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Indicting Trump: Patriotism or Treachery?

photograph of American flag hanging from tall buildings

As I write this, former President Donald J. Trump is returning to Florida after appearing at Manhattan Criminal Courthouse for his arraignment. He has been charged with 34 felony accounts of falsifying business records to conceal his alleged criminal activities. However, this is not the sole source of Trump’s legal troubles. He is also the subject of several other criminal investigations regarding storing highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, tampering in the 2020 Georgia state election, and his role in the January 6th insurrection.

Prosecuting former world leaders is nothing new. Former French presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy have each separately been found guilty of corruption. South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma was charged with corruption in 2021. In 2013, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi was convicted of paying an underage girl for sex (which was overturned on appeal) and, in 2014, was given community service for tax fraud. South Korea has convicted five former leaders for various crimes, including Park Geun-hye, for bribery and abuse of power in 2018, Lee Myung-bak for bribery in 2018, and Chun Doo-hwan for mutiny, treason, and corruption in 2017. However, indicting a former leader is a novelty for the United States. No other U.S. president has faced criminal charges, although Watergate brought Nixon close.

Democrats and those on the left side of American politics, like Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, and Jason Crow, have said that, despite its unprecedented nature, the indictment is an example of the U.S. legal system working as it should – no one, not even a former president, is above the law, and when evidence is found of wrongdoing, the consequences must be applied without fear or favor.

For Republicans and those falling to the right side of the political spectrum, including those who identify as diehard Trump supporters, the whole thing is politically motivated and, at its worst, an effort to subvert the democratic process. Trump himself has railed against both Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, and Juan Merchan, the judge handling the case. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said the indictment shows that the Democrats have become a party of violence and compared Trump to Jesus and Nelson Mandela. Ron DeSantis said that the charges are a weaponization of the legal system. And Kevin McCarthy said Bragg has “irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election.”

However, what McCarthy’s comment means is a little obscure. Why is this damaging for the U.S.? As outlined, other countries have no problem punishing their former leaders for wrongdoing. Indeed, if we take a broader view of populaces penalizing their leaders, jail is a relatively light load. For the extremes of such retributivism, we only need to look at France’s 18th-century revolution and the fates of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Louis Philippe (spoiler, they were guillotined). So, what makes this historical phase in American history so seemingly damaging, at least according to McCarthy and others?

Beyond any inherent political maneuvering to gain favor and influence, I would posit that the idea underpinning this claim is one that many of us will be familiar with – American exceptionalism.

According to this idea, the U.S. is unlike other countries because it is simply better. Something about the intermeshing of political, social, religious, economic, and legal systems makes America the best country on the planet, one which other countries aspire to but always fail to match. The idea has become so ingrained in U.S. political culture that it is a necessary trait for presidents. Ronald Reagan told audiences that he had “always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.” George W. Bush said that Americans “have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom,” invoking some existential, even divine, purpose. And, when politicians hint that the U.S. might not be as exceptional as others indicate, they run into trouble, as Barack Obama did when, while not even refuting American exceptionalism, he said it was no different from British or Greek exceptionalism.

This is why the indictment has caused such an uproar, especially amongst Trump supporters. He built his political brand on the idea that America is the world’s best country and should put itself first. To say that a former U.S. president is fallible, even criminal, is to directly challenge that idea of America being exceptional. If the reality is that America must charge its former leaders for crimes like corruption, election interference, insurrection, or anything else, then it has to acknowledge that it is just like any other country. Not exceptional, but as imperfect as France, South Africa, South Korea, or any other. It is to accept that the U.S. isn’t God’s chosen country but simply another one among them all. If this applies to the country as a whole, it seems it also applies to those who make up the country. If America isn’t an exceptional country, then Americans aren’t exceptional people but just like everyone else, which might be a hard pill to swallow. Worst still, they elect presidents, those persons who they feel best embody what it is America is and should be, and these living symbols themselves turn out to be just as flawed as any Tom, Dick, or Harry.

How should we respond, then? Should the visage of exceptionalism not be challenged? Indeed, do critics of the government do some terrible damage to the fabric of society when they highlight such painful truths?

