If Wright is wrong, then wrong is right: the Victor Davis Hanson guide to moral absolutes
I have to say: Victor Davis Hanson should probably stop trying to write about the difference between right and wrong. (I know, I know. But this one is unusually terrible.) In response to the Obama speech, he objects that ‘racism is a universal wrong’. Furthermore, because there should be an “absolute sense of wrong and right that transcends situational ethics, context, and individual particulars”, it is not acceptable to attempt to mitigate charges of racism by pointing out parallel wrongs committed by others, or by adducing facts about the background of the racist; or by arguing that the racist has done good things, which ought to be weighed in the balance. Last but not least, it is apparently necessary to ‘disown’ all racists, regardless of prior personal attachment or loyalty.
Now, to note only the most obvious, flagrantly salient consequence of this rigorous refusal of ‘situational ethics’: Hanson has just provided an argument that Wright was absolutely right to damn America (right?) And the fact that Hanson is not saying so himself therefore gives me a chance to pull a serious face and say I am very sorry to see him falling prey to moral relativism and, if I may say so, kneejerk victimology. It must be all the rap music.
Seriously, what it shows is that conservatives see they have a pressing situational need to move some goalposts. But they aren’t sure where. So they are running in all directions, carrying goalposts. The Corner has been a hoot for 48 hours. (To be fair, there are a few voices, urging that the posts be put back where they are supposed to go. That adds to the comedy, when people run into each other, carrying goalposts.)
I am one of the many who is very, very impressed with the speech. My support for Obama has gone up significantly. All I really have to add is just reiteration of what others have said: how effective Obama was at saying things that were, basically, plain good sense. The only trick to it – but what a trick – is to speak generous good sense, in a curiously mild manner. His ability to say what people of good will already all think, but say it in a way that makes them sit up and say, ‘but of course’, is what liberals have been needing. Not that conservatives can’t be good willed, but that just goes to show there was nothing liberal about the speech.
Now what do I mean by that? Let me explain with reference to Goldberg’s column-length response (which he could have titled “The Audacity of Hopelessness”, but for some reason did not.)
He begins by agreeing with the basic values implied by the Obama speech, while tossing cold water in the form of hints that, of course, to a conservative the good bits are old hat. It is just refreshing to hear such stuff from a liberal. (This is what I mean about colliding goalposts. What Hanson pretends to see as moral apocalypse is the same stuff Goldberg pretends to see as conservative.) But then he moves on to his objections:
By “investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.” The path for blacks, Obama insists, requires “binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who’s been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.”Meanwhile, the “real culprits” for our problems are: “a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.”
Sigh. Here we go again.
For all the wonderful rhetoric and tantalizing promise of Obama and his speech, there’s not much that is actually new here. This was largely a restatement of Jeremiah Wright’s indictment of America, delivered in University of Chicago parlance instead of South Side Chicago diatribe.
But that is precisely the important point. Obama managed to make what was, in a sense, just a mild-mannered restatement of the roots of Wright’s outrage sound to Goldberg like “wonderful stuff”. This just goes to show that … well, what is so bad about peace, love and understanding, come to think of it? (Are they too ‘situational’?) Justice and equality are not alien to the political traditions of this country. Goldberg doesn’t actually come out and say that he is opposed to fighting corruption, or that he is in favor or policies that privilege the rich over the poor. He doesn’t even go so far as to deny that it is true that existing policies do this. He doesn’t say he is against good schools, or opposed to civil rights, or opposed to fairness in the criminal justice system, per se. He just says ‘sigh’. “My hope for something better proved too audacious in the end.” He was hoping for hopelessness, but it was too much to hope for.
Goldberg would shift the debate onto policy. Hope is not a plan. But ‘sigh’ is not a policy. Can anything be done about anything, or is there nothing to be done? Obviously Obama proposes policies. He has hopes and plans. But he didn’t put much policy in the speech. Not that sort of speech. Being in favor of justice is not a policy proposal. Goldberg is, absurdly, clamoring to insist it can’t work, even though it is ‘wonderful’ in spirit, when there isn’t any ‘it’. Not yet. There’s just good spirit. So Goldberg has shifted the debate to policy and committed in advance to hold Obama to no yards in a game of ‘nothing proposed in this good spirit could possibly work, policy-wise.’
If conservatives really want to applaud the Obama spirit as ‘wonderful’, as what they already thought first themselves; if they just want to pick on the practicality – here Goldberg plants his goalposts – Obama can win that game. Here is Goldberg again, saying the same thing: the speech is just “intellectual bullying to get your way on programs and policies you can’t sell on the merits.” This is spin, but not the sort that will work. It invites debating programs and policies on the merits, while granting the desirability of the goals. This is, to put it mildly, the last debate conservatives want to be having.
It isn’t exactly an accident, after all, that Goldberg just finished writing a book called Liberal Fascism. Conservatives have, to date, done a good job of shutting down debate long before the mild-mannered policy stage. You shut it down with stock, alarmist insistence that there is something morally awful, philosophically un-American, about the will behind proposals and observations that are, apparently, reasonable. (Give Hanson points for sticking with the playbook.) If Obama can just talk through the noise machine racket – and he can, if even the author of Liberal Fascism doesn’t have the heart to pretend to think he’s a fascist, even in the aftermath if this Wright business – Obama’s also the guy to talk policy at the next stage. That’s a winning combination.
John wrote:
“His ability to say what people of good will already all think, but say it in a way that makes them sit up and say, ‘but of course’, is what liberals have been needing. Not that conservatives can’t be good willed, but that just goes to show there was nothing liberal about the speech.”
But of course there’s something liberal about the speech. Obama does two things in the speech – he lays out the problem and he proposes (at least at a high level) what to do about it.
The uglier stuff at The Corner is an objection to his laying out the problem, as if acknowledging an ugly realty is tantamount to delighting in it.
But you can admire Obama’s explanation of the state of race without buying into his (conventionally liberal) solutions. As a conservative (who, I hope doesn’t model the kneejerk culture war footing of most of the Cornerites), I came away from the speech liking Obama more but probably marginally less likely to vote for him. If he wins I’ll feel proud of my President, but suspect I’ll disagree with him on most policy decisions. This is, BTW, how I view my many liberal friends – as good people who I am blessed to know but who are simply wrong on the issues of policy.
There’s nothing fundamentally inconsistent about that, and much of the uglier side of our politics is a collective inability to see ideological opponents in such terms – as fundamentally decent people who interpret the “data” of the world differently.
That’s not to say that there aren’t bad actors in our politics (VDH et. al.), but only that not every angel is on my side and not every devil on yours.
A sigh is just a sigh.
I think you were overly harsh on VDH. I don’t think he’s saying that there is no such thing as mitigating circumstances, but rather that regardless of its causes, racism is wrong. Insofar as Obama didn’t say that Wright’s racism was wrong (this is assuming, of course, that Wright is a racist (which seems plausible to me) and that Obama didn’t condemn it (which seems less plausible)), then Obama shows a failure of moral judgment. This does not mean that certain instances of racism aren’t worse than others, or that we cannot point to factors that help to explain someone’s racism; only that explaining someone’s racism doesn’t make it morally permissible.
“I don’t think he’s saying that there is no such thing as mitigating circumstances.”
I think that he probably doesn’t really think that. So he couldn’t really mean it. But he pretty clearly said it, I think.
I think the closest he comes to saying it is in this passage:
“When he failed to “disown” Rev. Wright, and then brought in parallels of things purportedly as bad, or offered excuses that Wright had done good things to balance the bad, or that there were certain mitigating circumstances that explain his hatred, then the universal wrong of Wright’s racism and lying disappears and with it any ethical standard by which we have moral authority to condemn such vitriol.”
What VDH is condemning is that Obama brought up mitigating circumstances that explained Wright’s racism without also clearly condemning it.
Can anything be done about anything, or is there nothing to be done?
If I read the brief snippet where Goldberg defines the Totalitarian Temptation in his book—to paraphrase, the temptation being a utopian belief that you can make a better world—then no, nothing can be done, cause then you’d just be walking down the road to totalitarianism, vegetarianism, Whole Foodism, and other such isms of undeniable horror.
In response to josh r., I don’t think that’s what Goldberg says, or at the very least not what he means. I think what he means is that one should not have a utopia even as one’s aim, because having that as an aim will cause a lot more problems than having mere improvement of society as one’s aim. The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that.
questioner-
Find me some evidence that what you paraphrased represents what Goldberg meant.
Goldberg describes all methods of utilizing the state as “Fascist.” For example, Goldberg calls the New Deal Fascist because it expanded the role of the state—not because Goldberg thinks the New Deal was an attempt to realize a utopia.
