Category: Ethics

Proponents of unions advance the classic free-rider argument for compelling non-union employees to share in the cost of collective bargaining. Public unions are usually legally required to provide services to non-member employees. Because of this, if employees did not pay fees to offset the costs of these benefits, then they would be exploiting the people who did pay. This would effectively be stealing. This argument is morally compelling, and this can be illustrated by an analogy.

Imagine that a Lunch Group was formed by people who went to lunch together and this group provided lunch and other benefits in return for a membership fee. Now suppose that a law was passed that required the Lunch Group to pay for the lunches of anyone who was in the same restaurant when they had their lunch. While this would be a great deal for freeloaders, it would not be fair for the Lunch Group. As people could get the benefits of the Lunch Group without contributing, the group would probably disband as paying members would have little incentive to remain because the free riders would be exploiting them.

Naturally, some free riders might argue they are entitled to the free lunch, but that they should not contribute because they do not like the other benefits and disagree with some of the views of the group members. They just want their free lunch. This is analogous to the free speech argument advanced in favor of not paying the union fees: the employees want the benefits of the union, but do not want to pay for them.  They justify this by claiming that they do not agree with the political views and activities of the union. However, this is an absurd argument.

The no-free lunch reasoning is usually a favorite of conservatives. For example, it is a common conservative position that people who can work should work rather than “freeloading” on welfare. They criticize people who exploit the system as free riders. This principle should apply to public unions: if free riding on others is morally wrong, then free riding on a public union is morally wrong as well.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution to the problem, and one often endorsed by conservatives: workers should be free to join the union or not and they should be free to pay the fees or not. But, if they elect to not pay the fees, then they should receive none of the benefits. Just as a business is not required to provide free stuff to people just because they want it, the same should apply to the unions as well.

If unions are compelled to provide services to non-union members, then the law must also compel them to pay their fair share. Otherwise, the state would be mandating the equivalent of free lunches, something that conservatives rail against.  Except when it comes to busting unions. After all, an effective way to destroy a union is to compel it to provide services for free. This will encourage free riding and will deplete union funds—something that would please most conservatives. It is thus somewhat ironic that some conservatives use a tactic against unions that explicitly violates a professed principle of conservatives. But expecting consistency or any consequence from inconsistency has proven foolish. As has expecting principles.

Following their “good guy with a gun” mantra, Republicans often respond to school shootings with proposals to arm teachers. While there is some public support for these proposals, most Americans are not enamored of the idea. Teachers, with some exceptions, tend to oppose these proposals. As a necessary disclaimer, I’ve been shooting since I could hold a gun and shoot it safely.

While people line up on this issue based on their ideology, it should be given an objective evaluation in terms of practicality and morality.

From a practical standpoint, the question is whether arming teachers would make students safer. Under this broad consideration are other practical concerns. For example, an obvious concern is whether an average teacher would be able to engage and defeat a shooter with a reasonable chance of success and survival. School shooters tend to be inexperienced and untrained and a teacher with some training would probably be as skilled as the typical shooter. But school shooters tend to use assault rifles, and this gives them a firepower advantage in terms of range, accuracy, damage and magazine size. This assumes that teachers would be armed with pistols. But some would argue, a pistol is still better than being unarmed.

So, an armed teacher would be objectively better than an unarmed teacher when engaging a shooter. But the engagement would not be like a shootout in a Western, with gunslingers facing each other in an empty street. The engagement would probably take place with students in the area, making it possible that a teacher will miss the shooter and hit students. Even trained professionals often miss pistol shots in an active engagement and a teacher with just basic firearm training will miss more often. This leads to the practical and moral question of whether this engagement would make students safer than not arming teachers. The practical matter is an empirical question: would an armed teacher reduce casualties by either taking out the shooter or keeping their attention and allowing more people to escape? Or would they do more harm by wounding and killing students with missed shots? If teachers are armed, we will be able to collect data on this.

The moral concern is best put in utilitarian terms: if there is a reduction in deaths due to armed teacher intervention, would this outweigh unintended injuries and deaths caused by the teacher? On the face of it, a utilitarian calculation would find the action morally good, provided that the teacher’s actions saved more students than if they had not been armed. However, there is the moral concern about the possibility of teachers unintentionally killing or wounding students. But engaging a shooter would seem to be the right thing to do, even if there are unintentional casualties.

If concerns were limited to the engagement, then this matter would be settled. However, there are obvious worries about what harms might arise from having armed teachers in schools. Their guns will not magically appear in their hands when needed, nor can the guns be safely locked away for use only during an attack. The teachers would need to be carrying their guns all the time. This leads to a host of practical and moral problems.

One problem is accidental discharge. While not common, people do accidentally fire concealed weapons while, for example, digging in their purse for their phone. The risk of accidental death and injury needs to be weighed against the effectiveness of armed teachers. Since each gun is a risk every minute it is present, it is not unreasonable to think that the risk of having armed teachers outweighs the risk of not having armed teachers to respond to a shooter.

