New blog: Logos and Liberty

 I've decided to start a new blog on Substack, which I have titled Logos and Liberty. I am doing this for three reasons: first, I want to cover a wider range of topics, including religion and speculative philosophy; second, I want to reach a wider audience; and third, Substack offers the possibility of earning income without relying on ad sales. I will be reprinting some of my works from this blog but along with new material.

I have not decided if I will continue to publish new material here, but I will continue to maintain it as an archive.

This blog didn't get many readers. If you are one of them, thank you!

15 weeks

Having gotten involved in politics, the dirty little secret, I think, is this: Politicians on neither side want this issue resolved. It is a great issue to bring voters out, to get people outraged, to raise money. They don’t want it resolved.

--Carly Fiorina on The View, 9/21/2021

Carly Fiorina is correct; since 1976, her party has used abortion as an effective wedge issue -- despite the fact that prior to 1976 most Republican voters approved of Roe v. Wade. Abortion was legalized in New York in 1970 (three years before Roe v. Wade) with the support of a Republican governor [1]. Feminists have demanded that the Democratic Party incorporate pro-choice language into its platform -- despite the fact that the percentage of women who describe themselves as pro-life has never dropped below 41%, according to Gallup [2]. Over the years, Democrats have repeatedly used the abortion issue to fire up the base whenever the prospect of another GOP Supreme Court pick loomed, but it is unclear whether this appeal turns out more voters than it turns off. Judging by the 2000 presidential election results, this is a losing tactic. In its early days, the pro-life movement had more support among far-left pacifists than it had among establishment conservatives [3].

Fiorina cites a poll saying that most Americans think abortion should be legal in the first trimester, but most think it should be illegal after that. Polls have consistently shown that most Americans do not want a complete ban on abortion, but neither do they want it completely unrestricted [4].

Today, SCOTUS takes up Dobbs v. Jackson, concerning the constitutionality of Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, which bans on abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy, with exceptions for severe fetal abnormality or medical emergency. What if Congress were to beat SCOTUS to the punch? After the passage of the Texas antiabortion law, Democrats in the House passed a bill codifying Roe v. Wade (the Women's Health Protection Act), which has no chance of being passed in the Senate in its current form. But what if the bill were modified to reduce the 24-week limit on abortions to 15 weeks? What if elected officials could get past the use of abortion as a tool to manipulate various constituencies and actually tried to resolve the issue in a way that most Americans could accept? Passage of such a law would still go against Roe v. Wade and would therefore require judicial review, but there is reason to believe that the current SCOTUS might go along with more limits on abortion. We shall soon see.

Many European countries limit abortion on demand to 12 weeks; after that, there are restrictions. If those on the pro-life side can live with a 15-week limit on unrestricted abortions, those on the pro-choice side should accept it. Of course, it’s not that simple; many activists on the pro-life side would not, in fact, be content with a 15-week ban. Still, a 15-week ban could be a step toward a commonsense consensus. 

The country desperately needs such a consensus. In the face of the pandemic, climate change, and many other domestic and international threats to our institutions and security, we need something like a unity government. The country needs to come together around the problems that we all recognize and compromise on issues that divide us.

Activists on both sides will say that there can be no compromise on rights. In the context of this debate, this kind of table-thumping gets us nowhere.

Feminists claim that this is about patriarchal control of women's bodies. But there are more women than men in the US, and more women vote, and it has been that way for a long time. Most women do not favor the extreme position on abortion that certain feminists advocate in their name; if they did, the matter would have been settled long ago.

Pro-lifers should note that the abortion rate is lower in much of Western Europe, even in countries where abortions are paid for at public expense, and higher in other places in which abortion is illegal [5]. They should look at the results of Prohibition in the US. Outlawing alcohol through political maneuvers that failed to achieve consensus on the moral issue did not end alcohol consumption. It did generate an enormous black market to cater to the demand, which in turn led to the rapid growth of murderous criminal organizations. They should look at Ireland, where abortion was illegal for decades, but rather than ending abortion, thousands of Irish women simply went to the UK or other places for abortions every year, and the moral consensus that had initially supported the ban on abortion rotted away. The ban was overturned in 2018. Something similar is happening in Texas. In response to the new restrictions, many women are going to other states for abortions or using abortifacients.

The US abortion rate is 13 per 1000 women. If the goal is to save unborn lives, which state of affairs is preferable -- that of Switzerland (where abortion is legal and paid for by the government, and the abortion rate is 5 per 1000), or Colombia (where abortion is generally illegal, and the abortion rate is 34 per 1000)? [Ibid.]

If SCOTUS upholds Mississippi's ban on abortions after 15 weeks, but does not strike down Roe v. Wade, those on the pro-life side will still be free to picket abortion clinics, support women facing crisis pregnancies, and work to change hearts and minds, which in the end is the only effective way to prevent abortions.

If SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade completely, then will abortion just become an issue at the state level? And then will many states follow the path that Ireland trod, with abortion illegal, women getting abortions anyway, and eventually legalizing it? Maybe, but I doubt that it will go away as a national issue. I fear that, as Fiorina says, it is too useful as a political tool. It will become a legislative football, with both sides trying to enact legislation at the national level, and if such legislation ever passes, then the focus will be on overturning it.

This should worry progressives because it becomes an obstacle to necessary reforms in other areas. The filibuster has been a tool of reactionary politics for generations, but pro-choice organizations have opposed getting rid of it, because if SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade and the GOP regains control of Congress and the presidency, the filibuster will be the only way to prevent a national ban on abortions. Pro-choice activists have shown themselves willing to subordinate the entire progressive agenda to their issue.

Meanwhile, the Trumpist/fascist wing of the GOP has shown that it is willing to subvert majority rule and rule of law in order to get and retain power. If they can get just enough support to get their minions into key positions just long enough, then they will effectively be able to enact one-party minority rule. Wedge issues like abortion are key to their strategy, along with voter suppression and gerrymandering.

A SCOTUS ruling that allows states to ban abortion after 15 weeks but does not strike down Roe v. Wade may be the best outcome at this time. Such an outcome would disappoint or dismay single-issue voters on both sides, but it would reflect the longstanding position of the majority of the American people.

Image credit: Jarek Tuszińsky via Wikimedia

Notes:

[1]  The GOP's Abortion Strategy: Why Pro-Choice Republicans Became Pro-Life in the 1970s | Journal of Policy History | Cambridge Core

See also How Republicans Became Anti-Choice | by Sue Halpern

Update 12 May 2022: See also The Religious Right and the Abortion Myth by Randall Balmer, Politico

[2] Abortion Trends by Gender (Gallup)

[3] The Vestiges of the Pro-Life Movement's Liberal Origins (University of Notre Dame, Church Life Journal)

[4] Trimesters Still Key to US Abortion Views (Gallup)

See also Polls: Most Americans support the right to abortion, but many are also OK with 15-week limit (Yahoo News)

[5] Abortion Worldwide 2017 (Guttmacher Institute)

See also https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Abortion/Abortion-rate

Letter to an American

Dear Prof. Richardson:

I have been following your “Letters from an American” with interest for several months. I have read How the South Won the Civil War and look forward to reading more of your work on the Reconstruction in the future. I share your concern about the oligarchic trend in US politics and the Trumpist/white nationalist/fascist threat to our republican institutions. One must be judicious with the expression “Big Lie”, considering its origin, but I think your application of it to Trumpist disinformation is fair.

But there is another “Big Lie” that has been popular among the academic left for decades, one which you yourself have promoted unabashedly. That is the idea that the relationship between women and men in the US is essentially analogous to the relationship between blacks and whites. I don’t see how anyone can believe this after 2020.

I could cite government statistics and talk about all the areas in which the analogy of women:men::black:white doesn’t hold: life expectancy, educational attainment, incarceration, workplace death, etc., and I could talk about the way liberal feminists have prioritized the concerns of middle-class white women over the needs of African-Americans and the poor. I’m not going to bother because I’m confident that you know all that. (I’ve included some links below anyway for interested readers; scroll down to "Statistics: comparing race and sex".) 

You know all that, yet you talk as if the post-Vietnam progressive coalition, of which feminists and African-Americans are key constituencies, has been part of American society since the founding of the nation. The current leftist politics of identity and demonization of cisgendered straight white males are problematic enough when applied to our own times, yet you seem to interpret all of US history according to the terms of this ideology. 

Here is a recent example:

[The Civil War] had changed the idea of who should have a say in American society. Before the war, the ideal citizen was a white man, usually a property owner. But those were the very people who tried to destroy the country, while during the war, Black Americans and women, people previously excluded from politics, gave their lives and their livelihoods to support the government. ("Letters from an American", 1 July 2021.)

More facts that you know perfectly well: All states had eliminated the property qualification for suffrage before the Civil War; the Civil War killed over 618,000 Americans, the great majority of whom were white males; most of the officers on both sides came from the propertied classes. While it would be fair to blame Southern planter oligarchs for dragging the country into war, white male property owners also led the defense of the Union. African Americans supported the Union to the extent that they could, but I have no idea what you are alluding to when you say that “Black Americans and women . . . gave their lives and their livelihoods to support the government”; no reasonable sense of that predicate can be applied unequivocally to both of those subjects.

