectivism already tend to be intelligent, highly motivated, and often middle-class or above. The empirical claim of having a greater chance at success is thus very difficult to evaluate.

This leave happiness, which is the most difficult by far to evaluate: It strikes me that Objectivism’s “empirically falsifiable claim” about the greater happiness of its adherents is nothing of the sort. It is also not particularly original.

Certain forms of Christianity argue in much the same way, saying that theirs is the happiest life–even right here on earth. So do many forms of Buddhism. Viewed from afar, classical Western philosophy is a tangled hodgepodge of different routes and directions for human life, and every single one of them purportedly aims at happiness.

And I would argue that falsifying any one of these claims is quite impossible. The strongest adherents of any philosophy–those who ostensibly understand and practice it the best–will always tell you that they are the happiest people in the world. Among all philosophies, the doubters and the hangers-on will (almost) always tell you that they’re uncertain, uncomfortable, and unsatisfied.

So which philosophy is the happiest? All of them, provided that you believe with enough fervor. Or, to be cynical, mine is the happiest, because only my philosophy succeeds in making me happy. Crucially, you are quite unable to falsify any of these claims. You can say nothing about them until you believe everything that I do, and with the same degree of devotion that I already have. And because you now adhere to a different philosophy, it only follows that your happiness must be insincere and incomplete. (This last is another unfalsifiable proposition, by the way.)

I know that Objectivism does not hold that you can measure the truth of its claims by considering your own degree of happiness. The happiness of the Objectivist is said to be entirely a consequence of proper living, and not even a guaranteed consequence, because sometimes even very good people end up unhappy: Consider Eddie Willers at the end of Atlas Shrugged.

But insofar as Objectivism does hold that its adherents are happier than others, it makes an empty, unprovable claim indeed. The exact same claim has even been made about viciously evil philosophies–sadism, nihilism, communism, fascism: For what sincere convert has ever professed to be unhappy? As to Rand’s philosophy, it has indeed made me happy on occasion, but it has also infuriated me from time to time. Philosophically, the only thing that’s ever really made me happy is going my own way and belonging to no system at all. But please, don’t take my word for it.

Mr. Wilkinson continues:

…based on my own experience, Objectivists are not happier or in better psychological health than other people. Indeed, none of the happiest, most flourishing people in my experience are Objectivists, and I’ve met a lot of Objectivists.

The Objectivist can respond to this in number of ways. Here are two. First, she can say that few self-professed Objectivists (or “students of Objectivism”) have properly integrated the philosophy. But if this is the case, one wonders why a philosophy that is so hard for actual people to successfully implement is especially good for “living on earth.” Second, the Objectivist can say that insofar as non-Objectivists are doing well in life, they must be acting, perhaps unwittingly, on premises that are consistent with Objectivism. This is arbitrary and ad hoc.

Indeed. And if the philosophy is so hard for actual people to implement–then how is it that so many people seemingly do it by accident, and in spite of the many contrary principles that they seem to hold?

An Objectivist answer to this dilemma might include the observation that these irrational yet seemingly happy people succeed by preying on the efforts of others. They are wealthy and long-lived, have good careers, and seem on the outside to be happy. Objectivists would probably claim–and here I’d tend to agree with them–that these people are not genuinely happy. Their happiness is less secure than the happiness of those who live by their own efforts, and on some level they almost certainly know it. Yes, it’s a difficult claim to make, and it’s difficult for all of the reasons that I’ve mentioned above. Quite possibly it, too, is unfalsifiable. But life guarantees neither that the good will always be rewarded, nor that the evil will always be punished: This, too, can be observed merely by stepping outside in the morning.

I’m not sure if this answers the difficulty Mr. Wilkinson has raised, but I think it at least provides something to work with.

Subsequent parts of his letter deal with the lack of any substantial theory of sociability in Objectivism. To varying degrees, I think he is right–Objectivism lacks any significant treatment of family, children, friendship, non-sexual intimacy, and the forming of cooperative associations among individuals. Some of these topics are indeed discussed, but many of them are not so much as mentioned in Rand’s writings. The difficulties I have with the Objectivist position on sex will be treated elsewhere. They are significant enough to merit an entirely separate post–hopefully a shorter one.

All of these are gaps in the philosophy, but Objectivism would hardly be the first philosophy to neglect these topics. I do not see a systematic flaw here as he seems to identify; for me, it is merely a gap.

Mr. Wilkinson concludes his second letter as follows.

Thankfully, there is in fact some slack between theory and practice. People can often get along fine with false beliefs (and can arguably get along better, depending on the belief.) And Objectivists, being humans, know more about living decent lives among other humans than Objectivism allows. So I don’t worry too much about my Objectivist friends. That said, a philosophy for living on Earth really ought to be able to do a better job of helping us think about what we ought to do given what we really are.

“There is in fact some slack between theory and practice:” By properly Objectivist standards, this would be among the most utterly evil things that anyone could ever say. And yet it’s precisely what I see all around me, every single day of my life. Thank you, Mr. Wilkinson, for stating the most significant difficulties to the philosophy that is closest to my own. By sowing these doubts, you have–paradoxically–made me very happy.

Teaching, Blogging, Voting: It’s election season again, the time when politicians pretend to be religious, when clergy pretend to be political–and when everyone pretends that their individual vote will make some great difference in the world. I’ve fallen victim just like anyone else. And today, I’ve decided which candidate will get my vote.

I should know better than to commit the vulgar error of thinking that every vote counts. Sure, it counts in some trivial way, but I cannot escape the notion that several of my other activities actually count for far more in the civic life of the nation.

I think of teaching, of blogging, even of late-night philosophical wrangling with my husband. Unlike voting, each of these activities allows me the chance to present a coherent argument. This compares quite favorably to an election, wherein I delegate to someone else the task of inaccurately representing something that I most often do not believe.

In my teaching, I have the opportunity to reach as many as several dozen different students per term, exposing them to the ideas and events that caused western civilization to be what it now is. If they walk out of my classroom with a better understanding of Shakespeare, or Locke, or Voltaire, then I have done every bit as much as I could have done by voting–and quite possibly a great deal more.

My blog now gets more than four thousand visits a month, which means that I probably reach many more people here than I do in the classroom. (Note to Johns Hopkins: Are you sure we’re plugging this whole “education” thing properly?)

