Must we call genocide “genocide”?
The Armenian genocide? Or The Armenian mass killings? And does it matter?
In a debate that seems to recur every few years, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted today to condemn as “genocide”, the mass killing of Armenians during and after World War I. Like in 2007, the last time an Armenian Genocide resolution came up, the Administration (then Bush, today Obama), sought to halt the vote - both times to no avail.
Unlike with the situation in Darfur, the hesitancy to use the word “genocide” stems not from worries about the responsibilities to which the use of the word would commit the United States, but from simple geopolitics. Turkey, while acknowledging that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of Ottoman Turks, has always denied that the deaths were part of a planned orchestrated campaign - a prerequisite for calling them “genocide.” And fearing the genocide label would tar their national reputation, Turkey has long fought the official declaration by other governments of the events as such. Because of this lobbying, only twenty countries, to date, have recognized the Armenian genocide. Read more
Religion and foreign aid
I owe thanks to Nicholas Kristof for publishing a piece on religious missionaries in the NYT the day after I was discussing this issue with friends.
Kristof reminds us that religious groups are doing great humanitarian work. He reminds us that
Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.
I’m sure I’m one of the “some Americans” Kristof has in mind. I’ll freely concede that humanitarian work is good regardless of the reason why it’s done. I think a convincing argument could also be made that humanitarian aid would still be good even if it was used as a “lure” for conversion, if that’s the only way that the aid would be allocated. However, I don’t think Kristof takes seriously enough the case against faith-based intervention. He writes:
A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.
Accusations of elitism or “snoobbishness” generally point to poor argumentation to follow. The critique against faith-based groups is more serious than Kristof believes.
It’s never clear where commitments end and humanitarianism begins. The issue of condoms is a good example. Faith-based organizations that do not provide condom distribution are doing their constituency a grave disservice. if secular international organizations are not on the ground because the most pressing needs are being addressed (hunger, disease) by faith-based groups, there’s no locus in which good policy can be made. When aid money is channeled through government organizations, there’s room for an open debate on best practices. This debate cannot happen when aid money is simply granted to religious organizations. Fundamentally, Kristoff is ignoring that to at least some extent, the aid channeled through religious organizations trades off with aid provided by secular NGOs or governments.
The tragic case of Ugandan efforts to pass a law punishing homosexuality by death are another example. This farce was supported by a few US evangelical groups; probably the groups Kristof praises had nothing to do with it. But what will those groups do to actively oppose such initiatives? (Perhaps this is colonialism, and therefore should also be opposed by us snobs.)
But of course, Kristof is right in his central point — that many faith-based organizations do a lot of good and do not actively contribute to these harms. However, while he’s able to mention one group that seems to keep it’s religious commitments away from its humanitarianism, us pointy-headed liberal snobs are right to stay on guard.
-John
Montana allows assisted suicide
Last Thursday, the Montana Supreme Court found that there is no law prohibiting patients from seeking physician-assisted suicide, making it the 3rd state to allow the practice (after Oregon and Washington). The Court focused not on finding a right to assisted suicide, but on failing to find a legal prohibition against it in Montana law. Assisted dying, they argued, can be seen as an extension of patient autonomy and personal responsibility for crucial, life and death decisions.
Two judges dissented, however. Here’s Justice Jim Rice:
Until the public policy is changed by the democratic process, it should be recognized and enforced by the courts. In my view, the court’s conclusion is without support, without clear reason, and without moral force.
This is a Scalia-esque argument for judicial restraint on difficult moral questions. But sometimes rhetoric about “judicial activism” acts as a smokescreen for smuggled-in moral assumptions. When speaking of basic “rights” (and liberals are often inclined to think that the right to die is among them), it’s convenient to use the language of established public policy when it’s in your favor and protest “overreaching activism” when the perceived rights are not currently recognized. Meanwhile, actual moral argument regarding the demands and limits of autonomy when it comes to end-of-life decisions is pushed aside.
But perhaps that’s a good thing - Justice Rice would likely suggest that we ought to hash the issues out in public, through the political process, and in this way morality is not swept under the rug for the ease of legalistic maneuvering. The spectre of Roe v. Wade haunts us still!
-Colin
The Nobel speech as moral argument
Obama and global justice
President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech was filled with normative claims and arguments. I’ll outline the main ones here.
(1) Non-violence is moral.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
(2) But sometimes violence (i.e. killing other people) is neccesary and just. Moral suasion alone is not powerful enough; morality must take people as they are.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason
More on war games
Last week I wrote about the depiction of war in video games and suggested that the line between virtual and actual conflict seems to be getting thinner. Now, two Swiss human rights organizations have determined that some video games feature violations of international law. The orgs, Trial and Pro Juventute, argue that the violence included in many of today’s “military games” would actually constitute war crimes, and that allowing gamers to simulate such actions legitimizes them.