Another concern is someone taking a teacher’s gun, such as a student grabbing a gun when a teacher is trying to break up a fight. 23% of shootings in hospitals  involve guns taken from security officers; the same problem would apply to schools. This must also be factored in when assessing the moral and practical aspects of the matter. It would be ironic and awful if a school shooter used a gun taken from a teacher.

There is also the worry an armed teacher will be mistaken for a shooter when the police arrive. In the confusion of an engagement, the police will need to instantly distinguish the good guys with guns from the bad guys with guns. Armed teachers run the risk of being shot by the police or other armed teachers who see the gun but do not recognize their colleague in the heat of the crisis.

One concern that some will see as controversial is the worry that arming teachers will put black and Latino students at greater risk. Because black and Latino students already tend to be treated worse than white students, they will be at greater risk of being shot by teachers. This concern is often coupled with worries about stand-your-ground laws that allow people to use deadly force when they feel threatened. This concern does extend to white students as well; an armed teacher might feel threatened by a white student and pull their gun. It would be terrible and ironic if armed teachers ended up killing students rather than protecting them. While most teachers, like most people, are not inclined towards murder, the possibility of students being wounded or killed by armed teachers must be considered.

Assessing the morality and practicality of arming teachers requires weighing the risks of arming teachers against the benefits of doing so. Based on the above discussion, one advantage of arming teachers is that they will have a somewhat better chance of stopping or slowing down a shooter. Weighed against this are the many disadvantages noted above—disadvantages that include the possibility of teachers and students being wounded or killed by armed teachers.

One rational, but cold, way to approach this matter is to weigh the odds of a school shooting against the odds of people being harmed by arming teachers. While exact calculations of odds are problematic, the odds of a shooting incident in any K-12 school in a year in the United States has been estimated as 1 in 53,925. For high schools, it is 1 in 21,000. For elementary schools, 1 in 141,463. While these calculations can be questioned, school shootings are statistically rare given the number of schools and numbers of students. This does not diminish the awfulness of shootings. But, when coldly weighing the risks of arming teachers, it is critical. This is because arming teachers would be a good idea (practically and morally) if the benefits outweighed the harms. Determining this requires estimating the odds of a shooting, the odds an armed teacher will stop it and the odds of the various harms of arming teachers occurring. If a reasonable calculation shows that arming teachers would create more good than bad, then arming teachers would be a good idea. If not, it would be a bad idea. Perhaps this cold calculation might be countered by an emotional appeal, such as “if only one student is saved by an armed teacher, it would be worth it.” To this, there are two replies. One is that good policy is not determined by emotional appeals but by rational assessment of the facts. The second is an emotional appeal: “would it still be worth it if one student died because of armed teachers? Or two? Or ten?” My view is that arming teachers, given the odds, is a bad idea. However, I am open to evidence and arguments in favor of arming teachers.

 

An issue in aesthetics is whether the ethics of the artist should be relevant to the aesthetic value of their work. Obviously, what people think about an artist can influence their feelings about their work. But how people assess works of art and how they should do so are different.

One way to approach this is to look at art works as like any other work or product, such as a student’s paper in a philosophy class or a storage shed. In the case of a student’s paper, a professor can be influenced by how they feel about the student. For example, if a professor learned that a student had groped another student, then the professor is likely to dislike the student. But if the professor decided to assign a failing grade to the alleged groper’s paper, then this would be unfair and unjust as the quality of the paper has nothing to do with the behavior of the student. After all, a paper is supposed to be assessed based on the quality of the writing nd not on what the professor feels about the student.

By analogy, the same should apply to works of art: the quality and merit of the work should be assessed independently of how you feel about the artist and their (alleged) misdeeds. In the case of the technical aspects of the work, this seems obviously true. For example, the misdeeds of an artist have no bearing on whether they get perspectives right in a drawing or hit the correct notes in a song. Another analogy, that will lead to an objection, is to a professional athlete.

In sports like running and football, an athlete’s performance is an objective matter and how the spectators feel about the athlete has no role in judging that athletic performance. For example, how the spectators feel about a marathon runner has no impact on how their time should be judged. The time is what it is regardless of how they feel. By analogy, the same should apply to works of art. A work is what it is regardless of how people feel about the artist. The analogy to athletes leads to an objection against this view.

While the quality of an athlete’s performance is an objective matter (in certain sports), professional athletes are often also entertainers. For example, a professional basketball player is there to play basketball to entertain the crowd. Part of the enjoyment of the crowd depends on the quality of the athlete’s performance, but what an audience member thinks about the athlete can also affect their enjoyment. For example, if the audience member does not like the athlete’s history of domestic violence, then the fan’s experience of the game can be altered. The experience of the game is not just an assessment of the quality of the athletic performance, but can involve consideration of the character of the athletes.

By analogy, the same applies to artists. So, for example, while Combs might be a skilled musician, the allegations against him can change the experience of someone listening to his music.