My readership isn’t all that much by blogging standards: Even when Andrew Sullivan is on vacation and not blogging at all, he still gets several times as many visitors–in a single day. Smallness has its advantages, though: I still have a distinct sense of community with my readers. They can ask me questions and expect a response. They contribute to thoughtful discussions. In their own daily lives, my readers quite obviously think a great deal about the future of the republic. I’m proud to have them along for the intellectual journey.

I know, I know–I’m forgetting one important thing. Without voting, the conversation doesn’t mean much. I’ve seen the eighteenth century up close. If anything, the French back then were much better writers and talkers than we are today. Their chattering classes certainly knew history–and religion–a lot better than ours. We, though, have one thing that they lacked, and that is some semblance of representative government.

And it all comes back to this. It all comes back to the infinitesimal contribution that I will make to our representative government in just over two months–by touching a screen on a computer that may or may not even be reliable. Or honest.

It all comes back to this, and I’ve done my best to have no illusions. Mercifully, the candidates have done all that they can to help me. I’ve come to my decision, and I’m going to explain my motives. Let’s start with some of the choices I didn’t make.

First, I have given more than a moment’s thought to voting for the Constitution Party. I quote from their platform:

The Constitution Party gratefully acknowledges the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States. We hereby appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Providence as we work to restore and preserve these United States.

I’ve seriously considered voting for their candidate (and does it really matter what his name is?). By voting for him, I would force the Republican Party even closer to the abyss of right-wing fanaticism. Given enough of a push, the GOP could actually disintegrate, and a moderate, small-government, secularist, laissez-faire party might one day emerge from the wreckage.

But I see I’ve already broken my promise to have no illusions about the power of my vote.

This brings me to the Libertarian Party, which depends more than any other political entity on the illusions that people entertain about their votes. Neither party cares at all about them or their issues, but the Libertarians are convinced that they do. The party has fallen on hard times of late; these days Ralph Nader gets all of the third-party press, and the Libertarians–besides being nearly bankrupt–have to scrabble just like the Natural Law Party to get any attention at all.

I voted Libertarian in 1996 and in 2000, but I will not do so again. The sense of voting for anarchists–in a government election–has escaped me; the absurdity of it is lost on the Libertarians. Still, many of their platform planks are admirable, and often I agree with them word-for-word. I’m particularly fond of this excerpt, taken from the very end of their platform:

Our silence about any other particular government law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency, activity, or machination should not be construed to imply approval.

I can’t help but see, though, that if a Libertarian government were put into power, it would do a great deal more harm than good. The party’s policies would take decades to enact, yet their rhetoric leads one to believe that they think it could happen overnight, and even painlessly. And yet Libertarians by and large don’t know how to govern. As anarchists, many of them don’t even want to learn–but they’re eager to take over the entire show all by themselves.

Anarchy and overweening ambition: These are how the Libertarian Party has lost my vote. I am convinced that government is necessary for the defense of any good society; the Libertarian Party it not convinced. Yes, I do believe that a more libertarian political order would be far better than the one we have now, but I don’t believe that the Libertarian Party is the way to achieve it.

I’m giving Ralph Nader no serious consideration. Call it spite for 2000, and the same applies to the Greens, even though they’re running someone else (and does it really matter what his name is?). Now let’s talk about the major candidates.

Following a long train of other abuses, President Bush now seems to think that all paid, private political speech should be illegal. He even seems to think that he had accomplished as much already, the First Amendment notwithstanding. Nearly everyone’s talked about this flap in the past few days, but I suppose adding one more voice to the outrage can’t really hurt. Here is Eugene Volokh’s analysis:

I certainly hope that the Administration is not indeed calling for “an end” — a legal end, via an extension to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — to people pooling resources to express their political views, including their views about candidates. You can call it “soft money,” but it’s speech, of the sort that political movements such as the antislavery movement, the temperance movement, the civil rights movement, and many other movements (good and bad) have engaged in. Without such speech, who gets to speak effectively, in the large traditional media? The media itself; the parties; and the politicians who have the infrastructure to raise hard money in $2000 chunks; and a few super-rich people (unless they’re shut up, too). People who care deeply about a subject, enough to pool even tens of thousands of their dollars with others who care equally strongly, would be shut out.

No, this wasn’t the last straw for the Republicans–that was the war on Iraq. But it’s just more evidence that fits a disturbing pattern: The secrecy, the contempt for civil liberties, the flagrant unconcern about even First Amendment rights–Bush has to be stopped. And did I mention the Federal Marriage Amendment?

Voting against the incumbent goes without question, and rather than stay home I almost consider it an obligation to cast a vote in some other direction, merely to register my dissatisfaction. In an election like this, apathy is not an option. Not even studied cynicism, that last refuge of academics, can possibly excuse it.

John Kerry impresses me considerably more than George W. Bush, in part because I get the sense that Kerry actually understands the Constitution. This is important and should not be underestimated. But then, he’s trying to out-hawk Bush on the war. It’s a strategy atrocious enough that it may well succeed. It’s also a strategy that wins no points whatsoever from me.

An unjust war conducted unjustly would be grounds for impeachment, if only more leaders from the opposition had had the courage to denounce it for what it was at the outset. As things stand, they don’t dare apply the proper remedy, no doubt because it’s simply too difficult to admit that the entire enterprise was a ghastly mistake, and that they, too, were fooled. Because admitting any error at all is just too hard for most politicians, the only alternative is to strike out in the other other direction: We must try harder.

As Ken Layne writes,

Last week, when Kerry came out and said he would’ve authorized the Iraq invasion even knowing there were no WMDs, I thought it was a shockingly stupid error. No longer. It’s all part of the seemingly successful plan to paint Kerry as a born killer, somebody who would not only invade Iraq or any other country for no reason at all, but a guy who would insist on going himself for a few Glory Kills. And, holding life & death in his hands, he says he’ll send other nations’ troops to be slaughtered in Iraq while choosing to give life to some of the U.S. troops. That stiff demeanor and long, cruel face is beginning to look like something else entirely. It’s beginning to look like a God of War, a total monster who kills for the sheer pleasure of it…

And keep in mind, this guy apparently supports Kerry. (Thanks to Ampersand for the pointer.)

