Category: Politics

People try to make sense of events by weaving narratives matching their world views. One awful example of this is when people claim school shootings are false flag attacks. In this context, a false flag attack is when the attack is claimed to have been conducted by a mysterious force (like the deep state) to advance some political goal (such as taking away guns). In some cases, the false flag is alleged to be entirely false: there was no attack. In other cases, it is claimed there was a real attack, but attackers were acting at the behest (wittingly or not) of this mysterious force.

From a philosophical perspective, these alleged false flags present an epistemic problem: how does one know an attack is a false flag? As would be suspected, those advancing false flag narratives are often short on evidence. While a complete investigation would require considering each case, David Hume offers a useful guiding principle. When writing about miracles, Hume contends that the certainty one places on the truth of any matter of fact should be proportional to the strength of the evidence. I will apply this principle to the falsest of false flags first, the fictional attack.

Some conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones and James Tracy, infamously claimed that no one was killed at Sandy Hook.  Despite the repeated debunking of this claim, conspiracy theorists usually double down in the face of efforts to disprove their claims. That said, it is worth considering the false flag claim in the light of Hume’s principle as well as using the standard inference to the best explanation.

Faking a school shooting would involve many people. The fake parents, fake students, fake police, fake teachers, and others would need to be in on the conspiracy and would need to maintain the façade in the face of years of investigation. School records, police records and such would also need to be faked. There would need to be fake funerals with fake bodies. And so on for a conspiracy that would involve hundreds of people. Given what we know about the ability of people to keep secrets, it is wildly implausible that such a conspiracy could occur and occur repeatedly, as the false flag conspiracy theorists allege.

While it could be countered that the secret force behind the conspiracy has the power and funding to engage in such massive fakery and maintain the fiction for years, this simply creates another problem: if this secret force is so powerful, so capable and so disciplined, then it should be able to easily achieve its political goals. If the conspiracy theory about school shootings being faked to justify banning guns were true, then guns should have already be banned. The theory, in a way, disproves itself.

That is the trouble with proposing such a force. It would have no need to remain a dark conspiracy when it could simply impose its will. The best explanation is that the shootings are not complete fiction. This, however, does leave open the possibility of a false flag that is not a complete fabrication.

Other school shooting conspiracy theorists advance the idea that some or all school shootings are real shootings, but the shooter is acting at the behest of the secret force that makes such things happen. In this case, only the shooter needs to be involved in the conspiracy—either willingly or by being manipulated. There is also the option that the real shooter is an agent of the secret force and then a patsy is put in their place, perhaps as a corpse.

Those arranging the attacks are supposed to be acting as architects of fear who hope to scare the public into backing attempts to destroy the Second Amendment and take away guns. On these theories, the conspirators might be liberals who hate guns so much that they are willing to murder children. Or they might be someone else. The theories vary.

As before, the way to assess this claim is to consider the evidence. An obvious problem is that conspiracy theorists will claim that evidence against their view is the work of Them and they will cherry pick their evidence to confirm their theory. But a more objective assessment indicates the conspiracy theory is less plausible than the alternative. After all, the conspiracy theory requires a secret force that can operate in an amazingly effective manner yet is somehow unable to achieve its alleged ends. It is both extremely capable and extremely ineffective, which is an odd combination. If this secret force is alleged to have control of the state, then it should be able to achieve its goals. If it is not in control of the state, then there is the obvious question of why the state remains ignorant of its operations or ignores them. Once again, the best explanation is that the alleged false flag operations are simply what they appear to be; awful murders.

 

While public employees are usually not required to join unions, they are often required to help cover the cost of collective bargaining. While the legal issue will be settled by money and judges, there is the moral issue of whether public employees should be compelled to pay these fees. As a disclosure, I belong to a teachers’ union and this should be considered a potentially biasing factor.

One argument against such compulsion can be built on an appeal to the right of free speech. As has also been argued in the courts, money is speech and a moral case can be made that forcing employees to pay union fees is compelled speech. This is because unions, like corporations, use their financial resources to influence politicians and voters. A person who does not agree with the views expressed by the union is thus forced to “speak” on behalf of these views by paying fees. Being an advocate of free speech and opposed to compelled speech, I do find this argument appealing. However, it has some flaws.

