Category: Ethics

I have two main goals in addressing the question of why the right lies so often. The first is to satisfy my curiosity as a philosopher who teaches ethics, epistemology, and critical thinking. While there is little point in trying to get the liars to stop lying, my second goal is to encourage honest people on the right to look at their claims critically.

What I am asking of the honest folks of the right is to act in accord with Ben Shapiro’s famous saying: “facts don’t care about your feelings.” If you are an honest person on the right and you believe this, then you should engage with the claims made by yourself and your fellows in accord with this professed view: hold your feelings in check and consider what the evidence supports. There is also the popular YouTube pastime of destroying the liberals with facts and logic. Consistency requires that honest folks on the right subject the claims of the conservatives to the same treatment. Or, rather, to the treatment promised in the memes: to check the claims rigorously in accord with the principles of critical thinking and to make use of non-fallacious logic. The truth can withstand scrutiny, and good reasoning can hold up when assessed. As such, if an honest person on the right is sure that a claim made by their fellows is true, then they should not fear subjecting it to rigorous and objective evaluation. Likewise, if an argument made by a fellow conservative is strong (or valid), then you should not hesitate to put it to the test.

Before getting to the substantial content, I need to pre-empt some likely fallacious attacks. One likely attack is to respond by saying “what about the left?” or “What about Stalin? He lied all the time!” This is the rhetorical strategy and fallacy known as “whataboutism.”A second likely response is to say that everyone lies, that the practice is a common one. This is, obviously enough, just the fallacy of common practice. A third likely response is to assert that the left also lies and so they are just as bad as the right. This is a false equivalence. To avoid straw man attacks, I must make it clear that I am not claiming that the American right always lies or that the American left never lies. My claim is that lying is common on the right and my inquiry is into why this is the case. Feel free to destroy the lying left with facts and logic in your own blog or video.

The first step is providing a definition of “lying.” While one could discuss the fine nuances of the concept at length, my discussion only requires an intuitively plausible definition: lying is intentionally asserting that a claim is true when one believes it is false. This is not a perfect definition of the concept, but my discussion does not hinge on any nuanced or fine distinctions. I would, of course, be happy to get into a deep discussion of the complexities of defining the concept at another time.

The second step is providing evidence that the right, under the common usage of the term, lies often. A good place to start is at the top with President Trump. To be fair to the right, a good case can be made that Trump is not committed to conservative ideology, he has shifted his political affiliations often and one can easily imagine a parallel  world in which Trump was elected as Democrat. But Trump has conquered the American right and is their undisputed king. Trump is an epic level liar and his lies are thoroughly documented.

The folks at Fox News lie regularly, as the Daily Show showed back in 2015 with their “50 Fox News lies in 6 seconds.” The dishonesty of Fox News is well documented.  This is important because Fox News is the defining news of the right, although it now has some competition.

Another realm to consider is the brain of the right, the self-proclaimed intellectuals and thinkers of the right. The best known are Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. The YouTube intellectuals of the right are interesting in that they do what politicians and pundits generally do not: they lay out their views at length, they endeavor to argue, and they purport to offer evidence for their claims. While these folks generally do not hold political offices or positions of power, they present and defend the views of the right. As such, they are the ones that can be engaged in some form  intellectual combat.

There is an entire YouTube industry of left-wing tubers who meticulously go through the claims and arguments of the right. The usual approach is the same used by professional scholars: checking the sources and assessing the reasoning. One common occurrence is that the sources used in the right-wing video are often either problematic (biased) or clearly misused (the right-winger is wrong about what the source shows). One example of this is Shaun’s look at Lauren Southern’s claims about the great replacement conspiracy theory. As another example, the sarcastic Some More News goes through Ben Shapiro’s claims about systemic racism and notes the lies. While one might be tempted to use an ad hominem and dismiss the lefty critics on the grounds that they are lefties, the competent critics follow the good practices of citing sources, referencing the original in context, and assessing arguments in accord with the standards of good logic. As such, one can engage these works and check their claims and reasoning. In general, the right-wing thinkers seem to routinely make many false claims. These videos are all available on YouTube and you can go through each one yourself, checking the claims and assessing the logic. Destroying is an option, if you are into that.

The third step is to answer the question of why the right lies so often.  One easy and obvious answer is that it works: conservatives seem to be more susceptible to certain lies than liberals. There are also answers to be found in the realm of psychology as to why, for example, Trump lies. But my concern here is with the rational reasons why the right engages in lying as a strategy.

The first reason is that facts and reality often conflict with interests and ideology of the right. It also conflicts with their claims of success. To be more specific, the claims used to argue for the policies and views of the right are often not true and they know it. The claims used to defend the effectiveness of these policies are also often untrue and they know it. As Stephen Colbert said, reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Two classic examples of this are the right’s notion that tax cuts pay for themselves and climate change denial. We have had decades of empirical testing of the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves: you can examine the results yourself and find out that they do not. The truth of climate change has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. If the right were honest about tax cuts or climate change, they would have a difficult time making their case for their policies or “showing” that their policies are effective. Imagine if Republicans were honest about tax cuts or climate change; they would be unable to make much of a case in favor of their tax cut and climate policies.

As another example, consider the right’s claims about voter fraud. While the right asserts that voter fraud is a problem, the evidence does not support their claim. The means they propose to combat this almost non-existent fraud are instead aimed at voter suppression. If the right were honest about the extent of voter fraud, their argument would be utterly undercut. If voter fraud is almost non-existent, there would be little reason to accept their proposals to address it.

As a final example, consider Trump’s disastrous response to COVID-19. Trump’s main response was to lie. Bizarrely, Trump has made it clear that he would like less testing so that the United States would, falsely, look better. Trump is somewhat unusual in his tendency to sometimes be honest about his dishonesty. The COVID-19 response thus serves as a paradigm example of why the right lies so often: their policies and values often conflict with reality and the only way they can claim success is by lying.

A second reason that many on the right lie is that being honest about their values, beliefs and goals would either not win support or would even repulse most people. To illustrate, being honest about the effectiveness of tax cuts and who they benefit would generally not win much support from citizens. To use a more extreme example, consider the 1981 interview with Lee Atwater in which he lays out the southern strategy. Atwater makes it clear how lying about their racism is a strategy of the right:

 

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

 

Lest you think that this strategy of deceit is a thing of the past, consider Trump’s tweet about the Suburban Lifestyle: “I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood……Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!” Classic Atwater.  As a final example, saying to voters that they want to suppress voters to gain an undemocratic advantage to hold onto power would not win widespread support from the public.

Thus, the right has excellent reasons to lie. The first is that their claims often clash with the facts and if they did not lie, they would have to admit they are wrong. The second is that being honest would often cause them to lose support.

For those who dislike the Democrats, the mainstream of that party generally does not rely on strategic lying. Rather, they make use of strategic silence: they simply say nothing. We can see how well that has been working for them.

