We already have a 'bridge.' Its name is 'legal immigration.' Now we need a wall. Its name is 'rule of law.'
Author: Bill Vallicella
Know-Nothing Catholics on Muslim Immigration
It can be expected that Catholic bishops will respond with dismay to President Trump’s order banning immigration from seven Muslim nations. When Trump first proposed banning Muslims from entering the U.S., Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, the president of the USCCB issued a statement repudiating “the hatred and suspicion that leads to policies of discrimination.” At about the same time, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore said Catholics could “not possibly countenance” restricting entry to the U.S. solely on the basis of religious affiliation. It can also be expected that bishops will employ an argument they have long used against opponents of Muslim immigration—namely, that Catholic immigrants were once treated with similar suspicion.
The willful stupidity of Catholic bishops never ceases to amaze me on this issue and on others. Many of them give the impression of being leftists first, and Catholics second, if at all.
But it is worse than willful stupidity: it is a vile slandering of decent people who maintain a sound view backed with arguments.
It must be remembered that Islam is a hybrid ideology: both a religion and a political system. Sharia, or Islamic law, is essential to it. Coming from God, it cannot be questioned by man: man must submit to it. The primary meaning of 'Islam' is submission. God's law must be imposed on all and woven into the fabric of everyday life. It is theocratic right out of the box. There is no provision in Islam for mosque-state separation. But that is to put it in the form of an understatement. Islam positively rules out mosque-state separation.
John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (Yale UP, 1989, pp. 48-49):
From the point of view of the understanding of this state of islam [submission to Allah] the Muslim sees no distinction between the religious and the secular. The whole of life is to be lived in the presence of Allah and is the sphere of God's absolute claim and limitless compassion and mercy. And so islam, God-centredness, is not only an inner submission to the sole Lord of the universe but also a pattern of corporate life in accordance with God's will. It involves both salat, worship, and falah, the good embodied in behaviour. Through the five appointed moments of prayer each day is linked to God. Indeed almost any activity may be begun with Bismillah ('in the name of Allah'); and plans and hopes for the future are qualified by Inshallah ('if Allah wills'). Thus life is constantly punctuated by the remembrance of God. It is a symptom of this that almsgiving ranks with prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and confession of faith as one of the five 'pillars' of Islam. Within this holistic conception the 'secular' spheres of politics, government, law, commerce, science and the arts all come within the scope of religious obedience.
What Hick calls a "holistic conception," I would call totalitarian. Islam is totalitarian in a two-fold sense. It aims to regulate every aspect and every moment of the individual believer's life. (And if you are not a believer, you must either convert or accept dhimmitude.) But it is also totalitarian in a corporate sense in that it aims to control every aspect of society in all its spheres, just as Hick points out supra.
Islam, therefore, is profoundly at odds with the values of the West. For we in the West, whether (old-time) liberals or contemporary conservatives, accept church(mosque)-state separation. We no doubt argue heatedly over what exactly it entails, but we are agreed on the main principle. I regularly criticize the shysters of the ACLU for their extremist positions on this question; but I agree with them that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ." This implies that the government shall not impose any religion upon the people as the state religion.
This raises a very serious question. Is Islam – pure, unEnlightened, un-watered-down, fundamentalist, theocratic Islam — deserving of First Amendment protection? We read in the First Amendment that Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Should that be understood to mean that the Federal government shall not prohibit the establishment and free exercise of a totalitarian, fundamentalist theocratic religion in a particular state, say Michigan?
The USA is a Christian nation with a secular government. Suppose there was a religion whose aim was to subvert our secular government. Does commitment to freedom of religion enjoin toleration of such a religion?
Obviously not! Sharia is essential to true Islam. But Sharia is subversive of our system of government. So we are under no obligation from the Constitution to tolerate Sharia-based Islam. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. This implies that Muslims who do not renounce Sharia should not be eligible for positions in the government.
"But this violates Article VI of the Constitution!" No it doesn't. There we read that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." But this cannot be interpreted sensibly in such a way as to allow into the government elements subversive of the system of government the Constitution defines.
