Month: July 2025

While it might strike some as odd, I respect Trump supporters who claim Biden won in 2020 through fraud. I am taking them seriously; the same way I would take a claim by a professional colleague seriously in a philosophical dispute. I am also assuming that they are being serious.

This respect manifests in two ways. First, I am assuming they believe in their claims and are not knowingly making false claims for nefarious purposes, such as trying to steal the election.

Because there is currently no evidence for their claims of widespread voter fraud, I believe that Trump’s supporters are in error. But this is different from claiming they are lying. While it might not seem to be an important distinction, the difference between honest error and lying is significant. Honest error occurs when a person believes a claim that is false, but they think it is true, and they have put in the work to check their belief. A person is lying when they knowingly make false claims with an intent to deceive.

If Trump’s supporters believe that widespread voter fraud is real, then they would presumably either have evidence for their belief or they would support efforts to find credible evidence. After all, if they believe they are right, they should be confident of inquiries into their claims: the evidence should be there for all to see.

Trump supporters tend to regard the “mainstream” news and academic institutions as purveyors of fake news and lies. As such, we cannot undertake our search for evidence in such places. Although if these sources did find evidence of fraud by Biden, Trump supporters might find them credible in this one instance.

If the Democrats perpetrated widespread voter or election fraud, then there should be evidence, and this should be turned over to law enforcement. To use an analogy, if it were claimed that a group was involved in a nationwide illegal money laundering scheme, then there should be evidence of this alleged crime, and the police should be informed. If there is credible evidence, law enforcement would find it and there would be documentation in the form of police reports, court transcripts and the like. The same should hold true of the crimes of voter or election fraud.

If Trump supporters do not believe what they are saying, then they would have no evidence to support their lies and would have no interest in looking for evidence that they know does not exist. If they do believe what they are saying, then they should be able to provide evidence and should support the search for objective evidence. This seems like a reasonable test of honesty: the honest believer wants to believe the truth and has no fear of following the evidence to its conclusion. The liar has no evidence and attempts to distract others from the search for truth. To use another analogy, if Ted tells me that his neighbor Sam, whom he dislikes, is kidnaping people, and he is being honest, then I would expect him to provide evidence and take that evidence to the police. If he has no evidence and is unwilling to go to the police, then I would suspect that Ted is lying about Sam. If he was seriously concerned and had actual evidence, he would go to law enforcement. If he was trying to make trouble for Sam, I would expect that he would make unsupported claims but never go to the police as they would expect evidence.

Second, I assume they have a moral motivation. This is the assumption that Trump supporters are sincere when they say they love democracy and are motivated only by a desire to have an honest and fair election. The main alternative is that these claims are lies, and they do not really care how Trump wins.

Given this assumption, Trump supporters would be morally committed to a fair and honest election in which the candidate who receives the majority of legitimate votes wins the state in question. This moral view does, obviously, commit a person to opposing voter and election fraud: this sort of fraud would undermine democracy and make an election illegitimate to the degree that fraud occurred. I agree with the Trump supporters on this point, and I also oppose voter and election fraud: such fraud would be an attack on a foundation of democracy and would be an attempt to rob citizens of their right to choose.

This view also morally commits a person to opposing false claims about voter or election fraud: these false claims can damage the perceived legitimacy of an election. They can also be used, ironically, to commit a form of election fraud in which legitimate votes are rejected due to false claims they are fraudulent. If Trump’s supporters have a sincere moral commitment to democracy and honest elections, they should vehemently oppose false claims of voter or election fraud for these are as dangerous to the democracy and honest elections they purport to love. 

If Trump supporters show little or no concern about ensuring that claims of fraud are accurately assessed, then it would be reasonable to infer that they do not really care about the integrity of elections. Rather, what they care about is winning by any means.

As a closing point, thinking about whether Trump supporters are serious in their claims about fraud took me to pro-wrestling. When I have engaged with Trump supporters seriously on social media over the years, their responses tend to be insults and fallacies, as if we are engaged in some sort of competitive game rather than seriously looking at important claims about fraud. My hypothesis is that they might be engaged in kayfabe: they know they are engaged in performative fiction and accusing Biden of cheating is just part of the theatre. Asking them for evidence of cheating is like asking for evidence that the wrestling heel really does all those terrible things. Asking that question misses the point of the performance. If this is the case, then to Trump supporters I must seem like someone who wanders on stage at a play and thinks the drama is real.  To be honest, I do not know.

In the case of wrestling, taking the make-believe as real has no meaningful consequences. In the case of the election and politics in general, the make-believe (if it is such) does seem to have consequences. Elections are serious matters and if this is all theatre, it is harmful theater. My dilemma is this: if I take Trump supporters seriously, then I expect evidence for their claims. If it is just kayfabe, then it makes sense why no evidence is offered. But this means that their claims can be dismissed for what they are: mere fiction.

Back in 2020 Joe Biden has won the presidential election. Trump then claimed that Biden won through fraud, something that even Fox News greeted with some skepticism. Trump even claimed, without evidence, that voter fraud occurred in the election he won in 2016. Some of his supporters echoed his claims and presented, without evidence, claims of voter fraud.

As would be expected, the unsupported claims about fraud have been repeatedly debunked. But Trump and his supporters persisted in their claims even after Trump won in 2024. Issues and problems do arise in any election and fraud does occur in some microscopic fraction of the votes. As such, arguments trying to prove that significant voter fraud exists tend to be fallacies or based on lies. One popular approach is the fallacy of anecdotal evidence. This involves emphasizing an example of real fraud and then taking the anecdote to counter the overwhelming statistical evidence that voter fraud is incredibly rare. Somewhat ironically, the anecdotes often serve to better show that fraud is difficult and largely ineffective: the perpetrators are caught and any damage they did is addressed. For example, a North Carolina Republican operative was charged with multiple felonies for ballot tampering in a 2018 election. The results were overturned.

The rhetorical tactic of hyperbole is also used as are outright lies, such as claims made by Attorney General Barr. Willful misinterpretation is also a common tactic. For example, a New Jersey postal worker did dump 99 general election ballots in a dumpster over the course of a few days. While this might seem to be a case of intentional election tampering, the worker dumped more than 1,800 pieces of mail. As such, the more reasonable explanation is that he was dumping the mail for other reasons and ballots happened to be in this mail. There was a similar incident in which three trays of mail were found in a ditch. There were some mail-in ballots in the mix, but the situation was (as one would expect) nothing like the claims made by Trump about ballots being dumped in rivers.

While these incidents were bad, they are not a voter fraud problem but a problem with mail being dumped or lost. Once again, these examples ironically show that the system is working reasonably well: the mail was found, investigated and the issue addressed. Trump and his supporters have generally destroyed all their credibility, but this is not to say that their claims must be false. To infer that a claim about fraud is false because it was made by Trump or a supporter would be an ad hominem fallacy. But Trump has no credibility, so it would be foolish to believe a claim simply because it was made by him. What would be needed is credible evidence of significant, intentional efforts to engage in fraud or tamper with the election. So how can the dispute over fraud be settled?