The obvious reply is that while people do often feel this way, they are mistaken. They should, as argued above, be assessing the athlete based on their performance in the game. What they do off the field or court is irrelevant to what they do on the court. In the case of art, the behavior of the artist should be irrelevant to the aesthetic merit of the work. For example, Combs music should not be considered differently in the face of the allegations against him. Once again, people will feel as they do, but to let their feelings impact the assessment of the work would be an error.

This is not to say that people should feel the same about works in the face of revelations about artists or that they should still buy their art. The right to freedom of feeling is as legitimate as the right to freedom of expression and people are generally free to consume art as they wish. They are also free to say how a performance (be it athletic or artistic) makes them feel. But this is a report about them and not about the work. Naturally, there are aesthetic theories in which the states of the consumer of art matter and these are certainly worthy of their due, but this goes beyond the limited scope of this essay.

Another approach to the matter is to consider a case in which nothing is known about the creator of a work of art. As examples, a work might be found in an ancient burial site, or an anonymous poem might appear on a web site. These works can be assessed without knowing anything about their creators and this suggests that the moral qualities of the artist are irrelevant to the quality of the work.

Suppose that the anonymous poem was regarded as brilliant and beautiful, but then people learned it was written by an awful person. Nothing about the poem has changed, so the assessment of the poem should not change either. But some would change their minds based on the revelation. Now imagine that that the initial attribution of the poem was in error, it was really written by a decent and kind person. Nothing about the poem has changed, so the assessment should also remain unchanged. The point is that tying aesthetic assessment to the character of the artist entails that judging the aesthetic merit of a work would require knowing the moral status of the creator, which seems absurd. Going back to the sports analogy, it would be like having to determine if a runner was a good or bad person before deciding whether a two-hour marathon was a good time or not. That is absurd. Likewise for the art. As such, the moral qualities of the artist are irrelevant to the aesthetic merit of their work. Unless they are not

As noted in my previous essay, a person does not surrender their moral rights or conscience when they enter a profession. It should not be simply assumed that a health care worker cannot refuse to treat a person because of the worker’s values. But it should also not be assumed that the values of a health care worker automatically grant them the right to refuse treatment based on the identity of the patient.

One moral argument for the right to refuse treatment because of the patient’s identity is based on the general right to refuse to provide a good or service. A key freedom, one might argue, is this freedom from compulsion. For example, an author has the right to determine who they will and will not write for.

Another moral argument for the right to refuse is the right not to interact with people  you regard as evil or immoral. This can also be augmented by contending that serving the needs of an immoral person is to engage in an immoral action, if only by association. For example, a Jewish painter has every right to refuse to paint a mural for Nazis. But this freedom can vary from profession to profession. To illustrate, a professor does not have the right to forbid a Christian student or a transgender student from enrolling in their class, even if they have a sincerely held belief that Christians are wicked or that transgender students are unnatural.

While these arguments are appealing, especially when you agree with the refusal in question, we need to consider the implications of a right of refusal based on values. One implication is that this right could allow a health care worker to refuse to treat you.  People who support the right to refusal often believe it will be used only against other people, people they do not like. Which is often why they support specific versions of the right, such as the right to refuse gay or transgender people. The idea that it could be used to refuse Christians, straight people, or white people does not enter the imagination. This is because those crafting laws protecting a right of refusal tend to have clear targets in mind.

But moral rights should be assessed by applying a moral method I call “reversing the situation.” Parents and others often employ this method by asking “how would you like it if someone did that to you?” This method can be based on the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Assuming this rule is correct, if a person is unwilling to abide by their own principles when the situation is reversed, then it is reasonable to question those principles. In the case at hand, while a person might be fine with the right to refuse services to those they dislike because of their values, they would presumably not be fine with it if they were the one being refused. As noted above, laws designed to protect the right of refusal are usually aimed at people intended to be marginalized.

An obvious objection to this method is that reversing the situation would, strictly speaking, only apply to health workers. That is, the question would be whether a health care worker would be willing to be refused treatment.  Fortunately, there is a modified version of this method that applies to everyone. In this modified method, the test of a moral right, principle or rule is for a person to replace the proposed target with themselves or a group (or groups) they belong to. For example, a Christian who thinks it is morally fine to refuse services to transgender people based on religious freedom should consider their thoughts on atheists refusing services to Christians based on religious freedom. Naturally, a person could insist that the right, rule or principle should only be applied to those they do not like. But if anyone can do this, then everyone can, and the objection fails.

A reasonable reply to this method is to argue there are exceptions to its application. For example, while most Christians are fine with convicted murders being locked up, it does that follow that they are wrong because they would not want to be locked up for being Christians. In such cases, which also applies to reversing the situation, it can be argued that there is a morally relevant difference between the two people or groups that justifies the difference in treatment. For example, a murderer would usually deserve to be punished while Christians do not deserve punishment just for being Christians. And I’m not saying this just because I am an Episcopalian. So, when considering the moral right of health care workers to refuse services based on the identity of the patient the possibility of relevant differences must be given due consideration.

