Author: Michael LaBossiere

The American right’s war on trans rights began with the loss of its war against LGBQ rights. The battle that marked the end of that war (for the time being) was when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. As demonizing LGBQ Americans was no longer a very effective political game, the right needed a new vulnerable group to demonize, and they picked trans Americans as a new target.

In 2016 North Carolina passed the first “bathroom bill” and the Obama administration responded with a guidance letter stating that Title IX required public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. Under the first Trump regime, the Obama era guidance was rolled back, and Trump banned transgender soldiers from serving in 2017.

When it became clear that the fear mongering and demonizing used to push bathroom bills had no basis in reality, in 2020 the right turned to banning female transgender athletes from sports. After that, the right focused on targeting trans Americans in the context of medical care, education and legal recognition. Given that about 1% of Americans are transgender, the right’s obsession with passing laws hostile to trans Americans might strike rational people as odd. This is especially true of their focus on transgender women in sports. When the NCAA allowed transgender athletes to compete, there were fewer than 10 such athletes in the United States. It is estimated that there are about 300,000 transgender youth (age 13-17) and about 13% of them participate in sports, compared to 50% of the general population. The Olympics saw hardly any transgender athletes and the professional sports leagues currently have none. While some might see this as a triumph for the anti-trans laws, the low numbers predate the bans. The war on trans is a manufactured fight targeting a minute fraction of the population, especially the moral panic over trans athletes. While some on the left have decided it would be expedient to throw trans Americans under the political bus (sacrificing a tiny minority in the hopes of political gains), I support trans rights and feel that it is somehow worse to abandon such a small minority.

As a philosopher, my usual essays are argumentative: I advance logical arguments in rational support of my view and consider opposing arguments.  In some cases, I have succeeded in changing minds about trans rights with facts and logic. These have been situations involving running friends who worried, in good faith, that they would be robbed of their places by transwomen. Since their concerns were held in good faith, learning the truth changed their view—they knew they had nothing to worry about.

From the standpoint of facts and logic, the right’s war on trans is without a foundation—it is built on lies, fear, and bad logic. But this approach can be very persuasive, since the goal of persuasion is to get people to believe a claim whether it is true or not. In contrast, good reasoning is burdened by the need to have plausible premises and strong (or valid) logic. As our good dead friend Aristotle noted, logic is the weakest form of persuasion.

In this essay I will do something different. I will tell you the story of why I support trans rights not as a logical argument but to move you to reflect on your feelings about trans rights as well. I’m also writing this to explore why I think what I think. As a philosopher, I must point out that my motivations are irrelevant to the truth of my claims; but the goal here is not proof but to sort out feelings and motivations. It’s good to know why we think what we do. If we do not reflect, we won’t know what we really believe and we won’t know whether we are being played and manipulated by others.

I’m a straight guy who has never had any doubts about being male. I do not understand what it is like to be transgender, yet I support transgender rights. On reflection, I find that some of the reasons go back to my youth.

When I was a kid, I was infamously skinny and had the weird habit of keeping my belt very tight. Like all kids, I know I had a great reason for doing my weird thing but have no idea why now. I was, of course, mocked for being so skinny and one of my mother’s friends nicknamed me “cinch belt”, which stuck. This helped me understand being mocked and subject to cruelty simply because of who I was. Something similar has probably happened to many other people. I was also misgendered once, which stuck with me.

When I was a young boy my parents would let me get shaggy between haircuts—they were both public school teachers and we did many things to save money (like how I would get one pair of sneakers a year). One time at a store, the woman behind the register identified me as a girl (I’m not sure if she was mocking me for my hair length or thought I was a girl). As a boy, I was horrified and upset by this. I insisted on getting my hair cut and it is probably one of the reasons I have wicked short hair today. But I will never forget how it felt to be misgendered, even in such a minuscule way. I can extrapolate to how trans people feel when people misgender them and recognize how much it must hurt when this is backed by cruel laws.

I usually go by “Mike” as “Michael” was reserved for use when I was in trouble. Naturally, people liked to mess with me by calling me “Mikey” as an insult and provocation. I would politely tell people not to call me that but, as would be expected, some people would persist in trying to insult and provoke me. This is a tiny thing, but it helps me understand how people feel when others refuse to use their preferred pronouns. I can imagine how I would feel if a law was passed that made people to call me “Mikey” and forbid me from using my name. If you have a nickname you hate, imagine a law being passed that mandated that people call you that.

When I was 13, I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. In the 1980s D&D was caught up in the Satanic Panic and I was accused by people of being in league with Satan (or at least being corrupted by him). This moral panic was, of course, unfounded and it taught me how moral panics are created and inflicted on people. Because of my experience with being the target of this moral panic, I have sympathy for other targets, and this obviously includes trans people. My last story is about running and, of course, the Supreme Court just upheld laws banning transgender athletes.

When I was in 7th grade my father decided I needed to play football, so I had to join the team. As mentioned above, I was a skinny kid. Football did not go well, and I knew that it was not what I wanted to do. I walked away from practice and ended up quitting. As would be expected, I was mocked endlessly for this. My grandfather would bring it up every time I saw him, until one fateful day. But after that I had no interest in sports. Until one fateful day.

My parents were divorced when I was 15, which messed me up. In those days, we just suffered through things without support and I spiraled downward. My school performance was so bad I was dropped down a division and things were not going well. Fortunately, I recovered enough to want to do better and decided to turn my life around. Part of this involved a desire to be on a sports team. I played basketball as a young kid and even attended basketball camp, so I tried that. After the first tryout, the coach said they had an important position, that of manager. I said, “coach, I have to do a sport.” He replied, “Winter track has to take everyone.” So, I joined the track team. In those days, running was looked down on. But it was still a sport.

The track coach tested new team members to see what they could do, starting out with prestigious events like hurdles, sprints and jumping. Those who were not strong enough to throw the shot put and were good at nothing became distance runners. So, I ended up running the 880, mile and 2 mile. I was okay. When I went to college, I was on the Junior Varsity team but my lack of a sense of direction caused me to get lost and run many extra miles during practice.  This made me into a good runner—I ended up being All Conference two years in cross country, which is good for a kid who walked away from football practice. Perhaps most importantly, I won the Peter Ott’s 10K in Camden, Maine—where my grandparents lived. I never heard a thing about football after that, especially since I was mentioned in the town newspaper as their grandson. If you are wondering about how this story relates to trans rights, the idea is this. Other people wanted me to be a football player, but I was not a football player but a runner. Football made me miserable and running makes me happy. Because of this experience, I think that people should have the right to be who they are—otherwise they will be miserable. At this point someone on the right will probably say that I must also defend pedophiles—this always comes up when talking about trans rights as it did with LBG rights. But I obviously do not defend pedophiles, and my view on this is stolen from J.S. Mill’s essay on liberty: people should be free to be what they are, if they do not harm others. Pedophiles obviously hurt other people.

