Where Cheney is Wrong

I like Dick Cheney. I think he's an asset to our nation, and a man to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.

Generally speaking, I agree with his stances on various issues.

And on gay marriage, he has a reasonably consistent position: people should be free to marry whom they choose, and the several States should decide for themselves what they will allow.

But the trouble is this: marriage is not about freedom or liberty, it's about a government sanction of a binding relationship. It's a special contract, with centuries of legal precedent governing it. I say that not to make an appeal to tradition, but rather to say we should tread lightly in these matters, until all of the ramifications are clear.

Extending marriage, or even civil unions, to same-sex couples means giving a societal stamp of approval on their relationship.

And I don't think that's a good idea. I have a variety of reasons for thinking it's not a good idea, about which others may disagree.

So while I agree with Mr. Cheney that people should be allowed to do what they will, they should not demand that I approve their decision.

Is my position consistent? Sure. Do what you will, but don't ask my blessing.

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Would Jesus Want Rape Legalized?

Over at Classical Values, Simon asks:

A Question For Christian Social Conservatives

Did Jesus promote government solutions to moral problems?

The answer I gave there doesn't stress enough the obvious point that He did promote the Commandments, and not just the Big Ten. He just wanted us not to lean on the Law for approval.

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Brother's Keeper, Loser's Weeper

It is often said, now almost tritely, that "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." Yet extending this maxim to a general rule for recognizing the boundary between individuals on other matters is more difficult.

For instance, just as you have a right to an unbroken nose, you have a right to unblackened lungs. So clearly I must not blacken them by sticking the exhaust pipe of my car down your windpipe. And holding my exhaust pipe an inch from your face is hardly better.

But just as clearly, you would be hard pressed to show a difference in the blackness of your lungs if I drive my car in the next town against if I don't, or even if I drive it in the next town or your own. Somewhere between these extremes is a point at which my injury to you is too great to allow my production of pollution in your proximity.

But not only in distance or difficulty of detection of the injury caused is there a boundary point on one side of which my behavior would be acceptable and on the other not, but you also have a similar boundary. Our boundaries may not be the same, but for each of us one exists.

There arises thereby a bargain, by which you and I agree to allow each other activity which is mutually injurious on some level, but from which we derive some benefit. It may be that you directly derive some benefit from my activity and vice versa, but in the least we accept one another's activity so as to obtain permission to engage in it ourselves.

A similar situation exists for the wearing of perfume or cologne, noise polution, use of foul language, the use of offensive speech, and so on. In each case, there is a range of activity from innocuity to assault, and the line separating the two is difficult to place. We allow each other some leeway so that we will have leeway in turn.

In each of these instances there is the use by the individual of some common resource. Clearly we are each entitled to use common resources to some extent, or we could not breathe the common air or make any noise if we wandered off our own patch of dirt. But we also must not make the common resource unusable.

But differing opinions on usability are possible, just as individuals differ in their tolerance for injury. Some may prefer to allow more use of common resources than others, either so that they in turn may have more use, or because they don't want to use the common resource at all. Some, of course, do not consider the rightness or proprietary of their use of the commons, they simply use what they want, or what they can get. Similarly, so wish to keep the commons pristine.

We are passed by tradition or custom the expectation that we are permitted certain activities and denied others that were innocuous or harmful, respectively, but with the crowds of modernity have become less restricted or more so.

It is reasonable to suggest that there are some actions I could take which would not be injurious, or be minimally injurious, to another individual, but would be of greater harm to some group of individuals taken together, or to society as a whole. If I overuse or ruin some common resource, my overuse or ruination may not affect the next person to use it or the next fifty, but eventually my share or corruption will be felt.

So where does the interest of society in our behavior enter?

That, and any satisfying conclusion to the foregoing, will have to wait for another day.

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Your Homework for the Weekend

For a possible 10 Anti-Lunacy credits, compare and contrast:

Larry Craig, flirting in public restrooms, presumed guilty because...
Classical Values: An Unforgiveable Sin

Pedophiles as foster parents, above suspicion because...
Michelle Malkin: The Horrors of Political Correctness

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Hypeocracy

If you've not heard about the misfortunes of Senator Larry Craig, consider yourself both blessed for having missed the circus and cursed for having to read about it from me. On the plus side, I'm going to skip the sordid details and go straight for what's really important about the event: it highlights a difference between Left and Right on the subject of morality.