I’m unclear on what Jeremiah Wright said that is supposed to be even incorrect, much less racist.
Adam,
Well, I think this is incorrect: “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”
As for racism, the Anti-Defamation League, according to wikipedia, found no evidence of anti-semitism by Wrigth.
What VDH is condemning is that Obama brought up mitigating circumstances that explained Wright’s racism without also clearly condemning it.
From Obama’s speech:
“I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy….
“Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive….
“Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not.”
“Condemn”, “wrong”, “inexcusable”. What more is VDH looking for?
rickm,
Well, I doubt very much that you’re going to find evidence for your claim that Goldberg “describes all methods of utilizing the state as “Fascist”. I doubt he thinks use of the military is intrinsically fascist. As for the evidence for my claim, I’ll look for some, but I haven’t read Goldberg’s book, just some of his posts on his “liberal fascism” blog, so my paraphrase was based on a general impression.
John,
Goldberg would shift the debate onto policy. Hope is not a plan. But ‘sigh’ is not a policy. Can anything be done about anything, or is there nothing to be done? Obviously Obama proposes policies. He has hopes and plans. But he didn’t put much policy in the speech. Not that sort of speech. Being in favor of justice is not a policy proposal. Goldberg is, absurdly, clamoring to insist it can’t work, even though it is ‘wonderful’ in spirit, when there isn’t any ‘it’. Not yet. There’s just good spirit. So Goldberg has shifted the debate to policy and committed in advance to hold Obama to no yards in a game of ‘nothing proposed in this good spirit could possibly work, policy-wise.’
This is a great observation, John. There is a real sense amongst certain conservatives that there is something suspicious, something wrong about hope (perhaps because the polls indicate that what most Americans hope for is closer, insofar as socio-economic matters go, at least, to what liberals are offering?). They want to focus solely on policies, but policies only as they define them, rather than allowing that policies are supposed to arise from ideas and, well, hopes.
As for VDH, as I said over at Ross’s blog, I would like to dismiss Hanson’s comments as facile and politically pointless, but in the latter case, unfortunately I can’t. He does have a political point when it comes to “absolute standards,” or at least a point he can sell politically. He’s wrong; the language of Obama’s speech wasn’t nothing more than “self-serving relativism,” because the capacity to make judgments, even strong moral judgments, isn’t so crucially dependent upon the maintenance of “an absolute sense of wrong and right that transcends…[all] individual particulars”—at least not when what we’re talking about is words rather than actions. But still, there’s something there, something about the way highly educated people—even apparently sincerely religious, highly educated people like Obama—talk about community and morality and tradition, a way that smacks of elitism to many of exactly those white rural and working-class voters he wants to win over to his cause of “unity.” (More about this point here.) I’m doubtful that Pennsylvania is going to be such a sure marker of the success or failure of his speech as Hanson assumes it will be, but he may be right that, through this speech, Obama has clarified an argument which the Republican machine will be able to use against him.
Incidentally, I’m kind of curious how many times Wright has said “America is great” or “we should all get along” or whatever. Could you conceivably run an anti-smear campaign, where you quote his best statements out of context in a series of YouTube videos?
Adam,
I’m unclear on what Jeremiah Wright said that is supposed to be even incorrect, much less racist.
Why, he dared to complicate and be ambivalent about the middle-class American dream! What greater thought-crime can there be?
There’s also a pretty funny irony about someone saying that we should apply absolute standards in the condemnation of racism, and that we cannot associate with racists, and then writing from the National Review.
Okay, some evidence:
Goldberg approves (http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGU1YmZlZmJkMTE2MjU5YWFmOGEyOTJiMDg0MzlmMzI) of the review of his book by Bruce Thornton, a line of which reads that Goldberg: “recovers the true roots of progressive/liberal politics — in the deification of the state as the instrument of utopian aspirations, the same dynamic of 20th century fascism”.
See also this (http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDI0Zjk4NjJlYmFkNzNhZTU4NGMxZTI5MDI5ZDA1MmU), and this eulogy (http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjRjYWRhNGVmMDVmMWExNmYxMDVjYmZkNzE1MTcyMTc) for The Public Interest: “humble domestic policy journal which argued, time and again, that everything was more complicated than it seems, that unintended consequences was a “law” of social policymaking and that Romantic and utopian impulses invariably led to folly. In every way, shape and form this is the opposite of a fascistic political orientation.”
I wish I knew how to use HTML tags.
I agree with andrew edwards that Obama did condemn Wright’s remarks. I also wonder what more he’s looking for.
You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter how many times a Dem apologizes for whatever crap they decide to harp on, the wingnuts will ALWAYS want more. Too many Democrats are not smart enough to understand how that game works.
I won’t even bother with the gall of the likes of VDH to be lecturing ANYBODY about “standards”. Still less about racism.
HTML tags.
Thanks Bubba.
Here is a similar line of view: http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/03/19/obamas-awful-speech-on-race.html
By claiming that racism is absolutely wrong, VDH fails to see the distinction between racial hatred and racial resentment. According to Obama, Rev. Wright has no hate for white people, and Wright himself says he loves his enemies within his controversial sermon. Wright’s crime according to VDH is that he criticized institutionalized racism in an inflammatory manner. According to Obama, Wright is wrong because resentment of other races is the ultimate cause of institutionalized racism.
Obama’s speech was really impressive to me because he was able to distance himself from the more controversial (and, I would argue, over the top) aspects of Wright’s message without throwing the guy under the bus, and without giving in on the substantive issues that Wright brought up. Look, race matters in this country. It’s refreshing to have a candidate that is willing to talk about the issues that black Americans face because they have been off the agenda for way too long. What Obama’s speech proves is the power of empathy: he was able to show understanding for all positions in America’s debate over racial issues. He showed in his speech that America can have a leader that addresses racial issues in a way that is substantive yet not divisive, and the he is the guy. My appreciation for him has gone up a good deal since seeing it. The debate that is going in within the democratic party about who has it worse, white women or black men, is extremely harmful for the party and the country. Progress on both fronts is possible with Obama as president.
One of those odd changes in the conservative theology concerns race. It used to be a maxim with conservatives that all social engineering would fail, because it was based on the premise that humans were perfectable. The argument was that human nature is resistant.
But the new conservative message is that humans are amazingly perfectable. After a mere thirty years of legislation and non-racist standards of decorum in the media, racism has been totally wiped out in America – except, of course, for the real problem, the racism blacks hold, alas, against whites. Of course, this suggests that social engineering must be great! However, luckily, Bush era conservatism also holds strictly to the rule that it is all right to be schizophrenically contradictory – for instance, to present oneself as the liberator and true representative of the Iraqi people, whilst advocating nuking all Muslims – so it isn’t like this is going to give the NRO gang any pause.
Russell: There is a real sense amongst certain conservatives that there is something suspicious, something wrong about hope (perhaps because the polls indicate that what most Americans hope for is closer, insofar as socio-economic matters go, at least, to what liberals are offering?). They want to focus solely on policies, but policies only as they define them, rather than allowing that policies are supposed to arise from ideas and, well, hopes. is altogether too true. I am concerned at seeing a similar spirit infect people I otherwise admire in the spectrum from liberal to leftist, who seem to have concluded that since the conservative movement uses emotional manipulation to bad ends, it’s just wrong to ever have strong emotions about one’s policies and people, and most particularly to feel hope or pleasure about them. I continue to think it’s crucial to want better than one has, as long as we keep sharpening our sense of where the best and good lie.
Well, I think this is incorrect: “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”
Yes. It’s also ‘incorrect’ to say that the government gives black people drugs so that it can then arrest them and throw them in prison. But these are not just ‘incorrect’, they are vile, bigoted, crazy slanders.
I would not give a second chance to a presidential candidate who was revealed to have have spent twenty years raising his children in a community of white supremacists whose leader spewed similar vitriol and conspiracy theories (and whose congregation considered such speech unremarkable). Especially if the candidate adopted the leader as his ‘spiritual mentor’. So why should I accept this from Obama?
So I guess no one will vote for Mac either? Seeing that he likes Reagan. And Reagan increased taxes, pulled out of a war wihtout any warning (starts with an L) and didn’t condemn Apartheid clear enough. Looks like Hillary will win. But ask her if she is ready to be the President: URL REMOVED FOR REPEATED LINK TRAWLING
Given that every generation of blacks in America has faced either enslavement or what amounts to random terrorist attacks from whites, can you blame certain blacks for finding “conspiracy theory” stuff about crack and HIV plausible? Especially when most of the white terrorism is swept under the historical rug—the majority of whites simply don’t know how bad it was, because the textbooks are so whitewashed.