An obvious problem with considering relevant differences is that people tend to think there is a relevant difference between themselves and those they think should be subject to refusal. For example, a person who is anti-racist might think that being a racist is a relevant difference that warrants refusing service. One solution is to try to appeal to an objective moral judge or standard, but this creates the obvious problem of finding such a person or standard. Another solution is for the person to take special pains to be objective, but this is difficult.

A final consideration is that while entering a profession does not strip a person of their conscience or moral agency, it can impose professional ethics on the person that supersede their own values within that professional context. For example, lawyers must accept a professional ethics that requires them to keep certain secrets their client might have even when doing so might violate their personal ethics and they are expected to defend their clients even if they find them morally awful. As a second example, as a professor I (in general) cannot insist that a student be removed from my class by appealing to my religious or moral views of the student. As a professor, I am obligated to teach anyone enrolled in my class, if they do not engage in behavior that would warrant their removal. Health care workers are usually subject to professional ethics and these often include requirements to render care regardless of what the worker thinks of the morality of the person. For example, a doctor does not have the right to refuse to perform surgery on someone just because the patient committed adultery and is a convicted felon. This is not to say that there cannot be exceptions, but professional medical ethics generally forbids refusing service just because of the moral judgment of the service provider of the patient. This is distinct from refusing services because a patient or client has engaged in behavior that warrants refusal, such as attacking the service provider.

 

Joining a profession can complicate a person’s ethical situation. For example, lawyers are obligated to defend their clients even if their client is a moral monster. In the case of health care workers, moral complications can arise when they are expected to perform medical procedures they oppose on moral or religious grounds. They can also arise when they are asked to treat a patient when they have an objection to treating patients of that type, such as a transgender person or a CEO. There is the ethical issue of whether a health care worker has the right to refuse to perform a procedure or treat a patient based on these religious or moral objections.

Some might assume that health care workers have no moral right to refuse services, especially if they are thinking of procedures they find morally acceptable. For example, a pro-choice person is likely to think that a health care worker should not deny a patient an abortion on moral or religious grounds. But this assumption would be hasty. Entering a profession does not entail that a person automatically surrenders their moral rights or conscience. To think otherwise would be to embrace the discredited notion that “just following orders” or just doing one’s job provides a moral excuse. As health care workers are morally accountable for their actions, they also retain the moral agency and freedom needed to provide the foundation for that accountability. Those who support the moral right of refusal will find this appealing, but they must remember that this moral coin has another side.

Entering a profession, especially in health care, comes with moral and professional responsibilities. These responsibilities can, like all responsibilities, justly impose burdens and obligations. For example, doctors are not permitted to immediately abandon patients they dislike or because they want to move on right now to a better paying position. The ethics of a health worker refusing to perform a procedure based on their moral or religious views requires that each procedure be reviewed to determine whether it is one that a health care worker can justly refuse or one that is a justly imposed burden.

To illustrate, consider a state employed doctor asked to keep prisoners conscious and alive during torture. Most doctors would have moral objections to this and there is the question of whether this falls within the moral expectations of their profession. On the face of it, since the purpose of the medical profession is to heal and alleviate suffering, this is not something that a doctor is obligated to do. In fact, the ethics of the profession would dictate against it.

Now, imagine a health care worker who has sincere religious or moral beliefs that when a person can no longer sustain their life on their own, they must be released to God. The worker refuses to engage in procedures that violate their principles, such as keeping a patient on life support. While this could be a sincerely held belief, it seems to run counter to the ethics of the profession. As such, such a health care worker would seem to not have the right to refuse such services.

One could even imagine extreme cases as there is no requirement to prove that a sincerely held religious belief is true, one must only be convincing in one’s (alleged) sincerity. For example, imagine a health care worker who has a sincere religious belief that a patient must prove themselves worthy in the eyes of God by surviving with only the most basic care; anything beyond that is an affront to God’s will. The patient will survive if God wills it and humans should not interfere. Such views would not be accepted as justifying their actions and they should seek another profession if they cannot do their jobs.

Turning back to services like abortion and gender transition, the issue would be whether these are like asking a medical worker to participate in torture or expecting a medical worker to provide normal medical services. Those who oppose abortion will make the moral argument that performing abortion is as bad (or worse) than abetting torture. The pro-choice will contend it is a medical procedure.

In the case of gender transition, there are no moral appeal to concerns about killing. Rather, a person must appeal to the view that people should not modify their sex and should accept what they were born with. This seems to be more like my imaginary case of a health care worker who believes that people must prove themselves worthy in the eyes of God than like the torture case, especially if someone takes the view that God wants people to stick with their original sex. That said, it could be argued that such modifications are wrong in the same way that non-restorative cosmetic surgery is wrong as both aim to allow a person to be who they want to be. I do not, however, want to claim that the transitional process is as trivial as the gender affirming procedure of getting breast implants.

