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Nuclear War and Scope Neglect

photograph of 'Fallout Shelter' sign in the dark

“Are We Facing Nuclear War?”The New York Times, 3/11/22

“Pope evokes spectre of nuclear war wiping out humanity” — Reuters, 3/17/22

“The fear of nuclear annihilation raises its head once more” — The Independent, 3/18/22

“The threat of nuclear war hangs over the Russia-Ukraine crisis”NPR, 3/18/22

“Vladimir Putin ‘asks Kremlin staff to perform doomsday nuclear attack drill’”The Mirror, 3/19/22

“Demand for iodine tablets surge amid fears of nuclear war”The Telegraph, 3/20/22

“Thinking through the unthinkable”Vox, 3/20/22

The prospect of nuclear war is suddenly back, leading many of us to ask some profound and troubling questions. Just how terrible would a nuclear war be? How much should I fear the risk? To what extent, if any, should I take preparatory action, such as stockpiling food or moving away from urban areas?

These questions are all, fundamentally, questions of scale and proportion. We want our judgments and actions to fit with the reality of the situation — we don’t want to needlessly over-react, but we also don’t want to under-react and suffer an avoidable catastrophe. The problem is that getting our responses in proportion can prove very difficult. And this difficulty has profound moral implications.

Everyone seems to agree that a nuclear war would be a significant moral catastrophe, resulting in the loss of many innocent lives. But just how bad of a catastrophe would it be? “In risk terms, the distinction between a ‘small’ and a ‘large’ nuclear war is important,” explains Seth Baum, a researcher at a U.S.-based think tank, the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. “Civilization as a whole can readily withstand a war with a single nuclear weapon or a small number of nuclear weapons, just as it did in WW2. At a larger number, civilization’s ability to withstand the effects would be tested. If global civilization fails, then […] the long-term viability of humanity is at stake.”

Let’s think about this large range of possible outcomes in more detail. Writing during the heights of the Cold War, the philosopher Derek Parfit compared the value of:

    1. Peace.
    2. A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world’s existing population.
    3. A nuclear war that kills 100%.

Everyone seems to agree that 2 is worse than 1 and that 3 is worse than 2. “But,” asks Parfit, “which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between 1 and 2. I believe that the difference between 2 and 3 is very much greater.”

Parfit was, it turns out, correct about what most people think. A recent study posing Parfit’s question (lowering the lethality of option 2 to 80% to remove confounders) found that most people thought there is a greater moral difference between 1 and 2 than between 2 and 3. Given the world population is roughly 8 billion, the difference between 1 and 2 is an overwhelming 6.4 billion more lives lost. The difference between 2 and 3 is “only” 1.6 billion more lives lost.

Parfit’s reason for thinking that the difference between 2 and 3 was a greater moral difference was because 3 would result in the total extinction of humanity, while 2 would not. Even after a devastating nuclear war such as that in 2, it is likely that humanity would eventually recover, and we would lead valuable lives once again, potentially for millions or billions of years. All that future potential would be lost with the last 20% (or in Parfit’s original case, the last 1%) of humanity.

If you agree with Parfit’s argument (the study found that most people do, after being reminded of the long-term consequences of total extinction), you probably want an explanation of why most people disagree. Perhaps most people are being irrational or insufficiently imaginative. Perhaps our moral judgments and behavior are systematically faulty. Perhaps humans are victims of a shared psychological bias of some kind. Psychologists have repeatedly found that people aren’t very good at scaling up and down their judgments and responses to fit the size of a problem. They name this cognitive bias “scope neglect.”

The evidence for scope neglect is strong. Another psychological study asked respondents how much they would be willing to donate to prevent migrating birds from drowning in oil ponds — ponds that could, with enough money, be covered by safety nets. Respondents were either told that 2,000, or 20,000, or 200,000 birds are affected each year. The results? Respondents were willing to spend $80, $78, and $88 respectively. The scale of the response had no clear connection with the scale of the issue.

Scope neglect can explain many of the most common faults in our moral reasoning. Consider the quote, often attributed to Josef Stalin, “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” Psychologist Paul Slovic called this tendency to fail to conceptualize the scope of harms suffered by large numbers of people mass numbing. Mass numbing is a form of scope neglect that helps explain ordinary people standing by passively in the face of mass atrocities, such as the Holocaust. The scale of suffering, distributed so widely, is very difficult for us to understand. And this lack of understanding makes it difficult to respond appropriately.

But there is some good news. Knowing that we suffer from scope neglect allows us to “hack” ourselves into making appropriate moral responses. We can exploit our tendency for scope neglect to our moral advantage.

If you have seen Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, then you will remember a particular figure: The girl in the red coat. The rest of the film is in black and white, and the suffering borders continually on the overwhelming. The only color in the film is the red coat of a young Jewish girl. It is in seeing this particular girl, visually plucked out from the crowd by her red coat, that Schindler confronts the horror of the unfolding Holocaust. And it is this girl who Schindler later spots in a pile of dead bodies.

The girl in the red coat is, of course, just one of the thousands of innocents who die in the film, and one of the millions who died in the historical events the film portrays. The scale and diffusion of the horror put the audience members at risk of mass numbing, losing the capacity to have genuine and appropriately strong moral responses. But using that dab of color is enough for Spielberg to make her an identifiable victim. It is much easier to understand the moral calamity that she is a victim of, and then to scale that response up. The girl in the red coat acts as a moral window, allowing us to glimpse the larger tragedy of which she is a part. Spielberg uses our cognitive bias for scope neglect to help us reach a deeper moral insight, a fuller appreciation of the vast scale of suffering.

Charities also exploit our tendency for scope neglect. The donation-raising advertisements they show on TV tend to focus on one or two individuals. In a sense, this extreme focus makes no sense. If we were perfectly rational and wanted to do the most moral good we could, we would presumably be more interested in how many people our donation could help. But charities know that our moral intuitions do not respond to charts and figures. “The reported numbers of deaths represent dry statistics, ‘human beings with the tears dried off,’ that fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action,” writes Slovic.

When we endeavor to think about morally profound topics, from the possibility of nuclear war to the Holocaust, we often assume that eliminating psychological bias is the key to good moral judgment. It is certainly true that our biases, such as scope neglect, typically lead us to poor moral conclusions. But our biases can also be a source for good. By becoming more aware of them and how they work, we can use our psychological biases to gain greater moral insight and to motivate better moral actions.

The Totalitarianism of the Borg

image of Enterprise spaceship and Borg Queen

WARNING: The following article contains minor spoilers for Picard seasons 1 & 2 on Paramount+.

Sir Patrick Stewart has once again returned to our screens as the iconic explorer, archaeologist, writer, historian, diplomat, and Earl Grey drinking machine that is Jean-Luc Picard. The first season of Picard saw Starfleet’s greatest officer come out of retirement to save the life of Soji, a woman with a mysterious past. As a result, we saw him make new friends and enemies, tackle a nefarious cabal, and attempt to come to terms with his failing health. Permeating the thoughtful narrative were philosophical issues galore, including what makes us worthy of moral consideration, how we find or create meaning in the face of death, and whether the ends can justify the means.

While only a few episodes in, Picard’s second season is shaping up to be equally thought-provoking, challenging our perceptions of personal identity and what we are willing to sacrifice or destroy to secure our survival. It also reintroduces us to several familiar faces, one of which featured heavily in the show’s promotional material, the Borg Queen. So, in honor of the return of one of Star Trek’s great villains, I wanted to explore the Borg’s totalitarian tendencies.

The Borg are a group of cyborgs that search the galaxy for assimilatable people, technology, and cultures. They are not made up of a single species but consist of countless ‘drones’ whom they have forcibly assimilated into their group. There are no individuals within the Borg as each drone is linked together via a hive mind called “The Collective.” Once connected, individuality is absorbed and subsumed. The individual becomes a techno-zombie, possessed by the vast hive mind.

The Borg’s ultimate goal is biological and technological “perfection.” They seek this by harvesting anything distinctive from other races. Because of this unrelenting process of assimilation and incorporation, the Borg are one of Star trek’s most formidable entities. A single drone can assimilate an entire starship, and a single borg vessel can destroy entire fleets or raze a city to the ground.

In their debut, Q describes the Borg as:

the ultimate user. They’re unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced. They’re not interested in political conquest, wealth, or power as you know it. They’re simply interested in your ship, its technology. They’ve identified it as something they can consume.

In their pursuit of perfection, the Borg leave no room for freedom of choice, equality, or compassion. On the contrary, the collective sees these traits as inefficiencies; obstacles on the path to perfection. As Seven of Nine – a Borg drone later freed from the collective – observes while aboard a Starfleet vessel, “you’re erratic, conflicted, disorganized. With every individual giving their own small opinion, you lack harmony, cohesion, greatness.” The disdain Seven of Nine expresses for the individual’s worth, and specifically for the value afforded to the expression of that will, is in direct opposition to Jean-Luc’s philosophy. As he states, in no uncertain terms, when the Borg captures him:

Capt. Picard: I have nothing to say to you; and I will resist you with my last ounce of strength.

The Borg: Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.

Capt. Picard: Impossible. My culture is based on freedom and self-determination.

The Borg: Freedom is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You must comply.

Capt. Picard: We would rather die.

The Borg: Death is irrelevant.

Indoctrination into the collective erases all prior relationships with friends, family, religious affiliations, political memberships, and even one’s species status; the Borg consume them all. Even death lacks meaning for the Borg as death is merely the loss of the individual.

The portrait of the Borg painted here – a horrifying force assimilating everything into its structure, to the exclusion of all independent thought and actions, for the propagation of its survival and goal satisfaction – is terrifying. However, the Borg are more than tyrannous; they’re totalitarian.

Totalitarian governments attempt to control every aspect of their citizens’ lives through coercion and repression. As Alan Haworth highlights in his book, Totalitarianism and Philosophy, totalitarianism attempts to achieve total control via (i) the constriction of space and/or (ii) the conflict of wills.

The constriction-of-space model eliminates areas, be they conceptual or physical, where citizens can act autonomously. But, this is difficult to achieve as there are always ways for citizens to rebel and ways for states to exert more control. So, as Haworth argues, this avenue is more aspirational than anything else. A totalitarian state aims towards the total restriction of autonomous space even though such a state is unattainable. Or, in his own words:

This is, thus, a model of the relationship between control and liberty from which it follows that there is an inverse ratio between increase in control by the rulers and decrease in the area within which the ruled are free to act, in which case we must be forced to the conclusion that total control is a practical impossibility since – as the argument presupposes – rulers only have total control when their subjects cannot, as it were, ‘move’ at all, and that is something that could only happen – or so I take it – when the rulers are in a position to direct every single action and thought of those they rule.

The conflict-of-wills model envisions totalitarianism coming into full fruition when the oppressive government enforces its will upon its citizens, dominating their desires. This form of totalitarianism is more subtle than the overt constriction-of-space model. As Hannah Arendt remarks in The Origins of Totalitarianism, “[t]otalitarian terror achieved its most terrible triumph when it succeeded in cutting the moral person off from the individualist escape and in making the decisions of conscience absolutely questionable and equivocal.” This mode of totalitarianism subverts autonomy’s foundations and makes the previously unimaginable possible.

The Borg, however, do both of these. They invade the body and mind of the assimilated so entirely that they effectively enact both formulations of totalitarianism at once. The collective is housed just as much in the ships it commands as in the drones at its disposal. It maintains an all-pervasive watch on those who make up its quasi-species; there is no room for deviation from the collective’s will. More troubling, however, is their capacity to dominate the will of the individuals it assimilates. Even if room for deviation existed, the drones don’t have the capacity to take advantage of it. The Borg hive utterly dominates their will.

The portrayal of the Borg in the Star Trek franchise illustrates something important about totalitarianism’s nature. Namely, that as a political system, it demands unflinching obedience to the goals of those in power and cannot stand, nor survive, a populace that rebels against it. Indeed, when drones have regained their independence, the collective sees this as an imminent threat. The power of the Borg and the totalitarian state comes from their ability to dominate the wills of those they hold in their power. Thus, it is paramount to reject the urge to comply or be consumed by their pursuit of perfection or security. Neither the Borg nor the totalitarian state is invincible. Resistance isn’t futile.

On Judicial Philosophy: A Reflection on Judge Jackson’s Hearing

photograph of Ketanji Brown Jackson with law books behind

Judge Jackson’s recent confirmation hearing raises a variety of questions about the nature of judicial philosophy and what relationship it has with judicial “methodology.” In her opening statement, Judge Jackson outlines a three-step methodology to how she approaches each case: to clear her head, to examine the data, and to apply the relevant laws if it is her job. When pressed and questioned about what her philosophy is, she candidly maintained her judicial philosophy is her judicial methodology.

This has received a variety of attention. Some think her response is indicative of her defying being labeled by others. Others think she is required to give us her judicial philosophy, that her methodology is the bare minimum of what to expect from a judge. Indeed, some were analyzing and predicting what the judicial philosophy would be based on her previous remarks and experience.

While Judge Jackson’s response has been a highlight of Republican criticism, it would be rash to infer this question is pointless, a divisive tactic asked for the sake of moral grandstanding. It is worth addressing the nature of one’s judicial philosophy, its importance, and asking whether it is equivalent to a methodology.

Let us presume that a judicial philosophy comprises the values and stance from which one sees and evaluates judicial cases. In this way, a judicial philosophy is value-laden and often prescriptive of how to interpret the law and act. In contrast, a methodology is often only descriptive. This gives the impression that a methodology is fair, insofar as it does not necessarily subscribe to values and prescribe responses.

This distinction maps onto our standard use of the terms and some intuitive examples. Consider how an ethical philosophy not only describes but evaluates as well as prescribes certain actions. For instance, deontology describes and evaluates actions according to the well-known categorical imperatives, the rule of universalization, and the intrinsic value of rational agents. When the deontologist maintains “Don’t lie,” it is based on a value of rational agency and is universal in its scope and demand.

A methodology, in contrast, is procedural. Much like the surgeon who must conduct several steps to perform surgery, a methodology describes the steps of parsing data and conducting certain actions. Moreover, while a methodology evaluates appropriate actions according to the issue at hand, a methodology does not have certain prescriptions built-in (aside from, perhaps, the general prescription to act in accord with the role one stands in; consider how the Hippocratic Oath is an imperative to do no harm). Where a scalpel is required in some situations, an IV is required in others — it depends on the patient’s need.

If this distinction is plausible, then it follows that a judicial methodology and judicial philosophy are not equivalent. This is not to say, however, that the two cannot overlap. For every judicial philosophy can avail itself of a methodology, and vice versa. So, we need some clarity on what Judge Jackson means when she maintains her philosophy just is her methodology.

Would it be a problem to only maintain a judicial methodology without a judicial philosophy? At first blush, it would seem like a fortunate state of affairs if the judge were to be impartial like the surgeon with a methodology. One might argue by analogy that the judge collects the relevant data with a clear mind and applies the relevant tools according to the need. If the brain surgeon is not trained and equipped to conduct heart surgery, one would hope he denies the request to operate and calls his colleague! So too with the judge. Impartiality, after all, is necessary for a judge to be just.

Indeed, this cleanly depicts how Judge Jackson describes her own three-step judicial methodology in more detail:

  1. Remain neutral: to proceed “without fear or favor.” Before approaching any case, she clears her head of biases and prejudices.
  2. Evaluate the data: to receive all of the appropriate inputs for the case (e.g., hearings, factual records, etc.)
  3. Apply the law: to exercise the “Interpretation and application of the law to the facts in the case, and this is where I am really observing the constraints on my judicial authority.”

