With a little help from Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Hannah Arendt. Substack latest.
By the way, I learned that Arendt had ten books by Carl Schmitt in her library. We will have to look into their relationship.
Is that a cigarette holder she's using? A Randian touch. It would not be fair to call Ayn Rand a hack, but she comes close, and is nowhere near the level of Arendt. A is A!
No morally decent man wants ever to have to take a human life. But no manly man will be unprepared to defend against a lethal attack using lethal force, or hesitate to do so if and when circumstances require it.*
The first proposition cannot be reasonably disputed; the second can.
How might one dispute the second proposition?
I had a conversation with a hermit monk at a remote Benedictine monastery. I pointed out that the monastery was wide open to jihadis or any group bent on invasion and slaughter. He told me that if someone came to kill him, he would let himself be slaughtered.
That attitude makes sense if Christianity is true. For on Christianity traditionally understood this world is a vanishing quantity of no ultimate consequence. (I used that very phrase, 'vanishing quantity,' in my conversation with the monk and he nodded in agreement.) Compared to eternity, this life in time is of no consequence. It is not nothing, but it is comparatively nothing, next-to-nothing. Not nothing, because created by God out of nothing and redeemed by his Son. But nonetheless of no ultimate value or consequence compared to the eternal reality of the Unseen Order.
Socrates: "Better to suffer evil than to do evil." Christ: "Resist not the evildoer." Admittedly, "those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked 'to do as much evil as they please' " — to quote from Hannah Arendt quoting Machiavelli. But again, why would this ultimately matter if the temporal is nothing as compared to the eternal?
But is Christianity true? We do not know one way or the other. Belief, even reasonable belief, is not knowledge.
If Christianity (or some similar otherworldly religion) isn't true, then he who allows himself to be slaughtered gives up his only life for an illusion. But not only that. By failing to resist the evildoer, the one who permits evil promotes evil, making it more likely that others will be violated in the only world there is.
What do I say? More important than what I say is how I live. What people believe is best shown by how they live. Talk is cheap and that includes avowals of belief. Belief itself, however, is demonstrated by action, and often exacts a cost.
Well then, how do I live? Monkish as I am, I do not spend all of my time in prayer, meditation, study, and writing. I also prepare for this-worldly evils that may or may not occur. I shoot my guns not just because I like doing so; my ultimate aim is to be prepared to kill malefactors should it prove necessary to do so to defend self, others, and civilization itself. That being said, I pray that I may die a virgin when it comes to taking a human life, even the life of an MS-13 savage or a Hamas terrorist. **
Now what kind of mixed attitude is that? Am I trying to have it both ways? If I really believe in the Unseen Order would I not allow myself to be slaughtered like the monk I mentioned? To focus the question, suppose that my wife has died and that I have no commitments to anyone else. My situation would then be relevantly similar to the monk's.
If, in the hypothetical situation, I look to my worldly preservation, to the extent that I would use lethal force against someone bent on killing me, does that not show that I don't really believe that this world is a vanishing quantity, that the temporal order is of no consequence as compared to eternity? To repeat, real belief is evidenced by action and typically comes with a price.
I do believe, as my monkish way of life attests, that this world is vain and vanishing and of no ultimate concern to anyone who is spiritually awake, but I don't know that there is anything beyond it, and I would suspect anyone who said that he did know of engaging in metaphysical bluster. Which is better known or more reasonably believed: that this transient world despite its vanity is as real as it gets, or that the Unseen Order is real? There are good arguments on both sides, but none settle the matter. I say that the competing propositions are equally reasonably believed. I believe, but do not know that God and the soul are real and so I believe but do not know that this passing scene is of no ultimate consequence (except insofar as our behavior here below affects our eternal destiny). I also believe that I am morally justified in meeting a deadly attack with deadly force, a belief that is behaviorally attested by my prepping.
Both beliefs are justified, but only one is true. But I don't know which. The belief-contents cannot both be true, but the believings are both justified. And so it seems to me, at the present stage of reflection, that by distinguishing between belief-state and belief-content, a distinction we need to make in any case, I solve my problem.
But best to sidestep the practical dilemma by invocation of my maxim:
Avoid the near occasion of violent confrontation!