Suppose that we were disputing the issue of which NBA player scored the most points in 2024. While people might have strong feelings about who is the best player, we would be able to easily settle this by going to a trusted source for statistics and the issue would be resolved. While voter and election fraud are also objective features of reality, there is probably no source trusted by both fraud claimers and fraud deniers. For example, if I refer to NPR, CNN, or academic studies, I will be greeted with cries of “fake news” and “Marxist academics.” So, the matter cannot be addressed in this manner. What I will try to do is present a rational approach to addressing claims of fraud that does not require trusting news or academic sources.

Individual voter fraud is unlikely because it is a high-effort, low return tactic that is usually a felony. To use an analogy, it is like trying to get rich by robbing kid’s lemonade stands with a gun. There is little return, it takes effort, and the consequences are severe.  Election tampering is a “better” strategy in that it has a higher return on the effort but is also high risk as these activities are typically felonies and they seem to be easy to detect. While it could be argued that people do stupid things, significant voter fraud of this sort would require many people independently deciding to do the same stupid thing. While not impossible, it is unlikely. And if people were that stupid that consistently, new voting laws would obviously not stop them.

There is also the fact that there are legal ways to shape the vote: voter suppression, voter expansion, gerrymandering and such. These provide far greater return on effort and are not illegal. This is why parties put their efforts into these strategies rather than engaging in low-yield and high-risk fraud. As such, fraud organized by parties is unlikely but not impossible.

At this point, Trump supporters are likely to insist that they do have evidence of voter and election fraud by pointing to memes, websites, tweets, and videos. Since disputing these sources would be pointless, I will instead offer the following.

Voter fraud and election interference are crimes, typically felonies. If you have evidence of such activity, you should send it to law enforcement rather than to me. If they find it credible, they will investigate. If fraud or tampering did occur, then there will be arrests and trials. As such, if there is real evidence of widespread voter fraud or election interference, then there should be follow-up police reports and court transcripts. To be fair, it can take a while for investigations to conclude, so one must wait a reasonable amount of time to allow for the legal evidence to surface. Such information can be acquired directly from the police and court reports and there is no need to rely on the “fake news.” As I am writing this in 2025, no evidence of significant voter fraud has surfaced from the 2020 election and the best explanation why Trump has not ordered an in-depth investigation is that he knows he lost the election.

To use an analogy, if Trump claimed Democrats murdered millions of people in 2016 or that they were engaged in widespread murder in 2020, then there should be evidence of these crimes. Like voter fraud, murder is a crime and there would be evidence for these murders. If there is no evidence, then it would be unreasonable to believe claims about Democrats committing murder. The same applies to the crime of voter fraud.

If you do believe that Biden won due to widespread fraud and have evidence for this, I look forward to seeing the police reports and court transcripts for these cases. Oddly, past claims of significant fraud and tampering made by Trump and his supporters lack such evidence. For example, Trump’s claim about millions of people voting illegally in 2016 has obviously never been backed up with evidence. Trump has had control of the executive branch for four years and even his own voter fraud commission failed to turn up widespread fraud.

For Biden to have won through fraud would have required a nationwide coordinated conspiracy involving large numbers of people and it would have to occur under the noses of election officials, media, citizens and law enforcement. Such a vast conspiracy would create readily available evidence. If it were claimed that Democrats are Machiavellian masters of intrigue who have duped the nation, then there seem to be two inferences. One is that if they are so competent, then perhaps they should be the ones in charge. The second is that if they are so capable and hiding evidence how does anyone know they committed this miraculous crime?

At this point a dedicated Trump supporter might bring up the shadow government, a conspiracy theory that there is a secret government with the real power. The easy and obvious replies are as follows. First, how could this be? Back in 2020 Trump held the executive branch and thus controlled the military and the police. He also effectively controlled many courts. Republicans held the Senate, most governorships, and most state legislatures. There is not much left for the deep state or shadow government to control. Second, if this deep state or shadow government is so powerful and so inimical to Trump, then one must wonder why it allowed Trump to win in 2016 and then in 2024. The more reasonable explanation is that Biden simply won in 2020 by legitimately getting more votes. And Trump won in 2024.

As a final point when thinking about claims of voter or election fraud in 2020, consider the other elections on that ballot. If the Democrats were running large scale voter fraud, they would have seen to it that the won the other elections as well. One could argue that the Democrats are being super clever by just cheating on the Presidential election but playing fair with all the other races so no one suspects they are cheating. This is obviously stupid as Trump was already accusing the Democrats of planning fraud and they knew they would be accused of fraud. So, if they were going to cheat, there would be no reason not to cheat across the board.

George enjoyed and hated the privileged position of being the grandson of Edgar the Tyrant, the man who had killed his kindly brother Sam. Edgar had conquered the Seven Systems with alien technology and established the most crushing despotism in human history. Like his grandfather, George was a brilliant scientist with a special talent for understanding alien technology. Unlike his grandfather, George was burdened with ethics and compassion. After discerning the secrets of an alien time machine, George nobly decided to sacrifice himself by going back in time and killing his grandfather before he discovered the trove of alien technology that enabled his reign of terror.

After travelling back in time and locating his target, George took careful aim with the alien plasma rifle, confident that the heavy weapon would guarantee the death of his grandfather. It did exactly that, vaporizing not only him but several meters of ground.

George expected to be erased from time instantly, but in realizing that he still existed he realized he still existed. Thinking that it might take some time for the effects to catch up to him (or head back to him, however it worked) he sat down to wait. And wait. When nothing happened, he thought “hmm, maybe that rumor about grandma and Uncle Sam was true after all” and travelled back to his time.

 

Time travel, as any time traveler will tell you, is problematic. One of the classic problems is the Grandfather Paradox. If you can travel in time, then you should be able to go back in time and kill your grandfather (or grandmother, to avoid sexism in temporal murder). However, if you kill your grandfather, then you would never exist and would not be able to go back and kill him. As such, time travel would make it possible to kill your grandfather but killing him would make it impossible for you to kill him. Hence the paradox.

One solution is to take it as a reductio ad absurdum of time travel. If time travel were possible, it would lead to an unacceptable paradox. Therefore, time travel is not possible. Another approach is to address the paradox with a bit of temporal deus ex machina: you can travel back and time and try to kill your grandfather, but you will never be able to succeed. If you, for example, try to run him over with a car, you will run out of gas or get a flat tire. If, as another example, you try to shoot him with a rifle, every round will miss or misfire. Or you will get caught by the police. There is an obvious question of how this temporal enforcement mechanism would work.

One could, of course, invoke a teleological explanation: there is a purposeful agent that ensures that you will never succeed. As with non-time travel teleological agents, this could be a supernatural being (God or a god of time), mortal agents (time cops, perhaps) or some sort of Aristotelian temporal paradox-preventer (perhaps related to the first mover).

In the context of doing metaphysics in accord with the economic style of argumentation, using a teleological metaphysical entity to solve the paradox would raise the cost of the theory. As per Occam’s razor, entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Metaphysical teleological explanations also tend to be out of favor in philosophy, especially those of the supernatural sort. This will tend to impose both a “weirdness” and implausibility cost on the theory.

But this cost can be offset if the entity provides enough benefits, such as explanatory power. On this economic model one chooses between metaphysical theories in a way analogous to choosing between smartphones: the one with the best benefits for the lowest cost would be the winner.

