Category: Politics

While there are safe ways to enter the United States, there are also areas of deadly desert that have claimed the lives of many migrants. Americans have left water and other supplies in these areas, for example the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson organized No More Deaths to provide support and reduce the number of deaths.

 This group seems to be on solid theological footing, following the guidance of Deuteronomy 10:18-19: “For the Lord your God…loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.  You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” However, this kindness has resulted in arrests. Four women from the group were sentenced for leaving water for migrants. They were not charged with providing humanitarian aid; rather they were charged with abandoning personal property and entering the area without a permit. While they were released with a fine and probation, Scott Warren was arrested and charged with a felony for harboring migrants—in this case, harboring was giving the migrants food and water.  While one cannot know what is in the hearts of others, No More Deaths seems dedicated to reducing deaths as opposed to having a nefarious intent to smuggle in criminals. However, their actions are illegal as they are abandoning personal property (or littering) and rendering aid to people try to illegally cross the border. to cross the border. But what is illegal need not be immoral, so the question remains as to whether they are acting wrongly.

One reasonable approach is to see this as a religious group exercising their freedom of religion. Conservatives have been supportive of companies that do not want to accept the birth control mandate of the Affordable Care Act and of business owners who do not want to provide goods and services to same sex couples getting married. If it is morally acceptable to grant exceptions to laws on religious grounds to allow for discrimination, then it would be odd to deny exceptions to laws on religious grounds for rendering humanitarian aid (as commanded by God). However, conservative support for religious liberty aimed at kindness rather than discrimination is lacking. While there is a conservative narrative that Christians are being persecuted, being prosecuted for acting on kind religious beliefs is apparently not persecution.

One reply is to contend that religious exceptions are not universal and that while allowing people to refuse service to same sex couples is a matter of religious freedom, allowing people to aid those dying in the desert is not. In any case, my main concern as a philosopher is with the ethics of the matter rather than the religious aspects.

One approach to this issue is utilitarian in which the ethics of an action depends on its consequences. On the face of it, providing water in the desert is morally right. After all, the water can prevent suffering and death, and this is good. One could also use the golden rule: if I was dying in the desert, I would want the aid of others. As such, it would be immoral of me to deny aid to others. Another approach is to embrace deontological ethics, that there is an obligation to aid others who are in need. All these approaches show providing water would be the right thing to do. They can, however, be countered.

The utilitarian argument can be countered by contending that providing water does more harm than good. One possible argument would involve trying to show that providing water encourages migrants to try to cross the border in dangerous areas, thus increasing their chance of dying. Another approach would be to argue that providing such aid encourages migrants to cross the border illegally, perhaps because they think Americans are generous and welcoming. The obvious counter is that migrants try to cross the border even without the hope that Americans will provide water and without being tricked into thinking Americans are generous and welcoming. As such, targeting people providing water would not deter migration; it would only result in more suffering and death. Some claim that this is the intended consequence. Given that conservatives focus mostly on a religious freedom to discriminate, this makes sense.

In reply to the golden rule, it could be pointed out that if I was a criminal, I would want others to aid me in my criminal endeavors but it would not be right to do so. A reasonable counter to this is to contend that the people providing water are not aiming to aid criminal activity but trying to prevent deaths. To use an analogy, a doctor who treats a wounded criminal to save their life is not aiding in their crime.

Deontology does provide a counter: one could argue that there is a duty to obey the law. The problem is, of course, that there are many wicked laws and one cannot have a moral duty to do evil. But it could be argued that the laws used to prevent aid to migrants are just and righteous laws and should be obeyed, even in the face of death. After all, the migrants are breaking the law willingly, they are not compelled to enter the desert.

But providing water in the desert is morally acceptable because doing so will reduce human suffering and death. Since migrants cross the desert even without such aid, arresting people for providing humanitarian aid would not impact migration (except by increasing migrant deaths). While the United States does have the right to control its borders, it does not have the right to use the desert to kill migrants trying to enter the country and it does not have the right to use such a threat to deter migration. As the bible notes, there are moral obligations binding us together across national borders. But religious liberty exemptions for laws seem to be only for cruelty and not for kindness.

While conservatives are usually not overly concerned with racism and have been willing to tolerate the racism of their fellows, they delight in accusing Democrats of racism. If this Democrat is a woman and Muslim, so much the better.