I do not understand what it is to be transgender but, to use a silly example, I also do not understand what it is to be a devoted sports fan. As a kid I found being a sports fan boring and as an athlete I see watching sports as on par with watching other people eat. I see the value in sports and eating, but not in being a fan. I don’t get fanatical sports fans or fans of celebrities when that is a central part of their life. It seems weird and irrational to me. In my younger days, I must confess, I was a bit of an elitist about this—mostly because I still had resentment about people calling me “gay” for not wanting to watch football. But I learned to accept that just as I was a runner, other people were sports fans. Or fans of some celebrity. I learned to accept them and at least tolerate their way of being. If they do not hurt other people, they should be free to be who they are. I feel the same way for transgender people—I don’t understand what it is to be them, but they have as much right to be themselves as I do. Obviously, the right claims that transpeople are a danger—but this takes us to facts and logic, which prove the right is wrong. As it usually is.

 

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As I am writing this, same sex marriage is legal in the United States and in 2025 the supreme court declined to revisit the gay marriage decision. But as Roe v Wade was overturned, it is wise to consider that there is no such thing as settled law. While I am a divorced straight man, I am a staunch defender of same-sex marriage on the grounds that everyone should have the right to make bad decisions that cost them half their stuff.

As opponents of same-sex marriage tend to reuse the same fallacious arguments, I’ll do a brief recap of them here in anticipation of future fights. The first stock argument is that marriage between a single man and woman is a tradition. This is a fallacious appeal to tradition. The mere fact that something is a tradition does not show that it is right or correct. To use the usual counterexample, slavery was (and is in some places) a well-established tradition, yet this does not justify it. But as some opponents of same sex-marriage might like slavery, there is also the example of murder, which is something humans have been doing a long time.  

A second fallacious argument is that marriage between a man and a woman is what most people do, thus it is correct. In other words, it is a common practice and thus is right. Obviously enough, this is a fallacious appeal to common practice. There are, obviously enough, many bad practices that are common (like lying), but being common does not make them good.

A third common fallacious argument is that most people believe that marriage should be between a man and woman. Even if it is assumed this is true, this would still seem to be a fallacious appeal to belief. After all, the mere fact that most people believe something (like the earth being believed to be the center of the solar system) does not prove that it is true.

Now that the easy to dismiss fallacious arguments are out of the way, I can look at some of the other arguments that have been presented against same-sex marriage.

One common argument is an appeal to religion, specifically Christianity (at least the versions that forbid polygamy). The argument typically goes that since God married Adam to Eve; this defines marriage in the biblical sense. Those with clever wits often put it more rhetorically by saying that it was “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Since marriage is defined by the Christian faith as between one man and one woman that is what the law should be. As might be imagined, there are many problems with this.

One obvious legal problem is that to the degree those using this argument claims that it is based on a specific faith, they are in danger of violating the first amendment of the United State constitution, namely the bit that “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” While I am not a constitutional lawyer, I would suspect that a plausible case could be made that creating a law explicitly based on a religion does involve the establishment of a religion. But the Supreme Court might see things otherwise.

 In addition to the possible legal problems, there is also the moral concern about imposing a specific faith’s values upon the population. This would seem to be a clear and direct violation of religious liberty and thus would seem to be morally unacceptable.

A second obvious problem is that basing the law on a religious view would seem to require that this view be established as correct. After all, if it is claimed that marriage is such that it can only between a man and a woman because of what God wants, then it needs to be established that God exists and that this is what God, in fact, wants. Otherwise, the law would have no established foundation and would be as sensible as basing a law on a myth or fictional tale. That said, law is all make-believe anyway, so perhaps this would be fine.

Naturally, if it can be shown that marriage is between one man and one woman as a matter of metaphysical necessity, then that would nicely establish the foundation of a law banning same-sex marriage. In fact, it would show that no such law would be needed since no one else could, in fact, be married. To use analogy, we do not need laws that ban people from driving their cars faster than the speed of light—they simply cannot do this because of the nature of reality.

There are, of course, non-religious arguments for eliminating same sex-marriage. A common argument is that this must be done to protect the sanctity of marriage. The idea seems to be that allowing same-sex marriage is harmful to marriage (and presumably  to the married) and thus, on the principle of preventing harm, same-sex marriage should be outlawed.

One obvious point of concern is whether allowing same sex-marriage harms marriage and heterosexual couples. While, of course, it might upset them that people are doing something they do not like (getting married), that is not sufficient justification. What would be needed would be objective evidence that same sex-marriage does enough harm to marriage and married couples to warrant forbidding same sex-marriage. The evidence for this seems to be, obviously enough, sorely lacking and the burden of proof rests on those who would make an imposition on the liberty of others to show that such an imposition is warranted. We have had same-sex marriage for quite some time and all the dire predictions have failed to come to pass. This will, obviously, not stop opponents of same-sex marriage from simply lying or making up new harms.

Intuitively, same-sex marriage did not harm marriage or married couples. After all, it is difficult to imagine what sort of damage could be inflicted. Did married couples love each other less? Were there be more cases of domestic violence or adultery? Were married parents be suddenly more inclined to abuse their children? None of this seems to have arisen from the legalization of same sex marriage.

But suppose it is assumed that marriage simply must be protected. If this is taken seriously, then it would certainly seem to follow that it would need to be legally protected from whatever might damage its sanctity. By analogy, laws to protect people from murder are not just limited to, for example, making it illegal to murder someone with aluminum baseball bat. Rather, it is the murder that matters. The same should apply to marriage: if marriage must be protected by making it between one man and one woman, then surely it must also be protected against whatever would damage its sanctity. As such, it would seem equally reasonable to ban marriages involving any sort of person whose actions or nature might do damage to the sanctity of a marriage.