It should be noted that Republicans don’t believe this pro-war talk for even a moment. And they may well be right, because a lot of Democrats, too, are quietly hoping that it’s all an act–and that once in office, Kerry will promptly bring the troops back home. (So what’s Howard Dean been up to these days, anyway?)

Still, Kerry’s pro-war makeover has the Republicans worried. Their man has performed poorly as President, even by their own traditional expectations. He’s run up the deficit. He’s failed to find Osama bin Laden. He’s gotten sidetracked in a war that surely gives the GOP no end of private headaches, no matter how much they claim to support it in public. Who would have thought that after four years of George W. Bush, the country is ready for a decisive leader, and that John Kerry–of all people–would be that man?

The fact that Kerry is succeeding at all with this tactic shows just how deeply frustrated the country is with its current president, and that the frustration extends even into Bush’s base.

The USA-PATRIOT act scares the civil libertarians in the GOP; the FMA frightens the moderates. Bush’s blend of religion and politics goes further in the direction of pure theocracy than anything most of us today have seen. It makes the religious right happy, but others clearly aren’t so sure, and the recent vote on the FMA was a clear signal that Bible-thumping is only going to get so far in November.

And let’s not forget the war on terrorism, which is after all Bush’s leading issue. With each passing day, it looks more and more like the war on drugs: It’s costly. It’s deadly. It’s not making much progress. And we’ve got no choice but to continue.

So… If the dull, gloomy slog of an unwinnable war is your best political issue, then clearly it’s time to attack your opponent. Enter Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group whose very name will give future historians the giggles.

You want some truth? Here it is: Kerry went to Vietnam. Bush got his family to snag him a post in the National Guard, and it’s an assignment he can’t even prove he served. That’s the truth.

Sure, Republicans like to point out that Kerry only served four months and that his Purple Hearts may not have been for the gravest of wounds. But you know what? Kerry could have gone to Vietnam, wet his pants, and been sent home half an hour later–and he’d still be miles ahead of Bush on that positively vital issue of “where were you thirty-five years ago?”

I wasn’t born thirty-five years ago, but if I’d been around back then, I like to think I would have sided with the antiwar movement. A great many others of my generation feel exactly the same way. Yet we do so without animosity: We can respect both those who served their country idealistically and those who protested it, and who have in the meantime been vindicated. Vietnam is a total wash for us. The idea that Kerry was a hypocrite for fighting and then protesting makes no sense at all to the young: It merely shows us how out-of-touch both parties really are. It also shows us how ugly one of them in particular can be.

Enough is enough. Bush is campaigning exactly as he has governed, and if elected, he will govern again exactly as he has campaigned. It’s time for a change.

I’ll be holding my nose with both hands and voting with my elbows, but I’m voting for Kerry. Here are my reasons, and I will try to keep them positive.

Kerry will stop the creeping theocracy. Much of it has come from the president himself, and I have strong reasons to believe that a change in this one office will do a great deal to reverse the damage on the secularist front.

Rightly or wrongly, Kerry’s election will give the rest of the world a chance to start liking us again. I’m convinced that they don’t really want to hate us–They just need an excuse to change their minds. It could hardly be easier than this.

Kerry would oppose gay marriage, but not through the FMA. His damage here can be undone.

Kerry may try to increase the size of the federal government, but I doubt he will succeed against a bitter and largely Republican House of Representatives.

Kerry may try to increase restrictions on firearms, but again, I doubt he will succeed.

Kerry will probably try to repeal the Bush tax cuts–and, sad to say, I almost hope that he’ll do it. The deficits have absolutely got to stop. I’m thin, I’m young, and I don’t smoke. I’m going to have to pay for this mess, with interest, and I don’t want to.

And lastly, maybe Kerry’s position on the war really is an act. I sure hope so anyway.

From time to time I post a list of search strings that brought people to my blog from engines like Google and Yahoo. By looking at search engine hits, a blogger gets a good idea of what the rest of the world is really looking for–filtered, of course, through the lens of whatever the blogger happens to be talking about. Typically, the result is an altogether meaner and racier version of his very own blog. For example, here are some of my hits from the past two months. I haven’t written anything at all about most of them:

elves beaten by humans

eddie bauer is a fag

kurt schmoke illegitimate children

puffin meat taste like

gay male desktop wallpaper sexy androgynous

rugged sexy men in kilts

[…and my personal favorite…]

homemade hamster cakes

Yummy.

One search that brings people here all the time is han ah reum. HAR is a Korean grocery store about which I’ve written a glowing review. Here are addresses for the nearest Han Ah Reum.

I suspect my site gets a lot of HAR’s hits because, unlike HAR’s own web site, mine is not written primarily in Korean. Their banner proclaims, “Excellent quality. Dawny freshness. Lowest price ever! Take happiness at Han Ah Reum.” There’s an English version, but often it’s confusing and difficult to navigate.

But I still take happiness anyway, because HAR is a fantastic store. Yesterday I netted a couple of genuinely entertaining pieces of produce. Han Ah Reum excels at the unusual, and I proudly present to you the results of my latest trip: mamey sapote and rambutan. The mamey sapote looks like a coconut; the rambutan looks like an alien egg sac. I’ve included a quarter to show you their size:

Mamey flesh looks like sweet potato when you cut it open, but if anything, the texture is even firmer:

It’s sweet and tastes almost entirely like an almond. But rather disturbingly, it is known to be mildly toxic. How bad is it?

Morris et al. (1952) commented that, while the delicious mamey “has formed part of the diet of the inhabitants of the Caribbean Islands for many generations, it is well known that this fruit produces discomfort, especially in the digestive system, in some persons.” They reported also that “a concentrated extract of the fresh fruit” proved fatally toxic to guinea pigs, and was also found poisonous to dogs and cats. The extract was made from the edible portion only.

We’ll proceed with caution. Three bites of mamey sapote convinced me that the stomach cramps often associated with this fruit come chiefly from its flesh being nearly the precise texture of wood. Dicing and boiling it with plenty of tapioca should tame the awful texture, but again, caution is the word.

