Violence and just borders in the Middle East
What does the flotilla incident mean for the Israel-Palestine border?
Many viewed the recent flotilla incident in the waters off of Gaza as relevant to larger questions about Israel’s legitimacy and what constitutes a just outcome to the peace process. This argument, whereby the legitimacy of Israel (or Palestine) depends upon their policies toward the other side, seems inappropriate. What makes a state legitimate? What should the borders be between two states? These are hard questions. Whatever the answers are, as a matter of political morality, I doubt that it includes much analysis of how one side treats the other.
Consider this example: People A have lived in and governed Land Area Q for 500 years. People B invade Q to exploit its natural resource and they push out People A. In their attempt to regain control, People A resort to tactics that threaten the innocent members of People B.
We don’t generally believe (I think) that the right of People A to their land would be affected. Their tactics may be unjust and reprehensible, but it seems they’re unrelated to the deeper question of who should live in and govern a land area. There may, in theory, be a breaking point, such that if People A aim to commit genocide against People B, we might conclude that they’ve lost all rights, including the right to rule Q. But even this is uncertain; it’s not as if the German people after WWII lost all their rights to control land, such that the French could justly take their land.
When thinking about the big questions on Israel from a moral perspective (e.g. what’s a just border?), it’s maybe irrelevant when and whether one side commit actions deemed inappropriate, unjust, egregious, etc. It’s surely relevant from a policy perspective, insofar as some actions may be better or worse for one’s desired end-game. And it’s relevant in regard to other moral questions about how people ought to treat each other in such a conflict.
Israeli issues
Tony Judt in the NYT has an interesting, wide-ranging piece on state legitimacy, democracy, state responsibility, and other similar issues as they relate to Israel.
-Jake
Who owns the news?
The FTC is mulling a “Drudge tax” on websites like The Drudge Report that aggregate newspaper links, which would require aggregators to pay the newspapers to link to articles.
Is this is a question of individual rights, whereby a newspaper as a matter of copyright law and morality ought to have some ownership over not only their articles, but also over links to their articles? Or is it merely a case of pure government intervention in the marketplace to prevent something bad from happening, considered from a broad, nation-wide, consequentialist perspective (e.g. the disappearance of newspapers)? Or maybe it’s both. Copyright as a field is interesting in the way that it balances individual ownership rights over one’s creative products with nation-wide, consequentialist concerns with other people having access to those products and promoting new innovations based upon the earlier work. It’s through this reasoning that copyrights exist, but only last for a limited period of time.
Here it seems to be much more about keeping the newspapers in business than protecting their ownership over links to their work. It’s not unattributed use of their work, merely links to their work. If the newspapers were flourishing, the notion that, as a matter of moral right, they should have ownership rights in links to their stories would hold even less water. And if their is such a moral (copy) right, then it would hold in that context, too.
As a matter of policy conceived holistically, with the special role the press plays in holding politicians accountable and serving as a place for reasoned discourse, it nevertheless seems like a good idea to provide newspapers with some such form of ownership rights. It’s a case of consequentialist concerns (e.g. it’s good for the country for newspapers to stay in business) demanding and creating individual rights (e.g. ownership rights in links to their stories).
-Jake
Money and guns
US complicity in Mexico
When we attempt to attribute responsibility for the world’s most severe problems, especially in the developing world, it’s difficult to see exactly how the causal links operate. Even though the US is the most powerful nation, its direct responsibility for these crises is almost always attenuated and complex. One can spin ridiculous, semi-conspiratorial arguments where the US stars as the final puppet master to anything corrupt and unjust in the developing world, but these are not to be taken seriously in my mind. There exists, however, at least one glaring exception: The civil violence between Mexican drug lords and the Mexican government.
Outside of military intervention, rarely ever is there such a clear case of one nation’s culpability in the domestic challenges of another. The drug lords exist to feed the US drug market. And they get their guns through the US weapons market. We give the bad guys their money by buying their drugs; and we sell them the guns that enable their continued existence. The causal line does not involve a Rube Goldberg story beginning with the practice of colonialism. Its clear, direct, and recent. If democratic nations can be considered as coherent entities able to bear moral responsibility, as I think they ought to be, this is a pretty easy case.
In short, the US bears some direct moral responsibility for a civil conflict that creeps very close to the status of existential crisis for Mexico. If we take our moral status seriously, its imperative we think hard and fast about how to stem the flow of our money and guns to some of the most vicious people in the world.
-Jake
Pauleoconservatism
At the NYT, Ross Douthat argues that rather than “libertarianism,” Ron and Rand Paul endorse a “paleoconservative” ideological mis-mash, one marked by the inherent problems of dogmatism.
-Jake
Primaries as partisan purifiers
A problem?
Last week’s round of upsets in Senate primary races was interpreted by many as the product of an anti-incumbent and -establishment mood. Maybe more than that, however, it was the standard result of primary voters rewarding those especially to the right or left. In the Kentucky Republican race, Rand Paul defeated Trey Grayson. In the Pennsylvania Democrat race, Joe Sestak defeated incumbent Arlen Specter. And incumbent Blanche Lincoln is in a runoff with Bill Halter for the Arkansas Democratic ticket. In all three cases, primary voters have punished the more “moderate” candidate.