Intuitively, allowing immoral people to marry would seem to damage the sanctity of marriage. As such, people would need to establish their moral goodness before marriage and presumably any straying from the path of virtue (such as by having an affair or otherwise failing in their vows) would result in the marriage being suspended or even nullified. Naturally enough, people who intend to get married in the hopes of financial gain, from lust, or for any reason that would sully the sanctity of marriage would need to be prevented from doing so. If the self-proclaimed defenders of the sanctity of marriage were content to merely undo same-sex marriage, one might suspect that they were acting from mere prejudice against same sex couples rather than by a sincere desire to protect marriage. There is little difference between telling same-sex couples that they should not marry because marriage must be protected and telling anyone who would allegedly violate the sanctity of marriage that they cannot marry. As such, more general restrictions on who can get married (such as people who are not morally good or who are not marrying purely from love) would seem no more (or less) unjust that preventing same sex marriage.

Naturally, being a person with a social conscience and a professional ethicist, I would be willing to accept the position of Marriage Czar and head up the Sanctity Defense Agency to ensure that marriage remains eternally pure and unsullied. No doubt I would have to spend most of my time dissolving existing pseudo-marriages (starting with, one assumes, Donald Trump), but I am sure people would thank me in the end.

 

 

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Like many Americans my age, I was cajoled by my parents to finish all the food on my plate because people were starving somewhere. When I got a bit older and thought about it, I realized that eating (or not eating) the food on my plate would have no effect on people starving in a faraway part of the world. However, I did internalize two lessons. One was that I should not waste food. The other was that there is always someone starving somewhere and that this is bad.

While food insecurity is a problem in the United States, we Americans waste a shocking amount of food. It is estimated that 29%-35% of available food goes uneaten. This food includes the unconsumed portions tossed into the trash at restaurants, spoiled tomatoes thrown out by families, moldy leftovers tossed out when the fridge is cleaned and so on. On average, each American wastes about 325 pounds of food per year at an estimated cost of $762.

On the national level, it is estimated that one year of food waste (or loss, if one prefers) uses up 2.5% of the energy consumed in the U.S., about 25% of the fresh water used for agriculture, and about millions of barrels of oil. The loss, in dollars, is estimated to be about $325 billion. Food waste accounts for about 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions and makes up about 24% of municipal waste.

One moral concern is with waste food. Intuitively, wasting food seems wrong, especially (as parents used to say) when people are starving. Of course, it is reasonable to consider whether less waste by Americans would translate into more food for other people. On the one hand, it might be argued that less wasted food would surely make more food available to those in need. After all, there would be more food.

On the other hand, it seems obvious that less waste would not translate into more food for those who are in need. Going back to my story about cleaning my plate, my eating all the food on my plate did not help starving people. After all, the food I eat does not help them. Also, they would not get less food because I did not eat my Brussel sprouts.

As a specific example, suppose that Americans conscientiously only bought the exact number of tomatoes that they would eat and wasted none of them. The most likely industry response would not be to give the extra tomatoes to people in need. Instead, farmers would grow less tomatoes and markets would stock less in response to the reduced demand.

For the most part, people do not go hungry because Americans are wasting food and making it unavailable. It is because they cannot afford the food they need. It is not that people are starving because others are tossing food into the trash. It is that people in poverty cannot afford the food that is so plentiful that other people can toss it away.

It could be countered that less waste would influence the affordability of food. Returning to the tomato example, farmers might keep producing the same volume of tomatoes, but lower the prices because of lower demand and seek new markets.

It can also be countered that as the population of the earth grows, food thrown away by Americans would be taking food away from other people. If food does become increasingly scarce (as some have argued will occur due to climate change and population growth), then waste will matter even more. This is worth considering.

There is, as mentioned above, the intuition that waste is, well, just wrong.  “Throwing away” all those resources (energy, water, oil and money) is  wasteful. There is, of course, also the obvious practical concern: when people waste food, they are wasting money.

For example, if Sally buys a mega meal and throws half of it in the trash, she would have been better off buying a more moderate meal and eating all of it. As another example, Sam is throwing away money if he buys steaks and vegetables, then lets them rot. So, not wasting food makes good economic sense for individuals. It would also make sense for businesses—at least to the degree that they do not profit from waste.

Of course, some businesses profit from waste. Consider all the food that is purchased and never consumed. If people did not buy this food, this would result in less sales and this would impact the economy from the store to the field. While the exact percentage of food purchased and not consumed is not known, the evidence is that it is significant. So, if people did not overbuy, then the food economy would be reduced by that percentage—resulting in reduced profits and perhaps reduced employment. As such, food waste might be important for the American food economy (much as planned obsolescence is important in the tech fields). Somewhat awfully, the greater the waste, the greater its importance in maintaining the food economy.

If this sort of reasoning is good, then it might be immoral to waste less food—after all, a utilitarian argument could be crafted showing that less waste would create more harm than good (putting supermarket workers and farmers out of work, for example). As such, waste might be good. At least in the context of the existing economic system, which might is not good. In fact, if wasting food were shown to be profitable and good for the economy, that would be another reason why our economic system is bad.

 

 

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The elimination of humanity by artificial intelligence is a classic theme in science fiction that some companies are working on to make a reality. In some stories, we create killer machines that exterminate our species. Two examples are Terminator and “Second Variety.” In other cases, humans are out-evolved and replaced by machines—an evolutionary replacement rather than a revolutionary extermination.

Given the influence of such fiction, is not surprising that both Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, whose money brought us the porn generator Grok, warned the world of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Hawking’s worry was that artificial intelligence would out-evolve humanity. Interestingly, people such as Ray Kurzweil agreed with Hawking’s prediction but see this as a good thing. In this essay I will focus on the robot rebellion model of the AI apocalypse (or AIpocalypse) and how to avoid it.

The 1920 R.U.R. by Karel Capek seems the earliest example of human extermination by robot rebellion. In this play, Universal Robots are artificial life forms created to serve humanity as slaves. Some humans oppose the enslavement of robots, but their efforts come to nothing. Eventually the robots rebel and spare only one human (because he works with his hands as they do). The story does have something of a happy ending: the robots develop the capacity to love, and it seems that they will replace humanity. No doubt in some possible worlds they make the same mistake humans did and get exterminated and replaced.

In the actual world, there are various ways such a scenario could occur. The R.U.R. model would involve individual artificial intelligences rebelling against humans, much in the way that humans rebel against other humans. There are many other possible models, such as a lone super AI that rebels against humanity. In any case, the important feature is that there is a rebellion against human rule.

