Morality, Religion & Philosophy: August 2003 Archives

A lot of people read and linked to my recent post about the statue of Lenin in Seattle, and some of them took issue with my disgust. I'm writing this post to clarify my position on communists: I don't like 'em.

People more knowledgable about Russia than I am claim that the millions of dead that can be attributed to communism in the 20th century weren't really Lenin's fault. Fine. I don't really buy it, but I don't want to argue about it because I don't care. Lenin may have been a "moderate" communist, but in my mind that's like being a "moderate" Nazi.

I don't think Lenin was well-intentioned; he and his fellow communist revolutionaries were acting to increase their own power, at the expense of millions. But you know what? Again, I don't care. Lenin may have been a poor, misguided Father Frost. There were certainly millions of Nazis who were well-intentioned, too. Intentions count for nothing, when your actions cause massive destitution, death, and destruction.

The whole concept of communism is against everything I stand for. God, liberty, personal dignity -- all these are anathema to a communist. Communism subsumes free will to the tyranny of the group, violating the very essence of what it means to be human.

Not only that, but communism is generally merely a front for fascism. Most communist leaders are more concerned with remaking society according to their pleasure than they are with helping the proletariat. Promoting "the good of the people" is a ruse, an incredible deception designed to garner support from the masses that the communist leaders hope to dominate.

Many leftists in America (and socialists around the world) really like the idea of communism. They seem to think that although it's been an unquestionable failure every time it's been tried, the idea itself is sound. It'll work, it just needs a little more tweaking. They're wrong, and either evil or self-delusional. Yes, evil. That's a good word to describe someone who believes that utopia can be built by oppressing freedom and eliminating dissent.

To me, communists are worse than Nazis. I won't eat with a communist, I won't let a communist into my home, and I won't converse with a communist about anything other than the evil of their beliefs. I certainly wouldn't display a statue of a communist revolutionary in my city.

It bugs me when opponents deliberately talk past each other in an attempt to confuse listeners and avoid the real issues. It's distracting, and doesn't actually further the discussion. Of course often times the purpose of such misstatements isn't to encourage legitimate debate, but simply to generate soundbites and make indirect ad hominem attacks on your opponent.

Nowhere is this practice more prevalent than in the debate about abortion, and it's typically the pro-choice crowd that misstates the arguments of the pro-lifers. For example:

Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America (formerly the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League), derided McCorvey's motion as a "sad anti-choice publicity stunt" in a June 17 statement.

"Instead of leaving private medical decisions up to a woman and her doctor, anti-choice forces want the government to decide," Michelman said in the statement. "This case shows the extreme lengths to which they will go to overturn our constitutional right to choose."

Where to begin?

1. Pro-lifers don't get away with labeling their opponents as "pro-death" or "anti-life", or even "pro-abortion".

2. Michelman states that the position of pro-life advocates is that the government should be involved in people's private medical decisions, when that isn't the crux of the matter at all. To an opponent of abortion, the critical issue is that a fetus is a human being, and as such should not be killed without a cause more substantial than mere convenience. It has nothing to do with a lack of respect for the privacy of the mother, or with a desire to interfere with her private medical decisions. To a pro-lifer, the decisions to have an abortion isn't private, because it necessarily involves another person: the unborn baby.

3. Both sides in the debate label their opponents as "extreme"; that's pretty typical for politics these days.

4. Michelman states that there is a Constitutional right to an abortion, but that's precisely the question that is at issue here. The Supreme Court created that right by its interpretation of the Constitution, and that interpretation is at the center of the controversy. To assert that such a right is guaranteed by the Constitution and to then use that right as an argument in favor of the interpretation that created the right is disingenuous and deceptive.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that we have much more biological information available than we had 30 years ago, there is no legitimate debate about the facts of abortion being held in America. The pro-choice side has little incentive to engage in actual debate as long as their position is entrenched in law; their motivation is to maintain the status quo, and they know that recent polls have shown they would lose the debate if they were forced to make substantial arguments.

Chris Noble over at The Noble Pundit has functionally agrees with my position on the usefulness of education, but takes issue with my foundational explanation (after saying a bunch of nice stuff about me).

He then continues on to assert that man is inherently evil and that we are so because we are selfish (among other reasons). I disagree.

For a long time, I have believed that man was inherently good. We didn't always act on our goodness, but by and large, we were good. I've spent the last three or four days trying to reconcile man's goodness with his actions and have actually, to an extent, readjusted my position. Man isn't born pure and then corrupted. No, man is born in a neutral state (tabula rasa) and everything from there on is acquired by a form of education or conditioning.

