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Archives for November 2015

Trump & Truth

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As this is being written at the end of November, Donald Trump is still the leading Republican presidential candidate. While some might take the view that this is in spite of the outrageous and terrible things Trump says, a better explanation is that he is doing well because of this behavior. Some regard it as evidence of his authenticity and find it appealing in the face of so many slick and seemingly inauthentic politicians (Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are regarded by some as examples of this). Some agree with what Trump says and thus find this behavior very appealing.

Trump was once again in the media spotlight for an outrageous claim. This time, he made a claim about something he believed happened on 9/11: “Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”

Trump was immediately called on this claim on the grounds that it is completely untrue. While it would be as reasonable to dismiss Trump’s false claim as it would be to dismiss any other claim that is quite obviously untrue, the Washington Post and Politifact undertook a detailed investigation. On the one hand, it seems needless to dignify such a falsehood with investigation. On the other hand, since Trump is the leading Republican candidate, his claims could be regarded as meriting the courtesy of a fact check rather than simple dismissal as being patently ludicrous.  As should be expected, while they did find some urban myths and rumors, they found absolutely no evidence supporting Trump’s claim.

Rather impressively, Trump decided to double-down on his claim rather than acknowledging that his claim is manifestly false. His confidence has also caused some of his supporters to accept his claim, typically with vague references about having some memory of something that would support Trump’s claim. This is consistent with the way ideologically motivated “reasoning” works: when confronted with evidence against a claim that is part of one’s ideologically identity, the strength of the belief becomes even stronger. This holds true across the political spectrum and into other areas as well. For example, people who strongly identify with the anti-vaccination movement not only dismiss the overwhelming scientific evidence against their views, they often double-down on their beliefs and some even take criticism as more proof that they are right.

This tendency does make psychological sense—when part of a person’s identity is at risk, it is natural to engage in a form of wishful thinking and accept (or reject) a claim because one really wants the claim to be true (or false). However, wishful thinking is fallacious thinking—wanting a claim to be true does not make it true. As such, this tendency is a defect in a person’s rationality and giving in to it will generally lead to poor decision making.

There is also the fact that since at least the time of Nixon a narrative about liberal media bias has been constructed and implanted into the minds of many. This provides an all-purpose defense against almost any negative claims made by the media about conservatives. Because of this, Trump’s defenders can allege that the media covered up the story (which would, of course, contradict his claim that he saw all those people in another city celebrating 9/11) or that they are now engaged in a conspiracy against Trump.

A rather obvious problem with the claim that the media is engaged in some sort of conspiracy is that if Trump saw those thousands celebrating in New Jersey, then there should be no shortage of witnesses and video evidence. However, there are no witnesses and no such video evidence. This is because Trump’s claim is not true.

While it would be easy to claim that Trump is simply lying, this might not be the case. As discussed in an earlier essay I wrote about presidential candidate Ben Carson’s untrue claims, a claim being false is not sufficient to make it a lie. For example, a person might say that he has $20 in his pocket but be wrong because a pickpocket stole it a few minutes ago. Her claim would be untrue, but it would be a mistake to accuse her of being a liar. While this oversimplifies things quite a bit, for Trump to be lying about this he would need to believe that what he is saying is not true and be engaged in the right (or rather) wrong sort of intent. The matter of intent is important for obvious reasons, such as distinguishing fiction writers from liars. If Trump believes what he is saying, then he would not be lying.

While it might seem inconceivable that Trump really believes such an obvious untruth, it could very well be the case. Memory, as has been well-established, is notoriously unreliable. People forget things and fill in the missing pieces with bits of fiction they think are facts. This happens to all of us because of our imperfect memories and a need for a coherent narrative. There is also the fact that people can convince themselves that something is true—often by using on themselves various rhetorical techniques. One common way this is done is by reputation—the more often people hear a claim repeated, the more likely it is that they will accept it as true, even when there is no evidence for the claim. This is why the use of repeated talking points is such a popular strategy among politicians, pundits and purveyors. Trump might have told himself his story so many times that he now sincerely believes it and once it is cemented in his mind, it will be all but impossible for any evidence or criticism to dislodge his narrative. If this is the case, in his mind there was such massive celebrations and he probably can even “remember” the images and sounds—such is the power of the mind.

