Category: Politics

While strong support for public education has been bipartisan at times, it is now split along ideological grounds Most opposition to vouchers is from the left and they use various standard arguments. First, it is argued that the voucher system is intended to transfer public money to private businesses, thus making it a form of “wealthfare” in which public money benefits the well-off. Second, it is argued that vouchers take money from underfunded public schools that desperately need funding. Florida does very badly in spending per student and is at the bottom of the states for teacher pay. There are many unfilled teaching positions, schools have broken air-conditioning, and teachers routinely buy their own classroom supplies. Third, it is argued that vouchers are often a way to channel public money into religious institutions through their schools and using taxpayer money to fund churches is unconstitutional and wrong. Fourth, it is argued that the voucher system is intended to undermine public education to maintain the existing class structure and undermine democracy. While I agree with these arguments, it is worth considering the claimed merits of vouchers. After all, to simply embrace or shun something solely on ideological grounds would be to reject critical thought. As such, I will consider some of the reasons advanced in favor of voucher programs.

One set of reasons can be grouped under what I will call the “better student argument.” The gist of this argument is that vouchers are good, because they create better students. To be specific, choice advocates point out that private schools have better safety, better academic performance and better graduation rates than public schools. From this, they contend, it follows that vouchers are beneficial.

It certainly makes sense that private schools often have better students than public schools. But this is because they can select their students, and public schools must take everyone. To use an analogy, comparing the two is like comparing intramural teams which must take everyone and varsity teams that have strict tryouts. The varsity teams will almost always be better teams. But it is not being varsity that makes the varsity team better, it is the selection process. The fast runner is not fast because she is on the varsity team, she is on the varsity team because she is fast.  The same holds for the private schools; they get better students because they are free to reject the ones they do not want.

One could also use an analogy to public health: the private schools are like hospitals that can select their patients and exclude those they do not want. Public schools are like hospitals that must take everyone. Such exclusionary hospitals would have better outcomes than the public hospitals as they would select the better patients and would be getting more money. However, this would hardly be a good solution to public health problems. 

On the one hand, if your child is a good student and can get accepted by a private school, then the voucher program is appealing. You can get your child into a school with better students. On the other hand, if your child is the problem child or bad student that other children are trying to escape, then the voucher program will not help you. Your child will be stuck in an ever-declining public-school system. While this might be just a problem for the children who cannot escape and their parents, these children are part of society and are thus everyone’s concern even if the concerns are purely pragmatic about crime and employability. Using a public health analogy, abandoning people into a declining public health care system puts everyone at greater risk.

If it is replied that the problem students will also get vouchers, then the obvious problem is that private schools will no longer be better or safer. Going back to the sports analogy, this would be like varsity teams trying to still claim to be better while responding to criticism about leaving people out by opening the teams to everyone. They would soon cease to be better. Likewise for the voucher program: if it is open to all children, then the public schools would be replicated in private form. If the schools are exclusionary, then people will be left behind in what are claimed to be more dangerous and inferior schools. As such, the better student argument is problematic. Excluding the “problem” students so that the private schools are better means abandoning these citizens to declining public education, which will hurt everyone. Opening the schools up to everyone would mean they would be the same as public schools, so they would not be better. The discussion continues in the next essay.

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The foundation of legitimate political authority has been explored by political philosophers like Hobbes and Locke. When the thirteen American colonies revolted, they sought a foundation for political authority. While there are many views, the founders of the United States adopted a philosophy shaped by John Locke: legitimate political authority requires the consent of the governed and the majority should rule. Being aware of what Mill later called the tyranny of the majority, the founders put in place constitutional protections against oppressive incursions by the majority (and the state).

While these ideas appeal to me psychologically because of my upbringing, they also stand up well to philosophical scrutiny. As such, I accept that political legitimacy stems from the consent of the governed and that majority rule with proper protection against the tyranny of the majority is a good idea. For the sake of this essay, I will assume that these two basic principles are correct while acknowledging that they could be refuted.