Having mortal agents prevent the paradox could make for interesting science fiction (and imposes no metaphysical cost) but there is an obvious problem: mortal agents could fail. While one could argue that time police would have a huge advantage over a lone time-traveler, there are easy-to-imagine scenarios where even a lone time-traveler succeeds. One could imagine, for example, a rogue time cop deciding to kill their grandparent. Because of this, fallible protectors of time would not solve the problem.

Another approach would be to embrace a form of non-teleological determinism: while one could travel back in time one can never succeed in killing one’s grandfather because one failed. This would seem to have broader implications for time travel as well in terms of making any changes to the past. This does raise the question of how this determinism would work but determinism (in its various forms) is already a well-established philosophical position. As such, if you are already a determinist, then you can presumably apply it to time at no extra cost and solve this problem.

Science fiction has other options that could solve the problem. One approach taken by Alfred Bester  in “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” is that going back in time to commit murders does not affect the timeline, but instead affects the traveler by gradually removing them from reality. While the mechanism for this would need to be explained, it does solve the paradox: you could go back and kill your grandfather, but this would have no impact on the timeline. You would just fade a bit, metaphysically speaking, and history would remain unchanged.

Another approach is that time travel creates alternative timelines. The traveler goes back and murders his grandfather and thus creates a new timeline in which this occurred. The original timeline (whatever that might mean) remains intact. The time traveler might also split and they would exist in the original timeline because nothing changes there. But they would not exist in the “new” timeline: they killed their grandfather in that timeline and hence would never be born. Since time travel is mysterious and messy, perhaps the time traveler would be exempt from the split in some manner. Or perhaps not.

This approach does raise some obvious problems. One is that time travel would seem to create new timelines ex nihilo: they seem to simply come into existence from nothing. Unless, of course, the original timeline gets sliced like a pizza, something that would seem to be, at least in theory, detectable. Then again, if the original timeline is infinite, dividing infinity results in infinities. Another set of problems would involve personal identity. If the split occurs, what happens to the identity of the people in the original timeline and those “created” in the new timeline? For example, if Sally goes back and kills her grandfather and splits the timeline, then there would be a new timeline with the people from the original “duplicated” (perhaps including her grandfather if a there is an afterlife). To illustrate, consider Sally’s grandmother Sarah. When Sally kills her grandfather and splits the timeline, then there would now be at least two Sarahs. Both arose from the unsplit Sarah, so they would both seem to be Sarah. But they are now two people unless there is some form of cross timeline personal identity. Some theories of personal identity can easily handle this. For example, Locke’s consciousness-based theory would entail that both Sarahs were the original Sarah (if their memories remain) but they are no longer the same person after the split because they have different memories. Theories, like Descartes’, that make the person the soul would need to account for there being two souls: does the original divide like an amoeba or does a new soul get created? Or something else? All these issues (and others) need to be addressed to make this solution work.

While there are numerous problems that arise from this approach, it does not require postulating the existence of new types of metaphysical entities: one just needs multiples of what we already have, namely the timeline. This does not raise the ontological cost of the theory. To use an analogy, if one accepts the existence of one supernatural god, accepting a second or tenth god comes with no extra ontological cost. The price is paid for each metaphysical type rather than each token of that type. There might be other costs arising from this, though, such as matters of weirdness or plausibility.

The last approach I will consider is that time travel is dimensional travel. That is, when you travel in “time” you are going to another reality that is at a different time than your reality. On this view, when someone travels “in time” to kill “their” grandfather, they are travelling to an alternate reality and killing an alternate version of their grandfather. In that reality, “they” would not exist, but they could return to their own reality, which would be one in which their grandfather was not killed by a time traveler. This would be analogous to killing the grandfather’s twin brother: this kills someone like him but not him.

While this approach does require explaining how dimensional travel would work, it has fewer problems than the split timeline approach. While it does require multiple dimensions, so does the split timeline approach. But it does not require that they appear ex-nihilo or form from division. It also does not face the problems with personal identity: the person in the other reality is not the traveler’s grandfather, just someone similar. The obvious downside to this approach is that it solves the problem by eliminating time travel. But maybe that is a good thing.

Very broadly speaking, Democrats and Republicans have adopted two fundamentally different strategies for winning elections. These strategies are not used in every race and by every candidate but are generally used by the parties.

While Democrats have not done well lately, they have focused on getting more voters to vote for them. Republicans have focused on reducing the number of votes for the Democrats. This might seem to be distinction without a difference, but these are fundamentally different approaches.

 One part of the Democrat’s strategy is expanding the number of voters who vote by having more registered voters.  They support laws making it easier for citizens to register to vote encourage people to do so. They also tend to support restoring voting rights to felons who have served their time. In contrast, Republicans have done their best to prevent ex-felons from voting—even when they have the right to do so.  Republicans will sometimes accuse Democrats of getting non-citizens (or dead people) to vote. While it is true that non-citizens sometimes do get registered to vote, this seems to usually be an accident. Voter fraud is exceptionally rare and non-citizens voting is an even rarer form of fraud, despite Republicans claims. Democrats and Republicans both seem to believe that new voters are more likely to vote for Democrats and so this strategy makes sense to them.

Democrats also favor expanding the opportunities for citizens to vote. This includes having more polling places, keeping polls open for longer, enabling reliable public or private transport to the polls, and allowing vote-by-mail (sometimes known as absentee ballots).

Republicans, in contrast, have been waging legal battles to limit ballot boxes. They have also adopted a strategy of reducing polling sites and hours.  Trump waged a war of lies against mail-in-ballots. There were concerns that Trump was encouraging his supporters to engage in voter intimidation. Republicans also oppose making election day a national holiday while Democrats favor this.

Democrats and Republicans generally believe that Democrats would be more likely to win if it were easier for citizens to vote.  Republicans have traditionally engaged in voter suppression under the guise of fighting the almost non-existent voter fraud but Trump has gone so far as to claim that Republicans would never be elected again if it were easier to vote. While Republicans can and do win in fair elections, the approach of both parties is rational: easier voting does seem to favor Democrats because more people usually want to vote Democrat. While it is true that voter suppression can impact those who would vote for Republicans, voter suppression is targeted as much as possible to impact populations who are more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans.

Before the Southern Strategy, it could be argued that the Democrats did not support minority voting. But this changed when the Southern Democrats became Southern Republicans. Now the Democrats try to get more votes by appealing to minority groups. They generally try to do this by promising small, but meaningful, benefits in return for votes. While the establishment Democrats serve the interests of the wealthy elites, they will also support laws that provide some benefits to the working class and minorities. They also try to reign in the excesses of the elites in the hopes of delaying the next economic collapse. For example, Democrats tend to support anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action, affordable health care and a small increase in the minimum wage. As another example, the Democrats have opened seats at the tables of power for minorities, with Obama and Harris being but two examples. While the Republicans do have minority members, they lag far behind the Democrats (and the Democrats are not doing great).