I would say, in fact, the opposite. Letting a government, or those embodying its institutions, enact their will free of critical eyes allows such persons and systems to run rampant of the constraints it needs to be both effective and just. Power and the powerful have a tendency for self-propagation. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. If this trend is to be reversed, if equality and fairness are to be achieved, then the powerful can’t be left in the hopes that they will do it because, as history shows, they simply don’t.

Unflinching dedication to a country, cause, or even a former U.S. president, is not a loyalty that we should cheer but a failure to be excised. As the abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote:

I am one of those who think the best friend of a nation is he who most faithfully rebukes her for her sins—and he her worst enemy, who, under the specious and popular garb of patriotism, seeks to excuse, palliate, and defend them.

Trump has a loyal band of devotees, both in and outside the political arena. So, I suspect these charges will do little to dampen his political ambitions or his followers’ dedication. Indeed, since news of the indictment broke, Trump’s raised over $8M. Nevertheless, blind loyalty is bad for a democracy’s health. While the motivations behind Trump’s legal issues may have a political tinge, the fact that charges have been brought against him is not a sign of America falling into oblivion. Challenging the powerful and holding the mighty to account – be they individuals, systems, or institutions – is what a healthy democracy not only does, but should, aim for.

It’s unclear if Trump will face any repercussions for his alleged wrongdoings. But what is clear is that contrary to his most ferocious supporters, challenging him isn’t treachery, it’s what is required to be the nation’s best friend.

In-Groups, Out-Groups, and Why I Care about the Olympics

photograph of fans in crowded stadium holding one big American flag

We all, to some extent, walk around with an image of ourselves in our own heads. We have, let’s say, a self-conception. You see yourself as a certain kind of person, and I see myself as a certain kind of person.

I bring this up because my own self-conception gets punctured a little every time the Olympics roll around. I think of myself as a fairly rational, high-brow, cosmopolitan sort of person. I see myself as the sort of person who lives according to sensible motives; I don’t succumb to biased tribal loyalties.

In line with this self-conception, I don’t care about sporting events. What does it matter to me if my university wins or loses? I’m not on either team, I don’t gain anything if FSU wins a football game. So yes, I am indeed one of those obnoxious and self-righteous people who a) does not care about sports and b) has to fight feelings of smug superiority over sports fans who indulge their tendencies to tribalism.

This is not to say I don’t have my loyalties: I’m reliably on team dog rather than cat, and I track election forecasts with an obsessive fervor equal to any sports fanatic. But I tell myself that, in both cases, my loyalty is rational. 

I’m on team dog because there are good reasons why dogs make better pets.”

“I track elections because something important is at stake, unlike in a sports game.”

These are the sorts of lies I tell myself in order to maintain my self-conception as a rational, unbiased sort of person. By the end of this post, I hope to convince you that these are, in fact, lies.

The Olympic Chink

The first bit of evidence that I’m not as unbiased as I’d like to think, comes from my interest in the Olympics. I genuinely care about how the U.S. does in the Olympics. For example, I was disappointed when, for the first time in fifty years, the U.S. failed to medal day one.

Nor do I have any clever story for why this bias is rational. While I think there is a strong case to be made for a certain kind of moral patriotism, my desire to see the U.S. win the most Olympic medals is not a patriotism of that sort. Nor do I think that the U.S. winning the most medals will have important implications for geopolitics; it is not as though, for example, the U.S. winning more medals than China will help demonstrate the value of extensive civil liberties.

Instead, I want the US to win because it is my team. I fully recognize that if I lived in Portugal, I’d be rooting for Portugal.

But why do I care if my team wins? After all, everything I said earlier about sports is also true of the Olympics. Nothing in my life will be improved if the U.S. wins more medals.

Turning to Psychology

To answer this question, we need to turn to psychology. It turns out that humans are hardwired to care about our in-group. Perhaps the most famous studies demonstrating the effects of in-group bias come from the social psychologist Henri Tajfel.

In one study, Tajfel brought together a group of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys. Tajfel wanted to know what it would take to get people invested in ‘their team.’ It turns out, it barely requires anything at all.