This sort of allegation is probably satisfying. First, there is the value in scoring political points against Democrats. Second, it is no doubt pleasant to turn the tables on Democrats. Third, such attacks provide cover for the racism of certain conservatives: how dare the Democrats attack, for example, Trump for being a racist when they have racists among them? While it is ironic to attack Democrats for alleged racism to protect racists, it seems a popular strategy on the right. This is not to say that racist Democrats should get a pass, but this tactic is based on a fallacy.

A favorite target of conservatives is  Democrat Ilhan Omar. Omar has been critical of Israel and its influence over American politics. Unfortunately for the Democrats, but fortunately for the Republicans, she has used terms like “hypnotize” and “allegiance” that can be interpreted as linking to anti-Semitic tropes. Her words were not overtly anti-Semitic as one must interpret them through the lens of these tropes. If she had said the same words about another country, they would seem innocuous. For example, her use of “allegiance” was taken as referring to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. However, if she had accused Trump of having an allegiance to Russia, this would obviously not appear anti-Semitic to anyone.

An obvious concern, which has been raised by others, is that criticism of Israel can easily be cast as anti-Semitism by analyzing every word of the criticism to find some connection to anti-Semitism. Even if a critic is scrupulous in their word choices, it would be easy to make an accusation of anti-Semitism. For example, any criticism of the influence of Israel lobbying congress using money can easily be cast as an anti-Semitic attack based on antisemitic stereotypes of Jews, money and conspiracies.

Interestingly, critics of Israel find themselves in a situation that conservatives often claim to face, that their non-racist words and actions are wrongly interpreted as racist. More generally, this is the complaint about political correctness and not being able to “say things” anymore. Oddly enough, conservatives did not rush to defend Omar from political correctness. As an example, when a conservative makes a monkey reference involving a black person, their defenders will profess ignorance of the racist monkey trope and assert that the person was using the reference in a perfectly non-racist manner.

While the lamentations of conservatives about political correctness are often veiled defenses of racism and sexism, their concerns do contain some merit. A person’s words can be wrongly taken as racist, especially when people are hypersensitive and are actively trying to interpret the words as racist. And almost any criticism can be seen as racist. For example, criticism of Obama was sometimes cast as racist, even when it seemed to be limited to his policies and actions. As such, there is a real problem here: if criticizing a black person must be racist and criticizing Israel must be anti-Semitic, then there would be no way to offer legitimate criticism of a black President or Israel. It is obviously absurd to think that Obama or Israel should be exempt from criticism because such criticism must be racist or anti-Semitic. There are many legitimate criticisms of both that have nothing to do with racism. As such, it would be absurd to dismiss such criticism as automatically racist. So, criticizing Israel is no more automatically anti-Semitic than criticizing Obama is automatically racist or criticizing Elizabeth Warren is sexist.

There is, however, the problem of the opposite extreme: that having grounds for legitimate criticism entails that the criticism is not racist. For example, while there are legitimate grounds to criticize Israeli influence over congress, couching this criticism in terms of an international Jewish conspiracy and remarking that Jews are the secret bankers controlling America would be antisemitic. As such, while criticizing Israel can be antisemitic it need not be.

While the United States is experiencing a backlash from when Black Lives Mattered, there are still social expectations that set the allowed forms of racism. While racism is the foundation of United States immigration policy, blatantly attacking migrants for their color is considered impolite, at least for now. While there are various rhetorical approaches to attacking migrants, the focus of this essay is on the well-worn claim that migration needs to be restricted because migrants bring disease.

Ironically, migrants to the United States make up 16% of healthcare workers, including 29% of physicians and 24% of dentists.  It is more likely that a migrant will prevent or treat a disease than cause one. If the goal is to improve health outcomes, restrictions on migration would have a negative effect. While some might worry about migration and disease in sincere ignorance, it is primarily a tool of fear and racism. But is it true that migrants present no health risks?

If the standard is that migrants must present zero health risk, then this cannot be met: there is a non-zero chance a migrant pass on an illness to an American. And it is true that migration increases the number of cases of illness: more than zero Americans will catch some illness from migrants. However, this does not warrant regarding migrants as health threat. After all, there are non-zero cases in which a migrant saves a life or does something else heroic. But it would be odd to speak of the great promise of a wave of migrant heroism—except in the economic sense. Likewise, speaking of the threat of a wave of migrant disease would is unfounded. It is also worth noting that Americans having more babies or travelling between states also increase the spreading of disease, but this is not seen as a good reason to prevent people from reproducing or travelling.