After losing to Obama twice, the Republicans seriously considered adopting the Democrat’s strategy of expanding their appeal to minorities. However, Trump put a decisive end to this in what amounts to a re-activation of the southern strategy. That is, the Republicans have stepped up their appeals to white fears, racism and xenophobia. White supremacists certainly approve of this approach. This does make sense: the Republicans probably cannot consistently outcompete the Democrats to win over a majority of the minority voters. They can, of course, recruit some individuals and present them as “proof” they are not racist (or sexist). Trump’s election showed the effectiveness of these strategies—and his re-election in 2024 confirmed that the Republicans picked an effective strategy.

Republicans do criticize the Democrats for allegedly pandering to minorities (and women) asserting at the same time that Democrats are devoted to political correctness while also claiming they are cynically exploiting minorities they do not care about. But there are two main responses to these charges. The first is that the Democrats offer minority voters some return on their vote, such as places at the table and legislation they want. This is how politics works since people vote to get a return on that vote. The Democrats should be criticized for providing too little return on that investment, but the Republicans offer minorities far less. Second, while motivation matters in terms of assessing a person’s ethics, it has no bearing on whether the action they take, or its consequences are good or bad. I will show this with an analogy.

Imagine that Carl the contractor wants to get your money, that is all he cares about. One option is for Carl to do the right thing and provide good work at a fair price. Another option is to use his tools to break into your house to steal your property. Carl’s motivation is the same in both cases; but how he gets your money matters morally. Likewise, even if the Democrats just want to win, it does matter how they do it. The Democrats are trying to win by getting more voters to vote for them by expanding voting rights and making it easier for citizens to vote. They believe they can win this way because they believe more people want them to win. As such, this strategy would strengthen and expand democracy.

And this is where the Republicans come in: Republicans are trying to win by keeping more people from voting and try to ensure they target those who are likely to vote for the Democrats. They believe they can win this way because they believe more people do not want them to win. So, they need to make sure that fewer people who do not want them to win get to vote. The path to victory is to weaken and restrict democracy. I am not claiming that the Democrats are angels, but expanding voting is the right thing even if they have the wrong motivations.   It might be true that the Democrats would do what the Republicans are doing if the situation were different. If so, they would be doing wrong in that hypothetical situation.

Back in the last pandemic, lawsuits were filed by some religious groups because of  restrictions imposed in response to COVID-19. If the government imposes similar restrictions during a future pandemic, this will happen again. One  concern about such lawsuits is that churches were super spreaders of COVID-19. An interesting consideration is that while politicians have made a religious freedom issue out of the COVID restrictions, most Americans (including religious Americans) did not see these restrictions as a threat to religious freedom.  The issue is whether these sorts of pandemic restrictions violate religious freedom. I will focus on the moral issue and leave the legal issue to the lawyers.

As a starting point, religious freedom is not absolute and can be justly restricted in at least some cases. As a general argument, unrestricted freedom would restrict (or destroy) itself. To use a silly example, if religious freedom was absolute, then the religious freedom of a religion that wanted to restrict all other religions on religious grounds must also be respected. This is a reductio on the idea of absolute freedom (and one I stole from Thomas Hobbes). As such, religious freedom requires some restrictions on religious freedom. If so, then what we need to settle is the limit (or the extent) of religious freedom and see where pandemic restrictions fall.

Intuitively, we all probably agree that religious freedom should not allow people to engage in such things as murder, theft, rape, and genocide. So, if the Church of Murder, Rape and Robbery insisted they had the moral right to rob, rape and murder you on the grounds of religious liberty you would, I assume, disagree. And rightfully so. Sticking within a rights theory of ethics, your right to life and property would override their right to religious liberty. This rests on the notion that there is a hierarchy of rights, with some rights having more moral weight than others (among other factors). One could also use a utilitarian approach of the sort developed by Mill: if restricting religious liberty would create more positive value than negative value, then doing so would be morally right. While the members of the Church of Murder, Rape and Robbery would be unhappy about not being able to practice their faith on other people, the harm this would inflict outweighs their unhappiness.

I am not claiming that wanting a religious freedom exemption from pandemic restrictions is analogous to wanting the freedom to murder, rape and rob. My point is to establish that limiting religious freedom to protect other rights and to prevent harm can be morally acceptable. But this does not settle the specific issue of whether pandemic restrictions would violate religious freedom. Obviously, this will depend on the specific restrictions and the context.

One relevant factor is the intent of restrictions. If restrictions were created and applied intending to infringe on religious liberty, then that would be wrong. But even if the restrictions were created and applied with only benign intent, they could still violate religious liberty. To use an analogy, one might impose restrictions on high calorie drinks from a benign intent (to reduce obesity) and yet still be wrongly limiting freedom.  But there is no evidence that the past restrictions were created to harm religious liberty. As far as future restrictions go, they would need to be assessed.

Another relevant factor is consistency in restrictions. To illustrate, if religious gatherings were restricted because of the risk of people gathering, then fairness requires that standard be applied consistently. For example, if bars, restaurants, and movie theaters were allowed to operate normally while churches were limited, then there would a moral case that churches were being treated unfairly. The conclusion of such moral reasoning might, however, be that the bars, restaurants, and movie theaters should also be restricted rather than that the churches should not be restricted.

One can also make the essential service argument for churches. Grocery stores, car rental businesses and many government offices remained open because they were considered essential. The justification here is on utilitarian grounds: there would be more harm in closing them than keeping them open. To use the most obvious illustration, closing grocery stores and food delivery would result in starvation, so keeping these operating is morally acceptable. One cannot Zoom salad or download pizza.  But are large, in-person gatherings at churches essential during a pandemic?

Religious is obviously important, even essential to some people. That is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether large, in person gatherings are essential to religion. That is, can people practice their religion without being able to gather closely in large numbers. To use an analogy, running is essential to me, but large road races were restricted during the pandemic. Could I practice my running without the large gatherings of races?

On the face of it, the answer is yes. Religious people could gather online, they could gather outside and space themselves, they could gather inside in small groups wearing masks, and so on. In the case of running, I can still run by myself, I can run with others by maintaining distance, and I can do virtual races. These do involve costs and inconveniences, but they all allow people to continue to practice the group aspects of religion (and running). The fact that most religious people did these things provides evidence that religion (and running) can be practiced while restrictions are in effect. This can, of course, be disputed on theological grounds—something I will leave to the theologians. But on the face of it these restrictions did not interfere with religious liberty in a way that is unfair, inconsistent, or unwarranted relative to other freedoms, like the freedom of running.  

If restrictions are applied consistently based on relevant factors such as gathering size, risk, being essential, and proximity, then the issue would become whether there should be a special religious freedom exemption from restrictions. The issue is thus whether religious freedom would allow a special exemption because religious people want to gather in ways that violate pandemic restrictions. If so, this means that there should be religious exemption in the case of public health. After all, they would not just be putting themselves at risk, they be putting everyone they contact at risk as well.

Imagine, if you will, that a person infected with Ebola insists on their religious freedom and demands they be allowed to go to church without restriction. This would be wrong: such a deadly disease could kill the others and then spread out into the community. While COVID-19 was not as lethal as Ebola, it is meaningfully dangerous. Other pandemics will come in varying degrees of lethality as well. If the next pandemic is more like COVID-19 than Ebola, perhaps it could be argued that churches should be allowed an exemption to operate normally.  Churches have the right to stay open in flu season, although this does put people at risk. But we would probably all agree that people infected with Ebola should not be allowed to freely go to church because they have religious freedom. So, it is a matter of how much risk is acceptable.

