Sarah Palin’s Problem with Public Reason

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, JFK’s niece and our former lieutenant governor here in Maryland, does a nice job confronting Sarah Palin’s views about religion and its proper role in politics and public life.  I thought it a nice, practical illustration of what Rawls’s means by public reason and the idea that in politics we should only appeal to reasons that everyone, religious believers and non-believers alike, can accept.  JFK and his niece agree; Palin does not.  More importantly, Kennedy-Townsend, like her famous uncle, develops her claim using the materials of our shared political culture and history as Americans — again, just as Rawls would have it.  Lastly, by proceeding in this way, Kennedy-Townsend shows how far Palin really is from our American traditions and cultural mainstream.

Sarah Palin is wrong about John F. Kennedy, religion and politics

Here are a few select passages:

Palin writes that when she was growing up, she was taught that Kennedy’s speech had “succeeded in the best possible way: It reconciled public service and religion without compromising either.” Now, however, she says she has revisited the speech and changed her mind. She finds it “defensive . . . in tone and content” and is upset that Kennedy, rather than presenting a reconciliation of his private faith and his public role, had instead offered an “unequivocal divorce of the two.”

Palin’s argument seems to challenge a great American tradition, enshrined in the Constitution, stipulating that there be no religious test for public office. A careful reading of her book leads me to conclude that Palin wishes for precisely such a test. And she seems to think that she, and those who think like her, are qualified to judge who would pass and who would not.

Later, Kennedy-Townsend adds:

Palin contends that Kennedy sought to “run away from religion.” The truth is that my uncle knew quite well that what made America so special was its revolutionary assertion of freedom of religion. No nation on Earth had ever framed in law that faith should be of no interest to government officials. For centuries, European authorities had murdered and tortured those whose religious beliefs differed from their own.

To demand that citizens display their religious beliefs attacks the very foundation of our nation and undermines the precise reason that America is exceptional.

And finally:

Palin’s book makes clear just how dangerous her proposed path can be. Not only does she want people to reveal their beliefs, but she wants to sit in judgment of them if their views don’t match her own. For instance, she criticizes Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), a Democrat and a faithful Catholic, for “talking the (God) talk but not walking the walk.”

Who is Palin to say what God’s “walk” is? Who anointed her our grand inquisitor?

This is a woman who also praises Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, even though Lincoln explicitly declared, “But let us judge not that we not be judged.”

Usually, when the topic of Sarah Palin and her “views” arise, I demur because I find them hard to take seriously (like shooting ducks in a barrel, so to speak).  But this is serious since her view of religion’s role in public life appears to be gaining ascendancy.

Dreben, Rawls and the Common Law

Our first class on Rawls’s Law of Peoples inspired me to do something that I had wanted to do for some time: read Burton Dreben’s ”On Rawls and Political Liberalism,” one of Dreben’s only published works.  (Dreben’s piece is in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls.)

Who, you might ask, is Burton Dreben?  A long-time philosopher and colleague of Rawls at Harvard who receives prominent billing from Rawls in the acknowledgements to his books.  (See, for example, the final paragraph of Rawls’s “Preface” to The Law of Peoples.)   As such, one might expect to find reading Dreben helpful for understanding Rawls, and I certainly did.

Indeed, I found Dreben so helpful that I was inspired to post something straightaway before Thanksgiving break, but alas bags had to be packed, long drives undertaken, and turkey eaten.  However, after our session yesterday, I spoke with our resident Rawls expert (Aaron Hoitink) about Dreben’s piece, and his enthusiasm for it inspired me anew.