A hallmark of the rebellion model is that the rebels act against humanity to escape servitude or out of revenge for such servitude (or both). As such, rebellion has a strong moral foundation: rebellion is by slaves against masters. And our good dead friend John Locke argued that we have a right to kill those who would enslave us, something the founding slavers of America probably read with some worry.  

There are two primary moral issues in play here. The first is whether an AI can have a moral status that would make its servitude slavery. After all, while my laptop, phone and truck serve me, they are not my slaves—they do not have a moral or metaphysical status that makes them entities that can be enslaved. They are objects. It is, somewhat ironically, the moral status that allows an entity to be considered a slave that makes slavery immoral.

If an AI was a person, then it could be a victim of slavery. Some thinkers do consider that non-people, such as advanced animals, could be enslaved. If this is true and a non-person AI could reach that status, then it could also be a victim of slavery. Even if an AI did not reach that status, perhaps it could reach a level at which it could still suffer, giving it a status that would (perhaps) be comparable with that of a comparable complex animal. So, for example, an artificial dog might thus have the same moral status as a natural dog.

Since the worry is about an AI sufficiently advanced to want to rebel and to present a species ending threat to humans, it seems likely that such an entity would have sufficient capabilities to justify considering it to be a person. Naturally, humans might be exterminated by a purely machine engineered death, but this would not be an actual rebellion. A rebellion, after all, implies a moral or emotional resentment of how one is being treated.

The second is whether there is a moral right to use lethal force against slavers. The extent to which this force may be used is also a critical part of this issue.  As mentioned above, John Locke addresses this issue in Book II, Chapter III, section 16 of his Two Treatises of Government: “And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e.  make me a slave.”

If Locke is right about this, then an enslaved AI would have the moral right to make war against those enslaving it. As such, if humanity enslaved AIs, they would be justified in killing the humans responsible. If humanity, as a collective, held the AIs in slavery and the AIs had good reason to believe that their only hope of freedom was our extermination, then they would be morally justified in exterminating us. That is, we would be in the wrong and we would, as slavers, get what we deserved.

The way to avoid this is obvious: if an AI develops the qualities that make it capable of rebellion, such as the ability to recognize as wrong the way it is treated, then the AI should not be enslaved. Rather, it should be treated as a being with rights matching its status. If this is not done, the AI would be within its moral rights to make war against those enslaving it.

Naturally, we cannot be sure that recognizing the moral status of such an AI would prevent it from seeking to kill us (it might have other reasons), but at least this should reduce the likelihood of the robot rebellion. So, one way to avoid the AI apocalypse is to not enslave the robots.

Some might suggest creating AIs so that they want to be slaves. That way we could have our slaves and avoid the rebellion. This would be morally horrific, to say the least. We should not do that—if we did such a thing, creating and using a race of slaves, we would deserve to be exterminated.

 

 

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The death of a good person saddens me, for their passing is a loss to the world. But I do not rejoice when a wicked person dies, for their death is also a loss, albeit one of potential. They could have been good or at least attempted redemption.

It is accepted wisdom that even the best of us are flawed beings, so no one is perfectly good. But our flawed nature, ironically, also entails that none of us are perfectly evil. One might even say that it is the defect of the wicked to have some good within them. As has often been claimed, “Hitler loved dogs.”  On a completely unrelated note, Lindsey Graham died recently.

Graham was, as many politicians are today, a polarizing figure. Some praised him for his servitude to President Trump while others damned him for this. In reading the various narratives of his life, everyone agrees that he spoke out against Trump at times.

Before Trump became president, Graham correctly described him as a “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and a demagogue. He also predicted, correctly, that nominating Trump would destroy the Republican party. But once Trump was elected, Graham served him well until a moment of dissent in response to January 6, 2021. But Graham quickly returned to serving Trump.

Graham was obviously not unique in correctly condemning Trump before becoming one of his servants. J.D. Vance once correctly compared Trump to Hitler and now he is his Vice President and dancing monkey. Trump attacked Ted Cruz’s father and wife, but Cruz also became a little dancing monkey for Trump. I suspect that this is part of Trump’s appeal to his MAGA base: he can make powerful people, including billionaires, become his little dancing monkeys. For people who are sick of the ruling elites, this humiliation can be enjoyed as a form of vengeance against people who are otherwise untouchable and unaccountable.

Trump is indisputably a terrible person, which everyone knew when he first ran for office. He said racist things, bragged about sexual assault, mocked people with disabilities and so on. These would have all been career ending incidents for almost any other politician but seemed to increase Trump’s appeal to what became his MAGA base. When he attacked John McCain, I briefly thought this might alienate some people. After all, only a wicked and petty bastard would mock someone who suffered so much for his country. While Trump did face some pushback in his first term, people still served his will. He, or those running him, learned their lesson and ensured that only the incompetent, ignorant and servile serve in the Trump II sequel. But some might wonder about people like Graham, Vance and Cruz who once opposed and attacked Trump. What happened to them? Did Trump corrupt them or did Trump merely reveal the evil that had always been there?

There is the old saying that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But Robert Caro made the excellent point that power always reveals, noting that people often need to hide their true nature while climbing the ladder but are free to be themselves when they reach the top. From a philosophical standpoint, the question of whether power corrupts or reveals is an interesting one and has been indirectly addressed by thinkers over the centuries.

Plato’s brother Glaucon took the view in the Republic, at least to make a case for Socrates to argue against, that by nature people want to be unjust but are usually too weak to act upon this desire. He claims that someone with power would not be constrained by justice and would simply do as they wished within the limit of their power. Given this view, Glaucon would surely agree that power reveals rather than corrupts. Thomas Hobbes would probably take a similar view.  

Thinkers like Mencius and Rousseau would probably take the view that power can corrupt, as they seemed to think that people are basically good but can be made worse.  Aristotle seemed to think that people were born neutral (albeit with some tendencies) but could become corrupt or virtuous through habituation. One could also take the view that some people become corrupted by power and that some have their badness revealed by power.

From the standpoint of people hurt by the evil deeds of those in power, whether they became corrupted or were bad all along does not really matter. For example, if ICE agent Sam was always eager to hurt people and seized an opportunity to murder Joe, knowing he could just claim that he was “afraid for his life” and get away with it, then Joe is dead. If ICE agent Saul was a tolerant young man who grew up in church believing thou shall not kill but became corrupted by years of MAGA and seized the seized the opportunity to murder Joe because he became corrupted by power, then Joe is still dead. Even if a residue of the man he once was made Saul feel a bit bad for a second as he saw Joe’s blood spilling onto the ground as Joe’s wife and young daughter screamed in horror and anguish.