Specifically, the main charge against Craig is not what he did, but hypocrisy. Craig, as a Republican, is held to the familiar standards of traditional decency. (Yes, "traditional decency" is a loaded phrase, but it's the best one I can come up with that hasn't been co opted, redefined, and bumper stuck into obsolescence). Democrats are not held to those standards, or any other save the most clear and outlandish violations of law. Why is this so?

It is because on the Left, traditional standards of decency are not part of their morality. Morality, I've shown, is the set of rules for behavior that we believe everyone ought to obey. People differ wildly on what those rules are, but we all have them and a sense that ours are correct. On the left, even those who cling to traditional decency do not hold others to that standard, but prefer tolerance of wickedness over its disdain. Traditional decency is to liberals a matter of preference and lifestyle.

To liberals, then, traditional decency is an ethical choice. Since Senator Craig self-selected into a group adhering to traditional decency, liberals react to him as someone who has committed an ethical violation.

But don't fall for the "we just hate hypocrisy" line: consider the Global Warming alarmists who are palleted around in limousines and private jets while telling the little people to walk. Hypocrisy doesn't matter, only opportunity matters: the opportunity gain power by making public the peccadilloes of their political foes.

By the way: a United States Senator accused of public lewdness would not plead guilty unless he were guilty. If not guilty, he would come before the public and explain the misunderstanding, if any, or simply deny the charges. To plead guilty in secret and then exclaim innocence in public strains credulity, and where politicians are concerned, it already doesn't take much to make my lie detector peg the needle.

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Lunactivism Kills Bambi

As usual, Eric at Classical Values provokes thought with his post on deer in the headlights and the lunactivists who keep them there. Commenting, I noted

It is difficult to engage in rational discussion with people for whom humans and non-humans have equal (or comparable and in within an order of magnitude) value.

If you ask people which would be a greater crime, killing 10 deer or killing one human, most would answer that killing one human is worse. The "stop the killing" lunactivist in your post would have to ponder it, and probably come up with the wrong answer.

I really don't know how to stop them, or even how to engage them. They derive tremendous emotional and even spiritual value from standing against the status quo, shaking their little fists against what they see as the teeming hordes of Evil, those of us who draw a value distinction between human and non-human.

To me, the value of animal life and human life is not comparable. (Yes, I know humans are animals, too; unless I specify, you can be assured that I always use "animal" to mean non-human animal, or those aspects of biology which distinguish humans and non-humans from spinach or quartz. ) What I mean is that other things being equal, I would accept the immediate extinction of deer (or any non-human species) if it meant saving one human life, even for a moment.

Of course, things are not equal, and the extinction of even one species of deer would have a cost in human life, and an impact on ecosystems that would in turn have unknown, and largely negative, effects on humans. So, the pathologically absurd situation I posed above would at some point involve a dilemma in which human life could be balanced against human life.

But back in the real world, burgeoning deer populations spill over into areas occupied by people and their vehicles. Deer, lacking the evolutionary foresight to be constructed from sturdier materials, meet their inevitable end more quickly than either their Creator or we their predators would have liked. In the process they do a great amount of damage to property, and indeed, cost human lives.

So the overabundance of deer, as well as their total absence, would be a net negative for humans. Deer are good, when their numbers are great enough to be stable but not so great as to cause problems for themselves (by the lack of food and space) or us (by trying to use ours).

But the animal rights crowd will have nothing of that, because they don't see the distinction between humans and animals. Despite efforts to deny it, the notion that non-humans have their own innate rights, rather than drawing their protection from our need to regulate our behavior, leads inexorably to devaluing humans. So instead of stopping at criticizing those who engage in the cruelty of dog-fighting or other ways to have fun hurting animals, they engender overpopulation, disease, and harm to the creatures they ostensibly wish to help.

Like all attempts to deny reality, attempting to keep people from using animals for food is doomed to failure.

Stay tuned here for more on lunactivists, their antics, and their intractable nature.

