tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62150775784792525422024-03-15T20:09:24.700-05:00The Piety That Lies Between: A Progressive Christian Perspective"The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it ever has contained, contains, or ever will contain. That is the native city to which we owe our love." --Simone WeilEric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comBlogger625125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-30700509700313628592024-03-15T16:36:00.005-05:002024-03-15T16:36:44.150-05:00Some Thoughts on Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories<p>Since we're barreling headlong into a national election season, all of us are likely to hear a heightened number of conspiracy theories, often invoked to vilify political rivals or people who don't serve the interests of some party or politician. </p><p>As such, some thoughts on conspiracies and conspiracy theories strike me as in order--to help us sort through when we should take conspiracy claims seriously, and when we should be skeptical.</p><p>Let's start with what we mean by a conspiracy. Generally, a conspiracy exists when a group of people collude (work together in secret) to impact events in the world while trying to make it look as if no such collusion is taking place.</p><p>Conspiracies happen. And if they are successful, no one<i> knows</i> that the conspiracy happened: the event is seen by the broader world as being readily accounted for by the publicly available facts. We'll think it's an accident, or the work of a known rogue actors, or the ordinary operation of familiar processes. The role of the conspirators in producing the event remains hidden.</p><p>But here's the thing about conspiracies: they work best when they involve small groups of people or, if they involve more than a few people, do so within an organization that has very powerful control over their members in terms of ensuring coordinated effort and secrecy. </p><p>As soon as you get large numbers of people involved--especially if they come from a range of diverse groups or walks of life, and <i>most</i> especially if they include characteristically "unruly" groups of independently-minded people (such as, say, journalists)--the coordination required for success starts to break down along with the capacity to retain secrecy.</p><p>So, here's the thing with conspiracy <i>theories</i>. They often (not always) start out plausible enough. A highway accident, involving two cars and a bus, results in the deaths of two dozen people, including a prominent politician. The theory: it was no accident, but something deliberately brought about by a group of conspirators to kill the politician while making it look like an accident.</p><p>Often, the theory finds traction in some odd fact. Suppose the purported accident was triggered by the erratic driving of one the cars involved--but an autopsy of the driver found no evidence of drugs or alcohol that could explain the erratic driving, nor any evidence of mechanical problems with the car. Furthermore, the driver had no cell phone, being notoriously opposed to them--and so wouldn't have been distracted by that.</p><p>This oddity motivates the conspiracy theory, lending some initial plausibility to the hypothesis that the driver deliberately swerved so as to cause the accident. Other odd facts emerge. Maybe, before getting in the car that day, the driver was seen burning a stack of letters. What if he was destroying evidence that could link him to people with an interest in seeing the politician dead?</p><p>Of course, these facts can be explained in many ways, most of which don't involve the driver deliberately causing the accident as part of a larger plot to kill the politician. But someone "connects the dots" between an array of odd facts using the conspiracy theory as a unifying explanation for them all. </p><p>In the real world, lots of things happen that aren't connected to each other at all. <i>That</i> a certain story connects a lot of things isn't really evidence for the story. But a story that unifies stray facts into a cohesive story is attractive to storytelling animals like us--and sometimes disconnected facts <i>are</i> the visible signs of some unified explanation hiding under the surface.</p><p>In any event, what we have at this point is an explanatory hypothesis that accounts for a set of facts in a particular way--making them part of a unified story instead of a bunch of coincidentally related things. And even if the way the story unifies stray facts isn't by itself proof that the story is true, there might be reason to investigate the hypothesis--to treat it as something that <i>might</i> be true.</p><p>But it is here--when investigation into a proposed conspiracy starts--that things start to get wonky. IF a conspiracy is going on, then the conspirators will presumably try to <i>hide</i> the real story. And that means they will be working at cross-purposes with those investigating the hypothesis that a conspiracy was at work. </p><p>For this reason, those investigating a conspiracy have <i>some</i> grounds for not immediately dismissing the hypothesis the first time they encounter contrary evidence. Things that, with more ordinary hypotheses, we'd treat as a good reason to set the hypothesis aside, might not be enough to stop investigating a purported conspiracy.</p><p>But it can be easy to incrementally slide from being someone who hangs onto the hypothesis a bit longer than usual to becoming someone for whom the hypothesis of a conspiracy has become unfalsifiable. </p><p>The conspiracy theorist is someone who slides into the latter territory. And as they do, something happens which should throw up red flags for the rest of us. First off, evidence against the theory is increasingly treated as evidence <i>for</i> the theory--as further proof of how well organized and determined and powerful the conspirators are. Secondly, not only do they explain away all the contrary evidence, but they do so by expanding the <i>size</i> of the conspiracy. </p><p>Suppose a doctor comes forward to say that the man who drove erratically showed evidence of a health condition that could explain that behavior. The conspiracy theorist explains this away by making the doctor part of the conspiracy (maybe an unwilling one acting under threat from the conspirators). </p><p>Suppose an investigative journalist reports that the erratic driver recently broke up with a long-time girlfriend, and that according to a friend the driver collected love letters from early in their courtship--a collection that is now gone, offering an explanation for his being seen burning letters earlier that day. </p><p>What does the conspiracy theorist do with the fruits of this investigative journalism? Well, obviously, the journalist is part of the conspiracy, too.</p><p>And as other doctors corroborate the first doctor's claims, it becomes the medical establishment that is part of the conspiracy. And as other reporters and journalists claim to have seen the work and vetted the sources that the first journalist used to reach their conclusions, it becomes the mainstream media that is in on the conspiracy. When a vocal proponent of the conspiracy theory is found guilty of defamation of character against the doctor, the judicial system is now part of the conspiracy too.</p><p>More and more people, across increasingly varied group, have to be part of the conspiracy (or somehow under the control of the conspirators) for the conspiracy theory to remain standing in the face of the mounting contrary evidence.</p><p>And the problem, of course, is that these are precisely the conditions under which conspiracies are unlikely to succeed.</p><p>So, when someone claims that some significant event is the product of a nefarious conspiracy, look for a pattern like this. If the conspirator has to bring in more and more groups and organizations and individuals into the conspiracy to make the conspiracy theory hold up in the light of the evidence, you have reason to be<i> highly</i> skeptical. </p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-22196179174579687622024-02-27T12:22:00.005-06:002024-02-29T09:53:31.779-06:00So Eden Sank to Grief: Dubious Endorsement from Famous Philosophers! <p>My science fiction novel, <i>So Eden Sank to Grief</i>, is now available for purchase in both kindle and trade paperback formats. Check it out <a href="https://amzn.to/431uhUo">here</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p>In honor of the book's release, here are a few endorsements from philosophers long dead:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhlOfA15OnYKSO6bKbaJnHC4dyx-mc9zv8YWMGrSsAqo9klzpvwEKSaYYprk7y4UIbFKPlqQv2wqRor8U2k7yuq-j0B_sJ3_ySCoeVT0gD9mC-P8E7h-CVAwIFC6OLBYPnQWfJYZcOdhI2Kwr1L84wKShTvrRJL6IRsBAA1QmLwHBic1z-wozRvwRNQDEY/s1280/SESTG%20Plato%20Meme--pre-release.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhlOfA15OnYKSO6bKbaJnHC4dyx-mc9zv8YWMGrSsAqo9klzpvwEKSaYYprk7y4UIbFKPlqQv2wqRor8U2k7yuq-j0B_sJ3_ySCoeVT0gD9mC-P8E7h-CVAwIFC6OLBYPnQWfJYZcOdhI2Kwr1L84wKShTvrRJL6IRsBAA1QmLwHBic1z-wozRvwRNQDEY/w400-h225/SESTG%20Plato%20Meme--pre-release.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7e13n0YuzKpQcIXfUiAgz-T1BpH_R9wSbyfddah7t6XVqyW5V6XnHZeraySAPjBKs1eEpJE5labYXvFEh_nXNsM_1SK98PTJbNEmfspye38cqRByqz7GMC750sO0K35Lx56BpI_LF00NCOYKQF2H_DnvT-igwkS-HkPamcMk9TTk1VckYioCDNfd0QzIi/s1280/SESTG%20Memes--Anselm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7e13n0YuzKpQcIXfUiAgz-T1BpH_R9wSbyfddah7t6XVqyW5V6XnHZeraySAPjBKs1eEpJE5labYXvFEh_nXNsM_1SK98PTJbNEmfspye38cqRByqz7GMC750sO0K35Lx56BpI_LF00NCOYKQF2H_DnvT-igwkS-HkPamcMk9TTk1VckYioCDNfd0QzIi/w400-h225/SESTG%20Memes--Anselm.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrgCGGwfQK6KNQhXYyhgj-N3eottPTZ7g_JZcJtA-_L-ZS_p2y8dzRjjdLe0oeAqApuRyyRT5KKzN3LOsIPlobaZNZVhagSNxD8xLtZZNczVAewBOP5JPXC66V_elpG0igAO9Q8RFLTnaPUuXjLJRPVwwPxSVRukkLZrNcwmsSRra-0urG8s5m3_s8W5T3/s1280/SESTG%20Meme--Aquinas.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrgCGGwfQK6KNQhXYyhgj-N3eottPTZ7g_JZcJtA-_L-ZS_p2y8dzRjjdLe0oeAqApuRyyRT5KKzN3LOsIPlobaZNZVhagSNxD8xLtZZNczVAewBOP5JPXC66V_elpG0igAO9Q8RFLTnaPUuXjLJRPVwwPxSVRukkLZrNcwmsSRra-0urG8s5m3_s8W5T3/w400-h225/SESTG%20Meme--Aquinas.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHKNyHk6jqOWV1_jz4C5me0HY704-Ijfnar2qrQT8C9dJ_W6ozoecHLzZvn6dLFRsnyvkF3lkQ6uWZK7ETeDXJy1U2cjUwxzlFe_0GOBI65Y7mDabseTzA7kk4nuE0Np0HEW1J89C3vqu-CY4W31yWQ9x0KqQ9K7aQQ0E7vy1WsJyaVAcNM2p09f2Oidxw/s1280/SESTG%20Kant%20Perfect%20Duty%20Meme--pre-release.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHKNyHk6jqOWV1_jz4C5me0HY704-Ijfnar2qrQT8C9dJ_W6ozoecHLzZvn6dLFRsnyvkF3lkQ6uWZK7ETeDXJy1U2cjUwxzlFe_0GOBI65Y7mDabseTzA7kk4nuE0Np0HEW1J89C3vqu-CY4W31yWQ9x0KqQ9K7aQQ0E7vy1WsJyaVAcNM2p09f2Oidxw/w400-h225/SESTG%20Kant%20Perfect%20Duty%20Meme--pre-release.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkkOTPPQgqi2Xd_PAQf24jVlGS6yR-xDZpBuXe90ioioVZE_viWHb4sX1p51NYST8oQ6ksc0ITAer5CAMdvqITB5xH6lsjcZancFaE1lPe86M5OG1QXS8nNApUVCTQWRZXz1WejZMEUMhZJSaM4uHdPlnk8qEeXGpFSVQw4U-p0FwrjNLsMo47JDckLrAm/s1280/SESTG%20Hegel%20Meme--Pre-Release.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkkOTPPQgqi2Xd_PAQf24jVlGS6yR-xDZpBuXe90ioioVZE_viWHb4sX1p51NYST8oQ6ksc0ITAer5CAMdvqITB5xH6lsjcZancFaE1lPe86M5OG1QXS8nNApUVCTQWRZXz1WejZMEUMhZJSaM4uHdPlnk8qEeXGpFSVQw4U-p0FwrjNLsMo47JDckLrAm/w400-h225/SESTG%20Hegel%20Meme--Pre-Release.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7L4rn4VBDZr1tyspVEOjQxac3HjA_XBgPH1n2nE1el7jN6JRxg0LSm6X08PjWHWVgGK7N4KRF-dt8e1o1cyrzJ08olgBwo8UmUy7vh_1PpFHgEZb0a8BloXAczk90e7_ejQWXgATTAXzyCpn-8mr8n0HWvoschuIv5mX2o_733FDgb8upG7fRL3bpfVKa/s1280/SESTG%20Schopenhauer%20Meme--post-release.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7L4rn4VBDZr1tyspVEOjQxac3HjA_XBgPH1n2nE1el7jN6JRxg0LSm6X08PjWHWVgGK7N4KRF-dt8e1o1cyrzJ08olgBwo8UmUy7vh_1PpFHgEZb0a8BloXAczk90e7_ejQWXgATTAXzyCpn-8mr8n0HWvoschuIv5mX2o_733FDgb8upG7fRL3bpfVKa/w400-h225/SESTG%20Schopenhauer%20Meme--post-release.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-60717585050926214542024-02-20T14:08:00.003-06:002024-02-20T14:08:53.026-06:00Philosophy, Fiction, and the Human Condition<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">For most of
my adult life, I’ve been both a philosopher and fiction writer. Through both, I’ve
tackled the deep questions that most engage me, especially questions of faith,
social justice, human sexuality, and violence. The imminent release of my debut
novel, <i>So Eden Sank to Grief</i>, has got
me thinking about the relationship between these two things that have so shaped
the course of my life.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Two Distinct Roles</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Fiction and
philosophy are two distinct approaches to engaging with questions central to
understanding the human condition—questions about our values and basic
assumptions, about the things that shape our worldviews and, by implication,
how we respond to our world, what kinds of lives we strive for and what choices
we make.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Fiction does
so by telling stories about people—distinct individuals who have their own
perspective on things, who live in a concrete environment, and who have
problems. Fiction is about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">these</i>
individuals in<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> these </i>circumstances,
facing and trying to overcome the problems they face.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Philosophy explores
these questions by developing various alternative answers to these questions,
and then formulating and critically evaluating arguments for and against these
alternatives in the effort to determine which answers have the stronger arguments
in their favor.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Both disciplines
focus on the human condition, on issues about who we are and how we ought to
live, how we should understand our world and our lives and the point of it all.
But each has a different primary role.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Here’s my
sense of these distinct roles. Fiction at its best inspires us to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ask questions</i> about the human condition—new
questions, or old question asked with greater urgency or honesty or openness. Philosophy
at its best helps us to decide which questions we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> to answer (however tentatively) in order to live our lives,
and it provides a means of fairly and honestly seeking out answers that make sense
to us while also enabling us to understand why different answers might make
sense to someone else.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">In brief,
oversimplified terms, fiction prompts us to care about the questions;
philosophy offers a path to look for answers.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course
there is overlap here. Great fiction can help us explore answers to our questions,
and philosophy can help us to ask new questions and see why they matter. The
difference is one of emphasis. But the emphasis matters. It matters especially
to me, as a writer of fiction and as a philosophy teacher.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Limits of Philosophy</b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">In my role
as a teacher of philosophy, I pose to my students questions that we then explore
philosophically. Some of those questions are ones my students care about
already. But that’s not always true. When it’s not, what do I do? I’ve tried to
get them to see the importance of the question by presenting alternative
answers, showing how there are arguments for and against each, and showing that
each answer has different implications for how we ought to live.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Sometimes
that works. But if I rely on philosophy alone to inspire my students to really
care about these questions, I have far less success than if I pause to tell a
story that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dramatizes</i> the question’s
importance. Tell a story, and the students listen. Tell the right story, and
they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">see </i>why the question matters.
Tell a story featuring a character they care about, facing a problem relating
to the question, and they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">care </i>about
the question.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Furthermore,
I’ve discovered that sometimes when it looks like a student cares about a
question, what they really care about is their preferred answer. The question,
and the inquiry it triggers, is not for them something they value. On the
contrary, they see it as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">threat</i>. It
treats as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dubious </i>or debatable
something they don’t want to treat that way.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">As Plato
stressed, we are furthest from the truth not when we are uncertain but when we
are in the grip of false certainty. If we think we have the answer, we stop
asking the question. Or, perhaps more accurately, we stop believing that the
question matters <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as </i>a question. Instead,
we only care about it as a layup to the slam-dunk.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Like a catechism,
the question is posed not to prompt inquiry but to set the stage for announcing
our answer. Put simply, it is treated like a closed question.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">When
students confront a question in this spirit, arguments that challenge their
preferred answer are not something to be taken seriously and wrestled with but,
rather, something to be discredited. Something to be attacked.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">When someone
treats a question <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that </i>way, they aren’t
in a place where they can do honest philosophy about that question. At best,
they can be philosophical <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">apologists</i>:
they can recite the arguments in favor of their preferred answer and bash the
arguments against. To do honest philosophy about a question, the question must
be treated as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">open</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Open Questions, Closes Questions, and the
Power of Stories</b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Now there
may be a time and a place for refusing to treat a question as open, and hence
to refuse to approach it philosophically. If someone asks whether Black people
are really human with a human’s right to life, I would think it better to
insist that this is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not </i>an open
question, that the right answer is they are fully human with a human being’s
right to life. Perhaps, also, I might say a few words about why—but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">without</i> legitimizing the opposing
arguments and objections by taking them as serious arguments and objections
worthy of consideration.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">In other
words, there are cases where it is more than fitting to treat a question as
closed. But how do we decide when this is true? I’d look to stories. In the
case above, I’d look to stories from the point of view of Black people living
in environments where their full humanity is treated like an open question. Stories
that lay out <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what that’s like.</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">On the flip
side of things, imagine a story set in a community where a particular religious
question is treated as closed. Suppose the community thinks that non-Christians
are all damned. The main character, let’s call him Bill, meets a practicing Jew
for the first time—Jacob, let’s say. Through a series of events, they become
friends. Bill, desiring to save Jacob, tries to convert him, prompting conflict
and ultimately an angry challenge to the idea that Jacob is only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">acceptable</i> if he gives up his faith and
identity to become something utterly alien. Bill goes through an anguished internal
struggle. Does he really believe that Jacob, who is a good person, who is committed
to his faith and appears to love God deeply, is doomed to hell?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Bill is
further torn by competing perspectives and testimonies—especially from Jacob and
from his beloved mentor and pastor, Luke. In the end, the friendship with Jacob
falls apart. Jacob is clearly deeply wounded by what he describes as Bill’s
intolerance. Bill returns to the pews of his church but is now grieving, and he
can’t listen to what Luke preaches with the comfortable confidence he used to
have.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">It is at
least conceivable that such a story, powerfully told, could inspire a Christian
reader to wrestle with the question of whether Jacob is saved—that is, to treat
the question as open—when previously it had for them been closed. This might
happen even if the reader doesn’t actually change their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">answer</i> to the question.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">I think that
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">most</i> of the time, stories are more
likely to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">open us up</i> to questions
that we might have previously treated as closed, rather than closing questions
we’d previously treated as open.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">This is true
because of the ability of stories to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">expand
the range of our experience</i>. They help us to see the world through someone
else’s eyes, to get a sense of what something is like that we haven’t
experienced personally. Often, the reason we treat a question as closed is
because we haven’t personally had an experience that challenges the answer we’ve
come to accept. Such personal experiences are the primary pathway to being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jarred loose</i> from fixed ways of seeing
things.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">But stories
can offer another way—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vicarious</i> experiences
to supplement our own. The point is that stories inspire us not only to care
about questions we didn’t think were important before, but also to treat
questions as open—or as closed—that we didn’t treat that way before. And they
do this by their power to give us vicarious experiences, a sense of what it
would be like to face challenges we’ve never faced or to see things in a way we
haven’t before.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">If someone
with a fixed idea is presented with philosophical arguments that challenge that
idea, their spontaneous reaction is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">defensiveness</i>.
Something they believe is being attacked, which means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they </i>are being attacked. The walls come up, and they become even
more entrenched in their position than they were before.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">But tell
someone a story, and there is a different response. A leaning in. An opening
up. This is the power of stories.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Stories, Propaganda, and the Need for
Philosophy<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">But it is
one thing when a story opens us up to new questions. It is something else when
it leads us down a narrow narrative tunnel to a single answer, an answer so
vividly rendered that we lose sight of any other possible answers. Plato was
worried about oratory and poetry because it has the power to <i>persuade</i> even if it offers no
instruction. This is the dark side of storytelling: it’s potential to function
as <i>propaganda.</i> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">The worst
fiction is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">preachy</i>. Few stories can survive
preachiness, and teachers of creative writing warn against it for good reasons.
A preachy story tells you what to think, what to believe. It’s in-your-face about
it, and it is off-putting. I think our aversion to preachy stories tells us
something about what stories are supposed to be about: not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">answering</i> our questions, but encouraging us to wrestle with
questions by shedding light on them. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Stories are
meant to expand the range of human experiences available to us, thereby providing
us with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more data than we had before</i>,
more information with which to wrestle with the big questions. But if we want
to wrestle with those questions fairly and honestly, we need to do it in a way that
considers the arguments for different answers, the objections to alternative
arguments, the ways that different human experiences feed into alternative
answers, etc. In other words, we need to get philosophical.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">A story
overreaches when it becomes preachy—it tries to draw too universal a conclusion
from something that is essentially particular. Stories are about particular
people in particular settings facing particular problems.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">But
propagandistic stories are not necessarily preachy. In fact, the best
propaganda is not preachy at all. Rather, propaganda tells a particular story
without ever telling you explicitly what to believe. Instead of telling us what
to believe, the most crafty propaganda creates a story experience that fits
with the view the propagandist wants us to believe: vicarious experiences that,
typically, reinforce those preconceptions or prejudices that serve the
propagandist’s interests, making it less likely that we will question them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Two kinds of
propaganda are particularly significant. First, there is propaganda that relies
on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">othering. </i>It tells a story in
which the protagonist, who belongs to the same group as the audience,
encounters the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Other </i>(someone who
belongs to a different and unfamiliar group). And not only is the Other the
source of the problem the main character faces, but the Other turns out to be
just as bad (or worse) than the audience fears they are based on their preconceived
ideas.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">The other
kind of propaganda is what I think of as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">manufactured
discontent. </i>It follows the model of the dandruff shampoo commercial where
the first step is to make the viewer worry that they have dandruff and that
others are rejecting them because of this (by dramatizing a scene in which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly that</i> happens). The second step
is to introduce the shampoo as the solution to this manufactured problem (by
having someone buy the shampoo, use it, and suddenly be embraced by those who
had previously rejected them).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">For this
kind of propaganda, the aim is to hit on common sources of anxiety—and to magnify
our anxiety about them. For the hero of the propogandist’s story, these aren’t niggling
worries to be lived with. They aren’t things to be solved by an inner change of
attitude. In the fictional world the propagandist creates, there are people out
there free of these worries who are living idealized lives. As the story
unfolds, what might have been something the reader hardly worried about is now
something that clearly is a matter of concern—because it is standing in the way
of protagonist’s best life. A threat to happiness. Fortunately, the thing the
propagandist is selling comes along to fix things, and our hero lives happily
ever after.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Propaganda,
by its nature, relies on caricatures, stereotypes, and clichés. That is, it
relies on reinforcing a single narrow body of experience through repitition. A
single story along these lines—a single story in which audience fears and
preconceptions about the Other prove all too real, or audience anxieties are
presented as serious impediments to happiness that are cured by the right
shampoo or ideology—isn’t enough to push the audience towards a specific
answer. Propaganda works through volume (one kind of story dominates) and
through marginalization (alternative stories go unheard).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">When we look
to stories to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">give</i> us the answers, we
are empowering the propagandist, because it is only in the hands of
propagandists that stories will tell us what to believe. This is one reason why
we need philosophy—why stories are not enough. When stories are not controlled
and shaped by propagandists, they open us up to considering new questions and
they shed light on those questions by expanding the scope of our experience.