I felt that one of the main messages in Obama’s speech was, “Black resentment is based in reality, white resentment is based in fantasy (or based in misrecognizing the real cause of their problems).” Even many of the conspiracy theories of the black community conform to this rubric.
Bruce,
I am concerned at seeing a similar spirit infect people I otherwise admire in the spectrum from liberal to leftist, who seem to have concluded that since the conservative movement uses emotional manipulation to bad ends, it’s just wrong to ever have strong emotions about one’s policies and people, and most particularly to feel hope or pleasure about them.
A good observation, and one that needs to be heeded, especially since much of what is dismissed as “emotional manipulation” by some progressives, liberals, and leftists really comes down to their annoyance with religion, patriotism, and other affective concerns which are pretty central to the lives of many white and black working- and middle-class people. Obama is doing, I think, a very audacious thing: pouring on the “hope” and the “spirit” in his campaign, in very patriotic and even evangelical terms, without—at least not that I’ve been able to tell—compromising his critical intelligence or his expectations for his listeners. If he can pull it off, it’ll potentially signal something very remarkable.
Slocum,
I am confident that HIV was not invented in a government laboratory, etc. And therefore it is unfortunate that this was, and possibly still is, a widely held belief in the Black community. It’s a slander, then, but not, I think, a “vile, bigoted, crazy” slander. Given Tuskegee, it wasn’t crazy.
“It invites debating programs and policies on the merits, while granting the desirability of the goals. This is, to put it mildly, the last debate conservatives want to be having.”
Really? Why not? I think Goldberg is smart to shift the focus onto those grounds.
Do you really think school choice is such a losing proposition? So bad, that the last thing conservatives would want to do is debate about it?
In that same speech Obama concedes that is plausible that welfare policies were counter productive. A key conservative talking point.
“A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened.”
It is plausible that welfare policies were/are counter productive but the last thing conservatives want is a debate about welfare policies?
Because the last time there was a debate about welfare policies conservatives got stomped?
Oh wait, right, at the very least, welfare reform was 1/2 a victory for conservatives.
I am not saying it is a debate conservatives would absolutely win. But it would certainly be a decent contest.
Obama’s version of hope is pretty much the standard liberal list of remedies. A fairly compelling package or it wouldn’t exist in the political marketplace. But hardly invincible.
They would certainly have a much better chance than they would debating against hope.
Furthermore, because there should be an “absolute sense of wrong and right that transcends situational ethics, context, and individual particulars”
Uh, outside context and particulars, there is no such thing as “right” or “wrong,” in the same way that there is no abstract essence of “art” that one may appreciate without an actual piece of fucking art in the room.
Who is that idiot?
.
How is it a slander? It’s certainly not impossible that it was invented in a government laboratory. It’s merely a far-fetched conspiracy theory.
Also, I don’t quite understand this uncompromising attitude towards racism. Racism is one of the most common human emotions; most people are racists, one has to make a deliberate effort not to be a racist. Racism is pretty much like greed or lust.
I think it’s just fine, you can be a racist all you want – just keep it to yourself, follow the law and you’re a OK guy.
Read speeches and bio of Malcolm X…he is “Wright” for a long time and then he changes and seeks reconciliation. What I noted in watching the Wright videos was the audience responding positively to the charismatic hate monger. He can not renounce Wright? Why not? Did voters for Hitler have to stick with him no matter what? In fact, a mother or grandmother is kin, related; a preacher can be tossed aside if what he says and preaches is intolerable.
I admire Obama and believe he would be A great president, but I suspect he is in for trouble with this Wright thing as the election gets fully underway.
So now Wright is Hitler!
Again, aside from the HIV claim, I haven’t heard Wright say anything offensive, racist, or just plain wrong. But he’s an outspoken black preacher, so I can see why the right is up in arms about his statements.
How is it a slander?
How is it slander to accuse those in power (rich white people, Wright points out) of inventing the AIDs virus in order propagate genocide against black people?!?
It’s certainly not impossible that it was invented in a government laboratory. It’s merely a far-fetched conspiracy theory.
Extremely far-fetched. With no supporting evidence whatsoever.
Also, I don’t quite understand this uncompromising attitude towards racism.
OK —set aside the racial angle. I would also not support a candidate whose spiritual advisor turned out to be a ‘9-11 truther’ who preached that 9-11 was an inside job.
Right-wingers constantly curry the support of crazy apocalyptic preachers who think that events in the Middle East will trip some kind of magical heavenly code to bring about the end of the world—it’s an absolutely pervasive element of the Republican coalition. This preacher has a couple conspiracy-theory beliefs—given plausibility, mind you, by the actual historical oppression of African Americans—and suddenly OMG OMG CRAZY
!! Billy Graham and many mainstream evangelical leaders believe nutty stuff, but no one would blink if Obama had regarded Billy Graham as a spiritual advisor.
I can already anticipate the answer that a double standard doesn’t make Wright less dangerous or something—but he factually is much, much less dangerous than the people conservatives are in bed with constantly.
…rich white people, Wright points out…
The quote I found:
I don’t see any “rich white people” here. “Governments lie.” They certainly do. They are also extremely powerful and often quite ruthless. Thus the conspiracy theories. A preacher employing excessive, even grotesque rhetoric – yeah, that’s unheard of.
An example: Billy Graham supported Kim Il-Sung and exchanged gifts with Kim Jong-Il. Weirdly, this has never been a problem for any of the many presidents who have used him as a spiritual advisor.
slocum, I find that a little puzzling. Have you ever had a spiritual advisor, or perhaps a professional mentor? Perhaps someone who imparted a great deal of knowledge and wisdom upon you and supported your human or professional development in invaluable ways, but who happened, among all of his/her other wisdom & beliefs, to buy into something you found a little crazy (say, the moon landing was faked or the CIA assassinated JFK). You’d really cut that person off? You wouldn’t just agree to disagree while maintaining a fruitful relationship? Perhaps with the hope that you can influence said person’s views?
And how is it that the American populace equates a minister with a church? I thought we had an atypically high rate of church-going in this country. Has no one considered that maybe the Obamas had friends at that church that they were reluctant to leave behind? That this particular church met their philosophical/theological point of view better than others in the area? (In my own church, most of the members disagree vehemently with some matter or other of relative theological significance. We embrace that diversity; we don’t expect them to leave. Isn’t that a little bit like expecting those who find Bush’s (or Clinton’s) policies to be at least as abhorrent as Wright’s comments?) That its mission work fit their values better than others they had to choose from? That it offered ties to their community not available at other churches?
Obama made the outrageous observation that people are complicated and flawed. And that it is a greater defect of character to fixate on denouncing every person whose imperfections come to light than to try to understand them and respond with rational and civil disagreement.
I don’t see any “rich white people” here.
No, not in the same paragraph, but Wright has said, for example, “Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people…”
Wright preaches the country is controlled by rich white people. Wright preaches that the government (also presumably controlled by rich white people) invented AIDs and spread it in the black community to carry out genocide. How many millions of people—poor black Africans in particular—have, by Wright’s reckoning, have died of AIDS (which is to say were murdered by the people who control the U.S. government)?
I don’t find that a ‘little crazy’—I find that as bigoted and vile as the Jewish blood libel. But I’m white and fairly well off (though certainly not as wealthy as Obama). I have friends in positions of authority and even elected office. I take that crap personally.
Right-wingers constantly curry the support of crazy apocalyptic preachers…
And do progressives typically give them a pass on this? And this is not simply ‘currying support’. Wright and Obama have been very close for a long time. Wright had a position in Obama’s campaign and was scheduled to introduce him at his announcement until the first hints of controversy arose.
Have you ever had a spiritual advisor, or perhaps a professional mentor? Perhaps someone who imparted a great deal of knowledge and wisdom upon you and supported your human or professional development in invaluable ways, but who happened, among all of his/her other wisdom & beliefs, to buy into something you found a little crazy. You’d really cut that person off?
A little crazy, yes (a belief there might be something to the paranormal for example—a little nutty to my way of thinking, but harmless). But something remotely similar to a conspiracy theory that held that powerful people of one race had created and spreading a disease to destroy another race? Would I cut such a person off? Absolutely.
And how is it that the American populace equates a minister with a church?
I do to the extent that these views were obviously acceptable at TUCC rather than a firing offense (which they would have been, without any doubt, at any church I’ve been familiar with).
Has no one considered that maybe the Obamas had friends at that church that they were reluctant to leave behind?
Would you accept that explanation from a candidate who was a member of a white supremacist church?
Slocum-
So I guess your argument would bar you from supporting John McCain? Hillary it is then!
Wright preaches the country is controlled by rich white people.
Weirdly, it actually is.