Regarding this last step, she may look at her jurisdiction to see if it is her place to hear the case. Like the surgeon who coolly evaluates cases and responses, one might think Judge Jackson’s methodology is sufficient for her role as a judge.

However, the surgical analogy fails on precisely the points it should help. On the one hand, it is questionable that both the surgeon and judge may coolly evaluate data. Does not collection of data require an evaluation of the case’s salient features? It would seem so, though perhaps this is a common problem. If so, it would be what I like to call a ‘work hazard’ for simply engaging in this activity and thus not uniquely problematic to this particular issue. On the other hand, the respective standards which the surgeon and judge consult and the corpus to which they apply these decisions are different. For the Constitution is not self-interpreting and is far from clear at many points. For example, whose right is it to bear arms? Moreover, the application is also an issue. For example, does the prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment preclude the death penalty today? Both of these issues of interpretation and application require values to guide the judge.

To illuminate how a judge might offer different sentences based on different judicial philosophies, consider two prominent philosophies:

Originalism: Interpreting the legal text(s) according to the words and original context, most prominently the original author’s meaning and public understanding of the text.

Prudentialism (also known as pragmatism): Interpreting the legal text(s) according to the respective values and interests at play at the time of the case (Justice Breyer, whom Judge Jackson is to replace, exercised this methodology).

Based on the philosophy, one will have different answers to the above questions. According to originalism, “cruel and unusual” punishment might not preclude the death penalty. In other words, this could lead a judge be open to giving a sentence of the death penalty. Based on prudentialism, “cruel and unusual” may very well preclude the death penalty. Individuals’ sensibilities of what counts as cruel may differ from the original authors (e.g. are there really any “humane” methods of executing a human?) In other words, this could lead a judge to avoid such a sentencing. Indeed, based on the sharp decrease in numbers of executions since ‘99, there is good reason to think that sentimentality has shifted for what classifies as “cruel.”

I would suggest, then, that a judge not only ought to have a judicial philosophy but is required to have a judicial philosophy. A judge ought to have a judicial philosophy because it is both an obligation of the role and prudent to make explicit one’s values and interpretive methodology. A judge is required to have a judicial philosophy if only out of operational necessity. The Constitution and law must be interpreted and applied, and to take a stance on ‘no judicial philosophy’ is perhaps to take a stance on a nascent philosophy.

We could, of course, attempt to deduce Judge Jackson’s judicial philosophy. Some have pursued this route – she clearly maintains that “adherence to text is a constraint on my authority. I’m trying to figure out what those words mean as they were intended by the people who wrote them.” While such comments as this may be indicative of an originalist position, I find it more helpful to see how Judge Jackson’s minimal position is prudent and not unprecedented.

Judicial philosophies can unnecessarily be understood to signal a political philosophy. If offered in this forum, her position could very well be misunderstood and utilized to characterize her in different ways. This would not be unlikely, given some of the grandstanding and loaded questions from many senators. And Judge Jackson was admirably keen to avoid these issues and “stay in her lane.” So, regardless of whether a candidate is obliged to inform the committee or public of her position, it seems to be cautious in some respects.

Such a brief response is also not unprecedented. Consider, for example, Justice Sotomayor’s opening statement for her hearing before the Judicial Committee. When describing her judicial philosophy, Sotomayor stated that it’s

Simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make law, it is to apply the law. And it is clear, I believe, that my record in two courts reflects my rigorous commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its terms, interpreting statutes according to their terms and Congress’ intent, and hewing faithfully to precedents established by the Supreme Court and by my Circuit Court.

Justice Sonya Sotomayor

It could very well be that this is a stock and trade answer for such a forum. Moreover, it is an intentionally minimal answer and thus, a cautious maneuver.

For all the prudence and precedence, however, the point stands: a judicial philosophy is distinct from methodology, and the former is necessary for a judge. While a judicial philosophy is perhaps part of a judicial methodology, it will not be the whole parcel.

Why the Sunshine Protection Act Is Daylight Robbery

photograph of Los Angeles skyline at dawn

Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate unanimously voted in favor of the Sunshine Protection Act – a bill that would make Daylight Saving Time the new, permanent standard time from November 2023 onwards. Many may rejoice at this news. The process of adjusting our clocks twice a year can be enormously irritating. And it’s also dangerous. This biannual disruption to our circadian rhythms (the natural biological processes that follow a 24-hour cycle) has been linked to all kinds of negative side effects, including workplace injuries, sleep disturbances, stroke, and  heart attacks. This includes a 6% increase in fatal traffic accidents — accounting for about 28 deaths per year.

While often blamed on farmers, daylight saving time was actually first introduced in the U.S. during World War I as an energy saving measure. Farmers, it turns out are vehemently opposed to the practice — which creates a huge interference with their standard routines. Given all of this, it might seem obvious why the Sunshine Protection Act received unanimous support in the Senate. But it turns out that there’s more to this issue than meets the eye.

For one, it isn’t simply a case of scrapping the biannual time transition. Most people are in favor of this — which might explain why the bill has received such widespread support. The more important part of this process is deciding which time we will permanently transition to. And here, we have two options. First, there is Standard or ‘Solar’ Time — that is, the time the U.S. currently uses from November through March. This time is based on the movement of the sun, and pins midday to the moment at which the sun is at its highest point in the sky (hence the term “high noon”). The alternative is Daylight Saving Time (DST) — that is, the time currently used from March through to November. This time sees our clocks offset from solar time by one hour, so that the sun is instead at its highest point at one o’clock in the afternoon.

It might seem like an arbitrary choice — and you might think that so long as we get rid of that meddlesome biannual adjustment, nothing else really matters. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

It turns out that DST harms us in numerous ways. For one, it’s a public health risk. We sleep less long and less well, with Americans losing an average of 19 minutes sleep per night during DST. This may not sound like much, but this society-wide DST-induced sleep-loss has been connected to significant increases in the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, metabolic disorders, personality disorders, unintentional midday sleep, caffeine abuse, alcohol abuse, depression, and suicidality. That’s probably why we see things like a 24% uptick in heart attacks immediately after we change to DST each year. And this isn’t merely a result of the time transition, since the move back to Solar Time in November sees a corresponding reduction in heart attacks by around 10-21%.

DST is also bad for business. Workplace injuries among laborers typically increase 5.7% under DST, and result in 67.6% more days of lost work. Office productivity plummets by 20% for an average annual loss of $434 million nationwide. Perhaps worst of all, permanent DST would see most of us start school and work before sunrise for around a third of the year.

Unfortunately, the sole motivation behind the initial move to daylight saving — that is, the conservation of energy — no longer applies. This is largely down to the ways our lives have changed since World War I. DST now causes us to use more power — mostly in the form of morning heat and evening air conditioning. This subsequently leads to an increase in home energy costs, pollution, and climate change.

What’s interesting is that the U.S. already trialed the implementation of permanent DST back in 1974. Initially, 79% of the population were in favor of the change (no doubt fueled by relief that they would no longer have to adjust their clocks twice a year). But this support dropped to only 42% after just one winter — a winter in which eight children lost their lives walking to school on dark winter mornings in the space of just one month in Florida. The experiment ended shortly thereafter.

Given all of this, it’s deeply concerning that, while eradicating the biannual time transition, the Sunlight Protection Act is attempting to implement DST — not Solar Time — as the new standard time. But when we dig a little deeper, the choice isn’t all that surprising. There’s a lot of money to be made in DST. As previously noted, DST sees power and fuel consumption skyrocket — lining the pockets of the companies who provide those amenities. The National Association of Convenience Stores has also made no secret of their opinion on the matter, arguing before a Congress subcommittee that DST is “is good for business and commerce across the United States.” Other huge benefactors from a permanent transition to DST will be golf courses, with the National Golf Foundation admitting that the extra evening light will allow course operators to “accommodate more golfers/greens fee revenue.”

Ultimately, what might seem like an innocuous issue — whether to set our clocks according to the sun — is actually a matter of tremendous moral importance. While the shift to permanent DST might financially benefit certain businesses, it will come at a huge cost to society and the economy at large — robbing ordinary citizens of sleep, health, and money. Eradicating the biannual time transition in favor of permanent Solar Time would instead provide the best outcomes for the well-being of U.S. citizens — even if it means buying a few less slushies and rounds of golf.

The Ethics of Reproducing Trauma in Celebrity Biopics

photograph of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee

Practically every streaming service available has a new biopic revisiting celebrity scandals or scandals that turned former unknowns into cultural villains. Hulu just released The Dropout, a series that focuses on the infamous Elizabeth Holmes who lied about the effectiveness of her company’s game-changing blood test for diagnosing diseases. Netflix just released both Inventing Anna and The Tinder Swindler exposing the rise and fall of two con artists turned elite socialites. A number of other biopics are set to be released this year covering music stars like Elvis and Bob Dylan as well as documenting the important stories of Emmet Till and the journalists who broke the story on Harvey Weinstein’s rampant sexual abuse in Hollywood. As this wave of series and films are released, it is important to remember that these depictions memorialize difficult personal moments and are often told from a very specific angle – whether it be sympathetic or not to their subjects. The act of trying to tell other people’s real-life stories raises a multitude of questions about the ethics of taking a private event and turning it into a public spectacle. These questions become particularly pertinent when the biopics are made without the consent of the subject they are covering.

Obviously, there are many things to be gained from films and television that cover real historical events and people. After all, Schindler’s List – considered one of the most important movies ever made – is a historical drama that explores the tragedy and resistance in Nazi Germany, as well as the brave efforts of Oskar Schindler, a real man who saved Jewish people during WWII. The film covers one of the most traumatic events in modern human history, yet surely no one would argue against making a film such as this.

A more recent example of such a successful historical biopic is the story of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. The film depicts the violence that Black Americans faced in the 1960s from governmental organizations trying to quell the civil rights movement. Fred Hampton’s end is, tragically, also a traumatic one, but is one that a majority of Americans need to see in order to unlearn a white-washed version of American history. The movie’s makers were able to get permission from Hampton’s family to produce his story on screen, but securing consent from the subject or subject’s family is not always an option. Does that mean that the film shouldn’t be made? Surely the subjects of The Dropout and Tinder Swindler would rather not have their crimes brought to the screen.

What happens when filmmakers reach out for consent, but are denied? Studios have to weigh the risk of not getting permission from the subject and then potentially being sued later for defamation if the subject objects to the way that they were portrayed. Oftentimes, however, these cases get thrown out because it can be particularly hard to prove defamation, especially if the story is already well-known. The other option that studios have is to buy the life rights to a story. Life rights offer multiple benefits for studios because they provide legal protection and insider-access to the subject in a competitive movie-making market. These legal protections allow studios to exercise a good deal of creative license over a story, which often strays from the truth of actual events. Yet, they are still able to claim that their film is based off of a true story, which often lends extra significance to a story.

Ultimately, asking for subjects’ consent in film-making is treated more as a friendly gesture than a priority. The current state of affairs leaves very little room for the actual subject to have any sort of agency over how their story is told, especially when they are up against multi-million movie production companies. While studios may claim they are simply producing art, in the 21st century it is highly possible that an audience would take what they see on-screen at face value, especially when it is labeled a true story.

There are two very recent examples of this sort of conflict in the film House of Gucci and the Hulu series Pam & Tommy. In the first, the story of Patrizia Reggiani’s plot to assassinate the heir of the Gucci legacy, Maurizio Gucci, in the 1990s. The film featured an all-star cast with the role of Patrizia being played by Lady Gaga, who created an internet frenzy when it was revealed Gaga did not want to meet the character she was playing in the film. While Gaga had her own fair reasons for not wanting to meet the convicted murderer, Reggiani has criticized Gaga’s decision to not reach out. Meanwhile, the Gucci family has been vocal in their criticism of the film, particularly the sympathetic view the movie takes toward Reggiani as a woman trying to climb a patriarchal ladder. They also charged the film with chasing profits first and foremost, without a thought as to the potential impact the film might have on the family. In response to this criticism, director Ridley Scott only pointed out that the Gucci family has its own history of profit-seeking, which has placed them in the “public domain.” We might wonder, however, whether this reasoning is enough to outweigh the potentially traumatic impact of seeing their family member’s murder played out on the big screen. What obligations might filmmakers have when telling someone else’s story – especially a version they can sell to the public?

The new Hulu series, Pam & Tommy (2021), complicates this question even further as Pamela Anderson not only refused to give consent to the show, but has also spoken out about the trauma she endured. The release of the tape over two decades ago forever scarred her life as Anderson faced all manner of slut-shaming, misogyny, and invasions of privacy. Of course, as her career plummeted, her abusive partner in the tape only gained more status to his rock ‘n’ roll image.

All of this was mostly forgotten by younger generations who might’ve never even known the names otherwise. But Hulu’s series drudges up the sordid details and presents them anew. While showrunners claim to be defending Anderson in a way that she was not in the early 2000s, the series still does harm by simply revisiting all of this past trauma and bringing it to the forefront of headlines and social media. The reactions of Anderson and Lee make it clear who still benefits from this production. While Tommy Lee has praised the actor portraying him, Anderson posted to Instagram about refusing to be victimized once again, and continues to identify herself as a survivor. Anderson has also revealed that she’ll will be able to make her own documentary that truly tells the tale from her perspective. Will shining a new light on the story justify its production?

Anderson’s case is especially troubling because of the potential retruamatization. The Gucci family too stand to be deeply impacted, not only emotionally, but also financially by their family’s, and brand’s, name being dragged by a Hollywood film. These productions raise serious concerns over the lack of agency that one can have over how their story is told. What are the ethical boundaries of memorializing someone’s darkest moment for the world to see? What sort of responsibilities should showrunners be held to when attempting to produce “true” versions of someone else’s tale? And what might it say about modern society that we are so hungry for these fictionalized accounts of other people’s lives that they’ve become such lucrative projects?

Considered Position: Thinking Through Sanctions – Our Own Obligations

photograph of feet on asphalt before a branching decision tree

This piece concludes a Considered Position series investigating the purpose and permissibility of economic sanctions.

In this series of posts, I want to investigate some of the ethical questions surrounding the use of sanctions. Each post will be dedicated to one important ethical question.

Part 1: Do sanctions work to change behavior?

Part 2: Do sanctions unethically target civilians?

Part 3: What obligations do we as individuals have with regard to sanctions? 

In the first post, I suggested that sanctions are, on the whole, probably effective. In the second post, I suggested that sanctions, on the whole, probably do not violate the rights of innocent civilians (though I’m not totally certain about that).

The final question concerns how wide the scope of that obligation — that is, the duty to support these punitive economic measures — is.

There are two parts to this question.

First: who has responsibilities to boycott?

Do governments have an obligation to impose sanctions? Do companies have an obligation to pull out of Russia? Do sports organizations have an obligation to ban Russian athletes? Do academic journals have reason to reject papers submitted by faculty at state-sponsored Russian Universities? Do I have a responsibility to not purchase Russian-made products?

Second: who should be boycotted?

If I should boycott Russia, should I also boycott China given their treatment of the Uyghur people? Does it also apply to Saudi Arabia given their human rights abuses? Does it apply to the U.S. State of Georgia for its voting rights bill?