While I do not think I will change minds, the matter of moral objections needs due consideration. It is easy to simply embrace one’s views without considering the possibility of error.

 

While Florida Republicans falsely proclaim that Florida is a free state, the legislature and governor are hard at work to limit freedoms they dislike. One costly example of this is a potential $15.6 million contract with Maryland based Trinity Education Group to create a centralized system for reviewing and objecting to instructional materials and books in Florida’s public schools. In higher education, where I work, the state is engaged in an ongoing review of course syllabi and books to ensure conformity with the official ideology and indoctrination goals set by the legislature.

As of this writing, Florida has redistributed $3 million in taxpayer money to Trinity. Given that Florida’s teacher pay is last in the United States, a strong case could be made that the money should have gone to Florida teachers rather than to enrich a Maryland CEO. Florida schools, like most American schools, are also chronically underfunded and if the goal is to improve education, then it would make more sense to spend the money addressing this issue. Given these facts, it might be wondered what Florida is supposed to get in return for these millions and why this is so critical that it must be funded at the expense of educating children.

As might be guessed, this spending is part of Florida’s war on critical race theory, DEI, and woke. There are two reasons being presented as to why this system is necessary. The first is the claim by Sydney Booker that, “The Department firmly believes that parents have the fundamental right to know what materials their child is accessing at school.”  This view is eminently reasonable, and it is difficult to imagine that anyone would object to such a right. But the obvious question is why the state would need to enrich a Maryland CEO for parents to know what school materials their kid is accessing. While it would take a tiny bit of effort, a parent could ask their kid what they are accessing, they can look at the syllabi, they can talk to teachers, and they could take a few minutes to look through the catalog of the school library. That is, there are free and easy ways for a parent to quickly find out what material their kid is accessing. So why is this system needed? This takes us to the second reason.

According to the state, this multimillion-dollar system will ensure the public can access the same information, since “districts are currently making the materials accessible in various formats and platforms.” While this is superficially appealing, a moment’s reflection destroys this justification. Unless a parent has numerous children spread over several school districts, they will only need information from one school district. As such, they only need to be concerned with the one format and one platform used by that district. This reasoning is like justifying spending millions on a statewide database listing what classes each student is taking so that parents can check to see what classes their kids are taking. This would be absurd, as is the wasteful plan for the central system of course materials. This leads to the question of the system’s actual purpose.

As noted above, its first purpose is to fulfil a central goal of Republican education strategy: redistribute public education funds into CEO compensation and private profit.  The second goal, which is obvious from the “justification” given for a centralized system, is to provide a centralized system to enable a few actors to challenge books across the state. Without a centralized system, a person interested in censoring school material would need to put in more effort to determine what every school might be offering as opposed to a parent’s legitimate concern with what their kid’s school is offering. This system is clearly designed to facilitate people like Friedman (a man responsible over 30% of Florida’s book challenges) who have the goal of banningbooks that do match their value system. The state is thus sending up to $15.6 million to a Maryland corporation to make it easier for a few people in Florida to ban books and course material. Whatever one’s political ideology, this should seem like a terrible waste of taxpayer money.

If you are wondering how this got approved, the answer seems to be duplicity. The department told an administrative law judge that the rules implementing the school library statute wouldn’t have regulatory costs. The state then entered the contract with Trinity, which would seem to prove that there were regulatory costs. In response to questions about this, the department replied with a clever bit of sophism: “A statute that results in costs to either the district or to the state is not synonymous with regulatory costs of a rule.” This is like someone getting you to go to a restaurant by saying “it’s free to go with me” and then being hit with a huge bill that is defended by the person saying, “it being free to go with me is not synonymous with getting a free lunch.” You would be right in thinking they had misled you.

In closing, this system sems to serve three awful purposes. The first is to deplete education funding. The second is to redistribute public funds to a Maryland CEO. It is not even enriching one of our own Florida CEOs.  The third is to create a system to make censorship easier for a very few people. But all this lines up with the Republican approach to education and it is working as intended.

The rap musician Sean “Diddy” Combs has been accused of kidnapping, drugging and coercing women into sexual activities. This potentially puts him in the company of such men as Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein. These cases, and others like them, raise the question of the aesthetic impact of these misdeeds on their works. This is an old topic and philosophers, since at least Plato, have discussed the effect of the ethics of the artist one the aesthetics of their works. However, it is still worth discussing and is obviously relevant today. I will begin by getting some easy matters out of the way.

One concern that is more a matter of psychology than philosophy is the impact of the artist’s behavior on the audience. The experience of the audience can be affected by their beliefs about the ethics of the artist. It is possible that an audience member will find their aesthetic experience diminished or even destroyed by these beliefs. For example, someone listening to Combs’ music might think of the allegations and be unable to enjoy the work. It is also possible that some will be unaffected by this. For example, someone who enjoys his music might find this enjoyment undiminished by the allegations against Combs.