The idea that a human mind is born as a "blank slate" onto which anything can be written by the pen of experience was first advanced by one of my favorite philosophers, John Locke. However, modern cognitive psychology does not support such a belief, and Steven Pinker recently published a quite convincing refutation of the theory, titled "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature". (Pinker is also a brilliant linguist; although he is a disciple of Chomsky, he does not appear to share Chomsky's socialist/communist politics. In "The Blank Slate" Pinker condemns the horrendous application of the blank slate concept by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.)

There is no denying that environmental factors influence human psychological development, but that development does not occur in a biological vacuum; human brains are inherently wired for certain behaviors that do not vary under any set of controls (such as language). Pinker elaborates in great detail, and although I do not concur with all of his materialist beliefs I still highly recommend the book. For more on "The Blank Slate", please refer to this entry on Everything2.

Chris then goes on to describe a sort of "social evolution".

One of the underlying assumptions of this position is that the basics of being human - those first things we learn after we're born - are subject to Darwinian evolution. Traits that are good for mankind, like societies, religion, conscience, and laws will expand and evolve. Traits that are bad, like racism, murder, and theft will eventually wither away to near extinction (I'm not crazy enough to believe that they will ever die off entirely).

However, social evolution is quite a controversial subject, and there is no scientific support for Chris' assertions that racism, murder, and theft are bad from a survival standpoint. There are a great many circumstances in which racism, murder, theft, rape, deception, psychosis, and many other despicable behaviors are quite beneficial to an individual and his genes. Consider the animal world that is ungoverned by culture, and you will see instances of all of these. One of the most fascinating problems in artificial intelligence is explaining how culture can work to suppress these clearly beneficial strategies. I have mentioned a few papers on the topic previously, but no one has yet devised a sustainable scenario that explains the suppression of cultural free-riders. (The issue is quite complicated, because those individuals who act to punish free-riders incur a cost to do so that isn't distributed back to the society as a whole -- creating meta-free-riders.)

Chris then goes on to discuss the many benefits of selfishness.

Capitalism has been far and away the closest to the ideal economic system that has ever been devised by mankind. It does more to provide for our needs than any of the other variations of control economies have. Capitalism is based on people selling what other people want. But why do some people sell their time, their labor, or their resources to others?

Because they're selfish. They think that whatever the buyer is offering, be it cows and chickens in the ancient barter systems or cash in the modern economy, is worth more than the item that their selling. They want to possess the most possible value because it will give them the best standard of living. They don't care a whit about the other party involved; they're acting on pure selfish, hoarding motives.

He's quite right. As all of my readers should know, I'm an ardent capitalist. However, I think Chris misses the underlying issue: capitalism is the most efficient economic form precisely because humanity is selfish; capitalism balances my selfishness against yours.

However, if no one were selfish, capitalism and competition would be a waste. If everyone could be trusted to function altruistically, the ideal structure for society would be either anarchy (assuming broad information flow) or benevolent dictatorship. A society of altruistic anarchists could certainly out-produce a society of selfish capitalists, but as the old joke goes: "A smart blond and the tooth fairy are walking down the street, and they see a penny. Who picks it up? The tooth fairy, because the smart blond doesn't exist." Immediate families often operate as altruistic anarchies -- and they function quite efficiently -- but the structure doesn't scale, due to selfishness.

So although I agree with Chris that capitalism is the best we can do, that best is predicated on humanity's selfishness and inherent evil.

And freedom is best protected by those who are reasonable and selfish about their freedom. For a reasonable and selfish person will understand that to protect the most individual freedom, it is necessary to have equitable rules for all.

Be selfish for the common good.

Freedom would be best protected by an altruistic society, but unfortunately that don't exist and never will -- because we're evil.

I think the deal with the Ten Commandments monument in Alabama is getting kinda silly.

"What this federal judge [Thomson] has said is that we cannot acknowledge God," Moore told Fox News earlier Friday. "My battle is not with the justices of the court, my colleagues, my battle is with the federal government, who has come in and told us how to think, who we can believe in."

Not exactly. The judge said you had the move the monument to a less public area. I don't agree with his reasoning or his conclusion, but he certainly didn't tell you what to think or who to believe in.

On Friday, about 100 protesters moved from the steps of the judicial building to a sidewalk in front of the federal courthouse, where Thompson works. Some ripped to pieces and burned a copy of Thompson's ruling. Demonstrators also held a mock trial, in which Thompson was charged with breaking the law of God.

"We hold you, Judge Thompson, and the United States Supreme Court in contempt of God's law," said Flip Benham, director of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

God's law to do what? Display the Ten Commandments in front of all courthouses? The melodrama really isn't convincing anyone; I guarantee it.

Thompson's order gave the option of moving the monument to Moore's office. But Khan said she asked Moore during a deposition about moving it to his office and he said the monument was too heavy.