During the last pandemic the ideological battle over masks only slightly surprised me. On the one hand, getting into a fight over wearing masks during a pandemic is like getting over a fight over having brakes on cars. On the other hand, people can fight over what is stupid to fight over and the right has been working hard to undermine trust in reality, facts and science. So, we ended up in a situation in which people in positions of authority embraced the anti-mask position. Or the “pro-choice” position for some. As is usually the case with culture war fights, the fight was not grounded in any consistently held and applied principles.

But to be fair, there are legitimate concerns about masks during the last pandemic. To illustrate, there were concerns about having enough of them, about their impact on the ability of students to learn and teachers to teach, as well as on the development of critical language and social skills that require being able to see faces. These are all matters that are worthy of serious consideration and can provide reasons to forgo masks provided proper precautions are taken. My concern is directed at the reasons given that were ill-founded and inconsistent. Yes, I’m planning ahead for the next pandemic.

Ironically, some people borrowed from the abortion debate and took the position of Jed Davis, the president of Parkview Christian’s school board. As Jed said, “We’re not trying to politicize masks by any means. Again, we’re not anti-mask, we’re pro-choice.” Along this vein, some people also made arguments based on liberty and Constitutional rights. In general terms, these arguments seem to be:

 

Premise 1: People have the right to choose what they wear.

Premise 2: Some people choose not to wear a mask.

Conclusion: These people have the right to not wear masks.

 

While an appeal to rights is appealing, there is the matter of consistent application. This can be used to test if the proponents of allowing people to forgo masks believe in their professed principle. It is also a moral requirement if they believe their professed principle, they must apply it consistently in relevantly similar cases. So, let us engage in a thought experiment and use the same reasoning with a slight change.

 

Premise 1: People have the right to choose what they wear.

Premise 2: Some people choose to wear shirts that say “Fuck.”

Conclusion: These people have the right to wear shirts that say “Fuck.”

 

I suspect that Jed Davis other school officials would not follow their professed “pro-choice” principle consistently and allow students to wear such shirts; but I could be wrong. Give it a try, kids.

It could be argued that there is a relevant difference: students are not supposed to wear shirts with “fuck” on them because the word is vulgar and could offend people. People are supposed to wear masks to protect themselves and others from pathogens. So, students should be able to forgo masks but must be prevented from wearing “fuck” shirts.

While there is a difference between masks and “fuck” shirts, this difference would seem to favor requiring masks. After all, if schools ban clothing like “fuck” shirts because they might offend, they should require masks because forgoing them can result in serious illness or even death. To be consistent, Jed Davis and his fellows would need to allow students to dress as they wish, including “fuck” shirts. Or he would need to maintain dress codes and require masks to protect people from harm.

It could be objected that the “fuck” shirt is not analogous. After all, the choice is to wear a “fuck” shirt versus a choice to not wear a mask. So, the right being advocated is not the freedom to wear what you want, but a freedom to not wear what you do not want to wear. So, I will modify the argument again:

 

Premise 1: People have the right to not wear what they do not want to wear.

Premise 2: Some people do not want to wear clothing.

Conclusion: These people have the right not to wear clothing they do not want to wear.

 

One could object, again, that clothes are not analogous to masks. This is true, clothes are not important tools in preventing the spread of the virus. As such, any argument that would support the right to choose to not wear a mask would serve to support the far less impactful right to choose to go shirtless in school. I suspect that Jed and his fellows would not allow the students to come to school without being fully dressed. But if they are pro-choice when it comes to masks, consistency requires they allow the same freedom across the board. Obviously enough, allowing students to dress as they wish would present no meaningful danger to others, forgoing a mask would.

If the freedom argument has any merit, then the maskless students must be allowed to wear “fuck” shirts and otherwise dress as they wish. Just to be clear, while I favor freedom of expression and oppose the tyranny of pants (in favor of wearing running shorts) what I am advocating is that students be compelled to wear masks if doing so would protect them and others from a pandemic.

While Republicans defend inherited wealth, a principled conservative should want to reform inheritance, perhaps even radically. I will base my case on professed conservative principles about welfare. My use of the term “welfare” will be a sloppy, but necessary shorthand. After all, there is no official government program called “welfare.” Rather, it is a vague term used to collect a range of programs and policies in which public resources are provided to people. Now on to the conservative arguments against inheritance.

Way back in April, 2020 Senator Lindsey Graham argued public financial relief for the coronavirus would incentivize workers to leave their jobs.  While making this argument during a pandemic was new, it is a stock argument used against welfare. Rod Blum, a Republican representative from Iowa, said “Sometimes we need to force people to go to work. There will be no excuses for anyone who can work to sit at home and not work.” Donald Trump, whose fortune was built on inheritance, has said that “The person who is not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that’s working his and her ass off.” While this might sound like description of Trump, it was his criticism of welfare. In general terms, the conservative argument is that if a person receives welfare, then they would not have an incentive to work. Since this is bad, welfare should be restricted or perhaps even eliminated.

Conservatives also advance utilitarian arguments against welfare, arguing it is bad because of the harm it causes. In addition to allegedly destroying the incentive to work, it is also supposed to harm the moral character of the recipient and, on a larger scale, create a culture of dependency and a culture of entitlement. If we take these arguments seriously, then they would also tell against inheritance. In fact, this is an old argument in philosophy.

Mary Wollstonecraft contends that hereditary wealth is morally wrong because it produces idleness and impedes people from developing their virtues. This mirrors the conservative arguments against welfare, and they should, if they are consistent, agree with Wollstonecraft.

Conservatives also profess to favor the free market, meritocracy and earning one’s way. They speak often of how people should pull themselves up by bootstraps. In accord with these professed values, they oppose programs like affirmative action, free school lunch,  and food stamps. The usual arguments focus on two factors. The first is that such programs provide people with unearned resources and this is wrong. The second is that such programs provide people with an unfair advantage over others, which is also wrong. It is obvious that the same reasoning would apply to inheritance.

Inheritance is unearned. So, if receiving unearned resources is wrong, then inheritance would also be wrong. It could be countered that people can earn an inheritance, that it might be granted because of their hard work or some other relevant factor. While such cases would be worth considering, earning it by hard work is not the way one qualifies for an inheritance. However, an earned inheritance would certainly not be subject to this argument.

Disparities in inheritance also confer unearned advantages. For example, suppose that both of us want to open a business in our small town which can only support one business of that kind. For the sake of the arguments, let us assume we are roughly equal in abilities, so with a fair start there is about a 50% chance that either of us would win the competition. But suppose that I inherit $1,00,000 and you start out with a $1,000 loan from your parents. This provides me with a huge advantage. I can purchase more and better equipment. I can get a better location for my business. I can out-advertise you. I can bleed your business to death by taking a loss you cannot sustain. I will not say it is impossible for you to beat me and I can imagine scenarios in which I fail. For example, the townsfolk might rally to support you and boycott me because of my unfair advantage. But barring such made-for-tv miracles, I will almost certainly win.