While considerations of how people might react are relevant to the aesthetic issues, they do not settle these issues. For example, how people might react to an artist’s misdeeds does not settle whether the ethics of an artist is relevant to the aesthetic merit of their work. To use an analogy, how fans feel about a professional athlete’s moral misdeeds does not settle the issue about whether they are a skilled athlete.

Another area of concern is the ethics of supporting an artist who has engaged in misdeeds. This is part of the broader issue of whether one should support anyone who has engaged in moral misdeeds. As such, it is a moral issue rather than a specifically aesthetic issue.

While a customer has every right to patronize whoever they wish to give their money, what is under consideration is whether one should support an artist one thinks is a bad person. On the one hand, a moral case can be made that by supporting such an artist by buying their work, purchasing tickets to their movies or subscribing to a service that streams their shows one is supporting their misdeeds. Naturally, as the degree of financial support diminishes, so does the support of their misdeeds. To illustrate, if I think a painter is evil, but pay them $10,000 for a painting then I am providing more support than a situation in which I think Combs is evil yet keep paying for a music streaming service that he profits from.

It is also worth considering that unless the artist is operating alone the decision not to support their art impacts other people. So, for example, if someone decides to not buy any music by Combs because of what he is accused of doing, this might cost Combs some minute fraction of his income, but it also punishes everyone else who receives money from these sales. While people have every right to make purchasing decisions on ethical grounds, it is also important to consider that the target of their ire might not be the only one impacted.

 It can be argued that supporting an artist one regards as morally bad is not supporting their misdeeds. One is paying for the art and not paying them to commit misdeeds. The purchasing of the art is not an endorsement of the misdeeds but a financial transaction and what matters are the aspects that are relevant to the transaction. To use an analogy, one does not need to inquire whether a mechanic has engaged in misdeeds that have nothing to do with their job before deciding to use their services or not. One also does not feel obligated to investigate what the mechanic might use the money for. What matters is the quality and cost of the work. Naturally, a person might prefer a nice person as a mechanic or be upset if the mechanic used the money to pay prostitutes or buy illegal drugs, but that is a matter of preference.

It can be argued that patronizing a bad person who is an artist does support their misdeeds. After all, it is the wealth and power of people like Combs, Spacey and Weinstein that enabled them to get away with their alleged misdeeds for so long. On this view, once a person knows about the misdeeds, they would be morally accountable for continuing to provide support for the artist. This is analogous to patronizing any business that is accused of doing terrible things. On the one hand, one can claim to be just buying their product or service without endorsing their misdeeds. On the other hand, without customers they would be far less able to do their misdeeds.

 

By J R – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmrosenfeld/3639249316, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37298033

Some of the surplus of military equipment leftover from America’s foreign adventures were given to American police forces. While this might have seemed to be a good idea at the time, it did lead to infamous images of war ready police squaring off against unarmed civilians. This is the sort of image one would expect in a dictatorship but are not supposed to see in a democracy.

This images helped start a debate about the appropriateness of police equipment, methods and operations. The Obama regime responded by putting some restrictions on the military hardware that could be transferred to the police, although many of the restrictions were on gear that the police had, in general, never requested. In his first term, Trump decided to lift the Obama ban and  then attorney general Jeff Sessions touted this as a rational response to crime and social ills. As Sessions sees it, “(W)e are fighting a multi-front battle: an increase in violent crime, a rise in vicious gangs, an opioid epidemic, threats from terrorism, combined with a culture in which family and discipline seem to be eroding further and a disturbing disrespect for the rule of law.” Perhaps Sessions believes that arming the police with tanks and grenade launchers will help improve family stability and shore up discipline. With Trump’s promise to forcibly deport millions of migrants, we are likely to see a militarized police forcer operating alongside the actual military.

While it might be tempting to dismiss Trump and Session having engaged in a mix of macho swagger and the view that bigger guns solve social ills, there is a real issue about what is appropriate equipment for the police.

The key factor in determining the appropriate armaments for police is the role that the police are supposed to play in society. In a democratic state aimed at the good of the people (the classic Lockean state) the role of the police is to protect and serve the people. On this view, the police do need armaments suitable to combat domestic threats to life, liberty and property. In general, these threats would usually involve engaging untrained and unarmored civilian opponents equipped with light arms (such as pistols and shotguns). As such, the appropriate weapons for the police would also be light arms and body armor.

Naturally enough, the possibility of unusual circumstances must be kept in mind. Since the United States is awash in guns, the police do face opponents well-armed opponents. The police might have to go up against experienced (or fanatical) opponents, perhaps within a fortified defensive position. They are also sometimes called upon to go up against rioters.  In such cases, the police would justly require riot gear and military grade equipment. However, these should be restricted to specially trained special units, such as SWAT.

It might be objected that the police should be equipped with this sort of equipment, just in case they need it. I certainly see the appeal to this. A rational combat mindset is to be ready for anything and to meet resistance with overwhelming force. But that points to the problem: to the degree the police adopt a combat mindset, they are moving away from being police and towards being soldiers. Given the distinction between the missions, having police operating like soldiers with military equipment is a danger to civil society. Defeating an enemy in war is different from protecting and serving.