Trump could, of course, be well aware that he is saying something untrue but has decided to stick with his claim. This would make considerable sense—while people are supposed to pay a price for being completely wrong and an even higher price for lying, Trump has been rewarded with more coverage and more support with each new outrageous thing he does or says. Because of this success, Trump has excellent reasons to continue doing what he has been doing. It might take him all the way to the White House.

 

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The West vs. Islam?

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Crusader 2015One popular narrative on the American right is that the West is engaged in a “clash of civilizations” with Islam. Some phrase it in terms of Islam being at war with the West, while some are willing to cast the war as being between the West and radical Islam (rather than all of Islam). Not surprisingly, the various terrorist groups that self-identify as Muslim would probably be quite pleased with this narrative: they also would like it to be a war between all of Islam and the West.

There are various psychological reasons to embrace this narrative. Seeing oneself on the side of good in an epic struggle with evil is certainly very appealing. This provides a person with meaning and a sense of significance that is so often lacking in modern life. There is also the lure of racism, bigotry and religious intolerance. These are strong motivating factors to regard those who are different as an implacable enemy—inferior in all ways, yet somehow demonically dangerous and devilishly clever.

There are also powerful motivations to get others to accept this narrative. Leaders can use it as political fuel to gain power and to justify internal oppression and external violence. It also makes an excellent distractor from other problems. As such, it is no surprise that both American politicians and terrorist leaders are happy to push the West vs. Islam narrative. Doing so serves both their agendas.

While the psychology and politics of the narrative are both very important, I will focus on discussing the idea of the West being at war with Islam. One obvious starting point is to try to sort out what this might mean.

It might seem easy to define the West—this could be done by listing the usual Western nations, such as the United States, France, Germany, Canada and so on. However, it can get a bit fuzzy in areas. For example, Turkey is predominantly Muslim, but is part of NATO and considered by some to be part of the Western bloc. Russia is certainly not part of the classic West, but is the target of terrorist groups. But, perhaps it is possible to just go with the classic West and ignore the finer points of this war.

Establishing the war is fairly easy. While many terrorist groups that claim to be fighting for Islam have declared open war on the West, the overwhelming majority of Muslims have not done so. As such, the West is only at war with some Muslims and not with Islam. Likewise, Islam is not at war with the West, but some Muslims are. Muslims are also at war with other Muslims—after all, Daesh (which likes to call itself “ISIS”) has killed far more Muslims than it has killed Westerners. The West could, of course, establish a full war on Islam on its own. For example, President Trump could get Congress to declare war on Islam.

There are, however, some obvious practical concerns about taking the notion of a war on Islam seriously. One concern is the fact that while the are some predominantly Muslim nations that are hostile to the United States (such as Iran and Syria), there are others that are nominal allies (such as Jordan, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) and even one that is part of NATO (Turkey). As such, a war against Islam would entail a war against these allies. That seems both morally and practically problematic.

A second concern is that many friendly and neutral countries have Muslim populations. These countries would probably take issue with a war against their citizens. There is also the fact that the United States has Muslim citizens and waging a war on United States citizens could also prove somewhat problematic both legally and practically. But perhaps Muslim Americans could be treated the way Japanese Americans were treated during WWII. That worked out great, so why not just repeat history? Donald Trump has laid out some of his thoughts on this matter, at least in regards to handling the war with Muslims in America. He has considered requiring Muslims to be registered in a special database and to identify their faith. As those who are familiar with history will remember, this sort of thing has been done before. While I am no constitutional scholar, this sort of thing would seem to be a clear violation of basic civil rights and is clearly immoral.