Who Has a Reason to Boycott?

For individuals and companies, there could be three different relations to boycotts. Boycotting could be morally prohibited, it could be morally required, or it could be morally permissible. Since it will be permissible just if it is neither prohibited nor required, let’s consider reasons it might be morally prohibited or required for individuals to boycott.

Are there any reasons to think it is morally wrong for individuals or companies to boycott? 

Yes, often there are.

There are some actions which should only be done by certain agents. For example, if I see you commit a crime, I cannot lock you up in my basement. Only the state has the authority to impose criminal punishments, I do not. Similarly, many philosophers historically have maintained that only the government can legitimately wage war.

There is good reason to think that, often, we should limit ‘coercive pressure’ to centralized agents. This is because when a group of people all try to collectively punish someone, the resulting punishment is often disproportionate.

Sometimes people do really bad things, and deserve some punishment. However, when the information goes viral, they don’t just struggle to get a job, they struggle to get any job. And so the bad action can destroy someone’s life. Each individual employer thinks they are just not hiring the person for this job, but when everyone thinks that way, the person is unable to get any job at all. But sometimes a person does not deserve to be unemployable, even if they really did something quite bad. And this provides one reason for why individual people or companies should not always take ‘boycotting’ or ‘coercive sanctioning’ into their own hands.

Could such considerations apply to Russia? Possibly, but I think it’s unlikely. The invasion of a democratic nation is such a serious violation of international norms, that it is hard to imagine any form of economic isolation that would be a disproportionate response. There could well be issues if, for instance, Russian civilians begin starving. But that is a general problem with targeting civilians and is not really a specific problem of mob injustice.

Are there any reasons to think it is morally required for individuals or companies to boycott? 

In general, there are two sorts of reasons one might be obligated to boycott a country or organization that is doing something unjust.

First, it might be necessary to help protect those suffering injustice. Thus, you might think that we owe it to the Ukrainian people to put as much international pressure on Russia as possible. Or, you might think we owe it to the people of Taiwan to signal as large a credible threat as possible. Here the thought would be that, collectively, such pressure can do real good in making the world a better place and protecting the rights of those being oppressed.

Second, it might be necessary to avoid complicity with injustice. Even if your refusal will not make the situation better, we often think that participation in evil can itself be evil. Thus, Google might worry that their map software could be used by invading troops. It might not make the situation any better for the Ukrainian people if Russian soldiers lacked access to Google maps; but Google might think they still have reasons to avoid associations with evil.

Of these two reasons, the first one strikes me as by far the most plausible argument. If you want to argue that academic journals should not publish papers written by those working at Russian state universities, or that gas companies should not buy Russian-produced oil, the best argument is that doing so helps send a broad and unambiguous signal that such invasions will not be tolerated now or in the future. This could, in turn, help protect rights. It is not that any one company makes a difference, but that everyone working together can send a uniquely powerful signal, and that such a signal only works if we all do our part.

It seems plausible, then, that many individuals and organizations plausibly have at least some reason to support various boycotts (especially in contexts where there is involvement by the Russian state).

Who Should be Boycotted?

Once we accept that sometimes individuals have good reason to boycott other institutions. There are tricky questions to be asked about the scope of those duties.

It seems plausible that I should boycott Russia, but what about other countries which are violating international norms? It seems clear that I should refuse to join a country club that discriminates against Black people. But do we also have reason to boycott a streaming service if we don’t like a podcast they host?

These are difficult questions, and I don’t know any easy solutions for how to sort the cases. That said, there are at least a couple of plausible principles that can help think through these things.

First, the worse the injustice, the more boycotting is justifiable. The basic reason for this is because the worse the injustice, the less likely it is that the ‘piling-on’ effect is going to result in some clearly disproportionate and unfairly punitive responses.

Second, the clearer the social norm, the more justifiable boycotting is. There are tons of unjust actions performed by governments. Invasion and war crimes are unjust, but so is the denial of religious freedom and gender parity. Nevertheless, it seems more justifiable to sanction Russia for invasion than to sanction the Maldives for its violations of religious freedom.

Partly this is because war crimes are plausibly more serious injustices. But partly it is because there are clearer norms against invasion. Invasion is less ‘generally acceptable’ and so coercive punishment seems less ‘ex post facto’ or ‘capricious’ when employed against an invading nation. There are lots of injustices in the world, and we probably don’t want to coercively punish every injustice anyone performs. Thus, to avoid maliciously targeting just those we tend to suspect or dislike, it is easier to justify boycotting those in violation of clear and broadly-accepted norms of justice.

Third, you want to watch out for inconsistency. In general, it is very dangerous to boycott, sanction, or coercively punish someone else if the main reason is just to improve your own moral image. But I think we often find ourselves tempted to boycott, less for the sake of the oppressed, and more to solidify our own moral reputations.

One way to keep an eye out for this, is to notice if your responses seem inconsistent or disproportionate. If you find yourself calling for the boycotting of Georgia for their pro-life laws, but not China for the oppression of the Uyghurs, then it should at least make you pause and wonder if your motivations are mostly about political posturing.

What Is the Wrong Lesson to Draw?

It is extremely difficult to give clear principles for when individuals should coercively respond to the bad actions of others. It is easy to get bogged down in complicated edge cases.

However, this itself can be a form of temptation. We can often bog ourselves down in edge cases in order to avoid clear moral duties. Thus, because I am not sure exactly how much money I am obligated to give to charity, I don’t end up giving any. Even though I’m quite certain that I ought to at least give some. (Those of us reading online articles about applied ethical puzzles are probably particularly susceptible to this vice.)

There are real, difficult, and complicated questions here. But just because some of the cases are difficult, does not mean all of them are. And sometimes there are clear cases that require us to stand up and sacrifice for the cause of justice.

Considered Position: Thinking Through Sanctions – The Ethics of Targeting Civilians

photograph of ATM line in Kyev

This piece continues a Considered Position series investigating the purpose and permissibility of economic sanctions.

In this series of posts, I want to investigate some of the ethical questions surrounding the use of sanctions. Each post will be dedicated to one important ethical question.

Part 1: Do sanctions work to change behavior?

Part 2: Do sanctions unethically target civilians?

Part 3: What obligations do we as individuals have with regard to sanctions?

In the first post I suggested reasons to think that imposing economic sanctions generally has a good effect. In this post, I want to consider what I think is the strongest objection to the use of sanctions – namely, that they target civilians in an unjust manner.

Double Effect and The Combatant/Non-Combatant Distinction

One of the fundamental principles of just war theory is the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. In war, you are not supposed to target enemy civilians even if you think doing so might terrorize an enemy into giving up.

Now, this does not mean that you cannot ever harm civilians. Just war theorists acknowledge that sometimes civilians will die as a result of military action. You cannot wage a war without some collateral damage. Nevertheless, you are not supposed to target civilians. You are not supposed to intend that they be harmed.

We can illustrate this distinction by considering two different hypothetical cases of military bombing.

Case 1 – Strategic Bomber: A pilot is told that by destroying an enemy’s munitions factory, she will be able to end the enemy’s ability to wage war. By ending the war, the pilot will be able to save 200,000 lives. However, she is also told that the enemy has placed the munitions factory near a retirement center. If the pilot blows up the munitions factory, the secondary explosion will destroy the retirement center as well, killing 2,000 elderly civilians.

Case 2 – Terror Bomber: A pilot is told that the enemy is near the breaking point and might soon give up. However, it will require one last decisive strike against morale. The military’s psychologists have realized that the other country particularly values the lives of the elderly, and so if the pilot could kill several thousand elderly civilians that would demoralize the enemy, ending their ability to wage war. By ending the war, the pilot will be able to save 200,000 lives.

In both cases, the pilot faces a choice of whether to drop a bomb which will both end the war and kill 2,000 civilians. However, there is an important difference. In the strategic bomber case, she is not targeting the enemy civilians; in the terror bomber case, she is.

Here is one way to see the difference.

Suppose that in the first case, after the bombing the pilot comes home and turns on the TV. The TV announcer explains that a surprise bombing destroyed the enemy’s primary munitions factory. The announcer then goes on to explain that in a weird twist of fate, the bombing happened at the exact same time that everyone at the retirement center had left for a group trip to the zoo, and so no civilians were killed.

In the first case, the pilot would be thrilled. This is great news. The munitions factory was destroyed, and no civilians were harmed.

In contrast, suppose the second pilot targeted the same retirement center. When she gets home she also hears that no civilians were killed. But in this second case, the pilot will not be thrilled. The reason the pilot bombed the retirement center was to kill civilians. Killing civilians was the means to the end of ending the war. If the people don’t die, the pilot will not have helped stop the war at all.

In the terror bombing case, the pilot intends civilian deaths, because the harm to civilians is how the pilot plans to end the war. The civilians are, therefore, used as a means to an end. The civilians are viewed, as Warren Quinn says, “as material to be strategically shaped or framed.”

This distinction is core to just war theory, and for good reason.

But the distinction is often misunderstood. For example, many people mistakenly think that one’s ‘intention’ is just your ultimate goal (ending the war). Thus, some tried to use the intention/foresight distinction to say that Harry Truman did not intend civilian deaths when he authorized dropping atomic weapons on Japan. The thought was that Truman only intended to win the war.

But this is not how the principle of double effect works. Truman still intended those civilians’ deaths because it was by killing civilians that Truman hoped to win the war. This is why Harry Truman is a murder and a war criminal (as was argued by the great ethicist Elizabeth Anscombe).

The Problem for Sanctions

How do these principles apply to sanctions?

They create a real ethical challenge for the use of sanctions. That is because sanctions tend to directly target civilians. The goal of most sanctions is to inflict damage to a nation’s economy in order to change the government’s cost-benefit calculation. But it seems to do this damage by harming civilians.

Thus, sanctions seem to be a direct violation of the principle of double effect. Or so Joy Gordon argues:

Although the doctrine of double effect would seem to justify “collateral damage,” it does not offer a justification of sanctions. . . . The direct damage to the economy is intended to indirectly influence the leadership, by triggering political pressure or uprisings of the civilians, or by generating moral guilt from the “fearful spectacle of the civilian dead.” Sanctions directed against an economy would in fact be considered unsuccessful if no disruption of the economy took place. We often hear commentators objecting that “sanctions didn’t work” in one situation or another because they weren’t “tight” enough — they did not succeed in disrupting the economy. Thus, sanctions are not defensible under the doctrine of double effect.

Now, this objection does not apply to all sanctions. Some ‘smart sanctions’ do try to directly target the leaders of a military, and so do respect a distinction between civilians and combatants. But many other sanctions do not, including many of the sanctions that the west is currently levying against Russia.

A Possible Reply

There is a plausible reply that one can make on behalf of sanctions. That is because there is a big difference between dropping a bomb on someone and refusing to trade with someone.

The difference is that people have a right not to be killed, but it is not at all clear that anyone has the right to trade in Western markets. It is wrong for me to threaten to take your money unless you clean my house. But it is not wrong for me to offer to pay you if you clean my house. In both cases, you have more money if you clean my house than if you don’t, but in one case your rights are being violated and in the other they are not. If I threaten to sabotage your children’s grades unless you give me money, then I am using your children as a means to an end.  But there is nothing wrong with me saying I will only tutor your kids if you give me money.

So, you might think that the use of sanctions are not designed to harm civilians unless the government changes behavior. Instead, we are just refusing to help unless the government changes behavior.  And that seems, on the whole, far more ethically justifiable.

Real World Complications

So which view is right? Do sanctions violate the right of innocent civilians, using them as a means to an end to put pressure on a foreign government?

It’s a difficult question. And partly I think it might depend on the details of the sanction. Take the action of PepsiCo as an example. The company recently announced that they would no longer sell Pepsi, 7 Up, or other soft drinks in Russia. However, the company will continue to sell milk, baby food, and formula.

This strikes me as, plausibly, the right balance. I think it is plausible that people have a right to certain basic goods (like food, water, or baby formula), but not rights to Diet Pepsi. As such, it would make sense to refuse to sell luxuries, even if one continues to supply civilians with necessities.

Thus, it seems that we should probably oppose any sanctions that prevent the sale of life-saving medications to Russian civilians; but it seems justifiable to support sanctions that prevent the sale of American-made cars.

Considered Position: Thinking Through Sanctions – Do Sanctions Work?

image of Russian banknotes

This piece begins a Considered Position series investigating the purpose and permissibility of economic sanctions.

In this series of posts, I want to investigate some of the ethical questions surrounding the use of sanctions. Each post will be dedicated to one important ethical question.

Part 1: Do sanctions work to change behavior? 

Part 2: Do sanctions unethically target civilians?

Part 3: What obligations do we as individuals have with regard to sanctions?

In this first post I want to address a particularly fundamental question. Do sanctions even work?

Why It Matters if Sanctions Work

If sanctions are ineffective, then there are very strong reasons to reject their use. That is because sanctions cause massive harm to innocent civilians. We can already see this happening in Russia.

In the Spring 2010, the high school debate community debated whether or not it is permissible to use economic sanctions to achieve foreign policy objectives. I remember that at the time, it was widely accepted that sanctions directed against Iraq had killed over half a million children. And while we now know that the number was almost entirely fabricated by the Iraqi government, the very fact it was widely accepted by the United Nations shows just how plausible it is that sanctions can cause incredible amounts of harm. Even so-called “smart sanctions” — such as the choice to freeze the banking assets of a nation’s leaders — can sometimes be circumvented with harms passed onto civilians.

Because sanctions are accompanied by high costs to civilians, it is therefore important that sanctions work. Otherwise, we cannot possibly justify the harm they cause to innocent people.

How Sanctions Don’t Work

This raises a problem, however. Because at first blush it looks like sanctions are generally ineffective. If you look at the various times in the past that the United States and United Nations have imposed sanctions, they do not seem to really change a nation’s behavior.

Indeed, some studies suggest that sanctions are actually counterproductive — resulting in an increase in repression and human rights abuses.

Why would this be? There seem to be a couple of mechanisms.

First, economic sanctions often lead the populous of a nation to think they are being victimized by the international community. This can often produce a ‘rally around the flag’ effect where the populace comes to support national leaders more strongly in response to an external threat.

Second, sanctions decrease economic and information exchange between a nation and the wider community. This, at least historically, meant that sanctions made it easier for a government to control the information available to a citizenry (though this is changing in the world of modern computers).

Third, sanctions often cause the sanctioned government to crack down and increase control over the populace (as we are currently seeing in Russia), and this can result in the prosecution of opposition parties or free media. Thus solidifying the government’s control.

This forms the foundation for the standard objection to sanctions. Imposing sanctions does not actually work to change behavior. So, given the harms they cause, we should not use them.

However, there are good reasons to doubt this argument. The problem is that these studies find that sanctions are ineffective because they misunderstand how sanctions work in the first place.

I tend to think that sanctions are actually fairly effective. So, it is worth looking at the two mechanisms by which they actually seem to change behavior.

The Primary Mechanism: Threats

Most people critical of sanctions assume that sanctions work by changing behavior once the sanction is imposed. However, it is actually the preliminary threat of sanctions that changes behavior. Elizabeth Rogers makes this point in a discussion paper for the Belfer Center:

The literature focuses on the ability of imposed sanctions to compel the target to change its behavior, but does not systematically study whether the threat of sanctions can deter the target from taking a certain action. Hence the literature asks if sanctions can achieve compliance (which is difficult) without asking if they can achieve deterrence (which is easier). Deterring an untaken action is easier than compelling a policy reversal because leaders do not face the higher political costs that accompany reversing course.

