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Missouri

Protests, Peaceful and Otherwise

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In response to the nighttime announcement of the Ferguson verdict in which officer Wilson was not indicted, some people attacked the police and damaged property. Some experts have been critical of the decision to make the announcement at night, since the time of day does actually influence how people behave. In general, making such an announcement at night is a bad idea—unless one intends to increase the chances that people will respond badly.

Obviously enough, peacefully protesting is a basic right and in a democratic state the police should not interfere with that right. However, protests do escalate and violence can occur. In the United States it is all too common for peaceful protests to be marred by violence—most commonly damage to businesses and looting.

When considering reports of damage and looting during protests it is reasonable to consider whether or not the damage and looting is being done by actual protestors or by people who are opportunists using the protest as cover or an excuse. An actual protestor is someone whose primary motivation is a moral one—she is there to express her moral condemnation of something she perceives as wrong. Not all people who go to protests are actual protestors—some are there for other reasons, some of which are not morally commendable. Some people, not surprisingly, know that a protest can provide an excellent opportunity to engage in criminal activity—to commit violence, to damage property and to loot. Protests do, sadly, attract such people and often these are people who are not from the area.

Of course, actual protesters can engage in violence and damage property. Perhaps they can even engage in looting (though that almost certainly crosses a moral line). Anger and rage are powerful things, especially righteous anger. A protestor who is motivated by her moral condemnation of a perceived wrong can give in to her anger and do damage to others or their property. When people damage the businesses in their own community, this sort of behavior seems irrational—probably because it is. After all, setting a local gas station on fire is hardly morally justified by the alleged injustice of the grand jury’s verdict in regards to not indicting Officer Wilson for the shooting of Brown. However, anger tends to impede rationality. I, and I assume most people, have seen people angry enough to break their own property.

While I am not a psychologist, I do suspect that people do such damage when they are angry because they cannot actually reach the target of their anger. Alternatively, they might be damaging property to vent their rage in place of harming people. I have seen people do just that. For example, I saw a person hit a metal door frame (and break his hand) rather than hit the person he was mad at. Anger does summon up a need to express itself and this can easily take the form of property damage.

When a protest becomes destructive (or those using it for cover start destroying things), the police do have a legitimate role to play at protests. While protests are intended to draw attention and often aim to do so by creating a disruption of the normal course of events, a state of protest does not grant protestors a carte blanche right to interfere with the legitimate rights of others. As such, the police have a legitimate right to prevent protestors from violating the rights of others and this can correctly involve the use of force.

That said, the role of rage needs to be considered. When property is destroyed during protests, some people immediately condemn the destruction and wonder why people are destroying their own neighborhoods. In some cases, as noted above, the people doing the damage might not be from the neighborhood at all and might be there to destroy rather than to protest. If such people can be identified, they should be dealt with as the criminals they are. What becomes somewhat more morally problematic are people who are driven to such destruction by moral rage—that is, they have been pushed to a point at which they believe they must use violence and destruction to express their moral condemnation.

When looked at from the cool and calm perspective of distance, such behavior seems irrational and unwarranted.  And, I think, it usually is. However, it is well worth it to think of something that has caused the fire of righteous anger to ignite your soul. Think of that and consider how you might respond if you believed that you have been systematically denied justice. Over. And over. Again.

 

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Some Thoughts on the Ferguson Verdict

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In August of 2014 police officer Darren Wilson shot the unarmed Michael Brown to death. On November 24, 2014 a grand jury in Missouri failed to indict police officer Darren Wilson. Like most Americans, I have some thoughts about this matter.

In the United States, a grand jury’s function is to determine whether or not there is probable cause to prosecute. This level of proof is much lower than that of a criminal trial—such a trial requires (in theory) proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Unlike in a criminal trial, the grand jury is effectively run by the prosecutor and the defense has no real role in the process. As might be suspected, grand juries almost always indict. Almost always, that is, unless the person under consideration is a police officer who has killed someone. In such cases the officer is almost never indicted. As such, the decision in the Wilson case is exactly what should have been expected.

Now, it might be that the reason that police officers are almost never indicted for killing is that nearly all the killings are justified. In contrast, the reason that non-officers are almost always indicted is that there is almost always legitimate probable cause. This is, obviously enough, not impossible.