There is also the problem that military equipment is more dangerous than standard police weapons. While a pistol can kill, automatic weapons can do much more damage. The police, unlike soldiers, are presumed to be engaging fellow citizens and the objective is supposed to be to use as little force as possible. They are supposed to be policing rather than subjugating.

But the view that the police should serve and protect the good of the people is not the only possible view. As can be seen around the world, some states regard the police as tools of repression and control. These police operate as the military, only with their fellow citizens as enemies. If the police are regarded as tools of the ruling class and exist to maintain their law and order, then a militarized police force makes sense. Militaries serve as an army against the people of other countries, serving the will of their rulers. Same basic role, but different targets.

It could be argued that while this is something practiced by repressive states, it is also suitable for a democratic state. Jeff Sessions characterizes policing as a battle, and one could argue the is right. As Trump likes to say, one might think there are enemies within America that must be defeated in the war on crime. On this view, the police are to engage these enemies in a way analogous to the military engaging a foreign foe and thus it makes sense that they would need military grade equipment. They are a military force serving military objectives. This lines up with the criticism that the police are often an occupying army in poor neighborhoods, but this is regarded as a feature rather than a flaw as that is the function of the police.

While I do think the militarization of the police impacts their behavior (I would be tempted to use a tank if I had one), my main concern is not with what weapons the police have access to, but the attitude and moral philosophy behind how they are armed. That is, my concern is not so much that the police have the weapons of an army, but that they are regarded more as an army to be used against citizens than as protectors of life, liberty and property. As this is being written, the police have been deployed against striking Amazon workers and critics point to this as an example of how the police force serves as domestic army for the rich.

https://dukeroboticsys.com/

Taking the obvious step in done technology, Duke Robotics developed a small armed drone called the Tikad. Israel also developed a sniper drone that it is using in Gaza. These drones differ from earlier armed drones, like the Predator, in that they are small and relatively cheap. As with many other areas of technology, the main innovations are in ease of use and lower cost. This makes the small armed drones more accessible than previous drones, which is both good and bad.

On the positive side, the military and police can deploy more drones and reduce human casualties (at least for the drone users). For example, the police could send a drone in to observe and possibly engage during a hostage situation and not put officers in danger.

On the negative side, the lower cost and ease of use means that armed drones are easier to deploy by terrorists, criminals and oppressive states. The typical terrorist group cannot afford a drone like the Predator and might have difficulty in finding people who can operate and maintain such a complicated aircraft. But smaller armed drones can be operated and serviced by a broader range of people. This is not to say that Duke Robotics should be criticized for doing the obvious as people have been thinking about arming drones since drones were invented.

Inexpensive gun drones do raise the usual concerns associated with remotely operated weapons. The first is the concern that operators of drones can be more aggressive than forces that are physically present and at risk of the consequences of engaging in violence. However, it can also be argued that an operator is less likely to be aggressive because they are not in danger and the literal and metaphorical distance will allow them to respond with more deliberation. For example, a police officer operating a drone might elect to wait longer to confirm that a suspect is pulling a gun than they would if they were present. Then again, they might not as this would be a training and reaction issue with a very practical concern about training officers to delay longer when operating a drone and not delaying too long in person.

A second concern is accountability. A drone allows the operator anonymity and assigning responsibility can be difficult. In the case of the military and police, this can be addressed by having a system of accountability. After all, military and police operators would usually be known to the relevant authorities. That said, drones can be used in ways that are difficult to trace to the operator and this would be true in the case of terrorists. The use of drones would allow terrorists to attack from safety and in an anonymous manner, which are matters of concern.

However, it must be noted that while the first use of a gun armed drone in a terrorist attack would be something new, it would not be significantly different from the use of a planted bomb or other distance weapons. This is because such bombs allow terrorists to kill from a safe distance and make it harder to identify the terrorist. But, just as with bombs, the authorities would be able to investigate the attack and stand some chance of tracing a drone back to the terrorist. Drones are in some ways less worrisome than bombs as a drone can be seen and is limited in how many targets it can engage. In contrast, a bomb can be hidden and can kill many in an instant, without a chance of escape or defense.  A gun drone is also analogous in some ways to a sniper rifle in that it allows engagement at long ranges. However, the drone does afford far more range and safety than even the best sniper rifle.

In the United States, it is currently not legal to arm your drone. While the people have the right to keep and bear arms, this does not extend to operating armed drones. The NRA does not seem interested in fighting for the right to arm drones, but that could changes.

In closing, there are legitimate concerns about cheap and simple gun drones. While they will not be as radical a change as some might predict, they will make it easier and cheaper to engage in violence at a distance and in anonymous killing. As such, they will make ideal weapons for terrorists and oppressive governments. However, they do offer the possibility of reduced human casualties, if used responsibly. In any case, their deployment is inevitable, so the meaningful questions are about how they should be used and how to defend against their misuse. The question about whether they should be used is morally interesting, but pragmatically irrelevant since are being used.