Even if we were not in direct competition, I would still have a huge unearned advantage over you. If you decided to go to the next town over and I wished you well, I would still be more likely to succeed than you because my inheritance advantage would be considerable.  If receiving unmerited advantages is wrong, then significant inheritance would be wrong as well.

Since conservatives generally profess loath welfare and love inheritance, they would need a principled way to break the analogy between the two. There are ways to do this.

An argument can be built on claiming that inheritance is a voluntary gift of resources, while welfare involves taking tax money from people who do not want it to be used that way. The obvious reply is that if we vote for welfare (either directly or through representatives), then it is voluntary. This, of course, leads into the broader area of democratic decision making. But if we accept democracy and our democracy accepts welfare, then we agree to it in the same way we agree to any law or policy we might not like.

Another argument can be made by pointing out that inheritance often goes to relatives while welfare does not. But this is not relevant to the argument that welfare is bad because of its harm. After all, it is getting money that one has not earned that is supposed to be the problem, not whether it was given willingly or by a relative. One could try to argue that resources given by relatives are special and will not make people lazy while state resources will, but that seems absurd. Some will be tempted to argue that those who inherit wealth tend to be a better sort of people, but this seems an unreasonable path to follow.

Another argument can be made asserting that inherited wealth is earned in some manner while welfare is not. While this has some appeal, it falls apart quickly. First, some people do earn some of their welfare (broadly construed) by paying for it when they are working. For example, if Sally works for ten years paying taxes and gets fired when her company moves overseas, then she is getting back money from a system she contributed to. So, Sally earned that welfare.  Second, if a person did work for their inheritance, it is not actually an inheritance, but something earned. If, for example, someone worked in the family business for pay or shares in the company, then they have earned their pay or shares. But merely working there does not, obviously, entitle a person to own the business after the death of the current owner. Otherwise, the workers should all share in the inheritance. So, this sort of argument fails.

It might be pointed out that if someone opposes inheritance, then they must oppose welfare. One reply is to accept this. If welfare makes people idle and inflicts moral harm, then it would be as bad as inheritance and should be limited or eliminated. A second reply is to argue that welfare helps people in need and is analogous to family helping family in times of trouble rather than being analogous to inheritance, in which one simply receives regardless of need or merit.

To pre-empt some straw person attacks on my arguments, my view is not that inheritance should be eliminated. It would be absurd to argue that Sally cannot inherit her grandmother’s assault rifle collection. It would be foolish to argue that Sam cannot inherit his mom’s cabin where he learned to hunt deer. Rather, my view is consistent with the conservative arguments: inheritance should be reduced to a level that does not cause harm to those inheriting it and does not confer an unfair advantage. While a full theory of inheritance would require a book to develop, the core of my view is that inheritance should be taxed in a progressive manner and the tax income should be used to increase fair competition. A good place to start would be funding public schools. Funding low-interest loans for poor people creating businesses would also be a good option. This has the appeal that it takes nothing away from anyone who is still alive; people would merely get less unearned wealth. To use an analogy, it is like a tax on lottery winnings—people are would just get less for winning and would not be losing anything they earned. In this way, a tax on inheritance is morally better than income tax on wages, which takes away from what someone has earned.

It could be argued, as the Republicans often do, that taxing inheritance would be a double tax: the money or property is taxed, then taxed again when it is inherited. While this seems a clever argument, it has two obvious problems. The first is that the person inheriting the money or property is taxed only once. They do not pay a tax when the person dies and then pay another tax when they inherit it. Second, this alleged “double tax” is not unique to inheritance. When I make money, tax is taken out. When I buy a book on Amazon sold by a friend, I pay sales tax. When my friend gets their royalty, they pay a tax on that. If they buy a book of mine with the money they got from me buying their book, the money is taxed again when they pay the sales tax. Then I am taxed again when I pay my tax on my income. This is not to say that all this taxing is good, just that the notion that inheritances are subject to a unique and crazy double tax is absurd.

In response to a video I did on D&D and racism, a viewer posted “yet another racist feeling guilt trying to project their racism onto others, but this one attempting to use logic and his “appeal to superiority” with his college knowledge…” I do not know whether this was sincere criticism or trolling, but the tactics are common enough to be worth addressing.

There is a lot going on in that single sentence, which is itself a rhetorical tactic analogous to throwing matches in a dry forest. Throwing matches is quick and easy; putting out the fires takes time and effort. But if they are not addressed, the “match thrower” can claim they have scored points. This creates a nasty dilemma: if you take time to respond to these matches, you are using way more time than the attacker, so even if you “win” you “win” little because they have invested so little in the attacks. If you do not respond, then they can claim victory. While this would also be an error on their part since a lack of response does not prove that a claim is correct, it could give them a rhetorical “victory.”

The references to using logic and “college knowledge” seem to be a tactic I have addressed before, which is the “argument against expertise.” It occurs when a person rejects a claim because it is made by an authority/expert and has the following form:

 

Premise 1: Authority/expert A makes claim C.

Conclusion: Claim C is false.

 

While experts can be wrong, to infer that an expert is wrong because they are an expert is absurd and an error in reasoning. This can be illustrated by a person concluding that there must be nothing wrong with their car solely because an expert mechanic said it had an engine issue. That would be bad reasoning.

The person is also using an ad hominem and a straw man attack. In the video I explicitly note that I am giving my credentials to establish credibility and note that I should not be believed simply because I am an expert in philosophy and gaming: my arguments stand or fall on their own merit. As such, the “appeal to superiority” is unfounded but provides an excellent example of combining a straw man with an ad hominem.  These are common bad faith tactics, and it is wise to know them for what they are. I now turn to the focus of this essay, which is the tactic of accusing critics of racism of being the real racists.

The easy part to address is the reference to guilt arising from being racist. Even someone is motivated by guilt, it is irrelevant to the truth of their claims and this is just another ad hominem attack. As far as projecting racism, this is just part of the claim that the critic of racism must be racist. While the accusation of racism can be seen as a rhetorical device, there does seem to be an implied argument behind it and some take the time to develop an argument for their accusation of racism. Let us look at some versions of this argument:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of racism or racist R.

Conclusion: Person A is a racist because of C.

 

While not a specific named fallacy, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Consider the same sort of logic, which is obviously flawed:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or a corrupt person.

Conclusion: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

 

Being critical of corruption or a corrupt person does not make you corrupt. While a corrupt person could be critical of corruption or another corrupt person, their criticism is not evidence of corruption. Two other bad arguments are as follows:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about aspect of racism or racist R.

Premise 2: Person A is a racist because of C.

Conclusion: Criticism C is false.

 

This is obviously just an ad hominem attack: even if A was a racist, this has no bearing on the truth of C. Consider an argument with the same sort of reasoning:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt person R.

Premise: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

Conclusion: Criticism C is false.

 

This is quite evidently bad logic; otherwise, anyone who criticized corruption would always be wrong.

 

A variant, equally bad, is this:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about aspect of racism or racist R.

Premise 2: Person A is a racist because of C.