Why is Islam incompatible with the West? One reason is because Islam violates the separation of the religious and secular spheres. But why should they be kept apart? One reason is that we in the West have come to realize over the centuries that no one can legitimately claim to know the answers to the Big Questions about God, the soul, the purpose of human existence, the nature of the good, and so on. Only if one were absolutely certain of the answers to these questions would one be justified in imposing them via state power on everyone and forcing everyone to live in accordance with them. If we know that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and that God has condemned sodomy, and sanctioned the killing of sodomites, then we would perhaps be justified in outlawing sodomy and punishing it by death as it is indeed punished in some ten Muslim countries.
But surely no one of us KNOWS that God exists, let alone that God has revealed himself to man, let alone in a particular book or set of books, let alone inerrantly. Not knowing these things we have a good reason to tolerate homosexual and heterosexual sodomites, subject to certain restrictions, e.g. 'between consenting adults,' etc. We have reason to allow such behavior as legally permissible even if it in fact morally impermissible. For again, even if sodomy is is in fact morally impermissible because condemned by God, no one can legitimately claim to KNOW that it is.
Thomas Aquinas Against Open Borders
In a surprisingly contemporary passage of his Summa Theologica, Aquinas noted that the Jewish people of Old Testament times did not admit visitors from all nations equally, since those peoples closer to them were more quickly integrated into the population than those who were not as close.
The ‘Is’ of Identity and the ‘Is’ of Predication: Contra Sommers
Dedication: To Bill Clinton who taught us that much can ride on what the meaning of 'is' is.
………………
The Opponent has a very good post in which he raises the question whether the standard analytic distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication is but fallout from an antecedent decision to adhere to an absolute distinction between names and predicates according to which no name is a predicate and no predicate is a name. If the distinction is absolute, as Gottlob Frege and his epigoni maintain, then names cannot occur in predicate position, and a distinction between the two uses of 'is' is the consequence. But what if no such absolute distinction is made? Could one then dispense with the standard analytic distinction between the two uses of 'is'? Or are there reasons independent of Frege's function-argument analysis of propositions for upholding the distinction between the two uses?
To illustrate the putative distinction, consider
1. George Orwell is Eric Blair
and
2. George Orwell is famous.
Both sentences feature a token of 'is.' Now ask yourself: is 'is' functioning in the same way in both sentences? The standard analytic line is that 'is' functions differently in the two sentences. In (1) it expresses (numerical) identity; in (2) it expresses predication. Identity, among other features, is symmetrical; predication is not. That suffices to distinguish the two uses of 'is.' 'Famous' is predicable of Orwell, but Orwell is not predicable of 'famous.' But if Blair is Orwell, then Orwell is Blair.
Now it is clear, I think, that if one begins with the absolute name-predicate distinction, then the other distinction is also required. For if 'Eric Blair' in (1) cannot be construed as a predicate, then surely the 'is' in (1) does not express predication. The question I am raising, however, is whether the distinction between the two uses of 'is' arises ONLY IF one distinguishes absolutely and categorially between names and predicates.
Fred Sommers seems to think so. The Opponent follows him in this. Referencing the example 'The morning star is Venus,' Sommers writes, "Clearly it is only after one has adopted the syntax that prohibits the predication of proper names that one is forced to read 'a is b' dyadically and to see in it a sign of identity." (The Logic of Natural Language, Oxford 1982, p. 121, emphasis added) The contemporary reader will of course wonder how else 'a is b' could be read if it is not read as expressing a dyadic relation between a and b. How the devil could the 'is' in 'a is b' be read as a sign of predication?
The question can be put like this. Can we justify a distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication even if we do not make an absolute distinction between names (object words) and predicates (concept words)? I think we can.
Is it not obvious that if an individual has a property, then it is not identical to that property? Tom is hypertensive. But it would be absurd to say that Tom is identical to this property. This is so whether you think of properties as universals or as particulars (tropes). Suppose the property of being hypertensive (H-ness) is a universal and that Tom's brother Sal is also hypertensive. It follows that they share this property. So if Tom = H-ness, and Sal = H-ness, then, by the transitivity and symmetry of identity, Tom = Sal, which is absurd.
If properties are tropes, we also get an absurdity. On a trope bundle theory, Tom is a bundle of tropes. But surely Tom cannot be identical to one of his tropes, his H-trope. On a trope substratum theory, tropes are like Aristotelian accidents inhering in a substance. But surely no substance is identical to one of its accidents.