But then we need to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">think </i>about those
questions, making use of our own experiences and the range of vicarious
experiences that we receive from the stories others have to tell.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">The
necessary follow up to good stories is philosophy. Not necessarily <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">academic </i>philosophy, but philosophy
nonetheless.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">If we aren’t
prepared to do that work—that philosophical work—of thinking things through for
ourselves, we become easy prey for the propagandist. This is true because,
simply put, we need to come up with answers to some of the more pressing
questions of life. If we don’t find those answers through thinking
philosophically about our experience and the range of vicarious experiences
that diverse stories provide, we risk putting ourselves into the propagandist’s
hands. And in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i> hands, stories <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">narrow</i> the range of our experience in
the way well-worn grooves in a trail narrow the path a cart will take. We find
ourselves channeled reliably towards the answers the propagandists want us to
have.<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-84475008328616620972024-02-10T22:23:00.000-06:002024-02-10T22:23:13.472-06:00So Eden Sank to Grief Excerpt: The Hiddenness of Our Hearts<p>The previous except from my forthcoming novel, <i>So Eden Sank to Grief</i>, touched on the hiddenness of God. But God is not the only thing that's hidden in our lives--and it's not the only thing that's hidden in the novel. In fact, hiddenness is one of the recurring themes.</p><p>The passage below captures an intimate moment between the main characters, Caleb and Sally. It's an interlude of quiet after a harrowing "underworld" journey (in which they touch up against something the alien creators of their artificial world are hiding) and before all hell breaks loose.</p><p>It's a moment when the hiddenness of Caleb's heart comes to vivid life for them both. Here's the passage:</p><p>------------------</p><p>She sits up, looking down on Caleb. Something about the contours of his face or the way he breathes makes her realize he’s not asleep. “Caleb?”</p><p>His eyes crack open. “What are you looking at?” he murmurs, a lazy smile forming on his lips.</p><p>“That thing about the Rapture and your dad,” she says. “It’s…I think it’s the first thing you’ve ever told me about him. Was he…theology and Bible interpretation—”</p><p>His smile withers. “He went to seminary but it didn’t stick.” He looks away. “You don’t want to hear about my father.”</p><p>“I do.”</p><p>He takes a breath. “Some stuff—it’s better just to leave it in the past. Burned up and gone.”</p><p>“What? Did he beat you or something?”</p><p>Caleb shakes his head, closes his eyes. </p><p>She lets out a snort of frustration. “Sometimes…sometimes it’s like—I don’t know—it’s like you think that telling me the wrong stuff will make me fall out of love with you.”</p><p>He takes a long breath before sitting up and wrapping his arms around himself. “That’s stupid,” he says.</p><p>“Yes. It is.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter anyway.”</p><p>“Of course it matters.”</p><p>“He’s dead!”</p><p>“He’s your father.”</p><p>“Everyone’s <i>d…d…dead</i>.”</p><p>His stutter makes her heart ache. She touches his brow. “I’m not dead,” she whispers. “You’re not dead. I…I just feel like I don’t know you.”</p><p>“Y…you know me b…better than anyone ever has.”</p><p>“You know what?” She cups his face in her hands, her eyes darting back and forth between his. “I think that’s probably true. And when I think about that it…it makes me want to cry.” </p><p>-----------------</p><p>What reasons does Caleb give for not wanting to talk about his father? Do these sound like the real reasons? Why does Sally think he's holding back?</p><p>How often do we hide our hearts from one another, and why? And what effect does that pattern of hiding have on our capacity to fully connect with those we love, to realize authentic union with others?</p><div>Is it ever true about anything that it's better just to leave it in the past, "burned up and gone"? Or, perhaps better: under what conditions <i>can</i> we actually leave some ugly part of our lives behind?</div><p><br /></p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-41906881554249776862024-01-25T11:53:00.002-06:002024-01-25T12:10:52.832-06:00So Eden Sank to Grief Excerpt: The Hiddenness of God<p> <i>So Eden Sank to Grief </i>releases in just over a month, on February 27. It's a science fiction adventure about a group of people who wake up in a giant greenhouse that's floating in some star-rich corner of the galaxy--with no memory of how they got there. Think <i>Lost </i>meets <i>Lost in Space. </i></p><p>I've been writing and publishing short stories for years, but I'm always a philosopher--and that leaks through into my fiction, especially when the story is based on a parable I originally developed to make a philosophical point. <i>So Eden Sank to Grief </i>grew way beyond that parable, and as soon as I created the characters of Caleb and Sally, <i>what happens to them and what they do about it </i>became far more important than any philosophical point.</p><p>Still, <i>So Eden Sank to Grief </i>inevitably became a vehicle for raising philosophical questions that have long been of central importance to me, and Caleb and Sally can't help but reflect on philosophically significant ideas from their own personal standpoints, especially given the mysterious circumstances into which they've been thrust. A lot of those moments of reflection have to do with religion and God. Go figure.</p><p>Excerpted below is one such moment, followed by some reflection questions. </p><p>-----------</p><p>“The last thing I can remember,” she says. “The fight with my…boyfriend. I think something came afterwards. Like something’s missing.”</p><p>Caleb nods soberly. “I know what you mean.”</p><p>“But what? Is it possible to forget the end of the world?”</p><p>“That’s exactly the kind of thing you’d forget, isn’t it?”</p><p>“But maybe our visions…maybe they weren’t about what’s happened. Maybe it’s a warning. They’ve brought us here to teach us something and then they’ll send us back. You know, to help keep the vision from coming true.”</p><p>“Or maybe the visions are a bunch of crap.”</p><p>Sally looks up, up through the trees at the gap that’s just above them, and from where they sit it looks like a normal slice of night sky. “Do you believe in God?” she asks.</p><p>Caleb lets out a tired laugh. “I acolyted every month as a kid. Confirmed at fourteen. Vacation Bible School attendee through grade school, volunteer since Junior High.”</p><p>“Good God, I’m dating an altar boy.”</p><p>“Don’t worry. I’m not gonna be a preacher. Too afraid of public speaking.”</p><p>“You didn’t answer my question.”</p><p>Caleb stares past her. Maybe he’s thinking about what the question really means. “If there is a God he’s far away. Hiding himself.”</p><p>“Herself.” Sally flashes a wicked grin but can’t sustain it. “Somehow, after it happened, Mom <i>found</i> religion.”</p><p>“But not you.”</p><p>“It was either not believe at all, or hate God for letting Daddy die.”</p><p>-----------------------</p><p>Have you ever, like Sally, found yourself in a situation where atheism seemed the only alternative to hating God? For someone in that situation, which alternative is better? And which is closer to having faith? And why might the very tragedy that put Sally in that situation be the occasion for her mom to "find religion"? What about Caleb's perspective--the idea that God is hidden from us? </p><p>And why do you think that reflecting on their visions led Sally to ask Caleb about God?</p><p>Would love to hear what you think.</p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-39963751331201422782024-01-21T21:10:00.000-06:002024-01-21T21:10:47.694-06:00Tidbits and Snippets from the forthcoming novel, So Eden Sank to Grief, Part 1<p> In anticipation of the release of my novel, <i>So Eden Sank to Grief</i>, on February 27, I thought I'd do a series of posts extracting some tidbits and snippets from the novel, especially ones that connect with this blog's theme of wrestling honestly with religion and God.</p><p>My first snippet, quite short, is inspired by the outcome of tonight's divisional playoff game between my beloved Buffalo Bills and the ever-irritating (if talented) Kansas City Chiefs. If there is one silver lining to the Bills' loss, it is that this snippet still remains fully relevant.</p><p>Here it is:</p><p><br /></p><p><i>There are moments when she almost believes her mother's religion. In those moments, it's that sea of unanswered questions that does it: it seems too unfair for people to just </i>end<i> without ever learning the answers.</i></p><p><i>Never knowing how the next book in the series goes.</i></p><p><i>Never knowing if the Buffalo Bills will ever win a Super Bowl.</i></p><p><i>Never knowing what happened to your kids, or what waits beyond the secret passage or on the far side of the universe.</i></p><p><i>Never knowing what life is really about, and why we all have to go through so much shit.</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p>More to come, so stay tuned!</p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-36469842032112949262023-12-21T14:17:00.002-06:002023-12-21T14:28:23.811-06:00NEW BOOK! And this time it's fiction!<p> For those who've been wondering what I've been up to while I've been neglecting this blog, the answer is...quite a lot.</p><p>In addition to working on a new philosophy book, The Problem of Heavenly Grief, I've got a science fiction novel coming out with Quoir Books, So Eden Sank to Grief. </p><p>And it's based on a parable I wrote for this blog during it's first year, all the way back in 2008: <a href="https://thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot.com/2008/10/parable-of-spaceship.html" target="_blank">The Parable of the Spaceship</a>. </p><p>The story has evolved so much over the years it's not even remotely the same story, but the bones of that original parable are still there. </p><p>Below is the front and back cover. I love how it came out...and I'm kind of proud of it, since they used my own art as the cover image. </p><p>(Also, check out the blurb from <a href="https://markalpert.com/" target="_blank">Mark Alpert</a>, internationally bestselling author of such books as <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Final-Theory-Novel-Mark-Alpert-ebook/dp/B0011UEELY?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.QkXCVOZBX6j5qd9xHNfP1kvasvkOU495i4xX_csoIE2w1gM0JcJeGK3Y-K_27dpPrqSA_1Nz2CAQUMH6a9y7gkEpEPw0krwVT-_ViC1jbkIgupR8Xe-iDO_PikaXBcjgXgnBQEI7ryRPNAjfGOZZg5QmsGTIfsBrog4wFVqRjuOX1KS1BGA-3vx_XePztLgCIvFt7eAHxojoHZgyX3Zns_wJkgBfYyIhSY2YZCr3vu4.RunMgwbjLL1MnPr6oMYyHUx6pGT3-dF4D8UkF3jfd9E&dib_tag=AUTHOR" target="_blank">The Final Theory</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Joan-New-York-String/dp/B08G1Z7CM8/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=uJziX&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=132-5932661-3348619&pd_rd_wg=EpwqS&pd_rd_r=7ee095d1-29f6-4150-ab3b-72ac4a5d6826&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk" target="_blank">Saint Joan of New York</a>, and, most recently, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Show-Mark-Alpert/dp/1448309263/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=uJziX&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=132-5932661-3348619&pd_rd_wg=EpwqS&pd_rd_r=7ee095d1-29f6-4150-ab3b-72ac4a5d6826&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk" target="_blank">The Doomsday Show</a>.) </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQcfLvG0I2689hXkkCwg6aASDy0EY6pdEkmLowizVFDSjRzaNhOXvs64_u10V2TCf7YjC1vKzw9Y2UkqVS-EM7HMARIZyqmyzE5ssEJKB1nFH7PrSoxJ1ye2D1IRxpYP4s3S6jsZ9oYDyQs77xWNdLFVbb4cUiHaJznerbsgUDgEs4l09vU5zty36pmRaK/s1683/So%20Eden%20Sank%20to%20Grief%20Front%20Cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1683" data-original-width="1079" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQcfLvG0I2689hXkkCwg6aASDy0EY6pdEkmLowizVFDSjRzaNhOXvs64_u10V2TCf7YjC1vKzw9Y2UkqVS-EM7HMARIZyqmyzE5ssEJKB1nFH7PrSoxJ1ye2D1IRxpYP4s3S6jsZ9oYDyQs77xWNdLFVbb4cUiHaJznerbsgUDgEs4l09vU5zty36pmRaK/w410-h640/So%20Eden%20Sank%20to%20Grief%20Front%20Cover.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcS1TdVddnj7j6-fDNg_RCDM2T73W00n9astoWTsiypkcrbsWCW0T6aFbJSeuXb27LS1pR0FeJ3UBhODvmaANetmGCux31-rBXUjAPFRqXQk12B_ysAMla003hg_a8DKhwQiQrg63SvwhJ6gQTmQW1omgoEaUoQsOUAuUHQScnpAvP7Z8BzKOiV3AdrwHJ/s1698/So%20Eden%20Sank%20to%20Grief%20Back%20Cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1698" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcS1TdVddnj7j6-fDNg_RCDM2T73W00n9astoWTsiypkcrbsWCW0T6aFbJSeuXb27LS1pR0FeJ3UBhODvmaANetmGCux31-rBXUjAPFRqXQk12B_ysAMla003hg_a8DKhwQiQrg63SvwhJ6gQTmQW1omgoEaUoQsOUAuUHQScnpAvP7Z8BzKOiV3AdrwHJ/w408-h640/So%20Eden%20Sank%20to%20Grief%20Back%20Cover.jpg" width="408" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-50394402785563477832022-10-18T11:45:00.003-05:002022-10-18T12:09:53.651-05:00Friday Night Lights and Public Education: A Reflection<p>I've come to love Friday Night Lights: cheering for my high school football team and (more important, since my daughter's in the band) for the pride of Stillwater, the Pioneer Marching Band.</p><p>I love the fact that I am united with a whole bunch of people I don't know in a shared set of rituals, cheering for OUR team, cheering on OUR band, watching the dance/pom squad and the cheer squad show off their competition routines, cheering for all the young people who have accomplished great things in our community and are brought to the crowd's attention during breaks in game play.</p><p>You know what wouldn't achieve this kind of community unity, bring people from all over town together from a wide range of different demographics and economic brackets? The football game of the McUppity Private College-Preparatory School.</p><p>Conservativism, at its heart, is about valuing traditions and long-standing institutions and being very cautious about upending or damaging them. Our public schools are one such long-standing institution, and so much of our collective life--so much of our culture--has grown up and taken shape in and through our public schools.</p><p>At their best, our public schools bring divergent parts of our communities together in the shared project of supporting and education and cheering for our kids. Nothing symbolizes this more than Friday Night Lights, when people from different economic brackets, different political parties, and different faith communities, come together to cheer the community’s kids. </p><p>But there is a growing ideological opposition to our public schools, one that prefers a vision of everyone-for-themselves fragmentation in which public dollars are funneled into private schools instead--schools that by their nature aren't for everyone. "School choice" sounds nice, but private schools aren't required to let everyone in--they can refuse to educate those with special needs or can insist on educating only the gifted and talented or the people who belong to their particular faith tradition, etc. Channeling tax dollars towards these schools means the public schools will shrink and have fewer resources, and this will become a feedback loop: As they become less equipped to educate our kids, more families will choose to send their kids and public tax dollars to a private school. Eventually, the public school will be replaced by private schools for high-performing students and a public remedial school where the students with special needs or challenges are segregated from their peers and have too few resources to succeed. </p><p>One clear cost of this approach is that we will see an increase in inequality in the form of unequal access to the goods of education. But this point aside, were this anti-public-school vision for the future of education to succeed, there would no longer be the <i>community’s</i> school. Instead, there’d be the school of the rich country club set, the school of the Roman Catholic parish, etc. </p><p>None of these private institutions will draw the community together in a version of Friday Night Lights—because none of these belong to the community. </p><p>Of course, those who are critical of the institution of public education don't get up on a debate stage and tell us they aim to bring an end to Friday Night Lights. (In the current state superintendent race, the representative of this anti-public-school ideology hasn't gotten up on the debate stage at all. He was a no-show for the recent agreed-upon debate, perhaps afraid of what truths about him would be exposed.) </p><p>But even if they don’t get up and say it, the gutting of public schools is the gutting of a center of community life in America. In addition to jeopardizing democratic access to quality education, it would hasten the fragmentation of our communities.</p><p>This is an element of our public school system that doesn’t get the attention it deserves in our public discussions, even though it is an element we experience directly in all kinds of ways. Maybe we don’t pay attention to it because it is so integral to our lives that we take it for granted. </p><p>We shouldn’t. It is a robust public school system that makes Friday Night Lights possible. The marching band of the college-prep school on the rich end of MyTown won’t be the Pride of MyTown. It’ll be the Pride of the Rich Elites.</p><p>The very existence of so many of the valuable things we take for granted have been built up around and depend on long-standing public institutions. This is where the deep truth of conservatism lies: we shouldn’t be cavalier about upending such institutions or gutting our traditions, because it is sometimes hard to see how much of what we value is tied to them and depends on them.</p><p>I believe in public education. Its community-building importance, symbolized and embodied in Friday Night Lights, is just one of many reasons. When it comes to public education, I’m a conservative: I believe we should be deeply careful about policy proposals that threaten to undercut support for something that has been such a central part of American life for generations. </p><p>I never discovered Friday Night Lights before moving to Oklahoma, but I'm glad I did. And I hope that it continues to be a part of American culture into the future. Because it is a bastion against community fragmentation. It is a time and place where neighbors and strangers can come together to cheer as a community for the accomplishments of our kids. </p><p>It wouldn't exist without the public school--the community's school, the school that belongs to the community as a whole. But that is part of what makes it so meaningful to me. So often today we think only of ourselves, only own own kids, our own success. Friday Night Lights is the community coming together to celebrate its most important collective project: working together as a team to successfully prepare the next generation.</p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-69966146083906032202022-09-01T09:15:00.001-05:002022-09-01T09:16:49.164-05:00An Open Letter to Oklahoma Voters<p>Yesterday, Oklahoma State Secretary of Education Ryan Walters asked the Oklahoma State Board of Education to revoke the teaching license of Summer Boismier, who was recently fired from Norman Public Schools for sharing with her students a link to the Brooklyn Public Library (which has recently made access to their digital collection free to teens across the US as a way to help mute the impact of various book-banning efforts at public school libraries). Here's a copy of his letter:</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh26Cjh6koEcI3fKj5FpXsLBpyLVGun7yw8P7Wp9tc20_Z6H-qRf-45MAgG7qTWiUMLs-PFj0kF6vuSKJSIhHDAJcG0Vc90LymgblfAniJVNZef0q381PH4n93y5Wdq4ZxA1rIhGM6MilcNT6WJaVeEL5p47DO0vxzmjbBKeMT4JrnIV-or-L1aAZQyjA/s828/Ryan%20Walters%20F-d%20up%20letter.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="807" data-original-width="828" height="568" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh26Cjh6koEcI3fKj5FpXsLBpyLVGun7yw8P7Wp9tc20_Z6H-qRf-45MAgG7qTWiUMLs-PFj0kF6vuSKJSIhHDAJcG0Vc90LymgblfAniJVNZef0q381PH4n93y5Wdq4ZxA1rIhGM6MilcNT6WJaVeEL5p47DO0vxzmjbBKeMT4JrnIV-or-L1aAZQyjA/w528-h568/Ryan%20Walters%20F-d%20up%20letter.jpg" width="528" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Even if I'm not impressed with the substance of his letter, the structure of it is pretty nice--worthy of emulation, even. Unfortunately, I found it very difficult to use <i>only </i>slanted language without any argument or explanation or clarification, so I couldn't get myself to follow the form of the letter exactly. Even so, I was able to get pretty close. Here is the result. </p><p><br /></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Oklahoma Voters:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In light of recent events leading to the subsequent firing
of Norman High School English Teach Summer Boismier, I am asking the voters of
Oklahoma to revoke Ryan Walters’ capacity to further damage public schools and undermine the quality of education in Oklahoma. There is no place for a politician with a radical anti-education
political agenda in any political leadership position in Oklahoma, let alone in
such positions as Secretary of Education or Superintendent of Public Schools
(Walters currently holds the former appointed position and is running for the
latter).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ms. Boismier providing the link to a collection of books in
the Brooklyn Public Library system, available free to all teens, is evidence of a good teacher's interest in expanding young minds through access to quality books. Ryan Walters representing this act as a case of “providing
access to banned and pornographic material to students” is an unacceptable misrepresentation, and his call to have Ms. Boismier’s teaching
certification revoked is evidence that he cares more about using his power to
deprive students of access to ideas that don’t conform to his narrow ideology,
while instilling a culture of fear among teachers, than about the quality of
education in Oklahoma. These actions must
be dealt with swiftly and with respect to all our kids and parents.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Teachers are one of our state’s greatest assets and it is unfortunate
that one of our state leaders overseeing education would use his power in
draconian ways to pursue an extreme agenda, causing quality teachers to be
fired and driving others out of the profession at a time when we are experiencing an unprecedented teacher shortage. This type of behavior will not be tolerated
in Oklahoma and I speak for students, teachers, parents, and concerned citizens
across the state who are demanding swift and immediate action.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p><br /></p>Kids first (notice I put students first in the last sentence),<p></p><p><br /></p><p>Eric Reitan</p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-4553165428022479002022-08-17T11:40:00.007-05:002022-08-20T14:18:13.385-05:00The New Book-Banning Movement: Scrubbing Schools Clean of Diversity, Profanity, and Sexual Content<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The New Book Banning Surge<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Recently, some
parents here in Stillwater, OK, have started following a national trend of trying to get
books pulled from school library shelves for being inappropriate. Banning books
from school libraries has seen </span><a href="https://pen.org/banned-in-the-usa/" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">an unprecedented rise </a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">in the last year or two,
and the evidence indicates that targets for removal are disproportionately books
that feature diverse characters and themes, especially books by or about LGBT+
persons and people of color, and books that wrestle with issues of race in
America.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-prevalent-are-book-bans-this-year-new-data-show-impact/2022/04#:~:text=About%2022%20percent%E2%80%94or%20247,nonfiction%20titles%2C%20have%20been%20banned." target="_blank">Accordingto Education Week</a>, in the recent wave 41% of books banned from school libraries
feature people of color as protagonists, 22% are books that address issues of
race and racism, and 33% are books with LGBT+ themes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">If
diverse books were not being </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">explicitly</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
targeted we wouldn’t expect these numbers, given how recently school libraries
have started diversifying their collections to include these minority voices
and perspectives, and hence what a small percentage of the total collection
these books represent.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Co-Opting Parents with Concerns about
Sex and Profanity<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
many parents are brought into the book-banning fight not by an explicit appeal
to diversity but by appeal to worries about sex, violence, and offensive
language in the targeted books—with sexual content and offensive language being
especially significant in getting parents energized.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">So,
for example, the far right group <a href="https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/education/2022/05/11/brevard-moms-liberty-challenges-kite-runner-slaughterhouse-five-list-4-book-bans/9715731002/" target="_blank">Moms for Liberty</a> has been at the forefront
of efforts to ban books from schools, and they use the strategy of extracting
passages with sexual content or profanity from the books they want banned and
calling these passages to the attention of parents in the hope of triggering
outrage.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Among
their tools for pursuing book bans is the creation of <a href="https://bookriot.com/moms-for-liberty-booklooks/?fbclid=IwAR1iJA1LW_bR_RhKBedfP2Eb6RO92kxK18l8XXQwITz9cZLqQGVS-e5BGsY" target="_blank">a book-rating resource for parents, called BookLooks</a>, that rates books based on content, especially
focusing on sex and profanity. Books that score a 4 or 5 on a 0-5 scale of
increasingly objectionable content are then lifted up as targets for banning.