One concern is whether money is speech. While the courts have, so far, drawn a line at outright and explicit bribery, the logical conclusion of this notion is that if money is speech, then giving a politician money is the same as trying to persuade them via other means. While it would be a slippery slope fallacy to insist this view must lead inevitably to the legalization of bribery, proponents of the view have pushed through other barriers and the sea of money is eroding this last wall. It is reasonable to worry that what is now seen as bribery will become legitimate persuasion. It can be argued that the bribery line can be drawn and held by claiming crossing it would be harmful. But as many lines have already been crossed it is reasonable to worry that this barrier will fall as easily as the others. So, I disagree with the idea that money is speech and that spenders should enjoy so much freedom to use their money to influence politicians.

A second concern is this logic should apply to corporations. If it is morally wrong for employees to be forced to support a union whose views and activities they disagree with, then it is morally wrong for an employer to force employees to support an employer whose views and activities they disagree with. For example, an employee at Hobby Lobby might not embrace the religious views and political activities of that company. While employees are not (yet) required to directly pay for their company’s lobbying efforts, the money generated by their labor obviously goes to these activities. Just as an employee would make less income by being forced to pay fees to a union, an employee makes less income by being forced to receive less pay so that the employer can pay for their lobbying and political activity. Naturally, this would only apply to employers that used business funds to engage in such activities. If employees are engaging in compelled speech by being forced to pay fees to unions, then employees are also engaged in compelled speech by having the money they generate being used to fund lobbying and political activities rather than getting that money in their paychecks. As such, if employees cannot be compelled to pay union dues on free speech grounds, then employees have the same right to demand that their money not be spent by their employer on activities they disagree with. That money should be in their paycheck. Unfortunately, logic has no power in the law and employers would never permit the politicians they bought (with workers’ money) to implement this.

The way to respond to this argument is to argue there is a relevant difference between employers and unions. For example, it could be argued that people chose to work for companies and thus express a tacit agreement with their activities since they can get another job elsewhere. The easy and obvious reply is that the same applies to people seeking employment where they must contribute fees to unions. If they do not agree, they can get a job elsewhere.

It could also be argued that employers have special rights to compel speech that unions lack; the challenge would be to make such a case in a principled way. Merely liking employers and loathing unions would not be a principled justification.

Considering the above discussion, if employees have a free speech right to not pay union dues, then they have the free speech right to refuse to allow their employer to use the money they generate for political activities they disagree with. As such, if employees can get the benefits of the union without paying the fees, then employees should have the choice of contributing some of their pay to the political activities of their employer or getting that sum in their paycheck. As the employers own all of the Republicans and most of the Democrats, this will never happen.

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.

Mass shootings occur with such frequency that there is a well-established script for everyone.  The media focuses on the weapon used, the right offers “thoughts and prayers” and says now is not the time to talk about gun violence, and the left calls for more gun control. Attention will then fade; children will be buried and nothing significant will be done. This cycle will repeat with the next mass shooting. And the next. As a country, we are getting it wrong in many ways.

One way we get it wrong, which is a fault of the media and “the left”, is to obsess on the weapon used in the shooting. This weapon is often an AR-15. The media script often involves asking why it is used in shootings. The easy and obvious answer is that it shows up at mass shootings for the same reason that McDonald bags end up on the roadside: both are very popular. The AR-15 is a “good” weapon for mass shootings because it has a large magazine capacity and is both lethal and easy to shoot. But the AR-15 is not unique. There are similar assault rifles (as they are called). For example, the AK-47 and its clones are effective weapons of this type; but they are less popular in America. Other guns are just as lethal (or more so) than the assault rifles, but they usually have smaller magazines. For example, a hunting rifle might hold only 5 rounds. This shows one of the problems with the obsession with the AR-15, that there are other weapons that can do the same.

Another problem with obsessing about the specific weapon is that it enables an easy red herring response to calls for gun control. A red herring is a rhetorical device used to divert attention from the original issue to another issue. When, for example, a reporter starts pressing a congressman about the AR-15, they can easily switch the discussion from gun violence to a discussion about the AR-15, thus getting away from the real issue. A solution is to resist focusing on one weapon and focus instead on the issue of gun violence. Which leads to another way we get it wrong.

School shootings are horrific, but they are not the way most victims of gun violence die. Homicides are currently at relatively low levels (for the United States). Most gun-related deaths are suicides, and assault rifles are not the most used weapon in gun deaths. School shootings and mass shootings get the attention of the media and the nation, but this has seemed to enable us to ignore the steady flow of gun-related deaths that do not make headlines. This is not to deny mass shooting are serious problem. But the gun violence problem in America goes beyond mass shootings. It is, ironically, a quiet problem that does not get the spotlight of the media like a mass shooting does. As such, even less is done about the broader problem than is done about mass shootings. And little or nothing is done about mass shootings.