Slocum, I think it is indeed similar to the blood libel except that it’s a prejudice in a weak minority group against the dominant power. Compare to prejudices towards the ‘goyim’ held (in the past) by many of the Jews in Christian countries – very, very common. Nobody blames them – they were an oppressed minority, they had a good excuse. Same here.
No, not in the same paragraph, but Wright has said, for example, “Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people…”
Wow. That’s outrageous! The nerve of that guy, thinking that the US is run by rich white people, when EVERYONE knows it’s run by rich white men. Whatta loon!
Good one, Jay.
Not to sidetrack too much, but incidentally I found it striking how un-shocking Wright’s “God damn America” comment becomes when placed in context: “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
Wouldn’t this sentiment have to be shared by any consistent traditional Christian? The belief that God does “damn” sinners, and that putting other gods before Him is the highest sin, is a thoroughly moderate one in the context of traditional doctrine.
Seems harsh to me, but then, Christianity historically is.
It’s also worth underlining the “for as long as” part—which means he’s not as pessimistic about the capacity for change as Obama suggested.
The idea that the government created AIDS to use against black people would be a lot like the blood libel if black people dominated all the social and economic institutions of the country, had used white people against their will or knowledge in large-scale medical experimentation, subjected white people to both official and unofficial discrimination in education, housing, employment, and the like, held whites as slaves for generations and in subsequent generations engaged in driving the entire white population of towns out so as to seize their goods, subjected white vices to disproportionately harsh treatment….
Which is to say, it’s not at all the same thing.
The blood libel is one more justification for non-Jewish authorities to abuse Jewish people and communities in law, and for non-Jewish populations at large to do so with or without sanction of law. The government AIDS myth is the response of a discriminated-against minority who really have been used as involuntary guinea pigs and subjected to calculated efforts to destroy their social and political institutions to one more mysterious ailment the government and many social leaders seem more interested in using as justification for more abuse than trying to treat.
And as a white, not completely comfortable (North) American, may I say that I don’t find a whole lot objectionable in Rev. Wright’s speech? “God damn America” is offensive, but put it in context, it’s certainly no worse than Falwell’s comment that “homosexuals, liberals [et al] brought this [9/11]
upon us” after 9/11, nor Rod Parsley and John Hagee’s comments over the last few weeks, hating on muslims, Americans who don’t agree with them, etc.
I would have to agree with AdamK and JayB above, it does seem that America is run by rich white people, and there does seem to be cause for poor black people to be angry – but I guess you’re not supposed to mention that.
I also find the right-wing meme:
[Google Results 1 – 20 of about 357 for “obama threw his grandmother under the bus”.] to be ridiculously offensive. As Jon Stewart pointed out, Obama invited us to speak about race in America “as if we were adults” – and those who can’t attack his substantive statements are trying to insinuate he hates his grandma.
And Americans wonder why much of the world thinks they’ve got their heads in the sand?
How many millions of people—poor black Africans in particular—have, by Wright’s reckoning, have died of AIDS (which is to say were murdered by the people who control the U.S. government)?
I don’t find that a ‘little crazy’—I find that as bigoted and vile as the Jewish blood libel.
Well, there is the little difference that powerful white people actually have, frequently, attempted to kill (and succeeded in killing) large numbers of black people. So, the US government might not have used the particular method Wright suggests, namely inventing and spreading AIDS, but they’ve don’t more-or-less morally equivalent things (indeed, the Bush administration actually does promote the spread of AIDS in Africa by denying funding to organizations that don’t emphasize abstinence over condom use).
So, Wright is making a generally claim about the murderousness of a racist system, which is true, and using a specific example (the US government spreading HIV) which is false. This would only be analogous to the blood libel if you thought that the problem with the blood libel was that it got the details wrong about whose blood specifically the Jews drank.
First of all, Wright was preaching to the choir, so how could anything he said be construed as “divisive”? It becomes divisive only when someone rips away the context and peddles the text to an unintended and hostile audience. Would Wright “damn the United States” to a congregation of WASPs (those goddammed Anglo-Saxicans) in Skokie? Should O’Bama reject O’Wright in a nationally televised speech to an electorate which includes the people who are expected to support him in his presidential pursuit? It’s all political posturing, for the benefit of whichever audience is addressed, black, white, Republican or Democratic.
Finally, you don’t give whites adequate credit for their own paranoia. Whites are as much of a minority in the rest of the world as blacks are in the US. European Jews are as much a minority in the Middle East as they were in Europe.
“Uh, outside context and particulars, there is no such thing as ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ in the same way that there is no abstract essence of “art” that one may appreciate without an actual piece of fucking art in the room.
Who is that idiot?”
Hey, look, grand moff texan just implicitly called, say, Plato an “idiot” and thus claimed that Plato and Victor Davis Hanson are either equally genius or idiotic in asserting the reality of categorical abstractions.
As I am in no way willing to judge the likes of Victor Davis Hanson comparablly insightful with Plato on this important subject for this agreement, I am forced to conclude that it is grand moff texan who is likely a little intellectually challenged.
“There is a real sense amongst certain conservatives that there is something suspicious, something wrong about hope…”
This is certainly true for people like Horowitz and others who were fervent leftist idealists. But I think it’s a general trait of conservatives. They are cynical, consider it realism, and count it as a virtue. But it’s not. Realism is a virtue; but what they never understood, back when they were young and perhaps tried to understand progressivism/liberalism, is that leftism is not antithetical to realism or pragmatism.
I see a relationship with conservatives in this sense with religious unbelievers or a certain type. For these unbelievers, being a believer and praying and whatnot is childishly foolish. Once they, too, were childish and foolish, but then they grew up and understood the world for what it is in its relentless, unsympathetic ways. Those folk can’t imagine a believer who doesn’t pray to God for hugs and puppies. It’s naive belief and constant disappointment (or constantly adjusting delusion) or this bitter, cynical unbelief. There’s nothing else.
And, of course, there is. I don’t say this as a believer, myself. I’m not. But I find it remarkable how many outspoken unbelievers are really just reacting to the fact that the universe turned out to be more unpleasant than they wished and they are motivated, in consequence, by this maladjusted contempt and resentment of the believers.
Conservatives of this type—and there are a lot of them—see leftists as nothing but starry-eyed idealistic children who think that by clapping their hands really, really hard, Tinkerbell will live and there will be no more wars, and there will be universal health care and social justice.
But that certainly doesn’t describe me; it’s never described me. I was never an idealist of this type, even as a child. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a pragmatist or realist (in method and outlook; I did have to work through being labeled an idealist by my conservative father).
I don’t really think that for this type of conservative, it’s about the real world and policies, even though they think those are their exclusive provinces. It’s simply psychological: they are punishing others as proxies for the way they’d like to punish themselves for putting themselves at emotional risk, and (in their view) subsequently hurting themselves, by hoping for anything good. It’s a perverse and sad emotional maladjustment played out in political abstractions and group affiliation.
It’s also just an opportunity to play the “older/wiser” card. “The world is a hard place, people are unreliable and venal—only a fool ignores these fundamental truths.” The thing is, though, is that these aren’t really hard-won understandings. These things are true in exactly the same way as it’s true that gravity is unforgiving and people die every day from falling. What is foolish is not to see this as it is, from a young age. It’s not a great achievement to only begin to understand that bad things happen in the world in middle-age.
In this sense, I suppose, conservatism is the little of what counts as wisdom for fools. If having learned not to run with scissors counts as one’s great life-wisdom, perhaps one should be forgiven for concluding that doing nothing is safest. That’s certainly the best course of action for them—those who are so insensitive to life’s complexities and risks.
It’s probably pointless to argue with conservatives about what Wright did or did not say. This isn’t a discussion engaged in good faith: many conservatives seek a reason to diss Obama, and Wright has provided them with what they believe is a pretty good reason.
Ellis, perhaps you ought to go back to your Plato. Plato absolutist views are tempered enough to be unrecognizable in VDH’S terms – for instance, he advises the governors in the Republic to lie. As in not telling the truth.
Malcolm Schofield, in an essay in the Cambridge Companion to Plato, makes the nice point that:
“It was Augustine, not Plato, who was the first notable chapion of what we might call the absolutist position on the morality of lying: holding that all lying is wrong, and forbidden by God as sinful. Indeed, Augustine represents a watershed between antiquity and modernity in the history of the moral philosophy of lying. “
Of course, Plato lived in a slave supported republic, I imagine, when VDH finds this out, he will condemn him absolutely… Ooops! That would be politically correct, defined by conservatives as not understanding that outside context and particulars, there is no such thing as ‘right’ or “wrong.” Absolutism only counts, of course, when it comes to the true horror of black racism. That presidents in the U.S., from George Washington to George Bush, grew up in an America in which the very laws were racist, doesn’t count – cause it wasn’t black racism . As we know, that is the cause of every ill!