(It is worth noting that violence and drug/alcohol use are part of the rating
system, but what puts you into the 4 or 5 category is sexual content alone: a
book with extreme and explicit depictions of brutal violence but no sexual
content would be rated as a 3.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">One
big problem, of course, is that only a small number of books—out of the huge
number available in public school libraries—have actually been rated. Based on
the disproportionate degree to which diverse books are the targets of bans, one
can assume that selection of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">which</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> books
are read with enough care to </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">discover</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
the “objectionable content” appears to be guided by things that have nothing to
do with sex and cussing and everything to do with limiting diversity on the
school library shelves.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
even if that is true, the sex and cussing are highlighted, and many parents who
are swept up in the book-banning movement are drawn into it by concerns about
sexual content and profanity. When more egalitarian-minded parents and teachers
and librarians point out that there are many books not targeted for removal
that have just as much foul language and sex, these parents happily declare, “Remove
them, too!” (This was the immediate response of one Stillwater parent in a Facebook discussion thread about the local book-banning efforts here in town.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
other words, because a desire to limit diversity and representation in school
libraries is an obviously problematic reason to deny our kids access to books,
objections to sex and cussing have become a driving </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">public</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> justification that can drum up the support of parents who
wouldn’t be keen on a call to “eliminate diversity and representation in our
public school libraries!” <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/banning-books-about-martin-luther-king-jr-and-opposing-school-district" target="_blank">Bigots can work behind the scenes</a>, looking for
objectionable content in the diverse books—and since parents don’t have the
time or energy to read </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">all </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">the books
in the school library, the effect is that parents concerned about limiting
access to sex and cussing will call for the banning of the identified books, books
with diverse themes and authors, while letting similarly sexy and cussy books remain
on the shelves.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
short, parents concerned about sex and cussing are being co-opted to serve the
agendas of operators behind the scenes who are motivated by different aims. But
here’s the thing: even if parental worries about profanity and sex in books </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">weren’t</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> being co-opted for the purpose
of removing diverse books from our shelves, there are still reasons to question
reliance on sexual or profane content as a basis for deciding what books should
be available to our children.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">My Parents’ Policy—and its Effects<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">When
I was growing up, my parents had the following policy with respect to my
book-choices: they raised their eyebrows slightly when I came home with genre
fiction. Which I did a lot, in spite of their raised eyebrows, because (my
parents’ snooty preference for literary fiction notwithstanding) there are lots
of great books in genre fiction.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">In short, I was given carte blanche freedom to read whatever I wanted to
read. Usually it was fantasy and science fiction novels (JRR Tolkien and Ursula
K. Le Guin were favorites). I loved Kurt Vonnegut. Sometimes I read something
as weighty as Chaim Potok's <i>My Name is Asher Lev</i>...or
Dostoevsky's <i>Crime and Punishment</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Did
I end up reading books laced with profanity? Yes. Sexual content? Yes. Explicit
violence? Oh yes. Great, thought-provoking literature? Yes. Stories about
people very different from myself and those I grew up with, with perspectives
on life radically unlike that of my community? Yes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">My
parents didn’t care </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">what</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I was
reading. They cared </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">that</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I was
reading. And what was the effect of their hands-off policy? I almost never cuss,
despite the cussing I read in books growing up. My sexual life is extremely
tame, even though that wasn’t always true of the characters in the books I read.
As far as I can recall I have never committed an act of physical violence since
childhood (I believe I punched someone once when I was three and another time
in junior high), even though there was lots and lots of violence in the books
I read.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">If
there’s one really obvious effect that my childhood reading habits had on my
life, it’s this: I was very successful in college and graduate school, and
today I’m a college professor who still spends a lot of time reading and
writing. Less obvious, perhaps, but just as real and more important: my
prolific reading, especially of fiction, has had an impact on my capacity for
empathy and compassion, my ability to imagine myself into the circumstances of people quite different from myself.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now
I’m not saying we should put soft porn novels in our grade school libraries.
But I am saying that a fixation on sex and cussing in our high school library
collections is a misguided fixation, one that could deprive our children of
things with enormous value for their lives--and as such do them harm.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Profanity<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Let’s
start with foul language. Apparently BookLooks, created by Moms for Liberty to
serve their book-banning efforts, gives a </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">count
</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">of the number of cuss words in a book, using that to help determine where
to place the book on the 0-5 ratings system. But how important is the amount of
profanity?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">When
it comes to cussing in novels, so much of the impact it will have on readers
depends on the broader context. Who is doing the cussing in the book? Someone
the reader admires and wants to emulate? Someone who’s a jerk? Or someone the
reader feels sorry for? Is the cussing happening because the author is trying
to honestly represent the character—something the teen reader will likely
recognize, because they know people in real life who follow the same pattern of
cussing? Or is the cussing happening gratuitously, as a way to spice up the
story and make the characters seem more dangerous? All of these factors will
affect how the cussing in the book affects teen readers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">And
let’s be honest about two things. First, we all hear cussing in real life,
because there are people who cuss. Some cuss a lot. If you want to protect your
kids from cussing, maybe try pretending that the COVID quarantine is still
ongoing and hope your kids believe you and stay home. You certainly don’t want
them sitting in a school cafeteria. Ever. But you’ll need to control your kids’
viewing habits, too. If your kids have access to TV or internet it will take a
lot of effort to shield them from foul language. Books are hardly the main
thing to worry about here—and in great books, the exposure to cussing is far
more likely to have an important pay-off, in terms of deepened empathy for
others or a broader understanding the human condition, than will the cussing
they encounter in school hallways every day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
second thing is this: We all know really good human beings, people with big
hearts, who cuss. And we know some truly nasty people who are cussing-teetotalers,
with never a salty word escaping their lips. The correlation between good
character and cussing is…very thin, verging on nonexistent. Sure, we want to
encourage people to avoid giving needless offense. But guess what? A novel in
which a good person who cusses a lot ends up giving needless offense might just
teach that lesson—and would be banned under policies that only care about how
frequently cuss words appear in the text.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Sexual Content<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">So
what about sexual content in books?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Here’s
a small confession: As a teenage boy I thought a lot about sex (the sex I never
actually had). I tried to get my hands on dirty magazines (there was a kind of
black market of dirty magazines among my peers—magazines pilfered from trash
cans or stolen from some father’s or older brother’s stash—the 20</span><sup style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
Century equivalent of working around parental internet controls). But I also
was lured by the promise of literary depictions of sex in books.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
promise that a book contained a sex scene was often enough to get me to read it
cover to cover. But the books I had access to which promised such scenes were </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">good</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> books. My parents didn’t have porn
or erotica on their shelves, and neither did the public or high school
libraries, even if they had books with sexual content.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
ended up reading a lot of great fiction—powerful literature with important
themes, works that moved and transformed me—because I was hunting for the
promised sex scene.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
scenes are long forgotten (if they were there at all--I sometimes got bad tips, such as when I read Remarque's <i>All Quiet on the Western Front </i>in junior high on the promise of a sex scene). The big themes and the true-to-life
characters and their struggles to belong, to find meaning, to figure out who
they were and how they fit in, to rise up against challenges and confront injustice—those things stayed with me. They made me a wiser
person than I would have been. A better person.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Again,
I’m not saying we should be leaving soft core erotica lying around for pre-teens
to read. And I don’t mean we should deliberately use the promise of sex scenes
in books to lure kids into reading. What I’m saying is that some sexual content
in a novel with literary merit is not the sort of thing we should be especially worried
about, because that is not the sort of thing that will damage teenagers who,
even if they aren’t having sex, are already thinking about sex, already
obsessing about sex, already finding ways around parental controls on internet
and streaming content, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
my own childhood, there was only one time I can remember stumbling into
something in a book that fired up my “prurient” interests. It wasn’t in any of those
significant works of literature that deal honestly with human struggles,
sometimes including sexuality (the kinds of books school librarians are apt to
put on high school shelves).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Instead,
it was in a cheesy teen romance I filched from my older sister, a book that
involved no sex at all—what today would be classified as “clean” YA (young adult),
since it avoided all the forbidden things: no drugs or alcohol use, no sex, no
cussing. Just lots of kissing, kissing described in a way that fired up my teen
hormones. When I encountered a sex scene in a serious work of literature, the
deeper themes had me so absorbed that it never occurred to me to wallow in the
sex. That wallowing happened with the shallow book, the one with no big ideas
or important human truths to distract me from the way the depictions of kissing
made me feel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">One
of the scenes I read as a young adult had a profound effect on me. I can no
longer remember the book, but the scene was one in which a young woman is the victim of date rape (although I think it was written before that concept was part of our shared vocabulary). It was just explicit enough to make it
clear what was happening, but the weight of the writing was on the psychological
experience of the girl—her anguish, the horror she felt at what was done
to her by a guy she’d been attracted to, someone she’d chosen to trust, the psychological forces that kept her from refusing more forcefully, and her perverse guilt and self-blame in the aftermath. For the
first time in my life, I—a straight white teenage boy obsessed with sex—found myself
imagining what it would be like to be the victim of rape. I was crying in
empathy with the girl’s experience.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Would
I have become a date rapist had I not read that scene? I certainly hope not. But
reading that changed me, making me more vividly aware than I had been before of
just how utterly crucial it was for both parties to a sexual encounter to be
fully, completely consenting, with no hint of ambiguity or uncertainty. It was
the kind of thing that, after you finished reading it, exploded any notion some
guy might have that silence was consent, or that someone who stopped saying no
and just lay there had changed their mind.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Just
yesterday, I read another scene a bit like the one that impacted me as a kid (although different). I read it
while researching for this essay. Where did I read it? It was an excerpt from
the book </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28096541-the-nowhere-girls" target="_blank">The Nowhere Girls </a></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28096541-the-nowhere-girls" target="_blank">by Amy
Reed</a>. It was the main excerpt that the BookLooks rating site extracted from the
book as an example of objectionable content. Moms for Liberty is using this
rating as a rationale for seeking to have the book banned from school library
shelves. (I now know the next book on my to-read list, one I'll almost certainly be passing it on to my teenage children.) </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">A world where more kids read books like this is a world where sexual assault victims will have more allies, where more social and personal forces will be marshalled against the forces that spit out rapists--a world, in short, where our children are safer and better off.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
point is this: if you care about your kids’ healthy emotional development and
growth as a person but what you focus on is whether a book contains sex, you are
focusing on the wrong thing. What matters the most for your child’s emotional and
spiritual and personal growth is whether the book offers insight into the human
condition and understanding of other people, whether it encourages empathy with
struggles your kids have never faced as well as identification with struggles
they know well (except they now feel less alone in the struggle, less isolated
and less likely to fall into despair).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>The Value of Good Books, Sexual Content or Not</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Good books offer insights into the human condition and opportunities for cultivating
greater understanding and empathy towards others. In short, good books
increase our wisdom. Sometimes the wisdom is wisdom </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">about sex</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">, the sort of wisdom I want my teenage children to have. But
even if the wisdom is mainly about something else, I don’t want my children to
be deprived of that wisdom because of a sex scene. In good books—the kinds of
books our school librarians are trained to look for and add to school
collections—if there is sex it is not gratuitous and disconnected from the
story. Rather, it is integral to a larger story and as such can offer insight into the significance
of sex, the risks of sex, and its</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">place
in the broader context of human life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Lousy
books, by contrast, can lead us to wallow in the very shallow waters that
encourage fixation on superficial desires, including sexual ones—even if they
assiduously avoid explicit sex.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Our
teens are going to be thinking about sex whether or not there are books in the
library that have sexual content. But if there are good books that do, that may
help them think about sex more wisely.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Many
teens will be </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">having</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> sex whether or
not there are books in the library with sexual content. But if there are good
books with such content—books that are honest about teen sexuality, its
consequences and impact on the lives of those who choose it—they may make
better sexual choices than they would have otherwise.</span></p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-18883422166076481132022-08-09T11:49:00.002-05:002022-08-09T14:46:06.576-05:00Bumbling Idiocy, Reticent Dutifulness, or Superhuman Conspiracy: Alternate Versions of the Mar-a-Lago Search Decision<p>Let us consider some alternative versions of what happened behind the scenes in the FBI and DOJ prior to and leading up to the execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. Which version is the most likely or most plausible?</p><p><br /></p><p>Version 1--the Bumbling Idiocy Version:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Let’s find a judge who’ll sign off on a legally unjustified,
politically-motivated fishing expedition--um, that is, search warrant--against an ex-President! With a
nefarious scheme of this scale and with this many people involved, there’s no
way the legal fishiness of our rationale will be exposed! It’s not like Trump
will start screaming bloody murder and riling up a base that’s already shown
they’ll storm the Capitol for him, and it’s certainly not like the Republicans
in Congress would paint it as politically motivated misuse of power in a bid to
win votes. Nothing to lose and everything to gain! Now which judge will look at
a bunch of piss-poor evidence and call it good enough for a search warrant
against an ex-President—and won’t worry about his unjustified decision being
put under the microscope?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Version 2--the Reticent Dutifulness Version:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Holy $#!*. We’re talking about executing a search warrant
on an <i>ex-President</i>. Half the country is going to scream that it’s political,
and Republican politicians will encourage that! The credibility of the FBI and
DOJ will be the immediate topic of national conversation. Are we absolutely sure
our professional duty and the evidence before us demands that we do this?
Because it's going to be a $#!*-storm. Okay, okay. So if we’re going to do
this, we’ve got to be absolutely sure that our case is ten times stronger than
would be sufficient for executing such a search in any other case, that
everything is so by-the-book, with such an air-tight legal justification & such
impeccable documentation, that we can answer every challenge that is going to
be raised. Because even then, a third of the country is going to believe that
we did this as an unjustified political attack rather than as an effort to
ensure no one is above the law.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Which version is more plausible, given that we are talking about both the FBI and the DOJ, organizations filled with career public servants of varying political allegiances, many of them very smart, at least some of them very principled, and all of them surely operating with the understanding that this action will put them under the microscope in an unprecedented way?</p><p class="MsoNormal">Maybe it's a third alternative. Maybe, rather than bumbling idiocy (version 1) or reticent dutifulness (version 2), you think the behind-the-scenes-story is a <i>conspiracy</i>. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Version 3--the Superhuman Conspiracy Version:</p><p class="MsoNormal">"We, the Deep State, are a highly secretive and hidden cabal within the US that actually pulls the strings of national and global events without public knowledge. We have agents everywhere who are absolutely loyal. And our reach extends into every dimension of public life. We've achieved all this without anyone giving us away, and we will draw on these superhuman resources to fabricate a legal justification for the search of an ex-President's home and offices, one so meticulous and carefully constructed that there is no way it will fall apart in the light of even unprecedented public scrutiny. And just to be safe, we will have Judge X sign off on the warrant, since we have such damning dirt on him that he'll sign it no matter what. And we have dirt on every journalist who might be inclined to investigate Judge X and his decision! Not that we'll need to use that dirt, because all the journalists are in our pocket except Alex Jones, and we've managed to shut him down with that lawsuit. We're <i>that </i>powerful! Bwahahaha!"</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Conspiracies happen. They do. But they depend for their success on secrecy. Such secrecy is maintained by staying under the radar as much as possible and by having as few people as possible aware of what is going on. The kind of raid we're talking about is exactly the sort of thing conspirators would want to avoid: the scale if it and the resultant massive scrutiny are the greatest enemies of the secrecy on which conspiracies depend. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The idea that the conspirators are so powerful that they don't need to worry about threats to secrecy--that's what, inspired by philosopher Brian Keeley, I'd be inclined to identify as one defining hallmark of a "conspiracy theory." In a conspiracy theory, we begin with a story that explains events in terms of the operation of a group of hidden conspirators--but as objections to this story are raised, the objections are handled by increasing the size and reach of the conspirators. The judicial branch approved it because they're in on it! Your objection is based on information provided by the news media, but they're part of it, too! Eventually, the conspiracy reaches a size and level of power and unity of purpose--and continued secrecy--essentially impossible to reconcile with the messy realities of fallible human enterprises. </p><p class="MsoNormal">(In addition to the above, in his seminal philosophical work on conspiracy theories Brian Keeley focuses special attention on another dimension of conspiracy theories: in order to be sustained, they require adopting a kind of global skepticism about our ordinary sources of public knowledge. I find this a rich source of reflection about the dynamics of conspiracy theories.)</p><p class="MsoNormal">Superhuman conspiracies have been popularized in films and TV shows and novels--and they make for great fiction. But in real-world conspiracies, there is a real possibility of exposure, increasing as more people are involved and more public scrutiny is directed at the events the conspirators are involved with. And this means that conspirators don't tend to work through such things as highly-publicized officially-sanctioned raids that are guaranteed, by virtue of the political climate, to inspire many powerful politicians to demand and bring about unprecedented levels of scrutiny. </p><p class="MsoNormal">In short, a realistic formulation of the conspiracy version of the story folds into the bumbling idiocy version (version 1).</p><p class="MsoNormal">One more thought: Someone might think that the "reticent dutifulness" version (version 2) is too idealistic about public servants working in agencies like the FBI and the DOJ. But here's the thing. It might be too idealistic to assume that the people working at these agencies are so overwhelmingly guided by a sense of principle and duty that it would be impossible to pull off a less-than-above-board search. It is not too idealistic to assume that most people want to be<i> seen</i> as good people, and most people don't want to be <i>caught in the act</i> of doing something unsavory--and on those grounds posit that when they know they are going to be subjected to intense public scrutiny--as they will when they are involved in ordering a search of the property of an ex-President--they try to be as professional and above-board as possible.</p><p class="MsoNormal">That's just a basic inference about the way people generally are. Given that fact, and the competence and intelligence of so many who work in these agencies--along with the fact that many of them<i> are</i> professional and principled human beings who take the rule of law seriously and come from a diversity of political persuasions--it seems to me that the reticent dutifulness version of the story is considerably more plausible than the bumbling idiocy version.</p><p class="MsoNormal">But if the bumbling idiocy version is true, that should become apparent in the days and weeks to come (unless, of course, there is a superhuman conspiracy working to systematically silence all evidence of bumbling idiocy--and doing it so successfully that the truth is only known to that one guy who posts earnest YouTube videos about these conspiracies from inside his car, referencing unnamed sources that are "really high up" and have entrusted their secrets to him).</p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-24413352268685510442022-07-30T13:27:00.002-05:002022-08-19T18:37:13.095-05:00Shutting Down Racial Bias Education in Oklahoma? The Chilling Impact of HB 1775 and Recent OSBE Decisions<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">On
July 28, 2022, the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted to lower the
accreditation status of both Tulsa Public Schools and Mustang Public Schools to
the status of “accredited with warning.” In both cases, it was because of an
alleged violation of Oklahoma’s new (as of 2021) law, HB 1775, originally developed
in order to preclude the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools
(although what the law specifically prohibits—enumerated below—is not what
critical race theory, a field of legal study developed in law schools, actually
says).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
would like to spend a few minutes reflecting on this law and the recent OSBE
decisions, with an eye towards the likely future impact of HB 1775 given these decisions—and what implications that has for the state of Oklahoma.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">What Does HB 1775 Say?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
crucial section of HB 1775 is the “General Prohibition” section, which begins
with these words: “No teacher, administrator or other school employee shall
require or make part of any Course offered in a public school the following discriminatory
principles.” It then enumerates the prohibited principles as follows:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">(1)
One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">(2)
An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist,
sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">(3)
An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment
solely or partly because of his or her race or sex, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">(4)
Members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others
without respect to race or sex, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">(5)
An individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or
sex, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">(6)
An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for
actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">(7)
Any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of
psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex, or <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">(8)
Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist or were
created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Many—included
Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, Joy Hofmeister—have commented
that the wording of the law is vague, meaning that even if we have the law in
front of us it may be less than clear what the law actually prohibits.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">One
immediate problem of this sort has to do with what it means to “make part of any
Course” one or more of the prohibited principles. The charitable part of me
would like to assume that the intent here is not to prohibit </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">bringing up </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">these principles for the
sake of critical discussion in a classroom, but rather to prohibit </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">endorsing</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> them (and encouraging students
to endorse them). But the wording could go either way. And that creates some
serious worries.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Consider
the first prohibited principle: one race or sex is inherently superior to
another. This principle was accepted by many Americans in history and was used
to justify the institution of slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc. A history teacher
who did not call attention to this racist ideology and how it shaped historical
institutions and events would be failing to provide a proper understanding of
our history. But to call attention to this ideology, to make it explicit and
look at how it shaped American history, would clearly involve making principle
(1) “part of” a history course in one obvious meaning of that phrase.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">And
so, the wording of the law leaves open the possibility that a history teacher
could be found guilty of violating the law simply because </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">they are doing a good job of teaching history</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Or
take prohibited principle (6): ”An individual, by virtue of his or her race or
sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of
the same race or sex.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Suppose
a high school history teacher wanted to consider the issue of reparations for
the Tulsa Race Massacre. There are lots of interesting and important arguments
here. Property ownership is one of the most significant ways that wealth is
passed down from one generation to another, and in the Tulsa Race Massacre,
Black Wall Street was burned down—and with it, the property of its citizens. We
can reasonably infer that the descendants of those who were killed and
dispossessed by the massacre would have been financially better off today had white Tulsans not committed brutal murder and destruction, or had
the state compensated the victims at the time. In short, past injustices reach
into the present, affecting people alive today. Does Oklahoma as a community have an
obligation to try to remedy the injustice that current Oklahomans are experiencing because of the misdeeds of people in the past?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Suppose
a history teacher decided to explore this question and consider arguments on
both sides of it. Let’s suppose no one is arguing that the students in the
classroom are guilty of the crime that was committed by people long dead. No
one is arguing, absurdly, that they are responsible in </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">that</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> sense of the word. But some are arguing that the current
generation <i>has a moral responsibility </i>to remedy existing injustices in our
state, and that the crimes of past generations have cast a long shadow into the
present, one which means current Black Oklahomans are worse off than they would
have been had the massacre never occurred.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">If
a teacher in Oklahoma leads a discussion on this question, taking seriously
arguments of the latter sort, are they then “teaching” principle (6) in
violation of HB1775? Or are they only violating it if they dub their students
morally blameworthy for crimes committed before they were born (something no
thoughtful person would actually claim)?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Straw-Manning<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Setting
aside problems of vagueness, there are other serious problems with HB 1775,
problems that have the potential to hamper excellence in education and impede
efforts to fight racism in Oklahoma. These problems arise because HB 1775
emerged out the 2020 culture wars surrounding racism and so-called “critical
race theory” in America—and those culture wars featured a lot of straw-manning
of views, straw-manning that continues to cause enormous misunderstanding.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">If
a law is regulating what people are allowed to </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">say</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">, and if we are in the habit of grossly misunderstanding what
people say (especially across the culture-war battle lines), then the law is in
serious danger of being used to condemn people who didn’t actually violate the
law.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">To
see what I mean, let’s consider principle (2): “An individual, by virtue of his
or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether
consciously or unconsciously.” This principle is worth thinking about with
care, because it’s the principle that takes center stage in the complaint
against Tulsa Public Schools.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Given
its wording, I have no objection as such to prohibiting the teaching of this
principle in public schools, since it is clearly false: the idea that people
are inherently racist because of their race is nonsense. Simply having certain
physiological features, such as pale skin, has zero impact as such on what you
believe about human beings and how you act towards other. How we think about
and treat people who look different from us is a function of upbringing and
life experiences, education and cultural influence—things that might be influenced
by our skin color, but only because we live in a society where skin color
impacts life experiences.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">That
I am racist by nature because of my innate “whiteness” is also problematic
because it assumes that race is an actual thing, a biological reality that can
have actual effects on what a person is like all by itself. But we know now
that race is a cultural construct: it has no biological foundation. Instead,
human cultures pick out certain physiological traits that in themselves are
meaningless and treat them as if they were significant, grouping people into
different categories based on these traits, treating them differently because
of them, etc. Race is very real in the sense that it impacts people’s lives and experience,
but it is a reality created by culture, not by nature.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Principle
(2) supposes that race is a “natural kind” rather than a social construct. As
such, it conflicts with everything we now understand about race. Teachers
should not be in the business of teaching nonsense to kids, not when public tax
dollars are paying their salaries.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
I know, based on carefully following recent public discussions around what has
been dubbed “critical race theory,” that the nonsense that is principle (2) is
being routinely </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">attributed</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> to people
who don’t hold it—people who agree that it is nonsense, who would never endorse
principle (2), but who are being treated </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">as
if</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> they endorsed (2).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
philosophy, we talk about something called “the straw man fallacy.” This is
where, instead of critiquing what a person actually thinks or holds, you
attribute to them a distortion of their view, some mischaracterization of it
that is clearly false. You then show that </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">this</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
view (the one they don’t actually hold) is false, and condemn them for holding
it. It’s called the straw man fallacy because what you’ve basically done is set
fire to a straw effigy of someone and then behaved as if you set fire to the
actual person.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some
