Call it What You Want, This is Murder.

As write this, the great State of Texas is making plans to murder a man named Scott Panetti. Of course, if this murder is accomplished, it won't officially be called that; legally it will be an execution. Legal niceties, however, don't effect moral realities and if Scott Panetti dies at the hands of the state, it will be murder, whatever the law calls it.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I'm not of the view that every execution is murder. While I personally hold the opinion that capital punishment should be abolished, I recognise, as does the Catholic Church, that the state has the right to punish sufficiently heinous crimes with the death penalty. In the case of Scott Panetti, however, I fail to see how any person could regard the execution as morally justifiable.

Panetti has been sentenced to die for the 1992 murder of his in laws. There is no real doubt that Panetti did kill them. The reason his execution is so obviously unjust, however, is first, there is good reason to doubt his sanity at the time, and second, because his 1995 trial was a clear travesty.

Scott Panetti is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. In the years leading up to the 1992 killing he had no fewer than three compulsory admissions to mental hospitals, all on the same diagnosis. At his 1995 trial, he chose to represent himself, giving as his reason for doing so that he believed his appointed lawyer was part of a conspiracy against him. At the trial he dressed in a purple cowboy suit, called himself 'Sarge' and attempted to subpoena the then Pope, the late President John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ.

So, this ought to be the end of the matter, there is good reason to doubt his sanity at the time of the killings and he clearly wasn't fit to defend himself at his trial, he should be locked up for his own and others' protection but should not be put to death. Some, however, don't see it that way. Texas' governor, Rick Perry, has repeatedly refused to intervene in the case. Perry was candidate for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2012 and has flagged the possibility of running again in 2016. He likes to put himself forward as pro-life and a defender of Christian moral values.

In similar manner, one of those defending Panetti's death sentence in the federal courts has been Ted Cruz. Cruz, who defended the sentence in his capacity as the state's attorney general, is now a US Senator and darling of the 'Tea Party'. He also presents himself as a champion of pro-life values.

For anyone with a basic understanding of Christian moral philosophy or even basic humanity, understanding this should not be difficult. For Christians, one of the great glories of humanity is our freedom of the will. Our moral responsibility grows out of that freedom. For this reason, while we generally want humans punished when they do something wrong, we don't demand to see the tools they used or the clothes they wore punished, because we recognise that these things don't have free will. For the same reasons, people are not generally held accountable for what they do accidentally because they did not freely will it. (They are punished for the results of their negligence, but the negligence was freely chosen, even if the consequence wasn't.)

In the case of the mentally ill, however, that free will is impaired. In the case of someone as clearly insane and delusional as Panetti, that freedom is impaired to such a great degree that he can reasonably be deemed no more morally responsible that one of the weapons he used. In such circumstances, the state has no moral right to execute him and, should it do so, his death will morally be a murder, whatever the great State of Texas shall call it.

Ramadan Mubarak!

So, yesterday began the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. I'm not sure if any Muslims will read this post, but, if any of you do, my sincere good wishes for the fast.

I can imagine some eyebrows being raised at a Catholic Apologist wishing Muslims well in something tied to their religion. So that there are no misunderstandings, let me be clear; I believe public revelation ended with Christ and His apostles. For this  reason (and a number of other reasons) I believe that my Islamic friends are mistaken in their belief that Muhammad was a prophet. Logically enough, I therefor believe that they are mistaken in thinking that the Ramadan fast is something God commanded. To get an idea of why I reject Islam, you can watch my debate with Abdullah Kunde.

For all that I disagree with my Muslim friends, however, there are many things they a right about. One of those things is the importance of fasting. Fasting is not a specifically Christian or Islamic thing, but is a spiritual practice common to a great many of the world religions. For the Christian fasting is something Christ commands us to do (cf. Matt 9:15) and recommended by many of the saints a spiritual masters throughout history. I find it a source of some sadness that many Catholics today fast so rarely and would be very happy if a growing familiarity with Islam would help to encourage Catholics to reconsider fasting within our own spiritual tradition. So, while I don't believe the Ramadan fast to be divinely inspired, I admire the dedication of my Muslim friends on this point. I also think it is reasonable to hope that those who observe the fast in a sincere (even if mistaken) belief that it is God's command will be blessed by Him for doing so.