Tajfel first had the boys estimate how many dots were flashed on a screen, ostensibly for an experiment on visual perception. Afterwards the boys were told that they were starting a second experiment, and that, to make it easier to code the results, the experimenters were dividing the boys into subgroups based on if they tended to overestimate or underestimate the number of flashed dots (in actual fact the subgroups were random). The boys were then given the chance to distribute rewards anonymously to other participants.

What Tajfel found was that the mere fact of being categorized into a group of ‘overestimators’ or ‘underestimators’ was enough to produce strong in-group bias. When distributing the reward between two members of the same group, the boys tended to distribute the reward fairly. However, when distributing between one member of the in-group and one member of the out-group, the boys would strongly favor members in their same group. This was true even though there was no chance for reciprocation, and despite participants knowing that the group membership was based on something as arbitrary as “overestimating the number of dots flashed on a screen.”

Subsequent results were even more disturbing. Tajfel found that not only did the boys prioritize their arbitrary in-group, but they actually gave smaller rewards to people in their own group if it meant creating a bigger difference between the in-group and out-group. In other words, it was more important to treat the in-group out-group differently than it was to give the biggest reward to members of the in-group.

Of course, this is just one set of studies. You might think that these particular results have less to do with human nature and more to do with the fact that lots of teenage boys are jerks. But psychologists have found tons of other evidence for strong in-group biases. Our natural in-group bias seems to explain phenomena as disparate as racism, motherlove, sports fandom, and political polarization.

Sometimes this in-group bias is valuable. It is good if parents take special care of their children. Parental love provides an extremely efficient system to ensure that most children get plenty of individualized attention and care. Similarly, patriotism is an important political virtue, it motivates us to sacrifice to improve our nation and community.

Sometimes this in-group bias is largely benign. There is nothing pernicious in wanting your sports team to win, and taking sides provides a source of enjoyment for many.

But sometimes this in-group bias is toxic and damaging. A nationalistic fervor that insists your own country is best, as opposed to just your own special responsibility, often leads people to whitewash reality. In-group bias leads to racism and political violence. Even in-group sports fandom sometimes results in deadly riots.

A Dangerous Hypocrisy

If this is right, then it is unsurprising that I root for the U.S. during the Olympic games. What is perhaps much more surprising is that I don’t care about the results of other sporting games. Why is it then, if in-group bias is as deep as the psychologists say it is, that I don’t care about the performance of FSU’s football team?

Is my self-conception right, am I just that much more rational and enlightened? Have I managed to, at least for the most part, transcend my own tribalism?

The psychology suggests probably not. But if I didn’t transcend tribalism, what explains why I don’t care about the performance of my tribe’s football team?

Jonathan Haidt, while reflecting on his own in-group biases, gives us a hint:

“In the terrible days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I felt an urge so primitive I was embarrassed to admit it to my friends: I wanted to put an American flag decal on my car. . . . But I was a professor, and professors don’t do such things. Flag waving and nationalism are for conservatives. Professors are liberal globetrotting universalists, reflexively wary of saying that their nation is better than other nations. When you see an American flag on a car in a UVA staff parking lot, you can bet that the car belongs to a secretary or a blue-collar worker.”

Haidt felt torn over whether to put up an American flag decal. This was not because he had almost transcended his tribal loyalty to the US. Rather he was being pulled between two different tribal loyalties. His loyalty to the US pulled him one way, his loyalty to liberal academia pulled the other. Haidt’s own reticence to act tribally by putting up an American flag decal, can itself be explained by another tribal loyalty.

I expect something similar is going on in my own case. It’s not that I lack in-group bias. It’s that my real in-group is ‘fellow philosophers’ or ‘liberal academics’ or even ‘other nerds,’ none of whom get deeply invested in FSU football. While I conceive of myself as “rational,” “high-brow,” and “cosmopolitan”; the reality is that I am largely conforming to the values of my core tribal community (the liberal academy). It’s not that I’ve transcended tribalism, it’s that I have a patriotic allegiance to a group that insists we’re above it. I have an in-group bias to appear unbiased; an irrational impulse to present myself as rational; a tribal loyalty to a community united around a cosmopolitan ideal.

But this means my conception of myself as rational and unbiased is a lie. I have failed to eliminate my in-group bias after all.