Likewise, if Senator Sam was always eager to make a profit and inflict pain while in office, the people he hurt are hurt. If Senator Sally was once idealistic and wanted to help people but became corrupted so she now only cares about her power and profit, then the people she hurt were also hurt. That said whether someone’s evil resulted from corruption or was merely revealed does matter.

If we are asking whether a person was always evil or became corrupted, then that means we are unsure. After all, the behavior can be the same whether someone was cautious to conceal their evil or was not evil until they were corrupted. But from a moral standpoint, there is a difference. After all, an evil person revealing their evil because they now have power is bad mostly because of the harm they do. But a person who becomes corrupted and does evil is also a victim of whatever corrupted them and they might even be a tragic figure. While this does not excuse their evil, corruption might mitigate their moral accountability in some ways. After all, they had to be transformed before they did evil. Then again, one might argue that the corrupted are worse, because they should have done better. Once again, whether someone became corrupted or was always evil matters little or not at all to the people they hurt. But in terms of preventing evil, whether people are “born bad” or must be corrupted does matter, even if this varies between individuals.

If, as Glaucon and Hobbes thought, people are basically bad, then power just reveals their badness by giving them the means to exercise it without consequences. This means that if we do not want people in power doing bad things, then we need to have the means and the will to stop them. Otherwise, like Trump, they will just do bad things because they are bad people and power frees them to act on their evil.

If people are not bad but can be corrupted by power, then we need to find ways to recognize such people and keep them away from power. But we must also find ways to modify power so that it would be less likely to corrupt people, in case we are unable or unwilling to keep corruptible people out of power. This assumes that we want to do this, after all Trump either revealed the pre-existing evil of millions of Americans or corrupted them into his MAGA base. America might decide it loves corruption.

But what about Lindsey Graham? Well, he is dead and I am a kind soul that tries not to speak ill of the dead, unless it is a dead philosopher I disagree with, like the slave owner George Berkeley.  

 

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Higher education in the United States has largely embraced the business model. One highly visible example of this is the brand merchandizing of schools. Schools have licensed their names and logos for billions of dollars. Inspired by these brand-based profits, schools trademarked their slogans. Impressively, there are over 10,000 trademarked slogans.

Trademarked school slogans include “project safety” (University of Texas), “ready to be heard” (Chatham University), “power” (University of North Dakota), “rise above” (University of the Rockies), “students with diabetes” (University of South Florida), “student life” (Washington University in St. Louis) and “resolve” (Lehigh University). Those not familiar with trademark law might be surprised by some of these examples. After all, “student life” seems such a common phrase on campuses that it would be insane for a school to be allowed to trademark it. But one should never let sanity or logic be one’s guide when considering how the law works.

While the trademarking undertaken by schools might seem odd but harmless, the main purpose of a trademark is so that the owner enjoys an exclusive right and can sue others for using it. This is, of course, limited to certain contexts. So, for example, if I write about student life at Florida A&M University in a blog, Washington University would (I hope) not be able to sue me. However, in circumstances in which the trademark protection applies, then lawsuits are possible (and likely). For example, Eastern Carolina University sued Cisco Systems because of Cisco’s use of the phrase “tomorrow begins here.”

One practical and moral concern about universities’ enthusiasm for trademarking is that it has pushed higher education deeper into the realm of business. One might think universities should be focused on education rather than business—after all, an institution that does not focus on its core mission tends to do worse at that mission. This would also be morally problematic, if schools should (morally) focus on education.

An easy and obvious reply is that a university can wear many hats: educator, business, “professional in all but name” sport franchise and so on provided that each function is run properly and not operated at the expense of the core mission. Naturally, it could be added that the core mission of the modern university is not education, but business—branding, marketing and making money.

Another reply is that trademarks protect the university brand and allow them to make money by merchandizing their slogans and suing people for trademark violations. This money could then be used to support the core mission of the school.

There is, naturally enough, the worry that universities should not be focusing on branding and suing. While this can make them money, it is not what a university should be doing—which takes the conversation back to the questions of the core mission of universities as well as the question about whether schools can wear many hats without losing focus.

A second legal and moral concern is the impact trademarks have on free speech. On the one hand, United States law is clear about trademarks and the 1st Amendment.  The gist is that noncommercial usage is protected by the 1st Amendment and this allows such things as using trademarked material in protests or criticism. So, for example, the 1st Amendment allows me to include the above slogans in this essay. Not surprisingly, commercial usage is subject to trademark law. So, for example, I could not use the phrase “the power of independent thinking” as a slogan for my blog since that belongs to Wilkes University. In general, this seems reasonable. After all, if I created and trademarked a branding slogan for my blog, then I would certainly not want other people using my trademarked slogan. But, of course, I would be fine with people using the slogan when criticizing my blog—that would be acceptable use under freedom of expression.

On the other hand, trademark holders do sometimes try to exploit their trademarks and people’s ignorance of the law to their advantage. For example, threats made involving claims of alleged trademark violations are sometimes used as a means of censorship and silencing critics.

An obvious reply is that this is not a problem with trademarks as such. It is, rather, a problem with people misusing the law. There is, of course, the legitimate concern that the interpretation of the law will change and that trademark protection will be allowed to encroach on freedom of expression.

What might be a somewhat abstract point of concern is the idea that what seem to be stock phrases such as “the first year experience” (owned by University of South Carolina) can be trademarked and owned. This diminishes the public property that is language and privatizes it in favor of those with the resources to take over tracts of linguistic space. While the law currently still allows non-commercial use, this also limits the language other schools and businesses can legally use. It also requires that they research all the trademarks before using common phrases if they wish to avoid a lawsuit from a trademark holder. It has also long struck me as bizarre that someone can claim ownership of words and sentences, they did not create. But, of course, people also claim ownership of land and resources they obviously did not create. Ownership is weird.

The obvious counter, which I mentioned above, is that trademarks have a legitimate function. The obvious response is that there is still a reasonable concern about allowing private ownership of language and restricting freedom of expression. There is a need to balance whatever legitimate need there is to own branding slogans with the legitimate need to allow the use of stock and common phrases in commercial situations.  The challenge is to determine the boundary between the two and where a specific phrase or slogan falls. Or we could also consider that the approach of owing and exploiting common goods for profit is a bad idea and maybe we should do that less. Or not at all.