Conclusion: R is not racist.

 

While not a named fallacy, it is still bad logic: even if person A were a racist, it would not follow that R is not. Once again, consider the analogy with corruption:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt person R.

Conclusion: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

Conclusion: R is not corrupt.

 

Again, the badness of this reasoning is evident: if it were good logic, any accusation of corruption would be automatically false. At this point it can be said that while these bad arguments are really used, perhaps there are some good arguments that prove that being critical of racism or racists makes a person a racist or proves their criticism is false.

I do agree that there are cases in which critics of certain types of racism are racists. An obvious example would be the Nation of Islam: they assert, on theological grounds, that blacks are innately superior to whites. Someone who believes this could be critical of racism against themselves and they would be a racist criticizing racism (of a specific type). But it is not their criticism of racism that makes them racist; it is their racism that makes them racist.

What is needed is an argument showing that being critical of racism makes someone a racist. That is, if the only information you had about any person was the full text of their criticism you would be able to reliably infer from the criticism that they are racist. Obviously enough, if the criticism contained racism (like a Nation of Islam member criticizing white racism because of their view that blacks are inherently superior to whites) one could do this easily. But to assume that every criticism of racism must contain racism because it is a criticism of racism would beg the question. Also, pointing to racists who make a criticism of racism and inferring that all critics who make that same criticism are thus racists would be to fall into the guilt by association fallacy. And, of course, even if a critic were racist, it would be an ad hominem to infer their criticism is thus false. A racist can rightfully accuse another racist of racism.

 While the “ideal” argument would show that all criticisms of racism make one racist (and, even “better”, disprove the criticism) such an argument would be suspiciously powerful: it would show that every critic of racism is a racist and perhaps automatically disprove any criticisms about racism. Probably the best way to argue for such an argument is to focus on showing that being critical of racism requires criticizing people based on their race and then making a case for why this is racist. The idea seems to be that being critical of racism requires accepting race and using it against other races (or one’s own), thus being racist. But this seems absurd if one considers the following analogy.

Imagine, if you will, a world even more absurd than our own. In this world, no one developed the idea of race. Instead, people were divided up by their earlobes. Broadly speaking, humans have two types of earlobes. One is the free earlobe—the lobe hangs beyond the attachment point of the ear to the head. The other is the attached earlobe: it attaches directly to the head. In this absurd world, the free lobed were lauded as better than the attached lobed. Free lobed scientists and writers asserted that the free lobed are smarter, more civilized, less prone to crime and so on for all  virtues. In contrast, the attached lobed were presented as bestial, savage, criminal, stupid and immoral.  And thus, lobism was born. The attached lobed were enslaved for a long period of time, then freed. After that, there were systematic efforts to oppress the attached lobed; though progress could not be denied. For example, a person with partially attached lobes was elected President. But there are still many problems attributed to lobism.

In this weird world some people are critical of lobism and argue that aside from the appearance of ear lobes, there is no biological difference between the groups. Would it make sense to infer that their criticism of lobism entails that they are lobists? That they have prejudice against the free lobed, discriminate against them and so on? Does it mean that they believe lobist claims are real: that the lobes determine all these other factors such as morality, intelligence and so on? Well, if critics of racism must be racists, then critics of lobism must be lobist. If one of us went into that world and were critical of lobism, then we would be lobists. This seems absurd: one can obviously be critical of lobism or racism without being a lobist or racist.

When the culture war opened a gaming front, I began to see racist posts in gaming groups on Facebook and other social media. Seeing these posts, I wondered whether they are made by gamers who are racists, racists who game or merely trolls (internet, not D&D).

Gamers who are racists are actual gamers that are also racists. Racists who play games (or pretend to play them) are doing so as a means to recruit others into racism. While right-wing hate groups recruit video gamers, there seems to be no significant research into recruitment through tabletop games like D&D. My discussion does not require any racists who game; all that is needed is gamers who are racist. Unfortunately, you can easily find them on social media.

An easy way to summon racists is to begin a discussion of diversity in gaming or mention of the revised 2024 rules. But surely there are non-racists who disagree with diversity in gaming and the changes WotC has made in the 2024 rules? Is it not hyperbole and a straw man to cast all critics of diversity as racists? This is a fair and excellent point: to assume every critic of diversity and the game changes is a racist would be bad reasoning. But while some racists are openly racist, others use stealth. They advance arguments that seem reasonable and non-racist while occasionally letting a hint of racism show through. But not so much racism that it cannot be plausibly denied.

There is also another problem: the honest non-racist critic and a stealthy racist will often advance the same arguments. So, what is the difference, other than the racism? The answer is that the critic is arguing in good faith while the racist is arguing in bad faith.

As a philosopher, I will start with the philosophical definition of an argument. In philosophy, an argument is a set of claims, one of which is supposed to be supported by the others. There are two types of claims in an argument. The first type of claim is the conclusion.  This is the claim that is supposed to be supported by the premises. A single argument has one and only one conclusion, although the conclusion of one argument can be used as a premise in another argument.

The second type of claim is the premise. A premise is a claim given as evidence or a reason to logically accept the conclusion. Aside from practical concerns, there is no limit to the number of premises in an argument. When assessing any argument there are two factors to consider: the quality of the premises and the quality of the reasoning. The objective of philosophical argumentation is to make a good argument with true (or at least plausible) premises. Roughly put, the goal is to reach the truth.

Philosophical argumentation is different from persuasion as the goal of persuasion is to get the audience to believe a claim whether it is true or false. As Aristotle noted, philosophical argumentation is weak as persuasion. Empty rhetoric and fallacies (errors in reasoning) have greater psychological force (though they lack all logical force). The stage is thus set to talk about bad faith.

The foundation of arguing in good faith is the acceptance of the philosophical definition of argument: the goal is to provide plausible premises and good reasoning to reach the truth. This entails that the person must avoid intentionally committing fallacies, knowingly making false claims, and misusing rhetoric. A person can, of course, still employ persuasive techniques. Good faith argumentation does not require debating like a stereotypical robot or being dull as dust. But good faith argumentation precludes knowingly substituting rhetoric for reasons. A person can, in good faith, argue badly and even unintentionally commit fallacies because a person can make bad arguments in good faith. A person can, obviously, also make untrue claims when arguing in good faith. But as long as these are errors  rather than lies and the person put in effort to check their claims, then they can still be arguing in good faith. 

Arguing in good faith also requires that the person be honest about whether they believe their claims and whether they believe their reasoning is good. A person need not believe what they are arguing for, since a person can advance an argument, they disagree with as part of a good faith discussion. For example, I routinely present arguments that oppose my own views when I am doing philosophy.

One must also be honest about one’s goals when arguing from good faith. To illustrate, a critic of changes to D&D who is open about their belief that they are detrimental to D&D would be acting in good faith. A racist who argues against changes in D&D hoping to lure people into racism while concealing their motives would be arguing in bad faith. As would be suspected, a clever racist will conceal their true motives when trying to radicalize the normies. There is also the possibility that a person is trolling. But if someone is trolling with racism it does not matter that they are a troll for they are still doing the racist’s work for them.