Are these primary votes a good thing? Not every democracy has them.
Democracy seems to be in their favor, though. Rather than party insiders somewhat shadily selecting candidates and placing them in seats strategically, the members of the party themselves decide who shall represent their views.
Parties have an entrenched and often positive role in our system, as the sort of ideological categorical guides I discussed earlier, as a means of cooperation and organization, and as an additional systemic check (on each other). Related, they have an enormous amount of power. To leave the selection and placement of party candidates to a few unelected party leaders affords those people an undue amount of democratically unaccountable influence. And independent candidates, who have an difficult time fighting party machines, cannot be counted upon to check party leaders.
Also, primaries might afford the people an opportunity to escape the traditional, status quo views of party leaders (see Rand Paul).
Free speech and Islam
Pakistan expands internet censorship, including a outright ban on Youtube, after a court deems certain internet content contrary to Islamic law, like a Facebook page encouraging people to draw pictures of Mohammed. This reveals the obvious tension between certain interpretations of Islam and liberalism. The response might be that the court and the country support liberal freedoms, just not when they breach Islamic law. This is essentially a debate about of the fundamental sources and purposes of legitimate government; whether liberal freedoms are core of the whole point of government, whether they’re subordinate to religious values, or whether they’re just somewhat important values included in the bag of political concerns. It doesn’t get any deeper as a matter of political philosophy, which is something I always say about anything concerning Youtube and Facebook, especially in regard to that Youtube video where the dog says “I love you.”
-Jake
Life-without-parole for juveniles
Rules, standards, and individualized justice
In Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court yesterday outlawed life-without-parole for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide crimes, holding that such sentences violated the 8th’s Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishment. The argument involves two steps, neither of which involves much explicit political philosophy. First, following Roper, the Court looks at State practices to assess the prevalance of the given punishment. While it may seem odd to examine current policies in order to determine timeless constitutional principles, the concept of “cruel” maybe and certainly that of “unusual” are indeed somewhat contextual. Second, the Court examines the 8th Amendment’s text, history, meaning, and purpose, which means applying previous Supreme Court cases. Embedded within this interpretative second step is some genuine political philosophy. In the end, the court held that a juvenile could indeed have the maturity and moral culpability to deserve life-without-parole for a nonhomicide crimes, but that the process of delineating these individuals from the greater number that don’t have the requisite culpability is fraught with error. And to such a degree that the Constitution demands a categorical prohibition for the class of juveniles as a whole.
To be clear: Following the court’s logic, without the categorical prohibition, many juvenile would receive unjust sentences, because they don’t have the requisite moral culpability; but then again, with the prohibition, some will received lighter sentences then they deserve. It’s the old issue that when you draw a line and set a hard rule, it will be in some ways over- and under-inclusive. Whereas before there existed a standard in those states without their own prohibitory rule, now there is a national rule for all States.
From an abstract philosophical perspective, it makes sense to have standards for punishment, so each person can get exactly what they deserve. But in the real world, standards leave open the door for inequality (unequal time for the same crime), corruption, and bias, such that individualized justice is better served by a categorical rule.
-Jake
Burka ban and liberalism
Where we stand on the issue may reflect the divide that political philosopher William Galston identifies between Reformation liberalism and Enlightenment liberalism. Toleration, he argues, is at the heart of Reformation liberalism and we should extend toleration even to illiberal practices. By contrast, autonomy is the guiding value of Enlightenment liberalism, which embraces a more interventionist state.
In this case, toleration seems the more prudent course. Yes, there is something troubling about the burka. And, yes, we should scrutinise its merits through civilised debate. However, a ban raises as many problems as it may solve, about the appropriate limits of state power and the wellbeing of women behind the veil.
This is one issue where caution rather than doctrine should dictate our response.
-Jake
Ideological branding: Is Obama a centrist pragmatist or a communist?
The new categorical imperative
Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, argues in a Washington Post op-ed that the Republican rhetoric on Obama’s supposed radicalism is overheated and off-base. He concludes:
This president is a mainstream, pragmatic moderate, operating in the center of American politics; center-left, perhaps, but not left of center.
This debate reveals that ideological description is policy prescription. How we describe, explicate, and categorize someone’s political theory or ideology, conceived holistically–say, either as American centrist or communist–affects how we understand an individual policy forwarded by that person.
If Obama’s whole project is categorized justifiaby as radical socialist, then most Americans will have good reason to scrutinize and be especially skeptical of any particular policy he proposes. Even if they support that given policy, they have to be wary of death by a thousand cuts, and worry that it might represent one step toward a path-dependency leading to a undesirable destination, or one innocuous piece of a larger malevolent project. Require people to purchase insurance now, central planning of the whole economy later.
If he’s branded as a pragmatic left-centrist, people will grant him more trust and give him the benefit of a reasonable doubt. Require people to purchase insurance now, require people to purchase insurance now; there is no worry of path-dependency in the wrong direction, or lurking shadowy projects. Obama has worked tirelessly to make this image stick; whether or not he’s been successful, Orstein argues pretty convincingly that it’s not just spin.
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