[...] spend my time on issues. However, I think Obama has been improving his game lately, and I think John Holbo is persuasive here. What I want is for the candidate with best chance of winning to win the nomination, and for the [...]
Hate monger my fucking ass. Wright clearly can be intemperate, and ignorant (as in the stupid black-talk-radio HIV crap). I expect ministers to say crazy shit, by the way; after all they make a living talking to / about their imaginary friend in the sky.
But there is something wrong with you if you see “hate” in his remarks; if wanting to empower black people suggests to you an inevitable connection with putting down white people, or if you think bashing US society as presently constituted = bashing white people, then that’s a problem in YOUR psyche, not Wright’s.
I hear only demands for EQUALITY and the end of white privilege, and I personally have a problem with anybody who has a problem with that. And I close with the obligatory reminder that TUCC not only has white members and white associate pastors, but has maintained its connection with, and indeed actively supports at a more than token level, the overwhelmingly white UCC. (For which I have something of a soft spot; its HQ are here in Cleveland because it deliberately chose to locate in a troubled inner city- I respect people who put their money where their mouth is.)
Fuck the ignorant superpatriotism that disfigures this benighted country. If I feel like saying “God damn America”- and I often do these days- then I damn well will. Any wingnut who doesn’t like it can kiss my ass.
Looking at the tracking polls, it seems that those many who were very, very impressed were, just like you, already in the Obama camp.
I don’t think so. How about this part of the speech?:
Muslim baiting and support for occupation is plain good sense?
“God damn America” is offensive
Depends who you ask. In some parts of Iraq, “God bless America” might not go down too well either, I’ve heard….
CK’s point is better though: once you look at what he was actually saying it doesn’t sound offensive at all.
It’s also ‘incorrect’ to say that the government gives black people drugs so that it can then arrest them and throw them in prison. But these are not just ‘incorrect’, they are vile, bigoted, crazy slanders. – slocum
No, they’re not bigoted, unless you consider opposition to the US government “bigoted”. By that standard, obviously, most of American conservatism is “bigoted”.
Upstream, a couple bits from questioner: “I don’t think that’s what Goldberg says, or at the very least not what he means. I think what he means is that one should not have a utopia even as one’s aim, because having that as an aim will cause a lot more problems than having mere improvement of society as one’s aim. The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that.”
And, further on, re: “Public Interest”: “everything was more complicated than it seems, that unintended consequences was a “law” of social policymaking and that Romantic and utopian impulses invariably led to folly. In every way, shape and form this is the opposite of a fascistic political orientation.”
The conservative objection to New Deal-type/liberal stuff has always been that it is philosophically objectionable. On a couple levels. There are some stock, quick rhetorical moves to establish this: neglect of the law of unintended consequences. And hints that the whole thing is spiritually dangerous, a slippery slope aimed at something un-American. But if Goldberg admits that the spirit of the Obama speech is ‘wonderful’, then all this goes away. Obama isn’t naive about the difficulty of crafting good policy. And Goldberg admits he is aiming at something truly admirable (not crypto-fascist.)
In short, the argument used to be: the spirit is all wrong, ergo the policy must be flawed.
Now the argument is: the spirit is wonderful, but we already decided these policiies are flawed. Why are we talking about this? Sigh.
That’s why I think Obama can win the argument. Obama’s habit of just sensibly gesturing at the arguments on the other side neuters the other side’s rhetoric. Because conservatives only ever gestured to their own philosophy, in any case. So it is not as though there is anything left that Obama is missing, except the anger.
Slocum, until 1997 the US had not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, i.e. it had a deliberate intention of killing millions with biological or chemical agents. It had (as others have pointed out) a history of using deadly biological agents on black people, and further back in history of killing and/or enslaving millions of black people. When Wright made his speech the US was in the process of killing about a million non-white muslims.
So accusing the US of inventing HIV to kill blacks may be factually wrong, but it’s hardly out of whack with the spirit of the national enterprise. Bigoted and evil it is not, just slightly more paranoid than necessary.
“Ellis, perhaps you ought to go back to your Plato.”
It’s not clear to me why you would try to understand my comment, and the one to which I was responding, in the context of arguments about the moral necessity, or lack thereof, of being truthful. GMT was asserting that it was obviously true that “right” and “wrong” cannot be discussed, does not exist, outside of any particular example of a right or wrong act—he compares the contrary assertion to a contrary assertion of the existence of “Art”, independent of an example of piece of artwork.
GMT was attacking the reasonableness of asserting absolute morality and the independent existence of abstractions; I choose to primarily focus on the most literal reading of his claim and point out that a number of notable non-idiots have asserted that not only do abstractions exist independently from examples, they are the only truth there really is.
I don’t agree with those who hold those beliefs, but I’m certainly not going to call them “idiots”. Nor will I call “idiotic” the belief in moral absolutism. Neither of these philosophical viewpoints (materialism, relativism) are asserted by the majority of the world’s religions and philosophical traditions—they’re not even decided within our own philosophical tradition, the impressions of many notwithstanding.
I also, by the way, wasn’t defending Hanson’s arguments on its own merits, though you clearly seem to be assuming I was. I also agree with you, quite strongly, that this contemporary conservative tendency to take absolutist positions on the wrongness of racism is really just a convenient way in which they can bring white resentment to the table on equal footing with what black Americans have suffered. I think this is not only annoying, it’s an obscenity. Whites Americans who complain about being targets of racism inspire within me the desire to do them violence; I think Obama is far too understanding. Or, rather, I can bring myself to empathize with the complaints of certain lower-class and lower middle-class white Americans who feel socially insecure…but pundits of Hanson’s sort who manipulate, cynically or no, these resentments in ways in which accentuate the racial divide in the US and to the detriment of the racial minorities who have borne 99% of the brunt of racism make me ill from repulsion and fury. I’m no friend of Hanson’s.
But I’m not going to sit idly by while someone tosses around smug little assertions like those from grand moff texan, either.
Accusing the US of inventing HIV to kill blacks is crazy. It’s as crazy as trying to subvert and destroy science education in the US, and trying to instill religious dogma in textbooks.
Oh. Wait…
As a white man and an atheist, let me just say that on the basis of what I have read on this thread Reverend Wright’s view of the world sounds a lot more sane to me than Slocum’s.
Perhaps it has something to do with the demise of the communist ideology. There’s no need to fight the idea anymore, it’s not dangerous and they can now happily appropriate the liberal take on it: ‘yeah, sure, beautiful idea, unfortunately it doesn’t work, forget it’.
ck in 49: [Rev. Wright:] “God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.” …
It’s also worth underlining the “for as long as” part—which means he’s not as pessimistic about the capacity for change as Obama suggested.
Especially since the passage is part of a sermon whose entire point is that governments change, but God does not. You can see the quotation in its context here.
engels: As a white man and an atheist, let me just say that on the basis of what I have read on this thread Reverend Wright’s view of the world sounds a lot more sane to me than Slocum’s.
Yes, and others here obviously share your view. I guess we can conclude that for those who think the “AIDs designed in government labs for genocide against black people” theory is not that crazy or offensive—Obama has their votes sewn up.
I kind of suspect swing voters in American elections tend to take my perspective more than yours. But we’ll see.
John (#62),
Obama’s habit of just sensibly gesturing at the arguments on the other side neuters the other side’s rhetoric. Because conservatives only ever gestured to their own philosophy, in any case. So it is not as though there is anything left that Obama is missing, except the anger.
This is another fine point, though I guess we can look at 2008—assuming Obama gets the Democratic nomination—as a test case for it. There still are, amongst all the determined Republicans and party activists and others out there, a fair number of really committed conservatives. But those who are truly committed are, so far as I can tell, generally only on board with part of the Republican platform, because taken as a whole, it’s not so much a “conservative” document as one that just occasionally, inconsistently, gestures at various (often mutually contradictory) conservative ideas. Depending on what dominates public opinion in any given election year, that mix has nonetheless been enough to appeal to a wide swath of working and middle-class white voters, for various relgious/cultural/class reasons. Now what happens when you get a candidate who calls the Republicans bluff: who refuses to moderate his (already fairly moderate) liberal ideas, but treats those religious/cultural/class concerns with some real respect? Taking this speech as a test case, it clear this approach won’t win over all those voters—it still smacks of an elitism they (rightly?) find distasteful. But, as I argued before, it may be enough to draw is some of them. They wouldn’t be “Reagan Democrats”; the issues in play are, and therefore their motivations would be, very different. But maybe they’ll show up, all the same. Such a result would certainly make for a better win than Clinton’s difference-splitting 51-49-style victories.