While there are gun control proposals from “the left”, the right advocates having a “good guy with a gun” approach, blames mental illness, and propose fortifying schools. There seems to be little evidence that the “good guy with a gun” will solve the problem of mass shootings; but this is because there is so little good data about gun violence. While mental illness is clearly a problem and seriously addressing mental illness would be a social good, it seems unlikely that the vague proposals offered would do anything even if they were acted upon. America essentially abandoned the mentally ill during the Reagan era, an approach that has persisted to this day. The right is not serious about putting in the social services needed to address mental illness; they bring it up in response to mass shootings to distract people from gun control. The left, while expressing concern, also has done little to address this challenge or health care in general. Also, people with mental illnesses are more likely to be victims than perpetrators, so addressing mental health in a way that focuses on mass shooters would not address the broader problem.

The proposals to create “Fortress Academia” might seem appealing, but there is the obvious problem with cost: public schools are often chronically underfunded, and it is not clear where the money needed for such fortifications would come from. Turning schools into fortresses seems fundamentally wrong and is, perhaps, a red herring to distract people from the actual causes of the problem. To use an analogy, it is like addressing the opioid epidemic by telling people to get better home security to prevent addicts from breaking in to steal things to sell to buy drugs. This is not to say that school safety is a bad idea, just that turning our schools into forts does not seem to be the best approach.

I know that it will not be that long before I am writing about mass shootings and gun violence again as the malign neglect of the problem persists as does the neglect of so many of America’s ills.

 

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.

 

Due to the execution of a health insurance CEO, public attention is focused on health care. The United States has expensive health care, and this is working as intended to generate profits. Many Americans are uninsured or underinsured and even those who have insurance can find that their care is not covered. As has been repeatedly pointed out in the wake of the execution, there is a health care crisis in the United States and it is one that has been intentionally created.

Americans are a creative and generous people, which explains why people have turned to GoFundMe to get money for medical expenses. Medical bills can be ruinous and lead to bankruptcy for hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. A GoFundMe campaign can help a person pay their bills, get the care they need and avoid financial ruin. Friends of mine have been forced to undertake such campaigns and I have donated to them, as have many other people. In my own case, I am lucky and have a job that offers insurance coverage at a price I can afford, and my modest salary allows me to meet the medical expenses for a very healthy person with no pre-existing conditions. However, I know that like most of us,  I am one medical disaster away from financial ruin. As such, I have followed the use of GoFundMe for medical expenses with some practical interest. I have also given it some thought from a philosophical perspective.

On the one hand, the success of certain GoFundMe campaigns to cover such expenses suggests that people are morally decent and are willing to expend their own resources to help others. While GoFundMe does profit from these donations, their take is modest. They are not engaged in gouging people in need and exploiting medical necessities for absurdly high profits. That is the job of the health insurance industry.

On the other hand, there is the moral concern that in a wealthy country replete with billionaires and millionaires, many people must beg for money to meet their medical expenses. This spotlights the excessive cost of healthcare, the relatively low earnings of many Americans, and the weakness of the nation’s safety net. While those who donate out of generosity and compassion merit moral praise, the need for such donations merits moral condemnation. People should not need to beg for money to pay for their medical care. 

To anticipate an objection, I am aware that people do use GoFundMe for frivolous things and there are scammers, but my concern is with the fact that some people do need to turn to crowdfunding to pay their bills.

While donating is morally laudable, there are concerns about this method of funding. One practical problem is that it depends on the generosity of others. It is not a systematic and dependable method of funding. As such, it is a gamble to rely on it.

A second problem is that it depends on running an effective social media campaign. Like any other crowdfunding, success depends on getting attention and persuading people to donate. Those who have the time, resources and skills to run effective social media campaigns (or who have help) are more likely to succeed. This is concerning because people facing serious medical expenses are often in no condition to undertake the challenges of running a social media campaign. This is not to criticize or condemn people who can do this or recruit others. My point is that this method is no substitute for a systematic and consistent approach to funding health care.