When I point out that migrants do not present a  meaningful health threat, a common response is that must mean I support  open borders  and allowing people to  flood the United States without regulation and without any concerns about their health. My reply is that this entails nothing about my view of immigration policy, except that I do not think that fears of diseased migrants should shape border policy. While I am not terrified of diseased hordes invading America, I do still have health concerns about the movement of people.

The fear that migrants can bring devastating diseases to the Americas is based on historical fact. When Europeans arrived in what they called the New World they brought with them Old World diseases that proved devastating to the native populations. Smallpox decimated the native people, thus greatly European conquest of these lands. If the natives had been able to enforce strong borders and keep the Europeans out, history would be radically different. As would be suspected, modern opponents of migration to the United States do not use this example when making their disease argument. In part this is because it would make clear that most Americans are migrants or descendants of recent migrants. There is also the fact that the situation now is different.

Back in the 1500s the native people had little or no resistance to European diseases and there was no modern medicine. The situation is different today. Migrants coming to the United States will generally not be bringing in unknown diseases that will be devastating because there is no health care. That said, we should very worried about the impact of the Trump administration on America’s fragile and overpriced health care system.

While we will be having another pandemic soon, it is unlikely to arise from migrants coming into the United States. As such, legitimate worries about pandemics do not warrant restricting general migration. After all, what generally occurs is vaccinated people migrating from countries with health care systems to the United States.

A legitimate concern is that other countries might suffer from health care failures.  For example, Venezuela’s health care system was undercut due to the corruption and mismanagement of its government. One consequence was an outbreak of measles. Health care professionals have left Venezuela and its citizens have also attempted to flee. As such, we might see people fleeing a failing country with a broken health care system, thus making the spread of disease a real concern.

Normally, this sort of thing would not be a serious problem. In the case of measles, vaccination is safe and effective. It was also widespread. However, some Americans have decided to forgo vaccinating their children. America has thus intentionally made itself vulnerable to measles. While measles and other diseases will spread internally, we also need to worry about other countries failing at public health and allowing these diseases to spread. As this occurs, we might see a return to diseases spreading among unprotected populations. However, this time the lack of protection will be intentional as people will have chosen to condemn their children to illness, perhaps with the best intentions.

While proponents of the disease argument against migration will want to take advantage of these self-inflicted failures, even this scenario does not warrant the migration restrictions they favor. After all, measles is already here and does not need to be brought across the border. Rather than showing that the United States needs to tighten up the borders, this situation shows that the United States must tighten up the vaccination requirements for citizens to ensure that they are protected from diseases that are already here. Vaccines and health care, not a wall, will keep us safe from disease. While it might seem odd for the same people to push an anti-vax and “immigrants cause disease” view, this does make sense. They are both ideological movements built on fear and ignorance seemingly designed to maximize harm.

For those not familiar with blackface, it originated as makeup for portraying caricatures of black people. In the United States, it is generally considered unambiguously racist. While the use of blackface in the arts has largely ceased (though there is still controversy about white actors taking non-white roles) it has persisted in popular culture. It is most likely to be seen at costume parties, such as on Halloween. As might be suspected, the revelation that a public figure appeared in blackface can be a career ender. A few years ago, Mile Ertel resigned as the Secretary of State of my adopted state of Florida when photos of him in blackface surface.  He dressed up as a black Katrina victim two months after the storm and his defenders argued that this past behavior should not have been held against him.  While Ertel is a Republican, blackface is bipartisan.

The release of a photo from his 1984 medical school yearbook (showing one person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan gear) has created a bit of a problem for the former governor of Virgina, the Democrat Ralph Northam. Since the incident occurred in 1984, his defenders argued that he should not suffer the consequences of this past action.

One time-based defense for someone who used blackface is to argue they were not aware of its history and implications and did not have racist intention. People do dress up in non-racist costumes that are odd and problematic that they think are just fine, especially when alcohol is involved.