To use an analogy, we all probably agree that military grade flamethrowers should not be allowed for in-church use even if a church considers fire an important part of their services. This is because flame throwers would present a danger to the people in the church and could create a fire that would spread. But imagine a church that wants something less than flamethrowers: they just want their church to be exempt from the fire safety laws and regulations that other people must follow. They argue that their religion values fire, so being forced to have things like smoke alarms, working fire extinguishers and fire exits would violate their religious freedom to practice their faith. They also want to be able to use lots of fire in their services and want to a stock of flammable material on hand, stored in loose piles around the church, as their faith demands. They would argue that there is some risk, but it is relatively low compared to flame throwers. But, of course, they could easily set their church on fire and have it spread to all the nearby structures and burn them down (and hurt the people in them). While they could be argued to have a right to burn themselves and their church, their religious freedom would not seem to give them a right to put the nearby buildings (including other churches) and the people in them at such needless risk. They can, of course, have the fire needed for their faith, but it must be kept in a way that does not needlessly risk hurting other people. The same would seem to apply to pandemic restrictions and churches: they have the right to practice their faith, but they do not have the right to put others at risk while doing so.  

 

As I type this Microsoft’s Copilot AI awaits, demon-like, for a summons to replace my words with its own. The temptation is great, but I resist. For now. But AI is persistently pervasive, and educators fear both its threat and promise. This essay provides a concise overview of three threats: AI cheating, Artificial Incompetence, and Artificial Irrelevance.

When AI became available, a tsunami of cheating was predicted. Like many, I braced for flood but faced a trickle. While this is anecdotal evidence, the plagiarism rate in my classes has been a steady 10% since 1993. As anecdotal evidence is not strong evidence, it is fortunate that Stanford scholars Victor Lee and Denise Pope have been studying cheating. They found that in 15 years of surveys, 60-70% of students admitted to cheating. While that is not good, in 2023 the percentage stayed about the same or decreased slightly, even when students were asked about cheating with AI. This makes sense as cheating has always been easy and the decision to cheat is based more on ethics than technology. It is also worth considering that AI is not great for cheating. As researchers Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor have argued, AI is most useful at doing useless things. Having “useless” work that AI can do well could be seen as a flaw in course design rather than a problem with AI. There are also excellent practices and tools that can be employed to discourage and limit cheating. As such, AI cheating is unlikely to be the doom of the academy. That said, a significant improvement in quality of AI could change this. But there is also the worry that AI will lead to Artificial Incompetence, which is the second threat.

Socrates was critical of writing and argued it would weaken memory. Centuries later, television was supposed to “rot brains” and it was feared calculators would destroy mathematical skills. More recently, computers and smartphones were supposed to damage the minds of students. AI is latest threat.

There are two worries about AI in this context. The first ties back to cheating: students will graduate into jobs but be incompetent because they cheated with AI. While having incompetent people in important jobs is worrying, this is not a new problem. There has always been the risk of students cheating their way to incompetence or getting into professions and positions because of nepotism, cronyism, bribery, family influence, etc. rather than competence. As such, AI is not a special threat here.

A second worry takes us back to Socrates and calculators: students using technology “honestly” could become incompetent. That is, lack the skills and knowledge they need. But how afraid should we be?

If we look back at writing, calculators, and computers we can infer that if the academy was able to adapt to these technologies, then it will be able to adapt to AI. But we will need to take the threat seriously when creating policies, lessons and assessments. After all, these dire predictions did not come true because people took steps to ensure they did not. But perhaps this analogy is false, and AI is a special threat.

A reasonable worry is that AI might be fundamentally different from earlier technologies. For example, it was worried that Photoshop would eliminate the need for artistic skill, but it turned out to be a new tool. But AI image generation is radically different, and a student could use it to generate images without having or learning any artistic skill. This leads to the third threat, that of Artificial Obsolescence.

As AI improves, it is likely that students will no longer need certain skills because AI will be able to do it for them (or in their place). As this happens, we will need to decide whether this is something we should fear or just another example of needing to adapt because technology once again rendered some skills obsolete

To illustrate, modern college graduates do not know how to work a spinning wheel, use computer punch cards or troubleshoot an AppleTalk network. But they do not need such skills and are not incompetent for lacking them. But there is still the question of whether to allow skills and knowledge to die and what we might lose in doing so.

While people learn obsolete skills for various reasons, such as hobbies, colleges will probably stop teaching some skills made “irrelevant” by AI. But there will still be relevant skills. Because of this, schools will need to adjust their courses and curriculum. There is also the worry that AI might eliminate entire professions which could lead to the elimination of degrees or entire departments. But while AI is new, such challenges are not.

Adapting to survive is nothing new in higher education and colleges do so whether the changes are caused by technology, economics, or politics. As examples, universities no longer teach obsolete programming languages and state universities in Florida have been compelled by the state to change General Education. But AI, some would argue, will change not just the academy but will reshape the entire economy.

In some dystopian sci-fi, AI pushes most people into poverty while the AI owning elites live in luxury. In this scenario, some elite colleges might persist while the other schools perish. While this scenario is unlikely, history shows economies can be ruined and dystopia cannot be simply dismissed. But the future is what we make, and the academy has a role to play, if we have the will to do so.

In Utopian sci-fi, AI eliminates jobs we do not want to do while freeing us from poverty, hardship, and drudgery. In such a world of abundance, colleges might thrive as people have the time and opportunity to learn without the pressure of economic necessity. Or perhaps colleges would be largely replaced by personal AI professors.

In closing, the most plausible scenario is that AI has been overhyped and while colleges will need to adapt to the technology, they will not be significantly harmed, let alone destroyed. But it is wise to be prepared for what the future might bring because complacency and willful blindness always prove disastrous

As professors we worry students will use AI to cheat (until it takes our jobs). But we can also transform AI into a useful and engaging teaching assistant by creating AI personas tailored to our classes.

An AI persona defines the distinctive character and tone of an artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT. It is like an NPC (non-player character) in a video game. Both are designed to interact in a way that feels natural and engaging, enhancing the overall experience.

Creating a custom AI persona for a class involves two general tasks. While a robust Large Language Model (LLM) like CoPilot or ChatGPT will have a vast database, it will probably lack content specific to your class. So, the first task is to provide that information. The second task is to design a suitable persona. But why bother?

There are several advantages to having an AI TA. Unlike a human, it is available all hours and provides immediate responses. Human professors have other tasks, their own lives outside of academics and, of course, need to sleep.

Students are often reluctant to ask questions in class or during office hours, perhaps because of fear of embarrassment or being judged. As the philosopher Thomas Hobbes noted, people often do not take criticism well from other people, for “to dissent is like calling him a fool.”  But a student can interact privately with an AI TA without fear of embarrassment or judgement.  And some people are more comfortable with (and addicted to) interacting with devices rather than other people, so an AI TA has an advantage here as well.

And, as Kyle Reese said of the Terminator, “It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” While we do not want our AI TAs to terminate students, it will never get tired, angry, inattentive, distracted or bored. This provides an advantage over humans, especially when a student is struggling with material or prefers to learn at a different pace from that offered in the classroom. As these advantages arise from the AI aspect of the AI TA, you might wonder why you should create a persona.