Since the legitimacy of the government depends on the consent of the governed, it is essential that the governed can provide or withhold consent. As a practical matter, voting is fundamental to this consent. A citizen can also provide consent by not voting, if they are free to vote and decide against doing so. If a citizen is unjustly denied their right to vote, then their consent is not obtained. This weakens a government’s legitimacy  since the it would be extending its authority beyond the provided consent. To avoid a charge of absurdity, I must make it clear that I am not claiming that disenfranchising a single citizen destroys the legitimacy of the state. Rather, each unjustly disenfranchised citizen reduces the legitimacy of the state to that degree. I cannot specify the specific number of disenfranchised voters that would destroy the legitimacy of a state, but to require this would be to fall victim to the line drawing fallacy. But if most citizens were unjustly disenfranchised, that would be an indisputable case in which the state lost legitimacy. At levels less than this, the legitimacy of the state would be reduced proportionally to the degree of unjust disenfranchisement. Simply put, the more unjustly disenfranchised citizens, the less legitimate the state. Individual citizens who are unjustly disenfranchised can make a reasonable case that they owe little or no obedience to the state that has disenfranchised them. One can appeal to the principle of no taxation without representation.

While we praise the right to vote, the United States has a long and persistent history of unjust disenfranchisement. While the past is of interest, what is of practical concern is the present unjust disenfranchisement of citizens.

One means of unjust disenfranchisement it to use the specter of voter fraud to “justify” measures denying citizens their right to vote. While voter fraud does exist, all the evidence shows that it is incredibly rare.  To use an analogy, the obsession with voter fraud seems like a confused person who thinks Americans face a dangerous epidemic of excessive exercise and that a lack of health insurance is not a serious problem. This confused person would work hard to impose restrictions and limits on exercise while expressing no concern about insurance.  While athletic overtraining does occur, it is not a general problem and the focus should be on the lack of health insurance. Likewise for voter fraud and voter suppression: voter fraud does occur, but the real problem is voter suppression.

There is also the fact that the methods used are often ineffective against the sort of fraud that does occur. These methods are more effective at disenfranchising voters, especially narrowly targeted voters. One example is the Republican’s voter ID law in North Dakota that requires voters to have an ID that shows a street address. Many native American voters live in rural areas and have PO boxes rather than street addresses and they are now trying to get new IDs that meet the requirement of the law. In terms of why the law exists, it is not because there was an epidemic of fraudulent voting by people using government IDs that lack street addresses. Rather, it is because Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp won her election by less than 3,000 votes in 2012. 80% of majority-Native counties voted for her, so suppressing their votes could have resulted in a Republican victory. This law will also impact other citizens.

Another example of voter suppression is disenfranchising felons. While felon disenfranchisement impacts Republican and Democratic voters (Trump is a convicted felon), it is seen as impacting Democrats more, which explains why Republicans tend to favor it.

There are other ways in which citizens are unjustly disenfranchised, most of which are the result of strategies of the Republican party. It might be countered that I and the Democrats are only concerned about voter suppression because the voters being targeted are more likely to vote for Democrats. One might go beyond this and claim that I and the Democrats would be fine with the suppression of Republican voters. One might point to how Democrats engage in gerrymandering and other political trickery, perhaps even their own version of voter suppression.

My reply is that I cannot speak for other Democrats; but I can speak for myself. My view is that voter suppression is wrong regardless of who is being unjustly suppressed. As such, if the Democrats engage in voter suppression, I condemn that as strongly as I condemn voter suppression by Republicans. Or anyone, for that matter. While I would generally prefer that a Democrat win (if only from the pure self-interested fact that Democrats tend to be much friendlier to education and more pro-environment than Republicans), I would rather lose an election fairly than win through voter suppression. This is because, as noted above, voter suppression reduces the legitimacy of the state by robbing citizens unjustly of their opportunity to consent. In a nation that professes to be a democracy (yes, I know that it has a republican system at most levels) to rob citizens unjustly of their right to vote is a crime of the highest order. This is because it denies the foundational right of the citizens of a democracy and damages democracy itself. As such, voter suppression is treason, plain and simple.

As noted in previous essays, competition over opportunities is usually unavoidable and can be desirable. However, this competition can do more harm than good. One example of this is opportunity hoarding.  Opportunity hoarding occurs when parents try to seek advantages for their children in ways that are harmful to others. As would be suspected, opportunity hoarding typically occurs when parents use morally questionable methods to secure advantages for their children at the expense of other children. An excellent example of this is the 2019 college admissions scandal and I will use this to set the stage for the discussion.