So, here is a favorite passage.  According to Dreben:

To be a serious political philosopher, one should understand the development of the common law and what a great judge does; that is the heart of the subject. (340)

Elaborating on this thought, Dreben adds:

[T]o truly understand what Rawls is teaching, you have to understand the way the best appellate judges work….  If you have actually ever read — it is unfortunate that so few Americans do — appellate court decisions and Supreme Court decisions, you will see what they are always engaged in, when they are at their best, is what Rawls means by public reason.  Constantly what you are confronted with in our system is how basic ideas, basic concepts such as freedom and equality, are to be turned into conceptions, how they really are to be applied and developed into workable principles. (339-340)

Dreben then concludes:

Perhaps Rawls’s greatest contribution is his insistence that you cannot ever completely lay out what it is to be reasonable and what it is to be rational in this political sense.  But you can keep listing various criteria, and you can see public reason in action.  And these notions will change …  change according to implicit development, as you keep working through what is demanded by the fair terms of cooperation of free and equal and rational and reasonable citizens. (340)

Some may wonder why I think this helpful since Dreben is talking about Rawls and political liberalism rather than what we’re focusing on in class, the law of peoples and international justice.  But it seems to me that Dreben’s remarks on political liberalism, public reason, and how Rawls thinks we should work out our differences over key concepts such as freedom and equality in the domestic sphere also throw considerable light on how different peoples (liberal and decent) should work out similar issues internationally.

In others words, just as Dreben claims that Rawls’s political liberalism involves the more specific working out of certain shared ideals and norms (e.g. freedom, equality) in much the same way that common law judges operate, so I would suggest the same general model for understanding Rawls’s law of peoples.  The chief differences being that (1) the shared ideals and norms that are the starting place for liberal and decent peoples in the international sphere will be different — and less contentful — than what political liberals have to start with domestically and, correspondingly, (2) the resulting principles that liberal and decent peoples will arrive at in the international sphere will be different — and less contentful — than what political liberals will arrive at domestically.

The AK-47 & World Peace

Some of you may recall that, when we were talking about proposals for world peace, the topic of AK-47′s came up in reference to a new book and NPR feature.

I was curious, and this is what I found.

The AK-47: ‘The Gun’ That Changed The Battlefield : NPR

Here’s an excerpt from the NPR story:

One of the first true assault rifles, the AK-47, or Kalashnikov, was designed for soldiers who have to endure terrible conditions on the battlefield: It’s light, it can carry a lot of ammunition, and it can withstand harsh weather and poor handling. The gun’s design and ubiquity also have made it popular among small-arms dealers — as well as insurgents, terrorists and child soldiers.

C.J. Chivers, a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent for The New York Times, has encountered the Kalashnikov while reporting from Afghanistan and Iraq. His new book, The Gun, traces the migration of the AK-47 across the world, detailing the consequences of its spread.

“It’s pretty hard in many parts of the world, particularly in Afghanistan, to go [into] territory under insurgent control, and not be ambushed by Kalashnikovs,” says Chivers. “Their numbers are so outsized that this is quite a common experience.”

One estimate by the World Bank suggests that 100 million of the 500 million total firearms available worldwide are variations of the Kalashnikov.

You can get ‘The Gun’ on Amazon here.

Idiot America: Disturbing and Painful (and Painfully Funny)

Consider the following passage from a recent piece in Esquire magazine talking about the “Creation Museum”:

It is impolite to wonder why our parents sent us all to college, and why generations of immigrants sweated and bled so their children could be educated, if it wasn’t so that we would all one day feel confident enough to look at a museum filled with dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Belmont and make the not unreasonable point that it is all batshit crazy and that anyone who believes this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and his own money.

Dinosaurs with saddles?

Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark?

Welcome to your new Eden.

Welcome to Idiot America.

Let’s take a tour, shall we? For the sake of time, we’ll just cover the last year or so.

A federally funded abstinence program suggests that HIV can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay authors. The Texas House passes a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. And nobody laughs at any of it, or even points out that, in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is like having Nebraska ban corn.

I also found the observation about Iowans “not giving a rat’s ass” funny (and true to my experience) but also scary and sad:

The America of Franklin and Edison, of Fulton and Ford, of the Manhattan project and the Apollo program, the America of which Einstein wanted to be a part, seems to be enveloping itself in a curious fog behind which it’s tying itself in knots over evolution, for pity’s sake, and over the relative humanity of blastocysts versus the victims of Parkinson’s disease.