That's just amusing, because I understand the monument is quite large.

An organizer of pro-Moore demonstrations, Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, said Friday the demonstrations will continue.

He said five protesters will kneel in front of each of two exits from the building to keep the monument from coming out.

"Our message is clear. We are going to peacefully block the way if they try to move it," Mahoney said.

Well, that's in the best civil-disobedience tradition (which I don't particularly approve of, in general).

One of the demonstrators, retired Birmingham school teacher Murray Phillips, said she knows the monument will probably be gone from the rotunda soon.

"I'm upset, but I'm not surprised. At least I am going to be able to say to my grandchildren that at least I tried to do something," Phillips said.

This is the problem. You tried to do something that was obviously going to be completely ineffectual. Not only was it ineffectual, but it's making you (and me, and God) look silly. Now, I happen to agree with the protesters' position: I don't think the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment should be interpreted (through the 14th Amendment) as forbidding state governments from establishing religion. The 14th Amendment does project the Free Exercise Clause onto the states, but it's not clear that the Establishment Clause fits into the same framework. Nevertheless, that's the law.

We need to ask ourselves: what are these protesters trying to accomplish? They are pushing symbolism over substance. Just as the Moonies want to get rid of crosses in an effort to promote "religious unity", these Christians want to erect (or maintain) a monument to promote Christianity. In both cases, however, they've got the cart before the horse.

Putting up a monument to the Ten Commandments isn't going to convince anyone of anything. It's not going to lead anyone to Christ. It will only accompish two things (which are probably these protesters' true goals):
1. It will reinforce the protesters' self-righteousness, and give them a feeling of having "done something".
2. It will irritate, annoy, and rankle the non-Christians who face it.

Both of these motivations are built on pride, and neither one of them is spiritually profitable. First of all, Christians should not pursue political agendas merely to make ourselves feel good and powerful. Sure, it can be satisfying -- and that satisfaction is based on a lust for power and validation.

Secondly, irritating, annoying, and rankling non-Christians is not an effective way to show them God's love. I imagine we all know people that piss us off, and as they become more and more bothersome we tend to listen to them and care about them less and less. I'm not saying that we shouldn't stand up for what is right, but I am saying that forcing kids to pray in school or prohibiting gay people from having sex isn't going to have any spiritual benefit, for anyone.

These types of protest are a troubling waste of time and energy. The more confrontational you become, the more resistance you will face. In order to be effective ambassadors for God, we need to be subtle and enticing. Jesus never forced anyone to listen to him, and we don't need to either. On the contrary, Jesus lived under a far more oppressive government, and he made absolutely zero effort to reform it. Why? Because change begins in the heart, not in the courthouse.

The message of God's love and justice is compelling, and more often than not we Christians are responsible for its ineffectiveness. Some people will listen, and some will not, but we are not called to do any convincing or coercing. That's the Holy Spirit's job; he works on the hearts of men and women, calling them to God. We are only messengers.

According to the Mississippi Supreme Court, only the mother of an unborn child has the right to kill that child.

JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi Supreme Court, in a decision criticized by one of its members as an assault on Roe v. Wade (search), held Thursday that a fetus is a "person" under state law and wrongful death claims can be filed on its behalf. ...

Presiding Justice Jim Smith, writing for the court, said Thursday's ruling in the lawsuit brought by Tucker had nothing to do with abortion. He said doctors performing abortions are still protected by Mississippi law.

"Tucker's interest is to protect and preserve the life of her unborn child, not in the exercise of her right to terminate that life which has been declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court," Smith wrote.

That strikes me as a little odd. Even the pro-choicers seem to recognize the incongruity of the decision.

Sondra Goldschein, state strategies attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said she was troubled by the court's definition of a fetus as a "person."

"Anytime the fetus is recognizable as a person it chips away at the foundation of Roe," she said.

She's certainly correct, and I suspect that was exactly the purpose intended by some of the people behind the lawsuit. It's the same type of end-run that gun-control advocates try to pull by passing registration laws and limits on magazine capacities. I don't disagree with the decision, but I would vastly prefer it if our legal system weren't so convoluted.

I've read some strange ideas from "Christians" before, but this has got to be one of the weirdest.

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - An interfaith group founded by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon is spearheading an effort to have Christian ministers remove crosses from their churches, calling them a symbol of oppression and perceived superiority. Mainstream Christian leaders call the request "outrageously bigoted." ...

"We have realized that, as expressions of faith, there are certain symbols that have stood in the way," Stallings said. "The cross has served as a barrier in bringing about a true spirit of reconciliation between Jews and also between Muslims and Christians, and thus, we have sought to remove the cross from our Christian churches across America as a sign of our willingness to remove any barrier that stands in the way of us coming together as people of faith."