A third problem is that success depends on the appeal of the medical condition and the person with that condition. While a rational approach to funding would be based on merit and need, there are clearly conditions and people that are more appealing in terms of attracting donors. For example, certain diseases and conditions can be “in” and generate sympathy, while others are not as appealing. In the case of people, we are not all equal in how appealing we are to others. As with the other problems, I do not condemn or criticize people for having conditions that are “in” or being appealing. Rather, my concern is that this method rests so heavily on these factors rather than medical and financial need. Once again, this serves to illustrate how the current system has been willfully broken and does not serve the needs of most Americans. While those who have succeeded in their GoFundMe campaigns should be lauded for their effort and ingenuity, those who run the health care system in which people have to run social media campaigns to afford their health care should be condemned.   

 

While teen pregnancy has declined in the United States, Texas has had the slowest rate of decline. In a typical year, 35,000 Texan teenagers and women under 20 get pregnant. While some states have addressed the problem of unplanned teen pregnancies by education and social services support, Texas has taken a different approach. Most Texas schools offer either no sex education or abstinence only sex education. While many states offer contraception counselling to teen mothers, Texas generally does not. Texas also has restrictive policies regarding contraception for teenagers, although the evidence shows access to contraception reduces unplanned pregnancies (and also abortions). Despite the evidence linking Texas’ approach with teen pregnancy, the view of many social conservatives is that abstinence only education is the best approach. But is it?

Looked at in the context of reducing unplanned teen pregnancies, Texas’ abstinence only (or no sex education at all) approach is not the best. To use the obvious analogy, it is as if Texas was trying to reduce automobile accidents, injuries and fatalities involving teenagers by offering them either no driver education or driver education that says not to drive or get in cars. Texas is also doing the equivalent of trying to ensure teens who do get in cars do so without access to seat belts, air bags and other safety equipment. This all assumes that the best approach is defined in terms of reducing unplanned teen pregnancies just as the best approach to automobile accidents would be defined in terms of preventing them. But there are other ways to assess what is best.

One alternative is to pick the morally best. Some conservatives claim premarital sex is morally wrong. On this view, Texas is taking the right approach because unmarried teenagers should be practicing abstinence and enabling them to understand and access birth control would contribute to their immoral deeds. To use an analogy, consider murder. Since murder is wrong, schools should teach an abstinence only approach to murder and not enable people easy access to implements of murder. Except, obviously, guns.

One reply to this approach that the moral righteousness of those who deny teenagers proper sex education and access to contraceptives comes at the cost of harming the teenagers and society. Allowing this harm to occur to others so one can impose their own values is morally unacceptable on utilitarian grounds.  There is also moral concern about the rights of teenagers to make their own informed choices about consensual sexual behavior. The imposition of the values of the social conservatives denies them this right and infringes on their freedom. Naturally, those who value abstinence and oppose contraception are free to act on this view themselves. They have the right to not engage in sex or to not use contraception. They do not have the right to cause harm to others because of their views of sex as there seems to be no foundation for such a right. There is not a right to keep people in a state of harmful ignorance nor a right to deny people contraception.

But the Texas approach can be seen as the best approach by considering an alternative set of goals. As noted above, if the goal is reducing unwanted teen pregnancies, then the Texas approach is failing. However, it could be succeeding at other goals. One possible goal is to ensure the poor and uneducated remain that way. After all, unplanned pregnancies are most likely to occur among the poor and uneducated and they make it harder for people to rise out of poverty and achieve educational goals. Maintaining a poor and uneducated population confers significant benefits to the upper classes and meshes with some morally repugnant ideological views. Another possible goal is rooted in misogyny in that it is aimed at making it more likely that girls will get pregnant. This is a variant of the goal of maintaining an underclass; in this case the specific targets are girls and young women.

While a utilitarian case could, perhaps, be made for using these policies to help maintain the underclasses, the harms caused by them outweigh the alleged advantages. As such, policies aimed at maintaining the underclasses would seem morally wrong.

Given the above discussion, Texas’ approach to teenage pregnancy is either ineffective or immoral (or both). As such, the policies in Texas should be replaced by those that have proven effective elsewhere.

 

Trump picking anti-vaccine Robert F. Kennedy to serve as the secretary of Health and Human Services has shone a spotlight on the anti-vax movement. This movement has been growing, leading to a decrease in vaccinations. One impact of this has been an increase is measles cases in the United States.