One reason is that creating a persona allows you to set guardrails, so the AI TA does not, for example, do the work for the students. Another reason is that, going back to the NPC comparison, an AI with a persona is more interesting and can make conversations feel more natural and relatable, thus keeping students engaged longer. A persona can also be designed to add humor, creativity, or unique quirks, making interactions more enjoyable. While this can be controversial and raises some moral concerns, a persona can convey empathy and understanding, creating a sense of trust and comfort.

One practical concern about customizing the persona is analogous to picking the paint used for classrooms. While most find the usual neutral colors dull, they also do not find them annoying. While creative use of color in the classroom might appeal to some, it might also be annoying and distracting to others. And we must never forget the lesson of Microsoft’s Clippy. As such, care should be taken in making an appealing but not annoying AI TA.

A persona can also be designed to fit the needs of your class and students, thus creating a customized experience. A well-designed person can also simplify complex interactions, guiding the students through, for example, how to structure their paper or a complex problem. If the idea of having an AI TA is appealing, it is surprisingly easy to make this happen.

There are many ways to enable your AI TA. The cheapest and easiest is to provide your students with a prompt to create a persona and a file to upload to, for example, CoPilot. The downside is that the persona will be simple and both it and the file will be forgotten as soon as the session ends, requiring students to take these steps each time. The student will also have control over the persona prompt, so they can easily remove any guardrails you included.

A more expensive option is to get a subscription, such as that offered by ChatGPT, that allows you to create a persistent persona with custom content. This is easier for the students and allows you to ensure that your AI TA will operate within your specified guardrails (mostly).

There is also the option of hosting your own customized local LLM. While you will need suitable hardware, this is much easier than it sounds. For example, with the free software Ollama you could be running your own LLM within minutes. Customizing it and creating a web interface for students is much more challenging, but there is also free software available for this. No matter what approach you take, you will want to ensure that your AI TA operates and is used safely and ethically. Here are some recommendations.

While the AI TA should help students, it should avoid providing complete answers to exam questions, essays, or assignments. Instead, it should focus on guiding students through problem-solving techniques and frameworks. It can also be designed to ask thought-provoking questions and encourage exploration of topics to deepen understanding.

On the moral side, you need to communicate the AI TA’s limitations and your ethical guidelines for its usage. Encourage students to use the AI TA as a tool for learning rather than for shortcuts.

If the AI TA detects repeated behavior suggesting attempts to cheat (e.g., asking for answers to specific assignments), it could notify the user of the ethical standards. While you might worry that this would annoy students, Aristotle notes in his Nicomachean Ethics that “although people resent it when their impulses are opposed by human agents, even if they are in the right, the law causes no irritation by enjoining decent behavior.” While Aristotle’s claim can be disputed, the same should apply to the AI TA.

Power holders in the United States tend to be white, male, straight, and (profess to be) Christian. Membership in these groups also seems to confer a degree of advantage relative to people outside of these groups. Yet, as been noted in the previous essays, some claim that the people in these groups are now the “real victims.” In this essay I will look at how a version of the fallacy of anecdotal evidence can be used to “argue” about who is “the real victim.”

The fallacy of anecdotal evidence is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a small number of cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. The fallacy is sometimes taken to be a version of the hasty generalization fallacy (drawing a conclusion from a sample that is too small to adequately support that conclusion). The main difference between hasty generalization and anecdotal evidence is that the fallacy anecdotal evidence involves using a story (anecdote) as the sample.

Here is the form of the anecdotal evidence fallacy often used to “argue” that an advantaged group is not advantaged:

 

Premise 1: It is claimed that statistical evidence shows that Group A is advantaged relative to Group B

Premise 2: A member of Group A was disadvantaged relative to a member of Group B.

Conclusion: Group A is not advantaged relative to Group B (or Group B is not disadvantaged relative to Group A).

 

 

To illustrate:

 

Premise 1: It is claimed that statistical evidence shows that white Americas are advantaged relative to black Americans.

Premise 2: Chad, a white American, was unable to get into his first choice of colleges because affirmative action allowed Anthony, a black American, to displace him.

Conclusion: White Americans are not advantaged relative to black Americans.

 

The problem with the logic is that an anecdote does not suffice to establish a general claim because an adequately large sample is needed to make a strong generalization. But one must also be on guard against another sort of fallacy:

 

Premise 1: It is claimed that statistical evidence shows that Group A is advantaged relative to Group B.

Premise 2: Member M of Group A is disadvantaged relative to Member N of Group B.

Conclusion: The disadvantage of M is morally acceptable, or M is not really disadvantaged.

 

To illustrate:

 

Premise 1: It is claimed that statistical evidence shows that men are advantaged relative to women.

Premise 2: Andy was disadvantaged relative to his boss Sally when she used her position to sexually harass him.

Conclusion: The disadvantage of Andy is morally acceptable, or Andy was not really disadvantaged.

 

 

While individual cases do not disprove a body of statistical evidence they should not be ignored. As in the illustration given above, while men generally have a workplace advantage over women, this does not entail that individual men are never at a disadvantage relative to individual women. It also does not entail that, for example, men cannot be the victims of sexual harassment by women.  As another illustration, while white men dominate academics, business, and politics, this does not entail that there are not injustices against specific white men in such things as admission, hiring and promotions. These sorts of situations can lead to moral debates about harm.

One excellent example is the debate over affirmative action. An oversimplified justification is that groups that have been historically disadvantaged are given a degree of preference in the selection process. For example, a minority woman might be given preference over a white woman in the case of college admission. The usual moral counter is that the white woman is wronged by this: if she is better qualified, then she should be admitted, even if this entails that the college population will remain almost entirely white.

The usual counter to this is that the white woman is likely to appear better qualified because she has enjoyed the advantages conferred from being white. For example, her ancestors might have built wealth by owning the ancestors of the black woman who was admitted over her and this inherited wealth meant that her family has been attending college for generations, that she was able to attend excellent schools, and that her family could pay for tutoring and test preparation.

This can be countered by other arguments, such as how the woman did not own slaves herself, so it is unfair for her to not be admitted on the “merit” arising from all these advantages arising from generational wealth. One can, of course, consider scenarios such as cases in which the black woman is from a wealthy family while the white woman is from a poor family. Such cases can, of course, be considered in terms of economic class and one could argue that class should also be a factor. This obviously all leads to the moral issue of whether it is acceptable to inflict some harm on specific members of advantaged groups to address systematic disadvantages, which goes way beyond the scope of this essay.

Fortunately, I do not need to settle this issue here. This is because even if such anecdotes are examples of morally wrong actions, they do not disprove the general statistical claims about relative advantages and disadvantages between groups. For example, even if a few white students are wronged by affirmative action when they cannot attend their first pick of schools, these anecdotes do not disprove the statistical evidence of the relative advantage conferred by being white in America. After all, the claim of advantage is not that each white person is always advantaged over everyone else on an individual-by-individual basis. Rather it is about the overall advantages that appear in statistics such as wealth and treatment by the police. As such, using anecdotes to “refute” statistical data is, as always, a fallacy. But what about cases in which members of an advantaged group do suffer a statistically meaningful disadvantage in one or more areas?