An Alternative Vision of Moral Education

But we seem to face a problem. On the one hand, my in-group bias seems to be so deep that even my principled insistence on rationality turns out to be motivated by a concern for my in-group. But on the other hand, we know that in-group bias often leads to injustice and the neglect of other people.

So what is the solution? How can we avoid injustice if concern for our in-group is so deeply rooted in human psychology?

We solve this problem, not by trying to eliminate our in-group bias, but rather by bringing more people into our in-group. This has been the strategy taken by all the greatest moral teachers throughout history.

Consider perhaps the most famous bit of moral instruction in all of human history, the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this parable, Jesus is attempting to convince the listening Jews that they should care for Samaritans (a political out-group) in the same way they care for Jews (the political in-group). But he does not do so by saying that we should not have a special concern for our in-group. Rather, he uses our concern for the in-group (Jesus uses the word ‘neighbor’) and simply tries to bring others into the category. He tells a story which encourages those listening to recognize, not that they don’t have special reasons to care for their neighbor (their in-group), but to redefine the category of ‘neighbor’ to include Samaritans as well.

This suggests something profound about moral education. To develop in justice, we don’t eliminate our special concern for the in-group. Instead we expand the in-group so that our special concern extends to others. This is why language like ‘brotherhood of man’ or ‘fellow children of God’ has proven so powerful throughout history. Rather than trying to eliminate our special concern for family, it instead tries to get us to extend that very same special concern to all human beings.

This is why Immanuel Kant’s language of the ‘Kingdom of Ends’ is so powerful. Rather than trying to eliminate a special concern for our society, instead we recognize a deeper society in which all humans are members.

The constant demand of moral improvement is not to lose our special concern for those near us, but to continually draw other people into that same circle of concern.

On Patriotism

photograph of a patchwork ofnational flags sewn together

As a child, I savored July weekends at the carnival in my grandparents’ town of Wamego, KS. Nowhere on earth was Independence Day, and the lingering celebration of American freedom, taken more seriously and celebrated with more enthusiasm. But today, these holidays and traditions draw as much criticism as they do excitement.

Recent events, crises, national shames and national triumphs, make it difficult to know what to do or how to feel during the summer holidays when most Americans spend their weekends in flag-adorned swimming trunks, celebrating the land of the free and the home of the brave. A new question confronts us during the summer holiday season: is it wrong to participate in celebrating a nation so rife with inequality, racial and gender injustice, and environmental degradation? Are these celebrations and traditions merely an attempt to put an optimistic gloss on a nation that we ought to feel anything but optimistic about? And more cynically, does participating in these activities serve to normalize the harsh and unjust conditions that many Americans still face?

G.K. Chesterton, a philosopher, theologian, and fiction writer from the early 20th century, considered similar questions regarding whether we should love the world — for, after all, the world contains many deeply terrible and unlovable things! Should we be optimists about the world, he asks, because it contains so many things of deep value? Or ought we to be pessimists about the world because there is so much suffering, and evil, and injustice, with seemingly no end? Chesterton ends up endorsing a third view in his book Orthodoxy:

[There] is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the pessimist. The assumption of it is that a man criticises this world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown over a new suite of apartments. […] A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.

Chesterton suggests here that loyalty is not something we choose to exhibit based on likeable features, but rather is something that we automatically display whenever we do work to make things better. Through this work, Chesterton argues, we show love and loyalty to a world that, yes, is probably quite bad. Conversely, by refusing to participate in this kind of labor of love, we resign the world to a quickly-worsening fate. So, loving a bad world can actually be a good thing, if Chesterton is right, because this sort of love leads to loving improvement.

There are problems with applying this view straightforwardly to our attitude on national pride — namely, while we cannot choose loyalty toward some other planet, we could choose loyalty toward another country. One obvious response to this objection is that there are no perfect countries! As we have seen in the past couple years, other nations have followed the U.S. in forming Black Lives Matter groups and holding demonstrations protesting local instances of racially motivated police brutality. Additionally, following Chesterton, we may wonder what the world would look like if everyone poured their loyalties and efforts into the very “best” countries (whatever they take them to be): without a people willing to love a place despite its deep flaws, is there any hope of improving conditions from within?