Sanctions can deter in two ways. Target states can be threatened with sanctions directly, or sanctions can deter indirectly, by example. States seeing the economic damage sustained by sanctioned states may decide to avoid actions that will make them the targets of similar sanctions. Press accounts imply that this logic was part of the rationale for sanctioning Haiti in 1991 and Niger in 1996 after military coups in those states.

If sanctions work via a credible threat then you should not expect sanctions to change behavior once they are imposed.  Once you issue a threat of sanctions, then the other nation decides if it is still worth performing the triggering action. Normally, the sanction will tip the balance against the action. But where it doesn’t, the other nation has already factored in the chance of sanctions, and so is unlikely to change just because the sanction is actually imposed.

That does not mean that sanctions don’t work. It just means when you impose sanctions, then they have already failed. As such, if you try to test the efficacy of sanctions by looking at where imposed sanctions change behavior, you are basically trying to assess if sanctions work by only evaluating sanctions that failed.

So is the threat of sanctions effective? It turns out this is a really difficult empirical question to study. Nevertheless, we can get some indirect evidence that these threats are effective. For instance, it does seem as though one reason that Russia was willing to invade Ukraine now is because there was a fairly weak international response to the original invasion of Crimea in 2014. This would suggest that it was partly because Russia thought that serious threats were uncredible that they were willing to begin a larger invasion.

At this point you might wonder. If it is the threat of sanctions that does all the work, why actually ever impose sanctions? After all, imposing them won’t actually do much once the threat has failed.

The problem, however, is that to have a credible threat in the future you need to be willing to follow through with it even when deterrence has failed. For example, if we want China to think that there is a credible threat of sanctions should they invade Taiwan, then we need to sanction Russia even if we don’t expect it to change Russia’s actions (or even if we think it will increase Russian aggression).

The Secondary Mechanism: Norm Internalization

Sanctions also seem to work by reinforcing clearer international norms.

There is a big difference between a real social norm, and merely something that everyone in society pays lip service to. For instance, most highways have a speed limit of 55 miles per hour; but that is not the norm for how fast we drive. Most people drive 5 to 10 miles above the ‘official’ speed limit.

Why? At least in part because no one ever enforces the actual speed limit. The norm tends to get solidified where the punishment kicks in, not where a piece of paper says the norm should be. This also occurs with social norms that are not imposed by the government. Things that our social norms consider rude, are pretty much those things that might get other people to respond to you negatively.

Sanctions, in the broad sense, help to define norms.

Not only that, but when other nations impose sanctions because of the violation of some value, it tends to deepen that value in the sanctioning nations. So, nations that come together to sanction Russia, are likely to have a renewed commitment to certain international norms (if for no other reason than to not look like hypocrites).

So, one way that sanctions seem to work is providing a non-military form of punishment by which international norms are solidified.

This would also explain why sanctions are effective, even if they don’t tend to change behavior after they are imposed. After all, the nations who violate the sanctions tend to also be the ones that don’t care about the norms in the first place. That does not mean the sanctions don’t have an important effect on most other countries, however.

Whose Rights Matter for Gender-Affirming Care?

photograph of youth holding small Trans Support Flag at rally

Should medical decisions involving children be up to children, parents, physicians, the state, or some combination thereof? This question has been at the core of recent issues including vaccine mandates, but it is also central to a new slate of bills targeting gender-affirming care for trans youth, which are usually supported by appeals to children’s rights.

For example, the Idaho House recently passed a bill that makes it a felony, punishable by life in prison, to provide gender-affirming medical care to trans youth, to provide permission for a minor to receive that care, or to permit a minor to travel out of state to receive care. The bill has since been blocked in the Idaho Senate, due to concerns about parental rights. Similar laws are being proposed in Tennessee, Alabama, and Iowa.

What is interesting about these bills (as well as Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill) is that they are contested on the basis of a conflict between children’s rights and parents’ rights. In the case of gender-affirming medical care, whose rights matter more?

It seems that the proponents of these bills are right to say that it is the children’s rights that are primarily at stake in these decisions — not the parents’. They are wrong, however, to say that children’s rights support this kind of legislation.

Except for therapy, gender-affirming medical care begins around puberty, when children have basic reasoning and decision-making capacities and start to develop as autonomous agents. These capacities may not yet be fully developed (and young adults may not yet be socially and legally independent), but this fledgling autonomy is sufficiently developed to warrant and even require that these children are part of the medical decision-making process. However, before minimal autonomy is reached, parents and physicians should be very careful about making medical interventions to alter a child’s sexed presentation, especially given the long history of medical abuse of intersex people.

Apart from considerations about autonomy and decision-making ability, the other primary consideration is whether these interventions will help or harm the children who undergo them. Both concerns target children’s rights.

The two questions we should ask are thus: Can children who have reached puberty consent to medical intervention? And do these interventions harm or help children? For those proposing these laws, the answers are that the children cannot give informed consent and that these interventions are, on balance, harmful. But are these assertions true?

The answer to the first question is supported by ideas that children cannot yet know their gender identity and how they would like to present, or that they will transition just because it is cool, or that they will choose transition as an easy out from facing misogyny or mental health problems.

If children cannot yet know their gender identity, then it seems that puberty blockers should be recommended for even more children, as it would allow them to delay the changes their bodies undergo so that they can make informed decisions about how they would like their bodies to develop at a later date.

It also seems unlikely that being trans is cool enough to persuade children to transition on that basis alone. In 2019, 2% of high school students identified as transgender. That is hardly as popular as wearing crocs, and it comes with significant social costs.

The last rationale is usually cited in the case of trans men. Misogyny is an issue that many people assigned female at birth have wrestled with and that has informed both cis and trans folks’ gender identities, but transition is not an escape from oppression — it trades one kind of oppression for another. One might also worry that there’s a subtle misogyny in implying that people assigned female at birth are less capable of making competent decisions about their gender identity than those assigned male at birth.

Even if each of these worries were true, they would tell in favor of more care rather than less. Instead of cutting off options to children and leaving them without a good understanding of gender identity or the medical options for transition, we should be providing children with more options and with better counseling to enable effective joint decision-making. This provides children with greater autonomy than if they are left without any choice, and it allows them to explore for themselves where their feelings are coming from and what they indicate.

It is important to note that not all transgender or gender non-conforming children will choose to undergo medical procedures or the same set of medical procedures. There is a critique to be made here that our current system of medical care often prioritizes certain narratives of medical transition over others and tends to overlook the needs of those who don’t fit into these neat categories, especially non-binary people. But again, this tells in favor not of removing medical care but of improving it. We should be striving to provide adequate information to children in the decision-making process and, as the therapy begins, encourage re-evaluation of medical care and adjust that care in response to the child’s wishes.

Turn now to the second question: Even if children can give at least partial consent, is the harm done by gender-affirming care great enough to override what autonomy they have? To determine the answer to this question, we need to separate out different kinds of gender-affirming care. Though gender-affirming care encompasses a wide range of options, let’s simplify those options into the following categories: talk therapy, puberty blockers, hormonal therapy, and surgical intervention.

While talk therapy and puberty blockers present some risks, the main worries that proponents of these bills cite primarily target hormonal therapy and surgical intervention. The two major harms presented in support of this legislation are a loss of reproductive ability and the difficulties faced by retransitioners (people who transition back to their gender assigned at birth or who transition to a different gender, e.g., trans man to non-binary person). These are non-negligible considerations. But do they capture everything morally salient for decision-making?

There are other harms we should take into account that would result if these bills were to pass: an inability to medically address gender dysphoria (a psychological incongruity between one’s gender identity and presentation, which can result in psychological distress), the disruption of the patient/doctor relationship, the message that these bills send that trans youth are not seen or appreciated, the tendency of these bills to exaggerate inter-family conflicts when one parent supports a child’s gender transition and the other does not, the tendency of these laws to increase the risk that trans youth commit suicide, and the difficult to alter changes that happen after a child’s body naturally starts producing estrogen and testosterone at puberty, in the absence of puberty-blockers.

The question about access to gender-affirming care isn’t simply one about avoiding these harms — it’s also about promoting positive experiences like gender euphoria (joy felt when one’s gender lines up with one’s presentation and social relations with others). But do the worries about loss of reproductive ability and retransition override these other considerations?

With regard to retransition, several studies have indicated that only around 1% of patients regret their transition. The people who regret their transitions matter, and medical care should be tailored to prevent such regrets and address them when they arise. But the existence of very few who regret medical transition should not be used to deny gender-affirming care to others, especially when that gender-affirming care can be life-saving.

Regarding reproductive worries, many trans folks would like to have children of their own. While we are not yet to the point where trans women can bear children or trans men can produce sperm, trans women and men can rely on technologies that freeze their sperm or eggs and that allow them to produce a biologically related child in the future. Unlike surgery, hormone therapy does not necessarily make the patient infertile, though counseling is recommended to ensure that patients understand the reproductive ramifications of certain medical interventions. And the one surgery that is currently accepted for under 18 individuals is “top surgery” or double mastectomy.

These reproductive ramifications should be fully transparent to teens who are deciding what therapies to access, but these considerations alone do not seem to immediately rule out medical transition, given that they may be outweighed by a number of benefits. In addition, reproductive capacity will mean different things for different trans people, as, for example, some trans men may wish to avoid pregnancy at all for reasons of gender dysphoria.

We also tend to think that adults should have reproductive freedom in choosing whether to have a tubal ligation or vasectomy, and the teens who would have access to hormonal therapy would be much closer to adulthood and full autonomy. Given their greater autonomy, it is less worrisome to allow them to make a joint decision with potentially negative long-term ramifications.

On the whole, gender-affirming care appears to be more helpful than harmful and certainly not harmful enough to warrant overriding the autonomy of older children and young adults. Current practices of gender-affirming care rightly provide less risky treatment to younger children and more risky treatment to older teens, which mirrors the growth of autonomy and decision making through young adulthood.

Bills that would deny gender-affirming care are insidious because they take away the rights of trans youth while claiming to protect those same rights. It turns out that if we want to protect children’s rights, we need to fight legislation that would deny access to gender-affirming care.

Can Assassination Ever Be the Right Thing to Do?

blurred photo of man aiming rifle

On March 10th, Facebook modified its free speech policy to allow for some calls to violence directed against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

More strikingly, a week earlier, Senator Lindsey Graham explicitly called for the assassination of President Putin.

Politically, it is ill-advised to blithely call for an assassination in the middle of a tense diplomatic situation, and Senator Graham’s actions were criticized by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

And yet one cannot help but feel the emotional impact of a Clint Eastwood-esque narrative in which all one has to do is kill some bad guy and geopolitical problems go away. Senator Graham called on the Russian people rather than the CIA, but it nonetheless raises the unsettling question: is there a (moral) place for assassination in international politics?

The question is not as far from contemporary practice as it seems. Democratic nations like Israel have utilized political assassination. Ostensibly the United States has formally banned political assassination since the signing of Executive Order 11905 in 1976, yet it makes frequent use of “targeted killing” in its international policy, usually of actors designated as terrorists, but also of Iranian General Soleimani. The straightforward reply is that these actions are unethical, but the morality of assassination is not as straightforward as one would hope and is deeply revealing about international ethics.

The intuitive ethical appeal of killing political leadership is that the harm is, in theory, localized. It has not gone unnoticed that those who declare war rarely fight in them, and the harms of war (like the harms of sanctions), tend to refract over the most vulnerable members of society. Assassinations, by contrast, suggest the possibility of getting at those responsible and few others. Defenders of ethical assassination – like political philosophers Andrew Altman and Christopher Wellman and Eamon Aloyo and military strategist Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters – invariably allude to the possibility of lesser and more targeted harms.

In their discussion of political assassination, Altman and Wellman, write “once one agrees that armed intervention is sometimes admissible, it becomes very difficult to argue consistently that assassination is always morally impermissible.” The idea here is a parity of reasoning argument. If we think a political leader is so reprehensible as to justify the brutality of armed intervention, then why not assassination? Is assassination somehow morally worse than war? For that matter, is assassination worse than oppressive sanctions?

When pushed for reasons, it becomes difficult to draw these boundaries in a principled way.

Before embarking on this discussion, it needs to be emphasized that the argument that claims “IF armed intervention is justified, THEN so is assassination” must clear an exceedingly high bar. It is perfectly legitimate to question whether armed interventions are ever ethical, especially unilateral interventions. In their account, Altman and Wellman stress that such decisions would need to be made by the international community rather than single actors, and still they worry, rightly, whether such decisions would be subject to abuse. As in the case of the assassination of General Suleimani by the United States, it is all too easy to imagine international assassinations as a mere cynical extension of national interest. Hypothetically, assassination could be justified even in cases where armed interventions are not justified, but that would require different and stronger arguments than parity of reason.

The question that follows then is: Is there anything specifically morally abhorrent about assassination that does not apply to armed intervention more generally?

One strategy to clarify the specific problem with assassination is by appeal to international law. The landmark international treaty on the rules of war, the Hague convention of 1899, declared it “especially prohibited” to “kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.” This sentiment against assassination has been reflected in later law like the Geneva Convention treaty of 1977. These laws concern assassination in war, but presumably assassination would not be outlawed during war time but permissible during peace time. The limitation of this response is that it grounds an ostensible ethical difference in a merely legal one, which can be changed with the stroke of a pen.

A slightly different spin is that a prohibition on assassination is needed to constitute effective international government and law in the first place – that absent this basic decency any international order becomes a nihilistic race to the bottom. As the blowback to Senator Graham’s comments shows, even talk of assassination is corrosive to serious international politics. This line of argument is more compelling, but for full strength it assumes that potential targets are (at least partially) participating in international governance, which may not always be the case. Presumably an international order would not be threatened by actions directed at those fully outside it, as long as there was internal agreement.

A second category of response is that assassination is wrong because it is the ethically wrong way to do war. The military ethics tradition of just war theory (if taken as more than an oxymoron) concerns itself with both justice in the declaration of war and right conduct in war. Right conduct is classically characterized by not targeting, and minimizing collateral damage to, civilians. This concern is reflected in prohibitions for weapons incredible in their destructive scope, like chemical or biological agents, and/or indiscriminate in their targeting, like anti-personnel landmines. However, the intuitive argument for assassination is precisely that it (in theory) minimizes collateral damage and civilian casualties, so by the standards of just war theory assassination appears more moral.

An alternative focus is the “treachery” alluded to in the Hague Convention. Modern understandings and law regarding just war are rooted in older discussions of chivalry and honor. From this perspective, the differentiating wrongness of assassination is that it is uniquely treacherous and dishonorable. Assassinations often involve subterfuge and target someone other than a soldier on a battlefield. However, the same concerns would apply to other common military tactics such as drone strikes and night raids. Moreover, if the assumption about the more limited harms of assassination is correct, forbidding assassination on the grounds of its treacherousness places the “honor” of leadership above the lives of soldiers and civilians.

The final way to characterize the wrongness of assassination is not by appeal to principle, but to challenge its claims to minimizing harms. High-profile political killings are as often the start of atrocities as the end of them, igniting retaliatory violence or wars for succession. In one of the most extensive historical investigations of political assassination to date, historian Franklin Ford concluded “[political assassination’s] demonstrable tendency has nearly always been to besmirch the perpetrator’s credentials, while undermining his chances of any lasting political success.” Similarly, another evidence-based analysis found high levels of instability and violence after successful assassination for governments without well-ordered succession – and assassinations of course do not always succeed, with failed assassination coming with their own consequences.