Critics of the anti-vaccination movement point to such cases as proof the movement is misinformed and dangerous.  Critics of the anti-vaxxers often deride them and see them as stupid because there is no evidence that vaccines cause the harms anti-vaxxers claims they do. For example, it is often claimed that vaccines cause autism, but this is clearly untrue. Vaccinations have also been conclusively shown to prevent diseases and reduce the severity of illnesses and this is evident to anyone who has a basic knowledge of the history of disease.  

It is tempting for critics to dismiss anti-vaxxers as stupid people who are too dumb to understand basic science. This, however, is a mistake.  One reason is purely pragmatic: those who are pro-vaccination want the anti-vaccination people to change their minds and calling them stupid, mocking and insulting them will cause them to entrench and double down on their view. Another reason is that the anti-vaccination people are not, in general, stupid. Interestingly there are grounds for both skepticism and concern about health and science. To show this, I will present some points of concern.

One point of rational concern is that scientific research has been plagued with corruption, fraud and errors. For example, the percentage of scientific articles retracted for fraud is ten times what it was in 1975. Once lauded studies and theories, such as those driving the pushing of antioxidants and omega-3, were riddled with inaccuracies. So, it is not stupid to worry that scientific research might not be accurate. Ironically, the study that started the belief that vaccines cause autism is a paradigm of bad science. So, it is not stupid to consider that studies that show vaccines are safe might also have flaws. That said, the fact that some research is flawed does not prove that any specific research is flawed. After all, the fact that some people are guilty of crimes does not therefore prove that you are guilty of a crime.

Another matter of concern is the influence of corporate lobbyists on health issue. For example, the dietary guidelines and recommendations set forth by the United States Government should be set based on the best science. However, these recommendations are influenced by industry lobbyists, such as the dairy industry. Given the influence of corporate lobbyists, it is not stupid to worry the recommendations and guidelines given by the state might not be the best but instead are aimed to increase profits for certain industries.

A third point of concern is that dietary and health guidelines and recommendations undergo what seems to be relentless and unwarranted change. For example, the government has warned us of the dangers of cholesterol for decades, but this recommendation has changed. It would, of course, be one thing if the changes were the result of steady improvements in knowledge. However, the recommendations often seem to lack a proper foundation. John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and statistics at Stanford, has noted “Almost every single nutrient imaginable has peer reviewed publications associating it with almost any outcome. In this literature of epidemic proportions, how many results are correct?” Given such criticism from experts in the field, it hardly seems stupid of people to have doubts and concerns.

There is also the fact that people do suffer adverse drug reactions that can lead to serious medical issues and even death. While the reported numbers vary (one FDA page puts the number of deaths at 100,000 per year) this is certainly a matter of concern.  Everyone who has seen drug ads is familiar with the warnings. For example, consider Januvia, a diabetes drug. As required by law, the ads mention all the side effects of the drug and these include serious consequences including death. Given that the FDA has approved drugs with dangerous side effects, it is hardly stupid to be concerned about the potential side effects from any medicine or vaccine.

Given the above points, it is not stupid to be concerned about vaccines or any medication. At this point, the reader might suspect that I will defend an anti-vaccine position, bust despite all the points I raised I am pro-vaccination. This might seem surprising given the points made above, but my pro-vax position is consistent with my concerns.

The above points show there are rational grounds for a critical and skeptical approach to matters of health, medicine and science. However, this skepticism needs to be rational. That is, it should not be a rejection of science but the adoption of a critical approach in which one considers the best available evidence, assesses experts by the proper standards (those of a good argument from authority), and so on. Also, it is important to note that the general skepticism does not justify accepting or rejecting a specific claim. For example, the fact that there have been flawed studies does not prove that a specific study about vaccines is flawed. As another example, the fact that lobbyists influence government does not prove that all vaccines are harmful drugs pushed on Americans by greedy corporations. As a final example, the fact that some medicines have serious and dangerous side effects does not prove that the measles vaccine is dangerous or causes autism. Just as one should be rationally skeptical about pro-vaccination claims one should also be rationally skeptical about anti-vaccination claims.

To use an analogy, it is rational to have a general skepticism about the honesty and goodness of people. After all, people do lie and there are bad people. However, this general skepticism does not automatically prove that you are dishonest or evil—that is a matter that must be addressed on the individual level.

To use another analogy, it is rational to have a general concern about engineering. After all, there have been many engineering disasters. However, this general concern does not warrant believing that a specific engineering project is defective or that engineering itself is defective. The specific project would need to be examined, and engineering is, in general, the most rational approach to building stuff.