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I Hate Stupid Laws

Nate Nelson has a post over at Redstate about the latest hate crime law Congress is trying to pass. The bill is unconstitutional on its face, being an attempt to intrude Federal power into State and local matters. Nate does a good job of listing the reasons why it's such a bad bill, and why hate crimes laws are so bad in general.

But Nate misses the point of hate crime legislation. It isn't to punish those who commit the crimes per se, even though that is how the laws are written. The purpose of hate crime legislation is to legislate morality.

The illogic of passing laws with the expressed purpose of punishing people who break other laws is transparent. If the haters in question were going to obey the new law, they would have obeyed the old one.

It's a truism that 'you can't legislate morality', but of course the law does affect morality. What you cannot do is pass a law and expect a given person to be moral because of it. What you can expect is for society as a whole to tend to internalize as moral what the law says. How many politicians excuse or even justify their behavior with "I have done nothing illegal"? And so for ordinary folks, as well, especially the young and the shallow.

Hate crime laws put the people on notice that the government doesn't like people being picked on for their skin color, religion, etc. The biggest problem is their failure to generalize: if you're going to have hate crime laws, make it double-extra-illegal to victimize someone based on their group membership, period, and quit trying to make lists. Everyone would be covered equally by the law, then.

But that would not fulfill the other purpose, which is to let Democrats act like they're doing something to advance the cause of their current crop of victims.

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The Mass Hysteria of Convenient Targets

Mankind has a certain way of finding scapegoats, a method which seems to assign blame for causes on a scale inversely proportional with the ability of the scapegoat to defend itself against the charge.

Why do we insist on assigning guilt for all troubles great and small to the bogeyman of the day? While Satan, demons, pixies, elves, gremlins, and other such creatures have often received more blame than is their due, there can be little doubt that they are involved in some of our many troubles. But we don't stop there; we take actual things and people we see in the world and assign other-worldly power to them.

• Witches
  From as early as we can tell, witches enjoyed a special reputation for casting ruinous spells and unprovoked magicks on their hapless neighbors.
  
  These witches were so powerful as to control the climate, the economy, disease or war. That they chose in their omnipotence to live in a hut on the outskirts of some dirty little village ought to have given a thinking peasant reason to pause with his pitchfork. History being so woefully incomplete, we may never know whether the Cotton Mathers of the world gave that consideration.
  
  
• Jews
  Like witches, the Jews represented a convenient target. A small minority, with "odd" ways, the Jews were also quite a bit smarter on average. But beginning with the Black Plague in the 14^th century, Jews were blamed for various events which, with the benefit of hindsight, they probably wish they had not brought about.
  
  
• Corporations
  At the turn of the 19^th century into the 20^th, a populist movement began to vilify the Trusts as controlling all economic activity and exerting undue influence on government. This fell short of attributing weather patterns to corporate greed, but not too far short of it.
  
  
• Drugs
  At about the same time, Prohibition Fever caught hold of Americans, especially activist Christians. Opiates, marijuana, and alcohol were each vilified as ruinous to good living, and banned. This was at about the same time that self-propelled vehicles became common, allowing unprecedented leverage. Prior to this time, what a person drank or smoked was a matter of taste, with social benefits and consequences, but no concern of the government. With modern machinery came modern restrictions on freedom.
  
  Today the hysteria continues in certain circles, but it must be noted that drug use has not tapered off, despite laws to the contrary.
  
  
• Jews again
  The Nazis incorporated antisemitic hysteria into their governing philosophy.
  
  
• Commies
  In the United States at the height of the Cold War, the Red Menace was thought capable of any evil imaginable, and so communists were held responsible for even the evil they didn't do.
  
  
• Jews again
  What a surprise it is that the Islamofascists blame the Jews for their troubles. And what a shame that some Western dhimmis agree.
  
  
• Corporations
  Those evil corporations are said to be keeping a lid on 200-mpg cars, electric cars, a cancer cure, an AIDS cure, and the like.
  
  
• Global Warming
  But perhaps the all-time winner in the Mass Hysteria Sweepstakes, or at least giving antisemitism a runner up, is the Global Warming hysteria. Perpetuated by science worship and a willing media, the global warming myth plays on the fallacy that if something happens, there must be a human cause.
  