Chesterton suggests that the love we feel for the place we live need not lead to negative effects. But not everybody agrees that there is no harm in showing such naive loyalty. The philosopher David Benatar, in his book Better to Never Have Been, argues that, given the insufferable nature of human existence, humankind ought not to participate in perpetuating the cycle of life. His position, called “anti-natalism,” argues against the permissibility of procreation and in favor of working to reduce suffering for those who are already born. In support of this conclusion, he emphasizes two supporting points: 1) even in a very good life, the pain and suffering one must endure will always outweigh the pleasure and happiness they enjoy, and 2) there is no greater meaning or purpose to give a life of suffering any value.

Benatar echoes strains of French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’s “The Myth of Sisyphus” and The Plague in his description of human life as “absurd” — short and full of meaningless labor on the way to ultimate annihilation. If life in the world truly is this bad, even for people for whom it is “best,” then why allow it to continue? Ultimately, Benatar does not endorse hastening death for oneself or others — while life is overall a negative experience in virtue of the pain and suffering overwhelming the happy points, death (especially the process of dying) is even worse than life. But we should allow humanity to die out by refusing to procreate. This, then, is the opposite of what Chesterton calls an attitude of “loyalty” toward life on earth. Benatar sees this loyalty as blind faith and a cruel refusal to try to halt the long chain of suffering that human existence has wrought.

This perspective on earthly existence can help shed light on the position of those who choose not to participate in celebrations and traditions of national pride. Analogous to the anti-natalist, those against participation in such celebrations may see this kind of unconditional national pride as a mechanism for the continuation of the sufferings, injustices, and inequalities that mar the current state of the nation. Understandably, many may see this as an unacceptable price to pay for showing even the kind of self-sacrificial patriotic love that Chesterton discusses. Perhaps patriotic celebrations of national love or pride are themselves cruel refusals to fully grieve the ways in which citizens continue to face severe hardships and injustices.

So, what should we do? Should we join in the celebrations, ensuring that we include voices of criticism alongside voices of praise as equally important aspects of patriotic love? Or should we opt out of the celebrations, allowing our silence to send a message to others that the pain of discrimination, poverty, brutality, and other injustices, make our nation one that is not worth fighting for? Regardless of whether we choose to participate in specific forms of national traditions and celebrations, it may be worth taking to heart part an insight from Chesterton and an insight from Benatar. Chesterton brings our attention to the fact that things are rarely made better without people willing to love them despite terrible flaws. We might remember President Joe Biden’s response earlier this year when asked by reporters about his son’s struggles with drug and alcohol addictions, stating simply, “I’m proud of my son.”

Benatar, on the other hand, shows us that it is important to be discerning about who and what are worth loving and improving. While Benatar thinks that human life on earth is not worth furthering, loving and improving the lives of those humans who already exist is of supreme importance. And he argues it is perfectly consistent to reject loving “human life” while continuing to love individual living humans. Likewise, perhaps it is perfectly consistent to reject pride in a nation while loving and serving the individual people of that nation.

Both of these thinkers draw our attention to the fact that “pride” is more complex than we, or our national celebrations, have tended to realize. Is it possible to see the value both in participation and in abstention from celebrations of national pride? Alternatively, how can these celebrations incorporate a deep awareness of the ways in which we still struggle with discrimination, poverty, brutality, and injustice? Is our love for our country strong enough to weather the acknowledgment of these criticisms? Is our love for our fellow citizens deep enough to inspire us to take up a kind of love for our country, if that love could be transformative?

The Black Wall Street Massacre, Contributory Injustice, and HBO’s Watchmen

black and white aerial photograph of Tulsa Race Riot

On October 20th, the latest adaptation of Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s ground-breaking 1987 graphic novel Watchmen premiered on HBO; its opening scene featured the Tulsa Race Massacre, potentially “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history,” where thousands of buildings were burned and hundreds of black Oklahomans murdered in the Spring of 1921. Also known as the Black Wall Street Massacre, it was sparked when tensions escalated after a local black shoeshiner was accused of accosting a white elevator operator; because there was talk of an impending lynching, the black community protested, leading to an exchange of gunfire.