This will prove difficult in coming days as we slide into the abyss. But it ain't over 'til it's over. The slide is not inevitable. If you know what's good for you, you will support Donald J. Trump for president.
____________
*When I counter a lethal attack with lethal force, my intention is not to kill the assailant; my intention is merely to stop his deadly attack. But to do so I must use such force as is necessary to stop him, force that I know has a high likelihood of killing him. If my intention is to kill him, then I am in violation of both the moral and the positive law.
**Compare George Orwell, a volunteer for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War: "Still, I did not shoot partly because of that detail about the trousers. I had come here to shoot at ‘Fascists’; but a man who is holding up his trousers isn’t a ‘Fascist’, he is visibly a fellow creature, similar to yourself, and you don’t feel like shooting at him."
P1. Not everything morally impermissible should be legally impermissible.
P2. Not everything morally obligatory should be legally obligatory.
P3. Not everything morally permissible should be legally permissible.
Ad (P1). This could be put idiomatically by saying that not everything morally wrong should be illegal. I hope you will agree with me that drinking oneself into a stupor is morally wrong. It's a Friday night, you are alone, you stay in your house the entire time, but you down a quart of whiskey. I hope you will agree with me that this is morally wrong. (I could give an argument, but it belongs in a separate post.) Though morally wrong, such behavior should not be illegal. If you don't like my example, you are invited to concoct one of your liking that makes the same point.
Why should not everything morally wrong be illegal? The positive law is made by human beings and enforced by state power. But it is notorious that human beings are to varying degrees morally corrupt and that they are therefore strongly tempted to misuse any power that they acquire. Note that I do not say that power tends to corrupt its possessors, but that our antecedent corruption inclines us to the misuse of such power as we possess. (Lord Acton take note.) This misuse of power is especially clear in the case of the agents of the state. (Ever have a run-in with a cop, a sheriff, an IRS agent who overstepped the bounds of his legitimate authority?)
Given the egregious violations of individual liberty including mass murder that state agents have been known to commit, reasonable people support limited government. One way to limit government is to restrict its sanctions to behavior that impinges upon public welfare. Thus there needs to be laws against drunk driving. But laws against private drunkenness (as in my example above) tend to give too much power to the state, besides being unenforceable. Laws that are unenforced, however, tend to breed disrespect for law. Without widespread respect for the rule of law, all the laws in the world will not contribute to public well-being.
Laws should be few in number, rational in content, understandable by the average citizen, enforceable, and enforced with credible sanctions. So not everything morally wrong should be illegal.
Ad (P2). If you morally must do (ought to do, are obligated to do, have a duty to do) X, should the positive law require it of you? I answer in the negative. Consider the philosophical/religious duty to worship no such 'false gods' as money, power, sexual pleasure, Lady Luck, but to worship or devote yourself only to worthy objects such as God, truth, justice, benevolence, and the like. I would argue that it is morally impermissible to worship any such thing as money, sex, etc. and morally obligatory to apportion your highest concern only to worthy objects such as truth and justice. But these views of mine, thought rationally defensible, can be opposed with a show of rationality by sincere people. A hedonist might sincerely and thoughtfully maintain that pleasure alone is the good and that there can be no grounded distinctions among pleasures, and that therefore the pursuit of sexual pleasure among consenting adults is a perfectly legitimate and morally permissible object of pursuit. I would consider it better if people devoted themselves to truth over sexual pleasure, but the abuses that would result from using state power to enforce that view of mine would be worse than the positive outcomes would be good.
For a second example, consider the moral obligation to maintain one's physical health by the usual measures including good diet and vigorous exercise. If you value individual liberty and understand what I wrote above, you will not want laws that mandate these measures. (By the way, this is why 'universal health care,' i.e., government control of the delivery of health services ought to be opposed: a government that controls health care will be in a position to demand 'appropriate' behaviors from people including not engaging in activities deemed risky.)
Ad (P3). If an act is morally permissible, should it also be legally permissible? No. Surely there are circumstances in which running a red light is morally permissible. Suppose at three in the morning you slowly and cautiously coast through a red light at a deserted intersection in the proverbial 'middle of nowhere.' Surely that is morally permissible. Yet it ought not be legally allowed: a well-crafted law cannot have a clause that reads, "A motorist shall not run a red light except when it is safe to do so."
