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Stereotypes and Muslim Presidents

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Jose Duarte has an intelligent blog post on the Ben Carson/Muslim President controversy over at Medium. I respond to some of Duarte’s critics in the combox of his blog.

Carson’s comments are all over the place, but here’s a link to the CNN version.

I’m not a believing or practicing Muslim, so my comments at Duarte’s blog shouldn’t be construed as a defense of Islam per se; they’re intended as criticism of the incredible hypocrisy and culpable ignorance of people like Carson and those who agree with him.

For documentation of my comments on political Catholicism, I’d suggest reading Geoffrey Robertson’s The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Violations. For documentation of what I say about political Judaism, I’d suggest reading John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s much-derided but in my view unrebutted The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.  Here’s Robert Menendez on the holiday of Purim. This is how Menendez’s thoughts on Purim were received by some of my supposedly civilized Jewish neighbors here in New Jersey–a rabbi, no less.* For a mind-blowing defense of the Book of Esther–including an explicit defense of collective punishment and mass murder–I would suggest reading Yoram Hazony’s The Dawn: Political Teachings of the Book of Esther. And here is the full text of the Book of Esther itself, which you can probably get through in about half an hour or so.

The more of this anti-Muslim hypocrisy I hear, the more I feel like reverting back to Islam and declaring a jihad against the unbelievers. If I could get over the whole God thing (heaven, hell, angels, Satan, miracles, prophets, etc.), I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Wow, I should probably be careful with these cardiac metaphors.  “Know that God comes between a man and his heart…” (Qur’an, 8:24).

*Postscript: I had originally said “Menendez’s comments” rather than “Menendez’s thoughts.” Just to be clear: the author of the blog post begins his post by praising a 2015 Menendez speech at AIPAC, but then goes on to praise Donniell Hartman’s claims about Purim in 2015, not Menendez’s comments as voiced in the 2014 speech I link to above. (Actually, Hartman goes farther than Menendez in endorsing the claims of the Book of Esther.) So the author wasn’t literally responding to Menendez’s comments on Purim.

This ends up being a distinction without a difference, because Menendez 2014 and Hartman 2015 are saying virtually the same thing about Purim. Anyway, since “thoughts” is a little more precise than “comments,” I’ve modified the post.

Postscript, October 7, 2015: It’s hard to know how to comment on something like this, except to wonder out loud how “mainstream” political discourse in this country has descended to a level this idiotic. How did we get to the point at which well-paid people shovel pure garbage onto the nation’s airwaves, regard it as political commentary, influence the electorate, and get taken for granted for doing so?

Postscript(s), October 10, 2015: A useful item worth reading on this topic. Hat-tip: Fauzia Qureishi and my Mom.

Things just keep getting better.

Rally organizers in New York City suggest demonstrators target mosques in all five boroughs. In Dearborn, Michigan, protesters are being asked to bring their weapons for an “open carry, anti-mosque, pro-America rally.”

I’m just waiting for the pro-gun types to say, “Well, if the Muslims want to protect themselves, they should just make sure to be as heavily armed as the protesters.” Actually, shouldn’t Ben Carson be saying that? Maybe next week we can look forward to the Retaliatory Rally Against the Judeo-Christian Tradition, featuring large mobs of armed Muslims gathering in front of churches and synagogues.

I’m trying to remember why my family fled the insanity of sectarian strife in Pakistan for the U.S., but it’s not coming to me at the moment. All I know is that escape to Israel or Turkey is not an option. Or Pakistan, India, or Syria. Even Canada is becoming iffy.  There’ll always be an England? 

Puerto Rico?

Rocket Men

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OK, so here’s my annual anti-Atlas Society space travel movie rant. Last year’s mean-spirited (but totally on-target) rant was directed against Will Thomas’s review of “Interstellar.” This year’s “rant” is directed at Ed Hudgins’s equally silly review of “The Martian.”