So if you start to think the Witches have unleashed the Jews on us with their Evil Corporations peddling Drugs and leading to Global Warming, just relax. It's really George Bush's fault.

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Just Say No to Mixed Vegetables!

Apparently the moral philosophers of Al Kaiduh cannot abide cohabitating vegetables.

Avert your eyes! Have you no shame? There are children present.

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America is Good

IlliniPundit had the temerity to suggest that contrary to the assumption of many, America is a force for good in the world, and not of evil.

That brave suggestion presupposes agreement on the meaning of "good", however. In today's climate of Carrolinian redefinition, attaching meaning even, or perhaps especially to the simplest words requires a foundation built laboriously on the eroding sands of common understanding, subject always to the deconstructionist's indignant retort.

Words do have some meaning, as even the staunchest post-modernist would agree (though "post-modernist" is perhaps itself not well-defined). I submit that while it may not be possible for America's critics and her apologists to agree that any one particular thing is "good", we can at least agree that there is an adjective we use to mean we prefer one result to another, or one thing to its opposite.

But what does it mean for a nation to be "good"? Are we only saying that we prefer its existence to its absence? I think it's more than that.

When struggling to define "good" for a nation, it is tempting to fall back on what it means for an individual to be good. though nations are not individuals and must be held to different standards. On indulging the temptation, and recalling that almost all people everywhere have seen selfless giving as a high good, we can suppose that a pattern of selfless giving on the part of a nation, if such were possible, would tend to put that nation in line for the label "good".

The difference between personal morality and national goodness is that in a nation, people do not all hold the same views. That is part of why nations cannot be judged by the same moral standards as individuals: national governments must seek the good of all, if they are to last, and in doing so are often praised for things which would redound sharply against an individual, or criticized for that which would exalt an individual.

So does that conflict between standards for individual and national virtue apply to goodness? A national government cannot be as selfless as an individual, any more than a father or mother would be right to deprive and neglect his or her children to care for those outside the family. A single person can choose to live in abject and unhealthful poverty. The needs of a family, or those of the citizens of the nation, intervene.

Perhaps attractiveness in nations is a good meter for goodness, though here the bar is set so low for my argument that I may feel foolish completing it.

People don't allow themselves to be stuffed into the hold of cargo ships to get into China, or France, or Belgium. They come to America. But that only says that some people like the idea of America more than the reality of their homeland, which is not quite the same thing as being "good".

People come to America as they always have for two separate and inseparable reasons: the promise of prosperity, and the lure of liberty. Perhaps in the many generations who have journeyed here over the past four centuries there have been some who came only for liberty, or only in search of wealth, but each and every one of them also knew that if they were free to worship in their own way, they would likewise be free to turn their hand to whatever they wished. Similarly, those seeking wealth cannot but have known that here they would be free to worship, speak, write, and travel largely as they wished. One can hardly expect to prosper otherwise. And despite the growing tyranny of political correctness, in America one can still largely believe, say, and do whatever it is that strikes his fancy.

At present, we are still free. And that is a good thing about America.

America has for the past hundred-odd years been wont to engage in foreign wars not to gain territory or resources, but in defense of others. In particular, American lives have been expended to the ideals of others, and most especially their right to govern themselves. Sometimes our mission has been clouded in a kind of international conflict of interest, in which our dual goals of defending liberty and securing something else of value has been seen to sully our moral authority.

And yet this defense of liberty and the use of military force to extend commercial influence are similar, and in fact no different, from the desire of those emigrating from some impoverished or tyrannical country. For the desire to extend freedom to others and the desire for favorable trade climate are also inseparable. We cannot extend the social freedoms without also creating a free economy.

America has shown the world that a democratic republic could not only survive, but flourish. She has come to the rescue of nations beset by their own ill-constructed economies, natural disasters, and by other nations. And all America asks in return is that people be free.

America is good. It's almost a tautology.

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The Lies About Cats and Dogs

Eric at Classical Values (click title to go there) has been baying for weeks about California AB 1634, a mandatory spay-neuter bill with the Orwellian name "California Healthy Pets Act". It would essentially force any pet owner who wanted to avoid spaying or neutering a dog or cat to register as a breeder, with whatever registration fee, by the time the animal is four months old. This post is only about dogs, but the law applies to cats, too.