A third practical concern is determining the victory conditions for such a war. “Classic” war typically involves trying to get the opposing country to surrender or to at least agree to conditions that end the war. However, a war against a religion would seem to be inherently different. One rather awful victory condition might be the elimination of Islam, either through extermination or conversion. This sort of thing has been attempted against faiths and peoples in the past with varying degrees of “success.” However, such exterminations seem to be rather morally problematic—to say the least. Alternatively, Muslims might be rounded up and kept in concentrated areas where the West could observe them and ensure they did not engage in any hostilities against the West. This also seems rather impractical and morally horrifying.

Victory might be defined in less extreme ways, such as getting Islam to surrender and creating agreements to behave in ways that the West approves. This is, after all, how traditional wars end. There are, of course, many practical problems here. These would include the logistics of Islam’s surrender (since there is no unified leadership of Islam) and working out the agreements all across the world.

Or perhaps there is no actual intention to achieve victory: the war on Islam is simply used to justify internal suppression of rights and liberties, to manipulate voters, to ensure that money keeps flowing into the military-security complex, and to provide pretexts for military operations. As such, the war will continue until a more traditional opponent can be found to fill the role of adversary.  Russia seemed eager to get back into this role, but they now seem willing to take part in the war on terror.

One reasonable counter to the above is to insist that although the ideas of a war with Islam and a clash of civilizations are quite real, a more serious approach is a war with radical Islam rather than all of Islam. This narrower approach could avoid many of the above practical problems, assuming that our Muslim allies are not radicals and that our and allied Muslim citizens are (mostly) not radicals. This would enable the West to avoid having to wage war on allies and its own citizens, which would be rather awkward.

While this narrowed scope is an improvement, there are still some obvious concerns. One is working out who counts as the right sort of radical. After all, a person can hold to a very radical theology, yet have no interest in harming anyone else. But perhaps “radical Islam” could be defined in terms of groups that engage in terrorist and criminal acts that also self-identity as Muslims. If this approach is taken, then there would seem to be no legitimate justification for labeling this a war on Islam or even radical Islam. It would, rather, be a conflict with terrorists and criminals—which is as it should be.

There are some very practical reasons for avoiding even the “war on radical Islam” phrasing. One is that using the phrase provides terrorist groups with a nice piece of propaganda: they can claim that the West is at war with Islam, rather than being engaged in conflict with terrorists and criminals who operate under the banner of Islam. The second is that the use of the phrase alienates and antagonizes Muslims who are not terrorists, thus doing harm in the efforts to win allies (or at least to keep people neutral).

It might be objected that refusing to use “radical Islam” is a sign of political correctness or cowardice. While this is a beloved talking point for some, it has no merit as a serious criticism. As noted above, using the term merely serves to benefit the terrorists and antagonize potential allies. Insisting on using the term is a strategic error that is often driven by bravado, ignorance and intolerance. As such, the West should not engage in a war on Islam or even radical Islam. Fighting terrorists is, of course, another matter entirely. We should certainly put an end to Daesh and other such groups to protect the West and Muslims. And Western Muslims.

 

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Taxing the 1% IV: Incentives

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As noted in previous essays on this topic, the highest income folks in the United States now pay about 1/3 of their income in taxes.  The left has proposed increasing the tax rate to 40% or even 45% while the right has countered with proposals to either not raise taxes or cut them even more. This, the final essay in this series, considers the stock argument that a tax increase will be a destroyer of incentives.

The gist of the argument is that if the taxes for the top income brackets is increased to 40% or higher, the rich will become demotivated and this will have negative consequences. Since these negative consequences should be avoided, the conclusion is that taxes should not be increased—thus keeping the incentives in place.

In terms of assessing this argument, there are two major points of concern. One is whether or not a tax increase would destroy the incentives of the top economic class. The other deals with the negative consequences, their nature, their likelihood of occurring and the extent and scope of the harm. I will begin with the alleged consequences.

The alleged consequences are many and varied. One is based on the claim that the top economic class contains the innovators and if they are demotivated, then there will be less innovation. This could range from there being no new social media platforms to there being no new pharmaceuticals. While this is a point of concern, this assumes that innovation arrives primarily out of the top economic class—a matter that can tested empirically. While some top earners are innovators, much of the innovation seems to come from those in the lower economic classes—such as the folks in the labs doing the actual research and engineering. The idea that the rich are the innovators certainly matches the fiction of Ayn Rand, but seems to miss the way research and development actually occurs.