Throughout your work, you portray white women as either passive victims dragged along by white men as they dominated everyone else, or as actively joining minorities in the struggle for justice. This portrayal is almost cartoonish in its distortion and oversimplification. Power is distributed in the US primarily on the basis of socioeconomic class and secondarily on the basis of race, not sex/gender. Women who have had access to advantages based on class and race have generally not hesitated to enjoy them to the fullest and have at times fought to maintain them. You seem to suggest that women have generally fought for social justice against individualism, racism, and capitalism, and this is plainly not accurate. I have learned much from your work, but when I see the extent to which your interpretations are driven by a contemporary agenda, I do not know whether I can trust the conclusions you draw.

Maybe we both would benefit from re-reading Paula Giddings’s When and Where I Enter.

Respectfully,

M. D. Robertson

Image credit: Adam Jones, Ph.D. - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22198182

For the sake of sensitive readers, I have obscured the racial epithet that appears in this photo. 

Statistics: comparing race and sex

Of all the areas listed below, the analogy white:black::men:women holds in only two areas: suicide and wages. In most of these areas, whites are better off than blacks, but women are better off than men. 

Life expectancy

In 2018, the overall expectation of life at birth

was 78.7 years, increasing from 78.6 in 2017. Between 2017

and 2018, life expectancy at birth increased by 0.1 year for

males (76.1 to 76.2) and females (81.1 to 81.2). In 2018, life

expectancy at birth was 81.8 for the Hispanic population, 78.6

for the non-Hispanic single-race white population, and 74.7 for

the non-Hispanic single-race black population.

CDC NVSS 2017 data (pub. 17 Nov 2020)

Life expectancy at birth, in years:

Hispanic females 84.3

All females 81.2

White females 81.1

All Hispanics 81.8

Hispanic males 79.1

All         78.7

All whites     78.6

Black females 78.0

All males         76.2

White males 76.2

All blacks     74.7

Black males 71.3

See also Living Longer: Historical and Projected Life Expectancy in the United States, 1960 to 2060

Analysis by socioeconomic status 

“When did women start to outlive men” 

Education

Postsecondary

High school dropout rates

Earnings

By race and sex

By sex and occupation

The above link states that women make 81% of what men make, in aggregate, and also breaks it down by occupation. Note that this only compares people who are employed. It doesn’t take into account those who are unemployed, incarcerated, in the military, or have left the workforce. Other relevant considerations: men are judged by their earning power to a greater degree than women and are under more social pressure than women to compete for higher paying positions. Men are less likely to take time off after the birth of a child.

43% of American workers are women. Why is this figure so low, when there are more women than men in the US, and more men than women are incarcerated or in the military? A likely answer: More men than women are supporting a stay-at-home partner of the opposite sex. 

Suicide

Incarceration

Unemployment

Workplace fatality

Homelessness

Pro-Conscience revisited

My position on abortion is what I call "pro-conscience", which I outlined in this piece. The core ideas are

• People can disagree in good faith about the moral status of the unborn at the earliest stages of pregnancy. In the absence of agreement, the law must respect freedom of conscience.
• Past a certain point, however, the unborn deserve the benefit of the doubt and the protection of the law.
• Within constitutional limits, moral disagreements should be resolved by democratic processes, not judicial fiat.

I have long wanted to return to this topic and develop my ideas further, but I have been unable to answer several related questions to my satisfaction:

How do we define the "earliest stage of pregnancy", in which the issue can be left individual conscience to decide, and the later stage at which the state must protect the unborn? I suggested 9 weeks in my earlier piece, based on developmental milestones, but I would like to have a firmer ground to stand on. 12 weeks after conception is the limit for elective abortions in some European countries (10 weeks in Portugal). This doesn't solve the question in principle but it could in practice. What's good enough for secularist France should be good enough for pro-choicers in the US, and pro-lifers should recognize that pushing the ban much beyond that will not end abortions but will only drive them underground, creating a black market for abortions, as is currently seen in countries where abortion is completely illegal.

What would really happen if Roe v. Wade were overturned? Few on either side of the debate have offered honest answers to this question; both use the fear/hope of overturning RvW as a political talking point and don't offer any serious analysis of the consequences. If RvW is overturned, then the abortion debate would be moved to the state level -- unless it is codified at the federal level, which Biden has promised to do, but, like overturning the Hyde amendment, this is really up to Congress. The possibility of discarding the filibuster complicates this question.

What are the limits of local moral standards? If the abortion question were in fact returned to the states to decide, it seems highly likely that some states would keep it legal and others would not. This raises the broader practical philosophical question of what degree of local autonomy on moral questions is permissible. Currently, prostitution is legal in a few places in the US. After Prohibition was repealed, some localities continued to ban alcohol. Marijuana has been legalized in several states, though it is nominally still illegal at the federal level. Some states allow capital punishment. Slavery, however, is no longer left to individual states to permit or outlaw. What kind of questions can be decided at the state or local level, and what kinds of things rise to the level of inalienable rights that must be universally respected?

Since Biden's election, many new restrictions on abortion have been passed at the state level and some are currently scheduled to come before the Supreme Court, including a Mississippi law that outlaws abortions after 15 weeks.