As to rambutan, the forbidding exterior contains a pulpy center that resembles very closely the comparatively well-known litchi. Here’s Scott showing off the rambutan’s juicy inside, just seconds before he devoured it:

The taste resembles a litchi, too, but with a distinct citrus note that makes it even better if you ask me. No, I don’t mind one bit if people come to my site looking for HAR.

But there is another set of search strings that often bring people to my site, and I’m not happy about these at all: A substantial portion of the people who come here are looking for an “essay,” “term paper,” or “dissertation.” In other words, they are coming here to cheat.

Knowing that searches for these terms are so common, I am far less inclined than ever to believe the usual excuses: Students claim they did not know that they had done anything wrong by appropriating another person’s work. They claim that the Internet is free for anyone to use. They claim that a copy-and-paste essay just needs a few footnotes to be alright. They claim that instructors are being unreasonable by giving their copy-and-paste job a zero.

But they know they’ve done something wrong: Otherwise they would not be coming here by the dozen, looking for someone else to complete their work for them.

As a rule, I never post my academic writings, and I make my blogging eccentric enough that I doubt it would get a passing grade in any class at all. People looking for an essay on gay marriage that they can plagiarize will have a hard time explaining all of the twists and turns that I’ve woven into my writings on the subject. They’re also going to have a hard time explaining the details of their own gay marriage, particularly if they are in high school.

So, if you have come here looking for cheats, I commend to you my fanciful mock-Platonic dialogue “The Cheat Sheet Is Blowin’ In The Wind.”

The moral is simple: Whenever you cheat, your success is phony–and you almost certainly know it. In my class, the chances are good that you will get caught; even if you don’t, most of your proper punishment has already befallen you. The cheater’s reward is that he must spend a great deal of his life, and in some cases all of it, working against the truth, against the process by which you and I discover and understand the nature of reality itself.

The cheater must live in the hope that human cognition will fail, and this sets up within him an enduring anxiety that he most certainly deserves. He must live in hope that no one will notice the truth about himself. Rather than being able to share himself and his accomplishments openly, he must work against that same tendency in everyone around him. Cheating is a step away from humanity–and even from happiness. Like I said, the chances are good that I will catch you. And if I do not, you’ve still been punished. Now think about that before you try taking your happiness from me.

If you’re an instructor, I commend to you Caleb McDaniel’s latest post, “Online Cheating.” Caleb and I deal with this matter all the time in real life, and I like the way he’s put together all the relevant issues in a very succinct format. Here’s a quote:

Solutions to plagiarism will also have to go beyond the paradigmatic language of crime and detection. Talking about the Internet only as a tool for cheating, or a tool for stopping it, diverts teachers from talking to their students about how to use the Internet as a legitimate tool for research. The Internet is for “public consumption,” and the right strategy is not to give students the idea that it isn’t. All published material (literally, by definition) is for public consumption, whether online or off. The key is to teach students how to be efficient and ethical consumers of that information. It may be obvious, but it needs to be reiterated, that being a consumer of online information is not equivalent to being a customer of Geniuspapers.com.

Go read it now.

And why you should too:

Even people who are very familiar with the facts I am about to recount get drawn into these arguments: about whether the Bush administration genuinely believed that Iraq possessed WMD, and whether those WMD might have been passed to terrorists at some point in the future; about whether Iraq had ties of any significance to terrorist groups (Al Qaeda most obviously, but others as well); and about whether there was any merit to the administration’s contention that establishing a “democracy” in Iraq would somehow lead to the flowering of democracy throughout the Middle East.

All three of these arguments (and a few others) were put forth by the administration at various points, and the administration still clings to them. The emphasis periodically alters, depending on political vagaries and whatever the latest government report might say, but all three still are offered as “justifications.” It should be noted that the last reason — bringing democracy to Iraq — was only put forth belatedly. The administration always put its primary emphasis on a simple idea: war with Iraq was necessary for the self-defense of the United States. And the administration stressed this idea for one overriding reason: they knew very well that this was the only reason that a sufficient number of Americans would accept for this war, or any other. In that sense, Americans by and large remain properly selfish: they only want to spend billions of dollars — and they only want to put the lives of their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, and friends at risk — in pursuit of ends which are indisputably to our benefit, and necessary for our self-protection. The majority of Americans do not believe that it is moral or practical to mortage our financial future and lose American lives solely or even primarily for the benefit of people living in other countries, even if those people are suffering under a brutal regime.

So the administration stressed the self-defense argument, which they knew was the only one that would “close” the deal with the American public. But the specific manner in which the administration made its argument consisted only of pretexts, and all of the factors to which it pointed have now dissolved. We now know that Iraq had no weapons that presented any kind of serious threat to us, or even to its neighbors. We now know that Iraq had no meaningful ties to Al Qaeda, or to any other terrorist groups which threatened us.

Sporadic contacts between Iraq and terrorists did not constitute significant ties which need have concerned us, and endlessly recycled raw intelligence which had already been vetted and discarded by various government agencies themselves (intelligence which was then conveniently leaked to publications notably friendly to the administration’s war plans) do not represent any sort of compelling argument. I will not revisit these particular subjects, since they have been dissected endlessly. If you still put any credence in them, nothing that I or anyone else can possibly say at this point will dissuade you in any case.

But the much more important point — the point that is so enormous and so obvious that it is truly the proverbial elephant in the room that people still will not acknowledge — is a starkly simple one: none of these arguments mattered at all, and none of them were the actual reasons for this war. It is yet another sign of the massive denial that permeates our culture in countless ways that this fundamental fact still must be restated, and explained.

The real, fundamental reason for this war is the same reason that led to most of the wars in history. Contrary to what the majority of people would prefer to believe, most of the wars in history have not been conducted for reasons of self-defense — that is, in response to an external attack, either actual or provably imminent. Most wars are begun for the most obvious of reasons: states want to preserve the power they already have — and if preserving that power requires the expansion of their spheres of influence, then that is what they will do. Governments always seek to hold on to the power they already possess, and the natural and inevitable tendency of government power (both within its own borders and beyond them) is to grow, and never to diminish. History teaches this lesson over and over.

As a historian, I’m not big on “the lessons of history.” I tend to think that a great deal of history is simply a muddle. It’s a fascinating muddle, to be sure, but discerning clear-cut lessons about generalized human behavior is rarely so simple. Still, I think he has a point. We did not go to Iraq out of self-defense. We didn’t even go to defend any of our allies. We went because we feared that perhaps Iraq would eventually and indirectly become a threat. With reasons like that, we’ve many, many more wars ahead of us.