While there are objective methods for sorting out the quality of arguments and the truth of claims, determining motives and thoughts can be hard. As such, while I can easily tell when someone is committing an ad hominem fallacy, I cannot always tell when someone is engaged in bad faith argumentation. This is more in the field of psychology than philosophy as it involves discerning motives and intentions. However, sorting out motives and intents is something we all do, and we can divine from a person’s actions and words what their motives and intents might be. But we should use caution before accusing someone of arguing in bad faith and this accusation certainly should not be used as a bad faith tactic. To use accusations of bad faith as a rhetorical device or an ad hominem would be bad faith argumentation and would, of course, prove nothing. But why should people argue in good faith?

There are two broad reasons why people should do so. The first is ethical: arguing in good faith is being honest and arguing in bad faith is deceitful.  Obviously, one could counter this by arguing against honesty and in favor of deceit. The second is grounded in critical thinking: bad faith argumentation generally involves bad logic, untruths, and a lack of clarity. As such, arguing in good faith is ethical and rational. Bad faith argumentation is the opposite. Why, then, do people argue in bad faith?

One reason is that bad faith reasoning can work well as persuasion. If one rejects truth as the goal and instead focuses on winning, then bad faith argumentation would be the “better” choice. 

A second reason is that a person might risk harm, such as social backlash, for arguing their views in good faith. In such cases, hiding their views would be prudent. As a good example, a person who wants to get people to accept human rights in a dictatorship might argue in bad faith, hoping to “trojan horse” people into accepting their views. If they openly argued for human rights, they risk being imprisoned or killed. As an evil example, a racist might argue in bad faith, hoping to “trojan horse” people into accepting their views. If they were openly racist in a D&D Facebook group, they would face censure and might be kicked out of the group. So arguing acting in bad faith is the only way they will be able to poison the group from the inside. A third reason is that bad faith reasoning can lure people down a path they would not follow if it were honestly labeled. Such a use does raise moral questions; some might advance a utilitarian argument to defend its use for good while others might condemn such deceit even if it is alleged it is to achieve a good end.

In the next essay I will look at some arguments against some of WotC’s policies that can be made in good or bad faith

A few years ago the owners of D&D, Wizards of the Coast, issued an article on diversity. In the previous essay, I advanced two arguments in defense of some of what Wizards proposed. One is the utilitarian argument stolen from Plato that harmful aspects of art can harm a person’s character and could increase their chances of behaving badly in the real world. The second is a Kantian style argument that it does not matter whether immoral content causes harm, what matters is that the content is immoral. I ended the essay noting an obvious concern with my argument: the same reasoning would seem to apply to two core aspects of D&D: killing and looting.

As an aside, I lived through the Satanic Panic D&D faced in the 1980s. The argument against D&D was like Plato’s argument but with a Christian modification that D&D would lead people to Satanism and other cults. Like most other moral panics from the right, this was debunked long ago. Now back to killing and theft.

Using Plato’s argument as a template, it is easy to argue that violence and looting should be removed from D&D: engaging in fictional violence and theft could corrupt people and make them more likely to behave badly in real life. I can also reuse the Kantian argument: even if hacking up dragons and looting their hoards had no impact on people, allowing the immoral content of killing and stealing would be immoral. This would allow for an argument from analogy: if D&D should be cleansed of racist elements for moral reasons, then it should also be cleansed of violence and theft on moral grounds. There are two main options in terms of where this reasoning should take us.

The first is to accept the analogy and agree D&D should also be cleansed of violence and theft. This would radically change the game, although some people have run violence-free campaigns. The second is to take this analogy as a reductio ad absurdum of the original argument. If using the same logic (what is known as parity of reasoning) leads to an absurd conclusion, then this can be taken as refuting arguments with the same logic. A well-known example of this is philosophy is Gaunilo’s reply to St. Anselm’s ontological argument.

Since D&D is inherently a game of combat and looting, it would be absurd to remove these elements. This would be analogous to removing cars from NASCAR. Since the violence argument is reduced to absurdity, the diversity argument is absurd as well. D&D should remain unchanged: killing, looting and no diversity changes. While this line of reasoning is appealing, it can be challenged.

For this reasoning to be good,  fictional violence and theft must be analogous to fictional racism within the game. Interestingly, someone agreeing with this reasoning would need to agree that racism, killing and looting are all bad but they should not be removed from the game. Someone who thinks that racism, killing, and looting are all morally fine would not need to make the absurdity argument. They could just argue there is no moral reason to remove any of these from the game. So, can a person believe that killing, stealing and racism are bad while consistently supporting diversity on moral grounds while also allowing in game killing and looting? The answer is “yes” and supporting this requires arguing that the analogy between killing and racism breaks down.

The obvious way to do this is to point out a relevant difference between racism and killing: while racism seems to always be wrong, there are arguments that support morally acceptable violence. These include such things as Locke’s moral argument for self-defense and centuries of work in just war theory. In contrast, there seem to be no good forms of racism or cases in which racism is morally defensible. While someone might use violence for self-defense against a wrongful attack and be morally justified, there seem to be no cases of racism in self-defense: that one must use morally acceptable racism to protect oneself against wrongful racism. Likewise, there is no body of ethics that constitutes just racism theory. To be fair to the racists, they could argue in favor of the ethics of racism and I certainly invite good faith efforts to publicly make such a case.

Because there are moral distinctions in violence, D&D could include ethical violence with no moral problem. It would not be corrupting, nor would it be inherently evil. In D&D people typically play heroes doing heroic deeds such as fighting evil foes and looting their foes to continue their heroic efforts. There are, however, three obvious counters to this argument.

One is that there are arguments that violence is always wrong, and one could be a moral absolutist about violence. If violence is always wrong, then it would be wrong to include it in D&D. While not without its problems, pacifism is a coherent moral view and would certainly make D&D morally problematic if it were correct.

The second is that people play non-good and even evil characters in D&D who engage in evil acts of violence. I have played evil characters myself, my favorite being my delusional anti-paladin D’ko.  One could argue that playing evil PCs would be immoral. The obvious reply is that if one is playing the role and it is not impacting the person, then there would be no moral problem: no one is being harmed, and the evil deeds are fictional. If someone were to get into the role too much and engage in behavior that did hurt other people then that would be wrong as real harm would be done. This could even be harm done at the table. For example, a player who has their character rape defeated foes and graphically describes this to the other players could be doing real harm.  Also, a Kantian might disagree about the distinction between fictional and real evil and argue that to will evil even in play would still be evil.

The third is that even in games where all the PCs are good (or at least not evil), the DM must take on the role of any evil NPCs the players interact with and engage in fictional acts of evil. As such, it would seem hard to avoid including unjust violence in D&D. From a utilitarian perspective, this would be morally acceptable if the fictional violence did no harm, either in terms of corrupting people or inflicting suffering on those involved. Again, a Kantian approach might forbid even harmlessly playing an evil being as a DM but some Kantians are notorious as killjoys.