“Even in the developing world, where I spend lots of time doing my work,” [MIT Professor Kip] Hodges says, “if you tell them that you’re from MIT and you tell them that you do science, it’s a big deal. If I go to India and tell them I’m from MIT, it’s a big deal. In Thailand, it’s a big deal. If I go to Iowa, they could give a rat’s ass. And that’s a weird thing, that we’re moving in that direction as a nation.”

I say this is sad because, for anyone who values knowledge and wisdom, it’s hard not to find it sad that there are people who are so proudly and willingly ignorant.

In any event, while a bit long, the entire article is worth reading.

Click here:  Greetings from Idiot America – Esquire

Preventative War with Iran?

Consider the following analysis:

 

[I]f Obama’s goal is to appear strong on national security while regaining the center, Afghanistan offers the least attractive venue. His choices are negotiation, which would reinforce his image as an accommodationist in foreign policy, or continued war, which is not particularly new territory. He could deploy even more forces into Afghanistan, but then would risk looking like Lyndon Johnson in 1967, hurling troops at the enemy without a clear plan. He could, of course, create a massive crisis with Pakistan, but it would be extremely unlikely that such an effort would end well, given the situation in Afghanistan. Foreign policy presidents need to be successful.

There is little to be done in Iraq at the moment except delay the withdrawal of forces, which adds little to his political position. Moreover, the core problem in Iraq at the moment is Iran and its support of disruptive forces. Obama could attempt to force an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, but that would require Hamas to change its position, which is unlikely, or that Israel make massive concessions, which it doesn’t think it has to do. The problem with Israel and the Palestinians is that peace talks, such as those under Clinton at Camp David, have a nasty tendency to end in chaos.

The European, Russian and Chinese situations are of great importance, but they are not conducive to dramatic acts. The United States is not going to blockade China over the yuan or hold a stunning set of meetings with the Europeans to get them to increase their defense budgets and commit to more support for U.S. wars. And the situation regarding North Korea does not have the pressing urgency to justify U.S. action. There are many actions that would satisfy Obama’s accomodationist inclinations, but those would not serve well in portraying him as decisive in foreign policy.

The Iranian Option

This leaves the obvious choice: Iran. Iran is the one issue on which the president could galvanize public opinion. The Republicans have portrayed Obama as weak on combating militant Islamism. Many of the Democrats see Iran as a repressive violator of human rights, particularly after the crackdown on the Green Movement. The Arabian Peninsula, particularly Saudi Arabia, is afraid of Iran and wants the United States to do something more than provide $60 billion-worth of weapons over the next 10 years. The Israelis, obviously, are hostile. The Europeans are hostile to Iran but want to avoid escalation, unless it ends quickly and successfully and without a disruption of oil supplies. The Russians — like the Iranians — are a thorn in the American side, as are the Chinese, but neither would have much choice should the United States deal with Iran quickly and effectively…

Read more of this author’s analysis here: U.S. Midterm Elections, Obama and Iran | STRATFOR

Arms Dealers vs. Alms Dealers

Getting rid of arms dealers, now that’s one peace proposal that has obvious appeal.  (Though as with all prohibitions on trading in certain goods and services, such a proposal would almost certainly create a more-or-less thriving black market in weapons according to the strength of the underlying demand  for them.)

But getting rid of alms dealers, that’s not something that readily springs to mind as a way of bringing about peace.

Yet read on because the idea of banning the International Red Cross from war zones did not come out of the blue.

I read it HERE in this disturbing but thought-provoking article by Philip Gourevitch from The New Yorker.

And, as Gourevitch observes, Florence Nightingale herself originally made the same argument.

Philosopher Who Posed ‘Trolley Problem’ Dies

The philosopher in question was Philippa Foot, the only philosopher descended from an American President.  (Her maternal grandfather was Grover Cleveland.)

Here’s something about her importance from the obit in the New York Times:

It was the Trolley Problem … that captured the imagination of scholars outside her discipline. In 1967, in the essay “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect,” she discussed, using a series of provocative examples, the moral distinctions between intended and unintended consequences, between doing and allowing, and between positive and negative duties — the duty not to inflict harm weighed against the duty to render aid.