John Rowe has written a fascinating post about the education of Alan Keyes, who apparently came much closer than is generally known to Allan Bloom’s philosophical and personal nihilism. To make a very long story short, Bloom was a follower of Leo Strauss, who may well have held some decidedly illiberal ideas. Wikipedia gives a reliable summary:

Straussianism, as Strauss’s philosophy has come to be called, is predicated on the belief that 20th century relativism, scientism, historicism, and nihilism have been responsible for the deterioration of modern society and philosophy. Some Straussians believe that “universal principles of right” exist and are knowable through careful study of those philosophers who believed in such principles, especially Plato and Aristotle…

However, it is unwise to characterize Straussians, because, they are not unanimous in their interpretation of their mentor’s ideas; in a curious “catch-22″, Strauss’ own ideas are subject (under Strauss’ own doctrine) to both an exoteric, and an esoteric interpretation. This is why there are marked disagreements over Strauss’ doctrine, even among leading Straussians (such as between Thomas Pangle and Harry Jaffa). For Straussians such as Pangle, who learned the “esoteric” version of Strauss, Strauss’ ideas are rather similar to those of Friedrich Nietzsche…

And we’re not even talking about the “good” Nietzsche, of self-overcoming, self-fashioning noble souls or any of that: Nope, even many of Strauss’ followers believe that he advocated–esoterically–the doctrine that superior individuals should establish a restrictive public morality for the sake of the little folks, while following their bliss in private all the while. This is Nietzsche at his worst; ironically, Nietzsche the elitist is Nietzsche at his very most vulgar and uninspiring. It would seem that in this brand of Straussianism, only the philosophically superior souls can endure the decadence of homosexuality. The masses simply can’t handle it.

My partner Scott often accuses conservatives of exactly this kind of hypocrisy, noting how often they preach one morality in public while practicing quite another at home. I’m sure it would warm his cynical heart to read of Keyes and Bloom, the violent homophobe and the quasi-open homosexual, rubbing elbows for years on end. He would file them gladly next to such accidental Straussians as Jim Bakker, Roy Cohn, and Sun Myung Moon.

My own tendency is to discount the influence of Straussian nihilists on present-day conservatives. I like to think that the right is sincere about what it believes, and that–sincere or not–the best approach to religious conservatives is to assume that they mean what they say, then offer something slightly less unreasonable.

In his race against Alan Keyes, Barack Obama is doing exactly that, conducting his campaign along more or less the same lines even as he went from running against a hypocritical Republican, to running unopposed, to running against… another, even more deeply hypocritical Republican. Obama is playing the straight man to Keyes’ wild, unselfconscious political comedy, and I have to wonder how long the Republican party would last if every race between Democrat and Republican unfolded similarly. It would be enough to warm even my cynical heart, if only I thought the Democrats were worth voting for.

But as to Rowe’s post, I feel I ought to challenge him on one point in particular, even though his site doesn’t allow for commentary. I may be wrong on this, because I don’t know how accurate the source really is, but I’m not sure that it’s appropriate to rely on Ravelstein–Saul Bellow’s novelization of Allan Bloom’s life–for details of what Keyes may or may not have known or seen. Ravelstein is fiction, and it seems it ought to be treated as such.

Still, everyone does know that Bloom was a homosexual, and his students appear to have had no illusions on the question either. One can only wonder whether Bloom, had he lived longer, might have come to regret the cynical double standards to which he gave such lofty intellectual cover. While subtle philosophers can distinguish between the elite and the masses, crude ideologues cannot.

I have returned from Rhode Island at last. By Tuesday afternoon I had completed all the dissertation work that I could do without benefit of a university library, so I set out for Johnson and Wales University, located in downtown Providence, to do some further reading.

“Is it alright if I use the library? I’m not affiliated with this university, but I am with another one.”

“Which one?”

“Johns Hopkins.”

“Sorry, we can’t let you in. You’ll have to use the public library instead.”

I considered politely reminding her that Johns Hopkins students aren’t known for drooling on library books.

Then I considered getting in the car and driving to Brown University. Trouble was, I feared I’d get exactly the same response. And frankly, it would have been a lot harder to look down my nose at Brown. I’d almost feel like I deserved getting kicked out of their library.

So I went to the Providence Public Library; inside forty-five minutes I had determined that it would be of no use to me. I spent the rest of the week doing lots and lots of yoga, reading interesting books quite unrelated to my dissertation, and continually second-guessing the skeletal draft of my next chapter, which will be about two scandalous deaths in mid-eighteenth century Paris. The previous chapter is either very near completion or else it’s completely hopeless, depending on what mood I happen to be in when you ask me. See, history is such a creative, stimulating process.

As a result of my labors, I can now sit flat on the floor, extend one leg, and wrap my palms firmly around the sole of my foot. I can perform the entertainingly named Cow Face Pose. And I can write at length about Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.

Deep apologies go out to David Bell, my dissertation advisor, for two reasons. First, I must apologize for not being so productive during this past week, and second, for failing to review the book that he suggested (Carmen bin Ladin’s Inside the Kingdom). By the time I saw his suggestion, I’d already completed Freethinkers and had decided most everything I wanted to say about it, which will follow momentarily. Bin Ladin will have to wait for another time, but it will be soon.

In writing Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby has taken on an enormous topic. Simply put, she’s chosen to write about the infidels of the most religiously unorthodox country that the world has ever seen. She defines her terms precisely, however, and right from the start it’s clear that she isn’t talking about fervent yet eccentric belief systems. Instead, she concerns herself with secularizing ideologies and tendencies in public life. Above all, her work is an examination of the notion that government and religion should always be separate–whether for the good of government, of religion, or both.

It’s still a lot to discuss. Along the way, we meet atheists, agnostics, communists, religious liberals, religious minorities, followers of personal creeds, and various assorted other opponents of state-sponsored religion. She begins where any study of this kind absolutely must, in the freethinking strains of the Enlightenment that brought Jefferson to write Virginia’s 1786 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. She discusses the secular constitution and the anti-religious writings of Thomas Paine, a man who, like Voltaire, clearly possessed a personal belief in God–but who equally despised most organized religious manifestations.