So whether properties are universals or tropes, we cannot sensibly think of an individual's having a property in terms of identity with that property. If H-ness is a universal, then we would speak of Tom's instantiating H-ness, where this relation is obviously asymmetrical and for this reason and others distinct from identity.
Now 'H' is a predicate whereas 'H-ness' is a name. But nothing stops us from parsing 'Tom is hypertensive' as 'Tom instantiates hypertensiveness.' This shows that we can uphold the distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication with a two-name theory of predication, and thus without making Frege's absolute distinction between names and predicates. It appears that Sommers is mistaken in his claim that "Clearly it is only after one has adopted the syntax that prohibits the predication of proper names that one is forced to read 'a is b' dyadically and to see in it a sign of identity."
I am assuming of course that we cannot eke by on predicates alone: we need properties. By my lights this should not be controversial in the least. My nominalist Opponent will demur. In 'Orwell is famous' he seems to be wanting to say that 'Orwell' and 'famous' refer to the same thing. But what could that mean?
First of all, 'Orwell' and 'famous' do not have the same extension: there are many famous people, but only one Orwell. 'Orwell is famous' is true. What makes it true? Presumably the fact that 'Orwell' and 'famous' denote one and the same individual. And which individual is that? Why, it's Orwell! But Orwell might not have been famous. Since it is contingent that Orwell is famous, but noncontingent that Orwell is Orwell, the truth-maker of 'Orwell is famous' cannot be Orwell alone. It has has to be the fact of Orwell's being famous, which fact involves the property of being famous in addition to Orwell.
Nominalists insist that we ought not multiply entities beyond necessity. They are right! But there is no multiplication beyond necessity here since we need to admit properties as features of extralinguistic reality. To explain why 'Orwell is famous' is contingent, one must distinguish Orwell from his contingently possessed properties. Man does not live or think truly by predicates alone.
Matriarchy Mitigated: Another Trumpian Accomplishment
The mitigation of creeping matriarchy requires, among other things, a 'war' against puellafication. I coined the word 'puellafication' here. An ugly word for an ugly thing. Christina Hoff Sommers combats the thing. While so doing she provides further proof that the Left is devoid of common sense:
Across the country, schools are policing and punishing the distinctive, assertive sociability of boys. Many much-loved games have vanished from school playgrounds. At some schools, tug of war has been replaced with “tug of peace.” Since the 1990s, elimination games like dodgeball, red rover and tag have been under a cloud — too damaging to self-esteem and too violent, say certain experts.
Tug of peace? Is that a joke? Peace is better than war, of course, but to secure and maintain peace one must be prepared to wage and win war. Or as the Latin saying has it, Si vis pacem, para bellum. "If you want peace, prepare for war."
Life is competitive and hierarchical. Supervised and respectful competition in the schools on the playing fields and in the classrooms is good preparation for life.
A little tuggy-wuggy never hurt anybody. Dale Tuggy would approve of this message.
And another thing. Bring back the monkey bars and the long summer vacations. Enough with the wussification. (Not a word? It is now.)
Scott Adams’ Starting Point
Here:
For new readers of this blog, my starting point is the understanding that human brains did not evolve to show us reality. We aren’t that smart. Instead, our brains create little movies in our heads, and yours can be completely different from mine. We see that situation now. Half the country thinks President Trump is well on his way to becoming a Hitler-like dictator. But many other Americans think Trump is an effective business person with good intentions. They can’t both be right.
"They can't both be right." True, but how could Adams possibly know this if the human brain does not "show us reality"? According to the "little movie" in Adams' head, Trump cannot be both Hitlerian and non-Hitlerian. But there is this other guy, Shmadams, in whose head a "completely different little movie" plays according to which Trump can be both Hitlerian and non-Hitlerian.
So I tax Adams with the following dilemma. If he is justified in his claim that "They can't both be right," then our brains sometimes "show us reality" and Adams' theory refutes itself. If, on the other hand, Adams' theory is true, then he is not justified in his assertion that "They can't both be right." Nor is he justified in believing that his theory is true.
But I hasten to add that Adams' silly speculation about the brain and reality in no way detracts from his insights into Trump's modus operandi.
He understands that Trump is a negotiator who opens the bidding with an extreme offer so as to be in a position to dial it back to something reasonable. In this way he manages to mollify, to some extent at least, the extremists on his Right and those on his Left.
