Archives for May 2021

In the context of their war on “cancel culture” Republicans professes a profound devotion to the First Amendment, freedom of expression and the marketplace of ideas. As noted in earlier essays, they generally frame these battles in disingenuous ways or simply lie. For example, Republicans have raged against the alleged cancellation of Dr. Seuss, but the truth is that the estate of Dr. Seuss made a product line decision to stop selling six books. As another example, Republicans went into a frenzy when Hasbro renamed their Mr. Potato Head product line to “Potato Head” while keeping both Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. In these cases, no laws were passed forcing the companies to do anything and these seemed to be marketing decisions based on changing consumer tastes and values.

While I am not in agreement with the Republicans in their made-up battles over free expression, I do agree with their publicly professed principles about free expression and the First Amendment. I believe in a presumption in favor of free expression and hence that the burden of proof rests on those who would limit this liberty. I go beyond most Republicans and hold that this liberty should also protect employees from their employers. While the Republicans, as I have argued elsewhere, advance bad faith arguments about tech companies and free expression, I do hold that the power of corporations and the wealthy to control and dominate expression needs to be countered by the power of the state. As such, I favor free expression even when I disagree with the expression. That is, obviously, what it means to be for freedom of expression. In contrast, Republicans do not seem to believe in free expression (though there are obviously some individual exceptions). One rather obvious piece of evidence is that Republicans have been busy trying to pass laws banning teaching critical race theory in public schools.

Critical race theory arose in United States law schools in the 1970s and has gradually expanded. In general terms, it is the view that laws, regulations, and values should be critically examined to determine if they have different impacts on different racial groups. Given the truism that people in different groups will often be impacted in different ways by the same thing, this theory seems reasonable. Since it is a broad academic theory, people do obviously disagree about the particulars—so I would not assert that any specific claim made by a critical race theorist must be true. Academics is, after all, a place for debate and rational disagreement.

Critical race theory also seems to have contributed to the development of such things as diversity training and has clear implications across academic disciplines. Being exposed to critical race theory can incline a person towards being, well, critical about matters of race—such as considering how a law might impact many black Americans differently from many white Americans. It can also influence people to be, well, critical about American history and make them less inclined to believe the historical narrative often advanced by the right. As such, it is hardly surprising that Republicans are hard at work trying to pass laws aimed at “cancelling” critical race theory. For example, an Idaho bill defines what the writers take to be critical race theory and forbids any courses or instruction that requires students to “affirm, adopt, or adhere” to said tenets.  Some bills also ban mandatory diversity training and counseling.

On the one hand, one could make a liberty-based argument in favor of these bills. Students should have the freedom to choose their own values, so schools forcing students to “affirm, adopt or adhere” to an academic theory would be morally wrong. An obvious reply is that professors are already not supposed to do this to students and a student can justly complain if they are compelled to affirm, adopt, or adhere to the tenets of a theory.  For example, if I started compelling my students to affirm trope theory, then the administration would certainly put a stop to this. Thus, this sort of bill could be seen as yet another example of Republicans trying to pass bills addressing problems that either do not exist or are already adequately handled by existing mechanisms.

On the other hand, there is a reasonable concern that such bills are obviously aimed at simply banning teaching this theory to students. This clearly and directly conflicts with the Republican’s alleged devotion to free expression, the First Amendment, and the marketplace of ideas. But they clearly do not subscribe to these principles. Rather they subscribe to the principle that people should be able to express views Republicans are willing to tolerate and they should be prevented from expressing views Republicans do not like. As noted above, the “cancel culture” examples presented by Republicans are cases where companies made marketing decisions, and no one passed a law to compel them. In the case of critical race theory, Republicans are attempting to directly use the compulsive power of the state to forbid the expression of specific types of ideas—a blatant violation of the First Amendment. Their base generally either does not recognize the inconsistency or does not care. As such, it is a clever move on their part: they can praise free expression out of one corner of their mouth while calling for censorship out of the other corner.