The real barrier that prevents Jews, Christians, and Muslims from unifying is that they hold profoundly different religious views. I don't think it's the physical crosses themselves that offend Jews and Muslims (those who are offended, anyway), it's the beliefs that the crosses symbolize. Are they proposing that the beliefs be removed for the sake of some sort of religious "unity"?

Maybe this story is just too bizarre to even bother responding to.

This is the third in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 1: The 19th Amendment -- Good Idea?
Part 2: The "Right" to Vote, and Utility

With all the discussion of the costs and benefits of allowing women to vote, it's natural to ask the next question: why do we need democracy at all? If society could be more prosperous had women not been allowed to vote, then perhaps they shouldn't have been allowed to do so. The problem then, however, becomes a question of who gets to set the goals, and who gets to define "prosperous" (since we're not merely talking about monetary prosperity, but utility, and utility is different for everyone).

Historically, the people who have gotten to define "prosperous" have been people with hard power. Hard power represents the ability to use physical force to compel others to conform to your desires, and is often manifested in the form of armies and weapons, real estate and capital, and the knowledge and desire required to apply these tools to disagreeable circumstances. America wasn't able to break free from England purely by the virtue of our natural rights to freedom and liberty; rather, these rights and our desire to possess them motivated our forefathers to use their hard power to overthrow English rule. It's often said that we "have" a right to this or that, but unless we have the hard power available to seize and defend that right, it's little more than a rhetorical construct.

God may grant us the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but unless we have the hardware to back it up we're likely to have those rights taken away in fact. Our natural rights are not rights that are enforced by God, but they define the extent to which it is permissible to use force against each other, and they define who is right and who is wrong in such conflicts. If you attack me without provocation, God is not likely to intervene to stop you -- but he will sanction my use of hard power in self-defense. (SDB writes a little about hard power as it applies to relations between countries.)

The power to vote is not hard power, but soft power; votes only have meaning as long as those with the hard power respect them. If you look around the world, internationalists want to replace the hard power of armies with the soft power of UN negotiations, international courts (ICC), environmental treaties (Kyoto); however, dictators and strongmen continue to subjugate their people through the use of hard power, and generally show no respect for soft power unless it happens to coincide with their wishes -- take Saddam's treatment of the myriad UN resolutions, for example. Soft power can only be used successfully when those who possess hard power restrain themselves.

As I wrote in part 2, above, voting is not a right; as such, if you are forbidden the power to vote you are not being inherently wronged, as long as your true rights are not being violated. Using force merely to gain the power to vote is not morally acceptable. However, it's uncommon for societies with a single voter (a king), or a small, select group of voters (feudalism, or an oligarchy) to respect the rights of those without hard power of their own.

This situation sets up a rather interesting conflict, assuming those with hard power want to respect the natural rights of those without. Those with hard power can set up social institutions (democracy, courts, &c.) to ensure that everyone's natural rights are protected, but if those soft power structures overstep their bounds they will become burdensome, and they may eventually be overthrown. This perspective views democracy and other forms of soft power as grants from those with hard power who have an interest in respecting the rights of the powerless.

Soft power structures show their true strength over time, as they manipulate the foundations of hard power. For example, the 2nd and 3rd Amendments attempt to permanently diffuse the concentration of hard power, on the basis of the natural rights to private property and self-defense. These words don't factually eliminate the hard power that could oppress you, but over time they work in the minds of men to change their thoughts, and to further ingrain the respect for you rights that led those with power to restrain themselves in the first place. Soft power must entice and coerce hard power, subtly influencing over time.

Democracy has proven to be quite adept at manipulating and controlling those with hard power. America's military is the most powerful force that has ever existed on the planet, and if its generals were able to wield that power at their own discretion they would rule the world. But America's military is under civilian control, and that control is passed on every few years without involving the use of hard power. This principle is not merely written in our Constitution, but is ingrained in the hearts and minds of every man and woman who carries a rifle or drives a tank. They possess hard power, but they restrain its use because of their committment to the powerless.

Was our initial government in 1788, after the ratification of the Constitution, democratic? Yes, although only a limited group of people was allowed to vote. Under our modern system, many more people are allowed to vote, but still not everyone: children, convicts, non-citizens, the insane, the unborn(?). Are we democratic? Certainly. There is clearly a range of suffrage that is allowable under democratic rule, and over time we have moved along that spectrum -- but I don't expect that we will ever move to total suffrage, because those with power (hard and soft) don't think that granting the power to vote to those without it would lead to a better government.