As my closing argument, I contend there is a meaningful distinction between playing an evil character doing evil acts of fictional violence and having the game content mirror the racism of the real world. To use an obvious analogy, this is the distinction between an actor playing the role of a racist in a movie and knowingly acting in a movie that serves as racist propaganda.  As such, D&D can retain violence, and players can play evil characters (within limits) while avoiding moral harms. But the racism should certainly go.

A few years ago, Wizards of the Coast(WotC), who own Dungeons & Dragons, issued a statement on diversity. As would be expected, the responses split along ideological lines and the culture war continues to this day. The D&D front of the culture war is personal for me. I started playing D&D in 1979 and have been a professional gaming writer since 1989. This ties me into the gaming aspect of the war. I am also a philosophy professor, so this ties me into the moral and aesthetic aspects of this fight.

The statement made by WotC has three main points. The first addresses race in the real world. The second addresses the portrayal of fictional races, such as orcs and drow, within the game. The third addresses racism from the real world within the game, with the example of how a Romani-like people were portrayed in the Curse of Strahd. In this essay I will focus on the in-game issues.

Before getting to the in-game issues, I will pre-empt some of the fallacious arguments. While it is tempting to use straw man attacks and hyperbole in this war, WotC cannot prevent gamers from doing as they wish in their own games. If you want your orcs to be evil, vegans, mathematicians or purple, you can and there is nothing WotC or Hasbro can do. Any change of WotC policy towards D&D races (or species) only applies to WotC. As such, the only censorship issue applicable here is self-censorship.

As always in the culture war, there were (and are) ad hominem attacks on folks at WotC. Most of these attribute “wicked” motives to them and take these alleged motivations as relevant to the correctness of their claims. In some cases, the criticism is that WotC is engaged in “woke marketing” to sell more products. While this can be evaluated as a business strategy, it proves nothing about the correctness of their position. In other cases, those at WotC have been accused of being liberals who are making things soft and safe for the dainty liberal snowflakes. This is also just an ad hominem and proves nothing. One must engage with the actual claims rather than flail away with insults.

To be fair, one can raise legitimate questions about the ethics of the folks at WotC: their motives do matter when assessing them as people. If this is merely cynical snowflake marketing, then they could be criticized as hypocrites. But their motives are still irrelevant to the assessment of their position and plans. It is to this that I now turn.

While the Monster Manual from AD&D does allow for monsters to differ in alignment from their standard entries in the book, many fictional races in the game have long been presented as “monstrous and evil.” These famously include orcs and the drow (a type of elf). The concern expressed by WotC is that the descriptions of these fictional races mirror the way racism manifests in the real world. Their proposed fix was to portray “all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.” In the case of real-world racism manifesting in their products, such as the depiction of a fictional version of the Romani, they plan to rewrite some older content and ensure that future products are free of this sort of thing. These changes raise both moral and aesthetic concerns.

One way to defend the traditional portrayal of fictional races in D&D is to, obviously enough, appeal to tradition. Since Tolkien, orcs have been portrayed as evil. Since the G and D series of modules,  D&D drow have been evil. The obvious problem with this defense is that it the appeal to tradition is a fallacy, one I have addressed at length in other essays.

Another way to defend the idea that some fictional races are inherently evil (or at least almost always evil) is to use in-game metaphysics. Until recently, good and evil were objective aspects of the standard D&D world. Spells could detect good and evil, holy and unholy weapons inflicted damage upon creatures of opposing alignments, and certain magic impacted creatures based on their alignment. Demons and devils are, by their nature, evil in classic D&D. Angels and other celestials are, by nature, good in classic D&D. While alignment does have some role in D&D 5E, this role is miniscule by way of comparison.

In most D&D worlds, gods of good and evil exist and certain races were created by such gods. For example, the elves have mostly good deities, with the most obvious exception being the goddess Lolth, the queen of the demonweb pits. As such, the notion of races that are predominantly evil or good makes sense in such game worlds. As good and evil are metaphysically real, creatures could be imbued by divine and infernal powers with alignments.

While this defense does have its appeal, it raises an obvious concern: in the real-world people defend real racism with appeals to good and evil. They invoke creation stories to “prove” that certain people are better and others inferior. As the folks at WotC note, fantasy worlds often mirror the racism of the real world.

One reply to such concerns is to point out that most people can distinguish between the fictional world of D&D and the real world. Casting orcs and drow as evil and monstrous, even using language analogous to that used by racists in the real world, is nothing to be concerned about because people know the difference. The player who curses the “foul green skins” in game will not thus become a racist in the real world and curse the “wicked whites.” Thus, one might conclude, WotC stands refuted. There is, however, an ancient philosophical counter to this reply.

In the Republic Plato presents an argument for censorship based on the claim that art appeals to emotions and encourages people to give in to these emotions.  Giving way to these emotions is undesirable because it can lead to shameful or even dangerous behavior. On his view, viewing tragic plays might lead a person to give in to self-pity and behave poorly. Exposure to violent art might cause a person to yield more readily to the desire to commit violence. While Plato does not talk about racism (because the ancients had no such concept), his argument would apply here as well: engaging in fictional racism can lead people to racism in the real world. As such, Plato would presumably praise WotC for this action.

At this point it is reasonable to bring up the obvious analogy to video games. While the power of video games to influence ethics would seem to be an empirical matter, the current research is inconclusive because the “…evidence is all over the place” —so it currently comes down to a matter of battling intuitions regarding their power to influence. So, I will turn to Plato’s most famous student.

As Aristotle might say, players become habituated by their play.  This includes not just the skills of play but also the moral aspects of what is experienced in play. This, no doubt, is weaker than the influence of the habituation afforded by the real world. But to say that D&D games with moral components have no habituating influence is analogous to saying that video games with hand-eye coordination components have no habituating impact on hand-eye coordination beyond video games. One would have to assert players learn nothing from their hours of play, which seems unlikely.

I am not claiming that D&D takes control of the players in a Mazes and Monsters scenario, just that experiences shape how we perceive and act, something that is obviously true. So, I do not think that people who play in D&D games casting orcs and drow as monstrous and even those that mirror real world racism would make players into white supremacists. Rather, I agree with the obvious claim: our experiences influence us and getting comfortable with fictional racism makes it slightly easier to get comfortable with real world racism.

For those who prefer Kant, one could also advance a Kantian style argument: it does not matter whether the in-game racism that mirrors real world racism has an impact on people’s actions or not, what matters is whether such racism is wrong or right in and of itself. If racism is wrong, then even fictional racism would thus be wrong.

As someone who regularly games, I can see the obvious danger in the arguments I have just advanced: would not the same arguments apply to a core aspect of D&D, namely the use of violence? I will address these matters in the next essay.

