Moral Health

The saying is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  As far as I can tell, the mere desire for power is pretty good at bringing about corruption as well.  Many people will do what is egregiously wrong for no other reason than to gain power.  So much so that by the time they gain power, it is not at all obvious that there is room for them to become even more corrupted.

When I look at American politics, I see more corruption than I ever thought that I would see.  And from where I stand, one of the most striking ways in which this corruption manifests itself is that in order to gain power people will deny just about any and every truth—even where the denial of that truth is detrimental to the well-being of the country itself.

I have always held the view that the European Union and the United States ought to have presented a united front against Iraq, and should present a united front against the Arabic world.  Of course, that did not happen in the former case.  And all sorts of American politicians have seized upon that truth.  What gets conveniently left aside, however, is the reason why the EU did not stand with the United States.  This has just about everything to do with fear of Arabic reprisal in the EU, and next to nothing to do with the view that Iraq did not present a problem, even if only symbolically.  Never mind the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis murdered by their own leader.

In general, the EU is afraid to attribute any wrongdoing to Arabs; and, in turn, far too many Arabs in Europe are playing the “ethnic” card.  A most blatant example of the former is the extraordinary anti-semitism that was coursing through EU states just a year or two ago.  The EU tripped over itself not blaming Arabic youth for such antisemitism when any reasonable person on the streets knew that these youths were precisely the culprit.  Either that or one believed in some form of spontaneous combustion.

As an aside, another sign that the Arab world has gotten masterful at playing the race card is that Arabs, in the name of attaining a political ally, consistently refer to blacks as their brothers.  But when you ask Arabs about their enslavement of blacks people even prior to the Middle Ages, Muslim Arabs seem to have a massive failure of memory.

But let me return to the United States.  My own view is that President George Bush has many faults.  However, he is in fact right about one thing, namely that the Muslim Arabic world in general is a vicious one that seeks nothing but the destruction of the West, beginning first with the United States.  And this the Muslim Arabic world seems to want even if it entails its own destruction.

For one thing, if compromise were a possibility, then there would already have been peace long ago.  In this regard, I notice that I do not seem to hear any criticism from other Arabic nations as Iran asserts that Israel needs to be blown off the map and as Iran insists that it will hold a scientific conference in order to ascertain whether the Holocaust really occurred.  Yeah right: What fact does anyone suppose that Iran is missing.  Germany, of course, is laboring under a massive delusion in thinking that there was once a Nazi Germany that had as its aim the annihilate of the Jewish people, to say nothing of France and its despicable treatment Jews.  Or so Iran has to believe.

For another, the Arabic world has spent huge sums of money in the name of violence even as the vast majority of its citizens go lacking in mere basic needs.  There is no denying that poverty remains in the United States.  However, there is not even the slightest parallel.  Mr. Arafat, rather like Jesse Jackson vis a vis downtrodden blacks, became wealthy pleading the case of poor Palestinians.  But he kept much of the money that he received for himself and his wife’s home in Paris.

With all of his faults, Bush understands the Muslim Arabic world is intent upon destroying the West, even if this means destroying themselves; and people who are honest with themselves will admit this.

Is this is a matter of demonizing the Arabic world?  Well, let’s us.  Many have claimed that Jews eat the blood of non-Jewish children.  This claim has no basis in reality.  That is demonizing a people.  If, on the other hand, the religious and political leaders of an ethnic group explicitly and unequivocally express their intention to destroy a nation, taking their claim seriously is not tantamount to demonizing them.

Some people can only see racism committed by whites.  Any non-white, by contrast, can do whatever she or he damn well pleases and there is at the very least an excuse that operates.  More often not there is even a justification that is proffered.  So people who could see the slightest wrong of the least Israeli past blithely over the fact that Arafat was getting rich off of money sent to help the Palestinian people.

Quite poignantly, I find that many Democrats refuse to acknowledge these simple truths about the Muslim Arabic world.  And they cannot fathom the fact that, by contrast, a great many Americans see these truths and acknowledge them.  Indeed, it is painfully clear to me that far too many Democrats would rather demonize Bush for political gain than acknowledge that he is right about the issues to which I have drawn attention.  Is he right about everything?  Obviously not.   But is he right about something of fundamental importance to the very survival of this nation?  I would that I could say otherwise.  And I would that I could say with confidence that Republicans would act integrity were the president a Republican.  Alas, I am not persuaded of that.

What made Abraham Lincoln great is just that fact he was able to see past his own interests to the good of the nation.  Though a man of few relatively few words, this nation is forever in his moral debt owing to his having the wherewithal to act in an upright manner.  Today, there is no shortage of verbal cacophony.  Oh how wonderful it would be if that deafening noise were matched by a semblance of the integrity that Lincoln exhibited.  Once again: a nation would be saved.