Here is a summary of proposed laws around the US.

James Baldwin on writing with purpose

 

“You write in order to change the world … if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at the reality, then you can change it.” --James Baldwin [source]

As a blogger, I find these words both encouraging (in that it says this activity is worthwhile) and challenging (in that it ups the stakes).

Image credit: Allan Warren, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

What is and is not a militia

A few years ago, I started working on the S2A project, described in "Service and the Second Amendment" and subsequent entries to this blog. The core idea was that gun ownership should be limited to those who have served to protect the nation in some relevant way (armed forces, law enforcement, emergency response, intelligence, corrections, or diplomacy, including reserves, auxiliaries, and unpaid volunteer services). I hoped this might be a way to reduce gun violence in the US while increasing service participation and inculcating a deeper understanding of citizenship.

As I delved into the vast literature on gun rights and gun control, though, I became pessimistic about the effectiveness of my proposal to curb gun violence. I began to suspect that limiting gun ownership would not be enough without also addressing the manufacture and sale of guns. I also saw that those who have served in the specified ways are not necessarily less likely to misuse guns. So I put the S2A project on the back burner.

Recent events and developments have caused me to take another look at the S2A project, not so much for the gun violence angle, as for the other motivations related to service and citizenship. In particular, the growth of so-called "militias" and their involvement in threats to our republican institutions is deeply troubling. 

The media should stop calling these groups militias. It would be more accurate to call them private paramilitary bands. The writings of the Framers of our Constitution make it clear that when they talk about a "well-regulated militia" in the Second Amendment, they are talking about forces under the control of state governments.

For example, here is Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers #29.

And on the Anti-Federalist side, here is Richard Henry Lee, Federal Farmer #18

Both of these documents deal with the relationship between the national and state governments with respect to the military, and were written at a time when people were very concerned about the possible dangers of a permanent national standing army. Both construe "militia" as forces organized and trained under the authority of the state governments, under the command of officers appointed by the state governments, not self-appointed bands of private citizens.

(According to 10 U.S. Code § 246, all male citizens between the ages of 17 and 45 who are not in the National Guard or Naval Militia are part of the "unorganized militia". But joining a private paramilitary band doesn't affect that classification.)

The groups associated with the so-called "militia movement" of recent decades are not the genuine “well-regulated militia” of the 2nd Amendment. At best, they are hobbyists and cosplayers. At worst, they are domestic terrorists. So far, this movement has given us Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bomber), the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and the recent plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer, not to mention their participation in the insurrection of 6 January. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

Then there are the Boogaloo Bois, who demonstrated last year at Michigan's Capitol building  . This is a group that is actively preparing to fight a second civil war. The Civil War killed over 620,000 Americans out of a population 31,443,321 (1860 census). Anyone who considers another civil war a live option is either a traitor, a psychopath, a dupe of foreign provocateurs, or is cognitively impaired.

Private paramilitary bands and armed hate groups do not deserve to be called militia. Those who are seriously interested in bearing arms in an organized militia but do not want to join the National Guard or law enforcement have another option. In addition to the National Guard, some states have official volunteer state defense forces. They are unpaid (they may be paid when activated), are not deployed outside the state, and cannot be federalized in the way that National Guard units can be.

Michigan's Volunteer Defense Force website

MIVDF operates under the authority of the State of Michigan through the Michigan Department of Military and Veteran’s Affairs. The FAQ page on the MIVDF site gives further details about the laws under which MIVDF operates.

I have no connection with the MIVDF. I have no firsthand knowledge of the institutional culture of this or any other state VDF, but would I hope that their members do not support domestic terrorists or insurrectionists. I find it encouraging that the 5th Battalion of MIVDF posted the following message on their Facebook page after the plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer came to light:

We have decided to write a statement in the hopes of distinguishing ourselves the 5th battalion and other State Defense Force members from the type of groups like the one recently associated with an attempt to bring harm to the Governor of Mich.

Please be aware the Michigan State Defense Force/MIVDF is a state regulated military organization under the command of the Governor of Michigan. As a part of the authorized State Military we are force multipliers charged with assisting civil authorities. We hold no political or religious views, we are not in support of any forms of extremism or discrimination.

The better angels of our nature

 

Whichever way the election goes, and regardless of whom we voted for, should we be disappointed, violence is not an acceptable response.

I was going to write a post about options for nonviolent civil disobedience in the event one side tries to steal the election, such as a general strike, but I think instead I’m just going to encourage everybody to chill out and remember these lines from Lincoln's Inaugural Address:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

I invite you to also read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, reprinted in its entirety below, and recall that in between those two addresses, over 620,000 American lives were lost.

Second Inaugural Address.

Delivered at Washington, D. C. March 4, 1865.

Fellow-countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.