Even in cases of stable succession there is still no guarantee that the assassination will lead to positive change. This is the problem with the “bad guy” narrative. No matter how morally reprehensible, political leaders do not simply carry their country’s domestic and international problems around with them, to be neatly cleaned up after they fall. By focusing on singular villains we can neglect to appreciate the context behind political actions and the larger structures that maintain and exert political power. Nonetheless, especially in more dictatorial regimes, political leaders do have decision-making powers. The challenge however is to get political decision-makers to decide differently, not simply to eliminate them and let politics play out as it may.

Assassination then appears at the very least no more ethical than armed intervention, and because of its deleterious effects on international legitimacy, likely worse. It is not good ethics and it is not good politics. Nonetheless, advocates of assassination are right that there is something monstrous in the way conflicts between governments are settled via the lives of their people. As Lieutenant Colonel Peterson put it, “national behavior [of states] reminds me of those feudal squabbles in which minor nobles dueled by killing and raping each other’s serfs and burning offending villages.” Assassination, although itself impermissible, suggests an alternative vision for international ethics – thinking small. In a world of sanctions and cyberattacks, why can we not tailor these to target leadership and other influential actors more specifically? Russia is a test case, with sanctions starting to directly target oligarchs and legislators. However, not just in Russia, but everywhere, how would political decisions or actions change if every politician needed to worry about being embroiled in the conflicts they helped to create?

Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill and Parental Rights

photograph of school girl sent out of class

On Tuesday, March 8th, the Florida Senate passed H.B. 1557, following its approval by the Florida House. It’s now just a signature from Governor Ron DeSantis away from becoming law. Opponents have labeled it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill due to a proposed, but withdrawn, amendment that would potentially require teachers to “out” LBGTQ+ students to their parents. Defenders of the bill argue that this is misrepresentation; Gov. DeSantis has framed the bill as defending the rights of parents to not have young children indoctrinated, and some defenders, including Gov. DeSantis’ spokesperson Christina Pushaw, have said the bill is about preventing “grooming” of children, insinuating that critics are pedophiles or enablers.

To get a better understanding of this measure, we should ignore the noise and go directly to its heart. What does the law actually say? Troublingly, not very much. The law is seven pages, two and a half of which are preamble. The law requires schools to develop policies on notifying parents of changes in their child’s “mental, emotional or physical health or well-being.” In addition, the bill forbids school officials from encouraging students to withhold information about these matters from their parents.

However, the lightning rod for controversy is this sentence:

Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

Let’s break it down. There are two clauses separated by an “or.” So, each of these clauses is introducing a unique requirement. The first clause outright forbids “classroom instruction” for K-3 grade students on “sexual orientation or gender identity.” The second clause requires that all discussions from 4th grade onward are “age-appropriate.” Clearly, the bill does more than prohibit discussing sexuality with kindergarteners.

The trouble is that none of these terms are defined. There is no explanation of what “instruction” consists of and how it differs from, say, a discussion. Further, lines 21-23 of the bill’s preamble state that it is intended to prohibit discussion, creating internal incoherence about the goals. It contains no description or suggestion of what age-appropriate instruction would look like. There’s no statement about the kind of “change” in students’ “mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being” that might require teachers to inform parents.

Critics argue that the bill is designed to chill all discussion of gender identity and sexuality in schools through this vagueness. The bill does not set up criminal or misdemeanor punishments for violators. Instead, like the recent Texas abortion law, it gives parents the right to file suit against any school district or official that they believe violates the bill’s demands. Lawsuits are expensive and time consuming. Thus, many school officials would, justifiably, avoid engaging in behavior that could trigger a lawsuit.

So, critics offer scenarios like the following: Imagine a 1st grade classroom. One student, the child of two gay men, makes a comment about her dads. A confused student asks the teacher why her classmate has two dads when she only has one. Even though this isn’t instruction, the teacher may want to immediately squelch this conversation – a student could go home, say that she learned some families have two dads but no mom, and an upset parent may file suit. For similar reasons, any school officials who are members of the LGBTQ+ community may believe that they must hide this part of their identity from students.

This criticism is important – it gives us serious reason to question the bill. Especially when considering the larger cultural context. However, even if this bill made no references to sexuality and gender identity, it would still contain something very problematic. This was revealed through an exchange on the floor of the Florida Senate. Senator Lori Berman asked if a school would be required to inform parents that their child requested vegetarian lunches. Senator Dennis Baxley, the bill’s sponsor, gave a non-answer in response – he merely repeated that parents should not be kept in the dark. This is, to me, quite telling of the bill’s intent.

Parental rights regarding education have become a hot topic in recent months. However, most of these discussions have dealt with rights that parents have against institutions, namely, the right to know about, and reject, contents of the curriculum. Very little has been said about what rights parents have against their children, in comparison. H.B. 1557 gives a strong picture of parental rights – parents have a broad right to be told even what their children do not want to tell them. And the way the bill is framed seems to give parents the right to know whenever their child is engaged in questioning values.

Consider this case. A student in a 10th grade U.S. history class learns about the three-fifths compromise. She raises her hand and expresses some distress. She is deeply upset to learn that people were used as pawns for political purposes – representatives from Northern states literally did not want slaves counted among people, while Southern representatives wanted slaves counted as persons for the purposes of political power, but not in any way that would benefit the slaves. The student has a hard time reconciling this with the values of freedom and equality that purportedly motivated the Founding Fathers and feels that her image of the nation is shaken.

H.B. 1157 seems to require that the teacher report this distress to the student’s parents. Distress could be a change in her “psychological well-being” especially when this concept is left undefined. But I think this overstates the rights that parents have over their children. Even children, especially adolescents, should have some rights to privacy.

Although not yet full adults, in a biological or psychological sense, adolescents are in the process of discovering who they are and express agency while they do so. Part of this process involves questioning, in particular the questioning of values. This is often a painful and upsetting process. Like the experience of physical growing pains, the process of figuring out who you are by sloughing away what you are not can produce serious discomfort. If a young adult does not invite their parent(s) into this process, there is a reason for this – they do not view their parent(s) as able to constructively contribute to the process of self-discovery. This right to control who they invite into their process of self-building should be respected.

The point of H.B. 1557 seems to go well-beyond its restrictions on instruction of sexuality and gender issues. The proposal stands to further stifle the space that adolescents have available to them to question the world and their place in it. It threatens to turn schools into a surveillance apparatus; school officials are now tasked with closely monitoring students and reporting any behaviors relevant to “critical decisions” to their parents. If defenders of the bill are correct and it is indeed just a way of respecting parental rights, then it does so at the expense of children’s rights.

Ultimately, as Rachel Robinson-Greene argued in an earlier post, this may reveal a disagreement about the purpose of education. For those that view education as the transmission of information with a goal of job training, school is obviously not the place for questioning. But if we view education as training adolescents to be citizens in a pluralistic democracy, to think critically, to understand themselves and justify themselves to others, or even as a form of liberation, then schools should allow young people the space to critically reflect on the world, even if this clashes with the values of their parents.

Defenders of parental rights often view themselves as protecting their children from indoctrination. But thinking that your child was indoctrinated because they do not share your values ignores a basic tenant of democratic society – that reasonable people may value different things and come to different conclusions when presented with the same information.

Restrictive Legislation Prevents Liberation

image of child's mind maturing into adult's mind

In late April, the Wyoming Senate voted to withhold state funding for the Women and Gender Studies Program at the University of Wyoming. In favor of the resolution, Republican Charles Scott described the program as, “an extremely biased, ideologically driven program that I can’t see any academic legitimacy to.” Scott is 76 years old and attended business school. He has no background in Women and Gender Studies. Republican Senator Cheri Steinmetz expressed opposition to the program’s commitment to “service and activism,” claiming that the idea that state funds continued to support such a mission led her to a state in which she claimed, “my conscience won’t let me sleep.” Steinmetz has a background in farming, ranching, and insurance sales, not in Women and Gender Studies. There is no reason to think that either senator, nor any of the other 14 senators who voted in favor of the bill, have spent time reading books or journals on the topic, nor have they spent any significant time in classrooms dedicated to Women and Gender Studies. Even if they had, they would not be experts in this field.

This is just one of the most recent in a series of bills restricting the content of education that have been passed or proposed in recent months. Infamously, both houses of the Florida legislature passed “The Parental Rights in Education Bill” which has come to be known widely as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” This bill limits discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools. The reasoning, such as it is, behind the bill is that children shouldn’t be exposed to “inappropriate content” and that parents should be responsible for deciding how these issues are discussed with children. The best way to accomplish this, they argue, is to pass legislation ensuring that it is parents and not teachers who are discussing this subject matter with students to begin with.

Perhaps most notorious are the spate of laws across the country that restrict instruction and discussion of the topic of “critical race theory” and other such “divisive concepts.” As of February, 2022, 36 states have considered or passed this kind of legislation. Like the legislators responsible for defunding the University of Wyoming’s Women and Gender Studies department, these legislators seem to have little idea of what, exactly, they are banning or when and where it is being taught.

There are many implicit assumptions behind the passage of these pieces of legislation. One of them seems to be that education is valuable, if and when it is, for the purposes of teaching students trades and professions, reinforcing culturally-dominant opinions about institutions and historical events, and assisting in the development of young people into the kinds of adults that their parents want them to be. Educators, when doing things in the way these legislators want them to be done, capture and bottle the zeitgeist of the parents’ generation and pass it on, perfectly preserved and untested, to their children.

In contrast to these assumptions, many educators have argued that education is the practice of liberation. Through encountering new ideas and engaging in rigorous and critical debate, a person can achieve a kind of authenticity that might have been impossible for them otherwise. Real autonomy requires full information, or as close to it as one can get. This involves education, not just about matters of hard fact, but also about the experiences of individuals who are different from ourselves or our parents. The practice of becoming well educated, either in an institutional setting or otherwise, has the power to put people in circumstances to fully guide the direction of their own lives. Education can lead to self-actualization.

bell hooks ends her book Teaching to Transgress with the testimony of hope that,

The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility, we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.

hooks describes her experiences with education as a young black girl and young woman, growing up in what she describes as an intensely patriarchal family during a time of segregation. She says,

Attending school was sheer joy. I loved being a student. I loved learning. School was the place of ecstasy—pleasure and danger. To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.

Education potentially has transformative power for everyone but can be the most meaningful and even transcendent for disenfranchised populations. For instance, in his autobiography, Malcolm X has the following to say about how his dedication to self-education through reading and debate while incarcerated changed his world entirely,

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read woke in me inside some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

It’s no surprise that the educational practices about which these legislative bodies are most critical and about which they demonstrate also anger and fear, are transformative practices regarding how people think about race, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Racial justice, feminism, and LGBTQ rights are issues about which we have made tremendous progress only very recently in the scheme of things. Not everyone is on board; some people don’t want power dynamics to shift. No wonder, then, that study of these topics is cast as less than rigorous and the idea that educators might turn young people into activists on these topics causes some defenders of the status quo to lose sleep.

This is nothing new. Educational transgressors and liberators have been targets for all of recorded history. Socrates was transgressing accepted social norms by providing conditions for young people to challenge commonly-held beliefs and to engage in critical thinking. For this, Athenian jurists had him executed. Liberation through education is good for the liberators, but bad for the dominant power structure. One of the great virtues of the educator is that they know this history and, nevertheless, they persist.

Content Moderation and Emotional Trauma

image of wall of tvs each displaying something different

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has been raging violently since February 24th of 2022, Facebook (now known as “Meta”) recently announced its decision to change some of its content-moderation rules. In particular, Meta will now allow for some calls for violence against “Russian invaders,” though Meta emphasized that credible death threats against specific individuals would still be banned.

“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” spokesman Andy Stone said.

This recent announcement has reignited a discussion of the rationale — or lack thereof — of content moderation rules. The Washington Post reported on the high-level discussion around social media content moderation guidelines: how these guidelines are often reactionary, inconsistently-applied, and not principle-based.

Facebook frequently changes its content moderation rules and has been criticized by its own independent Oversight Board for having rules that are inconsistent. The company, for example, created an exception to its hate speech rules for world leaders but was never clear which leaders got the exception or why.

Still, politicians, academics, and lobbyists continue to call for stricter content moderation. For example, take the “Health Misinformation Act of 2021”, introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico) in July of 2021. This bill, a response to online misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, would revoke certain legal protections for any interactive computer service, e.g., social media websites, that “promotes…health misinformation through an algorithm.” The purpose of this bill is to incentivize internet companies to take greater measures to combat the spread of misinformation by engaging in content-moderation measures.

What is often left out of these discussions, however, is the means by which content moderation happens. It is often assumed that such a monumental task must be left up to algorithms, which can scour through mind-numbing amounts of content at a breakneck speed. However, much of the labor of content-moderation is performed by humans. And in many cases, these human content-moderators are poor laborers working in developing nations for an extremely small salary. For example, employees at Sama, a Kenyan technology company that is the direct employer of Facebook’s Kenya-based content moderators, “remain some of Facebook’s lowest-paid workers anywhere in the world.” While U.S.-based moderators are typically paid a starting wage of $18/hour, Sama moderators make an average of $2.20/hour. And this low wage is their salary after a recent pay-increase, which happened a few weeks ago. Prior to that, Sama moderators made $1.50/hour.

Such low wages, especially for labor outsourced to poor or developing nations, is nothing new. However, content moderation can be a particularly harrowing — in some cases, traumatizing — line of work. In their paper “Corporeal Moderation: Digital Labour as Affective Good,” Dr. Rae Jereza interviews one content moderator named Olivia about her daily work, which includes identifying “non‐moving bod[ies]”, visible within a frame, “following an act of violence or traumatic experience that could reasonably result in death.” The purpose of this is so videos containing dead bodies can be flagged as containing disturbing content. This content moderator confesses to watching violent or otherwise disturbing content prior to her shift, in an effort to desensitize herself to the content she would have to pick through as part of her job. The content that she was asked to moderate ranged over many categories, including “hate speech, child exploitation imagery (CEI), adult nudity and more.”

Many kinds of jobs involve potentially traumatizing duties: military personnel, police, first responders, slaughterhouse and factory farm workers, and social workers all work jobs with high rates of trauma and other kinds of emotional/psychological distress. Some of these jobs are also compensated very poorly — for example, factory and industrial farms primarily hire immigrants (many undocumented) willing to work for pennies on the dollar in dangerous conditions. Poorly-compensated high-risk jobs tend to be filled by people in the most desperate conditions, and these workers often end up in dangerous employment situations that they are nevertheless unable or unwilling to leave. Such instances may constitute a case of exploitation: someone exploits someone else when they take unfair advantage of the other’s vulnerable state. But not all instances of exploitation leave the exploited person worse-off, all things considered. The philosopher Jason Brennan describes the following case of exploitation:

Drowning Man: Peter’s boat capsizes in the ocean. He will soon drown. Ed comes along in a boat. He says to Peter, “I’ll save you from drowning, but only if you provide me with 50% of your future earnings.” Peter angrily agrees.