The bill probably came about because the neighbor's mutt got busy with some snob's chihuahua, and the result was a whole litter full of dogs. Dogs! No particular breed, just dogs. So now they want to make sure there are no more mutts, but only overpriced and inbred products to market and sell.

There is a fundamental difference of opinion between those who believe that animals have inherent rights and those who believe that animals derive their rights from their relation to us. For instance, anti-extinction laws can be justified on the basis of the inherent right of a species to exist, or on the basis of maintaining access to that species for future generations.

A strange shift has taken place in the animal rights community: many have come to believe that it is better to kill or neuter an animal than to allow it to live in any but the best circumstances. It's similar to the "quality of life" standard for humans, in which euthanasia is justified on the basis of poor quality of life. Quality of life being subjective, the standard may as well be that without access to shopping mall and Starbucks, life is not worth living.

Many places have already made it a crime to shoot your own dog, though no one seems to be able to explain why ending a dog's life that way is more cruel than doing it with a needle. The animal feels no pain either way.

There is another fundamental split, between the collectivists and the individualists. Collectivists believe that property belongs to everyone, and individualists believe in private property.

In AB1634, we see an alliance between those who do not believe in private property and those who want
to control other people's pets, both for the "good" of the pets and to line their own pockets. It's government interference both in the personal lives of people and in the marketplace.

Owning and training a dog is one of the great joys of life. Whether it's a simple game of fetch or teaching a dog sign language, the mutual loyalty is something to be treasured. Knowing that my dog is the first line of defense for my home and family is reason to keep it intensely interested in protecting its turf, as only an non-neutered dog or a mother with pups can be. That the same creature who runs after a Frisbee would gladly risk its neck to protect us is enough to make me unwilling to let anyone near it with a scalpel.

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The Balance Sheet

At Classical Values, Simon writes:

Clauzwitz [sic] says that the moral factor in war is the predominate factor. Fighting and sustaining the fighting has a moral calculus. The answer an individual gets will depend on the weight given to each component in the analysis. The weights are moral weights.

In Viet Nam and Iraq, Simon argues, the faces do not look like ours, and so the lives are deemed not as valuable, a situation he sees as deplorable racism. The Socratic reply was:

The moral calculus is based on something we need not dance around: American lives are more valuable to us than other lives. It isn't race, but national loyalty. The other viewpoint is called 'transnationalism'.

It is a mistake to strawman that into "foreign lives are worthless", because we have allies and enemies, and prospective allies. The degree to which another nation is our ally is the degree to which we should value the lives of its citizens, tempered of course by the constant value of all human life.

And there is the nub of the argument: how big is the constant factor, and does that factor outweigh our 'interests'?

What are the moral factors in the calculus of war? Specifically, in the kind of war exemplified by World War I, II, Korea, Viet Nam, and Iraq, in which our interests are to be defended on foreign soil, such that capitulation will not lead to immediate loss of sovereignty, but will significantly increase the likelihood of that loss.

In moral equations, it is necessary to establish the relations among terms and variables. We begin by listing the participants, simplifying somewhat by categorization, merely waving the hands for now in saying that there may not be hard lines between Allies, Enemies, and Neutrals in the new warfare.

• Us
• Allies
• Enemies
• Neutrals

And the assets:

• Ideals
• Civilian Lives
• Territory
• Military Lives
• Money
• Resources

It should be noted that defeat can be expressed as the complete loss of any one of those assets. Victory, however, is slightly harder to define. But the decision over whether to commit to war, and the will to stay at war, might be expressed as a vector equation by attaching values to each of those assets. Those values are the weights referred to by Simon, representing the importance we give the assets.

The situation is complicated further when we note that each of the participants will almost certainly value each of the assets, and especially each other's assets, differently. It is also very difficult to compare the values of the assets, except in relation to one another: we would spend money to save military lives, military lives to gain territory, territory (perhaps) to gain civilian lives, and would often sacrifice any of the other assets to defend the ideals of freedom, justice, and human rights.