So, the people who are anti-vaccine are not, in general, stupid. However, they are not rationally assessing the specific vaccines and the evidence for their safety and efficacy. It is rational to be concerned about medicine in general, just as it is rational to be concerned about the honesty of people in general. However, just as one should not infer that a friend is a liar because there are people who lie, one should not infer that a vaccine must be bad because there is bad science and bad medicine.

Convincing anti-vaccination people to accept vaccination is challenging. One reason is that the issue is politicized and is a battle of values and identity. This is partially since the anti-vaccine people have been mocked and attacked, thus leading them to entrench and double down. Another reason is that, as argued above, they do have well-founded concerns about the trustworthiness of government, the accuracy of scientific studies, and the goodness of corporations. A third reason is that people tend to give more weight to the negative and tend to weigh potential loss more than potential gain. As such, people give more weight to negative reasons against vaccines and fear the alleged dangers of vaccines more than they value their benefits.

Given the importance of vaccinations, it is critical that the anti-vaccination movement be addressed rather than attacked. Calling people stupid, mocking them and attacking them are not effective ways of convincing people that vaccines are generally safe and effective. A more rational and more effective approach is to address their legitimate concerns and consider their fears. After all, the goal should be the health of people and not scoring points in a political battle

 

Asking “when was the last battle of the Civil War fought?” is a trick question; the last battle has yet to be fought. One example of a minor skirmish is when New Orleans began its removal of Confederate monuments. The removal of the first monument looked like a covert operation. Using equipment with hidden company names, the removal crews wore masks and body armor while operating under the cover of darkness and police sniper protection. These precautions were deemed necessary because of threats. In addition to being controversial, the removal of such monuments is philosophically interesting.

One argument commonly used to defend Confederate monuments is the historical argument: the monuments express and are part of history and their removal is claimed to be like tearing pages from the history books. This argument does have some appeal, at least for objects marking an historical event and presenting facts. However, monuments tend to be erected to bestow honors, and this goes beyond marking an historical event and presenting history.

One example is the Battle of Liberty Place Monument. It was erected in New Orleans in 1891 to honor the 1874 battle between the Crescent City White League and the racially integrated New Orleans Metropolitan police and state militia. The monument was modified by the city in 1932 with a plaque expressing support for white supremacy. The monument was modified again in 1993 when a new plaque was placed over the 1932 plaque, commemorating all those who died in the battle.

From a moral perspective, the problem with this sort of monument is that it is not an objective historical marker, but and endorsement of white supremacy and racism. As such, to keep such a memorial in place would be to say the city at least tolerates white supremacy and racism. If these values are still endorsed by the city, then the monument should remain as a warning label. That way people will know to expect white supremacy and racism.

 However, if the values are no longer endorsed by the city, then such a monument should be removed.  This would express the current views of the people of the city. It could be objected that such removal would be on par with purging historical records. Obviously, the records of the event should not be purged. Historical records should aim at recording the facts without praising (or condemning) what has occurred. In contrast, to erect and preserve an honoring monument is to take a stance on the matter; to praise or condemn it.

It could be argued that the 1993 change to the monument “redeems” it from its white supremacist and racist origins and it and similar monuments should remain in place. This does have some appeal, part of which is that the monument expresses the history of the (allegedly) changed values. To use an analogy, a building that once served an evil purpose can be refurbished and redeemed to serve a good purpose. This, it could be argued, sends a more powerful statement than simply razing the building.

However, the monument was originally created to honor white supremacy, and the recent modification could be justly seen as an effort to conceal this fact. Since the monument does have historical significance, it would be reasonable to preserve it. After all, historical artifacts can be kept without endorsing values associated with the artifact. For example, keeping artifacts that belonged to Stalin as historically significant items is not to endorse Stalinism. Keeping a monument in a place of honor, is an endorsement.

The matter can become more complicated in cases involving statues of individuals such as General Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General P.G.T. Beauregard. These men did shape the history of the United States. It also cannot be denied they possessed some personal virtues. Lee is often presented as a man of considerable virtue. P.G.T. Beauregard went on to advocate for civil rights and voting rights for blacks (though some might say this was due to political expediency).

Given their historical importance and roles, it can be argued that they were worthy of statues and that these statues should remain to honor them. The easy and obvious counter is that they engaged in treason against the United States and backed slavery. Whatever personal virtues they might have possessed, they should not be honored for their role in the Confederacy. Statues that honor people who were Confederates but who did laudable things after the Civil War should, of course, be evaluated based on the merits of those individuals. But to honor the Confederacy and its support of slavery would be a moral error.