Hey, look, grand moff texan just implicitly called, say, Plato an “idiot”
Would you like me to do it explicitly?
It would save us a lot of time talking about the essence of “table.”
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GMT was asserting that it was obviously true that “right” and “wrong” cannot be discussed, does not exist, outside of any particular example of a right or wrong act—he compares the contrary assertion to a contrary assertion of the existence of “Art”, independent of an example of piece of artwork.
Because I was talking about manifestations of opinions, yes. That’s why I chose “art” instead of “geometry.” Saying that I dismissed the possibility of abstractions is just, well, stupid.
Abstractions and ethics are not the same thing. Asking for a sense of right and wrong without examples is incoherent.
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Judging by the grand moff texan’s sophisticated argumentative techniques (lacing reasonable disagreement with condescending accusations of idiocy and stupidity), I’m going to charitably assume that the texan is a first year undergraduate philosophy student. If that’s the case, the moff will either a) like so many of us did as undergraduate students, develop more nuanced views with increased experience and knowledge or b) drop such studies altogether and get an engineering degree.
In the meantime, the moff is probably not yet ready to have a grown up disagreement about such things, so it’s best for us, and the last 2000 years of philosophical inquiry and debate about ethical matters, to simply defer to his definitive judgment.
ps. I long ago decided that Plato was an idiot after reading Socrates’ dialogue with Meno’s slave. In the dialogue, Socrates simply asks leading questions, blank demonstrative sentences with tacked-on interrogatives, so that Plato can pretend that knowledge of geometry was innate.
Socrates: It is no easy matter, but still I am willing to try my best for your sake. Just call one of your own troop of attendants there, [82b] whichever one you please, that he may serve for my demonstration.
Meno: Certainly. You, I say, come here.
Socrates: He is a Greek, I suppose, and speaks Greek?
Meno: Oh yes, to be sure—born in the house.
Socrates: Now observe closely whether he strikes you as recollecting or as learning from me.
Meno: I will.
Socrates: Tell me, boy, do you know that a square figure is like this?7
Boy: I do.
Socrates: Now, a square figure has these lines, four in number, all equal?
Boy: Certainly.
Socrates: And these, drawn through the middle,8 are equal too, are they not?
Boy: Yes.
Socrates: And a figure of this sort may be larger or smaller?
Boy: To be sure.
Socrates: Now if this side were two feet and that also two, how many feet would the whole be? Or let me put it thus: if one way it were two feet, and only one foot the other, of course the space would be two feet taken once ?
Boy: Yes.
Socrates: But as it is two feet also on that side, it must be twice two feet?
Boy: It is.
Socrates: Then the space is twice two feet?
Boy: Yes.
Socrates: Well, how many are twice two feet? Count and tell me.
Boy: Four, Socrates.
Socrates: And might there not be another figure twice the size of this, but of the same sort, with all its sides equal like this one?
Boy: Yes.
Socrates: Then how many feet will it be?
Boy: Eight.
Socrates: Come now, try and tell me how long will each side [82e] of that figure be. This one is two feet long: what will be the side of the other, which is double in size?
Boy: Clearly, Socrates, double.
Socrates: Do you observe, Meno, that I am not teaching the boy anything, but merely asking him each time? And now he supposes that he knows about the line required to make a figure of eight square feet; or do you not think he does?
Even as rhetoric, it’s weak. As logic, it’s a joke.
But I guess it’s the same issue here. One can insist on the independent existence of abstractions. Insisting on the independent existence of ethics is merely a cheap way to avoid the hard work of making a concrete case. One projects one’s preferences into a safely non-falsifiable sphere in order to pretend that they have become ‘absolute’ merely by becoming vague and intangible.
So, having explained myself more than should have been necessary, all that seems to be left of Keith Ellis’ objection is an argument from authority.
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I’m going to charitably assume that the texan is a first year undergraduate philosophy student.
And what should I assume from your error? I mean, if you’re that far off, why should I be interested in your opinion?
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I have to say: I’m rather fond of the “Meno”.
Whoops!
My apologies, ck. I did not realize that you were posting from the seventeenth century:
the last 2000 years of philosophical inquiry
Plato, d. 347 BCE.
Please enjoy the Enlightenment. The ramblings of Greek trust-fund babies and pederasts will soon seem less important.
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I guess we can conclude that for those who think the “AIDs designed in government labs for genocide against black people” theory is not that crazy or offensive—Obama has their votes sewn up.
Please remember that Tuskegee didn’t end until 1972, well within living memory for a lot of American voters, and only a decade and a half before HIV really hit the public. Also, given the fact that biology education has been eviserated in this country, I’m not certain we should be surprised that the “HIV is black genocide” idea has propogated so well.
Also current in African American circles is a story, which I’ve never been able to verify, concerning experiments by infant formula companies in the mid-twentieth century.
The story goes that companies solicited infant test subjects by advertising in African American communities that the infants would be given some new scientific wonder food. In reality, test groups were selectively starved of specific nutrients in order to determine the cheapest necessary formulation, resulting in various developmental abnormalities in the infant subjects.
I have no idea if there is any factual basis for this. For all I know, it’s just some weird riff on the blood libel.
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I don’t think that’s what Goldberg says, or at the very least not what he means. I think what he means is that one should not have a utopia even as one’s aim, because having that as an aim will cause a lot more problems than having mere improvement of society as one’s aim. The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that.
Goldberg is that does say this. It’s in his definition of what “fascism” is.
What’s so irritating about Goldberg is that he wants to insult and claim injury for anyone saying that’s what he wants to do. There is a reason you know that his book isn’t called “Watch Out for Utopias.”
Please remember that Tuskegee didn’t end until 1972, well within living memory for a lot of American voters, and only a decade and a half before HIV really hit the public.
Yes, well, ‘the government’ obviously didn’t invent syphilis nor was anyone intentionally infected. And then there’s this:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA34A.htm
And a brief discussion here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/tips@acsun.frostburg.edu/msg14020.html
So, no—Tuskegee simply does not make the idea of U.S. government labs creating the AIDS virus (and then some other government agency initiating a program to spread it) in order to kill vast numbers of black people remotely plausible.
In #62, John Holbo wrote: “In short, the argument used to be: the spirit is all wrong, ergo the policy must be flawed.
Now the argument is: the spirit is wonderful, but we already decided these policiies are flawed. Why are we talking about this? Sigh.”
I don’t see what’s wrong with this position (other than the fact that the policies are not flawed).
To elaborate, why can’t Goldberg say: “some set of policies S were supported in the past by utopian underpinnings. Not surprisingly (at least, not surprising to the conservative) those policies turned out to do more harm than good. Now, those same policies are picked up by someone who isn’t moved by utopian impulses, but simply by impulses to improve things. Okay, great. Unfortunately, the ideological origin of the policies is what made them bad, not who picked them up later.” (And by the way, the conservative doesn’t have to think that any policy undertaken out of the spirit to improve matters must be good; there are objective criteria one can use to assess policies. And yes, I’m sure Goldberg contradicts his own dictum right and left. To use Peter Railton’s language, I’m talking about Goldberg*.)
In other important news, there was a mentally disturbed guy on my train home last night telling random strangers to get a job and that it was all their mothers’ fault.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with this position (other than the fact that the policies are not flawed).”
Well, you get to pretend to have argued against policies, without ever having offered an argument that you are (now) willing to stand behind.
“And by the way, the conservative doesn’t have to think that any policy undertaken out of the spirit to improve matters must be good;”
I was seizing more on the consideration that the conservative can hardly say that any policy undertaken out of the spirit of improvement is necessarily bad.
Yes, well, ‘the government’ obviously didn’t invent syphilis nor was anyone intentionally infected.
Please use a condom with that straw man.
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What can one say to someone who confidentially dismisses Plato himself as an idiot and the Meno as stupid? Or quibbles with ck’s rounding out the history of western philosophy to 2,000 years? Or invokes pederasty in a criticism of all of classic Greek philosophy? Maybe it’s best one just look away.
In any case, it’s not really fair to digress and start beating him up about his opinions on Plato. The point here is that his follow-up comment #72 just demonstrates that he’s not competent to be discussing the matter of what is stupid or idiotic to believe about even the most basic questions in moral philosophy or epistemology. He doesn’t have a clue—he’s making idiosyncratic distinctions that he thinks are self-evident as assumptions in what probably amounts to a “belief” that’s arisen cumulatively from a bunch of half-assed idle considerations, perhaps a few conversations, and probably a cohort lay opinion on the nature of morality and ethics. If something, merely at a first glance, apparently contradicts this “belief” of his? It must be “idiotic”.