In terms of cancelling mandatory diversity training, it can be argued that this does not interfere with freedom of expression: such training can be offered, but people can opt out.  Having been compelled to take a vast range of training over the years, I am very sympathetic to the idea that people should have the liberty to refuse training. For example, I have had to undergo mandatory training on how to use software that I had already been using for years. As another example, I have also been compelled to attend mandatory training on processes that could have easily been explained in a short email. However, there are many obvious problems with allowing people to exercise the liberty of avoiding training. One is that people who need the training might skip it, to the detriment of the school—and it is reasonable to expect people to be competent at their jobs and at they learn the values of the institution. As such, it is not a matter of freedom from mandatory training in general or even mandatory values training, but a very specific sort of mandatory value training—values that Republicans dislike. Arguments can certainly be made against specific types of mandatory value training on moral grounds. For example, if a school mandated that students be trained in fascist values, then a rather solid moral case can be made against that. In the case of diversity training, the challenge is to show how teaching people to be tolerant of those they must work, learn, or live with is morally wrong.

In closing, Republicans obviously do not subscribe to their professed principles of free expression, their claimed love of the First Amendment, and their alleged devotion to the marketplace of ideas. If they did, they would not be pushing these bills. They would, rather, let the marketplace of ideas sort out the good and bad ideas—something that they always say when they defend ideas of the extreme right. But they are operating in bad faith.

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In addition to being evil, bigotry also tends to be repetitive. For example, racists and xenophobes have relentlessly claimed that migrants are diseased job stealing criminals. This has gone on so long in the United States that descendants of migrants who were subject to these bigoted attacks are now using them against the latest wave of migrants. Another classic is the “what about the children!” tactic.

The gist of the “what about the children” tactic is to claim, that allowing something will harm children in some manner. Therefore, this should not be allowed. Since people tend to care about children, this tactic has considerable emotional power. After all, only a terrible person would favor allowing something that would harm children. While the emotional power of this tactic comes from the very human concern for children, it also draws from good moral reasoning. After all, if allowing something would harm the children, then this would generally be morally wrong on a broad range of moral theories. While using this tactic in good faith is reasonable, it has been weaponized for bad faith use by bigots over the years.

The bad faith use involves asserting, without evidence, that allowing something would harm the children. In many cases, there is more than just a lack of evidence for the alleged potential harm—the claims about the harms are false. Naturally, people can make good faith arguments out of concern for children and be in error; but that is another matter entirely. The bad faith “what about the children!” arguments are commonly used to “argue” against expanding civil and political rights.

In the United States, some arguments advanced against women’s suffrage focused on how voting would harm reproduction and harm the children. One rather odd claim seems to be that women would ignore their children to vote, thus doing terrible harm. What helps make this an absurd claim is that elections do not happen very often, and voting does not take very long. Obviously enough, women being able to vote did not have a harmful effect on children.

During desegregation, school segregationists advanced arguments that allowing black girls into the same bathrooms as white girls would expose the white girls to venereal diseases. This was seen as of special concern because venereal diseases were said to be especially harmful to children. This was an absurd argument for many reasons that were known at the time. One rather important fact is that venereal diseases are not transmitted through restrooms; so such fears were and are unfounded. Bathrooms have been desegregated for quite some time now and thus the claims about the dangers posed by desegregation have been thoroughly disproven. Although, once again, people knew that these claims were untrue when they were made.

Not surprising, the “what about the children!” was also aimed at gay men. My adopted state of Florida was a “leader” in this, and the impacts are still felt today in the state. While gay men were presented as a general threat to children, the narrative was that they prowled bathrooms looking for their victims. I remember adults warning me about this when I was a kid and when I moved to Florida as an adult, people still warned me about the bathrooms and told me to be careful if I used a park bathroom on a run. But, of course, this was fear mongering. Eventually the idea of the gay male bathroom predator faded a bit, and the new focus was on how same-sex marriage would harm the children. These claims were unfounded and there is some evidence that children raised by same-sex couples do better in school.

A more recent version of “what about the children!” is aimed at trans people. Not surprisingly, the focus was initially on bathrooms: the new imaginary predator of the restroom was the trans person. This was used to “argue” for a slew of bathroom bills. Somewhat ironically, the focus on the alleged dangers of the bathroom seems to have reduced the effectiveness of this fear mongering: the prophecies of danger did not come to pass. So, the bigots have started to move on: the new focus is on trans people who are athletes. Those pushing the new anti-trans bills profess they just care about fairness and are worried about the children. But, as I have argued elsewhere, they are not concerned about fairness—otherwise they would also be passing bills addressing actual unfairness, such as in wages. They are also not very concerned about the children. If they were, they would be passing bills addressing such matters as child poverty, inequality in public education, and children’s health. They would also be addressing the leading preventable causes of death among children. Not surprisingly, the states that are most anti-abortion and anti-trans also have higher infant mortality rates; yet they do not seem to think about this.