This defense is not entirely absurd. Everyone has done stupid things from ignorance rather than malice. Also, everyone has done wrong because of lapses in judgment or due influences like alcohol or peer pressure. While it would be a fallacy to argue that something is acceptable because it is commonly done, it is reasonable to argue that judgments of behavior should consider the realities of human behavior: we consistently do dumb things for dumb reasons.

While blackface is racist, if a person used it in sincere ignorance and apologize when informed of the truth, then they should be forgiven. The problem is that the history of blackface is well known in the United States. While a very young child could reasonably claim ignorance, others would be hard-pressed to claim ignorance. They could, however, use the aberration defense: that although they did not act in ignorance, they are not racist.

While it might seem absurd to say that a person could do something racist without being racist, there is an analogy to lying. While a person who lies is a liar when they lie, it would be absurd to label a person who is usually honest a liar because they have lied. Likewise, a person who is generally not racist, but has engaged in some out of character racist behavior, should not be labeled as a racist. Naturally, there would be exceptions. The key question is whether the incident is an aberration or arising from their established character. This is where time becomes a critical factor.

To steal from Aristotle, assessing a person’s actions requires considering whether they are acting from a fixed and permanent disposition. If a person has the vice of racism, they would be consistent in their racism, and it would not be an irregular or aberrant behavior on their part. Someone who is not a racist might have done some racist acts in their past, but if these acts are few and relatively minor, then they should not be considered a racist. To use an analogy, a person who has told a few lies in the past but is generally honest should not be condemned as a liar. The same works for virtues: someone who acted bravely once but is otherwise consistently cowardly would not be a brave person.

As such, while appearing in blackface would be racist, the person should be judged not by a single racist or ignorant action. The person’s reasons for the action must be considered and, importantly, their general character must be assessed. As such, while Ertel and Northam should not have put on blackface, the act itself does not suffice to determine whether they are racists who engaged in habitual racism or non-racists who did something racist. Their complete character and history must be considered.

It could be objected that the principle of judging people based on their character and broad history of behavior rather than on a single incident is unacceptable. In the case of blackface, it could be argued that the offense is so serious that it forever marks a person, rendering them eternally unfit for public office. But the idea of eternal offenses is problematic as it makes redemption impossible.  

There have been a series of violent incidents and acts of vandalism aimed at Tesla facilities, dealerships, vehicles and charging stations. The most likely motivation is anger at Elon Musk. Musk has aligned himself with the far-right and his DOGE has proven both unpopular and harmful. For example, DOGE’s attack on USAID will result in illness and death.  This raises the ethical issue of whether this “war” on Musk is morally justified.

 The obvious moral case against these attacks is that while they are aimed at Musk, they will also hurt other people. While people do buy Tesla vehicles because they agree with Musk, there are many Tesla owners who disagree with him. Anecdotally, most of the Tesla owners I know are wealthy liberals who bought them back when Tesla was presenting itself as a green company. And even if a Tesla owner backs Musk, this would not warrant damaging their vehicle to harm Musk, especially since it will hurt the owner rather than Musk. Going after charging stations will also mainly hurt innocent Tesla owners and attacking dealerships and facilities will harm their owners and the people who are employed there. As these attacks will do considerable collateral damage to innocent people, this sort of war on Musk is morally problematic. An obvious reply to this is to run with the analogy to war.

Even a just war will involve collateral damage to innocents and noncombatants and the same arguments used in favor of just war could be applied to this situation. While it is regrettable that innocent people and people other than Musk and his supporters will be harmed, this is the only viable means to impose consequences on Musk for his actions and the harm he and DOGE have been doing to America and the world. Those who believe in the rule of law will make the obvious and sensible reply that the use of extralegal violence is wrong. Instead, they would argue, legal remedies should be sought to preserve the rule of law and minimize violence and harm to property.

While this reply has merit, it suffers from a serious flaw. Trump has given Musk broad powers and Musk has used this to damage and dismantle the agencies and institutions that would keep him and Musk in check. While lawsuits have been brought against Musk, Trump controls the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court. He can also pardon Musk for any federal offenses. Trump also controls congress, albeit by a thin margin. As such, Musk can operate with impunity and is unlikely to face any meaningful consequences for any illegal acts and harm that he does. While Trump controls much of the state, the parts he does not control are being targeted for destruction. Within the parts that Trump controls, the machinery of the state will serve as Musk’s shield and sword: it will protect him and allow him to harm his foes. While lawyers are heroically bringing lawsuits, Musk’s power is effectively unchecked, and he is likely to have nothing to fear from legal means to oppose him.