It is not uncommon for the name of Hitler to surface as an example of a courageous person.  The rationale given usually goes like this: He stood up for what he believed in and, moreover, he did so at considerable risk to himself. By this line of reasoning, the KKK, the Nation of Islam, and neo-Nazis turn out to be courageous.  And that, needless to say, should give everyone pause, including the members of the groups just named.  The very idea that neo-Nazis, the KKK and the Nation of Islam might all be equally courageous should create some sort of moral meltdown.  The trick, of course, is to show in a non-arbitrary manner that the conception of courage just presented is rather indefensible.

It might be useful to look at the difference between courage and the other virtues.  Unlike courage, the other virtues are defined in terms of a specific kind of behavior that gets performed: telling the truth (honesty) or bestowing a benefit (generosity or kindness).  Courage, by contrast, is primarily defined in terms of behavior that does not get performed: standing up for what one believes is about not backing down in the face of significant harm to one.  Accordingly, all sorts of moral rift-raft can be courageous.  Fortunately, there is a non-arbitrary way of showing that courage comes to more than standing up for what one believes at great risk to oneself.

Think of moral virtues as each being maximally consistent from the moral point of view in that in that exercising a moral virtue is incompatible with exhibiting a vice.  It is obvious that kindness is maximally consistent in this way.  Insofar as one is being kind, this is incompatible with being malicious towards another another.

The same holds true even for honesty.  We know that the truth can hurt.  But here the hurt does not stem from the desire to be malicious.  If, when I ask you about the matter, you rightly and truthfully tell me that I lack the ability to succeed in philosophy, that truth may very well hurt me.  This hurt, though, has everything to do with me having to change my goals reluctantly, and nothing to do with your having untoward motives.  To be sure, if you see this as an occasion to tell me that I am the dumbest person whom you have ever met, then we have maliciousness.

If we apply to courage the model that the exercise of a virtue is incompatible with exhibiting a vice, then we can in fact rein in courage in a non-arbitrary way.

To state the obvious: causing gratuitous suffering is a vice even if one stands up to great harm in order to do so.  Telling lies is the vice of mendacity.  It is manifestly false that either all whites or all blacks or all Jews are either stupid or evil.  There is no evidence at all from history that any group has a monopoly on either good or bad behavior.  It goes without saying that risking harm in order to disseminate vicious lies or to cause gratuitous suffering is not in the least admirable.  So harming others on the basis of these claims is surely a vice.   That a person should stand up to all the world in order to do so does not change things at all.  The Nation of Islam, the KKK, and neo-Nazis are similar in precisely this respect.

Now we can bring out the important respect in which courage is more like the other virtues that one might first suppose.

To be honest is not merely to tell the truth but to do so in the right way and the right time.  Moreover, and this is particularly pertinent, there is the issue of choosing what to say and how one says it.  At any given time, there are countless truths that one could utter that one most certainly should not utter, even after we set aside things uttered to one in confidence.  Saying all that one knows to be true is a recipe for disaster on a multitude of fronts.  To say all that one knows to be true, whenever one feels like doing so amounts to sheer viciousness.  Observe the difference between saying to a man’s wife that “I saw your husband helping a woman who had been robbed” and “I saw your husband talking to a woman”.  Both statements are true!  If the event is all about the former, it is even wrong to begin with the latter claim, true though it is.

Analogous remarks hold for being kind.  Kindness has to be suitable to who the person is.  If a close friend were to give me season’s tickets to a football game, I would not quite know what to say; for I think that it is next to impossible to know me well and have the view that I have anything remotely resembling an interest in football.  Worse still, would be to give me season’s tickets in the middle of religious services.  The kind person has to choose to give the right things at the right time.  We all know that giving the resident drunkard $100 is woefully inappropriate.  Doing so is a vice rather than a virtue.

Some instances of truth telling can be a vice; and some instances of kindness can be a vice.  By parity of reasoning, then, some instances of standing up for a view at great risk to oneself can also be a vice.  Just as the honest person has to be committed to doing what is right and not just telling the truth, the courageous person has to be committed to standing up for the right sorts of views and not just doggedly advancing his views at great risk to himself.  Otherwise, we end up with the utterly absurd view that, for instance, a man who claims that rape is good for woman is manifestly courageous, since any man who asserts such a view obviously puts himself at great risk given the ire that he raises against him by both women and men alike.  And what exactly, I ask, is the difference between making that assertion and saying that either all whites or Jews or blacks are either evil or stupid?

Notice, though, that a man who asserts such a view regarding rape is apt to be ruthless.  And Hitler himself was indeed ruthless.  Ruthlessness is not about doing what is right but merely being brazen about having one’s way.  Ruthlessness has something in common with courage, namely the ability to overcome fear of harm to oneself.  Still, just as we do not have a display of the virtue of honesty simply because someone tells the truth (as telling the truth can have no other purpose than character assassination), we do not have a display of courage simply because a person overcomes fear of harm to herself.  And just as we want a world of honest people and not just a world of people simply blurting out truths, we likewise want a world of courageous people and not just a world of people overcoming fear of harm to themselves.  Or so it is if we what we truly want a world without vice.