Since the US is experiencing a drone panic as this is being written, I’ll close with a few rational points. First, of course people are seeing drones. As comedians have pointed out, you can buy them at Walmart. Drones are everywhere. Second, people are regularly mistaking planes and even stars for drones. Third, as has been pointed out and as should be obvious, if a foreign power were secretly operating drones in the US, then they would turn the lights off. Fourth, no harm seems to have been done by the drones, so it is a panic over nothing. But it is reasonable to be concerned with what drones are being used for as corporations and the state are not always acting for the public good.

While there are ongoing efforts to revise the Confederate States of America story from one of slavery to one of state’s rights, secession from the Union was because of slavery. At the time of succession, the leaders explicitly said this was their primary motivation. This is not to deny there were other motivations, such as concerns about state’s rights and economic factors. The Confederacy’s moral and economic foundation was slavery. This is a rejection of the principle that all men are created equal, a rejection of the notion of liberty, and an abandonment of the idea that the legitimacy of government rests on the consent of the governed. In short, the Confederacy was an explicit rejection of the professed values of the United States. Other than white supremacy.

While the Confederacy lost and the union was reformed, its values survived and are now manifested by the alt-right and increasingly the right. This is shown by their defense of Confederate monuments, their use of Confederate flags, and their racism. They are aware of the moral foundations of their movement.

While the value system of the Confederacy embraced white supremacy and accepted slavery as a moral good, it did not accept genocide. That is, the Confederacy advocated enslaving blacks rather than exterminating them. Extermination was something the Nazis eventually embraced.

The Nazis took over the German state and plunged the world into war. Like the Confederate states, the Nazis embraced the idea of white supremacy and rejected equality and liberty. The Nazis also made extensive use of slave labor. Unlike the Confederate states, the Nazis engaged in a systematic effort to exterminate those they regarded as inferior. This does mark a moral distinction between the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. This is a distinction between degrees of evil.

While the Nazis were once regarded by most Americans as a paradigm of evil, many in the alt-right embrace their values and some do so explicitly and openly, identifying as neo-Nazis. Some claim they do not want to exterminate what they say are other races but want to have racially pure states. For example, some on antisemites on the right support Israel because they see it as a Jewish state; a place where all the Jews should be. In their ideal world, each state would be racially pure. This is why the alt-right is sometimes also known as the white nationalists. The desire to have pure states can be seen as morally better than the desire to exterminate, but this is a distinction in evils rather than one between good and bad.

Based on the above, the modern alt-right (and increasingly the American right) is the inheritor of the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. While this might seem a matter of mere historic interest, it has important implications. One is that it provides grounds that the members of the alt-right should be regarded as on par with members or supporters of ISIS or other enemy foreign terrorist groups. This is in contrast with seeing the alt-right as being entirely domestic.

Those who join or support Isis (and other such groups) are seen as different from domestic hate groups. This is because ISIS (and other such groups) are foreign and conflict with the United States. This applies even when the ISIS supporter is an American who lives in America. This perceived difference has numerous consequences, including legal ones. It also has consequences for free speech. While advocating the goals and values of ISIS in the United States would be a threat and could result in criminal charges, the alt-right is protected by the right to free speech. This is illustrated by the fact that the alt-right can get permits to march in the United States, while ISIS supporters and similar groups cannot. One can imagine the response if ISIS or Hamas supporters applied for permit or engaged in a march.

While some hate groups are truly domestic in that they are not associated with foreign organizations at war with the United States, the alt-right cannot make this claim. At least they cannot to the degree they are connected to the Confederate States of America and the Nazis. Both are foreign powers who were at war with the United States. As such, the alt-right should be seen as on par with other groups that affiliate themselves with foreign groups engaged in war with the United States.

An obvious reply is that the Confederacy and the Nazis were defeated and no longer exist. On the one hand, this is true. The Confederacy was destroyed, and the states rejoined the United States. The Nazis were defeated and while Germany still exists, it is not controlled by the Nazis. At least not yet. On the other hand, the Confederacy and the Nazis do persist in the form of groups that preserve their values and ideology here in the United States. To use the obvious analogy, the defeat of ISIS and its territorial losses did not end the group. It will persist as long as it has supporters, and the United States has not switched to a policy of tolerating ISIS members and supporters simply because ISIS no longer has territory.

 The same holds true for those supporting or claiming membership in the Confederacy or the Nazis. They are supporters of foreign powers that are enemies of the United States and are thus on par with ISIS supporters and members in that they are agents of the enemy. This is not to say that the alt-right is morally equivalent to ISIS in terms of its actions. Overall, ISIS is worse. But what matters in this context, is the expression of allegiance to the values and goals of a foreign enemy—something ISIS supporters and alt-right members who embrace the Confederacy or Nazis have in common.