Another is based on the claim that the top class serve as the investors that provide the capital that enables the economy to function. Since the top class controls the capital, this is quite a reasonable concern. If Americans with the largest shares of the money decided to reduce or stop investing, then the economy would need to rely on foreign capital or what could be provided by the lower classes. Since the lower classes have far less money (by definition), they would not be able to provide the needed financial support. There are, of course, foreign investors who would happily take the place of the wealthy Americans, so the economy would probably still roll along. Especially since American investors might find the idea of losing out to foreign investors sufficient motivation to overcome the demotivation of a tax increase.

There is also the claim that the top income class contains the people who do the important things, like brain surgery and creating the new financial instruments that will take down the world economy next time around. While this does have some appeal, it seems that much of the important stuff is done by people who are not in the top classes. Again, the idea that the economic elite are doing the important stuff while the rest of the people are not (or are takers rather than makers) is yet another part of the fictional universe of Ayn Rand.

Fairness does, however, require that these matters be properly investigated. If it can be shown that the top class is as critical as its defenders claim, then my assertions can be refuted. Of course, it is well worth considering that much of the alleged importance of the top class arises from the fact that it has a disproportionate share of the wealth and that it would be far less important if the distribution were not so grotesquely imbalanced. As such, a tax increase might have the impact of decreasing the alleged importance of the top economic class. I will now turn to the matter of whether or not a tax increase would demotivate the top economic class.

One easy and obvious response to the claim that a relatively small tax increase would demotivate the top economic class is that the vast majority of the rest of us work jobs, innovate, invest and do important things for vastly less than those at the top. Even if the rich paid slightly more taxes, their incomes would still vastly exceed the rest of us. And if we can find the motivation to keep going despite the relative pittances we are paid, then the rich can also do so. When I worked a minimum wage job, I was motivated to go to work. When I was an adjunct making $16,000 a year, I was still motivated to go to work.

It could be replied that the lower classes are motivated because they need the income to survive. We need to work to buy food, medicine, shelter and so on. Those who are so well off that they do not need to work to survive, it could be claimed, also have the luxury of being demotivated by a slight decline in their income. Whereas someone who must earn her daily bread at a crushing minimum wage (or less) job has to get up and go to work, the top economic folks can allow themselves to be broken by the slight tax increase and decide to stop investing, stop innovating, and stop doing important stuff.

One reply is that it seems unlikely that the top folks are so weak as to be broken by a slight tax increase. Naturally, a crushing increase would be a different story—but there are no serious proposals to inflict crushing tax burdens on the rich. After all, crushing burdens are for the poor. Another reply is that if the current rich become demotivated, there are plenty of people who will be happy to take their place—even if it means paying slightly higher taxes on a vastly increased income. So, we would just get some new rich folks to replace the demotivated slackers—capitalism at its finest.

 

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Performance Based Funding & Adjustments

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Photo by Paula O'Neil
Photo by Paula O’Neil

I have written numerous essays on the issue of performance based funding of Florida state universities. This essay adds to the stack by addressing the matter of adjusting the assessment on the basis of impediments. I will begin, as I so often do, with a running analogy.

This coming Thursday is Thanksgiving and I will, as I have for the past few decades, run the Tallahassee Turkey Trot. By ancient law, the more miles you run on Thanksgiving, the more pumpkin pie and turkey you can stuff into your pie port. This is good science.

Back in the day, people wanted me to be on their Turkey Trot team because I was (relatively) fast. These days, I am asked to be on a team because I am (relatively) old but still (relatively) mobile.  As to why age and not just speed would be important in team selection, the answer is that the team scoring involves the use of an age grade calculator. While there is some debate about the accuracy of the calculators, the basic idea is sound: the impact of aging on performance can be taken into account in order to “level the playing field” (or “running road”) so as to allow fair comparisons and assessments of performance between people of different ages.