As many writing about the scandal pointed out, the rich have many legal means of tipping the admission scales in favor of their children. These include methods that have nothing to do with the merit of the applicant, such as the use of legacy admissions and making financial contributions to the institutions. Other methods aim at improving the quality of the applicant (or at least the application). These methods include paid test preparation courses, paid counselors, paid tutors, and paid essay coaches. Because the rich have so many advantages already, the admission scandal seemed especially egregious and even perplexing. After all, given the vast advantages the wealthy already enjoy, why would they risk any consequences by using illegal or socially unacceptable methods?   From a philosophical perspective, the scandal raises an interesting general moral question about what methods are acceptable in the competition for opportunities.

Some might consider a Hobbesian state of nature approach to this competition, a war of all against all with no limits, as a good idea. But this would violate the moral intuitions of most people. After all, while we might disagree on specific limits, we almost certainly agree that there are limits. To illustrate, murdering, blinding or maiming children is obviously unacceptable even to give one’s own children an advantage. But once the blatantly horrific is out of the way, there remains a large area of dispute.

One approach is to use the law to define limits. On this view, parents may use any legal means to restrict opportunities in favor of their children. While this might have some appeal, it suffers from an obvious defect: the law is whatever those in power make it, so the evil and unfair are often legal. The usual extreme, but legitimate, example is the legality of slavery. As such, while it is often right to obey the law, it does not follow that what is legal is ethical.  So, if a parent justifies their actions by pointing to their legality, they merely prove they acted legally and have not shown they have acted rightly. So, something is needed beyond legality to determine what the limits of the competition should be.

Since this is a question of ethics on a national scale, an appeal to utilitarianism seems sensible: the limits should be set in terms of what will be most likely to create the greatest benefit and least harm. This leads to the usual problem of sorting out what it means to create the greatest positive value and least negative value. It also requires sorting out the measure of worth.  For example, certain limits on competition might make the children of the wealthy even wealthier while the less wealthy become worse off. But this could create more total wealth than a more equitable system in which even the poor were well off. If what matters, as it does to some, is the overall wealth then these would be the right limits. However, if maximizing value is more about the impact on each person, then the more equitable division would be the moral choice.  It would create more positive value for more people but would fail to create the most total positive value.

Since a utilitarian approach recognizes only the utilitarian calculation of value, some might find this approach problematic. Instead, they might favor a rights-based approach, or one based on a principle of fair competition. To illustrate, Americans profess to value competition, merit and fairness: the best competitors are supposed to win in a fair competition. This, obviously enough, just returns to the problem of fairness: what means are fair to use in the competition for opportunity?

One possible approach is to use a principle of relevance: a fair competition is one in which victory depends on the skills and abilities that are relevant to the nature of the competition. For example, if the competition is based on academic ability, then that should be the deciding factor and donating money should not influence the outcome. This will, of course, lead to a debate about what should be considered relevant. For example, if it is argued that donating money is not relevant to determining college admissions because it is not relevant to academic ability, one might then argue that race or sex are also not relevant and should not be used. So, if relevance is used, it must be properly and consistently defined and applied.

While relevance, in general, is a reasonable consideration, there are also concerns about the preparation for the competitions. To illustrate, the children of the wealthy get a competitive edge in college admissions because their parents can get them into good K-12 schools, pay for tutoring, pay for test preparation, pay for counseling, pay for help on essays and so on. That is, they can buy many advantages that are relevant to the competition for college admissions and careers. On the one hand, these seem to be unfair advantages because they are not available to the children of the poor simply because they are poor. On the other hand, they are relevant to the competition because they do improve the skills and abilities of the children. One possible solution, for those who value fair competition, would be balancing things out by providing the same support to all children, thus making the competition fair. But those who push for “merit” based competition usually want to ensure that the competition is as unfair as possible in their favor. This leads into the question of how far the quest for fairness should go.

At this point, some might be wondering if I will advocate forcing parents to be no better at preparing their children than the worst parents, to even things out. After all, a parent who can spend time engaging in activities with their kids, such as reading to them and helping with homework, confers an advantage to their children. Since making parents do a worse job would make things worse, this would be wrong to do. As such, I obviously support parents being good parents. I only bring this up, because of the usual straw man attacks against advocating for fairness. However, many parents face the challenges of lacking time, resources and education to be better parents and these should be addressed. As such, I would advocate lifting parents up and reject any notion to bring them down.