What really inspired me to write, however, was this news story. Apparently Woolworths supermarkets have been putting up signs in some stores wishing people a "Happy Ramadan". I have to say, wishing someone a happy fast strikes me as odd, but I guess their hearts were in the right place.

Some people, however, are upset, labelling the wishes as offensive and "Unaustralian." This annoys me, although it also amuses me a little. If you are an Australia who is anything other than (a) an Indigenous Australian, or (b) of pure White Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage, the odds are pretty good that you are descended from someone who was once labelled "Unaustralian." This is particularly the case if you are a Catholic who is inclined to join the "Islam is Unaustralian" chorus. If you are such a person, can I suggest that you have a look at what was being said about your own religion seventy or so years ago. Indeed, I'm occasionally tempted to write a FaceBook post that would go something like:

First, we need to kick out all the Muzzies. They are probably all terrorists, or at least terrorist supporters ,and this is a Christian country and if they don't like it they can all go back to Arabia where they came from.

Then, we need to kick out all the Catholics. They put loyalty to Vatican City above loyalty to Australia and most of them are probably IRA members and if they don't like the religion of our protestant majority and our protestant Queen then they are all free to got live in Italy.

If you think the second paragraph is not the sort of thing anyone would say, do a bit of reading. I've read some of what was being said about Australian Catholics back in 30s by some of our protestant neighbours (not all of them, of course) and the above is only a slight exaggeration.

In any event, Woolworths gets an A for effort at least, and I wish my Muslim friends a sincere Ramadan Mubarak.

Understanding Class, a Rejoinder

Timothy Scriven has written a blog post in which he lays out his understanding of the Marxist theory of class. Tim has declared that his post is written in the hopes of stimulating debate and discussion and I offer this response in that same spirit.

Tim begins by arguing, reasonably enough, that in order to understand something you need to know what it is for. He then explains that the Marxist theory (at least, in his interpretation) differs from most other understandings of class in that its aim is not primarily to analyse society as it now but to identify how the system can be overthrown. As Tim puts it "Marxism sees everything in actually existing society through the lens of revolution." He makes clear that this does not mean that Marxism cannot analyse the existing state of affairs but that, as he put it "...its primary concern is with the instabilities, tensions and lines of possible motion within the system."

While Tim doesn't explicitly quote Marx's famous Eleventh Thesis on Feurbach "Up until now, Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it." that quote would seem to me to undergird his whole article.

This would seem to raise the question of why overthrowing the system is so important. Tim will go on to tell us that he doesn't want to overthrow capitalism just for the fun of it. He writes:

Our objection is that capitalism in its hundreds of years of operation has killed and shortened the lives of billions and drained much joy from the lives of billions more. We are not rebels without a cause... we are instead desperate people.

A number of objections could be raised here, but the deepest objection seems to me to ask how Tim thinks he knows the system has these features which merit its overthrow. The obvious answer would be that this conclusion is drawn from his examination of the system as it currently exists. The problem is that Tim has told us that his analysis of the system takes the overthrow of the system as it's starting point.  If the starting point of your analysis is the overthrow of the system and you claim to derive your belief that the system should be overthrown from the same analysis, you would seem, at least prima facia, to lay yourself open to a charge of circularity.

Tim, none the less, thinks that he can make the case for why the system ought to be overthrown. He makes a number of points in support of this:

To mention just two: we destroy vast quantities of food because the starving who need them who need them can't afford them and we seem to find it inordinately difficult to prevent our species from roasting itself to death since trying to do so would interfere with profit.

I can't deny that Tim has a point. The fact that wealthy nations destroy food because that's the profitable thing to do with it while famine continues to exist in the third world is a blight upon the present system and upon humanity. In wanting to end this, Tim stands shoulder to shoulder with Catholic Social Teaching.

Having said that and having declared that I'm a long way from being any kind of friend of unregulated capitalism, some of what Tim has to say strikes me as more than a little overblown. When I read Tim's comment which I quoted earlier, about capitalism killing billions and draining the joy from the lives of billions more I really wasn't convinced. Are there injustices which Capitalism (especially in its untrammelled forms) creates? Yes, I believe there are plenty. But compare the lives of many who, by today's standards are considered 'working class', 'struggling' or even 'poor' to their counterparts a hundred years ago let alone at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Is it not plain that the worker of today is better fed, better housed, has a wider range of educational opportunities and travel available?