Suppose, for example, I wanted to compare my performance as a 49 year old runner relative to a young man (perhaps my younger and much faster self). The most obvious way to do this is to simply compare our times in the same race and this would be a legitimate comparison. If I ran the 5K in 20 minutes and the young fellow ran it in 19 minutes, he would have performed better than I did. However, if a fair comparison were desired, then the effect of aging should be taken into account—after all, as I like to say, I am dragging the weight of many more years.  Using an age grade calculator, my 20 minute 5K would be age adjusted to be equivalent to a 17:45 run by a young man. As such, I would have performed better than the young fellow given the temporal challenge I faced.

While assessing running times is different from assessing the performance of a university, the situations do seem similar in relevant ways. To be specific, the goal is to assess performance and to do so fairly. In the case of running, measuring the performance can be done by using only the overall times, but this does not truly measure the performance in terms of how well each runner has done in regards to the key challenge of age. Likewise, universities could be compared in terms of the unadjusted numbers, but this would not provide a fair basis for measuring performance without considering the key challenges faced by each university.

As I have mentioned in previous essays, my university, Florida A&M University, has fared poorly under the state’s assessment system. As with using just the actual times from a race, this assessment is a fair evaluation given the standards. My university really is doing worse than the other schools, given the assigned categories and the way the results are calculated. However, Florida A&M University (and other schools) face challenges that the top ranked schools do not face (or do not face to the same degree). As such, a truly fair assessment of the performance of the schools would need to employ something analogous to the age graded calculations.

As noted in another essay, Florida A&M University is well ranked in terms of its contribution to social mobility. One reason for this is that the majority of Florida A&M University students are low-income students and the school does reasonable well at helping them move up. However, lower income students face numerous challenged that would lower their chances of graduation and success. These factors include the fact that students from poor schools (which tend to be located in economically disadvantaged areas) will tend to be poorly prepared for college.  Another factor is that poverty negatively impacts brain development as well as academic performance. There is also the obvious fact that disadvantaged students need to borrow more money than students from wealthier backgrounds. This entails more student debt and seventy percent of African American students say that student debt is their main reason for dropping out. In contrast, less than fifty percent of white students make this claim.

Given the impediments faced by lower income students, the assessment of university performance should be economically graded—that is, there should be an adjustment that compensates for the negative effect of the economic disadvantages of the students. Without this, the performance of the university cannot be properly assessed. Even though a university’s overall numbers might be lower than other schools, the school’s actual performance in terms of what it is doing for its students might be quite good.

In addition to the economic factors, there is also the factor of racism (which is also intertwined with economics). As I have mentioned in prior essays, African-American students are still often victims of segregation in regards to K-12 education and receive generally inferior education relative to white students. This clearly will impact college performance.

Race is also a major factor in regards to economic success. As noted in a previous essay, people with white sounding names are more likely to get interviews and call backs. For whites, the unemployment rate is 5.3% and it is 11.4% for blacks.  The poverty rate for whites is 9.7% while that for blacks it is 27.2%. The median household wealth for whites is $91,405 and for blacks $6,446. Blacks own homes at a rate of 43.5% while whites do so at 72.9%. Median household income is $35,416 for blacks and $59,754 for whites.  Since many of the factors used to assess Florida state universities use economic and performance factors that are impacted by the effects of racism, fairness would require that there be a racism graded calculation. This would factor in how the impact of racism lowers the academic and economic success of black college graduates, thus allowing an accurate measure of the performance of Florida A&M University and other schools. Without such adjustments, there is no clear measure of how the schools actually are performing.

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An Army of One

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Thanks to movies and TV shows such as the Time Machine, Dr. Who and Back to the Future, it is easy to picture what time travel might look like: a person or people get into a machine, some cool stuff happens (coolness is proportional to the special effects budget) and the machine vanishes. It then reappears in the past or the future (without all that tedious mucking about in the time between now and then).