The above is only a sketch and much more needs to be said about what the rules of competition for opportunity should be in our society. This is, obviously enough, a matter of values: are we just making empty noises when we speak of “fairness”, “opportunity for all” and “merit-based competition” while embracing the practice of unfairly buying success? Or do we really believe these things? The Trump administration and its ideological allies seem intent on ensuring that “merit” based competition is built on an unfair foundation. That is, the “merit” is based on the  advantages conferred by one’s economic class.

Competition, by its very nature, yields winners and losers and the outcome can be positive, neutral or negative. For example, a parent who leaks information about rival children to college admissions officers might get a positive outcome (her child is admitted) and the other children might get a negative outcome (they are not admitted). While assessing from the perspective of an individual or group is a way to approach assessing the consequences of competition, it is also worth assessing competitions in terms of their consequences for everyone. This is important when competition is within a society. The competition for educational opportunities in the United States is an excellent example of this.

A positive competition yields positive value for all involved. In an ideal positive competition, everyone in the competition is better off than they would be without the competition. This would include being better off than if the distribution of benefits was done equally without competition.

Friendly sports and games provide a paradigm example of positive competition. For example, while only one person wins a game of Risk, all the players can have fun and gain from the competition. As another example, a 5K race will have winners and non-winners, but everyone can have an enjoyable run. As a final example, some claim that an Adam Smith style economy can be a positive competition: while some businesses will succeed and others fail, we will all be winners because of better goods and services at lower costs.

A neutral competition has winners who gain from the competition and non-winners who gain nothing but suffer no harm from losing. While not everyone is better off from the competition, no one is worse off for competing. One example would be a random drawing for prizes. While some will win and others will not, not winning just means not getting a prize. It does not result in harm.

A negative competition has winners who gain from the competition and losers who suffer harm from their loss. In extreme cases, there might only be degrees of harm and winning only means suffering less harm. For example, a liability lawsuit can be a negative competition in which the winner gains and the loser suffers a detrimental effect, such as being forced to pay a settlement.

In many cases a society can control whether competition will be positive, neutral or negative. It should never be forgotten that the nature of such competitions is a matter of choice based on values For example, a society can decide to make competition for educational resources a positive competition: everyone gains, some are better off, but no one is harmed. A society could also make it a negative competition: the winners do very well while the losers end up at a great disadvantage and suffer harm. This segues into opportunity hoarding.

While a society will always have a finite number of opportunities for children and there will be competition for them, the nature of these competitions can be shaped by the collective choices of that society. This includes deciding whether each competition will be positive, neutral or negative. In general, making competitions positive will cost more resources, while neutral and negative competitions will cost less. To illustrate, making the competition for educational opportunities positive would cost more resources than leaving it negative, since the “losers” would still get the resources needed for a good education. As a specific example, the current model for K-12 public education is a negative competition: parents who can afford to live in wealthy neighborhoods give their children the advantage of better schools, while the children of the less wealthy often end up in poorly funded schools that hurt their opportunities. The poor are usually trapped in poverty and suffer the harm that entails. Shifting this to a positive competition in which every child gets at least an adequate education would require expending more resources on the poorer schools, thus incurring greater cost. This would also mean that the better off would have less advantage over the poor in terms of education. The upper classes would still retain the advantage of better schools, but the gap would be smaller and thus the competition they face later life could increase as they will be up against better educated poor people. This is one obvious reason for opportunity hoarding: the less able the competition, the easier victory is. The current education is designed in this manner, to provide the upper classes with an advantage and to burden the lower classes with disadvantages. This all but guarantees that the upper classes will win in a competitive “merit” based system

This example could, of course, be challenged. One could argue that the education system in the United States is already a positive competition: even the poorest Americans are supposed to get free K-12 education and even the worst public education is better than nothing. While this does have some appeal, the same sort of reasoning would seem to lead to obviously absurd consequences. For example, imagine the “competition” between a person intent on committing date rape and their intended victim. It could be argued that the competition is positive: the victim could get a free dinner and drinks, although they are raped. While they did get some “benefit”, the harm is greater, and they would have been better off without that “competition.” I do not deny there can be grounds for dispute over whether to cast a competition as positive or negative, such debates are likely.