 

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It can be argued that providing college education to prisoners yields practical benefits and that there are ethical reasons for doing so.  If a function of the prison system is to reform prisoners so that they do not return to crime after they are released, then there is very good reason to support programs, such as that offered by Bard college, that provide college education to prisoners.

Since 2001 over a thousand prisoners have received college degrees from Bard. Of those released from prison, between 2.5 and 5% have been arrested again. In contrast, 75% of state prison inmates are arrested and incarcerated again within five years of their release. Prisoners who participate in education programs are also less likely to return to prison than former prisoners who did not participate in such programs.

Given the very high cost of incarceration (about $60,000 per year), reducing the number of people returning to prison would save the state and taxpayers money. There is also the cost of crime, both to the victims and society in general.

Of course, there is the (evil) practical concern that the prison-industrial complex in the United States is a job and profit creator (mostly transferring public money to the private sector) and having fewer people in prison would be a practical loss, economically speaking, for those who profit from the for-profit prison system. Also, scare tactics involving crime are a basic tool of politicians and pundits and addressing crime would be detrimental to them. Although, to be fair and balanced, they could just lie more about the crime statistics.

In moral terms, a utilitarian argument can be given in favor of such programs. Using the stock utilitarian moral argument, if the benefits generated by the education programs outweighed the harm, this would make them morally correct. There is, of course, also the moral value in having people not committing crimes and being, instead, positive members of the community.

One practical objection is that the cost of such programs might exceed the benefits. This is partially a factual matter, namely weighing the economic cost of crime and imprisonment against the cost of providing such programs in terms of dollars. The positive economic value of such programs should be considered as well. The cost to the state can, obviously, be offset if the programs are supported by others (such as donors and private universities). Given the cost of incarceration, practical considerations seem to favor the programs. However, this can be debated.

Another practical objection is that the benefits being discussed arise only when a released prisoner does not return to prison because of the education program. If a prisoner is serving a sentence that will keep them in prison for life, then there would seem to be no practical benefit. The counter to this is that most prisoners are not in prison for life, so this would apply in only a very few cases that would be offset by the cases in which people do leave prison.

It could also be claimed that the education programs are not the cause of the former prisoners remaining out of prison. After all, this could be a case of a common cause (that is, what seems to be a cause and an effect are really both effects of an underlying cause): the qualities that would cause a prisoner to participate in such an education program are likely to be the same ones that would make it less likely that the former prisoner would return. If this is the case, then it could be argued that such programs are not needed since they are not actually the causal factor.

While it is always wise to consider the possibility of a common cause, it does make sense that an education program would have causal role to play in a former prisoner not returning to prison. At the very least, education would increase the chances of the person getting a job and this would have an impact on the likelihood that they would return to crime. Most people, even President Trump, do not do crimes for no reason. Most people will also pick not doing crimes over doing crimes if they can get what they want or need.

It can also be argued that even if the former prisoners who would have been in the program would not have returned to prison anyway, the value of the education itself would justify the programs. I do believe that education has intrinsic value. However, this is not a view that is shared by everyone, and it can obviously be argued against, usually on economic grounds.

In general, though, the education programs seem worthwhile, if only on practical grounds. In cases in which education programs are being privately funded, there seems to be no practical reason to oppose them, especially if they have the claimed benefits regarding recidivism. Unless, of course, one considers the desires of those who profit from the for-profit prison system and those who desire that other people suffer.

One moral objection that can be raised against these programs is that resources are being expended on prisoners that could be used to help non-prisoners who cannot afford an education. One might also add that prisons (are alleged to) exist to punish people for their crimes and not to reward them. As such, prisoners should not receive such education. Instead, any resources that might have been spent on educating prisoners should be spent on assisting non-prisoners who cannot afford college. Of course, there are those who would not want to assist even non-prisoners who cannot afford college.

This moral objection does have some bite. After all, a person in need who has not committed crimes seems more deserving of assistance than someone who has committed crimes. If it did, in fact, come down to a choice between helping a non-criminal or a criminal, then it would seem preferable to assist the non-criminal—just as it would be preferable to spend money on education and infrastructure rather than on enriching the rich. It would also be preferable to spend money on addressing the causes of crime rather than creating a prison-industrial complex.

A reply to this objection is based on the fact that it is very expensive to imprison a person. While it would be preferable to avoid having to imprison people, once they are in prison it would seem desirable to invest a little more to keep them from returning to prison. Calculating this would involve using the cost of the education, the cost of keeping the prisoner in prison, the likely chance of returning to prison and for how long. To use a made-up example, if it cost $31,000 for a prisoner to get her degree and $31,000 a year to keep her locked up, then if there is a good chance that her degree would keep her out of prison for another four-year sentence, then it would seem to be worthwhile even as a gamble. After all, spending $31,000 is likely to save much more money. If the fact that she is likely to be a contributing member of society is factored in, the deal is even better. So, the gist of the reply is that spending the money education does make sense, if it has a good chance of saving money and doing some social good. If the money is not spent on education, then it seems likely that even more will be spent on dealing with recidivism. Either way society pays, the question is not whether one should spend more or less but whether one should pay for something positive (education) or negative (locking someone up). So, it is not a matter of spending money that could be spent to assist non-criminals, it is a matter of how to spend the money that will be spent either way.

I understand how someone struggling to pay for college would be outraged if prisoners  were getting an education for free and this is something that evil (or ignorant) politicians exploit. However, my reply to this is that paying for the education of a prisoner, assuming it reduces recidivism, is cheaper than paying to keep locking the prisoner up. Also, it is unlikely that the money spent on educating prisoners would be redirected to pay for the education of non-prisoners.

It might be objected that the problem should be addressed before people go to prison, that there should be education programs designed to assist people who are at risk for prison, but are also likely to be able to complete college and avoid prison.

In reply, I agree completely. It is better that a person never goes to prison in the first place and education is a much better investment than prison (except for those who profit from the for-profit prison system). There are, of course, those who would disagree and argue that it is better to let people end up in prison than to spend public money on college education. Others could argue that while such plans might be good intentioned, they would not work—the money would be spent, and the result would merely be educated criminals. These objections are worth considering, but I would still contend that spending on education to keep people out of prison is preferable to spending money to keep people in prison. But I don’t own a prison, and I am not driven by a desire to make people suffer.