I suggest an ordering for the weights as follows. The idea is that we would gladly spend things lower on the list to obtain or retain things higher on the list.

• Our Ideals
• Our Civilian Lives
• Our Territory
• Ally Ideals (probably even those in conflict with ours)
• Ally Civilian Lives
• Ally Territory
• Neutral Civilian Lives
• Enemy Territory
• Ally Military Lives
• Our Military Lives
• Neutral Territory
• Enemy Civilian Lives
• Our Money
• Our Resources
• Ally Money
• Ally Resources
• Neutral Ideals (that don't match ours)
• Neutral Military Lives
• Neutral Money
• Neutral Resources
• Enemy Resources
• Enemy Money
• Enemy Military Lives
• Enemy Ideals (that don't match ours)

The actual equation is left as an exercise ... or perhaps another day.

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Whither Justice?

I don't think I've written anything about the Duke Lacrosse team.

I've never written that Mike Nifong should be disbarred.

Now I need not:

In fact, the Duke lacrosse case showed a number of things. Yes, there was the issue of the disgraced District Attorney Michael Nifong running amok, suppressing evidence and cynically bartering the lives of three white lacrosse players in his populist bid to win reelection in racially divided Durham. Nifong was certainly part of that “tragic rush to accuse.” As was Syracuse University, which decided not to accept as transfers any students from the Duke lacrosse team—not just the three accused chaps, mind you, but anyone contaminated by having played lacrosse for Duke.

But there are at least two other aspects of the case that deserve comment. One is the role of the media, which with few exceptions descended on the story like Lord Byron’s fabled Assyrian and his cohorts pursuing the destruction of Sennacherib. Oh, how The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and countless other bastions of liberal self-satisfaction loved it! Race. Class. Sex. Victimhood. It was the perfect morality tale. Those white jocks at “the Harvard of the South” just had to be guilty. And what a good time we were all going to have lacerating the malefactors while at the same time preening ourselves on our own superior virtue!

What the Duke case really shows, however, is the utter bankruptcy of defining morality in terms of a class struggle. The social justice crowd was unable to withhold judgement, to let the justice system winnow out the truth, because they do not believe in Truth.

When an individual from a group is pretermined by his very membership in that group to be immoral, that is injustice.

w/t, Pejman

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Repressive Repression

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, a future is described for us in which reaction to libertinism draws forth a suffocating state with the smug, self-righteous concern of the far left blended unapologetically with the smug, self-righteous moralizing of the far right.

Ms. Atwood was 20 years ahead of her time, and she chose the wrong culture. The regime in Iran is now poised to fulfill her warning, as a repressive regime implements a policy of outward modesty to show its tender care.

By enforcing their vision of modesty for Iran, the mullahs and President Mahmound Ahmadinejad will sow the seeds for their own eventual overthrow. As Atwood said, you can't cheat nature.

It is my hope that if U.S Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who I'm sure is well read, ever has a chance to speak to the Iranian officials, she politely wears shorts and a t-shirt.

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Who is Legislating Morality Now?

I hate racism. My parents raised their children not to see other people for their race, wealth, or outward appearance, but to treat everyone the same. The idea of using violence against someone because of they are different is difficult for me even to consider. Hate someone for their their religion or sexual orientation? How silly. Even sillier is hating someone for their race or gender, something over which they have no control.

The Congressional majority appears to be filled with race-baiters and fearmongers. Unfortunately, they aren't content merely to stir up trouble, like other race-baiting fearmongers. No, these folks want to assert federal authority to prosecute based on their perceptions of your perceptions. What race-baiting fearmongers think you are thinking will become the standard by which your actions will be judged.

The standard drumbeat from the left for years has been that the right is ... I won't use the phrase involving throats ... trying to pass laws to legislate morality. As if anyone ever tried to pass a law they considered immoral. But now, a veritable stampede of House Democrats are trying to turn people into non-racist, non-sexist, and otherwise legislate their version of morality.

HR 1592, like all thought crime laws, would make some crimes more illegal if you're thinking certain illegal thoughts while you commit them. It also extends the Federal hate crime definition to include sexual orientation and gender.