As such, if someone wants to characterize the current education system as a positive competition, they can try to make that case. As noted above, the students in the worst school in America do get more than nothing. In this case, one would need to recast the discussion in terms of degrees of positiveness in the competition, how the winners and losers fare relative to each other.

While each competition for opportunity would need to be assessed morally, I would suggest a general guiding principle. When our society is shaping the competition between our children for opportunities, the morally right thing to do is to make them at least neutral and there should be every reasonable effort to make them positive. After all, members of a society should strive to avoid harming each other and this is especially true when it comes to the children. We are, one would hope, friends and not enemies. But many politicians seem intent on ensuring that we see each other as enemies and our real enemies as our friends.

Opportunity hoarding, a concept developed by Richard Reeves,  occurs when parents give their children advantages in ways harmful to other children. In the previous essay I examined income mobility in the context of opportunity hoarding and I now turn to the ethics of competition.

Before getting into this, I will try to pre-empt likely strawman attacks. I will not argue that parents should be forbidden from doing the best they can for their children. As a specific example, I will not be arguing for things like a ban on parents helping their children with homework. I will also not argue that the state should use its compulsive power to force, Harrison Bergeron style,  the equality of children. Nor will I argue for the elimination of competition. Now, on to the discussion, one that will afford plenty of opportunity for criticism.

Opportunity hoarding raises two important moral concerns. The first is the moral issue of what opportunities should be competitive. The second is the issue of what means are morally acceptable in competitions. This essay focuses on the first issue.

While some might argue there should be no competition for opportunities, this position suffers from two obvious defects. The first, and most obvious, is that opportunity is always limited. As such, if there are more people than opportunities, there must be competition of some kind. These limits need not arise from any evil intent. For example, many runners will want to be trained by a legendary running coach, but she cannot coach everyone. As another example, many people might wish to take a writing class with a legendary professor, but they can only grade so many papers. While there obviously are other coaches and other professors, there will always be those who prefer one over the others—even if they are equally good. There is, of course, the legitimate moral concern that opportunities are limited for unethical reasons. I am not suggesting that all limits on opportunity are warranted just because there will always be some unavoidable limits. To illustrate, it is morally fine for a coach to limit the number of people she coaches because she can only do a good job with a limited number of athletes. It would not be morally fine for a coach to refuse runners because they were, for example, Christian or Moslem.

The second defect is that competition for limited opportunities is morally right. The easy and obvious argument is that if opportunities are limited (and the limit is ethical), then they should be distributed on a competitive basis. As is often argued, opportunity should be earned. The obvious analogy is to sports: the awards in a 5K should be earned by those who run the fastest. To hand out the awards randomly or based on some standard other than performance would be unfair and wrong.

Even if the notion of competition for opportunity is accepted, there arises the moral and practical problem of deciding how the competition will be resolved. In some cases, this will be obvious. For example, it makes sense that the best athletes be the ones who are on an Olympics team. In other cases, deciding who wins is more complicated, such as determining who should be admitted to a university. As would be expected, volumes can be written about the ethics of resolving competitions.

While there is debate about resolving competitions ethically, there is the question of what opportunities should be competitive. While there are always finite opportunities, there is also always a finite number of people seeking opportunities. In many cases we can decide how many people can have these opportunities by deciding how we allocate resources. For example, Americans could decide that we want all our public schools to be well-funded so all children can attend a good school. This would not eliminate competition for schools. Even if all schools were well funded and supported, there would still be better schools. But people would not need to compete to buy houses in wealthy neighborhoods to get their children into good schools, they could live anywhere and still get into a good school. This would come at a cost as the well-off parents would need to contribute to the general education of children rather than just supporting only their children’s schools. But if we value equality of opportunity for all children, then this would be a price worth paying.

This essay cannot, obviously, provide details about each opportunity. A reasonable starting point for broad moral choices is, of course, the utilitarian approach: looking at the cost and benefits for all, what would generate the most good and the least evil? This series continues in the next essay.

Way back during the college admissions scandal of 2019 the media briefly focused on how the wealthy can secure admission to the best schools. The discussion included talking about opportunity hoarding, a concept developed by Richard Reeves in his Dream Hoarders. Opportunity hoarding occurs when parents seek advantages for their children in ways harmful to others. One example is parents disparaging the children of other people who are competing with their own for school admission. The practice of opportunity hoarding raises moral issues I will address in a short series of essays. I will begin by discussing economic mobility.