Of course, the real concern here is not with the grand juries in general, but with this grand jury in particular. According to the various news reports and experts, Wilson received a “gold plated” grand jury in terms of how it was handled by the prosecutor and the state. To be specific, the grand jury seemed to be run in such a way that Wilson received exceptionally good treatment in regards to the case. This is in contrast with the sort of grand jury treatment other citizens typically get, which have been described as “tin plated.” In these grand juries an indictment is almost a forgone conclusion. This is not to say that Wilson’s grand jury involved corruption or misdeeds. Rather, the point is that there is a stark contrast between the sort of grand jury that a typical citizen will receive and the one that Wilson received.

This distinction in treatment is one reason that people are justifiably angry about the matter. After all, a proper justice system would treat everyone equally—everyone would get the “gold plated” grand jury (or the “tin plated” one) rather than getting the sort of justice deemed fit for the person’s race, class, or profession. This sort of disparity is yet one more example of the injustices of our justice system.

Naturally, I am well aware that the real does not (and probably cannot) match the ideal. However, this sort of appeal to the real is more of an acceptance of the problem than a refutation of criticisms of the problem. Also, I do not expect a perfect system—merely a reasonably fair one.

In addition to the nature of the grand jury, there is also obviously the central issue: was Wilson justified in shooting Brown to death? In this case, the justification is grounded on the principle of defense of life: an officer is justified in using violence to protect his life or that of an innocent person when he has an “objectively reasonable” belief that there is such a threat. In Wilson’s case, the shooting of Brown would be warranted if Wilson had an “objectively reasonable” belief that Brown presented such a threat. Since the justification is based on the reasonable belief in a threat, the warrant for the use of force ends when the threat ends.

According to the information released to the public, there is evidence that Brown had close contact with Wilson, which is consistent with Wilson’s claim that Brown attacked him and tried to take his gun. Brown died a considerable distance from Wilson and this raises the legal and moral question of whether or not Wilson still had an “objectively reasonable” belief that Brown still presented a threat that could only be dealt with by lethal force. The grand jury decided that he did, which settles the legal aspect of the case. However, there is still the matter of the moral aspect—was Wilson actually warranted in killing Brown?

On the one hand, when one considers that Brown was unarmed and too far from Wilson to attack him, then it would be reasonable to consider that Wilson was not justified in killing Brown.  On the other hand, if Brown appeared to be charging towards Wilson, then Wilson could be justified in shooting him. Since Wilson was not shot in the back, it does seem clear that Brown was facing Wilson—but facing someone is not the same thing as being a threat. Unfortunately, there is no video of the incident and the eye-witness reports conflict (and eye-witness reports, even given in all honesty, are not very reliable). Since Brown is dead, we only have Wilson’s side of the story. As such, one cannot be certain whether Wilson was justified or not, assuming a right to kill when one has an “objectively reasonable” belief that one is threatened.

This principle can, of course, be challenged. Some people take the principle to set a very low threshold—an officer just has to feel threatened in order to be warranted to use deadly force. This, as might be imagined, can be seen as a threshold that is too low. Some states do give citizens the same right (against other citizens) as shown in the various infamous stand your ground laws and these have proven rather problematic. Others take the view that the principle itself is reasonable—after all, it essentially expresses John Locke’s principle that force can be used to protect one’s life or the lives of the innocent. But, even if the principle is reasonable, there is also the question of whether or not it is applied correctly. My view is that the use of lethal force requires a comparable threat to justify it, on the principle of a proportional response. That said, one must also consider the practicalities of combat situations—it can be difficult to judge intent and the heat of a fight can easily change a person’s perceptions.

As one final point, even if Wilson was justified in shooting Brown, the perception remains that the police and the justice system treat black Americans very different from white Americans. Not surprisingly, some white people doubt this and do so in all honesty—they are assessing the system from their experiences and assume that everyone else has the same sort of experiences as they do. However, one must look beyond one’s experiences and consider those of others. While no one can completely get the experience and being of another, it would be a good thing for white folks to give some thought to what it is like to be non-white in America.

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Legitimate Rape & Punishment

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Republican Party (United States)
Republican Party (United States) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In August of 2012 Ted Akin, a Republican representative from Missouri, created quite a stir when he said, “First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

While primarily regarded as a political matter, this does raise some important philosophical concerns.

One point of concern is a matter of both ethics and epistemology. To be specific, his making the claim that the female body can “shut down” a pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape” raises the question as to whether or not a person in his position (a member of congress who gets to make decisions about women’s health) is morally obligated to make the effort to know what he is talking about.