people engage in such “straw-manning” on purpose. If you’re really clever (and
unprincipled) you can get lots of people on board, condemning someone you don’t
like—a political opponent, say—for an absurd view they don’t hold. This is especially
easy to do when your targets express their views using technical terms, terms
that are not well understood and take some time and effort to explain. The
person engaged in straw-manning can then just attach a false meaning to the
term. If they do that loudly and persistently enough in public platforms, the
target of straw-manning (who is trying to use the term properly to explain
their view) will end up routinely misunderstood—and perhaps mocked or scorned
or condemned for views they don’t actually hold.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Relatedly,
it can be disturbingly easy for unscrupulous pundits to straw-man ideas that
emerge out academic research. Often, understanding those ideas requires
studying the body of research, something most people don’t have the time or
energy or training to do. And so it can be especially easy for an unprincipled
pundit with an audience to mischaracterize the target’s views, express horror
about those views, and get the audience to be equally horrified. By the time
people who understand the research and are good at explaining it realize what
is going on, it may be too late. People don’t like to admit they’ve been duped.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The Straw-Manning of Implicit Bias</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
the public debates about so-called “critical race theory,” there’s been a lot
of straw-manning going on. And one of the victims of that straw-manning is the
concept of “implicit bias” and the research surrounding it. The basic idea of
implicit bias is this: all of us develop, based on our socialization and life
experiences, certain short-cuts for decision-making that we aren’t conscious of,
short-cuts that lead us to prefer some things to others based not on a careful
examination of the evidence but just kind of…automatically. Given how many
decisions we need to make and how much information is out there, a certain
level of automation is essential if we’re going to live our lives and not be
paralyzed. But the necessity of implicit bias explains why it is a universal
feature of the human condition. It doesn’t entail that implicit bias is always
unproblematic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some
of these automated preferences a pretty odd—such as the fact that the order in
which things are presented to us influences our judgments about them. A bias
like that can be harmless if you’re choosing which t-shirt to buy, but it’s
more serious when it comes to making judgments about which job candidate had
the best interview. Since implicit biases are implicit—that is, unconscious and
automatic in their operation, like our breathing—we can miss when a bias that
really has no bearing on which candidate is better is influencing our judgment.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
also like breathing, we can make ourselves aware of the operation of our
biases. And so we can try to control for them in some way. It may not always be
easy to figure out how—we can’t exactly interview all the job candidates
simultaneously—but knowing that these biases could be at work will allow us to
explore ways to minimize their influence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Most
often, “implicit bias” is used to refer to such unconscious/automated
preferences as they relate to classes of people.<a href="https://www.judicialengagementnetwork.org/media/com_jen_documents/documents/82-the-lens-of-implicit-bias.pdf" target="_blank"> Shawn Marsh</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">,
in addition to offering an accessible overview of the research, offers the
following helpful definition of implicit bias in this sense: “Implicit bias is
a preference—positive or negative—for a group based on stereotypes or attitudes
we hold and that tend to develop early in life. In contrast to explicit bias,
whereby we are aware of our biases toward a group, implicit bias operates
outside our awareness: we don’t even know it is there.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">As
noted above, implicit biases emerge because there’s just too much information
and too many choices for us to be able to sit down and figure out the best
choice, based on all the available information, every time we have a choice to
make. We’d be paralyzed. So our brain is designed to automate a lot of things,
shaping our split-second judgments.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
process of forming implicit biases starts very early and is shaped by lots of
social forces and personal experiences: who raised you and what they looked
like, whether they were loving or abusive, what kinds of people you were
surrounded by, who your earliest friends were, who scared you, what stories you
were told, what kinds of TV shows you watched, how people in your community
talked about or reacted to different sorts of people, etc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Unfortunately,
the automated preferences shaped by these experiences can influence our
responses to people of different races and sexes, leading to discriminatory
treatment that we aren’t even aware we’re engaging in. Some implicit biases
take the form of automated trust or automated fear: if some stranger you meet
on the street looks like the caretakers who nurtured you, you are likely to
give them the benefit of the doubt automatically, to assume they have your best
interests at heart until they prove otherwise. So, if that person pulls out a
cell phone, you’ll probably assume it’s a cell phone and be shocked when it’s
actually a gun and the person is an evil assassin sent to kill you.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
contrast, if someone doesn't look anything like the friends and family you
grew up with, your brain will automatically be
more cautious—seeing them more truly as a stranger rather than as a friend you
haven’t met yet. And if, by contrast, they look like someone you’ve only ever
seen on TV, generally in the role of the gun-slinging gangster, they may pull
out a cell phone and you’ll swear it’s a gun.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
point is that our split-second judgments about the people we meet are shaped by
our personal history and our socialization. Personal experience and culture
shape who we find trustworthy at first sight and who we don’t, who we feel at
home with and who we are uncomfortable around, etc. Often, this bias is slight
and easily corrected with more information. But even that slight unconscious
bias could be the reason the black candidate for the job didn’t give white interviewers the
same warm feeling as the white candidate and so didn’t get the job—or the
reason why police officers slightly more often mistake cell-phones for guns in
the hands of black men than in the hands of white women, leading to tragic
outcomes in the former case more often than the latter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">And
to the extent that the prevailing culture shapes implicit biases, one could
have a society where far more people have these small unconscious biases
against black people than white people. And the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">cumulative</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> effect could be more than small. It could make life
significantly harder for black people than white people, all else being equal—even
when nobody is consciously being racist.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
evidence suggests that the US is such a country. See, for example, <a href="https://www.jrsa.org/pubs/factsheets/jrsa-factsheet-implicit-racial-bias.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-state-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states/racial-disparities-in-health-care/" target="_blank">here</a>. What does that mean? It means
that if people do not investigate their own biases and recognize them and work
on mitigating them, and if institutions do not control for them, the cumulative
impact of these biases is likely to make it harder for blacks than whites to
succeed in life, even if no one is overtly racist. When something like a
widespread unconscious bias has such a cumulative effect, it serves as a
dimension of what is called “systemic racism”: the social system makes life
harder for one race than another, even if no individuals are setting out to do
this or are actively supporting it based on racist beliefs, etc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">That
implicit bias exists is a well-establish fact about human psychology. That white
people raised in the US are, in general, likely to have implicit biases that collectively lead to
social patterns that disadvantage blacks, is well-supported by the
social-scientific evidence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Someone
might sum up these well-supported claims by making the following <i>implicit-bias
claim</i>: “In general, white Americans are likely to harbor unconscious or
implicit racial biases that disadvantage black people or, in other words,
contribute to systemic racism.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
saying this, is the person saying that “an individual, by virtue of his or her
race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or
unconsciously”?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">No.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Implicit
bias is an established fact of human psychology, but “inherent racism”—which I
assume means racism as a matter of one’s very nature—does not exist. Implicit biases are </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">acquired</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">, not
“inherent.” No one has them “by virtue of their race or sex.” We have them by
virtue of our lived experience and social environment. My race and sex
will surely influence my lived experience and social environment, and hence which implicit biases I have. But nobody is born racist just by virtue of their race.
Those who say white Americans are likely to harbor implicit racial biases that
disadvantage black people are </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">not </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">claiming
otherwise.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">So,
the implicit bias claim above is very different from prohibited principle (2).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
teachers and trainers and scholars who have made the implicit bias claim above,
based on their understanding of the research, have routinely been
mischaracterized, accused of asserting the prohibited principle (2) as well as
some of the others, such as (5). These accusations are often repeated again and again, loudly, by pundits who benefit from doing so. And since the
general public is not always very familiar with the exact meaning of terms like
“implicit racial bias” and “systemic racism,” it is easy for pundits who don’t
care about truth but only about silencing and discrediting their political
opponents to shut down discussions of implicit racial bias and how to overcome
it by straw-manning the people who are trying to lay out the problem and
identify solutions.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">And
so, when I first saw HB 1775, my immediate worry was that the law would be used
to penalize those who are doing this kind of work—the work of calling attention
to the way implicit biases generate systemic racism even when people
consciously reject racism; the work of trying to raise consciousness about this
problem and promote solutions, thereby helping promote greater racial equity in
Oklahoma.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Bias Education and Defensiveness<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some
social problems can only be fixed when people are willing to introspect
honestly—when they are prepared to be vulnerable enough to see how they might
be part of the problem, and thereby see how they can work to be part of the solution.
Implicit bias education is aimed at inspiring that kind of honesty and
vulnerability, but for that very reason it can also inspire defensiveness.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Few
of us want to admit that we are part of a problem that hurts people. We might
feel guilty about it. And in our defensiveness, we might be motivated to
embrace mischaracterizations of those whose words are the occasion for our
discomfort. We might be inclined to too-quickly believe uncharitable accounts
about the trainer’s or teacher’s intentions—accounts that free us from the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">responsibility</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> that comes with admitting
we contribute to such a problem. We might blame the messenger for </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">making </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">us feel guilty, instead of seeing
the messenger as inviting us to take responsibility for making our society a
better place, starting with ourselves: looking for ways we can shake off
harmful social programming and help others do likewise.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
point here is this: predictably, those doing the work of teaching implicit bias
are going to sometimes be accused of trying to make people feel guilty or uncomfortable
for being white. The teachers aren’t actually trying to do that, but because the
insights they have to share hit home, exposing ways we might be unwittingly
contributing to a serious social problem, they sometimes inspire feelings of
discomfort and guilt. And so, when I looked at HB 1775, I am immediately struck
by principle (7): “Any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any
other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Of
course, implicit bias teachers/trainers are not out to tell people they should
feel guilty for being white. First of all, you don’t have implicit bias because
you’re white. Everyone has implicit biases because that is part of human
nature. The precise biases you have are not a function of your race but a
function of your social environment and life experiences. Your race will
influence those things, because people of different races have different social
experiences. But a white person in one culture may have very different implicit
biases than a white person in another.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Second,
implicit bias isn’t something you should feel guilty about, because implicit
bias is something you are unaware of and that is wired into you by social and
environmental conditioning. It’s not something you have consciously chosen out
of bad motives. It’s more like catching a cold: something in your environment
is responsible, not you. The trainer is trying to make you aware that you’ve
been affected in this way, not to make you feel guilty about something you
didn’t choose. Awareness means you can choose to make helpful changes. More
often than not, feeling guilty just leads to wallowing or hiding from the thing
that makes us feel guilty.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
response implicit bias trainers are hoping for is not guilt but something more practical. Again,
the cold analogy is helpful. If I find out I have a cold, it doesn’t make
sense to feel guilty. What makes sense is to treat the symptoms, take steps to promote recovery, and try not to spread the cold.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Likewise,
while I’m not responsible for having the implicit biases I have, I am
responsible for how I respond to discovering my implicit biases. While I shouldn’t
feel guilty about having a bias, there might be a reason to feel guilty about
attacking the messenger and rebuffing the message with a knee-jerk response of
“You’re just trying to make me feel guilty for being white!” That kind of
distortion of what is happening may make me feel better in the moment: if
they’re just out to get me, then I don’t have to do anything about my implicit bias. I’m off the hook! Whew. But I’ve gotten myself off the hook by
attributing false motives to the teacher who’s trying to help me discover ways
to improve myself.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">That's something that, if I did it, I should maybe feel guilty about.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">False Accusations and the Chilling
Effect of HB 1775<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">HB
1775, however, enables this defensive response to go a step further: once I’ve
shaken off the message and the responsibility it brings by blaming the teacher
for the bad feelings I have about it—once I’ve falsely accused the teacher of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">trying to make me feel bad just because I’m
white</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">—there’s now a law that says it’s illegal for them to do this thing (the
thing they’re not </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">actually</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> doing but
which I have accused them of doing in order to defend my ego). And so, in
addition to storming away from the training or the class, fuming because the
message challenged me in ways I don’t want to be challenged, I can take the
further step of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">striking back</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Legally.</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I can file a complaint that
accuses the trainer or teacher of violating HB 1775.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
short, it is entirely predictable that those who teach and train about implicit
bias, while not in fact guilty of teaching principle (7), will occasionally
inspire defensive responses that lead to them being falsely accused of (7). And
if decision-makers assessing whether the law has been broken have been primed
to misunderstand the relevant ideas by our culture wars’ straw-manning pundits—or
if they are psychologically prone to feel defensive themselves—then you can easily see how the law
might end up shutting down important work whose aim is to make our society a
less racist place.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">It
doesn’t even have to actually happen for the law to have a chilling effect on
these important discussion. It is enough if it looks like it happened. And this
brings me back to the recent decisions made by the Oklahoma State Board of
Education, in a vote of 4-2, to slap two Oklahoma school districts with warning
and threats to their accreditation based on supposed violations of HB 1775.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
the case of Tulsa Public Schools, this penalty was based on a supposed
violation of HB 1775 that took place during a required bias training for Tulsa
schools staff. It was the result of a complaint by a single teacher who
attended this training. Now maybe there really was a violation. Maybe the
trainer completely misunderstood implicit bias, and said something like the
following: “All white people have implicit bias just because they are white.
Their race alone makes them inherently biased against black people. White
people are born that way!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
it strikes me as highly unlikely that someone chosen to lead a training on this
issue for a school district would so radically misunderstand the concept of
implicit bias. And I’ve also seen sound explanations of implicit bias routinely
mischaracterized as statements like the one above. And so I find myself
immediately suspicious of the claim that any of the prohibited principles in HB
1775 were actually taught.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">And
here’s the problem: </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">the grounds for reaching
the decision that HB 1775 was violated haven’t been made public</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">. The thing
that might allay my suspicion—a transcript of the recording of the training, or
copies of the recording itself, showing that the trainer was not misunderstood
or mischaracterized or uncharitably interpreted but really was saying that
people are innately racist just because of their race and should feel guilty for
being white—are not available.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
person who lodged the complaint against Tulsa Public Schools claimed that in the
training, she was made to feel guilty about past wrongs by white people and
that she and others were told that white people “<a href="https://ktul.com/news/local/state-board-of-education-votes-to-demotetps-for-violating-crt-ban" target="_blank">are implicitly racially biased by nature</a>.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> But were the words “by nature” actually spoken, or was that the accuser’s
take-away, their own misunderstanding? Again, since implicit bias is a matter
of social conditioning—nurture, </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">not</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
nature—it seems unlikely that anyone leading a training on the topic would make
such a claim.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Apparently,
there is audio recording of the training. It was reviewed by a team investigating
the complaint. But not only has it not been made available to the public; it
appears to have not been made available to all the board members who were
supposed to vote on the matter. In fact, one board member who voted against the
downgrade—Carlisha Williams Bradley—<a href="https://nondoc.com/2022/07/28/tulsa-public-schools-mustang-public-schools-warned/" target="_blank">complained that she had not been given theopportunity to review the audio for herself</a>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">That
said, part or all of the transcript of the audio was presumably made available,
since during the meeting Bradley pointed out that OSDE general counsel Brad
Clark “had to make an inference based on the audio that never explicitly said
that an individual by virtue of his race or her race or sex is inherently
racist, sexist or oppressive. None of these things were ever said.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">So,
we have the public testimony of one board member who presumably has seen a
transcript of the most relevant parts of the training audio—and according to
that public testimony, the prohibited principles were never asserted. Instead, the judgment that HB 1775 was
violated was based on an </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">inference</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> or
an </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">interpretation</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">This
is not comforting for anyone who is working in or for Oklahoma’s public schools
and who cares about racial bias education. Given how our culture wars have led
to straw-manning of people’s views and arguments, especially in relation to
implicit racial bias, and given how defensiveness can lead to
misrepresentations, we find ourselves in a social climate in which people are
routinely accused, mistakenly or wrongly, of saying things prohibited by HB
1775. And now, school districts in Oklahoma have been penalized for violating
HB 1775 based not on anything that was </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">actually</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
said in clear violation of HB 1775, but based on </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">an inference.</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
a social climate so littered with straw-manning and defensive
misrepresentation, such inferences are always suspect, because they are so unreliable.
How, then, can anyone working in the public school system have any confidence,
based on the results of the Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting, that
they will not incur penalties for violating HB 1775 even when they take pains
not to do so? How can they be sure that if they take up the important
conversations about reducing racial bias in our culture, they won’t have their
words misinterpreted to mean things that, according to HB 1775, one is not
legally permitted to say as a teacher or trainer in Oklahoma’s public schools?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
short, given the recent OSBE decisions, I cannot see how HB 1775 can have any
effect other than a chilling one: keeping important research and information
out of the hands of teachers who could use it to promote greater inclusivity
and fairness in their classrooms, and keeping high school teachers from having
some really important conversations with their students (out of fear that
they’ll lose their jobs based on a straw-man mangling of their words).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Racism
is bad. We need tools to fight it. Among those tools are challenging
conversations about implicit bias in our high school classrooms, and training
for teachers aimed at helping them avoid unintended bias in their interactions
with a diversity of students. When HB 1775 is combined with the recent OSBE
decision, the effect is to make our schools and teachers afraid to take up these crucial tools.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">And our state will be the worse for it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Based
on all of this, I can only conclude that either HB 1775 should be rescinded, or
new and more exacting guidance on its use be issued that prohibits penalizing
schools, school districts, teachers, or trainers for contestable </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">interpretations</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> of what they said or
meant to say.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Addendum--Added 8/19/22<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Originally, OSBE spokespersons indicated that while
the slides for the Tulsa Public Schools training did not violate HB 1775,
elaborations found on the audio did. Since then, there has been a revelation:<a href="https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/audio-from-tps-implicit-bias-training-was-a-voice-reading-presentation-slides-verbatim/article_140cabde-1524-11ed-b809-1f6eb7ac6c64.html" target="_blank">the Tulsa World has reviewed the audio and found it to be identical to the slides</a>. Despite this revelation, OSBE stands by their ruling because,
apparently, the impact of the words on the slides being read aloud gave them
the impression that the spirit of the law had been violated. And that justified
a legal penalty.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">So, are we to infer from this that someone's tone of
voice can change whether they are found to be in violation of HB 1775, and
hence whether a school district will be legally penalized or a teacher fired?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">This revelation drives home further the fact that the
trainer did not in fact say anything explicitly prohibited by HB 1775. Instead,
the judgment that a violation occurred is based on some perceived meaning
beyond what was explicitly said--and/or some "spirit" of the law
beyond what is explicitly prohibited.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The former option is that the trainer meant something
by their words that's not only different from what they actually said but
opposed to what they actually said. Recall that OSBE took the trainer to be
violating the rule against saying that people are inherently racist because of
their race. But implicit bias is a matter of nurture not nature (hence,
implicit bias is not inherent), and implicit bias research understands biases
to derive from personal experience and socialization, not because of their
race. An implicit bias trainer knows this, and so it seems highly implausible
to claim that the trainer meant to say what HB 1775 explicitly prohibits, even
if they didn't explicitly say it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The more plausible interpretation of the OSBE decision,
then turns on their explicit invocation of the "spirit" of HB
1775--something that the law prohibits even if it doesn't come right out and
say so. But what do they take this "spirit" to be?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The trainer presented research findings about bias
that--while true and important to disseminate if we want a more equitable
society, and while not in violation of anything that HB 1775 explicitly
prohibits-- are uncomfortable truths: truths that many don't like to hear,
because it means they might be unconsciously contributing to racial inequity
even if they don't mean to be, and even if they denounce racism.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Is OSBE saying here that they take the law to mean
it's illegal for any teacher or trainer in Oklahoma schools to say anything
about race that, even if true and not included in the list of prohibited
"principles", makes someone uncomfortable? Because if that is what
they take the law to mean, they are treating it as prohibiting way more than
what it says it prohibits--probably ruling out any effort in public schools to
share research that could help reduce racial inequity (since such research is
sure to make someone uncomfortable).</span></p><p></p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-57798941860221275022022-07-16T11:17:00.004-05:002022-07-16T13:41:53.787-05:00Remembering Rune Engebretsen<p>Today, at Emmaus Church in Northfield, Minnesota, a service was held in memory of my Uncle, Rune Engebretsen, who died a few months ago. In his memory, I share the following reflections.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxCsqipMPUCJj2R0u8GRjmMcU1d04EZaIylMi1b1Gck-iYGCLyIy-oNEMXbRlbLSDe3VmpgZxwbYfEpOGqmFnF0L9OZB9uzfN-rTWV8H8Im83xNJ0esL4rRLP9LrEWviZf0iTSFudU03vCw5zXdXn2bdN6AXblUTL4WCssSQjy5otXgq9aUdREOjwISw/s1694/Rune.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1694" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxCsqipMPUCJj2R0u8GRjmMcU1d04EZaIylMi1b1Gck-iYGCLyIy-oNEMXbRlbLSDe3VmpgZxwbYfEpOGqmFnF0L9OZB9uzfN-rTWV8H8Im83xNJ0esL4rRLP9LrEWviZf0iTSFudU03vCw5zXdXn2bdN6AXblUTL4WCssSQjy5otXgq9aUdREOjwISw/s320/Rune.jpg" width="204" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>In Memory of Rune Engebretsen</p><p>My much-loved uncle, Rune Engebretsen (always “Onkel Rune” to me), passed away last week. A Scandinavian Studies professor and a skilled translator (from Norwegian/Danish into English), his special interest in Kierkegaard created a distinctive intellectual connection between us that I didn’t have with other members of my family. To oversimplify it, he was the relative I could always count on to talk philosophy with me. On a deeper level, I enjoyed his enthusiastic interest in deep questions about truth and meaning and values, about God and Christianity. When my first book came out, he was one of its loudest cheerleaders (at one point hyperbolically calling it “essential reading for all humanity”—which I took to mean he was proud of me).</p><p>He was also a collector of books. Apparently it got a little out of control.</p><p>But these are not the things I will most remember about him. Perhaps one of the best ways to capture his essence is to say that his personality made him quite naturally and easily one of the best Jule Nisses my family ever had. </p><p>That may require a bit of explanation. In our family, we’ve always followed the Norwegian Christmas Eve tradition of having a visit from Jule Nissen: the Christmas Elf. He’d sweep into the home, distribute presents, and dance around the tree with the family. As I was growing up, we had neighbors and family friends don the Nisse outfit to help out with the task. As an adult my sister and I have often enough taken on the job, and in recent years my daughter has been eager to put on the beard, Norwegian sweater, and knit stockings.</p><p>But Rune, during one of the Christmas Eves we spent with him and his kids, stands out in my memory as being one of the most delightful. Bantering in English and Norwegian as he stomped into the house, telling jokes as he distributed gifts from his sack—I can’t remember details so much as the way he made us feel: full of joy and laughter. </p><p>To say he always had a twinkle in his eye is a bit of a cliché—but when I think of Onkel Rune, the expression “a twinkle in his eye” comes to mind with such force that he’s who I’d want to point to if anyone hadn’t heard that expression and wanted to know what it meant. He had a way of smiling at you that invited you to share in his personal delight at the world. And he was charming. It wasn’t something he turned on in order to achieve some end, bust something he was: a charming man, in large measure because you really got the sense that he wanted the best for everyone.</p><p>This does not mean, of course, that he never disappointed those around him. All of us are imperfect in our own ways. My sense is Onkel Rune always meant well, but wouldn’t always follow through. My mother frequently said to me, “You’re just like my brother!”—especially at moments when despite my initial good intentions I failed to follow through. She’s right about me, so I’m not one to hold this too much against him.</p><p>More importantly, there’s the fact that at key moments in my life when I needed him, he had more than just good intentions to offer. One time in particular stands out. The summer after my freshman year in college, my friend Lou and I decided to drive across the country to Washington State (where Lou was from) to work at a fruit orchard for the summer. We started out the journey in an old AMC Spirit whose road-worthiness was a bit sketchy—and which, while paid for, was not yet legally registered in any state (Lou’s plan was to take care of that in Washington once we got there). Needless to say, this journey did not go smoothly. A breakdown and emergency repair, followed by a police stop, took all the cash we’d saved up for the journey and most of our spirits (except, of course, for the AMC Spirit, which we were stuck with).</p><p>The good news is that we were a few hours drive from Northfield, Minnesota, where Onkel Rune lived at the time. When we limped into town, Rune gave us safe haven. He offered rest, food, and a renewal of our spirits. And he gave us enough cash to make the rest of the trip to Washington (with no expectation of repayment). As a fan of the Lord of the Rings books, I felt like the hobbits arriving in Rivendell.</p><p>One final memory of Onkel Rune also relates to a road trip—this one from when I was a teenager, and our families traveled together on a summer trip to Washington DC and Philadelphia. I remember little from that trip, but what stands out is this silly little mantra that Rune had created, and which he repeatedly offered up to eye rolls and laughter. The mantra went like this:</p><p><br /></p><p>Are you happy now?</p><p>Happy go lucky, you know.</p><p>Happy as a flutterby!</p><p>Yes, sir, he said. Do you know him?</p><p><br /></p><p>On the day I learned he’d died, as I was driving my daughter Izzie home from school, I spoke those words to her—finding it a bit difficult to finish the whole thing, because I was starting to cry. But I finished it, and I told her that this silliness came from her Great Uncle Rune, and I was sharing it with her in his memory, because he had died.</p><p>Izzie hesitated, then said, “So that’s where that stupid saying comes from.”</p><p>Apparently, Rune’s silliness made enough of a long-term impression on me that, without even really realizing it, this bit of delightful nonsense made its way into my own repertoire of dad jokes and absurdities that I’ve used through the years to elicit eye rolls in my kids. </p><p>All of this is to say that Rune’s spirit lives on in those who knew and loved him; that his life has touched and changed the world for the better; and that, since I find it hard to imagine the world without him out there somewhere offering his twinkling glance, his charm, his intelligence, and his silliness, I refuse to do it. Instead, I will believe that he lives on in some different way, a way we may not fully know or understand, a way that—whether wholly metaphorical or metaphysically real—makes the world a better place.</p><div><br /></div>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-78520923864083709432022-05-12T13:19:00.001-05:002022-05-12T16:56:25.337-05:00Abortion Prohibitions, Rape Exceptions, and Roe v Wade: Is it feasible to prohibit abortion while making it available to rape victims?<p><b>Roe v Wade and "Middle-Ground" Approaches to Abortion Law </b></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Roe v Wade has essentially guaranteed for the last half century that any woman who wants to have a legal abortion can have one--and by extension, all rape victims who find themselves pregnant with their rapist's baby. Roe v Wade has not just precluded absolute bans on abortion, but also what many would call "middle ground" policies: legal policies that outlaw abortion in general, but allow for it in some specified range of justifying cases.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">For fifty years, such middle ground approaches have been just as hypothetical as outright bans. But with the very real possibility that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v Wade, they're no longer just hypothetical. And many Americans are drawn to some kind of "middle ground" position: they are uncomfortable with abortion on demand, thinking that it shouldn't be allowed under "ordinary" circumstances; but they think that a sweeping prohibition is just as troubling, because there are special cases in which abortion should be legally permitted. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The
special cases most commonly mentioned are rape and threat to the life of the mother.