The truth is, I haven’t seen “The Martian” and I’m not inclined to, since there’s only so much Matt-Damon-in-space I can take, and I got enough of him last year to last me awhile. So I’m not really talking about the movie part of the review, even if it has that trademark Atlas Society feel of Randroid propaganda masquerading as film criticism:

The Martian is an uplifting film that does not minimize the challenges of life; indeed, Watney explains that he knew going in that space travel was dangerous and that he could be killed. But he says that once you acknowledge that you might die, you deal with the problem at hand and the next and the next. This is humanity at its best. Damon as Watney gives a fine performance. His character must keep up his optimism—without maudlin emotionalism or self-deceiving bravado. He must demonstrate intelligence and ingenuity. In all this we see the best of the human spirit!

Formula: (Ayn Rand + Sartre + Marcus Aurelius + Macgyver) / Elon Musk = A Hero for Our Times

robert-mankoff-look-life-is-nasty-brutish-and-short-but-you-knew-that-when-you-becam-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg (473×355)

No, I’m talking about the hey-let’s-travel-to-Mars part of the review. But this time I’m not going to rant. I’m not going to say a damn thing. Just go back and read Hudgins’s case for going to Mars. Then read Ed Regis’s “Let’s Not Move to Mars,” published in The New York Times a few weeks ago, and compare the two.

An excerpt from Regis:

These are only a few of the many serious challenges that must be overcome before anyone can put human beings on Mars and expect them to live for more than five minutes. The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke.

I link. You decide.

By the way, if you’ve ever found yourself wondering why the average educated person regards Objectivism as a cult for immature, fantasy-besotted lunatics, hold Hudgins’s and Thomas’s praise for Elon Musk in mind while you read this. Is the supposedly uncharitable stereotype really that far off?

Postscript: I just realized that the Ed Regis I quoted above is Edward Regis, Jr., author of “What Is Ethical Egoism?” Ethics 91:1 (1980), and editor of Gewirth’s Ethical Rationalism (1984).

We Are FU

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I am very happy to report that my institution’s bid for university status has been successful. Though there are still some bureaucratic hoops to jump through before we can start acting like a university, we are now officially Felician University, not Felician College.

Our acronymic predicament reminds me of a really stupid rhyme once recited to me by my graduate school buddy Michael Byron, who despite being a really good philosopher, recited it as a joke intended to elicit laughter. “Ever hear the Norfolk University cheerleaders’ cheer?”–Norfolk U being a well-known women’s university.

We are the girls of Norfolk U

We don’t smoke, and we don’t chew

Norfolk U, Norfolk U

We all laughed when he recited that. We were in our 20s.

It’s been a long week. Really long. It’s Friday evening, and I’m going home before I do any more damage here.

2015 Felician Institute Fall Symposium: The Ethics, Politics, and Economics of Water

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In honor of Hurricane Joaquin, I thought I’d announce the topic and speakers for this year’s Felician Institute Fall Symposium:

The Fourth Annual Felician Institute Fall Symposium–“The Ethics, Politics, and Economics of Water”–will take place on Saturday, October 24, 2015 between 1 and 5 pm in the Education Commons Building on Felician’s Rutherford, New Jersey campus. Speakers include Joshua Briemberg, Representative for Program Development, WaterAid; Britt Long, Esq., an attorney in private practice and one-time litigator for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation; and Don Conger, North Hudson Sewerage Authority. This event is co-sponsored by the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs, the Felician College Pre-Law Program, and the Felician College UN Fellows Program.

If you’re in the area, please stop by. Refreshments served (yes, fresh water, too).

Some interesting water-oriented links (not necessarily indicative of the content of any given speaker’s presentation):

wateraid (1)

Rethinking rights (3): what it is for B to have a claim against A that A perform PHI?

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Plausibly, patients having claims against agents comes to patients having standing to make claims (object, demand, complain, etc.). What does such “standing” come to, though? In order to understand this, perhaps we need to think of the relevant system of rules as being rules for a rule-governed social practice.  In short, perhaps we need to think in terms of social practices, how they function, what their aims are.