Americans want to believe in economic mobility, that by hard work, people will be better off than their parents. While people just talk about economic mobility, it is important to distinguish between two types: relative mobility and absolute mobility. In both, mobility is moving up or down relative to one’s parents. Relative mobility is measured by comparing the economic ranking of current adults relative to their parents’ ranking. This can be illustrated by an analogy to racing 5Ks. When comparing two 5Ks, your relative performance is a measure of your place in the second race relative to how you placed in the first race. If you placed better in the second race than in the first one, then your relative performance was upward. If you placed worse, then your relative performance would be downward. In this analogy, the race is a generation: the first race would correspond to the economic ranking of the parents and the second would be analogous to the current adult’s ranking.

Absolute mobility is a measure of whether the current adults have a higher adjusted (for inflation, etc.) income at the same age as their parents. Going back to the running analogy, your absolute performance would be a measure of whether you were faster in the second race relative to the first race. As before, the first race is analogous to the parents’ income and the second is analogous to the current adults’ income. While both measure improvement (or decline) there are important differences.

A critical difference is that relative mobility is a zero-sum game: if someone moves up, someone else must move down. To illustrate, the top 1% can only be 1% of the population. If Sally moves into the 1%, then she pushes someone else down. The analogy to the race illustrates this as well: if you move into first place, then you push someone else into second place. In contrast, absolute mobility need not be zero-sum: you having more income does not entail that other people get less. Going back to the running analogy, if you get faster between races, it does not make anyone else slower, and everyone could get faster. Because of this, a country could have little or no relative mobility, but great absolute mobility.  Using the running analogy, the same people could place in the top 10 in race after race while everyone is also getting faster. Because of this, distinguishing between the two types of mobility is critical, especially when it comes to opportunity hoarding.

If relative mobility is low, then children usually stay in the same economic class as their parents. For example, if Sally is born to parents in the top 20%, then she will probably stay there. If relatively mobility is high, then people are likely to move up (or down) relative to their parents. While it is tempting to think that low relative mobility would always be bad, this is where absolute mobility is important. If relative mobility is low but absolute mobility is high and widely distributed, then most people will be better off than their parents, though they will still be in the same relative place. Going back to the running analogy, everybody is running faster, but people keep getting the same places in the races. One could imagine a desirable society that has very low relative mobility but exceptional absolute mobility. Imagine, if you will, a nation in which Bartholomew Billionaire’s family has always been in the top 1% and owns dozens of houses, several yachts, three private jets and 100 luxury cars. Living in the same country is Paula Poor whose family has always been in the lowest 1% of income earners. But her family now owns a modest house, her children are attending state college, and she and her husband can easily afford health insurance, good food and the occasional vacation.

 This seems to be better than a society with high relative mobility but poor absolute mobility. People readily moving up (and down) from generation to generation might seem good, but if income does not improve (or worsens) from generation to generation, then moving around more freely would be worse than being “stuck” in a good situation. Going back to the running analogy, this would be like races in which people did not get better (or got worse), but different people made it into the top 10 each race.

A society in which both types of mobility are low would be bad: those stuck in the lower income classes would not move up relatively or absolutely. While those in the upper classes would be secure, their lot would also not improve much relative to their parents. This would be a rather stagnant society. But what about real countries, such as the United States?

Currently, the United States has low relative mobility: contrary to American mythology, people usually  stay within the class they were born into. Absolute mobility used to be good, but income has stagnated and now the United States has lower absolute mobility. As such, many Americans are worse off than their parents and are also stuck in their economic class. In this situation, we are experiencing downward mobility.

Those in the upper classes (the top 20%) are aware of what downward mobility entails and they try to prevent this by giving their children advantages over other children. While doing the best one can for their children is usually the right thing to do, it can become morally problematic when this harms the opportunities of others, perhaps by locking them out of moving upward. Richard Reeves and Kimberly Howard have discussed the phenomena of the glass floor—a metaphor for the various factors that keep the children of the well off from sinking into the lower classes. This floor is a ceiling for others. Even if there is no malicious intent, to the degree that it keeps the children of the upper classes from descending it also keeps the children of the lower classes from ascending. This is for the obvious reason that relative mobility, like the places in a race, is zero-sum. My victory is your loss, and your victory is my loss. But it should not be simply assumed that this is immoral, hence the need for additional essays on this subject.