What I want to focus on here is the former. In other words, I want to here consider the idea that we can outlaw
abortion in general but still make it available, legally, to
rape victims (including incest victims). I’ve been teaching the ethics of
abortion for about thirty years, and to say that this idea is popular among my
students would be an understatement.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Philosophical Argument for the Middle-Ground View</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I can understand why. Most of my Oklahoma students, along with many Americans, see the
fetus as a human life with a person’s right to life. But they also recognize
the force of arguments from bodily autonomy. The whole idea of the state </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">forcing</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> people to make their bodies
available to be used by other people—even to save their lives—makes them
uneasy. For example, nobody should be able to force me to donate a piece of my
liver, even if it is the only way to save the life of another person (even an
innocent person who did nothing to put themselves into this situation, a person
with a fully-intact right to life).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">But, argue the supporters of this middle ground view, the robust right to bodily autonomy doesn’t apply if the
person has intentionally <i>done</i> something that they know will make another person
dependent on them to stay alive. Sure, the state shouldn’t be able to force me
against my will to donate my body or part of it to keep another person alive.
But if a woman has consensual sex, she does so knowing she could get pregnant.
She knows that by doing this, she risks a fetus becoming dependent on being connected to her
body for nine months in order to stay alive. Supporters of this view argue that if, knowing
that risk, the woman chooses to have sex anyway, she’s forfeited her right to
refuse to sustain the resulting life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">But
in rape cases, the victim didn’t choose. And so her right to bodily autonomy
remains fully intact. And so no one can require her to make her body available
for the fetus to use, even if the only alternative is abortion and the death of the fetus.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Supporters of this middle ground view don’t usually formulate
their thinking quite this explicitly. It usually takes some reading and reflection
and Socratic questioning for those of my student who favor this view
to lay out their case for it in the terms sketched out above. But I think,
even so, that most people who adopt this view are thinking along something like
these lines.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">If
you start by assuming the fetus is a person with a person’s right to life, combine
it with a general support of the right to bodily autonomy, and add a
compassionate awareness of the ways in which that right has been profoundly
violated in the case of rape victims, the resulting view seems quite sensible.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">...at
least if we're thinking of it in purely hypothetical terms. But today, as already noted, the view is
no longer just hypothetical. So we need to ask: given the realities of the law
and American society, could we actually protect the right of rape victims to
have abortions in the face of a more general prohibition?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">To
answer this, let’s try to envision how this rape exception would work.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>What Would a Rape Exception Look Like?</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Would
you grant an exception only in the case of a “confirmed” rape victim? And if
so, how would you confirm that someone was raped? The most obvious answer is
through the criminal conviction of the person who raped them. But
that’s not going to fly. First off, the baby will likely be born before anyone
is convicted. Secondly, securing a rape conviction in this country is hard. If
there is a list of crimes that includes an unusually high number of people who
are guilty as sin but have avoided conviction, rape would be at or near the top of that
list.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">So
maybe the law could look to some less decisive confirmation than a criminal
conviction. But what would that be?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Keep
in mind that most rapes are acquaintance rapes, many cases of rape rely on
intimidation or drugs or other means where there is no overt violence or
infliction of physical injury, and victims are routinely so traumatized or
ashamed (or both) after their violation that they retreat into seclusion and
don’t talk about what happened to them, let alone go to the hospital for a rape
kit or go to the police to make a police report.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Those
who have been violently raped by strangers are more likely to seek medical care
and police intervention in the immediate wake of the crime. But when the rape
is at the hands of a friend or loved one, someone trusted by the people the
victim knows, the confusion and sense of betrayal and self-questioning make the sort of timely actions likely to produce <i>evidence </i>far less likely.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Is
it reasonable to expect rape victims to hold themselves together enough—in the
wake of the worst thing that’s ever happened to them—to gather evidence of
whatever sort they can manage in the horrifying event that they might end up
pregnant? Or maybe we should just expect them to--what?--call the police? File a police report? Go on record that they've been raped?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Remember
that many rape victims are children. Can we reasonably expect children to
engage in this kind of forward-thinking action in the wake of
traumatic violation? Recall that many of these child rape victims were raped by
their own fathers or uncles or grandfathers or dear family friends. Perhaps
they have been groomed carefully and warned of the horrible consequences if
anyone ever finds out. After being victimized, they cower in fear of anyone
learning the truth—until they discover they're pregnant.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Given
these realities, how likely is it that, in general, rape victims will have
anything more than their word to support the contention that they’ve been
raped?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And
then there are the cases in which women grow up and marry within deeply
patriarchal cultures and find themselves without any sexual autonomy in their marital
lives. Their whole culture and community reinforces the message, and enforces
the norm, that their consent to sex with their husbands is irrelevant. It is
their duty to quietly endure whatever their husband wants to do to their bodies,
and they live in stark terror of being saddled with yet another child. These
women are raped not just by their husbands but by a culture that normalizes and
enforces the idea that consent doesn’t matter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In
such cases, it is hard to credit the idea that they have made a free choice to
have sex and so are responsible for any pregnancy that results. But it also
hard to credit the idea that they would file a police report every time their husband has sex with them, or that--if they are able to slip out of their husband’s
grasp long enough to visit an abortion provider--they would be able to do so in possession of legally-compelling evidence of rape.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And
then there are abused wives whose lives are very similar to what I just described, although instead of being immersed in a subculture that aids and abets
the domination of wives by their husbands, the husband just relies on the more ordinary
sexism and gender socialization of American society, combined with patterns of
domestic tyranny and secrecy, to maintain control. Perhaps
such an abused wife is able to slip away to an abortion provider—but can she do
so with proof-in-hand of what is happening to her? Could we reasonably expect <i>her </i>to file a police report every time she submits to unwanted sex with her abusive husband?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Of course, one might say that she should be going to the police, pressing charged, leaving home, etc., for all kinds of reasons other than securing legal access to abortion. But anyone who has studied patterns of domestic violence knows just how hard it is to take these kinds of steps. Among other things, it is a well-known fact about cycles of
abuse that the most dangerous thing an abused wife can do is leave her husband,
because that is when he is most likely to turn to murder. To minimize the risk of death, timing in taking these steps may be everything--and the timing for escaping an abusive husband may not match up with the kind of timing needed to get an abortion. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Should we
tell abused wives that in order to secure an abortion for a pregnancy that
resulted from months of routine rapes in a terrorist marriage, they have to first take
the kinds of steps that magnify their chances of being murdered?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The
obvious thought at this point is this: <i>their word should be enough</i>. But what does giving your word look like? Swearing under oath? Signing some form at an abortion provider? And would it just be some vague statement that one was raped or a specific accusation?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Right
now we live in a world where false accusations of rape are extremely rare.
There’s just nothing good that could come from it in most cases, given the ways
in which rape victims are treated and given the frequency with which rapists
get away with it. Far more common than false accusations is silence in the face
of sexual assault.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">All
of that could change if a rape accusation became the only pathway to a legal
abortion. But the implications are worse than a possible proliferation of false
rape accusations. Because real, traumatized victims, unready to come forward
and talk publicly about the horrible thing that’s happened to them, may still
be unable to push themselves to take that step even if legal access to abortion
depends on it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">So
instead of providing abortion access to those victims whose right to bodily
autonomy has been so egregiously violated by an assailant, a law like this
would be making it most readily available to those who find it easiest to <i>say</i> they were raped, whether they were or not.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Strong
criminal penalties for false claims of rape may sound like a partial solution, but how
does one go about such a thing? How do we avoid punishing a real rape victim
because they’re not judged credible, or because friends of the rapist come
forward to discredit her—all the same ugly things that rapists use to ruin the
lives of their accusers, but this time used by rapists as a way not to avoid
prison but to get their victim thrown into one? If there’s even a hint that
this could happen, the fear of prison may encourage many rape victims to choose to stay silent—and pregnant—rather than tell the truth and risk being
criminalized.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">To avoid the potential for such weaponization of the law to target rape victims, we might require that women seeking abortion via the rape exception simply sign a form attesting to being raped, without any policies aimed at corroboration or penalizing abortions sought under false pretenses. But then we're essentially back to abortion-on-demand, at least for anyone willing to lie.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
could go on, but I think my point is clear enough: it is extremely hard to
envision any law that could give rape victims ready access to abortion while
withholding abortion access from others.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And so, unless
I’m missing something obvious, implementing this middle
ground view at the level of the law is untenable. While a general prohibition on abortion might
be able to accommodate other kinds of exceptions such as life-threatening
pregnancy cases (whether this is true or not I leave my readers to explore on
their own), it does not seem it can plausibly accommodate a rape exception.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And
so, if you think that rape victims have a moral right not to be forced by law to
carry a pregnancy to term (equivalent to the kind of right I have to not be
forced by law to donate an organ to save another’s life), the only realistic
legal way to guarantee that right is to make abortion legally available to any
woman who seeks. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And
if you support a general prohibition on abortion, you will likely have to live
with denying legal abortion access to fourteen-year-olds raped by their uncles,
battered wives raped by their abusive husbands, all the young women betrayed and raped
by young men they trusted, and all the other sexual assault victims who end up pregnant with their rapist's baby.</span></p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-49062555195194420252021-08-17T13:25:00.004-05:002021-08-17T18:34:21.701-05:00Masking Up and Getting Vaccinated: My Rights vs What's Right<p><b>The Rise of the Delta Variant</b></p><p>Earlier today I read <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2021/08/10/what-we-now-know-about-how-to-fight-the-delta-variant-of-covid-column/?outputType=amp&fbclid=IwAR0gAYaXXwvYVa3iBFGIZ3Sg0O5Etnw94mgNwNsJpffQawvZvh3uTJ8KLGw" target="_blank">an article by the by the chief of the Pathology and Laboratory Service for the Central Iowa VA Health Care System. Dr. Stacey Klutts</a>. He is a health care expert, and his expertise is not just in medicine generally but in the very area of medicine that gives one a deep understanding of the virus, the vaccines, and the benefits of masks. He explains clearly why it is so, so important <i>both</i> to get vaccinated <i>and</i> to wear a mask as the Delta variant of the SARS-COV-19 virus surges across the country. He has no political agenda. He simply wants to help keep people alive and healthy.</p><p>In briefest terms, his point is this: the COVID vaccines offer robust protection against serious illness and death, but does not prevent the virus from getting an initial foothold on the surface of the throat mucosa. This means that a vaccinated person might be infectious for a couple of days (significantly shorter than the infectiousness of the unvaccinated), but is unlikely to get very sick (or sick at all) since the virus meets a primed immune system as it tries to spread beyond that initial infection point. Beyond this, his focus is on the Delta variant, which is many times more infectious than earlier strains--as infectious as the measles, meaning it is as infectious among humans as any disease we know. This Delta variant is sweeping through the south and heading north fast. He likens it to a tsunami, with vaccination as the high ground of safety. Getting as many people to safety as possible is critical--and mask use by everyone, vaccinated and unvaccinated, helps disrupt the rate of spread enough that we can get more people to safety.</p><p><b>Individual vs Collective Decision-Making</b></p><p>The question is what we should do, individually and collectively, with this information. And here, I want to focus on the phrase "individually and collectively." The first question is about what is the right thing for me to do, what is the right thing for you to do, what is the right thing for all of us as individuals to do granted this information. The second question is about public policy--and questions about public policy are generally about what we as a society will require and what we will permit.</p><p>These are different questions. When we are talking about public policy, individual rights loom large and often clash with matters of public welfare. The aim of public policy is to promote the public welfare, but individual rights impose constraints on how we do so. But how much do they constrain? How important does the public good at issue have to be in order to justify a constraint on liberty? These are hard questions, and they are the questions that become front-and-center when our conversation turns to mask mandates and vaccination mandates: does the individual have a right to refuse to wear a mask or get a vaccine, or does the state have the authority, given the urgent public health needs during a pandemic, to require these things?</p><p>My purpose in this blog post is to set aside those collective questions altogether and focus on the individual question: "Given the medical information currently available and the situation we are currently facing, what ought you and I to do?" That individual question often gets obscured or lost amidst the debates over the collective, public-policy questions.</p><p><b>What I Have a Right to Do vs. What is Right for Me to Do</b></p><p>In most of my moral philosophy classes, at some point I have to talk about the distinction between what we have a right to do and what is the right thing for us to do. Suppose I'm planning to go to a philosophy conference but learn that my sister will die without getting a liver transplant, meaning she needs a piece of someone else's liver--someone who's compatible. Let's suppose I'm a compatible donor, and it will be very hard to find another in time to save her if I don't volunteer. But if I do volunteer, I'll miss my conference.</p><p>I have right to refuse, given that it's my body. But what is the right thing for me to do? That I have a right to refuse really just tells <i>other</i> people what to do. It tells them they can't <i>make</i> me go under the knife to save my sister's life. It means, probably, that it would be wrong for the government to legally require me to donate a piece of my liver to my sister. So, it probably follows that is it wrong for the state to implement public policies that in any way, even with certain constraints, require people to donate organs to dying relatives. But that doesn't settle what I should do. Should I miss a conference to save my sister's life? Absolutely I should. Her life matters more than a philosophy conference.</p><p>Sometimes the question of what we have a right to do is clear, but the question of what's the right thing to do is muddy. Sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes--as in the case above--both questions are easy to answer: because it's my body I have a right to refuse even if it means my sister's death; and if I exercise that right by heading off to the conference and letting her die, I've done something seriously morally wrong. You'd be justified in thinking less of me. Doing that would, morally speaking, make me a pretty bad guy--even though I have a right to do it. Because the right thing for me to do in this case is clear as day: I should forego the conference and save her life. That's the right way for me to exercise my rights.</p><p>So let us assume that the information in the linked article is correct. There's excellent reason to do so. The author, Dr. Klutts, is an expert on precisely the matters at issue. He has studied all the evidence and explains it clearly. And he appears to have no reason to lie. Furthermore, what he's saying is endorsed by every competent physician whose expertise and character I trust--even if a few stray physicians in fields other than epidemiology and virology, whom I otherwise know nothing about, express a contrary view on YouTube videos. (I looked at one such video a few months ago and was able to google some of the claims as I was listening to uncover research studies that flat-out refute what she was saying and, in one case, makes it obvious that she was confused about some key distinctions--Thanks, Google Scholar!)</p><p>If you assume this, then the question of what we should do, what's the right thing to do, is pretty darned clear even if the question of what we have a right to do is a matter of major ongoing public debate. The question of whether the government can mandate vaccination and mask-wearing pits public health against individual liberty in ways that can make things muddy very quickly. But that doesn't mean that the question of what each of us <i>should</i> do is equally muddy.</p><p><b>The No-Brainer Moral Question</b></p><p>If the information contained in this article is correct, there isn't a lot of room for controversy about what the best choice is based on concern for your own health and the health of your loved ones, your neighbors, your fellow citizens, and the health care workers who are exhausted and, in many cases, at an emotional breaking point. Getting vaccinated promotes your own health and makes you less likely to infect others. Wearing a mask promotes your own health to some extent, and to a greater extent makes you less likely to infect others. The Delta variant is so transmissible that it will sweep through the unvaccinated population very quickly unless we slow it down with masks and other mitigating measures. Slowing it down gives us more time to get more people vaccinated--and the more people who are vaccinated and the slower the spread, the more likely it is that our healthcare system will be able to handle in the influx of seriously ill COVID patients.</p><p>In the light of this information and looking at things from the standpoint of consequences, masking and getting vaccinated are pretty clearly going to have better consequences than not. Of course, something might be immoral even though it has good consequences if doing it violates someone's rights. But my getting vaccinated doesn't violate others' rights. My wearing a mask doesn't violate others' rights. So if we're looking at the question of what I should do, the better consequences of masking and vaccinating win the day. The same is true if we look at things from the standpoint of the ethics of care: If I care about myself, about my loved ones, about the people in my community and the health care workers who treat them, I will want to show that by taking steps to make their lives better. Masking and vaccinating do that. </p><p>When our focus is on the question of what is the right thing for individuals to do, rather than what the law can rightly mandate, there's little room for moral argument. It is one of those no-brainer cases where it's hard to come up with an argument <i>against </i>masking and getting the vaccine. </p><p><b>My Plea</b></p><p>So here is my plea: Please don't let the controversies about the morality of health care mandates get in the way of seeing what's the best choice for each of us to make as individuals. I understand why people are concerned about legal mandates to get vaccines (and, to a lesser extent, mask mandates), even though I also believe that there is a legal place for public health-related mandates. But that's a debate about what people have a right to do or not do and what the government has a right to require. The question of what's the right thing for you and me to do is a different question. And while there is some variability in answers based on individual life circumstances (I know someone for whom mask-wearing triggers tachycardia), for most of us the question of what's right to do in this situation is far less muddy that the question of rights and government authority, at least when we think clearly enough to separate out the two questions.</p><p>So if you think the government shouldn't mandate masks or vaccines, by all means make that case in the public sphere (and be prepared to engage honestly with arguments for the opposing views). But don't confuse that argument with the question of what is the right thing for you and me to do.</p><p>In other words, it makes perfect sense to wear your masks, get your vaccine, defend the right of your neighbors to refuse to do likewise...while arguing that the right thing for them to do, the right way for them to exercise their rights, is to follow your example and get vaccinated and wear masks.</p><p>And whatever you do, please, please don't do something that hurts you and your loved ones and your neighbors and your community and the health care workers we all depends on just as a way to assert your right to do it. We have a right to do things we shouldn't do. But in making decisions, it's the "shouldn't do" part that defines our moral character.</p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-37994677642853837332021-08-14T19:53:00.002-05:002021-08-14T20:08:37.247-05:00How the COVID Delta Variant Changes the Stakes<p> As I tend to do when I'm worried about something, I've been reading up about the Delta variant of COVID-19. What does the emergence of this variant, which is outperforming all others today in terms of spread, mean for us? I have drawn two chief lessons. I share them here in case they are helpful.</p><p><i>LESSON 1: Not If but When.</i></p><p>The high transmissibility of the Delta variant means it is largely no longer a question of if you will get infected with COVID, but when. The remaining question is this: When you are infected, will your immune system be primed to fight off the disease quickly and efficiently—likely so quickly and efficiently that the virus is licked without you ever realizing you were sick? </p><p> It you are vaccinated, then the answer will be yes. If not, then the first time the virus enters your body, your immune system will be scrambling to figure out how to fight it. It may succeed--or, as has happened to too many people, it may flounder and go haywire in ways that jeopardize your life.</p><p>You <i>will</i> meet the Delta variant sooner or later. Its spectacular transmissibility pretty much guarantees that.</p><p>This means we are now in the situation of comparing head-to-head the health risks associated with getting the vaccine with the health risks of getting COVID. That didn’t used to be the case, at least not quite. Before the Delta variant came along, someone could reasonably say, “If I get the vaccine, I’m<i> sure</i> to face the risks associated with that. But if I don’t, I might never get COVID and so never face the risks associated with either one.” </p><p>That is no longer true, unless you are capable of total isolation.</p><p>Of course, no vaccine is totally risk-free, but in a head-to-head comparison of vaccine vs. COVID risk, there really is no comparison. Both have been intensely studied by medical experts. For ordinary citizens, the chances of serious health complications from the vaccine is one in <i>millions</i>. The chance of serious health complications from COVID, if you're unvaccinated, is one in hundreds.</p><p>Put simply, from a health-risk standpoint getting COVID is many thousands of times worse.</p><p>There are few medical decisions these days where the difference between the options is so stark—similar in clarity to the choice between whether to have ice cream or someone else’s vomit for dessert. The only difference is that in the case of the ice cream vs. vomit, we don’t currently see loads of people playing up the risks of lactose intolerance while trying to make the vomit more appetizing by sprinkling hydrochloroquinine over it.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>LESSON 2. We Mitigate Through Mandates or Face a Health Care System in Crisis</i></p><p>You might ask, if the Delta variant is so transmissible that everyone will be exposed eventually, why slow down the inevitable with mitigation measures like social distancing and mask-use? </p><p>There are two answers. First, slowing down the rate at which people are exposed gives us more time to get more people vaccinated. It gives us more time to convince the vaccine-hesitant to get the shot before exposure—something that may save their lives. And it gives us more time to finish researching the impact of the vaccine on children under 12—potentially enabling us to protect our children with safe and effective vaccines <i>before </i>they catch COVID.</p><p>Second, given just how transmissible Delta is, if we do not collectively and consistently pursue mitigation measures in settings where transmission is likely--something that will likely only happen if we implement mandates on mask-use and social-distancing wherever transmission rates are significant--the virus will sweep through the vulnerable (that is, unvaccinated) population so quickly that we risk completely overwhelming our healthcare system. </p><p>Delta spreads a LOT faster than earlier variants. A substantial vaccinated population--even as low as 50%--might have slowed the spread of other variants down enough to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. But Delta is a different animal. Unless we take active steps to mitigate spread, it will find the unvaccinated quickly. It will spread among the unvaccinated quickly--especially if we bring bunches of them together in one place (such as grade schools where all the kids are under 12 and so cannot be vaccinated). The most vulnerable among them will need to be hospitalized. Some will need ICU care. Some will die. </p><p>In states that actively preclude mitigation mandates, like Texas and Florida and Oklahoma, ICU beds (including pediatric ICU beds) are already at or near capacity. And that’s before the impact of the school year starting up (here in Stillwater, public schools started up two days ago and the university starts on Monday). Once schools are back in session, if we don’t implement mitigation measures like mask mandates things will get a lot worse a lot more quickly. </p><p>And if you think mask-use will be extensive and consistent if it is done on a wholly voluntary basis, without mandates, you might want to look around here in Stillwater, Oklahoma, today--and compare what you see with how things looked back before the mask mandates expired in May. Despite efforts to get the word out about the Delta variant and the new CDC guidance, mask use is...spotty.</p><p>Spotty masking won't do much good--especially if there is significant overlap between the unvaccinated and the unmasked. Remember, Delta is sweeping through the unvaccinated population, sickening the unvaccinated population, hospitalizing the unvaccinated population, killing the unvaccinated population. Those who are vaccinated <i>can </i>carry Delta to others...but are far less likely to. They can get seriously ill...but are far less likely to. </p><p>Here's the problem. We've got two classes of people: those who take the pandemic seriously and trust the medical experts; and those who either don't take the pandemic seriously, don't trust the medical experts, or both. The former are very likely to have already been vaccinated--and they are very likely to take seriously a strong CDC recommendation to begin masking up in indoor public spaces. But it's the latter who, being unvaccinated, are vulnerable to the current wave of the pandemic--and hence the ones we really need to mask up to avoid a health care crisis. Unfortunately, it is also the latter group that is least likely to mask up voluntarily based on guidance from medical experts--because, for whatever reason, they don't trust those experts.