For a second example consider that is it morally permissible for some 15- year-olds to drive. But it ought not be legally permissible for 15-year-olds to drive. The same goes for voting. There are 15-year-olds more mature than some 50-year-olds and more fit to cast a vote. Yet it ought not be legal for 15 -year-olds to vote. Finally, it seems obvious that some marijuana use by some people in some circumstances is morally permissible, but it scarcely follows that marijuana use ought to be legalized. What is harmless for some will be dangerous for many. Laws crafted for the common good cannot take into account individual differences.
Vallicella, William F. (2016) "William E. Mann, GOD, MODALITY, AND MORALITY," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 33 : Iss. 3 , Article 8. DOI: 10.5840/faithphil201633368
Available here. A long and meaty review article including a discussion of divine simplicity and Mann's approach thereto.
A London correspondent writes,
A question for you: is there a set of verifiable practices that would act as a benchmark for the Western Enlightenment? I can think of (i) widespread (but not universal) respect for science (ii) separation of church and state (iii) end of judicial torture (iv) abolition of slavery, etc.
1) I will assume that moral progress, both individually and collectively, is possible, both in moral theory and in moral practice. This is not obvious inasmuch as one might insist that while there has been moral change, there has been no moral progress. Progress, by definition, is change for the better, and a moral/cultural relativist will claim that there is no better or worse with respect moral beliefs and practices.
2) If moral progress is possible, is it also actual? I would say so. Holding as I do that slavery is a grave moral evil, I also hold that we in the West have made progress in this regard. The same goes for penal practices. We in the West no longer punish in the barbaric ways still employed in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. Example are easily multiplied.
3) Is overall moral progress consistent with a certain amount of moral regress? I would like to say so. Mass murder and mass enslavement in Germany 1933-1945 are recognized in the West for the moral abominations they were. The Germans have come to their moral senses. But what about the situation in the East under communism, in particular the communism practiced in China as we speak? I am thinking of the forced labor in China's Xinjiang region.
4) We cannot overlook the moral degeneration of the West, which suggests that while we made progress in the West, it is now being undone. The Biden administration, for example, is the most lawless in American history; as a matter of policy it aids and abets criminality and then lies about what it is doing.
5) As for the benchmarks of progress, the ones listed by my correspondent are essential. I would also add the following: religious liberty, limited government, the rule of law, equality of all citizens before the law, due process, universal suffrage, open inquiry and academic freedom, free markets, and the right to free speech and freedom of assembly without fear of reprisal.
AN EMINENTLY REASONABLE PRINCIPLE, but only if the law can be known by the average citizen who exercises appropriate diligence. For that exercise of due diligence to be possible, however, laws must be relatively few in number, rational in content, and plainly stated. If that were the case, then ignorance of the law would be vincible ignorance and thus no excuse or defense. But it is not now the case.
Respect for the rule of law cannot be legislated. A law that mandated respect for the rule of law would presuppose the very respect without which it could not be an effective law. Such respect is among the moral prerequisites of the positive law.
Victor Reppert poses the following important question on his Facebook page:
What, if anything, is wrong with holding, at the same time that a) Abortion is murder, and b) abortion should be legal?
It's not a logical contradiction, is it? Is it merely counterintuitive? Is it un-Christian?
One way of reaching this position might be to hold that, given a metaphysical or religious perspective, you view abortion as murder, but, living in a society where large segments of the population don't share that perspective, you don't think it reasonable to pass laws imposing that view on the general public.
The propositions in question are not logically contradictory. But one can generate a logical inconsistency by adding an eminently plausible proposition. Consider the following antilogism:
a) Abortion is murder
b) Abortion should be legal
c) Murder should be illegal.
The triad is logically inconsistent: the constituent propositions cannot all be true.