Jacoby discusses religious freethinking in the nineteenth-century abolition and feminist movements, emphasizing that religious freethinkers, liberals, and agnostics were at the fore of these movements–and not the organized mainstream churches of the day, as present “religious correctness” would have us believe. She piles up damning quotes from the mainstream religious figures of the day, both northern and southern, that either justified slavery or hastened to change the subject. It is in this, her third chapter, that her present-day polemical aims begin to direct the narrative. It’s also where I started having serious difficulties with the direction of Freethinkers.

Where, for instance, was Thoreau? He barely got a mention, despite going to jail in opposition to slavery, despite “Civil Disobedience,” and despite his firm antipathy to all organized religions.

But I was inclined to be indulgent. I dismissed the absence of Thoreau as just a quibble and entirely enjoyed Jacoby’s nuanced, thoughtful treatment of Lincoln, who, as most students of American history probably know, never belonged to any organized church. The chapter opened with a rhetorical zinger:

As soon as the first shots were fired, the issue of northern churchmen’s waffling response to slavery disappeared from public discourse and was replaced by the overpowering conviction that God was on the side of the Union army.

To his everlasting credit, Lincoln refused to lend any weight to these claims and refused also to promote a proposed constitutional amendment that would have rewritten that document’s preamble as follows:

Recognizing Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, and acknowledging the Lord Jesus Christ as the governor among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government…

Was he an atheist? It can’t seriously be considered. Was he a devout Christian, as many still wish to claim? If Lincoln was a Christian, it was largely by culture, not by faith; he knew the Bible remarkably well and could allude to it with great effect. But he seems to have found deeply repellent any suggestion that either he, the Union, or the United States had any divine mandate.

I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed that he would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter… These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation.

Jacoby’s book overflows with quotes like these, providing intellectual ammunition for anyone willing to fight in today’s culture wars. And make no mistake about it, the present day is precisely where Jacoby is aiming: Even as she discusses Walt Whitman, Thomas Huxley, and Robert Ingersoll (”the nearest approach we Americans have had to Voltaire,” wrote one source), the view is incessantly toward the present, where issues of censorship, reproductive freedom, and liberty of conscience still predominate in a culture war that Jacoby would extend throughout the history of the republic.

What irritates about this approach is not that Jacoby is wrong: She is entirely correct to extend the current culture wars back to the origins of the country. What troubles me is where she posits that the late nineteenth century represented a “golden age of secularism,” and that much of the twentieth century has been a train of failures, compromises, and backsliding on the part of secularists. In her view, religious conservatives have effectively come to dominate a mainstream public discourse that was formerly open to secularists–but now, sadly, is not.

I’m not happy with this assessment for a number of reasons. First, I think Jacoby gives insufficient consideration to twentieth-century secularists who absolutely did carry on the tradition of the supposed golden age. But like Thoreau, who wrote nothing at all on women’s issues and very little on censorship, these other, modern-day secularists may not always have moved in directions that Jacoby seems to privilege: Where such persons exist, her twentieth-century secular heroes are mostly liberal-to-socialist in their political leanings.

Other secularisms do exist, however, and they are worth considering. Were it up to me to retell the story that Jacoby has set out to tell–and really, I could not improve on most of it–I might still have privileged the late nineteenth century to some degree, but from that time forward I would tell a story not of decline but of fragmentation.

I would start with H. L. Mencken, the editorialist active in the 1920s and 30s who adamantly opposed both socialism and organized religion, seemingly with equal fervor and for equal reasons. Even more than Ingersoll, Mencken deserves the title of “the American Voltaire:” In both cases, their patience for fools was remarkably short. Unlike Ingersoll, Mencken worked primarily in Voltaire’s favorite medium, the pamphlet-length essay, where he displayed flashes of much the same mordant wit. By contrast Ingersoll was given to two devices that Voltaire never employed: the public lecture and restraint. Here is Mencken commenting on the Bible:

Whoever it was who translated the Bible into excellent French prose is chiefly responsible for the collapse of Christianity in France. Contrariwise, the men who put the Bible into archaic, sonorous and often unintelligible English gave Christianity a new lease on life wherever English is spoken. They did their work at a time of great theological blather and turmoil, when men of all sorts, even the least intelligent, were beginning to take a vast and unhealthy interest in exegetics and apologetics. They were far too shrewd to feed this disconcerting thirst for ideas with a Bible in plain English; the language they used was deliberately artificial even when it was new…The Bible that they produced was so beautiful that the great majority of men, in the face of it, could not fix their minds upon the ideas in it. To this day it has enchanted the English-speaking peoples so effectively that, in the main, they remain Christians.

Despite his enormous influence, Mencken gets only a few brief mentions in Freethinkers. Nowhere do we even read that he was an unbeliever, and that he was as frank and uncompromising as anyone could be on the subject. I would give more quotes from Mencken, but I’ve promised Paul Musgrave not to write about him until after he’s had a chance.

We also never hear of the woman who was probably the twentieth century’s most notable atheist, Ayn Rand. (Did you think I’d say Madalyn Murray O’Hair? The comparatively uninfluential O’Hair is discussed for several pages.)

Ayn Rand admired Mencken tremendously and went on to become one of the century’s sharpest critics of both communism and mysticism. Even granting that Freethinkers rightfully privileges the narratives of women’s rights, censorship, and church-state separation, Rand still deserved a mention. She spoke and wrote, uncompromisingly as always, in favor of contraception, abortion, liberty of the press, and the strict separation of church and state. She made no secret of her atheism, but also she made no secret of her support for laissez-faire capitalism–and one begins to suspect that this last is the reason why she was not included in Freethinkers. It’s a glaring omission, to say the least.

As we move toward the present day, the book increasingly becomes a “horror file” of secularists’ nightmares, with little consideration of the very real progress that secular culture has also made in the meantime. It may inspire action on the part of its doubtlessly sympathetic readers, but we should not forget that plenty of anti-mystical, pro-secular writers and thinkers still exist in today’s world; their contributions to Jacoby’s own cause should not be slighted. Beyond Rand and Mencken, I could name Harry Houdini (mentioned only briefly and in passing), Penn & Teller, James Randi, Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, and Stephen Jay Gould. All of them have acted in various capacities to debunk the claims of the credulous and the mystically-inclined; several have intervened as well in the culture wars over evolution, reproductive freedom, and separation of church and state. Freethinkers does not closely examine any of them. The late Carl Sagan, as one of our culture’s leading advocates for atheism and secularism, would seem particularly deserving.