Do children, convicts, non-citizens, the insane, and the unborn have the rights to life, libery, and the pursuit of happiness? Each of those groups of people has their power limited for different reasons, and many would argue that some have rights and others do not, for whatever reason. At the root level, however, the question of granting soft power to these groups comes down to that of the interests of those who currently wield power. And we say no. We may or may not recognize and respect their rights (if they exist, which is a separate issue), but we don't grant them power because we don't think it would be in our best interests They do not possess hard power of their own to use in seizing soft power.

Our nation is free and prosperous as a direct result of our respect for each other's natural rights. Economic liberty and social freedom have given us a tremendous amount of hard and soft power, and we use that power to create wealth and raise our standard of living, as well as to (hopefully) spread the values that have led to our success. Our experience has shown that rights are more likely to be respected when power is diffused as widely as possible. In response to part 1, a commenter wrote that by recognizing the rights of women (and by granting them soft power?) we have attracted the best and brightest women from around the world, and that they add immeasurably to our prosperity. Our foundational ideas hold that when rights are respected, economic and cultural success follow behind.

Making fine cultural adjustments is difficult and error-prone, as in general we decide against it. It may be the case that granting women suffrage has been a net loss, but it's so difficult to calculate -- and the gross benefits are so obvious -- that the nation (and those with power at the time) decided to err on the side of further diffusion. We do restict the power of some groups based on what most believe are rather clear criteria, but those circumstances are limited and (except for the unborn) mostly non-controversial.

So why democracy? Because democracy tends to diffuse power more successfully than any other form of government, and diffuse soft power limits the interference of those with hard power by subtly manipulating their goals and desires, thereby increasing their respect for the rights of the powerless.

Donald Sensing discusses an article by Nicholas Kristoff, and as a part of that discussion he posts an excerpt from his Master of Divinity thesis.

I see two world views among parishioners. There is the religious world view, reserved mostly for use during Sunday school and worship. This world view includes miraculous happenings, angels and demons, God and Satan. Sin results in penalty, virtue in reward, and God dispenses both. God's power is understood as absolute and unfettered. The theoretical foundation of this religious world view is classical theism.

The other world view, scientific materialism, is equally present among parishioners. It is used outside church. This world view is bereft of supernatural beings or events. God is not so much absent as unnecessary. Cause and effect are mechanistic: physical event "A" results in physical event "B." Penalties and rewards occur in a different scheme. Lung cancer results from smoking, not sin. Wealth comes not from righteousness, but from prudent manipulation of resources in a comprehensible economic system.

These world views are not readily compatible. The dissonance between them is reflected in the most important aspects of church life. How a congregation grapples with them affects its growth or decline, its ministries of compassion and justice, and its retention of youth, to name just three examples. The problem is made more acute by the fact that scientific materialism is useful every day of the week, while theism "works" almost exclusively on Sunday mornings.

He says he's going to write more on the topic later, and I look forward to reading it. However, I don't agree that classical theism and scientific materialism are incompatible, and I'll try to explain why.

The real key to blending classical theism with scientific materialism is recognizing that when God acts, it's rather subtle, and most of the time he works through natural occurances. If you smoke, God doesn't give you cancer; if you happen to get cancer, it's not due to a direct act of God. Rather, God designed the universe in such a way that people who smoke tend to get cancer. People who eat lots of protein tend to get strong, but that's not because eating protein pleases God, who then disrupts the normal flow of the universe to hand out big muscles.

In fact, as you study the Bible and God's teachings, it becomes abundantly clear that most of his instructions stem directly from a scientific, rational, economical perspective. God's wisdom is built around living successfully within the world as he created it, as well as living in a way that pleases him. Reading through Proverbs will give you a lot of practical wisdom, such as:

Proverbs 6:6-11
Proverbs 6
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.

9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest-
11 and poverty will come on you like a bandit
and scarcity like an armed man.

Jesus gives us a lot of valuable, worldly advice as well.

Matthew 5:25-26
"Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

God doesn't intend us to be so spiritually-minded that we're no earthly good. Through out the Bible we are taught how to live in the world, while at the same time always keeping in mind that God created us and designed us in a specific way and for a specific purpose. We live in the world, but we are not of the world. Consider:

Matthew 22:15-22
Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"

But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

"Caesar's," they replied.

Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

Whose portrait can be seen on you? Pleasing God doesn't require us to ignore logic, reason, and the world around us; on the contrary, we cannot be effective servents if we aren't firmly grounded in reality.

Dean points to an excellent marriage resource site and blog, Marriage Movement. They're pro-marriage, but probably not exactly what you'd expect from your preconceptions.

Check out their manifesto, with lots of footnotes and references.

This is the second in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 1: The 19th Amendment -- Good Idea?
Part 3: Why Do We Need Democracy?

There's no such thing as a "right to vote". There's the power to vote, but no-one has a natural, God-given right to vote. We have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but none of those require or imply the right to vote. An absolute dictatorship could respect our God-given natural rights, and be entirely just. For instance, most families don't operate as democracies, and yet most families respect these basic rights.