Really, I had expected his argument to be something more developed and from received wisdom—similar to, say, someone confidently invoking the intentionalist fallacy as the last word on aesthetics of authorship. But his claims about the idiocy of Hanson isn’t even that well grounded or coherent. It’s just ignorant bullshit.
Does this matter? I think it does. It’s a nice example of the toxicity of the smug, snarky, aggressively counter-productive discourse that infests the web. A contradictory form could have appeared on a right-wing website—one asserting the idiocy of denying an independent, absolute morality—with the same smug, self-congratulatory tone that says nothing more than “everyone else are idiots, amirite?” and which is based upon what is usually a completely inaccurate sense of personal competency in the matter at hand.
In fact, this particular example—in each of grand moff texan’s comments—demonstrates a mirror-world twin of the sophomorism of Objectivism. These are all people discussing philosophy with no competency whatsoever who believe of themselves exactly the opposite. Objectivists are perpetual college sophomores with nothing more than one or two survey-type philosophy courses (and that’s a generous estimate; more likely it’s zero) who think that they can authoritatively evaluate any philosopher and any philosophical idea at the drop of a hat, with little or no familiarity, with great self-assurance, and with extreme smug condescension. GMT’s comment on the Meno is a superb example.
It matters here, I think, because GMT is probably using the time spent reading and commenting here at Crooked Timber, an academic blog, as a source for furthering his collection of shiny geegaws with which he adorns his superficial comprehension of, well, everything. And I think shaming is an efficient corrective.
Are you seriously trying to minimize the govt’s culpability for Tuskeegee? How much less evil would you consider your doctor to be if she merely withheld treatment for a horrifying & eminently treatable disease without your knowledge & consent than if she infected you as well? Your prolonged & excruciating end is the same either way. And if your family then acquired AIDS (now that science has demonstrated the ability to create biological weapons), they would be not just irrational, but completely reprehensible for suspecting her of even greater moral depravity to them than she showed you? Why? because criminals never commit worse crimes than the ones for which they’ve been busted?
How exactly to the Tuskeegee doctors get off lighter than Obama with you?
While I very much enjoyed Ellis’s response to GMT, I have a different response to him: one can endorse a false conclusion and still be overall smart; one can use faulty reasoning and still be overall smart; if a bunch of very smart people all agree, or almost all agree, that someone P is extremely smart, that is some evidence for thinking that P is smart; if a bunch of very smart people agree that P is smart, and if you read lots of what P says and conclude that P is not smart, you might want to reread P’s stuff carefully at least once; finally, if P says a lot of stuff that appears foolish to you, but happened to write 2400 years ago, you might want to take P’s context into account.
I take all of the above to be obvious. If someone misses it, I don’t think he is stupid, but I do think he did something rather boneheaded.
“Well, you get to pretend to have argued against policies, without ever having offered an argument that you are (now) willing to stand behind.”
But I’m sure Goldberg has argued against those policies ad nauseum. If so, then a sigh seems fine (it indicates his exhaustion at having to go over these arguments yet again). Of course, a sigh is inappropriate if Obama has forwarded a new policy, but I don’t think he has, at least not in that speech.
“I was seizing more on the consideration that the conservative can hardly say that any policy undertaken out of the spirit of improvement is necessarily bad.”
That’s clearly true, but if the policy originally was endorsed out of a spirit of utopianism, and if Goldberg is convinced that that initial endorsement is what deformed the policy, then the fact that that same policy is now endorsed out of a desire for improvement doesn’t make it much more palatable than before.
What can one say to someone who confidentially dismisses Plato himself as an idiot and the Meno as stupid?
Since you don’t seem to be able to answer the question, I’ll try for you.
Is it possible that you’re on the internet? Having read the thread, which began with a post the very title of which mocks VDH’s juvenile sense of absolutes, where is it that I have managed to limbo under a bar that was set so low? I would have thought that your content-free characterizations would have been evidence enough to anyone that there are no standards of admission here. You keep claiming that I have inadvertently proved something about myself, if only because you can’t argue it.
Yes, I understand that there is a school of ethics that claims a basis in things beyond human comprehension, which is nice, because it will save a lot of time.
In the meantime, I don’t see why I should show Plato any greater reverence than the mumblings of an Indonesian shaman who thinks he can transform himself into a parakeet. I’m not saying any of these figures are insignificant, I’m just saying that they’re all bone-in-the-nose savages to me. If that hurts your Time Life Books™ sensibilities, then you are going to be a lot of fun.
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If someone misses it, I don’t think he is stupid, but I do think he did something rather boneheaded.
Can we compromise and call him autistic?
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Are you seriously trying to minimize the govt’s culpability for Tuskeegee?
Yes.
This has been another episode of …
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“Plato, d. 347 BCE.”
I was rounding to the nearest millennium, silly!
On the issue of moral absolutism—this is a serious, unresolved philosophical dilemma. True, absolute moral rules do, time and again, fail the test of intuition in individual cases. Nevertheless every attempt to construct an ethical theory that avoids them can be reasonably charged with either (a) tacitly assuming a moral absolute or (b) failing to justify its claims to morally obligate. I say reasonably charged, so a case can be made that the charges are false, but it remains a live issue.
(I find it shocking that no one has yet decisively answered Kant’s preemptive reply to the consequentialist: that a hypothetical moral imperative is moral only if ultimately grounded in a categorical one. Instead the deontologiststs and consequentialists ignore or talk past one another.)
To call moral absolutists idiots is also to take far too lightly a very serious practical ethical dilemma. Most of our cherished “enlightened” political values (liberalism, democracy, human rights, international law) have a historical basis in moral absolutes—so their rejection poses a threat to such values. (Of the “you’re not wearing a fancy uniform so we don’t have any moral obligation to recognize your humanity” variety. That’s excellent company to keep!)
Roger,
I don’t think the case of “noble lies” counts against Plato’s commitment to moral absolutes. That he doesn’t hold lying to be absolutely immoral is consistent with holding other moral absolutes. In fact, I think he would argue lying is acceptable in this case precisely because it’s an absolute good for the soul and state to be ruled by knowledge (which is not the same as by honesty).
I guess we can conclude that for those who think the “AIDs designed in government labs for genocide against black people” theory is not that crazy or offensive
No, just less crazy and offensive than a lot of other stuff I hear every day, often from rightwingers and ‘moderate’ liberals on this site, and certainly less crazy and offensive than your view that it is rational to judge a man who has been preaching for 36 years by extracting the single most disagreeable mistaken statement you can find in all of that and focusing on it obsessively.
Also pretty crazy if I may say so is your admission (#42) that you take any allegations of wrongdoing against the US government as a personal insult…
Others have already said this but it really bears repeating since slocum insists on both denying the obvious and then coughing up this baloney about being shocked, shocked I tell you regarding Rev. Wright’s words. I can’t see how Rev. Wright has said anything that remotely warrants an apology. Wright certainly hasn’t expressed anything that is racist. His sermons certainly sip from the cup of hyperbole but the characterizations of Wright’s anger as racist, un-American, America-hating, and treasonous are themselves substantively hyperbolic bullshit.
If I was to fault Obama for anything in his speech it would be his denial that white racism is endemic. Then again, after reading some of the comments here, I wonder if the next move on the right is to deny that white racism ever really existed let alone was something that could warrant an objection. Hopefully, the objections and outrage directed at Wright and Obama represent the last gasp of white racism.
I know you were, ck. Obviously I don’t think you’re in the 17th century since I was able to read what you wrote. Seventeenth-century paleography is a real bitch. Unfortunately for me, early 14th-century monastic hands aren’t much better.
But, since I’m a medievalist, I have to mock the idea that there have been 2,000 years of sustained intellectual inquiry in the Western tradition, especially because my guys are the ones who were supposed to have been wrong about it all for 1,000 years.
I appreciate your laying out for me the issue as you see it. But, since I study people who justify their actions in terms of a theology that has been disowned even by its own descendants, I see “ethics” as a class of rhetoric, a narrative we deploy in order to exploit social predispositions in order to justify what we may have done for completely different reasons (a sort of full-contact calumny). I understand why you call the issue a “serious, unresolved philosophical dilemma,” but is it possible that this is the reason why?
Take VDH. His invocation of Invisible Super Real Ethics floating through the aether seems to me to be a way of avoiding what Obama actually said. Obama answered the “questions,” which only grew legs in the media after William Kristol lied in the NYC. VDH needs an excuse to keep asking questions that have already been answered because it’s the only poo he has to fling.
Can you see why I don’t take the ethics discussion seriously? That’s not ethics, that’s polemics.