The bad faith “what about the children!” argument of the bigots keeps getting reused, often with a special focus on bathrooms. Even worse, while they push bad faith arguments and bills, they do little or nothing to address the very real dangers and problems children face. In some cases, they pass laws and implement policies that are actively harmful to children, as exemplified by Flint, Michigan. I am certainly not claiming that the bigots do not care about their children; but they do not seem to care about the children.

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If a person dies in the United States and is not in the care of a doctor, then any investigation into their cause of death will probably be conducted by a medical examiner or coroner. To qualify as a medical examiner, a person must be a physician and they are often board qualified in forensic pathology. In contrast, most states have only two qualifications for coroner: a person must be of legal age and have no felony convictions. Coroners are often elected while medical examiners are typically appointed to their position.  The editors of Scientific America recently argued in favor of eliminating coroners in favor of medical examiners. While I do agree with their position, this matter is worth considering within the context of political philosophy.

From what seems to be a neutral standpoint, the editors are correct. If we take the view that the job of the death determiner (coroner or medical examiner) is to correctly determine the cause of death of a person, then they should be experts in that job. This would require adequate medical training and a lack of bias. But it can be argued that this standpoint is not neutral. After all, this position is based on a value judgment about what the death determiner should be doing. By the standards of other values, the purpose of the job could be quite different. This can be illustrated by considering two contexts that are extremely relevant today: COVID-19 deaths and deaths caused by law enforcement.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump and his fellows responded in accord with their lack of interest and lack of competence: they downplayed the pandemic and lied about it. With some notable exceptions, the right chose to politicize the pandemic to isolate and energize their base. They also effectively weaponized the pandemic against minorities, women and the lower economic classes. Honest and accurate reporting of COVID-19 deaths would have undercut the downplaying and exposed the lies. As such, it makes sense that the undercounting of COVID-19 deaths has been greatest in pro-Trump areas of the country. After the defeat of Trump, the right has clung to politicizing the pandemic, so the undercounting is likely to persist. After all, pro-Trump death determiners would tend to be operating with a bias against attributing a death to the virus and they would also have an ideological incentive to lie. While medical examiners can be politically biased, the fact that coroners are often elected entails that they would tend to match the ideology of the area where they are elected. Hence, pro-Trump areas would tend to have pro-Trump coroners who will conform to the right’s position on the pandemic.

For those who see the proper job of the death determiner as advancing their political goals, then the death determiners should be elected coroners, preferably without medical training. This is not to say that medical examiners cannot be politically biased, just that having a favorably biased coroner is more likely than having a favorably biased medical examiner. There are, however, two possible problems with this approach. The first is that favoring coroners would allow the left to elect left leaning coroners. The second is that death determiners who lack medical training are likely to do worse at their jobs when determining the true cause of death is important and not a matter of politics. As would be expected, those who are concerned with correct determination of cause of death will disagree with this approach and certainly argue that objective and competent medical examiners are critical to protecting society from harm. The second illustration is deaths involving law enforcement.

One concern that has been raised about coroners is that they can be too closely linked to law enforcement and in some cases the coroner can be a law enforcement official, such as a sheriff. Those who think that the proper job of the death determiner is accurately determining the cause of death tend to think this is a problem and would prefer to have a medical examiner who is independent of law enforcement handle cases involving deaths caused by law enforcement. The reason is that such death determiners (be they coroners or medical examiners) can be biased in favor of law enforcement. They might even be inclined to lie about the cause of death to protect law enforcement. It is due to such concerns that families who can afford to pay for an independent autopsy or forensic examination often do so in cases when a relative is killed by the police. There is the reasonable concern that a forensic examination conducted by someone associated with law enforcement or who is otherwise biased will not be accurate. The George Floyd case provides an example of how this can occur. While replacing coroners would not completely solve this problem, it would be a step forward. Those who believe in just and fair policing favor this approach based on this value. But there are clearly those who hold to other values.

For racists and those who benefit from racism, having the death determiners biased in favor of law enforcement is advantageous. Having medical science serve white supremacy is a common practice and advantageous to the white supremacists. As such, they would see the purpose of the death determiner to assist in maintaining the existing order by classifying deaths in ways that protect the police. As such, the proper job of the death determiner is a matter of value. Those who value truth, public safety and justice will want death determiners who are competent and unbiased. Those who value the triumph of the white right will favor death determiners who are biased in their favor.

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