On the face of it, someone who is in a position to create and pass laws regarding rape and abortion certainly seems obligated to know the actual facts about rape and pregnancy. After all, passing such laws from a position of ignorance will tend to do more harm than good (and any good done would seem to be a matter of accident) since they would not be based on reality. In the case of rape and pregnancy, anyone who has taken a high school level class in anatomy and physiology (which I did) or a competent sex education class would be aware that the female body lacks these “shut down” mechanisms. It hardly seems unreasonable for a congressman to have at least a high school level knowledge regarding the human reproductive system.

Of course, it could be argued that such classes do not typically explicitly state that the female body lacks these mechanisms and someone might claim that the occurrence of pregnancy from “legitimate rape” is very low. However, this claim would be at odds with the known facts. Back in 1996 the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston conducted a large (4008 women) study over three years and found that there is a national average of a 5% rate of pregnancy among rape victims. This results in an estimated 32,101 cases of pregnancy per year in the United States. As such, Akin was wrong about the facts.

While having just one congressman being wrong about this is a matter of concern, there is also the general concern regarding the extent to which views about abortion are based on beliefs that are mistaken. After all, to the degree that opposition to abortion in cases of rape is based on the mistaken belief that women are all but immune to being impregnated by “legitimate” rape this opposition is unjustified. Naturally, there can be other justifications presented, but clearly Akin’s “shut down” view fails to justify his view that abortion should not be allowed even in cases of rape.

Akin does allow that the “shut down” mechanism might fail, thus allowing for a presumably slight possibility that a woman could be impregnated by “legitimate” rape. However, he asserts that even in such cases abortion should not be permitted. As he sees it, “there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

I, not surprisingly, agree that rapists should be punished. I am reasonably sure that this is a non-controversial position. However, the matter of not “attacking the child” is more controversial.

As Akin presents the matter, a woman who has an abortion after being “legitimately” raped is “attacking” and presumably punishing the child (Akin seems to be saying that the rapist should be punished and not the child). While the idea of punishing a child seems horrible, there is the question of whether or not this occurring.

One key point is whether or not the entity in question (which might be just a fertilized egg) is actually a child. This, of course, is a matter that is disputed in the course of the larger debate over abortion and addressing it would expand the essay far beyond its intended scope. As such, let it be assumed for the sake of this argument that the entity is a child. Let it also be assumed, obviously enough, that abortion kills this entity.

As might be suspected, casting the abortion as punishing the child is a clever rhetorical move since it seems terrible to punish a child for the action of another. It also allows those who oppose abortion rights to cast abortion in the case of rape as a woman punishing a child rather than a woman deciding not to bear the child imposed on her against her will by a rapist. While this has some rhetorical punch, it falls apart under examination.

While the entity (or child, if one prefers) is killed by the abortion, the entity is not being punished. Punishment entails a retribution in response to wrongdoing and requires that the entity in question be capable of being punished (and not merely harmed). In the case of the entity, it has done no wrong—mainly because it does not seem to be an agent capable of wrongdoing (or even a moral agent at all). That is, it simply lacks the attributes needed to be wrong doer. To use an analogy, a very young kitten who scratches a person and infects him with cat scratch fever is not a wrongdoer—it has no understanding of what it is doing nor intent to cause harm. To use another analogy, cancer cells might cause a person harm, but they are not doing wrong—they have no moral agency. Naturally, a person can inflict harm on the kitten or destroy the cancer, but neither the kitten or the cancer are being punished. They lack the attributes needed to understand that they are being punished and hence cannot be punished, although they can be harmed or killed.

Likewise, a zygote and even a fetus lack the agency and understanding to be wrongdoers. They can, of course, be harmed but they cannot actually be punished. After all, they lack the attributes needed to understand that what is being done is punishment and hence they can be harmed but not punished.

Naturally, it can be countered that although the claim that the entity is being punished because of the crime of the rapist is a rhetorical point, what actually matters is that the entity is being harmed. That is, a woman who is raped should not be allowed to have an abortion because doing so would harm the entity. The assumption is, obviously enough, that the fact that the woman was raped is morally irrelevant. This is, as might be imagined, a rather extreme position. However, it is worth considering because people like Akin and Paul Ryan, the Republicans VP pick for 2012, hold to that view.

Roughly put, the principle that Akin and Ryan seem to be operating on is that it does not matter how the woman was impregnated, what matters is that she is pregnant and that the abortion would kill the entity. More generally, it does not matter how an innocent life got there, the right to life of that entity overrides the rights of the host. One interesting way to look at this matter is to look at illegal immigration in the United States.

Suppose that the United States is looked at as being analogous to a woman and that people trying to get into the United States illegally are looked upon as being analogous to rapists (yes, this is horrible comparison but is not intended to degrade illegal aliens). The children that the illegal immigrants bring with them or give birth to in the United States are, obviously enough, analogous to the child in a pregnancy.