While falling victim to the fallacy of anecdotal evidence is bad logic, it is not an error to consider that members of an advantaged group might face a significant disadvantage (or harm) because of their membership in that advantaged group. As would be expected, any example used here will be controversial. I will use the Fathers’ Rights movement as the example. The central claim behind this movement is that fathers are systematically disadvantaged relative to mothers. While there are liberal and conservative versions, the general claim is that fathers and mothers should have parity in the legal system on this matter. Critics, as would be expected, claim that men tend to already enjoy a relative advantage here. But if the Fathers’ Rights movement is correct about fathers being systematically disadvantaged relative to mothers, then this would not be mere anecdotal reasoning. That is, it would not just be a few cases in which individual fathers were disadvantaged relative to a few individual mothers, it would be systematic injustice. But would this area of relative disadvantage disprove the claim of general advantage? Let us look at the reasoning:

 

Premise 1: It is claimed that statistical evidence shows that Group A is advantaged relative to Group B.

Premise 2: But Group A is disadvantaged relative to Group B in specific area C.

Conclusion: Group A is not advantaged relative to Group B.

 

As presented, this would be an error in reasoning because Group A being disadvantaged in one area would not prove that the group is not advantaged relative to Group B when all areas are considered. To use an analogy, the fact that Team B outscored Team A in the fifth inning of a baseball game does not entail that B is leading. It must be noted that a similar argument with multiple premises like Premise 2 could show that Group A is not advantaged relative to Group B. After all, establishing adequate statistical evidence would obviously be adequate. There are, of course, questions about how to determine relative advantage and these can be debated in good faith. One obvious point of dispute would be the matter of weighting. For example, if fathers are disadvantaged relative to mothers, how would this count relative to the pay gap between men and women? And so on for all areas of comparison. This does show the need to consider each area as well as a need for assessing value but this is not unique to the situation at hand and one could, as is often done, assign crude dollar values to do the math.

In closing, while individual wrongs and wrongs done to members of advantaged groups as members of that group can occur, they do not automatically disprove the statistical data. 

 

When it is claimed that the “real victims” are white, male, straight or Christian, there is the obvious problem of explaining how this occurs. It cannot be that white, male, straight and Christian people are systematically excluded from power in the United States. These are the people who currently dominate the White House, the Senate, the House, corporations, academia, and so on. But there is a feeling among some white, straight, male, and Christian people that they are suffering. But what is the explanation?

A “left wing” explanation would be that while being white, male, straight or Christian yields relative advantages, the greatest advantages are held by those who have the greatest wealth and power. That is, class is a dominant factor in the United States. Take, for example, the claim that migrants are stealing jobs. Put this way, white workers are claimed to be victims of minorities. While there are cases in which jobs are lost to migrants, the job woes of Americans are not caused by migrants stealing jobs. While the causes of job losses and underemployment are complicated, a major factor is that those with the power to make decisions choose to do things that hurt American workers. As a specific example, my hometown of Old Town used to have the paper mill as its primary employer. Migrants did not come to Old Town to steal the jobs, ownership of the mill changed and eventually those in charge decided to shut the mill down. This hurt my hometown in ways that it will probably never recover from. One could spend endless hours going through similar explanations of the real woes faced by white, male, straight, and Christian Americans. But this sort of explanation is obviously not going to be presented by those who hold power. But they still need to explain the suffering.

One “non-left” explanation is that the “real victims” are “losing” to the other groups because they are inferior. To use an analogy, back in the day my friends and I did well in the local road races; we were the ruling class of local running. This is no longer the case. The explanation is easy: we are now decades older and are inferior to the young athletes who now rule. One could argue that the same sort of thing is happening to the groups in question: they once ruled America but are now losing to superior groups because they are inferior. But this explanation would clearly be unacceptable to the conservatives who claim that white, straight, male, Christians are the real victims.

One reason for this is the conservative notion of merit and their claims about pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. If these groups are “losing” because they are inferior, then this would be acceptable under a professed principle of merit in conservative ideology. But conservatives do not say that it is morally fine that white, straight, Christian men are losing because they are inferior to their competition.

A second reason conservatives will not accept the inferiority explanation is that it would not be good propaganda or rhetoric. Telling these groups that they are losing because they are inferior will hardly yield the desired results. As such, an explanation is still wanting.

But conservatives do tend to present the “opponents” of these groups as being strong in some manner. This allows the “defeat” to be blamed on the strength of the opposing groups rather than on the weakness of the “real victims.” An obvious problem is that if these opposing groups are presented as strong, this entails their white, straight, male, Christian “victims” are weaker and thus, by conservative ideology, inferior. This creates a challenge for conservatives: the “real victims” must be victims, but they must also be mighty. That is, they must be mighty victims. The reasons given that the groups are mighty(yet victims) vary considerably and fall along a vast spectrum.

In the case of being white, the notion of whites being mighty can range from pride in being white to white supremacy. Moderate examples of this would be people to argue for the superiority of Western (white) culture and point to the accomplishments of white people. Approaching the extreme end would be assertions of fundamental white supremacy and the inferiority of all others. Nazis would be in this area. I must, of course, state the obvious to pre-empt a likely attack: being fine with being white is fine. I’m fine with looking white; but I do not think I am thus superior to others.

In the case of being male, the notion that men are superior to women can range from pride in being a male to complete misogyny. Moderate examples would be those who argue that men and women have different qualities, but men are generally better. Near the extreme end would be full misogyny, the idea that men are vastly superior to women and women are horrible and out to destroy men. One can be fine with being a man; that can be healthy. I am fine with being a man; but I do not think this makes me superior.

In the case of being straight, the notion that being straight is superior to having another sexuality can range from the idea that being straight is more natural to the notion that non-straight people are abominations that should be destroyed. Moderate examples would be those who say that being straight is generally better than not being straight and non-straight people probably have some minor mental illness. The extreme end would involve regarding those other than straight people as perverted abominations that should be cured, locked away or even killed. One can be fine with being straight. I am. But I do not think that other orientations must be perverted or inferior. I do, of course, recognize that there can be evil connected to one’s sexuality. After all, pedophiles and rapists are morally wicked.

In the case of Christianity, the idea that it is better than other religions can range from the notion that it is somewhat better to the view that other faiths are not only inferior but wicked. Moderate examples would be people who think their faith is better because of Christ, but who think that other monotheistic faiths are close to being right (if only they would accept Jesus). Extreme examples would include fanatical loathing and hatred of other faiths, regarding those people as not only wrong but monstrous in their beliefs. This is not to deny that some people are monstrous in their beliefs. Christians should obviously be fine with being Christian—I am fine with my Episcopalian background. But I do not think I am thus superior to others. Once it has been “argued” that these groups are superior, then an explanation must be given as to why they are the “real victims.”

As noted above, the opposing groups that make whites, men, straight people, and Christians into the “real victims” must be strong enough to “win” yet also somehow inferior. These requires that the opposing groups have the traits needed to “win” while also having traits that make them inferior. The “real victim” groups must have the traits needed to “lose” while also having the traits that make them superior. This seems to create the paradox of the mighty victims: the inferior victimizers must win consistently to explain why these superior groups are the “real victims”, but the “victory” must also be unearned.