</p><p>Of course, some of that latter group will resist mask use even if it is mandated. But mandates still have an effect. Last academic year, all my students wore masks in class, even those who didn't believe it was necessary. They wore the masks because that was the rule. Mandates increase mask-use, and widespread and consistent mask-use--especially among those who are unvaccinated--is a crucial tool in slowing the spread of Delta through unvaccinated populations and thus keeping hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.</p><p>An overwhelmed health care system means everyone has less access to lifesaving treatment—whether they’re sick with COVID or something else. An overwhelmed health care system means that doctors and nurses who are already overworked and emotionally exhausted find themselves pushed past the break point.</p><p>We’re talking about a health care system in which the human beings who are called to fight this war suffer such serious burnout they can’t continue. And like a kind of feedback loop, an already overburdened system becomes even more overburdened as people burn out and the weight falls heavier on those who remain.</p><p>This was a risk before the Delta variant came along, and was a major basis for the decision to shut the country down. Now the Delta variant is in play, with viral loads a thousand times higher than earlier strains and transmissibility rates many times higher. Unless we mandate mitigation measures like indoor mask-use, we will quickly reach a healthcare crisis once Delta starts to spread in schools. </p><p>If the crisis gets bad enough, we won't be talking about mandating masks in schools. We'll be talking another shutdown. And we'll be burying too many beloved dead.</p><p>Love your unvaccinated neighbors--by getting vaccinated and wearing a mask.</p><p>Love your local health care workers--by getting vaccinated and wearing a mask.</p><p>Love yourself--by getting vaccinated and wearing a mask.</p><div><br /></div>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-59089084485881532722021-08-08T12:20:00.002-05:002021-08-08T12:20:41.476-05:00The Campaign to Get People Vaccinated: Manipulation vs. Reasoned Persuasion <p>I've seen the following meme recently on social media, and given the timing of its spread it presumably relates to current efforts to convince Americans to become fully vaccinated against COVID. Here's the meme:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvp8GVdutdcVutSfURsTJY6DgqxjG8MMUYpQ309TFokyOnV1y_atLh79DPSoRWqa3Q9OPK7ph3DcLM7qX3b6mqDk35zBSXtO-xzN1K7zZr3ciBiw0ENnoTKd98Ngiid04C8Ug9IP_VcCvl/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="759" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvp8GVdutdcVutSfURsTJY6DgqxjG8MMUYpQ309TFokyOnV1y_atLh79DPSoRWqa3Q9OPK7ph3DcLM7qX3b6mqDk35zBSXtO-xzN1K7zZr3ciBiw0ENnoTKd98Ngiid04C8Ug9IP_VcCvl/" width="190" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p>(In the event of any difficulty reading the image, it says the following:</p><p>How Manipulation Works</p><p>1. FEAR--Do this or something bad will happen.</p><p>2. FLATTERY--Do this and you're a good person.</p><p>3. BRIBERY--Do this and I will do something for you.</p><p>4. VIOLENCE--Do this or else...</p><p>By the way...We're at step 3.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Looking at the meme as a philosopher, there are numerous problems with it. One problem relates to "steps" 1 & 2, and involves the failure to distinguish between what Plato called "mere persuasion" and persuasion that proceeds via "instruction"--or what I'm inclined to call the distinction between manipulative persuasion and reasoned persuasion.</p><p>The point is that we can persuade people through a kind of trickery in which we bypass people's rationality and responsiveness to evidence and arguments, instead appealing directly to irrelevant feelings and emotions to shift a person's view in the desired direction.</p><p>Or we can persuade people by give reasons and evidence that support the truth of the view we are asking them to accept. </p><p>The former is a kind of manipulation. The latter is not.</p><p>So, consider the so-called "step 1" of manipulation in the meme above, labeled "Fear": </p><p><i>Do this or something bad will happen. </i></p><p>Consider this step in relation to what the meme was surely intended to be a commentary about: the ongoing COVID vaccination campaign. Suppose that I point out that while COVID infection often has only mild health repercussions, in a significant number of people (much higher than for viruses like, say, the flu), it can lead to serious long-term health problems and even death. We've been able to isolate some of the risk factors for serious illness, but not all--and many apparently healthy people have died from the disease. </p><p>Suppose, furthermore, that I point out that the vaccines for COVID have been shown to be very safe and effective--and especially effective at prevent serious illness.</p><p>And suppose, furthermore, that I note that with widespread vaccination, we will be able to return to our normal lives without either seeing a surge of COVID-related deaths or whole classes of vulnerable people being forced to isolate themselves to avoid infection. But without widespread vaccination, we'll continue to face the tough choices we faced before vaccines were available: either we radically altar our collective way of life to protect the vulnerable (with the economic, social, and personal costs that this brings), or we don't, in which case vulnerable people will either be dying in frightening numbers or forced into seclusion.</p><p>And suppose I conclude on the basis of all of this that if we don't collectively make a commitment to vaccinate as widely as we can--which at a minimum means vaccinating ourselves and may also mean urging friends and family to do likewise--then the circumstances in our country will be far worse for many people than would be the case were we to make that collective commitment to vaccinate.</p><p>Suppose I lay out that argument. What I've effectively done here is given reason to think that it is true that "bad things will happen" if we don't collectively commit to vaccinating--bad things that won't happen if we do. But the argument above is based on sound evidence, and it logically supports the conclusion. In other words, it is a good argument for reaching the conclusion that if we don't do this, bad things will happen (or keep happening); and if we do this, those bad things will be avoided.</p><p>An argument like that is not manipulation. If you are about to drive without a seatbelt and I point out the differential accident survival rates of those who do and don't wear seatbelts, I'm engaged in <i>reasoned </i>persuasion, not the manipulative kind. Likewise with the vaccine argument above.</p><p>Of course, reasoned persuasion is open to criticism and response. It evolves through dialogue, through considering objections and responding. Reasoned persuasion, because it is oriented towards uncovering the truth, is open to being tested in the light of critical questions and the like. The point here, however, is that reasoned persuasion, which is <i>not</i> manipulative, can have the form of saying "Do this or something bad will happen." What distinguishes it from manipulation is that it is backed up by reasons and has an orientation towards speaking the truth.</p><p>The same can be said about "step 2." What are the characteristics of a good person? There is no universal consensus, of course, but there are still things we can and do agree about: virtues, or good character traits, that are typical of the people we call "good." </p><p>They care about others. They care about the public welfare. They are willing to mildly inconvenience themselves for the sake of helping others avoid major sacrifices, and they are willing to take small personal risks to help others avoid dire ones. </p><p>Given all the facts laid out in my argument above, you can see that it is easy to construct an argument for the conclusion that, on this broad portrait of a good person, someone who gets vaccinated against COVID is acting as a good person would. (Of course, there are cases of individuals who face a greater-than-typical risk from vaccination, and so might be very good people but choose nevertheless not to vaccinate; but generally, for the vast majority of us, the risk of vaccination is very low.)</p><p>In short, everything I said about step 1 applies to step 2: there are non-manipulative arguments for the conclusion that getting a vaccine is the sort of thing a good person as described above would do. Or, put another way, there are moral arguments for getting vaccinated that are good arguments for most ordinary, healthy people. Of course, these arguments are again open to critical examination, questions and objections. People with good motives may be misinformed about salient facts, and so they are unconvinced that they should get vaccinated absent a deeper investigation of those facts. But it is also the case that good people are open to being persuaded by an honest investigation of the evidence.</p><p>The point is that there can be good reasons to think that getting vaccinated is the sort of thing a good person, fully and properly informed, would do.</p><p>Of course there is manipulative persuasion that appeals to fear, and manipulative persuasion that appeals to flattery. What distinguishes these manipulative forms of persuasion is that they do not invoke evidence and reasons to support their conclusion. Instead, they paint a scary picture without offering clear, sound evidence for the view that the desired behavior contributes to preventing the scary picture from becoming reality. Or they pander to the egos of their audience, making the audience feel good about themselves, and then just trust that those good feelings will spill over onto the desired behavior without offering any solid moral arguments in support of the behavior.</p><p>Manipulation is about creating associations between feelings and views through building subconscious connections. You hold up an idea you want someone to believe, and you stoke certain emotions (fear or pride, etc.)--and you hope that those emotions will latch onto the idea in the right way. Fear will be associated with not doing X because of the vivid association created, even though you have done nothing to support the conclusion that failure to do X will have the fearful results. Or that gushy feeling of being a great person is associated with doing X, even though no reasoned moral argument is offered in support of the view that doing X is the kind of thing someone motivated by virtuous character traits would do.</p><p>When it comes to steps 3 & 4 in the meme, things are a bit different. 3 & 4 are not forms of persuasion in the sense of convincing you that something is true--either manipulatively or instructively. 3 & 4 are about behavior modification through rewards and penalties. But in labeling 4 "VIOLENCE," the meme ignores the fact that there are a wide array of penalties that are imposed to modify behavior that don't typically fall under the heading of violence--at least not violence in the typical overt form that we usually have in mind when we use the term (there are some less conventional understandings of violence that see all coercive pressures as violent, but I'm not going to dig into those understandings here).</p><p>Behavior modification through rewards and penalties is a widespread human practice. Parents do it when they reward and punish their kids. Teachers do it with gold stars and time in the thinking spot, or with A's and F's. Governments do it when they offer tax breaks and tax penalties. Laws are built on negative consequences for disobedience.</p><p>It is hard to imagine a functioning society that does not use rewards and penalties when the behavior at issue is important for the sake of social health and success. Of course, there are always pressing questions that we need to wrestle with when we are considering the imposition of rewards and penalties: is the matter important enough to try to shift people's default behavior by adding incentives and disincentives? And if so, what is the best approach: incentive-based, or penalty-based? </p><p>3 is often employed when reasoned persuasion of types 1 & 2 are insufficient. Milder (not-overtly-violent) forms of 4 are sometimes employed when 3 fails, without an overtly violent form of 4 ever being deployed. Many times we stop at 3 because we conclude that the most effective way to proceed is to push on with a combination 1-3. Sometimes the matter is so serious (murder), that we implement a violent (forcible arrest and incarceration) form of 4 immediately without waiting to see whether 1-3 alone, or a milder form of 4, will work. In terms of social tools for getting people to behave civilly and beneficially with one another, we use a mix of 1-4 in ways that don't follow some clear, inevitable pattern.</p><p>What is troubling about this meme is that it does not present 3 & (milder forms of) 4 as inevitable features of civil society, where 3 & 4 are employed variously in various situations, in various combinations with 1 & 2, based on assessments of social needs, individual rights, and pragmatic questions about what works. And it does not recognize that the "penalty" side of behavior modification comes in a range of forms, most of it not overtly violent. Instead, the meme represents 4 as violence, and 1-4 as this inevitable progression of increasing severity, with violence the final frightening stage in government population control. And then it ends with saying that we are just about to enter that final stage.</p><p>The meme offers no evidence, no reasoned argument, for the view that this is how our nation's campaign to get people vaccinated is evolving. It simply lays out this ominous set of stages, with VIOLENCE (in all caps) about to come hammering down.</p><p>So, based on the distinction made above between manipulative and reasoned persuasion, this meme appears to be a case of manipulative persuasion. In that respect, it is distinct from prevailing arguments about the troubling outcomes of large-scale failure to vaccinate, and moral arguments in favor of vaccination, since these arguments (at least the ones I've seen) most often take the form of reasoned persuasion. </p>
Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-2519545297699914792021-08-03T17:14:00.001-05:002021-08-03T17:14:34.957-05:00The Straw Man Fallacy, the Principle of Charity, and Deflection Tactics: The Case of Florida Governor DeSantis<p>Earlier today, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lashed out at a reporter who asked him if mask mandates might have helped seven children in Florida who are currently in intensive care with COVID.</p><p>DeSantis responded with the following words: "You're blaming the kids, saying they weren't wearing masks so they're in the ICU. With all due respect, I find that deplorable to blame the victim who ends up being hospitalized."</p><p>With all due respect, Gov. DeSantis, I doubt very highly that the reporter was blaming the kids who are in the ICU for their illness. A far more charitable reading of the question is that the reporter was blaming you.</p><p>Actually, since DeSantis is unlikely to ever read this blog post, let me stop talking to him directly. The point I want to make here is that there are strategies for engaging in public discourse about controversial topics that are likely to advance mutual understanding and help make progress in reaching wiser collective decision. And then there are strategies that have the opposite effect. DeSantis's response to the reporter falls into the latter category. Often, such deliberate muddying of the water is meant to deflect attention when someone faces a challenge they are ill-equipped to answer directly--and that is almost certainly what is happening in this case.</p><p>Let's go a bit deeper, in order to see why. The reporter asked a question. Let me paraphrase it as follows: </p><p><i>Seven children are severely ill with COVID. The state of Florida does not have masking mandates--in part because Gov. DeSantis is an ardent opponent of such mandates. Would some or all of those seriously ill children have been spared if there had been state-wide mask mandates of the sort DeSantis opposes?</i></p><p>These are not the reporter's precise words, but I think they capture the substance. So what is the reporter really saying here? Philosophers advocate using what they call "the Principle of Charity" in interpreting what others say: if what someone says can be taken in different ways, opt for the interpretation that makes the most sense. Partly this is about choosing the interpretation that is the best fit with their actual words and (since we sometimes fumble for the words or don't quite say what we obviously mean) with their likely intentions to the extent that we can discern them. Partly, also, it is about assuming the best about others when that is possible: if there is a way of understanding what someone says that is plausible and morally decent, then don't choose an interpretation that is wildly implausible or that attributes to them views or aims that are indecent.</p><p>The Straw Man Fallacy might be seen as the polar opposite of the Principle of Charity. The Straw Man Fallacy involves attributing to someone a view or position that is at best a distortion of what they have said and at worst foists on them an easily-refuted or outrageous view they would never endorse but which bears enough superficial resemblance to what they actually said that you can get away with making the false attribution. In short, it's about attacking someone for some implausible or indecent view they <i>don't </i>hold and then acting as if you have successfully refuted what they said. </p><p>Rather than a means of trying to engage with the substance of another's words, the Straw Man Fallacy is often a deflection tactic. Sometimes, the aim is to turn the conversation away from the actual ideas someone raised because you aren't sure you can refute them and you want to give the appearance of having won the debate--and since the distortion is easy to refute, you can create that appearance by attacking it. At other times, you use a Straw Man to <i>deflect </i>because the actual ideas the other person has expressed have merit...and if that is noticed it could be bad news for you.</p><p>It is no surprise at all that politicians routinely commit the Straw Man Fallacy and ignore the Principle of Charity. But am I right that DeSantis's response to the reporter is a case of this?</p><p>Consider. The reporter asked a question. It would be entirely reasonable to treat it not as a veiled act of casting blame or criticism, but as simply a question: Would a different policy have had better results for pediatric health in Florida than the policy DeSantis has been championing? Usually, there is no violation of the principle of charity when you treat something formulated as question as if it were an honest question. Had DeSantis engaged with this question, he might have given his reasons for thinking either that (a) a different policy wouldn't have had better results or (b) even though it might have had better public health outcomes, other considerations (perhaps the freedom of individuals to avoid the inconvenience of a bit of cloth on their faces) is more important that the survival of the state's children. </p><p>Of course, if he tried to make either case (a) or (b) he'd be forced to engage with strong arguments to the contrary. Of the two, he comes out better if he defends (a)--but in that case, he'd invite experts around the country to marshal arguments and evidence that strongly challenge the truth of (a).</p><p>Another interpretation of the reporter's question falls within the scope of plausibility and might be seen as allowed by the principle of charity, namely the interpretation I posited above: the reporter's question was a veiled criticism of the governor. The reporter was, in the <i>form</i> of a question, really saying that those critically ill children would have been less likely to have ended up in the ICU if DeSantis had championed a different public policy response to the COVID crisis in his state, perhaps one that included a mask mandate in indoor public spaces.</p><p>Had DeSantis interpreted the reporter's question in this way, if he didn't want to accept blame for making an unwise public health choice he could either (again) defend the wisdom of his favored public policy by defending (a) or (b)--or to concede that a mask mandate would have had better outcomes for the state but maintain that he can't reasonably be held blameworthy for choosing an alternative course, perhaps because of unavoidable ignorance or something to that effect. In states where mask mandates were lifted before the delta variant surge, I could imagine a public leader offering such a response: "We sincerely believed that vaccinations had brought the virus sufficiently under control that masking was no longer doing enough good to justify the intrusion into personal choice and public convenience." </p><p>But DeSantis's broader policy choices and leadership decisions could render such a move implausible, forcing him to defend (a) or (b). And if he didn't think he had a sufficiently compelling case for either (a) or (b), he might therefore have chosen to deflect with a Straw Man--not because that serves the truth or the public good, but because that serves his own ego and political prospects.</p><p>Is that what he did? The answer depends on how plausible it is to take the reporter as, in effect, saying, "The children who are in the ICU are to blame for their own condition, because they failed to wear masks." Is this a plausible reading of the reporter's question about whether a mask mandate would have spared those kids? Or, if not that, is it an implication of what the reporter was asking, even if he may not have noticed that implication?</p><p>Clearly it is neither. Here are some things to keep in mind, things that DeSantis surely knows:</p><p>1. Children in public spaces are more protected by the widespread mask-wearing of those around them than they are by their own mask-wearing. Such widespread mask-wearing is more likely to happen when there is a mask mandate. Hence, a widespread mask mandate could reduce the incidence of pediatric COVID independent of the mask-wearing habits of the children themselves. </p><p>2. Since younger children, being immature and lacking adult self-control, will predictably fall short in diligent mask-wearing, it falls on the broader society to protect those kids from their understandable failures through <i>adult</i> diligence. In other words, a society that knows kids will be safer if either the kids wear masks diligently or the adult population wears masks diligently, and which knows that kids being kids will fall short in wearing masks diligently, has reason to buckle down and diligently wear masks for the safety of those kids. So, a mask-mandate could help protect children from their own immaturity by driving home with the force of law the importance of adult diligence in protecting children through adult mask-wearing. And the evidence shows that, in fact, mask-wearing among adults is more diligent and widespread when there are legal mandates. So, again, a mandate could reduce risk to children regardless of what the children do--and, in fact, may be wise precisely because we cannot expect young children to diligently wear masks. </p><p>3. Kids cannot be expected to wear masks at home, and so they are vulnerable to being infected by family members who bring the virus home. But mask mandates reduce the rate of virus spread within a community, such that it is less likely that a family member will bring the virus home, exposing the child, in a community with a mask mandate than in a community without one. Again, for this reason a mask mandate protects children regardless of the mask-wearing habits of the children themselves.</p><p>In short, a mask mandate is the sort of thing that can reasonably be expected to protect children from the spread of COVID, reducing their risk of getting it and being hospitalized, regardless of whether the children themselves consistently wear masks. Not only has DeSantis surely been presented with this information, but so has the reporter. It is, after all, widely disseminated public knowledge, at least among those of us who have been following the research on masking and COVID. </p><p>As such, it is almost certainly this information that motivated the reporter's question. If the reporter were making an <i>accusation </i>(not merely asking a question) it is therefore highly unreasonable to suppose that the reporter were accusing the sick *children* of failing to mask up. It is much, much more plausible to treat the reporting as accusing state leaders (and DeSantis specifically) of failing to make a public policy decision pertaining to mask use that would have predictably reduced the risk to those children.</p><p>DeSantis surely knew that the reporter was not blaming children for being sick. He surely knew that there is a difference between talking about masking policies and individual mask use. The reporter specifically referenced the former. And when you are focusing on policies, it is primarily political leaders who are responsible for whether those policies are implemented or not--not sick kids who might have not gotten sick had the policies been different. </p><p>So, DeSantis was guilty of committing the Straw Man Fallacy and ignoring the principle of charity. And if you ask me, he probably did it on purpose as a deflection tactic, because he was not ready to defend himself against the charge that he'd made and was continuing to make a bad public health policy decision at a time of unprecedented risk to public health. </p><p>There are likely many who see those children in Florida ICU's are a vivid symbol of DeSantis's blundering of this public health crisis. He likely knows this. So when the reporter called attention to this symbol of public health incompetence, out of fear of the political ramifications he accuses the reporter of blaming innocent children for their own illness--even though that is not what the reporter did. </p><p>I sure hope that most people see through this move and continue to push for substantive discussion of public policy questions, and continue to ask whether state leaders who have been resisting mask mandates should rethink their positions as the delta variant surges in states like Florida (and my own state of Oklahoma). Let's demand actual engagement with these questions and not fall for Straw Man deflections.</p><p><br /></p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-47652515933230453922021-07-26T11:58:00.000-05:002021-07-26T11:58:14.843-05:00Socialism, Capitalism, and Talking Past One Another<p>I've been seeing a lot social media posts recently about socialism. Often, they take the following form: "How can anyone today seriously think socialism is a good idea? Are they too young to remember the Soviet Union and its collapse? And too out-of-touch to have followed the news about Venezuela?" </p><p>The problem, more often than not, is that the advocates of socialism and the critics of socialism are talking about different things--using the term "socialism" in different ways. They are talking <i>past</i> each other. And it seems to me quite possible that if they understood what the other was saying, they might actually <i>agree </i>with each other. Or at least be able to have a productive dialogue about their real points of disagreement.</p><p>I also think that there are forces at work in our society that are committed to stopping such mutual understanding and dialogue from happening, because they benefit from polarization--whether it comes from miscommunication or from substantive dissent.</p><p>So this is a short post aimed at, hopefully, countering some of those forces of polarization by clarifying concepts. </p><p>Strictly speaking, "capitalism" refers to a system in which the means of production are privately owned and the goods produced are made available in free markets to those who can afford to buy them. "Socialism" refers to a system in which the means of production are publicly owned and the goods produced are distributed to the public in accord with existing laws (created in whatever way the political system creates laws).</p><p>Most actual economies are a mix of these things. In the US most goods and services are privately produced and sold at market. But K-12 education, fire and police departments, the military, infrastructure such as roads, etc., follow a socialist model.</p><p>In such countries, it is perhaps better to speak of certain areas of the economy being capitalist or socialist than to speak of the country as socialist or capitalist. So we can say that in the US, the beer industry is capitalist and the military is socialist. But we usually don't. We usually talk about <i>countries</i> being socialist or capitalist.</p><p>So when is a <i>country</i> "socialist"? Here we see a diversity of uses.</p><p>Countries like the former USSR, which attempted to follow Marx's communist philosophy but got stuck in dictatorship, have been called "socialist".</p><p>Democratic countries like Norway with mixed economies are sometimes called "socialist" when their mix has more areas of public ownership than in the US.</p><p>The Nazis, during their rise to power, were competing with Marxist-communist groups for the support of disaffected working class Germans and so put "socialist" in the name of their party and adopted a few token socialist proposals as a rhetorical ploy to win support. Because of this self-labeling, some people want to call Nazi Germany socialist.</p><p>But the USSR, Norway, and Nazi Germany are all very different from each other. If someone says they'd like to see the US become like Norway (at least in certain ways), it would be a mistake to take this to mean they want the US to become like the USSR or Nazi Germany.</p><p>And if someone is talking about socialism in the sense of a country like Norway (as many younger generation Americans do), it would be a mistake to interpret them as talking about socialism in the sense of a country like the USSR (which is the sense that may older generation Americans appear to have).</p><p>Many of the criticisms that are right on target when one is talking about the USSR will miss the mark if one is talking about Norway. And so we can easily get a situation where one person is advocating socialism in the sense of "a country like Norway, with more socialized elements than the US but also with privately-owned businesses, free markets, representative democracy, etc." And someone else, hearing the term "socialism," imagines the USSR, with a command system and five-year plans and a dictatorial regime. The ensuing argument goes nowhere because the parties to the dispute are talking about different things.</p><p>Put simply, the term "socialism" has come to be used in different ways. Make sure, therefore, that when this term comes up in conversations about public policy, everyone is clear about how the term is being used. There are those who will try to prevent such clarity and mutual understanding because it serves their interests for people to be (metaphorically or literally) shouting uselessly at each other rather than having productive conversations.</p><p>For what it's worth, my own view is that the real disagreement in our society--and as such the real conversation we should be having--is about what mix of capitalist and socialist elements is the optimal one at this particular time and place (and I do believe that the optimal mix changes from time to time and place to place based on social and environmental conditions). The US is a mixed economy, like Norway. The Norwegian mix is probably not the best mix for the US today--but is there a mix that is better than the mix we have now? That is the conversation we need to be having, and it is a conversation that is derailed by those who encourage us not to understand what other people mean.</p><p>Resist them by asking clarifying questions. Here's one to try: "When you use the term 'socialism,' what do you mean?"</p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-57614757327775007412020-10-04T12:35:00.002-05:002020-10-04T13:16:51.624-05:00If I Cannot Love (Insert Your Preferred Villain Here), I Cannot Love Anybody: A Reflection on Christian Love<p>The other day on Facebook, I posted a lengthy reflection on what it means to pray for healing, given my commitment to Christian love, and inspired by the recent COVID diagnosis of President Trump. I stressed that prayer for healing should encompass all brokenness: physical and psychological, moral and social. We should always pray for more healing rather than less. When our society is riddled with all the problems we see, I am convinced that the solution is more love, not less.</p><p>But on reflection, it seems to me that these ideas, absent a deeper context, can lead to misunderstanding. So here, I want to offer some deeper thoughts about what Christian love calls for in relation to those we might think are not good people, those we think might pose a threat to others. Because even as I pray for Donald Trump's full recovery, I believe that for the good of this country, his presidency must end.</p><p>At the height of the Nazi ascendancy, pastor and activist