It could also be argued that even though the Confederate cause of fighting for the right of some people to own other people is wicked, people like Lee and Beauregard earned their statues and their honor. As such, it would be unjust to remove their statues because of the political sensibilities of today. After all, as it should be pointed out, there are statues that honor the slave owners Washington and Jefferson for their laudable deeds within the context of the dishonor of slavery. If the principle of removing monuments that honored those who supported a rebellion aimed at creating an independent slave-owning nation was strictly followed, then there would need to be a rather extensive purge of American monuments. If honoring supporters of slavery and slave owners is acceptable, then perhaps the removal of the statues of the heroes of the Confederacy could be justified on the grounds of their rebellion against the United States. This would allow for a principled distinction to be made: statues of slavery supporters and slave owners can be acceptable, as long as they were not rebels against the United States. Alternative, the principle could be that statues of victorious rebel slavery supporters are acceptable, but those of losing rebel slavery supporters are not. Winning, it could be said, makes all the difference.

 

The idea that government should be more like a business is appealing to those whose education, experience and values are in the business world. People do see the world through the lens of their experiences and want to apply the methods they are most familiar with to as many areas as possible. For example, I am a philosophy professor and tend to see the world through the philosophical lens and want to apply critical thinking, logic and ethical reasoning whenever I can. Likewise, those who are educated and experienced in business see the world through a business lens and wish to broadly apply their business skills and methods.

A reasonable case can be made as to why a business focused approach has merit. One can point out that many skills developed in the context of business can be used in government. For example, negotiating and deal making skills can be applied to politics. As another example, business leadership and management skills can also be applied in government. It would be a mistake to claim that government is nothing like a business, but it can also be argued that it is mistaken to try to transform government into a business.

One mistake is to think that just because there are positive qualities of business that overlap with those of government, making government more like a business will thus make government better. Making one thing more like another only adds positive qualities if they are made alike in positive ways. Making them alike in other ways does not do this. For example, dressing like a runner makes one like a runner, but this does not confer the health benefits of running.

 There is also the fact that although things with similar positive qualities are similar, it does not follow they are otherwise alike in relevant ways. For example, efficiency is a positive quality of business and government, but merely making government like business does not necessarily make it more efficient. There are businesses that are very inefficient.

Also, the fact that efficiency can be a positive quality of both business and government does not mean they are alike in other ways or that the way business is made more efficient is the way to make government more efficient. To illustrate, a business might be very efficient at exploiting customers and workers while enriching the stockholders, but that is presumably not the sort of efficiency one should aim for in government.

Avoiding this mistake involves resisting the mythology and fetishizing of making things like businesses and giving due consideration to which skills, methods and approaches transfer well from business to government and which do not.

A second basic mistake is like that made by Ion in Plato’s dialogue Ion. The rhapsode Ion believes, at the start of the dialogue, that poets have knowledge and mastery about almost everything. His reasoning is that because poets write about, for example, military matters, they thus are experts in military matters. As such, poets should be able to teach people about everything and serve as leaders in all these areas.

Socrates shows that the poets (as poets) do not have such knowledge. The gist of his argument is that each area is mastered by mastering the subject of that area and all these areas “belong” to others and not to the poets. For example, knowledge of waging war belongs to soldiers. The poets touch but lightly on these other areas and understand only the appearances and not the depth. Socrates does note that a person can have multiple domains of mastery, so a medical doctor could, for example, also be skilled at mathematics or art history.

The error in the case of business is to think that because there are many types of business and almost everything has some connection to business, then an alleged mastery of business confers mastery over all these things. However, business skills are distinct from skills specific to types of businesses. To illustrate, while a manager might believe that their management skills are universal, managing a software company does not confer software skills nor does managing a hospital confer medical skills. One might pick up skills and knowledge, but this would not be as a businessperson. After all, while a businessperson might be a runner, that does not make running a business. The fact that there are businesses associated with running, such as Nike, does not entail that skill in business thus confers skill in running. As such, for someone to think that business skills thus confer mastery over government would be a mistake. They might believe that they have such mastery because government interacts with business and some businesses do things like what government does, but they would be as mistaken as someone who thinks that because they manage a Nike outlet, they are thus an athlete.