Given the principle that Akin and Ryan seem to be operating on, children that end up in the United States cannot be deported if doing so would harm them. After all, this would be comparable to aborting them.

The obvious counter is, of course, that the illegal children have parents that can take care of them and hence the abortion analogy breaks down because the United States cannot be expected to take care of children when there are parents who can do that. After all, to expect Americans to bear the cost of raising someone else’s children would be wrong.

Of course, Akin and Ryan are expecting women impregnated by rape to do just that—that is, to bear the cost of taking care of children they did not choose and that were forced upon them. Naturally, it would be morally commendable for a woman to elect to raise the child—but it hardly seems reasonable to say that a woman is obligated to do so.

To use another analogy, the principle that Akin and Ryan seem to accept would seem to obligate people to raise any child that someone was able to get onto their property. So, if someone managed to sneak into Ryan’s house and leave behind babies, then Ryan would be obligated to raise them. After all, while the trespasser broke it, the rights of the babies trump the rights of the property owner. It would not do, of course, to attack the babies because of the crime of the trespasser.

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Kinder & the Non-Scandal Scandal

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Peter Kinder
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Missouri’s lieutenant governor Peter Kinder has become embroiled in a sexless sex scandal. A photo of him and  former Penthouse Pet Tammy Chapman has been making the rounds and the problem is that the photo was taken at a pantless bar. Kinder was, presumably, wearing pants and the photo does not show the Pet below the waist.

Kinder’s handlers initially tried to blame the liberal media for manufacturing a scandal. However, this defense failed as it turned out the story was correct in its details. Of course, there is the question of whether or not this situation is really a scandal. While I am generally skeptical of the unceasing cries about media liberal bias, I do agree that the media has a bias in terms of tending to present stories in ways calculated to attract attention. This seems to result in the media folks casting non-scandals as scandals. After all, the term “scandal” catches peoples’ attention. So, I shall endeavor to sort out whether this is a scandal or not.

While I would not go to a strip club myself (mainly because they seem like sad, pathetic places), this aspect of the scandal hardly seems all that scandalous. While strip clubs are typically looked down on by folks who want to take the moral high ground, they are legal and a (somewhat) accepted part of the culture. Kinder is also single hence there is not even the small moral concern that a married man is staring at half naked women. As such, this part is a bit creepy, but not a scandal.

However,  Chapman alleges that Kinder was obsessed with her in the 1990s and that he recently offered her the chance to live in a condo paid for by his campaign finances. If this is true, then this would clearly be a more serious matter. Obviously enough, using campaign money to provide someone with a condo is morally unacceptable and most likely illegal. Naturally it should not be assumed that Kinder actually made such an offer, nor should it be assumed that even if he did mention such an offer that it was intended seriously. As such, until it is shown that Kinder did something wrong, he should be regarded as innocent. But,  if this accusation has merit, then it would provide grounds for a scandal.

Oddly enough, Kinder tried the “youth defense” regarding his past involvement with Chapman. While it is well established that the youth generally have worse judgment than the more mature, there are two obvious replies here. First, being young is still not a good excuse. Second, Kinder was 40 when he was first involved with her. As much as I would like to regard the 40s as a time of the folly of youth, that is not the case. So, the youth defense fails.

Of course, being involved with a former Penthouse Pet is not illegal nor would I be inclined to take it as evidence for being unfit for office. If he were married or if he was cavorting with hookers, then things would be rather different. However, Kinder casts himself as a conservative and this sort of behavior has not endeared him to the social conservatives in his party. After all, a good social conservative is not supposed to hang out at strip clubs. However, this does not seem to really hit a level that is worthy of being a scandal. True, it can be manufactured into a scandal, but this hardly seems justified.
While the truth of Chapman’s allegations are not yet known, one thing that is known is that Kinder has spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on hotel stays. While staying in hotels on the taxpayer’s dime is not illegal (provided the proper procedures are used) this does stain his Tea Party credentials. After all, the Tea Party is supposed to be all about reducing government spending and Kinder’s taste for luxury hotels and tax dollars runs afoul of this. However, Kinder certainly seems to have done nothing illegal, hence all that can be said is that he seems to fail to practice what he preaches.  This is hardly a scandal.

 

 

“I am sorry, but the price of cavorting with Penthouse Pets in your 40s is that you don’t get to be governor of a Bible Belt state in your 50s,” Garrison wrote.

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