In this example, the drowning man is made better-off even though his vulnerability was taken advantage of. Just like this case, certain unpleasant or dangerous lines of work may be exploitative, but may ultimately make the exploited employees better-off. After all, most people would prefer poor work conditions to life in extreme poverty. Still, there seems to be a clear moral difference between different instances of mutually-beneficial exploitation. Requiring interest on a loan given to a financially-desperate acquaintance may be exploitative to some extent, but is surely not as morally egregious as forcing someone to give up their child in exchange for saving their life. What we demand in exchange for the benefit morally matters. Can it even be permissible to demand emotional and mental vulnerability in exchange for a living wage (or possibly less)?

Additionally, there is something unique about content moderation in that the traumatic material moderators view on any given day is not a potential hazard of the job — it is the whole job. How should we think about the permissibility of hiring people to moderate content too disturbing for the eyes of the general public? How can we ask some people to weed out traumatizing, pornographic, racist, threatening posts, so that others don’t have to see it? Fixing the low compensation rates may help with some of the sticky ethical issues concerning this sort of work. Yet, it is unclear whether any amount of compensation can truly make hiring people for this line of work permissible. How can you put a price on mental well-being, on humane sensitivity to violence and hate?

On the other hand, the alternatives are similarly bleak. There seem to be few good options when it comes to cleaning up the dregs of virtual hate, abuse, and shock-material.

The Nuclear Dice

image of clock showing five minutes to midnight

As I write, Russia is waging a brutal and illegal war against Ukraine. NATO has responded by providing Ukraine with weapons and intelligence, and by enacting sanctions and other measures which are essentially aimed at crashing the Russian economy. 74% of Americans say they believe that NATO should impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine – though it is unclear how many understand that this would require shooting down Russian planes and destroying Russian air defenses. In any event, it seems clear that there is a small but real risk of a larger war breaking out between Russia and the West. And in light of that, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, nuclear war feels like a realistic possibility.

This is not to say that there will be a nuclear war. I think there almost definitely won’t be. But nuclear war would be very, very bad: the greatest catastrophe in the history of human civilization. It could kill hundreds of millions of people immediately, kill billions more through fallout and nuclear winter, and render life much, much worse for the survivors for a very, very long time. And even a very small chance of a very bad outcome must be taken seriously. The theory of expected utility says that we can determine how seriously to take a risk by multiplying how good or bad the relevant thing would be by the probability of that thing happening. So, for instance, if a certain lottery ticket gives me a 1% chance of winning $100, the theory of expected utility says that I should value that ticket at $1 (because 1% of $100 is $1). But the same reasoning suggests that, if a nuclear war would kill billions of people, then even if there is only a 1% chance of a nuclear war happening at some point in the future, we should take that possibility as seriously as a calamity that kills tens of millions of people.

So – in addition, of course, to asking how we can help the people being unjustly harmed in the war right now – it is worth asking how we might reduce the risk of nuclear war. In the immediate future, NATO should obviously be wary of directly going to war with Russia, even if NATO helps Ukraine in other ways. The effect of these other forms of help on the risk of nuclear war is harder to gauge. Their immediate effect is to increase tensions with Russia. But on the other hand, if NATO stood by and did nothing while Putin attacked Ukraine, perhaps he would suppose that NATO was so reluctant to fight him that he could freely attack other countries, including NATO members like Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. And that would greatly increase the chance of a nuclear war. Suffice to say, the question is difficult.

In the longer term, what could we do? Unfortunately, this question is also difficult. Many people have worked for nuclear disarmament, the elimination of nuclear weapons. But while this may be a good long-term goal, it seems unrealistic for the foreseeable future. Because nuclear weapons can guarantee a nation’s security, they are too valuable to expect everyone to give them up. Ukraine gave up its own nuclear weapons in the 1990’s, and if it hadn’t, it seems quite likely that the current war would not be occurring. Meanwhile, Russia’s nuclear arsenal prevents NATO from using its superior military might to directly intervene in Ukraine. And so on. And if only some nations gave up their nuclear weapons, the risk of nuclear war might well increase. Peace between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War was achieved through the doctrine of mutually assured destruction: each country maintained a nuclear arsenal large enough to destroy the other in the event of a surprise attack. This meant neither side would launch such an attack, since their own country would be destroyed, too. But if one had gotten rid of its nuclear weapons on its own, the other might well have seized the opportunity to eliminate their rival.

However, there may at least be steps we can take to reduce the risk that a nuclear war breaks out due to an accident, or the actions of an irrational leader. For instance, at present, it is a matter of controversy what limits, if any, exist on the ability of the President of the United States to order the use of nuclear weapons. If a president someday orders a nuclear attack on Canada because he doesn’t like maple syrup, presumably those around him would disobey the order. But would there be any legal way to stop him? Some experts say no. Others suggest that those tasked with carrying out the order could reject it as inconsistent with the laws of war. But in any event, there is no reason to leave any confusion. The Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act would ensure that the president could only use nuclear weapons with the permission of Congress, or in response to the use of nuclear weapons by someone else. An alternative proposal would require that any order to use nuclear weapons be confirmed by the next two people in the presidential line of succession (ordinarily, the Vice President and Speaker of the House), perhaps with exceptions in the case of a surprise attack. Policies which might reduce the risk of accidental nuclear war have also been proposed. Advocating for the introduction of policies like these in the U.S. and in other nuclear-armed states might reduce the risk of nuclear war. So might working for a better and more peaceful world in general, since the fewer conflicts, the fewer opportunities for something to escalate into a nuclear exchange. Of course, all of these measures can only do so much. But given the stakes, making nuclear war even slightly less likely is morally urgent.

Great Man Syndrome and the Social Bases of Self-Respect

black and white photograph of David statue with shadow on wall

“Am I good enough?” “Was someone else smarter or more talented than me?” “Am I just lazy or incompetent?” You might find these thoughts familiar. It’s an anxiety that I have felt many times in graduate school, but I don’t think it’s a unique experience. It seems to show up in other activities, including applying for college and graduate school, pursuing a career in the arts, vying for a tenure-track academic job, and trying to secure grants for scientific research. This anxiety is a moral problem, because it can perpetuate imposter syndrome – feelings of failure and a sense of worthlessness, when none of these are warranted.

The source of this anxiety is something that I would like to call “great man syndrome.” The “great man” could be a man, woman, or non-binary person. What is important is the idea that there are some extra-capable individuals who can transcend the field through sheer force of innate ability or character. Gender, race, and other social categories matter for understanding social conceptions of who has innate ability and character, which can help to explain who is more likely to suffer from this angst, but “great man syndrome” can target people from any social class.

It functions primarily by conflating innate ability or character with professional success, where that professional success is hard to come by. For those of us whose self-conceptions are built around being academics, artists, scientists, or high achievers and whose professional success is uncertain, “great man syndrome” can generate uncertainty about our basic self-worth and identity. On the other hand, those who achieve professional success can easily start to think that they are inherently superior to others.

What does “great man syndrome” look like, psychologically? First, in order to continue pursuing professional success, it’s almost necessary to be prideful and think that because I’m inherently better than others in my field in some way, I can still achieve one of the few, sought-after positions. Second, the sheer difficulty and lack of control over being professionally recognized creates constant anxiety about not producing enough or not hitting all of the nigh-unattainable markers for “great-man-ness.” Third, these myths tie our sense of well-being to our work and professional success in a way that is antithetical to proper self-respect. This results in feelings of euphoria when we are recognized professionally, but deep shame and failure when we are not. “Great man syndrome” negatively impacts our flourishing.

My concept of “great man syndrome” is closely related to Thomas Carlyle’s 19th century “great man theory” of history, which posits that history is largely explained by the impacts of “great men,” who, by their superior innate qualities, were able to make a great impact on the world. There are several reasons to reject Carlyle’s theory: “great men” achieve success with the help of a large host of people whose contributions often go unrecognized; focusing on innate qualities prevents us from seeing how we can grow and improve; and there are multiple examples of successful individuals who do not have the qualities we would expect of “great men.”

Even if one rejects “great man theory,” it can still be easy to fall into “great man syndrome.” Why is this the case? The answer has to do with structural issues common to the fields and practices listed above. Each example I gave above — scientific enterprises, artistic achievement, higher educational attainment, and the academic job market — has the following features. First, each of these environments are highly competitive. Second, they contain members whose identities are tied up with that field of practice. Third, if one fails to land one of the scarce, sought-after positions, there are few alternative methods of gainful employment that allow one to maintain that social identity.

The underlying problem that generates “great man syndrome” isn’t really the competition or the fact that people’s identities are tied up with these pursuits; the problem is that there are only so many positions within those fields that ensure “the social bases of self-respect.” On John Rawls’s view, “the social bases of self-respect” are aspects of institutions that support individuals by providing adequate material means for personal independence and giving them a secure sense that their aims and pursuits are valuable. To be recognized as equal citizens, people need to be structurally and socially supported in ways that promote self-respect and respect from others.

This explains why “great man syndrome” strikes at our basic self-worth — there are only so many positions that provide “the social bases of self-respect.” So, most of the people involved in those pursuits will never achieve the basic conditions of social respect so long as they stay in their field. This can be especially troubling for members of social classes that are not commonly provided “the social bases of self-respect.” Furthermore, because these areas are intrinsically valuable and tied to identity, it can be very hard to leave. Leaving can feel like failing or giving up, and those who point out the structural problems are often labeled as pessimistic or failing to see the true value of the field.

How do we solve this problem? There are a few things that we as individuals can do, and that many people within these areas are already doing. We can change how we talk about the contributions of individuals to these fields and emphasize that we are first and foremost engaged in a collective enterprise which requires that we learn from and care for each other. We can reaffirm to each other that we are worthy of respect and love as human beings regardless of how well we perform under conditions of scarcity. We can also try to reach the halls of power ourselves to change the structures that fail to provide adequate material support for those pursuing these aims.

The difficulty with these solutions is that they do not fundamentally change the underlying institutional failures to provide “the social bases of self-respect.” Some change may be effected by individuals, especially those who attain positions of power, but it will not solve the core issue. To stably ensure that all members of our society have the institutional prerequisites needed for well-being, we need to collectively reaffirm our commitment to respecting each other and providing for each other’s material needs. Only then can we ensure that “the social bases of self-respect” will be preserved over time.

Collective action of this kind itself undermines the core myth of “great man syndrome,” as it shows that change rests in the power of organization and solidarity. In the end, we must build real political and economic power to ensure that everyone has access to “the social bases of self-respect,” and that is something we can only do together.

Why Starlink Isn’t Leaving Enough Space

image of space debris surrounding Earth

Last month, NASA submitted a five-page letter to the Federal Communications Commission outlining their concerns with SpaceX’s Starlink “mega-constellation” of satellites. Initially launched in May 2019, Starlink is a way of providing high-speed broadband internet across the world ‘beamed-down’ by a massive network of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). The network was originally intended to comprise 12,000 satellites, but at the end of 2019 SpaceX sought approval for an additional 30,000 satellites.

That’s a lot of satellites. But space is massive, so why be concerned?

Well, while space might be big, LEO is not. And it’s getting awfully crowded up there. Despite the fact that it’s been only 65 years since the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, there are now more than 25,000 objects being tracked in orbit — with about 6,100 of these below 600km. The more objects in orbit, the greater the likelihood of a devastating impact. And collisions are so much worse in space. First, there are the extreme velocities in play: in order to maintain a LEO, satellites must travel at a mind-boggling speed of around 17,000mph. Second, there is the far more complicated way in which high-speed matter interacts in space. When two cars collide on Earth, there’s a brief moment of carnage before all movement comes to a halt. This is not so in LEO. Every time two objects impact, they shatter into many smaller pieces. And these pieces keep moving — exponentially increasing the likelihood of yet another collision. This “space junk cascade” is a real concern for anyone putting objects into orbit. It even has a name: the “Kessler Syndrome.” Small pieces of orbital debris might not sound like a huge problem — but at the ridiculously high speeds mentioned above, they are. A single 3mm piece of aluminum debris traveling at normal LEO orbital speed is equivalent in energy to a bowling ball traveling at 60mph.

Introducing an additional 42,000 satellites to the already crowded high-speed orbital highway greatly increases the chances of a devastating collision occurring. Indeed, that’s probably why Starlink already accounts for more than half of the close encounters in LEO. Such a collision will, at best, come at a huge financial cost and potentially create massive disruptions to worldwide communication. At worst, it may even lead to the loss of life. Just three months prior to NASA’s letter, a Chinese space station occupied by three astronauts had to take evasive action in order to avoid such a collision.

Starlink has also raised problems on the ground. The satellites are described as a “mega constellation” for a reason — they are clearly visible from the Earth’s surface. But the high speeds of these satellites mean they don’t move in concert with other constellations, and instead streak across the sky at a much faster rate. This is devastating for anyone (professional or amateur) seeking to photograph the night sky, since Starlink satellites appear as a bright line across any long-exposure astrophotography. As a result, these satellites now ‘photobomb’ a fifth of Caltech’s telescope images — images that are intended to detect (and warn us of) near-Earth orbit asteroids.

All of these problems have come about while Starlink has only around 1900 satellites (about 1/20th of its total expected network) in orbit. Things will only get worse as the network expands.

Limiting congestion in LEO is therefore good for a number of reasons: It reduces the likelihood of collisions (and the resulting potential for destruction and death); it gives us an improved ability to photograph and document the night sky; and — at its simplest — it provides all of us with a better chance of enjoying an unfettered view of the cosmos. In this way, then, an uncongested LEO is extrinsically valuable — that is, it’s valuable because it gets us other good things.

But might we have a reason to think that an unpolluted sky is also intrinsically valuable — that is, that it’s valuable in-and-of-itself, regardless of whether or not we have anything to gain from it? Such a claim might sound strange; usually, the value of nature is seen in terms of the benefits it provides to humans. We might, for example, think that a plant is valuable because it provides us with food, or that a river is valuable because it provides us with clean drinking water, or that a mountain view is valuable because it provides us with a sense of wonder and joy. But might these things still have value even if humans weren’t around to benefit from them?

A simple thought experiment can show if such an idea has weight: Suppose that in a million years, humans no longer exist. Instead, in our place is a planet flourishing with a diverse range of animal life. Suppose, then, that one day — perhaps due to some astronomical cataclysm — the earth was to wink out of existence. Would this be a bad thing? If your answer is “yes,” then it’s likely that you think nature has value beyond what it can give humans. Put another way, you believe that the natural world has intrinsic value. Those plants, rivers, and mountain views might all provide some benefit to humans, but their value goes far beyond this. And we might argue that the same is true of space.

In this way, an unfettered view of the cosmos isn’t just good because of the benefits that it brings humans. It’s also intrinsically valuable. And polluting that vista just so that we can rewatch the Baby Shark Dance a little more easily is hard to justify.

Elective Disability and Body Integrity Dysphoria

image of human x-ray collage

Last month, Queensland police arrested 36-year-old John Yalu under suspicion of murder after he allegedly used a circular saw to cut off the leg of 66-year-old Kalman Tal, who died from his wounds soon after. Passers-by discovered Mr. Tal’s body in his car in a park in Innisfail, Australia, where the incident is believed to have occurred, and alerted the authorities to the situation. Mr. Yalu is currently in custody, and the case has been adjourned until June. Now, it seems that the men knew each other, and while this is not unique in murder cases, it does indicate that the death didn’t result from an indiscriminate, deadly assault. What does make the case distinctive is that, according to news reports, Mr. Tal paid Mr. Yalu $5,000 to use the circular saw to amputate his leg. Mr. Yalu didn’t lunge at Mr. Tal like a slasher-pic serial killer, but instead carried out a service of which Mr. Tal was aware. Indeed, local news reports that Mr. Yalu assisted Mr. Tal back to his car after sawing off his leg below the knee before departing on foot.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what on earth drove Mr. Tal to commission such an act? The simple answer is, currently, we don’t know. However, while police are still unearthing the facts, Mr. Tal’s family have theorized that he suffered from a condition known as Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID), also known as Body Identity Integrity Disorder.