As the COVID-19 pandemic played out, Trump wavered on social distancing. One reason was that billionaires  argued for getting back to work during the pandemic. In  neutral terms, their argument was that the harm of maintaining  social distance would exceed the harm caused by sending people back to work.  This is a classic utilitarian approach in that the right action is the one that creates the greatest good (or the least harm).  Lieutenant Governor  Dan Patrick  advanced a similar, but much harsher argument. On his view, the damage done to the economy by trying to protect people s far outweighs the harm done by putting people at risk. He went so far as to claim that he would be willing to die for the economy and seemed willing to sacrifice other seniors as well. While this was not a mainstream view, it got some traction on Fox News. While some billionaires and Patrick acknowledge a downside to their proposals, some claimed the deaths would be good, another plus rather than a minus.

While it is tempting to dismiss the billionaires as greedy sociopaths who would sacrifice others to add to their vast fortunes, they do raise a moral problem: to what extent should some people be sacrificed for the good of others? We allowed, and rightly praised, sacrifices by health care workers, grocery store workers and many others who risked themselves for others. As with the billionaires’ argument, this can be morally justified on utilitarian grounds: the few put themselves at risk for the good of the many. They kept the rest of us alive by taking care of us, ensuring food remained available and so on. It is inarguable that these sacrifices were good, essential and heroic. It is also inarguable that some of them died because they stayed at their posts and did what must be done to keep the rest of us and our civilization alive. For essential goods and services, the risk seemed morally acceptable; especially from the viewpoint of people who were not themselves in danger. But what about the broader economy?

The billionaires were correct that a badly damaged economy would harm workers. As evidence, consider what happened to workers during the depressions and recessions inflicted upon them in the past. Things were already bad for many before the pandemic and the economic damage made things worse. As such, there was certainly a good argument for getting the economy back on track as soon as possible. But did the utilitarian argument support the billionaires’ view?

When engaging in an honest utilitarian calculation of this sort, the three main factors are values, scope and facts. In the case of the facts, one must honestly consider the consequences.  The scope determines who counts when assessing the harms and benefits. The values determine how one weighs the facts, what is considered good and what is seen as bad. It is a fact that the social distancing practices did economic damage. Many people were unable to work, many businesses closed or operated at minimum levels and so on. It was also a fact that relaxed social distancing to get people back to work resulted in more infections which caused more suffering and death. The billionaires and those who disagree with them agreed on these facts; but they disagreed about matters of scope (who counts) and value (what counts more). The billionaires showed no concern for the well-being of workers and it would be absurd to think they suddenly started to care. As such, the scope of their concern was, at most, their economic class of billionaires. In terms of values, the billionaires value money, more so than the well-being of workers (otherwise they would provide better pay and benefits). As such, their argument made sense to them: relaxing the restrictions benefited them financially and the harm would, as always, be suffered by other people. Those who think that everyone counts and who value life and health over profits for billionaires saw the matter differently.

It could be objected that while the billionaires are interested in their profits, they are also correct that workers would have been hurt more by the ongoing economic damage. As such, it was right to relax the restrictions because it was also better for the workers.  There are two main replies to this argument. The first reply is to argue that the billionaires were wrong in their assessment: even in their economic terms, relaxing the restrictions caused more economic damage than keeping them in place. To use an analogy, imagine a business in a large building that is on fire. One could argue that having the fire trucks pump water into the building will do a lot of damage and that the fire should be allowed to burn out while employees continue to work. But this can be countered by pointing out that allowing the building to burn will do far more damage in the long term and kill more people.  As such, unless the goal is short-term profits and long-term disaster, then it would have been best to keep social distancing in place until it was medically unnecessary.

The second reply is that people suffered, as they have for a long time, because of the economic and social structures we have constructed. We had vast resources to mitigate the harm that was done—the problem is that these resources were (and are) hyper concentrated into the hands of a few and most people lacked the resources to endure the pandemic on their own (and many lacked the resources to endure “normal” life before the pandemic). The truth is that we could have gotten through the economic harm of the pandemic better if we had been more willing to share the resources and wealth that we all created. It was ironic that the billionaires had a fix on hand for many of the harms they predicted: the economic and social structures could have been radically changed for the good of us all, rather than focused on the good of the elites

The lesson I hope we learned here is that the sacrifices of those in essential areas, like those working to provide food and health care, are morally justified and laudable. Another lesson is that the sacrifices extracted from the many by the few to expand their wealth are neither justified nor laudable. What is perhaps more horrifying than the billionaires’ view that people should die for the economy is that they believe they can make such statements in public with impunity and without fear of consequences. I hope that more people will see this for what it is, and they will work to change the world. Unfortunately, many have chosen the side of the billionaires once again and now they openly rule the oligarchy of America.

As COVID-19 ravaged humanity, xenophobia and racism remained alive and well. For example, an Iranian leader  played on fears of America and Israel. He advanced, without evidence, the claim that the virus was created specifically to target Iranians. In addition to conspiracy theories that the Chinese engineered the virus (either to reduce their own population or for use against other nations) there was also a worldwide rise in xenophobia and racism against Asians.

One reason for the xenophobia and racism is that people were looking for a visible enemy upon which to take out their fear and anger. Many people felt helpless and afraid during the pandemic and as humans are inclined to focus on other humans as threats, there was a rise in xenophobia and racism. People are also inclined to seek an intelligence behind dangers, as they did when they attributed natural disasters to gods. Since humans suffer from in group bias and evil leaders feed xenophobia and racism, it is no surprise that people are sought a scapegoat for the  crisis: someone must be to blame. Someone must pay.

The United States, with a long tradition of racism against Asians, saw an increase in xenophobia and racism. While most incidents were limited to verbal hostility, racism in the context of disease raises serious concerns. The United States has a history of weaponizing racism in the context of diseases and we should be on guard against this, because leaders try to appeal to their base and divert attention away from their failings. An example of an American leader’s effort to use xenophobia and racism is Donald Trump using the term “Chinese virus” in place of “coronavirus” or “COVID-19.”

Trump did have excellent, albeit evil, reasons to use these terms. One is that it appeals to parts of his base. This dog whistle sends the message he is speaking to them.  A second reason is that it shifted blame from Trump’s inept and harmful early handling of the pandemic. By presenting it as a Chinese virus Trump created the appearance the threat is the responsibility of a foreign power (and people) and attempted to mitigate his responsibility. Third, it helped create an “us versus them” mentality, with the “them” being other people rather than the virus. Unfortunately, while Trump gained some apparent advantages from this approach, it came with a high cost.

There are those who will defend Trump and take issue with my criticism of him. My first response is that Trump is just an example for the problem of xenophobia and racism. If a Trump defender claims he was not engaged in any racism or xenophobia, then I would refer to the United States being blamed by other for the virus. I suspect a Trump supporter would agree that the xenophobia of other countries towards the United States was not helpful and was, in fact, detrimental.