As the state is dismantled and gutted, Musk will be able to operate in a lawless zone. In Lockean and Hobbesian terms, he is operating in the state of nature: he can do what he wants and the only means to oppose him is the use of force. People already seem to understand this; they know that Musk will be able to keep inflicting terrible damage and the best that can be done within the system is to bring lawsuits and hope that someday there will be a favorable ruling that Musk will be willing to obey.  Ironically, as Musk dismantles the machinery of the state that protects the rest of us from people like him, he also dismantles his protection. When people realize that they have no legal means to address the harm being done by Musk, some people will turn to violence, just as happened with the execution of the health insurance CEO. This is the state of nature situation in which disputes must, as Hobbes said, be settled with the sword.

It is unlikely that anyone will be able to execute Musk, as he has his own private security force. Some of Musk’s private security were deputized by the US Marshall’s Service and this gives him ownership of his own small police force. He will also be protected by the “normal” police.

There is no independent prison system where Musk could be locked up for his alleged crimes or an independent judiciary that could impose fines on him. As such, the only recourse seems to be inflicting financial harm by targeting Musk’s companies. This does provide Musk with a set of hostages since hurting Musk’s companies also hurts the employees, contractors, stockholders and customers. As such, there is the moral question of whether the harm caused to these people to harm Musk would be morally acceptable. As noted above, this can be taken as falling under the ethics of just war and it can be argued that collateral damage to innocents can be justified as part of a moral conflict against an enemy who cannot be held accountable by other means. Naturally, it could be objected that the conflict with Musk is not just or argued that people must stick with legal remedies even as Musk and Trump gut the system that would allow such remedies.

When politicians shut down the federal government, some federal workers are ordered to work without pay. To illustrate, TSA and Coast Guard personnel are often ordered to keep working even when their pay is frozen. This raises the moral question of whether it is ethical to compel federal workers to work without pay. The ethics of the matter are distinct from the legality of unpaid labor. That is a matter for the courts to sort out based on what they think the laws say.

A sensible starting point is to note that federal workers should expect politicians to shut down the government and freeze their pay. Since the workers accepted the jobs, they seem to have consented to work without pay. This would appear to make it ethical to force them to work without pay. This assumes the workers signed the contracts without being under duress and knowing they would be required to work without pay under certain conditions. If the workers were not properly informed or the contracts were accepted under duress, then they would have no moral obligation to obey such a forced or fraudulent agreement. That said, there is still a concern about what people can ethically agree to.

Philosophers have, of course, considered whether there are limits to what people can agree to. For example, it has been argued that a person cannot freely agree to become a slave. As such, it is worth considering whether a person can agree to do normal paid labor for free because of a government shut down.

One way to approach is to consider that people do agree to work for free. A good example is volunteer work: this unpaid labor is not only acceptable, but often praiseworthy. As such, it would be absurd to claim it is wrong for people to agree to work for free. But what if someone is compelled to work for free? That is, what if they cannot quit and are forced to work for free? This would seem to be something that a person cannot ethically agree to. They are, in effect, agreeing to a form of slavery in which they must work but are not paid and cannot quit. Even if they were paid, it would still be a form of slavery. A key aspect of slavery is not working without compensation, but the lack of freedom. Not being compensated simply makes it worse. As such, federal workers should be free to quit immediately and without any consequences. Otherwise, the state would be claiming a right to enslave citizens, which is morally wicked.

It might be argued that those who entered into long-term agreements with the state, such as a term of service, are obligated to stay in the job and quitting because they are not getting paid would be wrong. While this has some appeal, this would mean accepting that a person can, morally, be locked into working without compensation even when doing so would be harmful. This expects too much of people. Naturally, it could be countered that if they freely entered into a long-term agreement that included the possibility of working without pay, then they are obligated to stick to that agreement—even if they are harmed. After all, a contract is a contract.

While this does seem sensible, it also seems sensible to argue that such agreements should not include the possibility that there will be no pay. That is, it is immoral for this to be included in agreements of this sort, even if people agree to accept the terms. As such, federal workers should always be paid for their work or allowed to terminate their agreements with no harmful consequences being imposed. After all, no one has the right to expect people to labor for free and to demand this would be immoral.