For many HBO viewers, the most surprising thing about the scene was not its graphic violence, but the later realization that the Massacre was, indeed, a historical event – an especially bloody episode in American history which, by and large, goes undiscussed in American schools.

Consider now the message that President Donald Trump, embroiled within an impeachment inquiry about multiple cases of corruption and misconduct, tweeted on October 22nd:

“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!”

Immediately, Trump was criticized for comparing the constitutionally-outlined impeachment process to the lawless brutality of lynching, a form of domestic terrorism almost exclusively used to reinforce racist oppression throughout the country by torturing and murdering black men. For anyone to draw (or defend) such an analogy requires, at best, an embarrassing level of ignorance or insensitivity about the actual history of racial abuse in the United States.

In different ways, both of these cases evidence what Ta-Nehisi Coates has called “patriotism à la carte” – a selective awareness of our national history that highlights certain favorable elements (or, at least, elements favorable to a particular subset of Americans) while quietly ignoring others. To Coates, such an approach to history is dishonest and, when it prevents some groups of Americans from being able to fully understand and engage with their current social situation, oppressive. Rather than cherry-pick the stories which we collectively magnify into cultural icons, Coates argues that an honest treatment of history will include multiple perspectives – even, and especially, if some perspectives emphasize that the U.S.A. (and its heroes) has not always been heroic for everyone: “If Thomas Jefferson’s genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemings’s body. If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.”

Furthermore, both the general ignorance about Black Wall Street and the specific ignorance about the cruelty of lynching demonstrate various forms of what Kristie Dotson, professor of philosophy at Michigan State University, has dubbed “third-order epistemic injustice” or, more simply, “contributory injustice.” In general, epistemic injustice relates to the ethical implications of how society mistreats knowledge claims from various parties. If a woman accuses a man of sexual assault, but her testimony is, as a matter of principle, treated with skepticism, then she may be the victim of first-order epistemic injustice, often called “testimonial injustice,” because her testimony is unjustly discredited. Cases of second-order injustice – also known as hermeneutical injustice – result when a person is not only unable to communicate their experiences, but is prevented from even privately conceptualizing their own experiences, such as in the case of harassment or assault victims prior to the coinage of terms like “sexual harassment,” “date rape,” or “marital rape.”

Contributory, or third-order, epistemic injustice comes about as a matter of what Dotson calls “situated ignorance” which prevents the voices of marginalized groups from contributing to the wider cultural conversation. By “maintaining and utilizing structurally prejudiced hermeneutical resources,” perpetrators of contributory injustice define what “counts” as “real” history; the fact that audience members of HBO’s Watchmen were surprised to learn about the violent mistreatment of the actual residents of Greenwood, Oklahoma may well stem from the systemic “à la carte” approach to America’s racial history that Coates decried. Importantly, those guilty of maintaining dominant perspectives may not consciously realize that they are silencing marginalized groups, but – whether such actions are intentional or not – such silencing remains and, therefore, remains a problem.

And when Donald Trump or others try to dilute the severity of America’s racist past by comparing professional accountability (and potential prosecution for legitimate crimes) to the painful history of the illegal and immoral lynching of innocent people, this also evidences Dotson’s concern to highlight the role that social power plays in maintaining the process of contributory injustice. As she points out, hermeneutical injustice entails that both a speaker and an audience are unable to understand the thing in question; in a case of contributory injustice, the marginalized group can fully conceptualize their own experience, but differential social positions prevent the confused people in power from attending to the less-powerful perspective – it is a lopsided confusion propped up by the ignorance of the powerful.

Interest in philosophical considerations of epistemic injustice, and the wider field of “social epistemology” as a whole, is growing; it remains to be seen just how long it might take for its insights to substantively contribute to the broader public conversation.

Should the NFL’s Players Have to Pay to Protest?

Photo of San Francisco 49ers players kneeling during the National Anthem.

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.


This May, the NFL announced a new policy—any team with a member who kneels during the National Anthem will have to pay a fine. The policy was decided by a vote of the team owners.  Union representatives for the players were not aware of the decision until it was announced. This new policy is a change in tone from the attitudes the league expressed last year and is a further development in an ongoing controversy sparked by players’ decision to protest by taking a knee during the National Anthem.  In August 2016, Colin Kaepernick made headlines for kneeling during the anthem in protest of violence perpetrated by police officers against people of color. Kaepernick no longer plays for the 49ers or any NFL team.  Amnesty International recently honored him with the 2017 Ambassador of Conscience Award.