Opponents of these games can object either on consequentialist or virtue-based grounds. Either war crimes in games have a traceable effect on the values and behavior of games and thus society, or there’s just something inherently wrong with allowing war crimes to take place, even in a virtual setting (or both). It’s hard to prove the consequentialist argument, and the virtue-based argument seems a bit censorial… Would we censor all forms of media in this way?
The Swiss orgs responded that games are especially dangerous because of their interactive nature. We don’t just watch war crimes take place - we make them happen (and are often rewarded with bonus points).
-Colin
Cash for kidneys
The ethical implications of buying and selling organs
Richard Thaler writes in Sunday’s New York Times about the shortage of organ donors in the U.S. Though Thaler mentions that some economists advocate “a market allowing the buying and selling of organs,” he dismisses the idea as unrealistic. Politicians and the public, he says, would never support such a proposal. Thaler may be right that buying and selling organs is “a political nonstarter,” but would a system be defensible—even desirable? Read more
My ancient Greek wedding
Does the history of ancient Greece tell us anything about the modern debate regarding gay marriage? No.
Emily Wilson has a book review of James Davidson’s Greek Love, a new exploration of the varieties of homosexuality in ancient Greece. I have not read the book itself (which sounds worthwhile), but the review reveals some confusion that may be typical of Liberal commentators on this issue.
Before going further, let me state for the record that I am in favor of full marriage rights for all, or the abolition of state-sanctioned marriage altogether. Good.
Wilson writes:
In short, there was no single “traditional” way to conduct same-sex relationships in ancient Greece. This fact in itself might make us leery of any claims about what a “normal” or “traditional” domestic setup might look like. Any claim about “the way things have always been” is liable to be false.
But this itself is simply false, as her own reading reveals! Davidson’s history reveals that there are indeed normalized views of love — his work shows only that there are many, many versions of tradition across Greece. There was indeed no normalized “Greek” view of homosexuality, but there certainly were customs and traditions in each city state that were no doubt powerfully prescriptive to their populations.
Wilson argues contra Foucault that “it really does not matter whether any Greeks thought of themselves as ‘gay.’” While this is surely true, in the modern context it certainly does, and the inevitability of this distinction forms the basis of the best arguments for gay marriage. WIlson has revealed only that it would be possible to think about homosexuality differently than we do now. Given that, her conclusion makes less sense:
Whatever public legitimacy was, or was not, granted to same-sex relationships in any previous culture, it would still be entirely unjust, within the terms of our own society, to deny homosexual couples the legal status available to heterosexual relationships.
Wilson is walking the fine line trodden by many historians and sociologists. Wilson’s conclusion is an explicit value judgment which is grounded in her own time and place and, of course, her Liberal values. However, the sweep of history reveals in no way that gay marriage should be justified, or even that it has been — that argument, which again I agree with, should be rooted in universal values. Davidson’s excellent history should be left to stand on its own, without a modern political agenda which it cannot support.
-John
Do unto others
From Thomas Sowell’s syndicated column:
So many “rights” have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don’t meet the terms of the Geneva Conventions, then the Geneva Conventions don’t protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.
That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.
But getting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral. So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect.
This conclusion is not an inevitable conclusion. If morality is a contract, then those who willingly leave the contract may not earn its protections. But if we’re duty bound to observe certain prohibitions (which is generally the argument against, say, torture), then the decision of another to ignore his duties may not absolve us of the obligation to observe ours.
–Sam
Gay marriage, continued . . .
Andrew Sullivan refers readers to a virtual exchange on whether marriage is a human right. Norm Geras, defending marriage as a human right, calls it a “liberty right”–something that can’t be prohibited.
Jake has put together one take on this. To me the operative question has more to do with what marriage is than what constitutes a right. If marriage is some kind of spiritual pledge between two people, it’s hard to imagine legitimate state restriction. If marriage is a set of privileges under the law, I have trouble conceptualizes what it would mean for gay marriage (or any kind of marriage) to be a human right. Is the argument that thriving as an autonomous individual requires tax advantages that encourage couple-dom?
Not trying to pooh-pooh the thought, but curious for more reader specification/meditation on why gay marriage should be a human right — as opposed to a legal right — in the United States.
–Sam
What morality “means”
Do definitions matter?
One of our commenters on Friday raised an interesting question in response to Marc’s post about the morality of brain-enhancing drugs:
When you imagine that the use of brain enhancing drugs might be immoral, what conception of morality to you have in mind? Is it that this is immoral in the same sense of the term in which murder and torture are immoral? I mention this because it seems to me that there is serious question whether the terms ‘moral’ and ‘morality’ are always used to refer to the same thing. One thing that a public philosopher might profitably do is to call attention to this, and consider what alternative conceptions of morality seem to underlie various uses of these terms, and what we should think about the merits of and relations between these different conceptions.
It’s true that we’ve been a bit fast and loose with the word “morality” here at The Public Philosopher. In this post, I’m not sure I can offer a comprehensive or even uncontroversial account of some of the definitions of morality that I think are relevant to politics, but I can give some cursory thoughts about some of them. Perhaps this will provide some good fodder for continued discussion.
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