My second response is that Trump engaged in in open racism and xenophobia. He used the well-worn xenophobic and racist trope of the foreign disease and the diseased foreigner—which was also used in the racism aimed at the allegedly diseased caravans heading towards the United States from the south. That Trump’s defenders had to engage in relentless efforts to explain away his seemingly racist claims undercuts their own case. One would have needed to argue Trump unintentionally but constantly used racist tropes and language. While not impossible, it does strain the boundaries of possibility.

Another piece of evidence is that Trump used his infamous sharpie to cross out “Corona” in his speech and replace it with “Chinese”, showing his use was intended, rather than a slip.  His defenders could engage in verbal gymnastics to explain this. One strategy was to argue Trump used the phrase “Chinese virus” as “Spanish flu” was used. While this approach has some appeal, using the phrase “Spanish flu” is also problematic. Labeling a disease with a specific country or ethnicity tends to lead to stigma and racism. As such, using the “Spanish Flu” defense is like defending the use of “wetback” by saying that people also used “wop.”

A second strategy is to argue that Trump was just referring to where it came from and, for bonus points, one can point out that it was originally called the “Wu Han virus.” One can say that it cannot have been racist or xenophobic for Trump to use “Chinese virus” because the Chinese used “Wu Han virus.” The easy and obvious reply is that the use of the term “Wu Han virus” was also seen as problematic, for the same reasons that “Spanish flu” and “Chinese virus” are problematic. To use an analogy, this would be like a Chinese leader talking about “Caucasian flu” and saying that was just fine because, for example, Americans first started using a term like “Connecticut flu” when the disease first appeared in Connecticut. Since Trump decided to refer to it as the “Chinese flu” and there are no good reasons to use that term, the best explanation is the obvious one: Trump used a xenophobic and racist dog whistle, cashing in on the well-worn trope of the diseased foreigner and the foreign disease. For those who would try to present this in a positive light, one must ask why do this? And why defend him against the umpteenth reasonable charge of racism and xenophobia?

As noted above, there was already racism and xenophobia against Asians (and Asian Americans) and Trump’s insistence on calling it the “Chinese virus” was likely to have contributed to the uptick in such incidents. Using this sort of label also put the United States at odds with other counties. And other countries blaming us had the same effect. Having Americans turn against other Americans is harmful, especially during a crisis in which community unity is an important part of our survival toolkit. It is also harmful to create conflict between nations when cooperation will improve our response to pandemics. A pandemic is a war between humans and a disease. Creating conflict between humans might serve the selfish goals of some leaders, but it harms humanity. As such, a key lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic is that using racism and xenophobia will only make things worse. As it always does.

In the United States, health care is often seen as a private good. The benefit of a private good belongs primarily (or even exclusively) to the individual. But a private good could have some broader benefit as well. A private good is usually seen as being the responsibility of the beneficiary. Put roughly, you should pay for your private good, not the rest of us. There are many things that are clearly private goods.

For example, my running shoes are a private good because they benefit me, and I should be the one to buy them.  In terms of broader benefits, my health means that I do not miss work, and this benefits my employer and students. But this is not enough to make them a public good.  .

Obviously. a public good is supposed to benefit the public and is often seen as being the responsibility of society. Put roughly, it is a good for us and we should pay for it collectively. A public good need not benefit everyone directly. For example, public transport does not directly benefit someone who never uses it and only gets around by walking or biking.  There is considerable debate over what goods (if any) should be public. Public versus private health care is a matter of debate in the United States.

Apart from the United States, most wealthy countries have chosen public health care. The United States offers some public health care in the form of Medicare and Medicaid but people need to qualify for both and the Trump administration and Musk are doing what they can to cut into these programs.

Most working people rely on private health care. One reason is the rhetorical narrative that health care is a private goo or at least better as a private good. In terms of being a private good, the idea is that each of us is responsible for our own health care in that we must earn the money to pay for insurance and treatment. With the exceptions of Medicare and Medicaid, we are on our own. The idea is that my health is good for me, but not for you, hence I should bear the cost.

There are also arguments that private health care is better than public health care. This can be countered by the fact that people go bankrupt due to medical expenses, people cannot afford and hence do not get basic care, and people  turn to GoFundMe to pay their medical bills. It is true that we have the best health care money can buy, if you have the money to buy it. I will set aside this debate to focus on the main issue: whether health care is best seen as public or private good. One way to approach this matter is to consider paradigm cases of public goods.

Consider, if you will, an alternative America in which defense, police, fire and the legal system are private goods analogous to how health care is a private good in the real America. In this alternative America, citizens need to purchase military, police and legal insurance or face high costs for purchasing military, police, fire and legal services. In the case of military and police coverage, a citizen would be provided with various degrees of military protection for their person and property. Without such coverage, a citizen would need to pay high costs to secure such services as defense against foreign enemies and police investigations into crimes committed against them. Those who could not pay might be able to qualify for some basic services through government programs such as Militaryaid and Policecare. Those unable to qualify for these programs and unable to afford the services would be on their own. They would need to rely on self-defense, a garden hose and vigilante justice to address threats and crimes against them. This would be fair and just—after all, having the military protect me does not benefit you, nor does having the police investigate theft of my truck benefit you. Only having the military protect you benefits you. Only having the police investigate the theft of your truck benefits you. So, by the logic of health care as a private good, police and military services are also private goods. The same would also apply to aspects of the legal system. Being able to defend my property or other rights in a legal system does not benefit you, it just benefits me.

There would be, of course, certain police, military and legal activities that would occur because they would be good for these institutions and the state. The police would certainly enforce laws that generated revenue for them and the state; but if the law served only your private good, then you would need to pay for its enforcement. Such institutions would be lean and efficient, operating in accord with strict market forces as God intended. Unless, of course, they grew bloated and inefficient.

In this world, the results would be like health care in the real world. People would be locked into jobs to keep their police, military, fire and legal benefits. People in need would turn to GoFundMe to pay to have their spouses’ murder   investigation or keeping Canadians off their land. Many people would be victimized, injured or killed because they lacked basic coverage. But defenders of the system would praise it for all it alleged virtues and mock other countries for their public police, military, fire and legal services.

Things like police, military, legal and fire services are seen as public goods because they meet a state’s minimal obligation of protecting its citizens. Such goods require large expenditures, thus requiring collective funding and this can be seen as justifying providing a collective good. The same can be applied to health care; just as the state should protect its citizens from ISIS, fire and crime, it should also protect its citizens from COVID-19 and cancer. After all, you are dead whether you are killed by an ISIS bomb, a criminal’s bullet or COVID-19.

Police, military and other such services are also seen as public goods because they do (mostly) benefit everyone—even though the specific applications benefit specific people. The same also applies to much of health care. For example, infectious illnesses spread and containing them is a public good. As another pragmatic example, sick and injured people contribute less to the economy, so treating them benefits the public by getting them back into serving their core functions in capitalism: working and spending. As such, health care should be seen as analogous to the public goods of the military, police, fire, and legal system. There are, of course, obvious exceptions in which medical procedures are entirely private goods (like face lifts) but these exceptions do not disprove the general principle.