According to the ICD-11, the diagnostic manual published by the World Health Organization and used as the global standard for categorizing health information and causes of death, BID is characterized by:

an intense and persistent desire to become physically disabled in a significant way (e.g., major limb amputee, paraplegic, blind), with onset by early adolescence accompanied by persistent discomfort, or intense feelings of inappropriateness concerning current non-disabled body configuration. The desire to become physically disabled results in harmful consequences, as manifested by either the preoccupation with the desire … significantly interfering with productivity, with leisure activities, or with social functioning … or by attempts to actually become disabled have resulted in the person putting his or her health or life in significant jeopardy.

In short, those with BID suffer due to a discrepancy between their self-perceived identity and their bodily construction (typically a limb); they see themselves as disabled people trapped in the body of non-disabled people. In the case of Mr. Tal then, it seems his family believe that he paid Mr. Yalu to undertake the amputation as a DIY treatment for his undiagnosed BID. The presence of the limb in question caused Mr. Tal suffering to such an extent that he felt he had no other option but to have it removed.

While the ICD-11 recognizes BID, it does not provide any recommended treatment. Indeed, the appropriate treatment option for the condition is disputed as it’s highly resistant to traditional interventions such as psychotherapy and medication management. From the small-scale studies and anecdotal evidence available, it seems that amputation is the only intervention that provides long-lasting and consistent relief from suffering.

However, as I’m sure you can imagine, the prospect of medical professionals deliberately disabling otherwise healthy people to cure them of their mental anguish is one that strikes many as inherently wrong. As the prominent bioethicist Wesley J. Smith writes:

These sufferers deserve our empathy, support, and intensive mental health interventions. But it should go without saying — but no longer can — that doctors should never be allowed to remove healthy limbs or snip spinal cords, which would be, by definition, to cause harm in contravention of the Hippocratic Oath.

Now I don’t begrudge Smith for holding this view (even though he’s criticizing a paper I wrote). The idea that doctors should heal, not hurt their patients is a powerful one, and it is one with which I wholeheartedly agree. Doctors who deliberately harm their patients – such as Simon Bramhall who branded his initials onto two anesthetized patients’ internal organs and Ian Paterson’s numerous bodily mutilations during his time as a public and private surgeon – do act unethically, do breach the Hippocratic Oath, and should face the consequences. I also have some limited sympathy for the idea that one’s intuitions act as a warning against unethical actions, what Leon Kass calls the Wisdom of Repugnance.

However, if the available evidence suggests that interventions that deliberately disable people alleviate the suffering of those with BID, are we not doing more harm by letting our aversion to the prospect guide our judgments? If we’re denying people the chance to access a potentially effective treatment simply because we find the idea of it distasteful, are we not causing them harm? There are multiple accounts of people with BID who, having no access to safe, medical amputations, have taken actions into their own hands. This includes people pouring bleach into their eyes to blind themselves, damaging a limb so severely by freezing it so that a surgeon has to amputate, or seeking out black-market amputations.

Now, this is not to say that amputation is undoubtedly the right treatment option for those with BID. While existing evidence suggests the intervention’s effectiveness, this evidence is limited, and more clinical research needs to be undertaken before any firm conclusions can be made. But, categorically ruling out disabling people for therapeutic purposes simply because the prospect seems harmful does a disservice to everyone involved.

We can’t know for sure that Mr. Tal had BID because, as stated, he was never diagnosed with the condition. Furthermore, even if we did know this, we can’t know if the availability of therapeutic, elective amputation would have prevented him from acquiring Mr. Yalu’s services, thereby potentially preventing his death. What we do know, however, is that people do suffer from BID, and this suffering can exist to a tremendous degree. Therefore, if we are dedicated to the idea of preventing suffering, and if doctors are committed to the idea of doing no harm, then we need to at least consider elective disability as a treatment option based on the merits of the procedure, and not on whether we find the idea repugnant or not.

On Banning Russian Athletes

photograph of gladiator statue at Spartak Moscow stadium

In response to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been banned from international football competitions and Russia’s last remaining team in European competition – Spartak Moscow – has been expelled. Russian teams have also been banned from competing in international cycling events, though individual cyclists can still compete.

In The Atlantic, Yasmeen Serhan has argued that, despite the temptation to see it as such, these bans are not merely symbolic. By kicking Russia out of sport, by not releasing Disney movies in Russia, by not subjecting Russians to the Eurovision song contest, we send a message: “If Russia acts beyond the bounds of the rules-based international order in Ukraine, it will be treated as an outsider by the rest of the world.”

According to Serhan, these cultural sanctions might not make much of an economic impact, but they do stop Russia from succeeding on the World stage – a key Putin aim. What’s more, “if ordinary Russians can no longer enjoy many of the activities they love, including things as quotidian as watching their soccer teams play in international matches… their tolerance for their government’s isolationist policies will diminish.”

I want to take up two distinct issues that spring out from reading Serhan’s persuasive piece.

Firstly, let’s talk about sportswashing – that is, the laundering of one’s reputation through sport. As noted in Serhan’s piece, Russia has been using sport to increase its global reputation by succeeding – albeit through doping – in athletics, and hosting events like the World Cup in 2018 and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. War is as good an excuse as any to prevent nations from laundering their reputations through sports, but we could perhaps learn a lesson here. As The Guardian’s Barney Ronay notes, it’s often just far too late by the time we react to evil regimes’ sportswashing. Much of the damage has been done already. Last year, cycling’s European Track Championships were stripped from Belarus, only after a state-sponsored hijacking of a plane to capture a dissident journalist. But what will Qatar have to do for FIFA to take the World Cup away from it: kill more immigrant laborers?

It’s all well and good that Russia, and its clubs, can no longer compete, but poisoning people on British soil was fine, so long as the money kept flowing into London. It might be time for sporting associations to take their social responsibilities seriously, even if just for the purely egotistical reason that they look pretty stupid when everything blows up.

Beyond these tangible impacts of cultural sanctions – and this is my second point – there is more to be said about their symbolic purpose.

George Orwell said sport “is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.” I have little time for this sentiment in general, but something about it is instructive. When we play sports, we compete. We want to win. But sports have arbitrary goals: we aren’t competing for natural resources, or for power, or for love. We’re competing to be the best at kicking a ball into a net. And, ultimately, we are often doing that for glory. This drive for glory can be perverted, such as when evil regimes use the desire for glory to improve their own standing. And the desire for glory has an egoism at its heart: I want the glory, I want to be better than you. Still, this is a long way from war.

And it doesn’t strike me as particularly morally problematic. In fact, it strikes me as a good thing that we have a space where we can express this desire to win, to be better than others, in fairly harmless contexts.

But that’s precisely why Russia shouldn’t be allowed to compete: because Russia is not just trying to be better in a sporting domain, it is trying to take over another country. There is no way of competing with Russia at sport and this not being manifestly obvious. Every kick of the ball would be imbued with this context.

Sports are games, when we engage in sports we are playing. How can you play with somebody who is trying to kill somebody else you are playing with? The same applies on a global scale. How can you play football against Russia, when Russia is trying to take over Ukraine? There seems to be something about the nature of sporting competition (and think of the use of “sporting” that means “fair”) that excludes competing with murderous regimes. By imposing sporting sanctions, we make it clear that we – the global sporting community – will not engage with such regimes.

Now, perhaps you think that other nations do things that are just as bad, or perhaps you think we should draw the line earlier than full-on war. Perhaps you think the human rights abuses that go on around the world mean other nations, clubs, or players should be excluded from sports. That is all well and good – but the focus here is simply Russia, and we needn’t engage in working out the full expanse of a theory in order to see how it can apply in a clear case.

Further, my argument has its limits. Individuals don’t necessarily represent their nation. That’s why I think that it’s perfectly fair that a Russian cyclist or footballer might still be able to compete for a foreign team. The gray areas come up when we consider club sides (like Spartak Moscow) and individual athletes competing under a national banner (like at the Olympics).

Football clubs might, in some way, represent their local area. But even if we think that Spartak Moscow represents Moscow, or part of it, it’s far from clear that they represent the political entity that is Russia. And although athletes compete at the Olympics for their nation, when it comes to the individual or pairs events, they are very much also competing as individuals.

Thinking about these cultural sanctions solely in terms of having an impact (and trying to prevent needless suffering in Ukraine) might point us in favor of harsh sanctions, including against sports teams that play in Russian, and even Russian individuals. But thinking about the symbolic and sporting value of excluding Russia from sporting events gives us a clear reason for excluding Russia. After all, Russia is using tremendous violence to achieve its political aims, so it should not be permitted to compete on the relatively friendly sporting stage. It has shown itself to not be a friend.

The Hidden Ethics of Inflation

photograph of hands removing fiver from wallet

A danger of the modern obsession with data, facts, and figures is that it can disguise questions of ethics as questions of facts. Authors here at the Prindle Post, as well as elsewhere, have discussed the slipperiness of the slogan “follow the science.” It is easy to follow the science to belief in COVID-19 and the effectiveness of vaccination, but far harder to follow the science to what an acceptable level of risk is.

Our measures and metrics, the ways we describe the world we inhabit, involve more than taking a ruler to the structure of the universe. Science requires reflection and judgment. An awareness of the way our facts and figures are constituted opens up new space for ethical and political deliberation.

Inflation is a good case in point. The naturalization of inflation as a simple descriptive fact about the world, like bad weather, prevents a discussion of the causes of inflation and the choices behind those causes. The reporting of inflation as a single tell-all figure hinders awareness of whom it impacts most.

Inflation as simultaneously fact and decision

It is not uncommon to see inflation referenced as a cause or explanation for higher prices, in the sense that the reason prices are higher is because of inflation. For instance, in an op-ed for Newsweek, former congressman Newt Gingrich wrote, “Each day that inflation increases prices, the Democrats lose ground with ordinary Americans.” Similarly, CNBC declared, “inflation has raised the prices of many goods people want for a home revamp.” However, as economists define it, “inflation” is simply the word we use to describe any general increase in the prices of goods and services over some period of time in a country. “Inflation,” then, no more explains a price increase, than a “drunk-making power” explains the inebriating effect of alcohol. What matters is the why of inflation.

It is of course likely that businesses are partly raising prices for reasons consumers can appreciate – COVID-tangled supply lines, elevated raw materials costs, increasing production capacity or workforce, raising worker pay. However, as critics of current record profits have pointed out – such as Elizabeth Warren, economist Paul Krugman, and others – at least some inflation might be the result of large corporations leveraging pricing power due to market dominance or consolidation. Inflation is, if nothing else, a good excuse to raise prices.

But even if one grants the contentious point that corporations are actively doing this, we might still believe that it is perfectly fine for a corporation to increase profits when the consumer demand is there. These are for-profit entities after all. I am, however, not concerned with the ethics of this particular practice at present; rather, my point is that all those important debates about corporate responsibility, pricing power, and anti-trust are being obscured by our insistence on treating inflation like the weather – that is, as a force beyond human control.

Likewise, it is taken as natural that higher product costs should be passed onto consumers. Here again, there can be choice. Corporations could choose to cut executive bonuses or curtail stock buybacks (which are currently surging) rather than exclusively opt to increase prices. Yet further choices are in the background about tax levels for very high income earners and the permissibility of buybacks, which were largely illegal before 1982.

Even for the notionally bloodless topics of supply lines and logistics, choices were made by corporations about prioritizing efficiency over resilience, about offshoring and the use of cheap foreign labor, and about concentration of manufacturing in specific markets.

These choices may or may not be defensible, given one’s values and their economic framework, but it is imperative to recognize them as choices, occurring in a specific political and institutional context which facilitated them, and which could be otherwise.

Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath

All sorts of significant choices and hidden values are buried within the way inflation is measured.

Inflation is typically measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI). The index is, in their own words, “a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of consumer goods and services.” (See their  FAQ.) The “basket” of goods includes gas, clothes, groceries, healthcare, and other typical purchases.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects an enormous amount of data, from across regions and consumer income levels. Economists quibble about the details – about how perfectly it captures overall inflation – but the more foundational concern from an ethical perspective is the move from an inflation measure, to how that measure impacts a particular consumer. While national policy decisions may take the details into account, national news will typically only report the overall Consumer Price Index. However, the very act of averaging across the diverse economic landscape of the United States entails the measure is insensitive to the specifics.

This happens in at least three ways. First, price increases are uneven across the bundle of goods. Inflation of 7% does not mean that gas rose 7% and frozen concentrated orange juice rose 7%. In fact, gas prices have increased several times that, spiking even higher after the invasion of Ukraine. Second, price increases are uneven across the country. Third, even if the bundle of goods is the same, it represents a different proportion of income for different people. (Stocks and other assets are not immune to negative effects from inflation, but inflation can potentially be waited out and money moved to less sensitive assets.)

The long and the short of this is that inflation hits different people differently. The people it hits hardest include those who must spend a large proportion of their income on consumable goods like food, those with less financial flexibility to modify their habits and assets, those with primarily cash saving, and those poorly positioned to negotiate inflation adjustments to their pay. The savvy reader may notice these are circling a central descriptor – those who are already poor.

In the U.K., activist Jack Monroe is developing a Vimes Boots Index that she believes more accurately reflects inflation specifically for people with less money. It is named after a character in a Terry Pratchet novel who comments that the poor cannot choose to buy boots that cost five times as much even if they last ten times as long because the poor never have the cash on hand to buy the nicer boots in the first place; a riff on the more general idea it is expensive to be poor.

Again, this is not to dispute that there is value in reporting the Consumer Price Index. It is instead to attend to the fact that how we discuss inflation and the metrics we use are not simply “following the science,” even the dismal science; they are, either more or less knowingly, decisions that express our values.

 

The author would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback of Rashid CJ Marcano-Rivera on economic matters.

The Freedom Convoy and the Ethics of Civil Disobedience

photograph of Freedom Convoy truck blockade

Stealing money seems wrong. Speeding in a car seems wrong. Even lying on your tax return seems wrong. But is it always wrong to break the law?

Activists for women’s suffrage illegally disrupted Parliament, broke windows, and slashed tires. Gandhi led tens of thousands to the Arabian Sea to illegally gather salt in protest of the heavy tax levied on salt by British law. Rosa Parks illegally sat in the section of the bus reserved for whites under segregation. Edward Snowden illegally handed thousands of classified documents to journalists, revealing the massive surveillance program the United States government was operating. In recent days, almost 2,000 Russians have been arrested for illegally assembling to protest the war in Ukraine.

These are all examples of civil disobedience — breaking the law to protest perceived injustice. And I suspect the chances are high that you think at least some of them were justified, moral acts.

Now that it is coming to a close, it’s a good time to ask: was the “Freedom Convoy” that grabbed headlines for so many weeks another example of civil disobedience? Or was it something else?