It may be too soon to tell, but another phenomenon would also seem worthy of mention, and that is the recent explosion of material on the internet relating to atheism, secularism, and church-state separation. I frequently link to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance and the blog The Sky Is Falling; one could easily add all of the following mostly internet-based organizations and blogs as well:

–The Secular Web
–The Brights’ Net
–The Church of Critical Thinking
–Positive Atheism

The last is not to be confused with the title of this site. We don’t yet know whether any of them are going to make a lasting difference, of course, and it would be presumptive to include them in the history books just yet. One of them, the Bright movement, proposes coining a new, more user-friendly adjective to describe those who reject mysticism in favor of critical thinking. Jacoby offers a different approach, and one that I must say I greatly prefer. Her term for the continuing movement includes both those who are secularists because they would keep the government out of their churches and those who are secularists because they would have the churches make their case through reasoned persuasion, not government sponsorship:

American secularists have trouble deciding what to call themselves today, in part because the term has been so denigrated by the right and in part because identifying oneself as a secular humanist–unlike, say, calling oneself a Jew, a Catholic, or a Baptist–has a vaguely bureaucratic ring. It is time to revive the evocative and honorable freethinker, with its insistence that Americans think for themselves instead of relying on received opinion. The combination of free and thought embodies every ideal that secularists still hold out to a nation founded not on dreams of justice in heaven but on the best human hopes for a more just earth.

I’m sad to report that Providence, Rhode Island is not terribly absorbing. What’s worse, my Internet connection is sporadic, so despite my boredom I still can’t guarantee I will blog very much in the coming days. I’ll do what I can, though, and here is a first attempt.

In my dissertation I’ve lately touched on witchcraft beliefs, and I thought I’d point out this interesting passage from a book I’ve been reading.

There are two distinct ways of approaching the decriminilazation of witchcraft… One is to treat the question as a problem in intellectual or legal history and concentrate on the public debate; the other is to examine the record of court decisions. The two methods yield very different results. The first tends to focus attention on the latter half of the seventeenth century as the turning point for witchcraft trials in western Europe; the second, when applied to certain countries–England, France, the United Provinces–pushes the phenomenon backward in time to the early years of the seventeenth and even, in the case of Spain, to the first quarter of the sixteenth century.

The reason for this discrepancy is that official pronouncements of judicial institutions are seldom intended as forthright explanations of jurisprudence. More frequently the constitute a façade, a false front to reconcile popular opinion to measures and decisions which would otherwise be unacceptable. For a modern analogy, consider the futile legislation still largely unrepealed, although rarely enforced, concerning soft drugs. Rational discourse on the issue is effectively blocked; medical evidence is ignored; and journalists of all persuasions tirelessly rehearse the standard argument that a marijuana cigarette is the first step on the dismal road to a heroin habit–whereas common sense suggests that the chief link between the two is the legal prohibition itself. (My comparison is less farfetched than might at first appear; the odium reserved for the witch in early modern times is, today, directed against the drug dealer, held responsible for an inordinate proportion of all the ills of society, including acts of political terrorism which his profits are alleged to finance.) — Alfred Soman, “Decriminalizing Witchcraft: Does the French experience furnish a European Model?” in Sorcellerie et Justice Criminelle, 16e-18e siècles Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1992.

One of the most notable facts about the history of witchcraft persecutions in Europe is that although the average person today declares witchcraft to be among the basest of superstitions, the people who abolished the witchcraft trials most adamantly professed to believe in the reality of witchcraft itself. Rather than admit that burning people at the stake was a lot of silly nonsense, they merely chose among one of the following noisome compromises:

1. Witchcraft does exist, but it’s too hard to detect, so we shouldn’t burn anyone for it.

2. Witchcraft does exist, but the devil inspires people to lie about it. Therefore, prosecuting witchcraft tends to implicate the innocent as well as the guilty.

3. Witchcraft exists, but it’s hopelessly confounded with other non-supernatural crimes like blasphemy, poisioning, abortion, divination, and the like. Thus it is far easier to prosecute these other, non-supernatural crimes–and leave witchcraft aside.

4. Witchcraft used to exist, but there have been so many burnings and so many persecutions that we have finally succeeded at stamping it out. The last genuine witch probably died off many years ago, and thank God for that. Now we don’t have to burn people anymore!

And yes, I’ve got a reference for each of these idiocies in my research.

When the witch belief was in its death throes but not yet completely vanquished, virtually no one espoused the properly modern view: Consorting with the devil is impossible, and we should no more persecute people for it than we should persecute people for talking to themselves. Try as you might, you will not find this view articulated until a given society had long since abandoned witchcraft persecutions over irrational arguments like the ones I’ve given above. Weaning European societies away from superstition seems always to have required an intermediary superstition, one that was perhaps more humane but not a hair more rational.

Perhaps it’s a case of cognitive dissonance: When your own magistrates are currently in the process of roasting women alive, it’s damn hard to say “Hey, you’re a bunch of raving misogynist lunatics.” The path of least resistance is to assume that they’ve got their reasons. Even after they’ve stopped, it often takes a generation or two before people can really speak their minds.

Then again, perhaps it’s because of the Bible, which gives plenty of reasons. Moses competes against Pharaoh’s sorcerers; Exodus tells us that we must not suffer a witch to live; Saul visits the witch of Endor despite the prohibition; Jesus casts out demons; Simon bewitches the people of Samaria. For a very long time–even into the eighteenth century–passages like these served as justifications for continuing the witchcraft trials. If witchcraft was nothing more than a collective delusion, then how could the Bible possibly endorse our belief in it? And if you are seriously going to argue against witchcraft, then aren’t you arguing against the Bible itself?

Nowadays, the rationalist’s short answer would be “yes:” There are indeed some things in the Bible that are demonstrably false. There are others–like witchcraft–that are so palpably silly that they don’t even deserve serious attention, except perhaps from intellectual historians who want to understand the death of superstition.