VDH is being evasive and wants to dress up his intellectual cowardice in a bunch of pretty syllables. I would expect professional intellectuals (of any discipline) to know better, and John Holbo clearly does.
Likewise, when Goldberg writes:
This was largely a restatement of Jeremiah Wright’s indictment of America, delivered in University of Chicago parlance instead of South Side Chicago diatribe.
He is simply changing the subject to tone, whining in order to walk away from a debate he can’t handle. Here, he invokes American conservative anti-intellectualism so that he can turn back to the white-flight/white fright specters of South Side Chicago.
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NYT
not
NYC.
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“So, no—Tuskegee simply does not make the idea of U.S. government labs creating the AIDS virus (and then some other government agency initiating a program to spread it) in order to kill vast numbers of black people remotely plausible.”
Slocum, could you clarify this point? I’m guessing your view is something like this: given the ineffectiveness and side effects of the treatments of they day, the experiment did not amount to knowingly letting the patients die. So they weren’t morally responsible for passively killing the subjects in the study, even if they should have been more stringent about procedures of informed consent.
So: without a precedent of either direct or indirect attempts to kill black people en masse, the theory that the U.S. government would try to do so is not even remotely plausible.
Assuming that’s your position, I’m not sure that conclusion follows. Why can’t a long history of profound state and cultural abuses and state tolerance for cultural abuses count as general reasons for finding it plausible?
This is a strained analogy, but would a Jewish German in the very early 20th century have no plausible reason to believe a similar conspiracy theory about their own government—until after the holocaust? Aren’t (remotely) plausible grounds for belief in a government conspiracy to commit genocide nothing more than: the existence of the motive and the means?
Texan,
Your position seems to be at least related to the Thrasymachian skeptical position that the language of “justice” has no real meaning except as an instrument of power. So it’s a position that Plato is not completely ignorant of and one that he has at least in principle given some consideration.
To entirely reduce ethical discourse to rhetoric is, in itself, a profoundly controversial move—so it doesn’t extricate you from the philosophical debate. There is, first of all, the question of whether or not that’s simply a false claim—either in the Thrasymachian version or the (is it Foucauldian?) version you’ve employed—er, I mean, deployed. That ethical language can be used merely rhetorically or polemically—even if, hypothetically, it is always used in such a way—does not show that its claims are true or false.
Secondly, it still leaves you in a position that requires explanation—or it places one in a paradoxical ethical position. Assuming ethical discourse is simply a rhetorical device: how can you justify any ethical position—e.g., the ethical position you take on the Wright/Obama issue or toward the responses people have made to it? If you admit that you cannot do so, then why try to persuade anyone to your position.
Medieval theology has been disowned even by its own descendants? Tell that to Katherin Rogers. Or Eleonore Stump. And the list can be expanded (Scott MacDonald, the late Norman Kretzmann, etc.).
Regardless, even if you were right that medieval theology is no longer defended by anyone today, even those who consider themselves orthodox Christians (or Muslims, or Jews), your conclusion that therefore ethical theory and invocations are mere rhetoric wouldn’t follow.
Of course, I’m guessing you take the norms of logic and argumentation to be mere social corralling of intellectual predispositions or some such (and of course, I’m sure you don’t care to provide evidence for that conclusion, because the need to justify conclusions must itself just be a base desire with no normative authority, right?), so arguing with would would not be fun.
http://www.mail-archive.com/tips@acsun.frostburg.edu/msg14020.html
So, no—Tuskegee simply does not make the idea of U.S. government labs creating the AIDS virus (and then some other government agency initiating a program to spread it) in order to kill vast numbers of black people remotely plausible.
As an older physician let me note that patients diagnosed with tertiary syphilis in the 50’s and 60’s were treated. There was no question of holding treatment back. If nothing else thee would always be the possibility of passing it on if nothing else. Most of the article is concerned with treatment in the 1930’s which was pretty awful but that has never been the question. Wy did a group of black men not get treated when a treatment became available?
I do thank you for this reference. I will add it to my list of poorly written papers/studies to demonstrate to my medical students how to read articles.
Steve
ck: thanks again
Your position seems to be at least related to the Thrasymachian skeptical position that the language of “justice” has no real meaning except as an instrument of power.
Not necessarily, since I said “may have done.” I simply refuse to assume that participants in an ethical debate are necessarily honest. One need not be a skeptic (in the colloquial sense) in order to say “might makes right,” so I’ll see your Thrasymachus and raise you a Melian Dialogue.
So it’s a position that Plato is not completely ignorant of and one that he has at least in principle given some consideration.
Of course! But it will come as no surprise to you that a historian sees ethics as historically situated. Historians have been credited (and blamed) with historicizing and ‘relativizing’ ethical standards by showing that they change over time and/or were not actually observed at the time they supposedly were. So, for me, Plato isn’t so much a source as a highly localized example.
And, I would like to point out that I did not call Plato an idiot, I was challenged for calling him an idiot by implication. Throwing out Meno’s slave, a favorite of mine, was merely a way to disappoint an attempt at intimidation. O, we dursn’t insult the ancients! We simply dursn’t!
To entirely reduce ethical discourse to rhetoric is, in itself, a profoundly controversial move—so it doesn’t extricate you from the philosophical debate.
Of course not. But, if ethical standards vary historically, and if we cannot know if the participants in ethical debates are honest participants, what is the value of ethical discourse?
You’ll note that we’re talking about a controversy in a presidential election. Why, then, should it be unusual to assume that the “ethical” objections of VDH are anything other than polemical? This is not a debate amongst philosophy faculty, this is ideological warfare.
That ethical language can be used merely rhetorically or polemically—even if, hypothetically, it is always used in such a way—does not show that its claims are true or false.
Again we agree. So: how can we tell which is which?
Secondly, it still leaves you in a position that requires explanation—or it places one in a paradoxical ethical position. Assuming ethical discourse is simply a rhetorical device: how can you justify any ethical position—e.g., the ethical position you take on the Wright/Obama issue or toward the responses people have made to it? If you admit that you cannot do so, then why try to persuade anyone to your position.
Why should I try? People will align for their own reasons with different candidates. Some, who were never going to vote for Obama, will point to this as a faux justification. Others aren’t willing to accept any criticism of their candidate.
Early Christians understood the problem of authenticity, and emphasized the essential nature of “metanoia” in contrition, because anyone can deploy the rhetoric of contrition. The blogsphere understands this problem, having coined the phrase “concern trolls.”
So, if I see ethical standards as fluid and the participants in ethical debates as not necessarily honest, if there are no specific examples in which we are to find ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ what are we talking about, if anything? This is what I meant by “incoherent.”
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I see “ethics” as a class of rhetoric, a narrative we deploy in order to exploit social predispositions in order to justify what we may have done for completely different reasons
I was with you until now, Grand Moff, but this just won’t do.
All of us—except a few sociopaths—falsify this claim every day, whenever we attempt to act ethically. You might say that we’re just fooling ourselves about our real motives, but that’s irrelevant; the question “what ought I to do?” is incompatible with the view that ethics is just rhetoric. So anyone who asks that question—again, pretty much everyone—must take the view that there is indeed such a thing as ethics as distinct from rhetoric.
By implying that rejection of Platonism leads to rejection of any kind of positive ethics, you are unintentionally making the case for Plato.
On a less related point, I think this post should have been titled:
If Moral Absolutes are Wrong, then I don’t Want to be Wright.
Holbo, it’s yours, free of charge.
Engels, I thought that #42 made fascinating reading—I bet it’s a pretty common attitude in some circles. I wonder what rich powerful white people think when they’re accused of supporting state terror overseas, another thing that’s in Wright’s sermons? And that accusation is true.
I think Obama’s long association with Wright is the best thing about his candidacy. Wright has said stupid things, but nothing as stupid or offensive as slocum’s attempt to downplay Tuskegee. With most of the white critics of Wright, you just have to sit back and let them talk and they’ll probably say something far worse than anything Wright is guilty of.
To #98—Tuskegee was continued long after the point when there were effective treatments. Don’t let him off the hook.
And to sortition in # 58—Yeah, that part of the speech nearly ruined it for me. It’s clear Obama isn’t a saint—he’s willing to lie about the root causes of the I/P conflict. Still, he’s better than most politicians.
Medieval theology has been disowned even by its own descendants? Tell that to Katherin Rogers. Or Eleonore Stump.
Uh, no. You can tell them that, and I’ll stand over here.
Yes, the list can be expanded, but it’s not going to make Trent and Vatican II go away. The fact is that the medieval Roman Church doesn’t exist anymore.
iRegardless, even if you were right that medieval theology is no longer defended by anyone today, even those who c