The new policy mandates that players on the sideline “shall stand and show respect for the flag and the Anthem.” It may sound as if the players are being forced to express respect whether they feel it or not, but one key feature of the new policy is that it doesn’t require players to stand during the anthem.  Players who choose to protest may either willfully incur a fine on their team or may remain in the locker room while the anthem is played. Individual teams have the autonomy to decide how the fine is dealt with; the team can choose to pay it, or it can be imposed on the individual members who chose to protest.  On May 24, New York Jets owner Christopher Johnson announced that fines would be covered by the Jets rather than by players who saw fit to protest.  Moves like this by team owners are attempts to demonstrate respect for both sides of the debate.  Players may continue to protest without fear of punishment at the level of the individual, but the NFL and its teams will not have to deal with being viewed unfavorably by the public.

Some critics of Kaepernick and other players engaging in the same behavior argue that, though protesting is certainly warranted under some circumstances, and perhaps even that it is warranted under these circumstances, the form it takes, in this case, is inappropriate because it is unpatriotic.  The National Anthem is a potent symbol of our country. Kneeling while it plays disrespects the song and, by extension, the nation.  Some argue further that the United States was the country that made it possible for Kaepernick and other football players to make millions of dollars playing sports.  Protesting during the anthem of the country seems, to these people, to be ungrateful. They argue that this is simply not the forum to engage in this kind of behavior.

Supporters of the protest counter those claims in a number of ways.  First and foremost, they argue that the injustices faced by people of color in this country are far more pressing than any concerns about patriotism.  If injustices are happening (and they are), perhaps it is time that society at large stops telling people of color when and where it is appropriate for them to peacefully protest those injustices.  In fact, to many, it sure looks like this is exactly the right forum—these protests have generated widespread national discussion about racial injustice in this country.

 Supporters argue further that kneeling is not a gesture of disrespect.  It’s not as if the protestors were extending the middle finger at the flag while the anthem played.  After all, kneeling is a posture that many people take when they pray. Protesters did not engage in the most outrageous form of protesting.  The simply assumed a prayer position rather than putting their hands over their hearts.

Many contend that it is not unpatriotic to exercise free speech rights.  In fact, taking advantage of the right to peacefully protest is perfectly consistent with the fundamental values of this country.  A smaller group of Kaepernick supporters argue that it is no real, justified criticism to refer to Kaepernick’s actions as “unpatriotic,” because blind patriotism isn’t something that we should value in the first place.  Nationalism can be an ugly thing. When a person commits to being blindly allegiant to their country, they are often willing to overlook bad actions performed in the name of that country. It also becomes easier to behave as if the interests of those who live outside of that country aren’t important.

Another point made by critics of this form of protest is that it could have been done in a way that didn’t insult the troops. For many people, the act of holding one’s hand over one’s heart during the anthem is an opportunity to show support and appreciation for those who fought and risked or even sacrificed their lives in service of the country.  In response to this argument, people are quick to point out that the National Anthem doesn’t have one and only one meaning. It means different things to different people. One of the most crucial guiding motivations behind the formation of our country was the value of freedom of conscience. People should be free to respond to the anthem in a way that is consistent with their values.

A further argument offered against the protests is that they are being done during work, not during the player’s private time.  What an employee does during the time that they are at work reflects on their employer. In most any other job, if an employee engaged in a speech act in their capacity as representative of their employer and that message was not something the employer wanted to be conveyed, the employee would be risking their job.  The new policy addresses this concern because it offers a third option. Players who don’t want to stand for the National Anthem don’t have to. They can stay in the locker room until it is over.

Major figureheads have weighed in on this controversy. In 2016, President Obama acknowledged the importance of the values emphasized on both sides of the debate but indicated that he respected Kaepernick’s exercise of his constitutional rights and encouraged both sides to listen to one another.  President Trump has repeatedly criticized the protests, and Kaepernick in particular. Nevertheless, Trump has extended an invitation to Kaepernick to participate in a summit on race later this year.