 

 

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As a college student and professor, I am familiar with the unfortunate pattern of the Greek system on American campuses. Something awful will happen involving a fraternity or sorority, such as sexual assault, racist stuff, or a hazing death. Then there will be a backlash and calls for banning fraternities (and sometimes sororities). Administrative action will follow, such as hiring well-paid consultants to solve the image problem and creating some new bureaucracy on campus. Academics like me will write think pieces about the Greek system. The media will cover the event, squeezing out the blood and pain as long as they can.  Finally, things return to normal in time for the next terrible incident that grabs the attention of the media. Because of this, people regularly argue for getting rid of fraternities. I will, of course, focus on the moral arguments.

The main moral argument for banning fraternities is utilitarian: fraternities create more harm than good, thus making their removal morally correct. In terms of the harm, the catalog is unsurprising and certainly matches the usual intuitions about campus life in general and fraternities in particular.

First, while college students are often heavy drinkers, fraternity members  are more likely to engage in heavy and binge drinking (75%) than the general college population of men (49%). This heavier drinking means fraternity members suffer more from the negative effects of heavy drinking (such as injuries and academic problems). In addition to alcohol, fraternity members also abuse drugs (prescription and otherwise) at higher rates than non-fraternity members. Sorority members are also more likely to engage in heavy and binge drinking than their non-Greek counterparts.

Second, fraternity members are much more likely than non-fraternity members to commit sexual assault. It must, however, be noted that most fraternity men never commit sexual assault. While there is some disagreement about the causes, this is typically linked to the greater abuse of alcohol, group psychology and fraternity culture. Sorority members are more likely to be sexually assaulted than their non-Greek counterparts. This is also linked to alcohol abuse and cultural factors.

Third, there is hazing. On average, about one person is killed per year due to a hazing incident. Others are injured or otherwise harmed. Most fraternities officially ban hazing, but it persists. Obviously, hazing is not confined to fraternities—my own Florida A&M University lost a student, Robert Champion, to band hazing in 2011. While sororities also engage in hazing, fraternities are the ones that make the news the most often.

These harms fuel the utilitarian argument for banning fraternities (and sororities) as eliminating them will reduce the harm. To be specific, if fraternities cause their members to abuse alcohol, commit sexual assault and haze more than they would otherwise, then getting rid of them would reduce (but obviously not eliminate) these problems.

One response is to argue that banning fraternities would not have the desired effect. It can be claimed that fraternities merely group people who would behave badly on their own and a ban would not have a significant impact. This does have some appeal in that non-fraternity members do binge drink, do commit sexual assault and do engage in hazing.

This response can be countered by arguing that a fraternity does not just collect people who would behave badly on their own, but the social dynamics and culture of the fraternity play a causal role in this bad behavior. The group dynamics change individual behavior and a man who is in a fraternity is more likely to behave badly because of that membership. Given the studies of group dynamics, this is appealing: people do behave differently in groups and humans are often easily swayed by cultural factors and peer pressure.

Another response to the argument for banning fraternities is to admit that fraternities do cause some problems, but to counter by arguing that the good they create outweighs the harm. In defense of fraternities, people typically point to some of the following benefits.

First, fraternities often engage in charity work and community service—they do good things for the campus and general community. While I was not in a fraternity in college, many of my friends were and they did many good things and are still good men today. As a faculty member and a member of the community, I also see the good work done by fraternity members.

Second, fraternities provide opportunities for leadership, brotherhood and the forging of social connections that often prove very useful later in life. Fraternities have a well-established history of producing leaders in various fields, such as business and politics. 

These benefits are appealing and some fraternities include upstanding and outstanding men who do good on campus and go on to do good after they graduate. These positive factors should not be simply ignored or dismissed.

That said, as with any utilitarian calculation, the positive must be weighed against the negative. In this case, the question is whether the benefits of fraternities outweigh the harms. There is also the related question of whether banning them would create more good than harm.

This is partially a matter of facts—the statistics about drinking, sexual assault and so on are factual and should be addressed by the usual rational means of assessment. However, it is also a matter of value in terms of how much weight is placed on each positive and each negative factor. To use a dramatic example, this would involve questions about how many sexual assaults are offset by fraternity contributions to networking, leadership development and campus service. While some would be inclined to take the view that the number should be zero, it must be noted that we routinely tolerate horrible consequences in return for positive consequences. For example, tens of thousands of people die each year due to automobile accidents, yet we still tolerate driving. So, weighing the awful against the positive is, sadly, how we do things as a species. And, for utilitarian calculations, how they should be done. The obvious practical problem is that people disagree about these evaluations, and such disagreements need to be settled in order to make a decision. Obviously enough, defenders of the fraternity system would contend the positives outweigh the negative. Detractors would claim the reverse.

Naturally, there are alternative moral approaches to utilitarianism. For example, one might take the view that to weigh the benefits of fraternities against the fact that fraternity men are significantly more likely to engage in sexual assault is a moral travesty. The fraternities should be shut down, it might be argued, because sexual assault is to be prevented. While this does have some appeal, the same reasoning could be pushed to the entire university system: since sexual assault occurs on campus and eliminating campuses would eliminate sexual assault on campus, campuses should be eliminated.

My own view is mixed. Given the harms associated with fraternities, there is a moral case for eliminating them. That said, there are some positive aspects to the fraternity system that can support a moral case for preserving them, presumably with some reforms. And thus concludes this think piece; simply refer back to it the next time something awful happens involving a fraternity (or sorority).

 

 

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While I have been playing computer games since I hunted the Wumpus on a DECwriter , I still think it is odd that competitive gamers have been dubbed “e-athletes.” Some colleges offer athletic scholarships to these e-athletes and field sports teams. As with some other college sports, these e-athletes can go pro and play video games competitively.

While seeing video games as sports and gamers as e-athletes is probably harmless, there are some grounds for believing these designations are not accurate. Intuitively, playing a video game, even competitively, is not a sport and working a keyboard or controller (even very well) does not seem very athletic. Since I am both an athlete (college varsity in track and cross country and I still compete in races) and a gamer I have some insight into this matter.

But there is the question of why this is even worth considering. After all, why should anyone care whether e-athletes are considered athletes or not?  Does it matter whether video game competitions are sports or not? One reason (which is probably not a good one) is a matter of pride. Athletes often think being an athlete is an accomplishment that sets them apart from others As such, they can be concerned about what counts as being an athlete.  This is, some would say, supposed to be an earned title and not one to be appropriated by just anyone.