Most Americans see overt racism as offensive and as are as likely to swallow it as they are to eat a shit cookie. But like parasites the alt right aims to reproduce by infecting healthy hosts. One way it does this is by tricking the unwary into consuming their infected shit. So how is this done?

The alt right uses many effective strategies, but my focus here is on what I am calling “chocolate chipping” because I am going to use the shit cookie analogy. Let us begin with the anatomy of the shit cookie.

The alt right relies on lies (the shit) and morally awful ideas (the infection) to reproduce. Since normal people will not eat a shit cookie, the alt right needs to find a way to get them to eat shit and eventually get infected. One way they do this is by the rhetorical strategy of chocolate chipping.

Most people like chocolate chips and it is easy to get them to eat chocolate chip cookies. So, continuing the analogy, if the alt right can convince normal people that their cookie is a chocolate chip cookie, they can often get people to eat it. But if they hand them a shit cookie right away, they will taste the shit and spit it out. So, they need to get a normal person accustomed to the taste of shit. So, the tactic is to gradually blend a little more shit into the chocolate chips and serve up chocolate chip cookies.

For example, if an alt right tried to win over a normal person by immediately saying “the inferior races are swarming across our border to rape away the purity of the white race”, then few would eat that shit cookie. But if the shit is blended into the chocolate in the form of a claim about migrants coming here to commit crimes, steal jobs, and take away housing, then normal people are more likely to bite that cookie and get used to a little bit of shit. Some people will taste even a small amount of shit and spit out the cookie. Others will not notice it or even think that the chocolate chip has some extra zest. Some of them will start baking their own shit cookies and serve them to others, perhaps unaware that the secret ingredient is shit. These chocolate chip and shit cookies provide cover for the alt right: they can claim that they are just giving away cookies and not distributing shit. Those that eat them can become the most ardent public defenders of shit cookies, insisting the chips are all chocolate and no shit.

The alt right then offers cookies that have ever increasing amounts of shit, leading those who find they like the taste of shit to chips that are almost all shit. Once the former normal person is willing to eat shit cookies, then the alt right can start really infecting them with the ideology of the alt right. This infection consumes the person’s moral decency, replacing it with racism. The person can then become a true baker of shit cookies, thus propagating the alt right. So, do not eat the shit cookies.

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.

The question “why lie if the truth would suffice” can be interpreted in at least three ways. One is as an inquiry about the motivation and asks for an explanation. A second is as an inquiry about weighing the advantages and disadvantages of lying. The third way is as a rhetorical question that states, under the guise of inquiry, that one should not lie if the truth would suffice.

Since a general discussion of this question would be rather abstract, I will focus on a specific example and use it as the basis for the discussion. Readers should, of course, construct their own examples using their favorite lie from those they disagree with. I will use Trump’s response to the Democrats’ Green New Deal as my example. While this is something of a flashback to his first term, Trump recently signed an executive order targeting the old Green New Deal.

In 2019 the Democrats proposed a Green New Deal aimed at addressing climate change and economic issues. As with any proposal, rational criticisms can be raised against it. In his first term, Trump claimed the Democrats intend “to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military – even if no other country would do the same.”  While there are some Democrats who would do these things, the Democratic Party favors none of that. Looked at rationally, it seems to make no sense to lie about the Green New Deal. If it is bad enough to reject on its own defects, lies would not be needed. If one must lie to attack it, this suggests a lack of arguments against it. To use an analogy, if a prosecutor lies to convict a person, this suggests they have no case—otherwise they would rely on evidence. So, why would Trump lie if the truth would suffice to show the Green New Deal is a terrible plan?

The question of why Trump (or anyone else) lies when the truth would suffice is a matter for psychology, not philosophy. So, I will leave that question to others. This leaves me with the question about the advantages and disadvantages of lying along with the rhetorical question.