We can invent social practices and we might start by looking at these sorts of social practices. It is intuitive to say that I might invent a game in which, when player A lands on spot X (in her way around the board, the object being to be the first player to complete the circuit around the board in accordance with the rules), player B, who is the player to the right of player A, has standing to demand that player A relinquish her next turn. Plausibly, B having this claim (standing to make the relevant claim) against A comes to: (i) B being permitted, according to the rules of the game, to demand that B relinquish her next turn when A lands on spot X and (ii) everyone else collectively, or whoever is the “master” of the game if the game works that way, being required to enforce B’s claim against A (in some particular way), should B make the claim. In this way, standings to make claims are features of deontic systems of rules that implicate obligations to enforce claims that are obligations possessed by whoever is that is in what I’ll call the compliance-enforcement role.  In this way, claims are a function of the deontic rules of a practice that has agent, patient, and compliance-enforcement roles (in virtue of which one possesses obligations, permissions, etc.).  This seems like a better hypothesis than my earlier idea that claims come to practice-relative reasons for the patient to make claims (demands, objections, etc.).

It is possible that things like demands, objections and complaints get to be claims, when they are, only by being related to such a social practice (and one with the requisite general enforcer role).  It is possible, in other words, that a speech-act being a claim requires that it be part of a social practice characterized by the roles and role-associated obligations (or lack of obligation) as indicated.  I have to think more about what (descriptive) claims are and how they are different from objections, complaints, demands, etc.

What Every 21st Century American Should “Know”

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The journal Democracy is running an article revisiting E.D. Hirsch’s idea of cultural literacy, and looking for readers to help generate an updated list like the one at the end of Hirsch’s 1987 book, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. 

Here’s the list I came up with, completely off the top of my head (i.e., involving less than a minute of thought, since that’s all the time for thought I currently have).

  1. Wounded Knee 1890
  2. Wounded Knee 1973
  3. The Fort Laramie Treaty (1868)
  4. Russell Means and/or Dennis Banks
  5. AIM (American Indian Movement)
  6. Ayn Rand
  7. Atlas Shrugged
  8. The Fountainhead
  9. libertarianism
  10. BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions)

The list is totally idiosyncratic, and focuses on things that I either happen to be thinking about lately (1-5, 10), or that I’ve thought a lot about at one time or another but that tend not to make it onto lists of this sort (6-9). Arguably, I’ve also cheated a bit because many of my items overlap (e.g., 4-5, 6-8), and one line of the list contains two items (4). Whatever. I still think the list consists of things that every 21st century American ought (in some sense) to “know.” I don’t have time to insert hot links into my list right now, but will do so when I get a chance (perhaps “IOU” should be on the list).

It’s an interesting question what “know” means in this context. I take “know” to mean “recognize as something important and to know something about” (to be contrasted with drawing a complete blank on encounter with the item).* It’s not entirely clear to me what epistemic value there is to knowing a lot of items in this sense; clearly, Hirsch thought that there was enough value there to serve the pedagogical goals of an ideal educational system. I read Hirsch’s book a long time ago and saw him defend its thesis in a lecture sometime in the 90s. I suppose I agree(d) in a general way that ceteris paribus, having broad cultural literacy, even in a weak sense of “knowing,” was better than not having any. But I don’t have strong views on the subject. I just think it’s fun (and easy) to generate a list, so I did.

At any rate, if there’s anything to Hirsch’s argument, I’d argue that my items belong on the list. But I’d be interested in seeing readers’ lists in the combox (obviously feel free to add to Democracy’s list as well).

*For related discussion, see Pierre LeMorvan’s “Knowledge, Ignorance, and True Belief” plus the paper by Goldman and Olsson he cites.

A Traumatic Conversation

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Actual snippet of conversation with a nursing student in the college parking lot:

Khawaja: So have you decided on a specialization in nursing?

Student: Oh, anesthesiology, definitely. Starting salary is $160K. Cannot wait to make that much.

Khawaja: So you’re in it for the money?

Student (earnestly): No! No! I mean, right now my residency is in Trauma. Would I go into Trauma if I was just after money? I go into it because I love it. I love Trauma. Like, half the time I’m covered in blood. It’s awesome.

Khawaja: You like being covered in blood?

Student (puzzled): Well, yeah. Except maternal blood, like during a C-Section. Eww.

She’s a former student of mine. Ethics.