Thanks to philosophers, science fiction writers and scientists, there are enough problems and paradoxes regarding time travel to keep thinkers pontificating until after the end of time. I will not endeavor to solve any of these problems or paradoxes here. Rather, I will present yet another time travel scenario to the stack.

Imagine that a human research team has found a time gate on a desolate alien world. The scientists have figured out how to use the gate, at least well enough to send people back and forth through time. They also learned that the gate compensates for motion of the planet in space, thus preventing potentially fatal displacements.

As is always the case, there are nefarious beings who wish to seize the gate for their own diabolical purposes. Perhaps they want to go and change the time line so that rather than one really good Terminator movie and a second decent one were made, there are many very bad terminator movies in the new timeline. Or perhaps that want to do even worse deeds.

Unfortunately for the good guys, the small expedition has only one trained soldier, Sergeant Vasquez, and she has only a limited supply of combat gear. While the other team members will fight bravely, they know they would be no match for the nefarious beings. What they need is an army, but all they have is a time gate and one soldier.

The scientists consider using the gate to go far back in time in the hopes of recruiting aid from the original inhabitants of the world. Obvious objections are raised against this proposal, such as the concern that the original inhabitants might be worse than the nefarious beings or the possibility that the time travelers might simply be arrested and locked up.

Just as all seemed lost, the team historian recalled an ancient marketing slogan, “Army of One.” He realized that this silly marketing tool could be made into a useful reality. The time gate could be used to multiply the soldier into a true army of one. The team philosopher raised the objection that this sort of thing should not be possible, since it would require that a particular being, namely Vasquez, be multiply located. That is, she would be in different places at the same time. That sort of madness, the philosopher pointed out, was something only metaphysical universals could pull off. One of the scientists pointed out that they had used the gate to send things back and forth in time, which resulted in just that sort of multiple location. After all, a can of soda sent back in time twenty days would be a certain distance from that same soda of twenty days ago. So, multiple location was obviously something that particulars could do—otherwise time travel would be impossible. Which it clearly was not.

The team philosopher, fuming a bit, raised the objection that this was all well and good with cans of soda, because they were not people. Having the same person multiply located would presumably do irreversible damage to most theories of personal identity. The team HR expert cleared her throat and brought up the practical matter of paychecks, benefits, insurance and other such concerns. Vasquez’s husband was caught smiling a mysterious smile, which he quickly wiped of his face when he noticed other team members noticing. The philosopher then played a final card: if we had sent Vasquez back repeatedly in time, we’d have our army of one right now. I don’t see that army. So it can’t work.

Vasquez, a practical soldier, settled the matter—she told the head scientist to set the gate to take her well back before the expedition arrived.  She would then use the gate to “meet herself” repeatedly until she had a big enough army to wipe out the invaders.

As she headed towards the gate with her gear, she said “I’ll go hide someplace so you won’t see me. Then I’ll ambush the nefarious invaders. We can sort things out afterwards.” The philosopher muttered, but secretly thought it was a pretty good idea.

The team members were very worried when the nefarious invaders arrived but were very glad to see an army of Vasquez rush from hiding to shoot the hell out of them.  After cleaning up the mess, one of the Vasquez asked “so what do I do now? There is an army of me and a couple of me got killed in the fight. Do I try to sort it out by going back through the gate one me at a time or what?”

The HR expert looked very worried—it had been great when the army of one showed up, but the budget would not cover paying the army. But, thought the expert, Vasquez is still technically and legally one person. She could make it work…unless Vasquez got mad enough to shoot her.

 

 

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Refugees & Terrorists

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In response to the recent terrorist attack in Paris (but presumably not those outside the West, such as in Beirut) many governors have stated they will try to prevent the relocation of Syrian refugees into their states. These states include my home state of Maine, my university state of Ohio and my adopted state of Florida. Recognizing a chance to score political points, some Republican presidential candidates have expressed their opposition to allowing more Syrian refugees into the country. Some, such as Ted Cruz, have proposed a religious test for entry into the country: Christian refugees would be allowed, while Muslim refugees would be turned away.