Motive is always a dispositive factor in finding a person guilty or not guilty of a crime. The same physical action can be considered

• A crime
• Not a crime for reason of self-defense
  
• Not a crime for reason of insanity
  
• A reckless accident
• An unforeseeable accident, or
• An act of heroics

depending on the motivation for the action.

Suppose two men argue over something -- a poker game, a girl, or a seat on the subway. Things get heated, and one of them calls the other an ethnic or sexual slur. Their argument becomes a brawl, and soon it escalates into a kill-or-be-killed battle.

Now, at this point, one of them is guilty of using physical violence, while the other is guilty of a hate crime. But which one? The one who used the ethnic slur merely used words.

Sticks and stones
May break my bones,
But words will never hurt me.

But the one who responded to the ethnic slur is filled with hate, and is committing a crime based on the perceived or actual race of his victim. Or maybe it was all about the poker game and testosterone. Tough to tell, isn't it? Are their actions really any different?

Hate crime laws aim to make certain crimes more strongly punished than other crimes, depending on the thoughts behind the motivation. While it's often difficult enough to judge whether someone intended to commit a crime or was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's a simple matter compared to deciding whether someone was motivated by greed, blood lust, hunger, or some kind of group hate.

Suppose it was some of all of those?

Suppose a person commits a crime that is 90% intended to acquire enough money to buy a nicer stereo, but has the added benefit of showing some member of a protected group a "lesson". Is that still just as bad as if the entire motivation were motivated by group hatred?

What about a fellow who harms someone of a different race, motivated 99% to protect himself, but oh, there was a tiny bit of racial animosity stirred up by the very need to defend himself. Is his self-defense invalidated because he had illegal thoughts in the heat of the battle?

Since these laws are not enforced equally, they violate the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.

The logical generalization of hate crime laws is to make sentences proportional to the level of group animosity that motivated the crime, regardless of the group or the crime. Democrats ought to love that, since they make their living keeping people labelled and divided into groups.

Maybe if we stop paying so much attention to the color of people's skin and what they do behind closed doors, we'll start to get along a little better.

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Besmirch Not Thy Betters

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Rosa Brooks mistakenly charges Col. George E. "Bud" Day (Ret.) with being a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of Vietnam-era veterans who opposed Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in his 2004 presidential bid. While unleashing her venom on the the Swift Boat Vets for speaking truth to Mr. Kerry's attempt to gain power, Ms. Brooks splashes some of her poison on Col. Day, a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the most decorated living veteran.

When a Medal of Honor wearer enters a room, Generals stand. Everyone who wears, or has ever worn a uniform for our country should stand and salute if appropriate. He is due the same level of respect as the flag-covered casket of one killed in action, because by his actions he showed that he would forfeit his life for ours. He is due the deference one would show the holder of an irreconcilable debt.

To carry the illustration further, Redstate's Jeff Emanuel (wreath tip) notes:

When a man wearing the Medal of Honor approaches the President, it is the President who salutes. 'Nuff said.

He is owed, in perpetuity.

It would be as difficult, and as fruitful, to attack Mother Theresa for harlotry as to attack his integrity for a quick political score. As she shunned both lucre and carnality, the implication that she used the latter to gain the former would expose the one making the charge for transparent malice. Those awarded the Medal of Honor are accorded, unlike all other citizens, a free pass similar to hers with regard to being a judge of character, at least character in military service, in no small part because they define it.

As a postscript, it should be noted that while there is nothing wrong, and very much right, with being a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Col. Day was not one. Ms. Brooks not only picked an unassailable target for character assassination, but she was shooting blanks at the wrong target.

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Of Redefinition and the Soundbite Gotcha

As my devoted followers know, I like for words to mean things. You probably share that point of view; it's one of the best ways to test for conservatism or liberalism: is a person misusing a word, or is it acceptable to use words as we see fit, if doing so allows us to prove a point, or at least to feel that we have proven it?

It is the most liberal of illicit crafts: redefine the word, to attach to the word a new connotation.

"Morality? But isn't true morality caring for our fellow man, or would you say that is immoral?"

"Justice? But isn't true justice when children are fed -- or is a hungry child what you think is just?"

"Peace? Peace includes Justice and Equality -- or do you want injustice and inequality?"

