Guns versus liberty

In light of the horrific mass shooting last weekend in Orlando, I thought that I would link to a post I wrote last October: “An armed society is an unfree society.” It expresses (more or less) the reasons why I think that easy access to firearms reduces the freedom of citizens (in addition to all the other harms it causes with respect to loss of life, health, etc.). In other words, the debate over gun control in the US should not be construed (as it generally is now) as a debate between 'freedom' on one side and 'security' (or life) on the other. Rather, it's really a debate about the just distribution of freedom. And the gun control side is the one that promotes greater overall freedom for citizens.

On this topic, well worth watching is this hilarious rant about guns from Australian comedian Jim Jefferies (from 2014).

The moral duty of American citizens to vote against Donald Trump

Political theorist (and friend) Julia Maskivker has a recent piece in the Washington Post: “Yes, you do have an obligation to vote for the lesser of two evils. Here’s why.” I think that her position is spot on.

The forthcoming American presidential election will be between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It is clear which of these two candidates is the greater evil: the unstable, narcissistic, quasi-fascist Donald Trump. Trump plays to, and is in large part supported because of, the authoritarian impulses and racial resentments of many white American men.

I am no fan of Hilary Clinton. Her foreign policy record is too hawkish for my comfort. And based upon her past positions and ties to Wall Street, I have little confidence that she will pursue genuinely liberal and egalitarian domestic policies, especially within the economic domain. But Clinton is the candidate whom the Democrats have chosen, and whatever her flaws, I cannot comprehend how anyone can deny that she is several worlds more competent than Trump. His destructive and incoherent policy views aside, I find it unimaginable that someone so manifestly unbalanced – a person in the grip of a juvenile ‘dominance’ view of political relations – could have control over the United States’ nuclear arsenal.

There is no grey area in – or room for ‘reasonable’ debate concerning – this US election. American citizens have an overriding moral duty to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. And voting for Clinton is simply the most effective means that most citizens have to fulfil this duty.

Update on the Wisconsin GOP's unending efforts to thwart democracy

This is just a quick follow-up to my earlier post on the real aim of the recent GOP-passed Wisconsin 'voter ID laws': namely, to suppress the franchise amongst Democratic-leaning voters.

These laws presently are being challenged in court, and the former chief of staff to then-Senator Dale Schultz (Republican), Todd Allbaugh, has named names and presented some of the comments made by key Republican legislators in a 2011 closed caucus meeting. As Allbaugh makes clear, preventing (practically nonexistent) 'voter fraud' had nothing to do with the law; rather, it was all about suppressing the ability of people to vote in Milwaukee and on college campuses. Apparently, many GOP legislators were 'giddy' at the prospect of preventing many citizens from voting. (Unsurprisingly, the dim-witted and contemptible Glenn Grothman said this: "What I’m concerned about is winning. [...] [W]e better get this done while we have the opportunity"[.])

Update 1: Some further coverage at The New York Times and Talking Points Memo.

Update 2: My favourite American political commentator, Charles P. Pierce, has weighed in on the matter: "Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, has conspired with his pet state legislature to make it harder for Wisconsinites to vote."

Happy May Day!

I thought that I would mention that I have a paper coming out in the journal Philosophy, Politics & Economics somewhat related to this occasion. It's called, "Freedom, Money, and Justice as Fairness." (I'm not sure when it will appear in print; I submitted the final version less than a month ago, and I have yet to receive the proofs.) One of the things that I argue for in the paper is a basic right to discretionary ('leisure') time ("8 hours for what we will") for all citizens.

Here is the abstract:

The first principle of Rawls’s conception of justice secures a set of ‘basic liberties’ equally for all citizens within the constitutional structure of society. The ‘worth’ of citizens’ liberties, however, may vary depending upon their wealth. Against Rawls, G.A. Cohen contends that an absence of money often can directly constrain citizens’ freedom, and not simply its worth. This is because money often can remove legally enforced constraints on what citizens can do. Cohen’s argument – if modified to apply to citizens’ ‘moral powers’ rather than ‘negative liberty’ – threatens a core feature of Rawls’s conception of justice, as it is unclear why the parties within the ‘original position’ would endorse the lexical priority of the first principle over the ‘difference principle’ (which concerns the distribution of wealth) if both principles similarly shape citizens’ freedom. I concede Cohen’s point regarding the relation between freedom and money, but argue that it is not fatal to Rawls’s conception of justice if the ‘basic needs principle’ is understood to enjoy lexical priority over the first principle, and is modified to include a right to adequate discretionary time. Nonetheless, Cohen’s argument helpfully highlights the infelicitous nature of Rawls’s terminology with respect to liberty: the basic needs principle, the first principle, and the difference principle all should be understood as shaping citizens’ freedom to exercise their moral powers.

Growing up in Ontario, I regularly was exposed to commercials for "Lotto 6/49" on television. These commercials annoyed me to no end, but the slogan "Imagine the Freedom" became firmly imprinted onto my brain. Many years later, when I read G.A. Cohen's paper, "Freedom and Money," the slogan leapt back into my consciousness, as it seemed to express perfectly Cohen's core thesis (roughly: the more money one has, the more 'negative liberty' one has). So I became determined to incorporate a reference to those blasted commercials in the paper itself.