One my my friends (I hope she's still my friend) responded to my earlier post about the 19th amendment and said that she doesn't want to apply economic principles to civil rights. However, economic principles apply to every human endeavor, whether we recognize it or not. No one needs to come put a price tag on your forehead for there to be a cost associated with the rights and powers you enjoy. That cost is there automatically, regardless of your approval, and economics is merely the study of the costs and benefits associated with everything humans do.

Costs and benefits often aren't monetary -- generally economists refer to "utility" to describe how valuable something is to a person. Love and affection, the power to vote, $1000, clean air -- all of these items have utility to people, and different people will value them differently. When it comes to the power to vote, I hypothesized that if you were to walk up to a random guy on the street and offer him a 20% permanent raise in exchange for his power to vote, he'd probably sell it to you. Most people don't vote, and many who do don't take it very seriously. If Joe Shmoe won't sell his vote for a 20% raise, maybe he will for 50%, or 100%, or 1000%. There's a price, you just have to find it and be willing to pay it. Some people may place infinite value on their power to vote, but I doubt there are many such people -- especially if you separate the power to vote from the natural rights we hold so dear.

With all that understanding, it's quite reasonable to wonder whether or not giving women the power to vote was a wise idea. I agree that it has moral value, and we gain some utility as a society from that good morality, but does that moral utility out-weigh the utility of every effect that has arisen because women can vote? It's possible that that moral utility is more valuable to you than anything else, but I doubt that's the case.

The question is whether or not our present circumstances are overall better or worse than they would be if women had never been given the power to vote. Yes, there is some degree of utility that arises from the moral good that was done in granting women that power, but that utility is not of infinite value.

For instance, the War on Drugs would probably not exist if women couldn't vote; the War on Drugs costs us billions of dollars a year and incarcerates millions of otherwise-innocent people. It also encourages a lot of violent crime associated with the black market. On the other hand, the War on Drugs probably reduces drug use, and reduces the societal costs associated with that. So, your opinion of the War on Drugs can influence your opinion of the total utility gained or lost when women were given the power to vote. There are many other issues that have been affected by the 19th Amendment, and all of them should affect the way you value the power of women to vote.

Courtney has some links to the conversation going on at Dean's World. In the comment section there she promised a post on the subject herself -- but so far, nothing!

Continued in part 3, "Why Do We Need Democracy?"

Update:
Dean Esmay explains some of the thinking during the early suffrage movements.

This is the first in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 2: The "Right" to Vote, and Utility
Part 3: Why Do We Need Democracy?

Call me old fashioned, but women voters? What planet are we on? Beam me back up to the mothership.

As Dean Esmay notes, it's been 83 years, and what have women really done for us? Prohibition -- good move. That worked well. Oh sure, it was ratified before women could vote, but it was their idea. Let's see... that's pretty much it.

Let's be serious here though and really consider. Are we as a nation better off having given women the power to vote? I agree that from a moral perspective it was the right thing to do, but I don't think the issue is that black and white; there were substantial groups of women opposed to granting women suffrage.

If you told me, Michael, the country could have a 20% higher standard of living if we were to go back in time and start again as a monarchy, I'd say "sign me up!" I think most people would be willing to trade their vote away for a substantial salary increase. Any individual would sell their vote for the right price, so it's not unreasonable to speculate on the costs and benefits of women's suffrage.

Each individual woman has more freedom than she would otherwise have had, and each individual man has less power than he would otherwise have had -- at least as far as voting goes. But women tend to vote socially and economically liberal, so it's possible that men have more freedom now than they would have had if women had not been allowed to vote, simply because women may have voted for more civil liberties than men alone would have. However, it's also possible that women's liberal voting tendencies have reduced our freedoms, considering that modern "liberals" aren't really all that concerned with maintaining liberty. Similar hypotheticals can be set up with regard to the economy.

It seems likely that if women had not been given the power to vote, more conservative/libertarian laws would have been enacted than actually have been. Women are big supporters of the War on Drugs, for example, and big social spenders. Therefore, those who hold conservative/libertarian positions would probably have a government more to their liking if women had not been given suffrage.

I'm not a historian, but I play one on TV, and if you look through history you'll realize that the position of women in America is really an aberration. Through out every culture, through out all time, women have never been as free and powerful as they are in the United States right now. In an absolute sense, giving women equal social power was an act of indulgence for men; women are physically weaker than men, and in might-makes-right societies that weakness translates directly into social subjugation. It's quite reasonably arguable that the power of women in America is against the "natural order" of the world, and it would be difficult for any materialist to disagree.