Every reasonable person must grant that there must be some restrictions placed on whom to allow to immigrate. Trump will alienate Muslims and leftists but he will also insure that what has already happened in Europe won't happen here.
You lefties need to cool your jets, to use an old '70s expression, and give the man a chance. The stroke you prevent may be your own. The more extreme and thuggish your protests, the more asinine your Hitler comparisons, the more you will discredit yourselves in the eyes of the sane.
On the Value of Twitter as a Research Tool
In 2013, a college student assigned to research a deadly substance sought help via Twitter: "I can't find the chemical and physical properties of sarin gas someone please help me." An expert at a security consulting firm tried to be helpful, telling her that sarin is not gas. She replied, "yes the (expletive) it is a gas you ignorant (expletive). sarin is a liquid & can evaporate … shut the (expletive) up."
Nominalism and an Identity Theory of Predication
The Worthy Opponent comments,
We nominalists hold that 'God is good' is true when what is signified by 'God' and what is signified by 'good' are numerically one and the same thing.
I stumble over this.
Apparently, it is The Opponent's view that a sentence such 'Socrates is good' is true when what is signified by 'Socrates' and what is signified by 'good' are numerically one and the same thing. I don't understand. 'Good,' unlike 'Socrates,' is a common term: it applies to many individuals. So there cannot be numerically one thing that both 'Socrates' and 'good' signify. 'Socrates' signifies one thing; 'good' signifies many things.
If, contrary to fact, there were only one good thing, then it would make some sense to say that 'Socrates is good,' which is by its surface grammar a predication, could be read as asserting the numerical identity of Socrates with the one good thing. But if Socrates is good, or seated, or conversing with Theaetetus, this is only contingently the case. So how analyze the possibly true 'Socrates is not good' on the assumption that there is only one good thing? We would have to say that Socrates is distinct from himself — which is absurd. For if, in actuality, Socrates is good in virtue of being identical to the one good thing, then, in the possible counterfactual situation in which he — the very same individual — is not good, he would have to be numerically diverse from the one good thing, namely, himself!
The same argument goes through even if there are many good things. For the Opponent's claim is that Socrates is good in virtue of being identical to one of the many good things. Call this good thing G. The claim is that 'Socrates is good' is an identity proposition in disguise, and that its deep logical form is: S = G.
The problem is that 'Socrates is good' is contingently true. But 'S = G' is not contingently true. So the predication is not an identity proposition in disguise.
This looks to be a pretty powerful objection.
I am assuming something that is well-nigh self-evident, but which I fear the Illustrious Opponent will deny, namely, that if a = b, then this is non-contingently the case. In other words, I am assuming that if a = b, then there is no possible situation in which a and b both exist but are numerically distinct.
Curiously, the Opponent's theory works in one case and one case only. But he has to admit the divine simplicity. So assume that God exists, that God is essentially good, and that God is identical to his attributes, and that therefore God alone is good in this sense. If God is identical to his attributes, then God = the one and only good thing. (Socrates is good only in an analogical and derivative sense.) In this one case, 'God is good' is an identity proposition in disguise.
The Literary/Visual Trope of the Women’s March
I propose the synecdoche:
a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage).
People who refer to women using 'vagina' or, more commonly, its obscene equivalents are employing the literary device known as the synecdoche. To refer to women as skirts, however, is not a synecdoche but a metonym. The graphic is an example of a visual synecdoche.
Time was, when feminists protested the objectification of women, and rightly so. Nowadays they self-objectify, presumably in the belief that by co-opting 'pussy' and other derogatory words they can remove their sting.
Paradoxes of Illegal Immigration
This entry from 6 January 2012 bears re-posting in the light of current events. 'Light' indeed. A new day is dawning. Things are looking up. We now have a president with the cojones to take action, and he has. Who would have thought that Donald J. Trump of all people would be the patriot to save the country? The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways. What a week it's been! While conservatives rejoice — I mean true conservatives, not NeverTrump quislings and jokers — leftists lose their minds and descend into thuggery showing themselves plainly for what they were all along.