A.J. Muste said, “If I can’t love Hitler, I can’t love anybody.” He was making
a point about the logic of Christian love, sometimes called “agape”: it is the
kind of love that does not wait on worth, but extends to each person, even the
enemy. If your love excludes the enemy, then it isn’t <i>this </i>kind of love. It isn’t
agape. </p><p>That doesn’t mean your love for your family or friends isn’t real and
beautiful. It doesn’t mean you’re a villain on the order of Hitler. It just
means that this particular difficult kind of love that Jesus called his followers
to display is not the kind of love you are cultivating in your life. Or, if you
are trying to cultivate it, then it has eluded you.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It eludes all of us. It has to be and always is
an ongoing struggle. To be committed to living by this sort of love is not to actually
live by it, but to constantly <i>try anew</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A couple decades after Muste, Martin Luther King, Jr., made very
similar points when he led a movement that targeted racism, not
racists, and when he insisted that an unwavering and relentless opposition to
racial injustice should be paired with love for the agents of injustice.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it is very important to know, not just the scope of this
kind of love, but its character. What does loving Hitler <i>look</i> like?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>I</o:p>t doesn’t mean being “nice.” It doesn't mean not trying to stop them from committing crimes against humanity. It doesn't mean enabling abuse or remaining silent in the face of injustice.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Years ago, I wrote my
dissertation on the Christian Love Ethic and its relationship to violence. One
of the points I made was that agape looks very different when it is directed
towards the robbery victim lying in a gutter along the Jericho road than it
looks when directed towards the elites who are abusing the poor or those who
watch it happen in silence because they don’t want to risk their comfort. At its
heart, agape is a love that desires that the brokenness within each person be
healed and that seeks, in the most fitting way, to promote such healing.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For the racist, the most egregious brokenness is their
racism. For the compulsive liar, it is their profound disconnection from truth.
These are afflictions of the soul, wounds that separate the afflicted from the
true and the good while also causing untold damage to others. My love for the
liar and my love for the liar’s victims demands that I stand against the lies
and pray for a transformation that will restore to the liar the love of truth
that is essential for human welfare.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me be clear. Agape is not the sort of love that calls an
abuse victim to remain with their abuser. Because agape is a love that extends
to everyone, it extends to the victim of abuse. It extends to yourself. And so
agape calls abuse victims to protect themselves from toxic relationships. By virtue of the love they are called to have for themselves, they are called to escape the kind of
relationship that enables abuse. But this love also extends to all the future
potential victims of the abuser. And so it can mean denouncing the abuse (if that is safe). It can
mean warning the world about the threat that the abuser poses.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And because it extends to the abuser—and because the
brokenness Christians call sin is the worst kind of brokenness of all, a
brokenness that separates the sinner from the most fundamental truths in a way
that leaves them adrift, that leaves them furiously chasing after dominance and
control of others as a surrogate for the deeper peace and joy that is possible
when one lives in tune with reality—because the abuser's sin is so crushingly
destructive of the <i>sinner</i>, love for the sinner calls for interventions that
shake them out of the illusion that the path they are on is anything but evil.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This can and often does mean punishment. This was one of the
most interesting conclusions I reached in my study of Christian love and violence:
the infliction of punishment on someone who has committed egregious wrongs may
be the most loving thing we can do for them. Of course, our systems of
punishment are themselves broken and need to be healed. The privileged often
escape punishment while the marginalized are punished, not for serious wrongs, but
for desperate acts pursued to meet their basic needs or escape their pain. But
for those who are mired in viciousness, who have lost their capacity to
empathize with others, who are so selfish or so trapped by ideologies of hate
that they have become severed from the true and the good, the most loving thing
we can do for them may be to punish them.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I began doing weekend conflict resolution workshops in
prisons, and I found myself forming bonds of human connection to murderers and rapist and even child
molesters, I never thought they shouldn’t be there. They were exactly where they
belonged, both for their own sakes and for the sakes of their victims. But for
their sakes, they also needed a healing from afflictions they didn’t
understand. They needed a grace they didn’t know how to ask for. Some were so
closed off from the true and the good that they thought they weren’t broken—and
the most powerful breakthrough of an intense weekend workshop came when they
found themselves face to face with the depths of their own brokenness and began
to weep for all those they’d hurt, all those who had hurt and abused them, all
those ways they’d been hiding from the truth about themselves, and all those
ways they had dealt with wounds inflicted on them when they were innocent by
simply inflicting comparable wounds on the innocent around them.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This kind of brokenness—moral brokenness—is the most
damaging kind of brokenness of all. Especially when its victim lives within
layers of delusion that hide the truth of their brokenness from themselves. And
so love calls us above all to care about healing such brokenness where we find
it. But the most serious kind of brokenness is not necessarily the most urgent.
Sometimes, to even begin to focus on moral brokenness, other kinds of brokenness
must be addressed <i>first</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is why we are called to love the poor and the sick by
offering food and healing without thought to their character, without exploring
what other forms of brokenness might lurk beneath the surface. The Good
Samaritan, coming upon the robbery victim lying in a gutter, didn’t first grill
the robbery victim to find out if he was a racist or an abuser before helping
bring him to safety and care. The Good Samaritan just helped.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When it comes to those who are physically wounded, sick with
a deadly illnesses, starving, or homeless, their desperate human need cries out
in such a way that if we walk on or place conditions on our aid, it means we
don’t love them with the agape kind of love. If Martin Luther King, Jr., found
one of the most vile racist sheriffs of his day lying in a gutter, bleeding,
King would get that man to a hospital and pray for his health. He would also
continue to oppose and fight to overthrow everything that this sheriff was
fighting to defend.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even as we punish those who commit egregious wrong, we must feed
them a healthy diet, provide adequate shelter and health care, and pursue their
deeper psychological and moral needs. In so doing, we show (or at least strive
to show) that the punishment we inflict is not about hatred of them, not about
petty vengeance, but about repudiating and hopefully transforming the moral
brokenness that harms both them and all those they victimize.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes, when our bitterest enemies fall sick or become
destitute, we are not in a position to drive them to the hospital or give them
a bowl of stew. When we cannot do these things directly, we do it by praying
for those needs, an act that displays our commitment to those needs in the face
of our own impotence. For me, this is what prayer is about, first and foremost:
a way to commit myself to my neighbor’s welfare even when there is nothing else
that I can do. It is a way to orient my will towards their health, their
safety, their general welfare, their moral development, despite my limits.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One reason we might not be able to provide help ourselves is
because we lack the skills or the resources But a different reason is because,
in doing so, we might put ourselves within the reach of someone who would
exploit that closeness in order to hurt us. This is why I would not encourage an abused wife who has escaped the hell she was in to return to her abusive husband if he fell deeply sick and needed a caretaker. Such an act would expose her, someone she is called to love, to renewed abuse. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes, the reason we can’t
help someone is because we know that if we try, they will take advantage of our
good will to attack us, to dominate or bully or abuse us. Our love for
ourselves demands that we remain at a distance. And so we express our love by
opposing their abusiveness, condemning their actions, perhaps insisting they be
punished, and praying for their health.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(Some use this as an excuse, for example, to not provide
help for refugees. But there is a difference between refusing to take in
someone you know to be a terrorist and refusing to take in innocent victims of
terrorism and violence out of a fear, unsupported by concrete evidence, that
they *might* be terrorists in disguise or might be prone towards terrorism—simply
because of their ethnicity or religion. This is prejudice, not self-protection.
We create more terrorist threats to our safety when we turn away those in need
out of prejudice than when we offer them safety, a home, and a way to live with
dignity.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In this moment, I am thinking about what this ethic means
for how I should respond to Donald Trump’s COVID diagnosis. What is clear to me
is this: I am called to pray for his health. In this moment, that has an
urgency that I cannot ignore. I am called to pray that he gets the care he
needs to recover fully from this disease that has the power to kill. But his
illness does not change my belief that his administration poses a credible
danger to the health of this country, that his character is such that his
occupying the office of the presidency is doing harm, serious harm, to the
country I love.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And so even as I pray for his full recovery, I will vote
against him, and I will call out in appropriate ways and in appropriate places
the offenses he has committed—the bullying, the refusal to condemn white
supremacists, the chronic indifference to truth, the self-serving exploitation
of people’s fears and the deliberate stoking of divisiveness and polarization
at a time when these problems have become so serious that our country urgently
needs a leader who at least tries to do the opposite. As I pray for his healing
I will pray for the kind of breakthrough in grace I occasionally saw with some
of the prisoners I worked with: a coming to grips with the depths of his own brokenness.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am called to love everyone. And this means I am called to see and respond
to all the brokenness in the world to the best of my ability. I am called to
cry out for bodily healing if Trump’s body is broken, and to cry out for moral healing
if his character is broken, and to cry out for social healing if his brokenness
exacerbates the brokenness of my country. To oppose what I think is dangerous
in his character, in his policies, does not preclude me from praying for his
health and the health of his family and those around him. In fact, it all
springs from the same source. I am called to love in a way that seeks the end
to brokenness wherever I find it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is the ethic I try to live by. I am no better at it
than others who try to live by it. I fail, and then I try again. I will not
tell you that this is the ethic <i>you</i> must live by, but I will say that I have
found it to have an astonishing potential to heal forms of brokenness that
looked to be so fixed, so permanent, that there was no possibility at all of
any change. It doesn’t always work. But the more that this sort of love spreads
within a community, the more immersive it becomes, the more powerful it is.</p>Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-70951480095960614352020-06-06T14:23:00.000-05:002020-06-06T14:24:14.745-05:00One Statue, One Symbolic Gesture: The Case of the Texas Ranger Statue at Love FieldThe other day,<a href="https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-ranger-statue-at-love-field-removed-over-concerns-about-racist-history/2382528/"> airport officials at Dallas Love Field removed a 12' brass sculpture that has greeted travelers for decades</a>.<br />
<br />
The sculpture is of a law enforcement officer, a Texas Ranger. The sculpture's caption reads, "One Riot, One Ranger"--a reference to the apocryphal story that when a single Texas Ranger appeared in response to a riot there was someone who asked if he was really alone and the ranger replied, "You only have one riot, don't you?"<br />
<br />
The model for the sculpture was a Texas Ranger by the name of Jay Banks. The impetus for the removal of the statue comes from<a href="https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2020/june/texas-rangers-love-field-statue-jay-banks-frank-hamer/"> a recently published excerpt, in D Magazine</a>, from a forthcoming book, Cult of Glory, by Doug Swanson (a Pulitzer Prize finalist and, for a year, a John S. Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford University). But while that publication called attention to some uncomfortable truths about Jay Banks, current national events almost certainly played a big role in the swiftness of the decision to remove the statue. What Swanson's excerpt reveals is that Banks commanded Rangers who carried out a deeply troubling assignment: they blocked the integration of a public high school and a junior college in Mansfield, Texas.<br />
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The move to take down the statue is predictably controversial, peppered with cries of political correctness run amok. One person I know on social media bemoaned the fact that, because Banks did one thing people don't like, we are tearing down a tribute to someone who spent a career serving and protecting the public.<br />
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But just as one Texas Ranger can, purportedly, quell a riot, so too can one act by a law officer have far-reaching and career-defining implications.<br />
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A favorite quote of mine, from A.J. Muste, is this: "If you can't love Hitler, you can't love anybody." Muste is here make a very challenging but also a quasi-logical claim about the nature of Christian love, the distinct kind of love that does not wait on worth but extends unconditionally to all. His point was that if I can't love Hitler, then my love has conditions; and if my love has conditions, it isn't this unconditional Christian kind of love. And that means that this ONE instance tells us something about all of my acts of love: none of them are Christian love in the full sense.<br />
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Likewise, one police action by an individual officer can, at least in certain cases, reveal to us something career-defining, something about who that officer is and what values and commitments shape the nature of his police work. It can tell us, among other things, whom he sees himself as serving in his vocation--and whom he does not serve.<br />
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And that, in turn, can tell us a lot about what his name and likeness mean, symbolically, when lifted up--or taken down--by a community. A career-defining moment may not only tell who this officer is, but the values of the community that chooses to honor that officer. If a community hoists up a statue to that officer, what is the community saying about itself, about its members, about its values? If they leave it up when they learn something troubling, what does that say? And if the same community takes the statue down, what does that say?<br />
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The decisions about erecting monuments, keeping them up, and taking them down are decisions about what a community wants to say about itself to its citizens and to wider world. One statue can thus mean a lot, and what we do with that statue can both express and shape the values of a community. It can help determine whether Black Lives Matter, really matter on an equal footing with White lives, to a community and its criminal justice system.<br />
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With this in mind, let's look at the story about Jay Banks that Swanson shares in the published excerpt from his forthcoming book.<br />
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I want to review the story that Swanson tells in my own words, since I want to highlight certain features of it that are important for drawing moral conclusions. In 1956, in keeping with the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court Decision, the NAACP tried to integrate the high school in Mansfield, Texas. White citizens responded with outrage, threats of violence, and an effigy of a lynched black man strung up at the entrance to the school. The governor responded by sending in the Rangers--not to quell the angry white supremacist crowds and help the black children go to school, but to help the angry white supremacists keep integration from happening.<br />
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Let me say that another way: these Rangers were not sent to enforce the law of the land but to help the white citizens of Mansfield to continue segregationist policies in violation of the highest laws of the land.<br />
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Jay Banks was the Ranger in command. And he did as ordered. It was his mission to enforce unconstitutional segregationist policies, and he carried it out.<br />
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We could imagine a brave officer of the law refusing such a mission on the grounds that his job was to enforce the law, not help citizens violate it. We could imagine some Texas Ranger taking a principled stand for justice in that moment in history, bucking the white supremacist values that were so widespread and instead speaking a prophetic moral message of racial equality. It would make a great story. But Jay Banks was not the hero in such a story. He made no such courageous stand.<br />
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Nor did he did make any attempt to disperse the violence-threatening mob of white citizens who were gathered to defy US law and enforce white supremacist principles.<br />
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Nor did he make any attempt to take down the sinister effigy of a lynched Black man--a symbol used to terrorize the Black population of Mansfield just as lynchings and the threat of lynchings have been used for generations to terrorize Black people. He let that stay up.<br />
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Here's a picture of Jay Banks, leaning against a tree in front of the school, the dangling effigy in place:<br />
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<img alt="Ranger EJ Banks in front of Mansfield Highschool" height="266" src="https://assets.dmagstatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Ranger-EJ-Banks-Mansfield-HS-1024x683.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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When asked about it later, he explained his actions as follows: “They were just ‘salt of the earth’ citizens. They were concerned because they were convinced that someone was trying to interfere with their way of life.”<br />
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Banks and the Rangers dispatched to Mansfield were successful. As Swanson notes about the high school integration effort, "Blacks were so intimidated that none attempted to enroll at Mansfield." When two young Black people, aged 17 and 18, attempted to enroll at the local junior college, they were met by an angry mob--one that a Life Magazine photographer described as among the meanest he'd ever seen.<br />
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The Rangers, including Banks, stood with the mob. They made no attempt to disperse the mob but, instead, threatened to arrest the two young Black people, who then retreated. Afterwards, the White Citizens Council treated Banks to a chicken dinner.<br />
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So what does all of this tell us? What I know specifically about Banks' career overall is limited to what I just shared. But I assume that he did many good things in the course of a career in law enforcement. I assume he apprehended violent criminals and helped to prevent acts of violence. I assume he protected innocent people from harm and gave a helping hand to people in trouble. Maybe he helped a lost child find her parents. Maybe he stood his ground in the face of dire threats to his life in order to keep other people alive. Maybe he saw people broken down on the side of the highway and stopped to help.<br />
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But when I use the word "people," I wonder who these people are. Because here's the thing: in Mansfield, Texas, a mob comprised of one segment of the population threatened violence against another. They hoisted up one of the most terrible, terrifying symbolic images one can imagine: a lynched body, a symbol of hanging someone until dead. A Black body, of course, not a White one. The symbol probably did not instill terror in Whites. But it surely did to the Black citizens of Mansfield. It said to them, loudly and forcefully, "We will <i>murder </i>you if you exercise your newly-acknowledged legal right to attend this school."<br />
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Jay Banks called the people who delivered this message "the salt of the earth." He defended them on the grounds that "someone" was trying to "interfere with their way of life."<br />
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And he acted to protect their way of life <i>from </i>the "someone" who threatened it.<br />
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He saw that as his job. He did not protest it or resist it. He saw it as his job: to serve and protect the White community and its way of life from the threat posed by Blacks, by the prospect of Black equality, and by those outsiders (whatever their color) who worked for equality and justice.<br />
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I keep returning to this portrayal of violence-threatening mobs as "the salt of the earth," because it communicates a vision of what law enforcement is about, a vision that's bound up with white supremacy. Mobs that gather and threaten violence in order to thwart people from doing what the highest law in the land says they have a legal right to do? THAT is the very definition of lawlessness. A commitment to law enforcement that was impartial with respect to race would balk at defending such a mob.<br />
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In order to do what Jay Banks did in Mansfield, he had to have an understanding of his role, of his purpose, that was not impartial with respect to race. He had to believe that it was his mission to protect and serve White people--and a big part of what he was supposed to protect them against was the threat posed by Blacks. Not just Black violence, but Black presumption--the presumption of equality and dignity and respect that trying to enroll in a junior college represents.<br />
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This means that Jay Banks did not merely see his role as being about protecting and serving White citizens but about protecting and serving their White privilege. He stood with the White citizens of Mansfield to face down that threat to their privilege posed by integration.<br />
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Now let me pause here and say something important: I'm not claiming here that Jay Banks was some kind of moral monster who helped to fire up the racist sentiments in Mansfield. Far from it. In seeing things the way that he did, and in seeing his role as a law enforcement officer as he did, he was probably pretty normal.<br />
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It was probably how he was raised to see things. It had to be, for him to look at mobs threatening Black children with lynching and call then the salt of the earth. The people who did this were <i>his</i> people, people like him who were raised to think as he did about race in America. And he saw his job as a Texas Ranger not to be the egalitarian administration of justice or the unbiased enforcement of the law but the protection of these White citizens and their privilege, even against threats that came from the law itself--from the highest law of the land, the Constitution of the United States of America and the rulings of the Supreme Court.<br />
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The way that an officer of the law carries out an assignment like this tells us how that officer of the law sees his role and his purpose in society. And what we see on display here is a racialized vision of law enforcement. It is about protecting and serving White citizens and their privilege. It is about protecting them from the threats posed by Black citizens (although I doubt he'd call them citizens), whether that threat came in the form of theft or promised violence, or whether it came from the attempt to assert equality and dignity.<br />
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The fact that this way of seeing things was commonplace at the time may well serve to soften the force of our moral repudiation. Today, people know better and have no excuse for thinking in a such a way--but maybe in Jay Banks' day, they didn't know better. Or perhaps they were just beginning to encounter the insights that could help them to know better. In terms of assessing the moral blameworthiness of people in the past, it can lead us into trouble if we simply apply our contemporary standards and values without qualification. While I believe injustice is injustice no matter what the era, understandable cultural blindness can partly excuse people for failing to be just, even if such blindness can never make injustice anything other than wrong.<br />
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But in taking down a statue of someone from the past, the issue at hand is not how we should morally assess the overall moral praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of the person represented in the statue. The question is what values we want to symbolically affirm today with the public symbols we choose to display.<br />
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The fact is that precisely because Jay Banks was a man of his time rather than a man ahead of his time, he represents something far bigger than himself: he represents a vision of law enforcement that has for generations led to the marginalization and violation of Black Americans. It is precisely this vision of law enforcement whose legacy we have to cast off if we want to move into a future in which fewer George Floyds are murdered by police officers. It is precisely this vision of law enforcement that has no place in any system of law enforcement today. Not that it did back then, either, but we have the clarity of vision today to stand against that vision and to lift up in its place one that is truly egalitarian and just.<br />
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To do that, we need to clearly repudiate racist visions of law enforcement. This is what the historic moment we are in calls for: unambiguous repudiation of the vision of law enforcement that sees the mission of police to be the protection of White Americans and White privilege against the threats posed by people of color and their demands for equal dignity and respect.<br />
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In other words, this moment in history calls us to unambiguously repudiate the vision of law enforcement that Jay Banks represents--the one so clearly on display during his defining moments in Mansfield, Texas. He was perhaps no more guilty than anyone else in his day for affirming and acting on such a racist vision. Still, he was an uncritical agent of that racist vision and its evils. And that means he represents this vision. And there is no way to unambiguously repudiate that vision while, at the same time, leaving intact a symbol in a public space that lifts up someone whose career represents it.<br />