Now (c) is the least rejectable (the least rejection-worthy) of the three propositions. For if the law does not proscribe murder, what would it proscribe? The purpose of the State, at a bare minimum, is to protect life, liberty, and property. (Call it the Lockean triad.) If the State is morally justified, then its passing and enforcing of laws is morally justified. Among these laws are laws pertaining to the killing of human beings. Without going any deeper into it, I will just assert what most of us will accept, namely, that the intentional killing of innocent human being is morally wrong and therefore ought to be made illegal by a morally justified State.
In short, we ought not reject (c). Therefore, one who accepts (a) ought to reject (b). Transforming the antilogism into a syllogism, we get:
Murder should be illegal
Abortion is murder
Ergo
Abortion should be illegal.
Reppert ought to be persuaded by this argument since he accepts the minor and I have given a powerful argument for the major.
Reppert asks whether it is reasonable to pass laws against abortion in a society in which large segments of the population do not oppose abortion. Well, was it reasonable to pass laws against slavery in a society in which large segments of the population did not oppose slavery?
Suppose we become even more morally depraved than we are now. We get to the point where the majority considers infanticide morally acceptable. Would it be reasonable to do away with the laws proscribing it? Or the laws proscribing child pornography? Or rape laws? Should the law merely reflect the going moral sentiment no matter how decadent it becomes?
I'll leave you with these questions.
Mendocino Joe writes,
Wow, I cannot believe what I am seeing in our country these days.I think your blog post about the Left hating because they need a bogey man after winning the civil rights battle is way too kind. I think we are seeing, in the Left these days, radical Evil from the pit. We are watching people who are unmoored from any traditional religion or morality, completely unmoored. It is very scary to me.
Let me be clear on this — if you're bitter that there was no President Pantsuit that's fine. Losses can be bitter, especially when you really think you should have won. But no matter what you think by the rules of the contest Hillary lost to Trump — period.
But if you go beyond being bitter, start up hashtags like "#Resist" and then put that into action both inside and outside the government to disregard and disrupt the results of a valid electoral process you are not only violating the law you are inciting a shooting civil war.
This sort of activity by people inside the government is treading right to if not over the line of insurrection. The use of government force for unlawful purpose, intentionally, meets the definition; it is an attempt to overthrow the law of the United States by corrupting the monopoly on deadly force that the government has and directing it unlawfully against certain people for political purposes. This is not a "petty offense"; it is a direct assault on and attempt to overthrow the result of a lawful elective process and according to the above link it's still going on today.
If you're aggrieved by an election's results you have every right to print up a sign and go picket on a public street or other public place. You can take out all the political advertisements you wish and make your best effort to get a different result the next time around. But you do not have the right to enter into a restaurant where someone is eating dinner, which is private property, and assault said person because they happen to be a member of that political party. That is a violation of the law in that it constitutes assault and is begging for an immediate outbreak of violence in response.
Read the whole thing. It's very good.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 101:
Certain rash people have asserted that, just as there are no mice where there are no cats, so no one is possessed where there are no exorcists.
Lichtenberg's observation puts me in mind of anarchists who say that where there are no laws there are no criminals. That is not much better than saying that where there are no chemists there are no chemicals.
Just as there are chemicals whether or not there are any chemists, there are moral wrongs whether or not there are any positive laws* prohibiting them. What makes murder wrong is not that there are positive laws prohibiting it; murder is wrong antecedently of the positive law. It is morally wrong before (logically speaking) it is legally wrong. And it is precisely the moral wrongness of murder that justifies having laws against it.
And yet there is a sense in which criminals are legislated into existence: one cannot be a criminal in the eyes of the law unless there is the law. And it is certainly true that to be a criminal in the eyes of the law does not entail being guilty of any moral wrong-doing. There are senseless, incoherent, and unjust laws.
But the anarchist goes off the deep end if he thinks that there is no moral justification for any legal prohibitions, or that the wrongness of every act is but an artifact of the law's prohibiting it.
As I like to say, anarchism is to political philosophy what eliminative materialism is to the philosophy of mind. Both are 'lunatic' positions. But 'lunacy' has its uses. It is instructive in the way pathology is. We study diseases not to spread them, but to contain them. We study diseases of the mind not to promote them, but to work out the principles of intellectual hygiene.