……………………………………
Philosophers hate a contradiction, but love a paradox. There are paradoxes everywhere, in the precincts of the most abstruse as well as in the precincts of the prosaic. Here are eight paradoxes of illegal immigration suggested to me by Victor Davis Hanson. The titles and formulations are my own. For good measure, I add a ninth, of my own invention.
The Paradox of Profiling. Racial profiling is supposed to be verboten. And yet it is employed by American border guards when they nab and deport thousands of illegal border crossers. Otherwise, how could they pick out illegals from citizens who are merely in the vicinity of the border? How can what is permissible near the border be impermissible far from it in, say, Phoenix? At what distance does permissibility transmogrify into impermissibility? If a border patrolman may profile why may not a highway patrolman? Is legal permissibility within a state indexed to spatiotemporal position and variable with variations in the latter?
The Paradox of Encroachment. The Federal government sues the state of Arizona for upholding Federal immigration law on the ground that it is an encroachment upon Federal jurisdiction. But sanctuary cities flout Federal law by not allowing the enforcement of Federal immigration statutes. Clearly, impeding the enforcement of Federal laws is far worse than duplicating and perhaps interfering with Federal law enforcement efforts. And yet the Feds go after Arizona while ignoring sanctuary cities. Paradoxical, eh?
The Paradox of Blaming the Benefactor. Millions flee Mexico for the U.S. because of the desirability of living and working here and the undesirability of living in a crime-ridden, corrupt, and impoverished country. So what does Mexican president Felipe Calderon do? Why, he criticizes the U.S. even though the U.S. provides to his citizens what he and his government cannot! And what do many Mexicans do? They wave the Mexican flag in a country whose laws they violate and from whose toleration they benefit.
The Paradox of Differential Sovereignty and Variable Border Violability. Apparently, some states are more sovereign than others. The U.S., for some reason, is less sovereign than Mexico, which is highly intolerant of invaders from Central America. Paradoxically, the violability of a border is a function of the countries between which the border falls.
The Paradox of Los Locos Gringos. The gringos are crazy, and racist xenophobes to boot, inasmuch as 70% of them demand border security and support AZ SB 1070. Why then do so many Mexicans want to live among the crazy gringos?
The Paradox of Supporting While Stiffing the Working Stiff. Liberals have traditionally been for the working man. But by being soft on illegal immigration they help drive down the hourly wages of the working poor north of the Rio Grande. (As I have said in other posts, there are liberal arguments against illegal immigration, and here are the makings of one.)
The Paradox of Penalizing the Legal while Tolerating the Illegal. Legal immigrants face hurdles and long waits while illegals are tolerated. But liberals are supposed to be big on fairness. How fair is this?
The Paradox of Subsidizing a Country Whose Citizens Violate our Laws. "America extends housing, food and education subsidies to illegal aliens in need. But Mexico receives more than $20 billion in American remittances a year — its second-highest source of foreign exchange, and almost all of it from its own nationals living in the United States." So the U.S. takes care of illegal aliens from a failed state while subsidizing that state, making it more dependent, and less likely to clean up its act.
The Paradox of the Reconquista. Some Hispanics claim that the Southwest and California were 'stolen' from Mexico by the gringos. Well, suppose that this vast chunk of real estate had not been 'stolen' and now belonged to Mexico. Then it would be as screwed up as the rest of Mexico: as economically indigent, as politically corrupt, as crime-ridden, as drug-infested. Illegal immigrants from southern Mexico would then, in that counterfactual scenario, have farther to travel to get to the U.S., and there would be less of the U.S. for their use and enjoyment. The U.S. would be able to take in fewer of them. They would be worse off. So if Mexico were to re-conquer the lands 'stolen' from it, then it would make itself worse off than it is now. Gaining territory it would lose ground — if I may put paradoxically the Paradox of the Reconquista.
Exercise for the reader: Find more paradoxes!
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Pictures, Photographs, Images, etc.
The Who, Pictures of Lily
Paul Simon, Kodachrome. Simon was an English major whose early efforts were sometimes a bit on the pretentious side. Dangling Conversation, for example. (Still and all, a great song.) Later on he found his groove.
Safaris, Image of a Girl
Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition
The Band, When I Paint my Masterpiece
Howlin' Wolf, I Want Your Picture. Not to be confused with Howlin' Wolff.