In case any readers are curious, here is a relatively recent Lotto 6/49 commercial:

Cheers!

From Macbeth to political philosophy

William Shakespeare died 400 years ago today. It is partially his fault that I became a professional political philosopher.

In high-school we (the teenagers of Ontario) had to study one Shakespeare play every year. In grade 12 it was Macbeth. The students in my class were allowed to design their own assignments, so I decided to write a "Machiavellian" assessment of Macbeth's strategy and actions in achieving and using political power. This involved reading The Prince, summarizing the main points, and applying them to Macbeth.

I don't remember much of what I wrote now, but it was one of the very few high-school assignments that I did not put off until the night before it was due. I loved it.

When I went to university afterwards, I decided to take some courses on political theory because of that experience. And, many years later, I ended up teaching political philosophy for a living -- though not Machiavelli, alas, as he's generally not covered within philosophy courses.  (This is one of the noteworthy differences with respect to 'the canon' between 'political theory' as taught within political science departments, and 'political philosophy' as taught within philosophy departments. I started out in political science, and indeed began a PhD after completing a politics MPhil at Oxford, but eventually moved to philosophy.)

So to the Bard: happy 'death day'!

The banana republicanisation of Wisconsin continues

[Cartoon from here.]

In recent years Republicans around the United States have been pushing for and passing demanding new ‘voter ID’ laws. Wisconsin, under the malign leadership of Governor Scott Walker, has been no exception. Republicans claim that such laws are necessary to deal with the menace of ‘in-person’ voter fraud. But such crimes are exceptionally rare: far, far more people are struck by lightning than commit voter fraud by impersonation. And implementing voter ID laws costs money (something about which Republicans often pretend to express concern). So what is the actual rationale for these laws? It is no mystery: to suppress the ability to vote of people who tend to support Democratic candidates, such as students, the poor, and members of minority communities.

Of course Republican politicians are careful to avoid making explicit the fact that voter ID laws are about disenfranchising their political opponents. But following last Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin, one especially nasty and dim-witted congressman, Glenn Grothman, noted that voter ID would help the GOP in Wisconsin this November: “now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well." Apparently Grothman forgot that he was not supposed to explain the real reason for Wisconsin’s voter ID law on television!

At the same time, former Republican Todd Albaugh explained that he had abandoned the Wisconsin GOP in disgust in 2011 over precisely this issue:

“[T]his was the last straw: I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American's constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power.”

(There is an interview with Albaugh here. And for an amusing takedown of these kinds of laws, check out this video by Seth Myers.)

Of course, the voter ID disenfranchisement strategy is but one symptom of Wisconsin’s collapse as a legitimate democracy under the Republican Party. The judicial election on Tuesday was pretty much decided by ‘dark money’ spending, which favoured the right-wing homophobe (and winner) Rebecca Bradley by 4:1.

Every day I find myself stunned (at least for a few moments) at how badly this state has declined since I began my job at UWM in 2008. It has been transformed from a reasonably politically progressive place (at least for an American Midwestern state) – one with strong anti-corruption institutions and laws, and the best protections of academic freedom within the country – into a corrupt, plutocratic, economically stagnant backwater with only faux tenure for professors within the UW system. The ‘Wisconsin Idea’ and the legacy of ‘Fightin Bob’ LaFollette and other Wisconsin progressives have been thoroughly shredded.

Wisconsin's assault on academic freedom

Over at Slate, Rebecca Schuman does a solid job of summarizing the current assault on academic freedom within the University of Wisconsin system in her piece, "The End of Research in Wisconsin."

Some especially important bits:

“This past June, American academia went into an uproar over Gov. Scott Walker’s new budget in Wisconsin, which not only cut $250 million from higher education, but also severely weakened shared faculty governance and effectively destroyed professor tenure at state universities.”

“[T]he situation in Wisconsin is worse than your garden-variety corporatization. […] Academics, whether they have it or not, want some form of tenure to exist to protect the integrity of the knowledge that is produced, preserved, and disseminated.”

“Wisconsin professors simply do not want research limited by the whims of 18 people appointed by a governor with an openly stated anti-education agenda. And you shouldn’t, either. Think university research doesn’t affect you? You’re wrong. Hundreds of technological and social advances that you depend upon have been made thanks to the research of some brainiac at some university somewhere: what kind of cities to plan; how (and where) to alleviate poverty and hunger; what kind of diseases to treat; what kind of drugs to invent (or make obsolete); what kind of bridges and roads to build (and where). If professors are not protected from disagreeing with the agenda of their ‘bosses’—whether that be Dow Chemical, Gov. Walker, or President Trump—the consequences will go far beyond one person’s paycheck.”

“What’s happening in Wisconsin is a worst-case scenario come to life, and $9 million will do nothing to stop the demise of the integrity of research produced there—and everywhere else, too, if we don’t start electing lawmakers who actually value research.”

Unsurprisingly, morale at the place where I work, the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, has been horrifically low this academic year.