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At the same time, a public act of taking down such a symbol is a public message with its own symbolic meaning: "We are turning away from this racist conceptions of policing; we are choosing not to honor it."<br />
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Of course, there are difficulties here because public symbols are complex. This is especially true of the public symbols that are tied to the legacy of human lives, such as statues and the names of famous people attached to building or streets or town squares. No human being symbolizes just one thing. And neither does Jay Banks. And there are surely things in Jay Banks' life that we want to lift up today.<br />
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If we look at the lives of those officers of the law who, in earlier generations, saw their mission through racist lenses and went out to serve and protect White citizens while keep Black ones down--if we are honest and fair as we examine their stories, we will find them standing for things we want to honor: their courage in facing danger for the sake of the helpless, for example. But surely we can find people in our history who exemplify these virtues <i>without</i> the limitations that racism imposes on their expression. It's probably true that, at some point, Jay Banks went out of his way to help a child. But my guess is it was a white child, and that he wouldn't have shown the same compassion for a black child. But surely there are law officers in the state of Texas who have shown compassion without racist constraints. So let's honor <i>those</i> officer.<br />
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If we want to honor the virtues of law enforcement without also honoring the racist history of policing in America, let's find those <i>prophetic</i> officers who stood for racial equality when it wasn't popular to do so, the ones who were asked to enforce inequality and said <i>no</i>. Let's find the officers who took a stand for racial justice. Let's find Black officers who had the courage to take up a calling in law enforcement despite a hostile environment, who blazed a trail paved with moral courage and helped to challenge racist assumptions.<br />
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Let's find those officers who represent the values we want our law enforcement agencies today to embody. Let's commission statues of them.<br />
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Maybe the people of Dallas want to lift up what is best in the history of the Texas Rangers. So let's find someone who can symbolize that--someone who saw the mission of the Rangers as demanding opposition to racist oppression rather than someone who happily went along with a Governor's order to enforce racial oppression. Surely in the storied ranks of the Texas Rangers it is possible find such a person, right?<br />
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So find that person, make a statue, and erect it where Jay Banks' statue used to stand. One statue, one symbolic gesture that affirms our community's opposition to racist law enforcement and the respect we hold for those officers of the law who truly embody a commitment to equality under the law, to even-handed administration of legal justice, to fairness and dignity, to the idea of serving and protecting everyone in the community regardless of such markers as race or ethnicity, creed or sexuality.<br />
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Our symbols matter. Even one symbolic change can, like a Texas Ranger wading into a riot alone, make a big difference in who feels included in the community, who feels marginalized, who sees law enforcement as an ally in the quest to live a good life, and who sees law enforcement as a threat.<br />
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In this historic moment, let us make the kinds of symbolic changes that reflect the values of equality and justice and human dignity that can help us move towards a more inclusive and harmonious nation.Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-49568080753129464792020-05-27T19:15:00.000-05:002020-05-27T19:15:09.139-05:00I Can't Breathe"I can't breathe."<br />
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There are people out there these days who are protesting rules that require wearing masks during this pandemic. They think the law is pressing itself into their lives, restricting their freedom. Some complain that it's hard to breathe in those things.<br />
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The force of law, restricting their breath.<br />
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"I can't breathe."<br />
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Eric Garner was put in a choke hold after being detained by police for selling loose cigarettes. We know how it ended: Eric Garner died and the police officer walked free.<br />
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The force of the law, restricting his breath.<br />
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A year later, in Tulsa, Eric Harris was fleeing the police. He died when a volunteer reserve deputy shot him after he'd already been tackled. It was apparently a mistake: the volunteer meant to pull out his taser but instead pulled out his gun. As Harris was dying, he gasped out, "I'm losing my breath." The deputy responded, "F**k your breath." Perhaps they were the last words he heard before he died.<br />
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The force of the law, restricting his breath.<br />
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The other day a police officer knelt on the throat of George Floyd, who was suspected of forgery and resisted when the officers tried to arrest him. He gasped for breath, gasped out the words, "I can't breathe." Onlookers became involved, afraid for Floyd's life, asking the officer to relent. The police officer did not relent. Floyd was picked up by an ambulance but he died.<br />
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The force of the law, restricting his breath.<br />
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Stopping it. Ending it.<br />
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An utterly predictable ending in this most recent case. I saw the size of the officer who had his knee on George Floyd's throat. I know that if someone that size had their knee on my throat for thirty seconds or less, I'd almost certainly die. George Floyd looked bigger and stronger than me, so I'd give it a little longer. Still, this was a murderous form of restraint. A deadly form of restraint. Certainly not the only thing the officer could have possibly done under the circumstances with an unarmed man being arrested for a nonviolent crime.<br />
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Three black men who couldn't breathe. Three black men who lost their lives. And they are only a few among many.<br />
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Most police officers have not ended someone's life by cutting off their air supply, certainly not by kneeling on the suspect's throat. We need to point that out. But it isn't enough to point this out. We also need to ask how many, under identical circumstances, would do the same.<br />
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I hope the answer is not many. I think the police officers I know would be critical of what this officer did. We need to point that out. But pointing that out is not enough. Because we also need to ask how many police officers will circle the wagons and defend those in their ranks who cut off someone's breath.<br />
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I hope the answer is that far fewer will do so this time than has happened in the past. And if this is right, we need to point that out. But again, pointing that out is not enough. We need to ask other questions, broader questions:<br />
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How many in our society will look at what happened and say, "He shouldn't have resisted when the cops came to arrest him. It's his own fault." As if the death penalty is the right punishment--imposed without judge or jury, there on the scene, on the street, caught between a tire and the weight of a man's body concentrated through the knee and applied to the throat. As if that is what resisting arrest deserves.<br />
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How many will say, "The man was big and dangerous, and when he resisted they had to subdue him. They had no choice." As if, in a confrontation between an unarmed man outnumbered by armed police trained in various methods of restraint, there was no other possible choice but to kneel on his throat and keep kneeling on it even after he started gasping, even after it was clear that he was struggling to breathe, to live, to live one more moment if not another day. "No alternative. Gotta do it. Big black guy. Dangerous. Gotta put him down like a mad dog." How many say such things? And of those who don't say it, how many think it?<br />
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How many in our society, even if they do not think such things, are hesitant to speak against blatant inhumanity, homicidal inhumanity, for fear of alienating those in their circle of friends and family who do think such things?<br />
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This is not just about a single person committing a single homicidal act. That police officer who killed George Floyd is clearly responsible for his actions, but the rest of us are responsible for how we respond to those actions. The rest of us are responsible for shaping and reshaping our shared culture and society.<br />
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Do we shape it in ways that minimize the gravity of such crimes? Do we shape it in ways that help to form the hot thin soup out of which such crimes evolve?<br />
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Do we shape it in ways that result in Black lives being treated as less precious than white lives? Do we shape it in ways that, while virtuously condemning overt in-your-face racism, perpetuate a quiet refusal to consider how implicit biases and unconscious prejudices create a more dangerous world for our Black neighbors?<br />
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If so, then our voices are there, helping to shape the words of the officer who said "F**k your breath" to a dying man.<br />
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Or are we, instead, gagging along with Eric Garner, Eric Harris, and George Floyd? Are we encouraging the empathy that is required to see the humanity, the image of God, the face of God, in strangers who are dying on the street? Do we feel the everyday racism that our Black neighbors endure as a weight on our own shoulders, even if we aren't ourselves Black and even if we cannot fully inhabit or understand it? Do we endeavor to do so with enough persistence and compassion to at least try to envision what it is like to be Black in America and to see white police officers ending the lives of unarmed Black men only to be acquitted time and time again, and to see white vigilantes gunning down Black joggers and not be charged until there is a public outcry?<br />
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If so, then how can we not find ourselves vicariously gasping and crying out, "I can't breathe"?<br />
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Since I started by talking about face masks, let me return to that now--because I think there some lessons there.<br />
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Except in rare cases, a cloth face mask does very little to restrict breathing. People can wear it for hours and suffer no ill effects except for mild discomfort, fogged eyeglasses, and some chafing. These masks help keep asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 from unwittingly spreading it to others, by trapping the respiratory droplets that spread the disease before they can splash outward into the grocery store or the pharmacy. Any law or policy requiring you to wear such a mask is not intended for your safety. It is intended for the safety of those around you. But the policy only works if everyone does their part.<br />
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There are two lessons to draw from this. The first is this. Except in rare cases where medical conditions make mask-wearing harmful, those who complain that they can't breathe when they wear a mask are operating from a position of privilege. They are operating from a space of unfettered breathing, from a social space in which they are used to filling their lungs and breathing out across their world without a care. The restriction is nothing compared to the knee at George Floyd's throat. So if you think the mask is the law demanding too much, then so is the knee. If the mask calls for protests and rallies and hours of your time fighting in the name of human breath free of legal tyranny, than all the more so should the knee demand the same. Perhaps something even more dramatic, more sustained, than quietly taking a knee during the National Anthem at a football game.<br />
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And here is the second lesson: the mask requirement is about collective responsibility. It is a small thing, but if all of us collectively do it the outcome could be dramatic: people alive who would otherwise be dead; small businesses able to stay afloat which would die if another surge in the pandemic created the need for more sheltering in place. All of us do this little thing, and the burden of the pandemic will be eased from the shoulders of the minority who fall into the highest risk categories. We all do our little part, a tiny inconvenience, and people live who otherwise would have died--like my mother who is in her 80s, or my mother-in-law who is in her 70s and has diabetes.<br />
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This is about collective action: everyone seeing themselves as part of the solution rather than treating it as someone else's problem. That is what the masks represent. And that is what is required to change our society enough that our Black neighbors can breathe easier.<br />
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The problem of racism is in part a problem of overt racist people acting out their hate in the world. If and when police officers are identified as such overt racists, they should be fired. And when their acts rise to the level of crimes, they should be punished.<br />
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But the problem of racism is also a problem of hidden systemic forces and widespread patterns of thinking and acting that are most unconscious and, individually, probably not very harmful. Let's call this the problem of systemic and implicit racism. With respect to this problem, it is a mistake to single out the police as some special locus of systemic and implicit racism. That's just a trick some people play--people who aren't police officers, often white liberals--to avoid responsibility. The problem of systemic and implicit racism is everywhere, including in the system of higher education of which I am a part.<br />
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What we need is collective action and collective responsibility. What we need is a willingness to take action from our place of privilege, despite the chafing and the fogging of our glasses, so that someone lives who otherwise would have died.<br />
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In the case of systemic and implicit racism, the steps are less obvious and more complicated than simply putting on a mask before stepping into Walmart. It will be harder work. And just as there are those who refuse to wear a mask, there are those who refuse to do this harder work. But hopefully enough of us hear the anguished cry, "I can't breathe," deep in our bones. Deep enough so it aches. Deep enough so it stirs us to act.<br />
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The cynic will say, "I'm not holding my breath." But I am not a cynic. I am a person of faith, and I believe that every breath is a gift. As long we can breathe, we have the power to carry into our world the very breath of God. Let us use it well.Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-41738055902423899792020-01-08T08:51:00.000-06:002020-01-08T08:51:38.769-06:00Iran, Jesus' Third Way, and the Notion of a Christian NationIran did exactly what they said they'd do. Notice that the US threat of strong reprisals should they do this did not deter them. And when they say that should we strike back they will feel compelled to strike again, that will not deter us. In a dynamic like this, each side from its own perspective sees each escalating act by the other as a new wrong that <i>demands</i> a violent response: an eye taken that demands an eye be taken, a tooth knocked out that demands the knocking out of a tooth. We never reach a point where things are "even" because each side has their own moral perspective from which the other side's act of getting even is seen as a new affront that demands that we get even. That's the engine that drives escalation to all-out war.<br />
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And the entire pattern of thinking and relating that creates this engine makes the world a far worse place than it would be if we could only cultivate a "third way" of response--an alternative both to "taking it" and to "striking back in kind."<br />
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This kind of third way was what Jesus was attempting to describe in the Sermon on the Mount. As theologian Walter Wink noted, turning the other cheek was not for Jesus a call to simply endure abuse but a call for a creative third way of response that neither strikes back in kind nor meekly submits. It matters, for understanding Jesus, that he specified that if someone strikes your <i>right</i> cheek you turn the <i>left</i> cheek to them. This matters because a blow to the right cheek was the kind of back-handed blow a master would use to strike a slave. A blow to the left cheek was a blow that one struck against a perceived equal. Turning the other cheek was thus an example of a creative way to assert one's equal dignity in the face of a demeaning attack, without striking back in kind. (Wink offers a similar analysis of walking the second mile and giving all of one's clothes to the one who demands your outer garment.)<br />
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Jesus did not here offer a specific solution to be used in every conflict but rather a way of thinking about conflict, a way of approaching conflict, distinct from the eye-for-eye approach that serves as an engine of escalation. This different approach, this third way, demands thought and planning and imagination. It cannot be carried out by rote but by bringing thoughtful people to the table who understand the enemy and how our actions will affect them. Massive symbolic gestures that startle and disarm, responses that make continuing to strike culturally costly or shameful, responses where the only face-saving move is <i>not</i> to escalate. Responses that aren't in the script, that leave everyone momentarily stunned.<br />
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Imagine if we as a nation devoted a fraction of what we devote to the military towards the cultivation of our capacity to launch such creative third-way responses. Imagine if we were as committed to developing and implementing such responses as we are to developing and implementing effective military ones. To imagine such a thing is to imagine a <i>nation</i> that as a matter of national policy takes seriously Jesus' strategy for responding to violence and injustice. To imagine such a thing is, in a real sense, to imagine a Christian nation.<br />
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In this sense, the world has never seen a truly Christian nation. Perhaps we never will.Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-64153861810773501242019-07-04T09:43:00.000-05:002019-07-04T09:43:16.466-05:00America's Values: A Fourth of July Meditation"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."<br />
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These are America's founding values, which we celebrate today. As we understand them now, they do not apply only to men. They affirm that all people have an equal moral worth and have a claim on equal basic rights, and that this moral standing is derived not from any government or law but is an original endowment.<br />
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While Jefferson invoked the language of "Nature's God" to describe the Creator of this original endowment--a reference to his Enlightenment Deist philosophy--I understand this Creator in Judeo-Christian terms. Others have different understandings. Jefferson and other founders later affirmed their commitment to this freedom of religion in various ways<br />
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But what I want to meditate on here is the idea that equality and basic moral rights precede any government or nation-state. This basic moral standing, enjoyed by all human beings without exception, determines when a law is legitimate and when a government has exceeded its authority. Our country was founded on the idea that the equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness isn't something we have because we belong to a society that grants this to us. On the contrary, our society is obligated to honor and protect it because we already have it.<br />
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We were born with it. We possess it because we are human.<br />
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Not because of our race or gender or political party. Not because we are Americans. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because we are human.<br />
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That means that we distort or even betray our country's founding values if we hold that they only apply to Americans.<br />
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To be an American is to believe that all people everywhere were created equal.<br />
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To be an American is to believe that all people everywhere have the inalienable right to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness.<br />
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And it is to believe that if any government--including our own--makes laws or pursues policies that violate these rights toward any person, American or otherwise, that government has acted wrongly.<br />
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This is why Americans have never been able to get uniformly behind isolationist policies. If these values at the heart of America are about all people and not just Americans, then we should care about what happens to people elsewhere in the world. That doesn't mean we should always intervene. It certainly doesn't mean we must always try to impose our will coercively on other people. But it does mean we have to pay attention to the plight of those outside our borders, care about that plight, and take that into account when making decisions.<br />
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This is why Americans have never been able to get uniformly behind the idea that being an American is about blood or birth. By blood and birth, all human beings have the same inalienable rights, whether they were born in Nebraska or Nicaragua or Norway or Nigeria. Being an American is most fundamentally about allegiance to this ideal and commitment to civic participation in a society committed to it. For all its history, despite forces of opposition born from the human tribal impulse, America has continued to welcome new Americans into this noble experiment, this effort to build a country based on values opposed to tribalism.<br />
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What all of this means for our immigration policies today is a difficult question that I don't want to try to answer here. Our values must contend with an array of realities, including resource limits, when it comes time to decide specific policies. But some general principles are clear. We must care about those beyond our borders. We must care about those who are not American citizens. And with respect to migrants at our borders, any policy that fails to honor their equal human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is in violation of our founding values.<br />
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All human beings are created equal, not just Americans. All have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not just Americans.<br />
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To think otherwise is un-American.Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-17312112960749899602019-04-30T13:31:00.000-05:002019-04-30T13:31:14.995-05:00It's About the Hate: Targeting Religious WorshipersChristians targeted during worship by violent extremists in Sri Lanka.<br />
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Muslims targeted during worship by violent extremists in New Zealand.<br />
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Jews targeted during worship by violent extremists in the United States, in Pittsburgh this fall and today in San Diego.<br />
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In all cases the root evil is an us/them ideology of hate. The in-groups and out-groups that the ideology latches onto may be different, but that's ultimately incidental. What matters is the hate.<br />
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The agents of hate aren't made that way by some feature of the wider faith tradition, ethnicity, etc., with which they identify. Hate always has a cover story, but the hate comes first. If the hate springs from someone who wears Christianity as a label, you can be sure that the ugliest verses in the Bible are lifted up and the call to love explained away. If the hate springs from someone who wears Islam as a label, you can be sure that the ugliest verses of the Koran are lifted up and the calls for decency and respect across differences explained away.<br />
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Hate isn't motivated by anything about its target, but it needs a target. And it needs vindication, some "purpose" that the agents of hate can give themselves over to, so that they can see themselves as foot soldiers in a cause greater than themselves. They want to indulge in the most evil of human impulses, but want to do it with a clean conscience. They want to glory in violence and death while experiencing pureness of heart.<br />
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And so they make a class of people into monsters, and they conceive themselves to be noble warriors fighting for a chosen group--a group destined for greatness or happiness by virtue of their intrinsic worth, but kept down by the very existence of the monsters.<br />
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And so they tell themselves that every death and defeat of those they consider the Children of Darkness is a gain for the Children of Light. They indulge evil in the name of good, declaring themselves heroes, laboring to build some imagined Utopia out of the corpses of the innocent.<br />
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In my first book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Religions-Cultured-Despisers-ebook-dp-B003K16QWM/dp/B003K16QWM/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=">Is God a Delusion?</a>, I distinguish between religion and religion<i>ism</i>. The former offers a way of thinking about the world and a way of living life, something around which communities can form. Religionism is about using religious differences in the same manner that racism uses racial distinctions and nationalism uses nationalities: as a way to divide the world and set <i>us</i> against <i>them. </i>It is about hate above all else.<br />
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In fact, it is hard to disentangle this species of hate from others. Is anti-Semitism about religion or ethnicity? Is Islamophobia targeting people because of their faith tradition or because of middle-eastern origins? The answer is that, for the person infected by an ideology of hate, <i>it doesn't matter</i>. Because the point is to have a group to hate, someone that is worthy of hate regardless of who they are and what they do or what kind of life they lead. Automatic, easy hate, hate that can latch on without needing to investigate the actual character or life of the person being hated.<br />
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Whether it's religion or ethnicity or race doesn't much matter, and typically an ideology of hate uses more than one thing. Ideologies of hate are vague and ecclectic in who they target, precisely because what matters is to be able to hate someone.<br />
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This is why Jews become afraid when Islamophobia is nurtured, why African Americans feel less safe in church when a Mosque has been recently targeted. Because it's about hate. And hate breeds hate.<br />
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Such ideological hate, described beautifully by Sartre in his short book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Semite-Jew-Exploration-Etiology-Hate/dp/0805210474/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/140-7818934-1175124?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0805210474&pd_rd_r=93ef7459-6b75-11e9-afd4-2da01f345a74&pd_rd_w=Y8Dzp&pd_rd_wg=n2fGk&pf_rd_p=588939de-d3f8-42f1-a3d8-d556eae5797d&pf_rd_r=N68RXBXEDHD1AX9NDNG4&psc=1&refRID=N68RXBXEDHD1AX9NDNG4">Anti-Semite and Jew</a>, is a demon. It <i>possesses</i> human beings. It is a demon that thrives and spread best under a distinctive set of conditions: when empathy is restricted to people like ourselves, when building walls matters more than building bridges, when communities become insular and polarized, when fear displaces hope, and when security for "us" matters more than compassion.<br />
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Christianity is just one faith tradition that urges us to love. All over the world, in different ways and with different words, that call can be heard.<br />
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And yet, all over the world, people find ways to put limits on the scope of that call. The more we do the latter--the more we justify limits on love and the less we aspire to love every single other person (even when we fail, as we inevitably do)--the easier it becomes for ideologies of hate to take root.<br />
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And here's the thing: we can't control others' commitment to loving widely. We can only choose in our own case, and invite others to follow our example. And as hateful rhetoric becomes louder--as it finds its way into more prominent places--love has to become louder, too.<br />
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When hate spreads, we must look for ways to amplify the voice of extravagant love.Eric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.com2