"Patriotism? Dissent is patriotic."

Both sides agree that X is good, so the redefiner says "true" X is X plus another good thing Y, and equates disagreeing with the new definition of X with being against Y.

We all agree that Peace is good, and a lack of societal tension (injustice, tyranny, inequality, discontent) is good. But it's redefinition to go from there to saying that Peace is not Peace if there is tension. Where does that stop? It can't. The poor will always be with us. People will always be dissatisfied; it's what we do.

Why not just say Peace cannot last long without Justice? Why can we not agree that any Peace without Freedom is an unacceptable Peace?

Because then one of us has to say that Peace alone is not our goal. Let that be me, then. Peace is not my goal, either for you or for me, unless we are both Free, unless we both live under Justice, and unless we both have some opportunity to better our lot.

We face a risk in saying that while we like children to be fed, and not feeding the hunger violates Charity, that's not what we mean by Morality or Justice. The risk is the Soundbite Gotcha: "You said you don't think it's moral to feed the hungry!". No, I said it was uncharitable, a charge just as grave. There are many ways for something to be wrong; it may be uncharitable, injust, or immoral; it might be illegal, unethical, or just plain sneaky. But while logical, applying that notion doesn't defend against the Soundbite Gotcha very well.

And it won't fit on a bumper sticker.

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Ethics

(This post is a sidebar for an upcoming entry on morality.)

Some incorrectly see ethics and morality as synonymous. ("Ethics", as it concerns us here, are sets of rules, rather than the study of the entire field which includes moral philosophy.) It is the meaning intended when someone labels conduct "ethical" or "unethical". Ethics are rules we intentionally adopt for ourselves.

Our ethics are typically situational, to abuse some terminology, because they offer a guide for conduct in a particular set of uncommon but foreseeable circumstances. Ethics are often necessary because the law or morality don't work for a given situation, either because the legal or moral precept does not extend to the situation, or because two precepts conflict.

Almost all professions, crafts, and fields of endeavor have their own code or codes of ethics.

• Doctors have to treat people regardless of whether the harm was self-inflicted, or the result of some unfortunate decision made by the patient. The doctor cannot allow himself to become a judge. Neither morality nor the law can tell them how to behave. A code of ethics is required.
• Lawyers are bound by ethics. Our legal system is adversarial; the presumption is that two equally armed sides in a legal dispute will arrive at justice through debating the issues involved. That system requires that lawyers set aside their disdain for the guilt of their client and proceed as if he were innocent. Lawyers often muck around with the law itself, as each court case potentially can alter the law. The law cannot be made exact enough to cover these instances, so a code of ethics is required.
• Journalism, politics, computer system administration, and virtually every other field has its own standards of ethical behavior, covering those areas where morality or the law cannot guide. Should a journalist cover a story with the potential to harm as well as to enlighten? Should a computer system administrator examine the contents of some suspicious private files? These questions are best resolved under ethical standards.

It is because ethical rules resolve moral conflicts and work outside of morality that we can see the difference between the two.

Ethics, morality, and law share guiding human behavior as their common subject matter. It is possible for behavior to be unethical but moral and legal; unethical and immoral, but legal; and so on. But in most cases the intersection of the three is characterized by their violation: the unethical will be immoral or illegal. Some people, even otherwise clear-headed philosophers, seem to become thoroughly befuddled when asked to compare and contrast them. It's all pretty simple:

• Ethics are the rules we adopt for ourselves
• Morals are the rules we believe apply to everyone †
  
• Laws are the rules we demand that everyone obey

By adopting a code of ethics, we know a priori that they are not universal. They often overlap with morals, but the distinction of personal adoption is important. For some, ethics replace morality entirely, as in the (hypothetical) case of those who believe they have a sufficiently developed set of rules to ignore societal norms.

Ethics are real things, and have an objective, factual basis: they either are in place or they are not. We are not free to assign or ascribe ethics to others; they must adopt their own. If someone adopts a set of ethics, for example by joining a group which claims a code of ethics, we can hold the joiner accountable for behaving according to the ethical standards so adopted. Unethical conduct can by definition only be practiced by someone who has adopted a set of ethics.

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† Morality is the subject for another post.

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