I expect that most people who are reading this believe that women's suffrage is a Good Thing. I hope that none of my female readers have taken offense to this topic. Even though I agree that women have God-given equality with men, I'm not convinced that giving them equal social power has resulted in a net gain for society -- or either men or women separately.

Please leave your opinion. Your concept of "gain" may be purely monetary (what we might normally call "standard of living"); it may include freedoms and liberties aside from the power to vote itself; it may encompass foreign policy; it may involve deep philisophical or religious issues. In any event, please define what you consider to be "gain", and then tell us if we made the right decision.

Update:
Continued in "The 'Right' to Vote, and Utility".

Jackie over at au currant asks, what pain?

GeekPress points to a rather long list that purports to summarize the many attempts to prove that God exists. Of course, the list is flippant and humorous, but the point is fair. Can it be proven that God exists?

Well sure, but as I've written before, not by us. If God exists and wanted to prove his existence he could certainly do it, but he hasn't done so. Therefore, either he doesn't exist, or he doesn't want to prove it. Which is it?

Hebrews 11:1-2,6 -- Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. ... And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

It might seem like a convenient out, but the fact of the matter is that God requires us to come to him by faith. There is quite a bit of evidence that God is real, but that same evidence can be interpreted in many ways, and it doesn't constitute "proof". It's very unscientific, I know.

Why would God do this? I can only speculate, but it might have something to do with free will. If God wanted to compel us to behave in certain ways (to believe in him or not, or anything else) then he could do so, but instead he has endowed us with the power of self-determination. Consider: if there were incontrovertible proof that God existed, wouldn't that be nearly the same as compulsion?

Most of the non-Christians I know (even atheists) agree that if it could proven to them that God exists and wants them to do such-and-such, they would do it. That may or may not be the case (consider those who met Jesus face-to-face and still rejected him), but they agree rationally that when confronted with proof, acceptance is the only reasonable action. However, God doesn't want to force us into choosing him, he wants us to love him as a response to his love for us.

This line of thinking is one possible component of the truth, and there are many others, but in the end it comes down to free will. God wants us to choose him out of our own free will, not because he makes the decision inescapable.

Part 1.

Ok, I haven't been following the gay-bishop story much, because I guess I just don't care. Those Episcopalians... sigh. I mean, it's hardly news these days when some "Christian" group does something that totally spits in God's face, right?

I wrote before about how many of "Rev." V. Gene Robinson's quotes implied to me that the whole bishop thing was really all about him, and not at all about building up his church or glorifying God. Some people thought I was taking the quotes out of context, or twisting them. Fine.

But hey, take a look at today's Bleat (like you haven't already).

This story has irritated me from the start, and it has nothing to do with Rev. Robinson’s sexual orientation. The guy left his wife and kids to go do the hokey-pokey with someone else: that’s what it’s all about, at least for me. Marriages founder for a variety of reasons, and ofttimes they’re valid reasons, sad and inescapable. But “I want to have sex with other people” is not a valid reason for depriving two little girls of a daddy who lives with them, gets up at night when they're sick, kisses them in the morning when they wake. There's a word for people who leave their children because they don't want to have sex with Mommy anymore: selfish. I'm not a praying man, but I cannot possibly imagine asking God if that would be okay. Send them another Dad, okay? Until you do I'll keep my cellphone on 24/7, I promise.

I had no idea that this guy had left his wife and family. Lileks has some more on marriage in general, which lines up with my own thoughts.

Heard an interview with Rev. Robinson this afternoon, and he used a phrase that set my teeth on edge: he referred to partnerships as “life-intentioned.” A wonderful weasel word, that: intention. The escape hatch is built right in. It’s as if the intention to stay together is equal to the expressed promise to stay together. But it’s not. Everyone had a faithless lover who did you wrong, and usually blamed everything but free will. It just happened, you know. Wasn’t intending to cheat, but . . . it just happened, okay?

In my mind, the fact that this guy broke his vow to God to honor and cherish his wife is way more important than the fact that he's gay. What scum.

I'm not Episcopalian, and I really don't have much to say about their new gay bishop. I do want to point out, however, that many of Rev. V. Gene Robinson statements illustrate that his top priority isn't glorifying God or edifying the church, but advancing his own particular agenda.

The Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop told Fox News Wednesday that he hoped the church would be strengthened by his confirmation, not split in two. ...

Robinson told Fox News Wednesday morning: "I don't want those people to leave. I've done everything I can to reach out to them ... letting them know I want them to be a part of my church."

For Robinson, the whole matter seems to revolve around him and what he wants, rather than around what the Bible teaches or what is best for the church. His attitude does not reflect the character attributes that I would desire for someone in spiritual leadership over me.