Annette Hanshaw, If Had a Talking Picture of You, 1929
Kinks, Pictures in the Sand
Kinks, People Take Pictures of Each Other
Kinks, Picture Book
Ringo Starr, Photograph
Women for Trump
Undocumented Workers and Illegal Aliens
One of the purposes of this website is to combat the stupidity of Political Correctness, a stupidity that in many contemporary liberals, i.e., leftists, is willful and therefore morally censurable. The euphemism 'undocumented worker' is a good example of a PC expression. It does not require great logical acumen to see that 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal alien' are not coextensive expressions. The extension of a term is the class of things to which the term applies. In the diagram below, let A be the class of illegal aliens, B the class of undocumented workers, and A^B the intersection of these two classes. All three regions in the diagram are non-empty, which shows that A and B are not coextensive, and so are not the same class. Since A and B are not the same class, 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal alien' do not have the same intension or meaning. If two terms differ in extension, then they differ in meaning. (The converse does not hold.) Differing in both extension and intension (sense, meaning), 'undocumented workers' and 'illegal aliens' expressions are not intersubstitutable.
To see why, note first that there are illegal aliens who are not workers since they are either petty criminals, or members of organized criminal gangs e.g., MS-13, some of whose illegal alien members are terrorists, or too young to work, or unable to work. Note second that there are illegal aliens who have documents all right — forged documents. Note third that there are undocumented workers who are not aliens: there are American citizens who work but without the legally requisite licenses and permits.
So the correct term is 'illegal alien.' It is descriptive and accurate and there is no reason why it should not be used.
Now will this little logical exercise convince a leftist to use language responsibly and stop obfuscating the issue? Of course not. Leftism in some of its forms is willfully embraced reality denial, and in other of its forms is a cognitive aberration, something like a mental illness, in need of therapy rather than refutation. The latter are sick and one cannot refute the sick. They need treatment and quarantine and those who go near them should employ appropriate prophylactics.
So why did I bother writing the above? Because there are people who have not yet succumbed to the PC malady and might benefit from a bit of logical prophylaxis. One can hope.
Hope for the best. But prepare for the worst.
The winds of change that have blown the Orange Man into the White House have brought us to the shores of hope, hope for a return to sanity and order and the rule of law.
Is Islam an Abrahamic Religion?
What I Believe About Free Will
1. We are morally responsible for at least some of our actions and omissions.
2. Moral responsibility entails libertarian freedom of the will.
Therefore
3. We are libertarianly free.
That clinches it for me. But is this a compelling argument? By no means. No argument for any substantive philosophical thesis is compelling. One could, with no breach of logical propriety, deny the conclusion and then deny one or both of the premises. As we say in the trade, "One man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens." Any valid argument can be thrown into 'inferential reverse,' the result being a valid argument. For example, one might plausibly, and with no breach of logical propriety, deny (3) on the ground that L-freedom is an incoherent notion; accept that we are sometimes morally responsible, and conclude that moral responsibility does not entail libertarian freedom of the will. This second argument, which a compatibilist could give, is of course also uncompelling.
While the original argument is not compelling, it is practically decisive for me. I accept both premises. That I am morally (as opposed to causally, and as opposed to legally) responsible for at least some of what I do and leave undone I take to be more evident than its negation. I can't shake the idea.
And, like Kant, I see compatibilism as a shabby evasion, "the freedom of the turnspit." I apperceive myself as the unsourced source, the agent cause, of some of my actions and omissions and indeed in such a way that I could have done otherwise.
Some will say that libertarian free will and the deep moral responsibility that entails it are illusions. I find this view incoherent for reasons supplied in Could Free Will be an Illusion?
A reader poses the question, "How do you reconcile one's given character and moral responsibility?" I have no really good answer to this, but I would say that no one's character is entirely given: it is in part made by the agent. One's life is a project and a task. The materials we must work with are not our doing, but what we do with them is our free doing. Suppose you find you have an irascible temperament. That is not your doing. But you are free to either give rein to your irascibility or rein it in. Suppose you excuse your expressions of irascibility by insisting "Hey, that's just the way I am." That too is a free act, a free display of what Sartre calls "bad faith."
Having mentioned Sartre, I believe he says somewhere something to the effect that freedom is what we do with what has been done to us.
And now it occurs to me that the Sartre reference serendipitously jibes with the existentialist beatnik graphic above.