Having established his starting point, Tim goes on to declare that aim of his analysis of class is to determine which force has both the interest in and the power to overthrow capitalism. Tim likens this to the plot of a classic detective novel.

We seek to identify a group with means and motive. We call the hypothetical group who have both the means and motive the 'proletarians'; after a Latin word meaning that the group of people who had nothing to give but their own bodies and wombs.

Now, it's a very long time since I studied Marx's sociology in any serious way and I don't have a direct quote to mind, but Tim's definition here seems to me to stand Marx on his head. When I first read The Communist Manifesto (longer ago than I now care to admit) it seemed pretty clear to me that Marx and Engels started with the fact of the Proletariat's existence and saw it as their task to demonstrate that it was in the Proletariat's interest to overthrow the existing system. On Tim's view, it is analytically true (ie. true by definition) that, if any proletarians exist, overthrowing capitalism is in their interest, it is then the Marxists task to show that anyone fitting this definition of a proletarian actually exists. I have to say, I'm not at all clear why Tim's variation should be considered any kind of advance.

Those are my initial thought's on Tim's post. Obviously, I'm not a sociologist and I'd be interested in Tim's, or anyone else's response to my thoughts.

 

Miraculous Transformations

I've noticed something interesting about certain political conservatives. Now, please note, I'm not saying this is true of all Conservatives, or even most and, if you are a Conservative who is reading this because we are friends, this almost certainly doesn't apply to you. Having said that, I've spent more time than was probably healthy over the past week reading some of the right-wing groups on FaceBook and other parts of the internet, and, in many of the people posting there, I notice something.

This something refers to the Australian unemployed, the homeless, the disabled and those who might broadly be described as "the needy." In the minds of the people I'm describing, such people seem to possess miraculous powers of transformation. The transformation goes something like this: whenever the conversation is about welfare policy, the aforementioned people are all bludgers who could find decent jobs and homes if they really wanted to and it's a terrible injustice that the taxes of hard working Australians get wasted on subsidizing these people's laziness. If, however, the topic turns to foreign policy, and more specifically to foreign aid, those same people are magically discovered to be poor Aussie battlers who both need and deserve a hand up and, obviously, we cannot be sending money overseas while there are all these needy Australians upon whom the government should be spending more money.

It really is an amazing thing and, as a legally disabled person myself, I was startled to discover that I posses such powers of transformation.

As astounding as this is, it is by no means the first time that such miracles have been observed in Australian politics. I can remember when John Howard first became Prime Minister, in Nineteen Ninety-Six.  After his election win, the unemployed underwent a change of a similar kind. Prior to the election, they had all been innocent victims of Paul Keating; they really wanted jobs, but the incompetence and heartlessness of the ALP government had created conditions under which there just weren't jobs for them to find. Within months, however, they had all been transformed into bludging layabouts who could easily find jobs, they just didn't want them.

What amazing folks, we unemployed and disabled Australians are; I don't believe J.K. Rowling's characters have anything on us.

Time to Get Out.

This isn’t an easy post to write. It involves implicit criticism of people who I like a lot, but it needs to be said.

Yesterday I chanced upon a recruiting stall for Notre Dame University’s ALP club. The stall was interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, there was no picture of Kevin Rudd or any other ALP figure and nothing promoting the present government’s achievements. The only prominent picture was of Tony Abbot and the recruiting pitch seemed entirely negative. There was no “join us because we stand for these values” or “join us because this government is good”. The message, so far as I can tell, was entirely “join us to stop the bad things Abbot will do if elected.”

I’m no stranger to negative campaigning; I was an active member of the ALP in 1996, when a large part of the campaign message was based on fear of a hidden agenda which, the ALP claimed, a Howard government would implement. (Most of this fear, I should add, turned out to be quite justified.) Even then, however, a typical ALP stall featured a prominent picture of Paul Keating and/or the local ALP candidate and would have some positive material about what the ALP was doing.