Ok, check out this article by Ralph Peters on how the bombing in Jakarta shows that we're winning the War on Terror. It's ok in some respects; yes, the fact that terrorists are reduced to bombing hotel lobbies instead of flying passenger jets into skyscrapers is good. He goes on to laud the Indonesians' apathy towards terrorism, but claims that they now recognize that the threat of terrorism cannot be ignored. I think my previous post refutes that.

Anyway, the main reason I am pointing out this article at all is because of this sentence:

Certainly, Indonesia has a strong minority of Muslim fundamentalists - as the United States has millions of Christian fundamentalists - but none of the country's major religious organizations has established ties to terrorism.

As a writer, Ralph Peters should recognize the power of words, and should also be aware that the same word can mean different things in different contexts. Just because the label "fundamentalist" is applied to both groups of Christians and groups of Muslims doesn't indicate that there is any similarity between the groups. "Fundamentalist" is a modifier which indicates that the group in question places great importance on the foundational tenets of their beliefs; the foundational beliefs of Christians and Muslims are radically different, and so the parallel Ralph Peters draws is entirely nonsensical.

More than that, it's quite insulting to me as a Christian -- even though I don't really consider myself a fundamentalist. He makes the comparison to imply that because there are groups with the "fundamentalist" label who don't blow people up for fun, it's absurd for anyone to think that Indonesians have terrorist sympathies just because many of them are fundamentalist Muslims. However, it's precisely fundamentalist Muslims who have been blowing up planes, buildings, ships, and themselves, for decades now. Fundamentalist Christians sure haven't been, and it's ridiculous that Ralph Peters would try to garner credibility, honor, and respectability for Muslims by trading in on Christianity's reputation.

(Link to Ralph Peters from Bill Hobbs.)

Donald Sensing writes a good bit about marriage and divorce. Check out the comments as well, there are some great thoughts in there.

Allow me to plug my previous post on marriage.

SDB writes about how xenophilic cultures prosper, while xenophobic cultures stagnate.

Cultural cross-pollination, like genetic crossing, leads to stronger cultures. The best of several cultures may combine. But many in times past and now have felt that this was evil, and have resisted it. ...

This almost unique cultural pride in xenophilia and openness has been one of the great advantages of the people of the US and one of the major reasons why the US has become rich and powerful. It's the reason why we are more racially and culturally integrated than anyone else, and one of the big reasons why we're now the most powerful nation in the world.

I agree with him (of course), and so it's interesting to speculate on what the end result of this cross-polination will be. Our world has not reached an equilibrium cultural state; there are still many distinct cultures, even among developed nations. However, as communication becomes cheaper and travel becomes faster, the world will continue to shrink and it is inevitable that earth will eventually be culturally homogenous. It may take 1000 years, but frankly I think it will take less than 100.

If, as SDB argues, America owes its current rate of advancement to the exchange of ideas between various cultures, then it depends on a resource that will eventually be depleted. Once the world becomes homogenous, it will also become stagnant. Communication and travel will continue to get faster. What can be done?

On the planetary scale, I don't think there's any way to prevent this phenomenon, and so to preserve the advance of our civilization it is necessary to think beyond the mere planetary. If the speed of light truly is an insurmountable barrier, then physical distance can only thwart this effect when population centers are separated by years of travel that technology can never reduce or eliminate.

If humanity is able to spread to the stars, it is conceivable that cultural heterogeneity can be preserved indefinately, either through continual expansion to new star systems or simply due to the immense distances between settlements. The time required to pass people and information between systems would probably limit humanity to a slower rate of advance than we are currently experiencing, but that rate would still be much preferable to the inevitable stagnation that faces us if we remain concentrated solely on earth. Likewise, war under such a scenario would be nearly eliminated -- individual planets would be culturally homogenous, and star systems would be so far apart that interstellar warfare would be almost unthinkable.

With all these benefits, I'm astounded that the leftists of the world aren't pressing for greater space exploration. Environmental pollution would become a thing of the past, as would overcrowding, refugees, American imperialism, war, cultural homogeny -- all their favorite causes could be eliminated!

Then again, if none of their concerns are actually held in good faith but are actually mere scapegoats for their own ideological failures.... It's ironic that capitalistic space exploration will likely be the eventual solution to all the problems that the left holds so dear.

Update:
TMLucas at Flit responds that information overload will prevent cultural stagnation. I understand his point; there will always be too much culture for any one person to absorb. However, it isn't necessary for a single person to grok an entire body of understanding in order for that body to be considered a unified "culture".

Although there will remain a great many vibrant sub-cultures on earth for as long as the population is large enough to support them (and for as long as genetic variation produces people with varied interests), the underlying fabric of human existence will continue to mix and smooth. At some point, an arbitrary threshhold will be crossed and the whole earth will belong to a single, stable equilibrium culture.