The lie about the Green New Deal is a good example of hyperbole and a straw man. Trump himself claims to use the tactic of “truthful hyperbole”. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device in which one makes use of extravagant overstatement, such as claiming that the Democrats plan to eliminate cows. The reason hyperbole is not just called lying is because it is a specific type of untruth and must have a foundation in truth. Hyperbole involves inflating or exaggerating something true rather than a complete fiction. The Green New Deal is aimed at making America carbon neutral and this would impact cars, cows, planes, oil, gas and the military. The extravagant exaggeration is that the proposal would eliminate all of them permanently. This would be as if someone proposed cutting back on dessert at family dinners and they were accused of wanting to eliminate meals permanently. Since hyperbole is rhetoric without logic, it has no logical force and does not prove (or disprove) anything. But it can have considerable psychological force in influencing people to believe a claim.

Hyperbole is often used in conjunction with the Straw Man fallacy. This fallacy is committed when a person’s actual position is ignored and a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position is criticized in its place. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:

 

Premise 1: Person A has position X.

Premise 2: Person B presents position Y (a distorted version of X).

Premise 3: Person B attacks position Y.

Conclusion: Therefore, X is false or bad.

 

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position is not a criticism of the actual position. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

Like hyperbole, the Straw Man fallacy is not based on a simple lie: it involves an exaggeration or distortion of something true. In the case of Trump and the Green New Deal, his “reasoning” is that the Green New Deal should be rejected because his hyperbolic straw man version of it is terrible. Since this is a fallacy, his “reasons” do not support his claim. It is, as always, important to note that Trump could be right about the Green New Deal being a bad idea, but not for the “reasons” he gives. To infer that a fallacy must have a false conclusion is itself a fallacy (the fallacy fallacy).

While hyperbole has no logical force and a straw man is a fallacy, there are advantages to using them. One advantage is that they are much easier than coming up with good reasons. Criticizing the Green New Deal for what it is requires knowing what it is and considering possible defects which take time and effort. Tweeting out a straw man takes seconds.

The second advantage is that hyperbole and straw men often work, often much better than the truth. In the case of complex matters, people rarely do their homework and do not know that a straw man is a straw man. I have interacted with people who honestly think Democrats plan to eliminate planes and cars. Since this is a bad idea, they reject it, not realizing that is not the Green New Deal. An obvious defense against hyperbole and straw man is to know the truth. While this can take time and effort, someone who has the time to post on Facebook or Twitter, has the time to do basic fact checking. If not, their ignorance should command them to remain silent, though they have the right to express their unsupported views.

As far as working better than the truth, hyperbole or straw man appeals to the target’s fears, anger or hope. They are thus motivated to believe in ways that truth cannot match. People generally find rational argumentation dull and unmoving, especially about complicated issues.  If Trump honestly presented real problems with the Green New Deal, complete with supporting data and graphs, he would bore most and lose his audience. By using a straw man, he better achieves his goal. This does allow for a pragmatic argument for lying because the truth will not suffice.

If telling the truth would not suffice to convince people, then there is the pragmatic argument that if lying would do the job, then it should be used. For example, if going into an honest assessment of the  Green New Deal would bore people and lying would get the job done, then Trump should lie if he wants to achieve his goal. This does, however, raise  moral concerns.

If the reason the truth would not suffice is because it does not logically support the claim, then it would be immoral to lie. To use a non-political example, if you would not invest in my new fake company iScam if you knew it was a scam, getting you to invest in it by lying would be wrong. So, if the New Green Deal would not be refuted by the truth, Trump’s lies about it would be immoral.

But, what about cases in which the truth would logically support a claim, but the truth would not persuade people to accept that claim? Going back to the Green New Deal example, suppose it is terrible but explaining its defects would bore people and they would remain unpersuaded. But a straw man version of the Green New Deal would persuade many people to reject this hypothetically terrible plan? From a utilitarian standpoint, the lie could be morally justified; if the good of lying outweighed the harm, then it would be the right thing to do. To use an analogy, suppose you were trying to convince a friend to not start a dangerous diet. You have scientific data and good arguments, but you know your friend is bored by data and is largely immune to logic. So, telling them the truth would mean that they would go on the diet and harm themself. But, if you exaggerate the harm dramatically, your friend will abandon the diet. In such a case, the straw man argument would seem to be morally justified as you are using it to protect your friend.

While this might seem to justify the general use of hyperbole and the straw man, it only justifies their use when the truth does suffice logically but does not suffice in terms of persuasive power. That is, the fallacy is only justified as a persuasive device when there are non-fallacious arguments that would properly establish the same conclusion.