The Moral Consequences of Protecting American Jobs

One of President-elect Donald Trump’s key campaign promises was to stop companies from shipping American jobs overseas. Since his election in November, he has already claimed credit for making progress on this promise. The President-elect has claimed credit for stopping Carrier from moving jobs in Indiana to Mexico. More recently, Ford announced that it had cancelled plans to build a new car manufacturing facility in Mexico. The January 3 New York Times article linked to above suggests that Ford’s decision was partially a response to Trump’s plans on trade policy.

Continue reading “The Moral Consequences of Protecting American Jobs”

Patriotism Run Awry

With the 2016 presidential election looming, we’re inundated with a number of messages from both major political parties. Many of these messages invoke patriotism as a reason to support one particular party or candidate over another. Republican candidate Ted Cruz, for instance, refers to “faith, family, patriotism” as fundamentally conservative values. Lest one think that only Republicans appeal to patriotism, in a Veterans’ Day speech, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders said: “If patriotism means anything, it means that we do not turn our backs on those who defended us, on those who were prepared to give their all.” It’s no surprise that both the DNC and the RNC have adopted the colors of the American flag for their logos and websites. After all, who would object to patriotism—love for and pride in one’s country?

I think it’s important to keep in mind that while patriotism can be a political virtue, it can also go wrong. One need not conjure up images of Nazi rallies in the 1940s or pro-Taliban demonstrations in Afghanistan to see instances of patriotism that many in our current political climate would take to be problematic. Our own political history should teach us that we ought to be cautious about patriotism given the opportunity for it to run awry. As just one of many instances, consider how claims of patriotism have been used in the US to justify discrimination against individuals with disabilities, particularly disabled immigrants. At numerous times in our nation’s history, immigration law has been used to keep out individuals that we think would ‘pollute’ or ‘dilute’ our country. Loving our country, it was thought, requires us to protect it. And protecting it requires us to keep the wrong kind of people out. The ‘Red Scare’ following World War I led to tightened controls on immigration as a way of keeping out those who had different political views.

But it’s not just suspicions of anarchism or socialism that led to restrictions on immigration. The US has a long history of using disability to the same end. The Immigration Acts of 1882 and 1924, for example, allowed for government officials to restrict the immigration of those who were either disabled or even likely to become so. In the early 20th century, immigration officials were told that “any mental abnormality whatever … justifies the statement that the alien is mentally defective” (Nielsen, 103), a judgment that could be used to prevent an individual’s immigration into the US. (Perhaps not surprisingly, such laws resulted in a higher deportation rate for individuals from Asia than from Europe.) These, and other laws, were used to exclude people from immigrating or to push them underground once they were in the country. In the late 19th and first few decades of the 20th centuries, numerous cities—from San Francisco to Chicago—enacted laws that prohibited those with disabilities or other ‘mutilated or deformed bodies’ from being in public.

The use of ‘disability’ as a way of marginalizing or discriminating against individuals in US history does not just apply to the disabled. It was also used to justify slavery in the 19th century. For instance, Samuel Cartwright, a medical doctor and proponent of scientific racism, argued that “blacks’ physical and mental defects made it impossible for them to survive without white supervision and care” (Nielsen, 57). In the 1870s, influential educational leaders argued that attempting to educate women led to their becoming disabled. And as late as the 1940s, the claim that Native Americans were particularly prone to disability was used to justify failing to extend full rights to indigenous population.

Finally, the US has a long history of using appeals to patriotism as a reason to forcibly sterilize the disabled. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ claim that in the service of the “public welfare … three generations of imbeciles is enough” defended the constitutionality of such a practice, which is not only legal but still practiced in numerous states. The reason for such sterilization, presumably, is for the good of the American people.

So, this coming election, feel free to be patriotic. But make sure that the vision of our country that you’re supporting and working to enact is one that is worthy of your love and pride. For not all patriotism is worth it.


Quotations from Kim E. Nielsen’s A Disability History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012). For a discussion of how eugenics influenced US perceptions of disability and contributed to immigration restrictions, see Daniel J. Kelves’ In the Name of Eugenics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 1985).