The second thing of note was that, among the warnings which this ALP stall was giving about Abbot, one concerns his views on abortion. This is significant; another of my memories of the 1996 election, in the debate between Keating and Howard, the compare, Ray Martin, asked a question about abortion. Both Keating and Howard responded with their personal positions but both were at pains to stress that this is not a party issue and that MPs in both their parties were free to vote as their individual consciences dictated. Both men struck me as being at pains to downplay the issue as one that any voter should consider in voting for or against the government.

Up until now, that has been the accepted pattern. The liberal party has no position on abortion, the ALP, officially has a “pro-choice” policy but also makes clear that this policy is not binding on any member. Traditionally, when the issue did come up, both sides were content to do what Keating and Howard did in 1996; stress that it was a personal matter for each member and downplay it as an election issue.

This seems, on the ALP side, at least, to be changing. When Julia Gillard launched the “Women for Gillard” group, her speech made a point of stressing Abbot’s supposed opposition to abortion as a reason to vote for her (or at least as a reason not to make Abbot P.M. which amounted to the same thing.)

This has, or ought to have, implications for those faithful Catholics and other social conservatives remaining within the ALP. As I noted above, I used to be an ALP member. I am well aware that there are faithful Catholics and other pro-life individuals within the party. Many of these are people I respect; a few of them are good friends of mine. I came to the conclusion a while back that remaining in the ALP just wasn’t a viable plan for a faithful Catholic. I was, and still am convinced that the party was moving in a direction which would eventually lead to the remaining conservative elements in the party being squeezed out. I could understand, however, why many of my brethren in Christ thought otherwise and I respect those who have stood and fought within the party in a consistent manner. As I said, I have good friends in that group.

This election, however, I think the situation has changed dramatically. When Gillard gave her “Women for Gillard” speech, for the first time in living memory, abortion was being urged, by a leader of one political party, as reason for voting for the return of that party to government. How all the pro-lifers in Gillard’s cabinet did not immediately resign is simply beyond me.

If you are an ALP member and a faithful Catholic, or a pro-life person of any other kind, you need to be clear about this. You are no longer simply a member of a party which, on paper, has a pro-choice policy but, in practice, treats the issue as a matter of conscience, you are a member of a party which is making this a campaign issue and you are on the wrong side.

I understand the reluctance of ALP members to leave. For one thing, where will they go? The Greens are even worse on this and other such issues and I fully understand why they can’t stomach the liberal side. I think the DLP has at least the potential to be a real alternative, but I can understand why many are skeptical. Surely, however, staying in the ALP has lost credibility as an option.

PS. I’m aware that there are those who have doubts as to whether Tony Abbot still is as opposed to abortion as the ALP portrays him as being. I’ve avoided direct comment on that because it doesn’t seem directly relevant to the point of this post.

PPS. Some might respond that I am being unfair in treating a speech by someone who isn’t leader anymore and one poster by one university club as representative of the whole party. In partial response to this, I’ll say that this poster was put out by Australian Young Labor and seems to be part of a national campaign.

PPPS. If any pro-choice individuals read this post, it’s obviously not really directed at you. That said, I’d be curious to know how you feel about the pro-life individuals within the Gillard and now Rudd ministries.

Parental Rights and Common Good

Apparently, as I type this, the Parliament of NSW is debating changes to public health legislation which will lead to mandatory vaccination of children. This provoked a considerable controversy on the FaceBook wall of a friend of mine (I imagine it provoked controversy in other places too) and, surprisingly enough, I was drawn into the fray.

The debate centered around two separate questions: first, does vaccination actually help or harm public health and, secondly, even assuming vaccination aids public health, is it acceptable for the state to coerce parents on this matter.

I avoided part one; I’m a philosopher, not a doctor and not a public health expert. On the second issue, however, I had a bit more to say. Now, I can imagine that many of my friends who are utilitarians/ consequentialists will find this an easy question. I however, am not a consquentialist; I think parental rights are a real thing and they need to be respected. On this occasion, however, I agree with the consequentialists in their practical conclusion. I think the value of vaccination to the common good is such that the state may legitimately over-ride parental claims in this matter.