____________
*Positive laws are those posited by a legislature. See here:
In general, the term "positive law" connotes statutes, i.e., law that has been enacted by a duly authorized legislature. As used in this sense, positive law is distinguishable from natural law. The term "natural law", especially as used generally in legal philosophy, refers to a set of universal principles and rules that properly govern moral human conduct. Unlike a statute, natural law is not created by human beings. Rather, natural law is thought to be the preexisting law of nature, which human beings can discover through their capacity for rational analysis.
UPDATE (1/24). Tom Anger comments:
What makes murder wrong is not that there are positive laws prohibiting it; murder is wrong antecedently of the positive law. It is morally wrong before (logically speaking) it is legally wrong.
[N]atural law is not created by human beings. Rather, natural law is thought to be the preexisting law of nature, which human beings can discover through their capacity for rational analysis.
From a Cato Policy Report:
. . . Alan Dershowitz discusses his time litigating cases in the old Soviet Union. He was always taken by the fact that they could prosecute anybody they wanted because some of the statutes were so vague. Dershowitz points out that this was a technique developed by Beria, the infamous sidekick of Stalin, who said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” That really is something that has survived the Soviet Union and has arrived in the good old USA. “Show me the man,” says any federal prosecutor, “and I can show you the crime.” This is not an exaggeration.
And now Donald J. Trump, the legally elected president of the United States, is the man. To prosecute someone for a crime, some crime has to be alleged. But in this case what is the crime? Alan Dershowitz raises the question and answers it: there is no crime.
There is no evidence that Trump or his team colluded with the Kremlin to swing the election in Trump's favor. But even if there were, such collusion would be at worst political wrong doing, not a crime. This is not my opinion but the opinion of a distinguished Harvard law professor who is not a Trump supporter. As Dershowitz told Tucker Carlson last night, "I voted for Hillary Clinton very proudly."
Around 3:10 Dershowitz speaks of "hacking the DNA" several times. He means: hacking the DNC, the Democrat National Committee. Carlson failed to catch the mistake.
I now want to make a point that Dershowitz did not make last night, namely, that phrases like 'hacking the election' have no definite meaning. You can literally hack into John Podesta's e-mail account, but you can't literally hack an election. (It has been claimed that the password he employed was 'password.' Could Podesta be that stupid or careless? I am skeptical.) Of course, you could use 'hack an election' to mean 'influence an election,' but then you will have changed the subject. Almost all of us, from low-level bloggers to the most august pundits, were trying to 'hack the election' in the sense of 'influence the election.'
What we have here with the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller is not an inquiry into whether a crime has been committed, but a witch hunt: a search for a nonexistent crime to pin on a much-hated man.
But didn't Trump obstruct justice by firing Comey? Is that not what is maintained by such powerful intellects as Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi? Of course not, as Dershowitz points out at 3:38 ff. Trump's firing of Comey was well within the president's constitutional rights. "Under the unitary theory of the executive, the president has the right to direct the justice department." I would add that the president fired Comey for good reason.
No doubt the 'optics' were bad: the firing looked self-serving. So the haters pounced suggesting that the only reason Trump fired Comey was because Comey was about to expose criminal acts by Trump. But that is just nonsense. Again: which criminal acts?
Even if Trump was sick of Comey and wanted him out for personal motives, he had solid impersonal legal reasons for firing him. They were set forth in the Rosenstein memorandum.
The Trump haters appear to be committing a version of the genetic fallacy. The psychological motivation of a claim or action is irrelevant to the question of the truth of the claim or the justifiability of the action. Had Hillary or Bernie or Jill or Jeb! been president, each would have been justified in firing Comey. Again, this is because of the availability of solid impersonal legal reasons for his firing. And you can bet all of Hillary's ugly pant-suits that she would have fired him had she won as she was 'supposed to.'
Sanctuary cities and marijuana legalization statutes are examples of local and state governments ignoring federal law. But federal authorities and elected officials who vent about those subjects should look to their own disregard of the law. Two recent instances of the lawlessness of Beltway elites concern the U.S.-Mexico border barrier and the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im).
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 called for the construction of 700 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Not even the most shameless sophist will argue that anything like that happened. Far fewer than even 100 miles of high fencing followed. The feds did lay down vehicle barriers and counted those as “miles” toward compliance, but it’s laughable to contend that the law was implemented in any meaningful way.