On the one hand, it is tempting to dismiss this as mere political posturing and pandering to fear, racism and religious intolerance. On the other hand, it is worth considering the legitimate worries that lie under the posturing and the pandering. One worry is, of course, the possibility that terrorists could masquerade as refugees to enter the country. Another worry is that refugees who are not already terrorists might be radicalized and become terrorists.

In matters of politics, it is rather unusual for people to operate on the basis of consistently held principles. Instead, views tend to be held on the basis of how a person feels about a specific matter or what the person thinks about the political value of taking a specific position. However, a proper moral assessment requires considering the matter in terms of general principles and consistency.

In the case of the refugees, the general principle justifying excluding them would be something like this: it is morally acceptable to exclude from a state groups who include people who might pose a threat. This principle seems, in general, quite reasonable. After all, excluding people who might present a threat serves to protect people from harm.

Of course, this principle is incredibly broad and would justify excluding almost anyone and everyone. After all, nearly every group of people (tourists, refugees, out-of-staters, men, Christians, atheists, cat fanciers, football players, and so on) include people who might pose a threat.  While excluding everyone would increase safety, it would certainly make for a rather empty state. As such, this general principle should be subject to some additional refinement in terms of such factors as the odds that a dangerous person will be in the group in question, the harm such a person is likely to do, and the likely harms from excluding such people.

As noted above, the concern about refugees from Syria (and the Middle East) is that they might include terrorists or terrorists to be. One factor to consider is the odds that this will occur. The United States has a fairly extensive (and slow) vetting process for refugees and, as such, it is not surprising that of “745,000 refugees resettled since September 11th, only two Iraqis in Kentucky have been arrested on terrorist charges, for aiding al-Qaeda in Iraq.”  This indicates that although the chance of a terrorist arriving masquerading as a refugee is not zero, it is exceptionally unlikely.

It might be countered, using the usual hyperbolic rhetoric of such things, that if even one terrorist gets into the United States, that would be an intolerable disaster. While I do agree that this would be a bad thing, there is the matter of general principles. In this case, would it be reasonable to operate on a principle that the possibility of even one bad outcome is sufficient to warrant a broad ban on something? That, I would contend, would generally seem to be unreasonable. This principle would justify banning guns, nuts, cars and almost all other things. It would also justify banning tourists and visitors from other states. After all, tourists and people from other states do bad things in states from time to time. As such, this principle seems unreasonable.

There is, of course, the matter of the political risk. A politician who supports allowing refugees to come into her state will be vilified by certain pundits and a certain news outlet if even a single incident happens. This, of course, would be no more reasonable than vilifying a politician who supports the second amendment just because a person is wrongly shot in her state.  But, reason is usually absent in the realm of political punditry.

Another factor to consider is the harm that would be done by excluding such refugees. If they cannot be settled someplace, they will be condemned to live as involuntary nomads and suffer all that entails. There is also the ironic possibility that such excluded refugees will become, as pundits like to say, radicalized. After all, people who are deprived of hope and who are treated as pariahs tend to become a bit resentful and some might decide to actually become terrorists. There is also the fact that banning refugees provides a nice bit of propaganda for the terrorist groups.

Given that the risk is very small and the harm to the refugees would be significant, the moral thing to do is to allow the refugees into the United States. Yes, one of them could be a terrorist. But so could a tourist. Or some American coming from another state. Or already in the state.

In addition to the sort of utilitarian calculation just made, an argument can also be advanced on the basis of moral duties to others, even when acting on such a duty involves risk. In terms of religious-based ethics, a standard principle is to love thy neighbor as thyself, which would seem to require that the refugees be aided, even at a slight risk. There is also the golden rule: if the United States fell into chaos and war, Americans fleeing the carnage would want other people to help them. Even though we Americans have a reputation for violence. As such, we need to accept refugees.

As a closing point, we Americans love to make claims about the moral superiority and exceptionalism of our country. Talk is cheap, so if we want to prove our alleged superiority and exceptionalism, we have to act in an exceptional way. Refusing to help people out of fear is to show a lack of charity, compassion and courage. This is not what an exceptional nation would do.

 

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