Even those who today support biblical inerrancy–the idea that the Bible contains no mistakes whatsoever–are often remarkably quiet about burning witches at the stake. They don’t seem too keen on resuming the practice. This is except of course for the Christian Reconstructionists–but then again, what don’t you expect from them? The rest are silent, giving not even the feeble, early-modern excuses I’ve offered above.

Perhaps it’s because, in H. L. Mencken’s inimitable phrase, the police aren’t currently enforcing that part of Genesis. It’s a lot easier to believe in something completely absurd when someone’s roasting people at the stake to make it look properly serious. And it’s a lot easier to roast people at the stake when a big, important book tells you that you’ve got no choice but to do it: The one reinforces the other. It’s not rational, it’s not logical, but so help me, it’s the way of the world.

The Bible remains the Bible, and even today it retains all the anti-witchcraft passages I’ve mentioned. But the government no longer burns witches, and because of this lapse in discipline–arrived at by some manifestly sorry half-measures–we’ve not got the pressure upon us to insist on the burnings.

The story that we’d like to tell about ourselves is that we have reasoned ourselves out of such nonsense, but the historical record says something quite different indeed. And because that book–the good book, the one by which most everyone swears–still holds within it the dictum that we must not suffer a witch to live, I’m not yet willing to rule out a return to that old black magic at some time in the future.

Or, as the quoted article suggests, perhaps we’ve never really left it behind.

Blogging may light for the coming week, as Scott and I are going to Providence, Rhode Island for an engineering conference. Yes, I’ll be taking notes so that I can make plenty of snarky comments afterward.

I’m also bringing three interesting books with me. They are

A Mencken Chrestomathy (ie, the best of H. L. Mencken’s work),

Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia by Carmen Bin Ladin, the dissident sister-in-law to you-know-who,

and Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby.

As part of my desperate attempt to write about anything other than gay rights and gay marriage, I now ask my readers to select one of these three; I will write an extended review and response during the week.

In other news, an alert reader has pointed me to the Museum of Non-Primate Art, and I happily pass the link on to you. Be sure to check out the “avian dejecta” section. No, really.

And in much the same vein, Dispatches from the Culture Wars comments about a particularly obnoxious editorial at WorldNetDaily. Here is a snippet:

Many conservatives worry that the Democratic Party is nothing more than a loose-knit collection of social extremists intent on moving their particular agenda out into the mainstream, regardless of the cost to the rest of us. And at the top of that list is homosexuality. Conservatives see the Catholic Church facing bankruptcy and ruin because homosexuals infiltrated the seminaries and recruited their boy-lovers as students into the priesthood. These recruits took their newfound “wisdom” into the parish, where they perfected it on the alter [sic] boys.

We worry that the same thing could happen to public education if John Kerry is elected president. We don’t want to send our 8-year-olds into NAMBLA-staffed, government quota-managed classrooms, where our kids can be “educated” about gay sex in public restrooms. The Kerry campaign could demonstrate its commitment to children and families by supporting a traditional marriage amendment and re-criminalizing homosexual behavior.

It doesn’t get any worse than this. Welcome to the new face of conservatism–and the reason that I’m happier and happier calling myself a (classical) liberal.

The author also gives us his solution to terrorism.

By ordering a hit on bin Laden’s entire extended family, [John Kerry] could take a significant bite out of terrorism. Financing this effort should be well within Theresa’s means. And under a Kerry presidency, perhaps even the Internal Revenue Service could see their way clear to considering the payments a charitable deduction.

I’d better start reading Carmen Bin Ladin’s book right away; she may not be long for this world. Then again, I might not be either.

In Voltaire’s Candide, the protagonist learns that the English use a remarkable disciplinary practice. It goes without saying that the English are the most enlightened people in the world:

…in this country it is found requisite, now and then, to put an admiral to death, in order to encourage the others… Candide was so shocked at what he saw and heard, that he would not set foot on shore, but made a bargain with the Dutch skipper (were he even to rob him like the captain of Surinam) to carry him directly to Venice.

Today, California did likewise: The state’s supreme court invalidated 3,995 marriages–so that marriage will remain sacrosanct. To encourage the permanence of marriage, the state has attacked the very permanence of marriage. Or so it would seem.

You can read more about the decision at The Volokh Conspiracy and How Appealing.

Charitably, I hope that at least some heterosexuals are benefiting from all of this.

Less charitably, I note that the court offered to refund the license fees incurred by the now-unmarried couples. I propose that these couples demand their refunds at once–and contribute the money to The Human Rights Campaign. No doubt the HRC could find better uses for it than could the state of California.

The legal principles behind the ruling are both narrow and impeccable, and maybe I shouldn’t argue with them: Gavin Newsom was engaged in civil disobedience. He knew quite well that there was no clear legal authority for what he did when he married these couples, and he also knew that his chances of winning in court were slim. But civil disobedience is not tyranny. At its most inspired, civil disobedience is a closely-choreographed exercise in democracy itself. Newsom will abide by today’s ruling; no one questions it. Newsom has made his statement, and such was his right. And one day, today’s ruling will be looked at as the one step backward that our constitutional dance requires for every two steps forward.

Mayor Newsom acted out of justice, not out of law, and today’s ruling really only settled the rather simple question of law. The real battle still lies ahead, and the court acknowledged as much when it wrote,

…although the present proceeding may be viewed by some as presenting primarily a question of the substantive legal rights of same-sex couples, in actuality the legal issue before us implicates the interest of all individuals in ensuring that public officials execute their official duties in a manner that respects the limits of the authority granted to them as officeholders. In short, the legal question at issue — the scope of the authority entrusted to our public officials — involves the determination of a fundamental question that lies at the heart of our political system: the role of the rule of law in a society that justly prides itself on being “a government of laws, and not of men” (or women)…

To avoid any misunderstanding, we emphasize that the substantive question of the constitutional validity of California’s statutory provisions limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman is not before our court in this proceeding, and our decision in this case is not intended, and should not be interpreted, to reflect any view on that issue.

By the court’s unanimous declaration, marriage was not at issue today.

So why does marriage exist in law? It is because in justice, marriage is superior even to government itself, in much the same way that individuals are superior to states. We are the creators of states; we are the soverei