The philosopher John Rawls thought that civil disobedience was a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act that was contrary to the law, aimed at bringing about a change in law, or fixing an existing injustice. There’s a lot in that characterization.

What did he mean that it is “public”? Civil disobedience is, fundamentally, an act of communication, “an expression of profound and conscientious political conviction.” The Freedom Convoy protesters were certainly seeking to communicate to the public and those in power that there is an injustice that needs to be rectified. The movement was ideologically diverse and perhaps unsavory in parts, but its core message was protesting vaccine mandates and vaccine passports for truckers crossing the U.S. border. The perspective of the protesters was that these laws were unjust — that the government had overreached and infringed on Canadians’ rightful liberties. They were trying to bring the attention of the public and pressure politicians to change the law. I’m not going to try to figure out if the protesters were right or wrong about these laws being unjust. Whatever the case, it seems clear that their protest was a public act. It also seems clear that it was aimed at bringing attention to a perceived breach of justice, and bringing about a change in the law to rectify the perceived injustice.

Rawls also claimed that civil disobedience is non-violent. This distinguishes it from more extreme forms of political action such as militant action and terrorism. The reason civil disobedience ought to be non-violent, Rawls thought, is connected to its function as an act of public communication. If violence occurs, it is likely to distract from the intended message and discredit the movement.

These ideas are echoes of Martin Luther King Jr.’s moving “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in which the civil rights leader responds to the condemnation of his non-violent but illegal marches against racism and segregation. It is clear that King, like Rawls, sees non-violence as vital to civil disobedience’s power to rectify injustice. The civil rights protestors had workshops on non-violence, and asked themselves, before marching “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?” Only those who answered affirmatively were permitted to march.

Finally, Rawls thought civil disobedience was contrary to the law, but still “in fidelity” to the law, still conscientious. This might sound paradoxical, and it’s a tension MLK Jr. confronted. He wrote,

Isn’t negotiation a better path? [Civil disobedience] seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.

Those who commit civil disobedience intentionally break the law, but they do so purely to draw attention to the cause of pursuing justice. They peacefully accept being arrested and enduring whatever legal punishments they receive. This demonstration of respect for the legal system is also crucial to the communicative function of civil disobedience. The protestors, in order to change it, must show that they accept the existence of the legal and political system. They want to improve it, not to overthrow it. For this reason, Howard Zinn suggests that “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; It is absolutely essential to it.”

Once again, the Freedom Convoy seems to have largely demonstrated fidelity to the law, even while acting contrary to the law. While illegally blocking the bridge linking the U.S. and Canada, at least 100 Freedom Convoy protestors were peacefully arrested without resistance.

All in all, the Freedom Convoy does qualify as civil disobedience, at least according to Rawls’ characterization. But not all civil disobedience is morally acceptable. So the next question to ask is this: was the civil disobedience of the Freedom Convoy moral?

Once again, we can get some help with this question from Rawls. He provides three criteria that need to be met for civil disobedience to be moral.

The first is that it is sincere. Those who are breaking the law must truly believe that the policies or laws they are seeking to change are unjust. They cannot be using the cause as an excuse to break the law, or the cause as a cudgel to beat their political opponents. It’s much harder to say whether this standard was met by the Freedom Convoy as a whole. Many protestors appear to have been sincere, while others arguably used the movement as a partisan opportunity to push conspiracy theories or put political pressure on the politicians they already opposed.

The next standard that Rawls claims needs to be met for civil disobedience to be moral is that the challenge must be well-founded. The injustice that is being protested must be a genuine, serious breach of justice, of security, social welfare, rights, democracy, and so on. It must be a cause worth breaking the law for. Were the vaccine mandates and passports a breach of basic rights or a sensible health measure? This is a hard question, and a lot of ink has already been spilled (or keyboards hammered) answering it. I am sure you have your own views.

Rawls’ final criterion that must be met for civil disobedience to be moral is that it must have good enough consequences. It cannot, for example, be justified to commit murder in an attempt to condemn or change overly harsh legal penalties for murder. There must be a good balance between the benefit of rectifying injustice and any harm generated by the law being broken in protest. The disruption to ordinary citizens’ lives in Ottawa was fairly profound, and this can only be justified if the protest achieves something even more valuable than that which is destroyed.

This last criterion means that, in many cases, legal forms of protest should be favored over civil disobedience, as the former tends to generate smaller costs for both the protestors and society at large. Even so, civil disobedience can still be justified as a last resort. MLK Jr. found it important that his own civil disobedience was the last resort. “It is unfortunate that [illegal] demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham,” he wrote, “but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure led the Negro community with no alternative.”

Was the Freedom Convoy’s law-breaking a last resort? It’s a difficult question. There had been rising dissent against the coronavirus restrictions since the first lockdown of 2020 but few reductions in restrictions, which might suggest to some that the legal avenues for change had been exhausted and failed. But to others, this only shows that these legal avenues had never been fully explored and that the Freedom Convoy caused needless disruption and suffering and was never the last resort.

If you are left feeling frustrated that philosophy refuses to deliver any clear answers, I acknowledge the point. But philosophy can at least give us the tools to think about things more clearly; Rawls’s framework for evaluating civil disobedience may not be able to tell us if the Freedom Convoy was right or moral, but it does at least help us to focus on the right questions in trying to find an answer.

When Should You Boycott?

close-up image of Benjamin Franklin on a hundred dollar bill

Public calls to boycott companies are increasingly common. Recently, musicians and podcasters have pulled their content from Spotify, and a member of Congress urged people to cancel subscriptions, due to the company’s relationship with Joe Rogan. Republican figures in the U.S. have called for boycotts of “woke” corporations. There is a rich history of calls to boycott Starbucks, from reasons ranging to the design of holiday cups to their recent removal of employee vaccine requirements. The examples go on, but I’ll stop for the sake of brevity.

Given the frequency and intensity of calls to boycott, slowing down and analyzing this practice may be useful. My goal here is to briefly reflect on the nature and purpose of boycotts to determine criteria for when one ought to join a boycott.

My analysis here will be somewhat limited. First, I won’t directly consider international boycotts – the refusal to purchase goods that are produced in some foreign nation due to policies of that nation. Second, this analysis will only look at consumer boycotts rather than practices like diplomatic boycotts. However, what I present below may nonetheless have bearing for non-consumer boycotts.

We should start by considering the purpose of a boycott. Each boycott should have specific goals and aims. There must be a motivation that differentiates a boycott from matters of mere convenience, say, shopping at store A rather than store B because store A is around the corner while store B is on the other side of town.

One might think that a boycott serves as punishment. Namely, a punishment that consumers inflict on companies for engaging in wrongdoing. Corporations aim to make profits. So, refusing to consume their wares is a way to make them worse-off. In contrast, it hardly seems like I am trying to punish other grocers when I shop at the store closest to me.

Although some might view boycotts as a form of punishment, this does not capture the whole picture. This is apparent when we consider the idea of expected consequences. Suppose that my friends and I decide to stop buying clothes from a manufacturer who we believe uses exploitative sweatshop labor. This is a classic example of boycotting.

What consequences can we expect to follow from this choice? Well, practically none. If this clothing company is of any significant size, the choices of a few consumers will have little, if any, impact on their profits. The choices of a small collective are just proverbial drops in the bucket compared to their billions of dollars in sales each year. If a boycott is supposed to be a form of punishment, then perhaps my friends and I should abandon this boycott; we can’t hope to put a dent into their profits.

So, we’d be better served by abandoning the conception of boycotts as punishments. Instead, we might see them as a form of expression. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that spending money is a speech act. So, consumers who choose to engage in a boycott might be seen as performing a speech act in the marketplace. Vote with your dollar. Namely, their economic behavior and choices are meant to express opposition to some action, behavior, or policy of a corporation.

Viewing boycotts as a matter of expression can change our understanding of the circumstances under which we should join a boycott. Specifically, I think that we ought to join a boycott if it a) aims to express the right kind of message and b) if it has a reasonable chance of succeeding at this. A note of clarification about the later criteria is necessary, though. By “succeed” I do not mean that a boycott must bring about change. Rather, this requirement is less rigorous. When we view boycotts as being about expression, a boycott is successful simply if it sends the message. These criteria taken together give rise to at least three conditions that a boycott should meet before we ought to join it.

First, the boycott should be organized. The marketplace can be chaotic. A variety of reasons determine consumer choices. Businesses are left with raw sales figures and must determine the reasons behind any changes. Suppose many joined in on our clothing boycott. Unless our messaging is organized, the corporation may never attribute the sales decline to consumer outrage and thus our message will not be received. So, our boycott should be organized in some form, whether this is through petitions, messaging on social media, etc.

Second, the boycott must have a clear goal. For a behavior to be wrong, there must be something else that one could perform. This is one implication of a principle that philosophers call “ought implies can.” If I told you that breathing was wrong due to the chance that you might inhale and kill a small insect, you’d be right to respond incredulously – you cannot stop breathing, so breathing cannot be wrong. By having a clear goal (which it sends through its organized messaging) a boycott makes the case that the behavior of the corporation is wrong by showing the morally superior alternative.

The organization and goal requirements have an additional benefit – they may allow us to avoid frivolous boycotts. For instance, some have boycotted vodka over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact that almost no vodka consumed in the U.S. is a Russian product. A more organized boycott would target specific, actually Russian-produced brands. Further a boycott with clear goals would not merely expressing outrage at a product due to its association with a particular culture – it would aim to send a message to an authoritarian regime, not condemn the people suffering under it.

Third, boycotts should send the message that a behavior is morally unacceptable, rather than merely disagreeable. This stands in contrast to actions that one merely finds displeasing or does not agree with. Unlike the previous two criteria, this is not a practical consideration. Rather, the concern involves the message we send when we join boycotts motivated solely by disagreement.

Imagine the owner of a local pizza shop made a series of posts on a personal social media account supporting a particular candidate for office. Screenshots of these posts then circulate, maybe on a sub-Reddit. Members of the community who support a different candidate begin questioning whether they should continue to order pizza from here. They should ask themselves: What message might a boycott send?

Well, the boycotters might be seen as expressing the sentiment that they refuse to support others whose political beliefs run counter to their own. This is not an incoherent position to take. However, it is antithetical to the attitudes that enable the functioning of a democratic society. To live somewhere with a free, deliberative, and collective decision-making process requires accepting that others will not always share your outlook. So, we should not engage in boycotts simply due to political disagreements. Instead, the positions and behaviors worthy of boycott should be those that cross the line from merely contentious into morally unacceptable.

Of course, the line between the political and the moral is blurry. Indeed, political ideology may determine moral beliefs. This leads to moralism in politics; the attitude that one’s political views are universal moral truths which cannot be compromised. Thus, for many, a Venn diagram of the politically disagreeable and the morally unacceptable may just be a circle.

And this could be why calls to boycott have become more common in recent years. As political disagreements become increasingly more morally charged, they are less about the merits of particular policies and more about how we should live our lives. In a capitalist society, our behavior on the marketplace is part of how we live our lives. Thus, it makes sense that our decisions about what we buy and where are increasingly shaped by our political preferences.

Hypocrisy and Credibility in U.S. Foreign Policy

Wide-angle photo of a tattered American flag

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second week, much of the world appears to be united in opposition to Russian aggression and support for an economic blockade that has already caused the value of the Russian ruble to drop by thirty percent. Although Putin is still capable of snuffing out Ukrainian resistance, it appears that he underestimated both Ukraine’s willingness to fight and the world’s willingness to punish Russia for violating its neighbor’s sovereignty. Ultimately, Putin’s geopolitical gamble, which is aimed at resurrecting something like the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, may backfire spectacularly, leading Eastern European nations to embrace the West more fervently than ever before.

Of course, the United States has been among the leaders of efforts to sanction Putin for his war of aggression. In the diplomatic negotiations leading up to the war, it rejected Russia’s demand that NATO retreat from Eastern Europe. The United States plausibly believes that Putin’s objections to NATO expansion are pretextual. The man who famously said that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century would have waged war on Russia’s neighbors even without NATO expansion if they demonstrated a desire to align themselves with the West politically, economically, and culturally. According to this narrative, Putin’s aim is not, as he claims, to maintain a neutral buffer zone between Russia and expansionist Western powers, but to throttle the democratic aspirations of small nations. And U.S. support for these nations reflects its longstanding commitment to national self-determination.

Again, this is a plausible story, but when the United States tells it, its past actions undermine its standing as the storyteller. For over two hundred years, the United States pursued a policy of zero tolerance of other major powers’ involvement in the political affairs of the Western hemisphere, or even the political alignment of countries in the Americas and the Caribbean with other major powers. Thus, the so-called “Banana Wars” of the early twentieth century saw successive administrations invade various Caribbean and Central American nations, often to deter foreign meddling. For example, the Wilson administration sent the U.S. Marines to invade Haiti in 1915 because, among other things, he feared German influence over Haitian affairs and even a possible German invasion of Haiti.

During the Cold War, the U.S. acted aggressively to isolate and, if possible, overthrow Marxist or socialist governments in the Americas, seeing them as potential Soviet allies or proxies. In 1954, for example, the CIA toppled a socialist government in Guatemala and attempted to justify the coup by producing evidence of Soviet meddling in the country’s affairs. When Fidel Castro established a pro-Soviet regime in Cuba in 1959, the U.S. responded with an economic blockade, an attempted invasion, and numerous plots to assassinate him. The U.S. covertly backed a coup against a social democratic government in Brazil in 1964, and in 1965 it invaded the Dominican Republic in order to prevent what the Johnson administration believed to be a second Cuban revolution. In 1973, the CIA helped overthrow the Soviet-friendly democratic socialist government of Chile and install a pro-American dictator. When the Soviet-aligned Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua in 1979, the Reagan administration, fearing that they might export Marxist revolution to other Central American countries, backed the Contras’ bid to overthrow them through the use of brutal terroristic violence. And in 1983, the Reagan administration launched an invasion of Grenada, which it justified on the grounds that its non-aligned Marxist government was aiding a Soviet-Cuban military buildup in the Caribbean.

The point of this recitation is not to defend Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. When a blamer is accused of hypocrisy for acting in the same manner as the person she blames, the accusation does nothing to justify the behavior of the blame’s target. Instead, it calls into question the sincerity of the blamer’s commitment to the principle she blames others for violating. The accusation goes to the blamer’s standing as a blamer, and as a result, it has a tendency to affect others’ willingness to take the blamer seriously and to accept the blamer as a moral leader.

Thus, the U.S.’s actions in the Western hemisphere genuinely undermine its standing to blame Russia for waging aggressive war aimed at establishing dominance over its immediate neighbors. Of course, Putin makes just this point at every opportunity. As of now, most countries appear to accept the U.S.’s leadership. But how many politically-engaged people with a little knowledge of history have been led to sympathize with Putin’s agenda, or at least doubt the validity of the liberal international order, by their awareness of this hypocrisy? According to reports, many Chinese citizens, conditioned by years of Chinese propaganda harping on American hypocrisy in foreign affairs, appear to be largely sympathetic to the invasion.

Again, Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine is wrong. Indeed, I believe that it is my generation’s Spanish Civil War: a canary in the coal mine, a prelude to a larger conflict between the world’s rising illiberal powers and its floundering liberal democracies. I know what side I’m on. But for the sake of the liberal international order, the U.S. must take more seriously its responsibility to act in accordance with the principles it avows.