I’ve laid out my reasoning on this matter below. Before I give it, however, I need to make a couple of a couple of points: I’m not, at this time, interested in debate on natural law theory versus consquentialism. If you are a consequentialist, or an adherent of any other school than natural law, please view the following as an exercise in “what if”. Second, while the effectiveness of vaccination and the lack of any significant risk thereof are premises of my argument, I’m not much interested in debating those either. Once again, if you are one of those people who disagree with the near universal consensus amoung actual health practitioners who regard vaccination as a good thing, treat the below as a “what if.”

One final point, the views, expressed in this post, are my own and not necessarily the views of any group I may be affiliated with.

1)      Parents have a universal duty to not needlessly endanger the lives or health of their children.

2)      Citizens have a universal duty to not needlessly endanger the lives or health of their fellow citizens.

3)      The state has a legitimate interest in legislating to ensure that people meet their duties under (1) and (2) above.

4)      While the duties under (1) and (2) above are universal, the exact nature of what constitutes “needlessly endangering” may legitimately vary from situation to situation.

5)      If, within a given society, there exists a certain technology such that said technology is easily available, that the use of said technology does not involve any significant cost or risk to the user and such that the use of said technology will lead to greatly reduced risks to the lives or health of others, then failure to make use of such technology violates either (1) or (2) above.

6)      From (1) – (3) above it follows that, if, within a given society, there exists a technology which meets the criteria given in (5), then, the state has a legitimate interest in compelling the use of that technology.

7)      In 21^st century NSW, vaccination does, in fact, meet the criteria given in  (5)

8)      It follows from (6) and (7) above that the state of NSW has a legitimate interest in compelling the use of vaccination.

Back to Blogging

Ok, so, I set up this blog almost a year ago, intending to post regularly and I've let the year go by and posted nothing. I apologise.God willing, it's my hope that I'll be able to get into a routine of at least semi-regular posting, but you never know.

What finally spurred me back into the attempt to blog was reading this article by Ms. Mary Elizabeth Williams. On one level, I have to congratulate Ms. Williams, like Peter Singer, she has at least this to be said for her, she is a lot more consistent than many on her side of the political divide. However much I disagree with her, I have to at least congratulate her for her honesty in facing up to the rather obvious fact that a foetus is a life, indeed a human life.

In attempting to reconcile this acknowledgement with her “pro-choice” position, she argues that all life is not equally valuable and that the life of the mother is more important than the life of the foetus she carries.

My first thought in response to this was that, if you are going to argue for the greater value of one life over another, you should seek to lay out in detail a criterion by which such value will be determined; Ms. Williams never really does this, or even, so far as I can see, attempts to do so. This matters.

Let me offer a hypothetical scenario. Imagine a person who is working in a job of considerable national importance; let's further imagine that this person has a large family to support. Now, let us further suppose this person is in need of a heart transplant and is facing death soon if a compatible donor is not found and that the normal sources have failed to find a match. To add to this, let's imagine that a person with a compatible heart has been identified; he or she is unemployed, no job prospects and no close family.

Would Ms. Williams decide the second persons life was worth less than the first and support putting him or her to death (painlessly of course) so this his or her heart can be harvested? I feel reasonably confident she would not, but, having told us that lives are not of equal value, I doubt she could consistently defend this position.

My second thought was along a different line. Even if we accept that the life of the mother is more valuable than the life she carries, that is still not a justification for abortion in most cases. I can understand (though I would still disagree with) a view that says that the life of the mother is more valuable than that of her child and therefore abortion must be allowed where continuing the pregnancy would threaten the health of the mother. It must be noted, however, that these are a very small minority of pregnancies. If a woman does not feel she can be a mother, there is an alternative open. In any developed country I'm aware of (certainly in Australia) the number of couples wanting to adopt a child is far larger than the number of children available to be adopted. Under such circumstances, even if it could be established that a woman's life is more valuable than the life she carries, that would justify abortion in only a small number of cases. To justify the rest, you would essentially have to show that the life of the foetus is less valuable than nine months of inconvenience to the woman in question.

In short, Ms. Williams is to be congratulated for her willingness to face up to the reality that her “pro-choice” position involves ending human lives. Her attempts to justify this, however, simply will not stand up.