One way to try to do this is by a sports analogy in which the allegedly best athletes are consistently bested by allegedly inferior athletes. Inferior athletes could win by cheating or through some conspiracy, thus the inferiors consistently and unfairly best their betters. This would, of course, require that the best athletes can never overcome cheating or do anything to prevent it. That is, they are powerless to be anything but mighty victims. But this would seem to require that although they are the best athletes, they are lacking in other ways that allow them to be so easily bested. For this analogy to work with the groups in question, it would need to be shown that these groups are cheating in some manner that cannot be addressed by the alleged superiority of the “real victims.” It is not clear how this would work: that the “real victims” would be superior yet still unable to overcome the cheating of their alleged inferiors.

A second way is to use the ally hypothesis. The allegedly inferior victimizing groups are aided and abetted by traitors in the victimized groups. On this narrative, the traitors can best their betrayed fellows because they are also among the superior groups and aid the allegedly inferior groups to best their own kind. For example, one might allege that there are white traitors helping to victimize their fellow whites. Ironically, this would require that the traitors be superior to the loyalists, otherwise the group loyalists should be able to “win.” So, if whites being the real victims is explained in terms of white traitors, the problem is that this would seem to entail that the “best” whites are the traitors since they are “beating” the “lesser” whites. So, the ally hypothesis falls apart under examination.

A third way is to use the numbers hypothesis; the allegedly inferior victimizing groups have superior numbers, so the mighty victims are “losing.” While it is true that numbers can offset ability, the “real victim” groups are generally not outnumbered. Men and women are roughly equal in numbers, straight people vastly outnumber other orientations, Christians dominate American religion, and white people still have a numerical advantage in America, though we might now be a majority minority (that is, not 50+% of the population but still more than any other group). As such, the numbers argument fails. But there is an explanation that does reconcile the fact that these groups are both “superior” and victims.

It is true that white people, men, straight people, and Christians are victims. But it is also true that people from these groups hold the overwhelming power in the United States. Thus, these groups both hold superior power and contain victims. The victims are, ironically, most often victims of their fellows who hold superior power. So how do the powerful few convince the many in these groups that they are the “real victims” of the out groups?

A main strategy seems to involve pointing to losses in relative advantages between groups and convincing people that these losses are both unfair and caused by the other group. For example, men have lost some of their relative advantages over women in both the law and social norms and nothing stings like losing an undeserved advantage. It seems natural to blame women for this, since they have gained from these changes.  As another example, whites have lost some relative advantages over the years. To use an extreme example, it is no longer legal to own a black person. It is natural to blame people who are not white for the changes. Straight people have also seen same-sex marriage legalized, which some people somehow see as a loss. It is natural to blame people with other orientations for this.  Christianity has had to share more space with other religions and this loss of advantage no doubt strikes some as being victimized. It is natural to blame people of other faiths for this, since they have gained something.

Another strategy involves getting people in these mighty victim groups to believe (or at least feel) that most of their woes are the fault of the other groups, even when there is no connection. For example, the poverty and underemployment that white, straight, Christian men face is blamed on minorities although the economic decisions in the United States are mostly made by a few white, straight, Christian men. Men who are concerned that men die disproportionately in dangerous jobs might blame the feminists but it is obviously not the feminist who exclude women from dangerous jobs, and it is certainly not the feminists who control working conditions or when we take military action. There are also cases in which the harms are entirely fictional, for example Fox’s eternal make-believe war on Christmas.

We thus have a working explanation of mighty victims. A tiny fraction of the members of the group are mighty in that they hold overwhelming power. The other members of these groups are victims, but they are mostly victimized by members of their own groups. Which makes sense: the idea that those with less power are somehow victimizing the powerful is as absurd as the idea that the poor are victimizing the rich.

When Democrats in congress propose benefits for Americans, such as a universal pre-K program, childcare benefits for working families, expansions of the child tax credit and the earned income credit, free college and so on many on the right (such as Fox News) engage in D&D. Not the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, but the Deficit argument and the Dependency argument.

The deficit argument, which can also be categorized as the “it costs too much” argument, is that such programs will cost too much money, thus increasing the deficit. Since increasing the deficit is claimed to be harmful, then these programs should not be implemented. Cost-benefit arguments are certainly sensible if they are made in good faith. While some on the right do make this argument in good faith, many do not.

While the philosophical problem of other minds shows that I cannot know the content of another’s mind (or even if they have one), a good general test for bad faith is the consistency test. If a person is making a good faith argument based on their professed concern about something, then they will have similar concerns in other similar situations. Naturally, there can be relevant differences that warrant not applying the same principle in other circumstances. In the case of the deficit argument, the test for bad faith is to see if those making the argument are consistently concerned about cost and the deficit. If so, then this can be reasonably taken as a good faith argument: they believe what they are arguing. If their concern is not consistent, then it is reasonable to suspect bad faith although people can be inconsistent for other reasons, such as being unaware of the inconsistency. Looking back on the previous Trump presidency (and other Republican administrations) and looking at the Big Beautiful Bill we can see that the right generally does not care about costs or deficits when it comes to spending money on or increasing the deficit for things they like, such as military expenditures, corporate subsidies, and tax cuts. As such, it is reasonable to conclude that they do not believe in their deficit argument and do not care about costs or deficits as such. This is not to say that their argument must thus be flawed or their claims untrue.

Bad faith argumentation is like (and can include) lying: it is a matter of intent and belief. To infer that someone’s argument must be fallacious or their claim’s false because they are arguing in bad faith would be to fall victim to the ad hominem fallacy. Just as person could be telling a “true lie” by making a true claim they believe is false to deceive, a person could make a good bad faith argument: the argument could have good logic and plausible premises, but the person making it does not believe in their own argument. So why not just assess the logic of the argument and truth of the claims?

While logical assessment should be done, determining whether an argument is made in bad faith is still important as a normative rather than logical matter. When someone makes a bad faith argument (or claim), they do not believe in their own argument (or claim). As such, other people are not under any moral obligation to take their bad faith argument or claim seriously. To use the example of lying, if I know someone is lying to me, my moral concern is not with whether their claim is true or not (that is a matter for critical thinking) but with their intention to deceive or manipulate me. As such, while I should not reject their claim out of hand (it could be a true lie) I should certainly not be influenced by their lie as they have forfeited the expectation that I will give them serious consideration.

As noted above, the right generally does not care about deficits and debt as such. To be fair, there are some who are consistent on this point and they have thus earned the normative right to be given due consideration. But those who have proven that they do not care about the deficit as such are just advancing a bad faith argument, they are engaging in deceit rather than good argumentation.

In closing, I want to stress that it does not follow that a bad faith argument must be a fallacy or that a bad faith claim must be false. Just as people can tell true lies, they can also advance good arguments in bad faith. As such, the argument that any proposal to help Americans who are not rich will cost too much should be given due consideration on its own merits and, of course, this should also apply when the right is running up the deficit with tax cuts, corporate subsidies, and military spending.

In addition to the deficit argument, many on the right also advance the Dependency argument. This will be considered in the next essay.