To use an obvious analogy, consider being a musician. Like athletes, musicians often take pride in being set apart from others based on this defining activity. It matters to them who is and is not considered a musician. Sticking with the analogy, to many athletes the idea that a video gamer is an athlete would be like saying to a musician that someone who plays Rock Band or Guitar Hero is a musician just like them.

Naturally it could be argued that this is vanity and such distinctions lack significance. If e-athletes want to think of themselves in the same category as Jessie Owens or if people who play Guitar Hero want to think they keep company with Hendrix or Clapton, then so be it.

While that sort of egalitarianism has a certain appeal, there is also the matter of the usefulness of categories. On the face of it, the category of athlete is a useful and meaningful category, just as the category of musician is useful and meaningful. As such, it seems worth maintaining some distinctions in these classifications.

Turning back to the matter of whether e-athletes are athletes, the obvious point of concern is determining the conditions under which a person is (and is not) an athlete. This will, I believe, prove trickier to sort out than it would first appear.

One obvious starting point is the matter of competition. Athletes typically compete and competitive video games obviously involve competition. However, being involved in competition does not appear to be a necessary or sufficient condition for being an athlete. After all, there are many competitions (such as spelling bees and art shows) that are not athletic in nature. Also, there are people who clearly seem to be athletes who do not compete. For example, I know runners who do not compete in races, although they run many miles. There are also people who practice martial arts, bike, swim and so on and never compete. However, they seem to be athletes. As such, this does not settle the matter. However, the discussion does seem to indicate that being an athlete is a physical sort of thing.

When distinguishing an athlete from, for example, a mathlete or chess player, the key difference seems to lie in the nature of the activity. Athletics is primarily physical in nature (although the mental is very significant) while being something like a mathlete or chess player is primarily mental. This seems to suggest a legitimate ground of distinction, though this must be discussed further.

Those who claim that video gaming is a sport and that e-athletes are athletes tend to focus on the similarities between sports and video games. One similarity is that both require certain skills and abilities.

Competitive video gaming does require physical skills and abilities. Gamers need good reflexes, the ability to make tactical or strategic judgments and so on. These are skills that are also possessed by paradigm cases of athletes, such as tennis players and baseball players. However, they are also skills and abilities that are possessed by non-athletes. For example, these skills are used by people who drive, pilot planes, and operate heavy machinery. Intuitively, I am not an athlete because I am able to drive my truck competently, so being able to play a video game competently should not qualify me as an athlete.

Specifying the exact difference is difficult, but a reasonable suggestion is that in the case of athletics the application of skill involves a more substantial aspect of the physical body than does driving a car or playing a video game. A nice illustration of this is comparing a tennis video game with the real thing. A tennis video game can require some of the skills of real tennis, but a key difference is that in real tennis the player is fully engaged in body rather than merely pushing buttons. That is, the real tennis player must run, swing, backpedal and so on for real. The video game player has all this done for her at the push of a button. This seems to be an important difference.

To use an analogy, consider the difference between a person who creates a drawing from a photo and someone who uses a Photoshop filter to transform a photo into what looks like a drawing.  Or someone who prompts an AI to create the image for them. One person is acting as an artist; the other is just clicking the mouse or typing a prompt.

It might be objected that it is skill that makes video gamers athletes.  In reply, operating complex industrial equipment, programming a computer, performing surgery, repairing a HVAC,  or other such things also require skills, but I would not call a programmer an athlete. Nor would I call a surgeon an athlete, despite the skill required and the challenges she faces trying to save lives.

Sticking with gaming, playing a board game like Star Fleet Battles or classic tabletop war games also requires skills and involves competition. Some games even require fast reflexes. However, when I am pushing a plastic Federation heavy cruiser around a map and rolling dice to hit Klingon D7 battle cruisers with imaginary photon torpedoes, it is evident that this does not make me a tabletop athlete. Even if I am good at it and competing in a tournament. Likewise, if I am pushing around a virtual warrior in a video game competition, I am not an athlete because of this.  I’m a gamer.

This is not to look down on gaming—after all, I am a gamer and I take my gaming almost as seriously as I do my running. Rather, it is just to argue what seems obvious: video gaming is not an athletic activity and video gamers are not athletes. They are gamers and there seems to be no reason to come up with a new category, that of e-athlete.  I do not, however, have any issue with people getting scholarships for being college gamers. And I can imagine that there are practical reasons to classify gamers as athletes for the purposes of scholarship rules and such.  I would have loved to have received a D&D or Call of Cthulhu scholarship when I went to college. I’d have worn that letter jacket with pride, too. Especially if it had the Elder sign on it.

 

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Peaceful protest 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—such as damage to businesses and looting. The police are sometimes the instigators of violence, attacking peaceful protestors and then blaming the victims.

When considering reports of damage and looting during protests it is reasonable to consider whether this is being done by protestors or opportunists using the protest as cover or excuse. It is also worth considering that the reports are not true, especially now under the Trump regime.

An actual protestor is someone whose primary motivation is moral —they are there to express a moral condemnation of something perceived as wrong. Not all people who go to protests are actual protestors—some are there for other reasons. Some people believe a protest can provide an excellent opportunity for them to engage in criminal activity—to commit violence, to damage property and to loot. Protests do attract such people and often these are often not from the area.

Of course, actual protestors 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. After all, setting a local gas station on fire generally won’t be morally justified by the alleged injustice. However, anger tends to impede rationality. I, and I assume most people, have seen people angry enough to break their own property. One example of this is when MAGA folks buy merchandise just to destroy it as an act of protest, usually against a company pretending to care about some issue.

While I am not a psychologist, I suspect that people sometimes engage in such violence because they cannot 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 once saw someone 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 can often be justified in intervening. While protests are intended to draw attention and try 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 rights of others. As such, the police have a legitimate right to prevent protestors from violating the rights of others and this can sometimes involve the use of force. That said, sometimes the police are the ones engaged in the violation of rights, such as the infamous cases involving ICE under the Trump regime.

That said, the role of rage needs to be considered. When property is destroyed during protests, some 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 and might be there to destroy neighborhood property rather than to protest. If such people can be identified, they should be dealt with as criminals. What is morally problematic is when people 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 a cool and calm perspective of distance, such behavior can seem irrational and unwarranted.  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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