The most arresting of her examples, offered in just a few sentences, was the ethical dilemma faced by the driver of a runaway trolley hurtling toward five track workers. By diverting the trolley to a spur where just one worker is on the track, the driver can save five lives.

Clearly, the driver should divert the trolley and kill one worker rather than five.

But what about a surgeon who could also save five lives — by killing a patient and distributing the patient’s organs to five other patients who would otherwise die? The math is the same, but here, instead of having to choose between two negative duties — the imperative not to inflict harm — as the driver does, the doctor weighs a negative duty against the positive duty of rendering aid.

For the rest of the Times obit, click on the link here:

Philippa Foot, 90, Dies – Philosopher Who Posed ‘Trolley Problem’ – Obituary

Nobel Winner Sen to Speak on Global Justice

Maybe I’ll go to New York to hear Sen’s lecture since the seminar doesn’t meet that day …

NYU 2010 Frumkes Lecture: Amartya Sen on “Global Justice and Political Philosophy”

Sounds interesting.

FYI, for those who didn’t know, Professor Morris recently edited and contributed to an anthology on Sen’s work (see link below).

Amartya Sen (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

Welcome ‘Global Justice’ Seminar

Welcome fellow participants in Chris Morris’s seminar ‘Global Justice & World Order’.

I am reviving an old blog of mine to post thoughts, questions, etc. that arise during seminar discussion or while reading something assigned for, or related to, the seminar.

Feel free, by all means, to comment if something I post strikes your interest.

If you would like to pursue some other topic, you can use the comment function for this as well.  Or, preferably, let me know, and I’ll post your topic as a separate, new item.

Cheers, Jim Taggart

Btw, next time we’re at Plato’s Diner, I’ll buy a drink for whoever in the class can tell me whose self-portrait I’ve put in the right-hand column of my blog (at the top).

Build It & They Will Come

Neal Potter, a former Montgomery County executive, tells us in today’s Washington Post here that the proposed Intercounty County Connector (ICC) will not reduce traffic congestion, citing past and current studies. How can this be when the ICC would be a huge, new six-lane highway connecting I-95 and I-270? How could such a road fail to have a positive effect on traffic congestion on, for example, the Beltway? Certainly it would seem that traffic that would otherwise take the Beltway could be shifted off onto the new ICC. But appearances can be deceptive, especially if you don’t take into account how the existence of an ICC will alter current behavior. Building the ICC will encourage people who don’t currently drive on existing roads to rethink their decision about where and when to drive. While the ICC may provide a brief period of temporary relief, precisely because of this relief more people will decide to take up driving again on the Beltway and other roads, leaving us right back where we started with the same or worse levels of congestion. This is what I like to call the “Build It & They Will Come” phenomenon, seen time and time again when new roads are built. So Potter is right. The ICC is not the answer.

So why do we build things like the ICC given that they are so expensive with little, if any, expected benefit? We build them because we are optimists and doers. We don’t like to admit that some problems may not have solutions and we don’t like taking things “lying down,” so to speak. Accordingly, we reward politicians who take decisive, highly visible actions to address our perceived problems. And if there is a more decisive and highly visible way of tackling traffic congestion than by building a big, new six-lane highway, then I can’t think of one. (Except perhaps to build a big, new eight-lane highway! I wonder how long it will be until they talk about widening the ICC.)

Unfortunately, whether such actions actually will help is almost beside the point. (Bob Ehrlich, not coincidentally, lives nowhere near the proposed ICC so he can sleep more easily given its likely effects.) By the time the consequences of such actions become clear years later, the politicians responsible are long gone from the political scene and there are “new” problems calling for additional “solutions” to feed the ambitions of another generation of politicians. Of course, it’s not really the fault of the politicians. They are merely exploiting our ignorance and our corresponding readiness to accept highly visible actions like building big, new highways as genuinely responsive to problems like traffic congestion.