The view that courage requires making the proper choice (as with all virtues) and that courage (as with all virtues) is incompatible with the exercise of vice, enables us to say with confidence that evil and courage are never partners.

There is a line of argument commonly invoked nowadays that is most problematic, namely: It is in the genes.  The idea is that if one’s interests or tastes or behavior has a secure biological basis, then one’s interests or tastes or behavior cannot be open to criticism.  But, of course, this is just so much nonsense.  The argument is simply unsound.

It has been claimed that a person can be born with a biological predisposition with regard to alcohol consumption.  Needless to say, what surely does not follow from this is that consuming untold amounts of alcohol is just fine and cannot be open to moral criticism.  It most certainly can.  The same argument holds if some people are born with a biological disposition for being depressed.  It has been said that a person can be born with a biological disposition towards violence.  Obviously, violent behavior is open to moral criticism.

I did not begin with the example of a biological disposition for violent behavior precisely because I wanted it to be clear that a person’s behavior can be open to moral criticism even if the individual harms no one else but himself.  Yet, the example of a genetic basis for violent behavior is telling in the sense that it shows, at once, that one does not have a sufficient reason for excusing or tolerating a given type behavior, given the mere truth that the behavior has a genetic basis.

Significantly, having a genetic basis for a disposition with regard to a given kind of behavior does not entail biological determinism with respect to that behavior; and there is very little behavior in terms of acts of agency that genes determine.  So a person with a biological disposition for violent behavior could still be expected not to behave in a violent manner.  The difference is that she would have to take precautions that those without that disposition do not have to take.  Likewise for the person with a biological disposition with regard to alcohol consumption.  In the first case, the person might have to avoid crowded sports arenas, for example.  In the second, the person might have to avoid that single glass of wine with dinner.  And the ability to do either of these things is not precluded by the corresponding biological disposition for violence and alcohol consumption, respectively.

The relevance of all this to the subtitle of this entry is clear.  A gay alcoholic is open to moral criticism for being an alcoholic—not for being gay.  This is so even if we have a biological disposition in both cases.  But the reason why the gay alcoholic is not open to moral criticism for being gay is not simply that there is a biological disposition for being gay.  That cannot be the rerason.  Rather, the reason has to be that a person cannot be open to moral criticism solely on the basis of her or his sexual orientation, whether that orientation is biologically anchored or self-induced.  For surely the thought cannot be that being gay is wrong if it is self-induced in the way that, say, the taste for beer is.  I mean surely no one is born liking beer.  Yet, a great many go to their grave enjoying “a cold one”, as they say.

Hiding behind biology serves only to obfuscate matters.  It is, of course, important to establish that a person’s sexual orientation, as such, does not bespeak some deep psychological flaw.  So it is not trivial to establish that homosexuality is natural in that sense—or least it is not some form of mental derangement.  But aggressive behavior can be natural in that sense too, as can various kinds of fears.  Thus, an independent argument is needed to establish that what is natural is thereby good, precisely because we know that what is natural can also be morally unacceptable.  My favorite example in this regard is promiscuity.

Lots and lots of arguments in evolutionary theory show males are more disposed to be promiscuous than females.  Yet, fidelity is highly valued in contemporary society.  The unfaithful male cannot go: “Honey, I am so sorry that my unfaithfulness offends you so.  But have you read the work of evolutionary biologists regarding the matter?  It is all perfectly natural, you know.  Here, dear, read this and then let us talk about it.”  Any man looking to bring his relationship with a woman to an abrupt halt need only proffer this rationale ! ! !

As I have said: naturalness with respect to biological dispositions most certainly does not entail determinism with respect to behavior.

What many advocates of the view that being gay is a biological disposition miss is this.  Unless there is an independent argument to the effect that being gay is as morally wholesome as being straight, then in the face of the increasing ability to engage in gene manipulation, what reason would there be not to opt for a genetic manipulation that delivers heterosexuality, given that sexual orientation could indeed be determined at this level?  It is true, as they say, that being gay does not make one less of a person.  The same, though, holds for being an alcoholic.  Yet, this truth is perfectly compatible with it being rational to opt out of alcoholism.  Gays have been so besotted with the idea that homosexuality has a biological basis that they have failed to see that this truth amounts to a very hollow victory, indeed.

For the truth that homosexuality has a biological basis does not establish that given the choice between homosexuality and heterosexuality either for themselves or for another (say, their children), persons have little or no reason to prefer one sexual orientation over the other.  Biology is not morality; and this truth has been lost on so many who, with regard to homosexuality, are quick to point out: “It is in the genes”.  For if homosexuality is viewed on the order of promiscuity among males (which also has a biological basis), a person could retort: “Yea, and let us make sure that we keep it there”.  Owing to intellectual myopia on the part of the gay movement, the arguments that could be given here are not being given.

Many gays think that they have struck gold with the biological argument.  Unless more is said, however, the truth is that this gold is none other than quicksand.