It was conservative inaction that gave Trump traction. On this issue as on others.
It is. Illegal immigrants are subject to criminal penalties. While improper entry is a crime, unlawful presence is not a crime. One can be unlawfully present in the U. S. without having entered improperly, and thus without having committed a crime.
If a foreign national enters the country on a valid travel or work visa, but overstays his visa, failing to exit before the expiration date, then he is in violation of federal immigration law. But this comes under the civil code, not the criminal code. Such a person is subject to civil penalties such as deportation.
So there are two main ways for an alien to be illegal. He can be illegal in virtue of violating the criminal code or illegal in virtue of violating the civil code.
Those who oppose strict enforcement of national borders show their contempt for the rule of law and their willingness to tolerate criminal behavior, not just illegal behavior.
Petula Dvorak, Washington Post, 13 June: "Omar Mateen despised gays in the same way that Donald Trump and too many of his supporters despise Muslims."
Why isn't this libel?
'Libel' as defined in the law:
1) n. to publish in print (including pictures), writing or broadcast through radio, television or film, an untruth about another which will do harm to that person or his/her reputation, by tending to bring the target into ridicule, hatred, scorn or contempt of others. Libel is the written or broadcast form of defamation, distinguished from slander, which is oral defamation. It is a tort (civil wrong) making the person or entity (like a newspaper, magazine or political organization) open to a lawsuit for damages by the person who can prove the statement about him/her was a lie. Read more.
Dvorak and her employers ought to be careful. Trump is a vindictive man with the will and the wherewithal to take legal action against his enemies. There are plenty of negative things she could say about the man that are true.
Whether or not Dvorak's outrageous statement counts as libel, she has no evidence for it. To call for a moratorium on Muslim immigration is perfectly reasonable in present circumstances and does not imply any hatred of Muslims.
Analogy. The law forbids the sale of firearms to felons. I think this provision of the law is wise and good and conducive unto law and order. Does that make me a hater of felons? I don't hate them; I merely hold that it would be unwise to allow them to purchase firearms. Similarly, I don't hate Muslims, I merely hold that in present circumstances it would be wise to vet carefully immigrants from Muslim lands.
Suppose I sell you my car, transferring title to you in a manner that accords with all the relevant statutes. It is a good-faith transaction and I have no reason to suspect you of harboring any criminal intent. But later you use the car I sold you to mow down children on a school yard, or to violate the Mann Act, or to commit some other crime. Would it be right to hold me morally responsible for your wrongdoing? Of course not. No doubt, had I not sold you that particular car, that particular criminal event would not have occurred: as a philosopher might put it, the event is individuated by its constituents, one of them being the car I sold you. That very event could not have occurred without that very car. But that does not show that I am responsible for your crime. I am no more responsible than the owner of the gas station who sold you the fuel that you used for your spree.
Suppose I open a cheesecake emporium, and you decide to make cheesecake your main dietary item. Am I responsible for your ensuing health difficulties? Of course not. Being a nice guy, I will most likely warn you that a diet consisting chiefly of cheesecake is contraindicated. But in the end, the responsibility for your ill health lies with you.
The same goes for tobacco products, cheeseburgers, and so on down the line. The responsibility for your drunk driving resides with you, not with auto manufacturers or distilleries. Is this hard to understand? Not unless you are morally obtuse or a liberal, terms that in the end may be coextensive.
The principle extends to gun manufacturers and retailers. They have their legal responsibilities, of course. They are sometimes the legitimate targets of product liability suits. But once a weapon has been legally purchased or otherwise acquired, the owner alone is responsible for any crimes he commits using it.
But many liberals don't see it this way. What they cannot achieve through gun control legislation, they hope to achieve through frivolous lawsuits. The haven't had much success recently. Good. But the fact that they try shows how bereft of common sense and basic decency they are.
Don't expect them to give up. Hillary is in full-fury mode on this one. According to the BBC, "She proposes abolishing legislation that protects gun makers and dealers from being sued by shooting victims."
There is no wisdom on the Left. The very fact that there is any discussion at all of what ought to be a non-issue shows how far we've sunk in this country.
