MAIL WITHOUT REPLIES (or with short replies): Mail with substantive replies comes later. Sorry I’ve taken forever on this. In reverse chronological order, starting with the oldest and moving to the newest. Christian soldiers; cloning; home ec; promise-making; what is a Christian?; science fiction and war; media bias; manners; and VX gas.

Paul Donnelly: I think you miss the point — a soldier has made a LEGAL commitment. Thus he (or she) is required to follow all LEGAL orders, and takes a huge LEGAL risk when and if she decides that some order is not legal. But when soldiers refused to obey Lt. Calley’s orders at My Lai, they were not breaking the law. I missed the original proposition — but I can’t think of any ‘immoral’ orders that aren’t also illegal, and so you’re confusing the primary obligation: soldiers take an Oath, you know. “What is an Oath, but words we speak to God?”

Thus, when you pose it as necessarily a moral question after the fact, you miss the point of the legal obligations a soldier has voluntarily accepted in the first place, which carry their own moral weight. Kipling pointed out in his marvelous short story, “The Drums of Fore and Aft”, that the ideal soldier thinks for himself, which is good. (He wrote this 120 years before our “Army of One” stuff.) But first, he added, a soldier goes through a period where he thinks OF himself, which is disaster.

The primary legal obligation which a soldier accepts is the chain of command. It flows one way — down. R(Remarkably similar to Roman Catholicism’s vision, ain’t it?) Superiors by definition have better information and more authority than those lower down. THAT is why it is morally wrong — in principle — for a junior officer, much less a non-commissioned officer or an enlisted soldier (sailor, air crew, marine) to disobey lawful orders. It places the entire military at risk — it’s known as “mutiny”.

For Catholics, mutiny is the moral equivalent of heresy.

I couldn’t come up with an example of an immoral order that an American soldier might be given that would not also be illegal. The hypotheticals I can think of, viz., Muslim soldiers who might refuse to fight against Muslims

(not likely — we’ve already had two instances of dutiful valor by American Muslim soldiers against predominantly Muslim enemies), are mutiny — which is presumptively IMMORAL, precisely because it requires breaking a solemn Oath that religious soldiers conclude with: “So help me, God.”

LOL — this is an Americanist idea, you know.

Well, Americanist/anti-Vatican stuff aside (since I am unsure a) what “this” in the last sentence even refers to, and b) what “Americanism” entails), I don’t remember the whole Christian-soldiers discussion super well, but I was specifically asking about what happens when soldiers are given immoral, My Lai-style orders.

Robert Wenson: Much of Mark Solomon’s letter is beyond my competence to address; but his arguments against the continuity of the self are pretty weak. Not that I have any strong arguments for it; I think it is a self-evident truth. Dr. Johnson once answered an arguer against free will with the words, “Sir, we know our wills are free and there’s an end to it.” Well, I know I’m the same person I was 10, 20, 30, and 40 years ago, and there’s an end to it.

Mr. Solomon argues that, (a) because the cells in my body die and are reproduced every month or so, I cannot reasonably say I am the same person I was last month; and (b) because my opinions or personality may drastically change, I cannot say I am the same person I was before the change.

(I will leave aside the argument that a person is not merely a body, but a soul-body complex, partly because I don’t know if Mr. Solomon accepts the concept of the soul, but mostly because I’m not familiar enough with the details to employ it usefully).

To answer (a): Mr. Solomon’s actual words were, “every cell in your body dies and is replaced by a new cell according to the dictates of your genetic code.” My genetic code is continuous. I have the same genetic code as I did last month, 40 years ago, and from the moment of my conception. To the extent that one emphasizes the importance of DNA in our physical nature, one has to accept that our physical nature is continuous. Also, nerve cells are not replaced. If one of my brain cells goes, it’s gone. I have the same brain cells that I did 40 years ago. To the extent that one emphasizes the importance of the nervous system in our physical nature, one has to accept that our physical nature is continuous.

To answer (b): Again to quote Mr. Solomon, “your attitudes, beliefs, and personality may change so drastically that you will scarcely recognize your younger self a few years down the road (‘I can’t believe I did that, wow, I was crazy back then, etc’).” I appeal to personal experience: when I look back on my past attitudes, beliefs, or aspects of my personality that have changed, generally one of the effects is shame. Now, I do not feel this when I look at anyone else who has the same attitudes, beliefs, or aspects of personality that I used to; exasperation or resignation (depending on my mood), yes, but not shame. There must be some continuity for me to feel, and say, “I am ashamed of what I was.” Mr. Solomon’s words also reveal that the very structure of our language inescapably assumes continuity: he says “your cells”, “your personality”, “your self” (!), “I was crazy back then”. I know of no language that includes a distinction between the present person and the past person. Either personality is continuous, or all humanity is and has always been so deeply subject to an illusion that it has embedded itself in our very speech.

Finally, a couple of anelephantinopurgetic* arguments: (1) We take it for granted that parents will care for their children from birth to adulthood; yet, if personhood changes from month to month, what’s to stop my wife and me from throwing our daughters into an orphanage? They’re not the same persons that were born to us. (2) We sentence criminals to long prison terms; yet, if personhood changes from month to month, after a month or so the prisoner is not the man who was sentenced (in fact, given the pace of criminal justice these days, he is not even the man who committed the crime). Not being the same man, he is being punished for a crime he did not commit.

Hope you find the above interesting.

Cordially,

Robert Wenson

* “Un-ivory-tower” (from the Greek), i.e., arguments that appeal to “reality” or “the way things are”. From what little I know of philosophy (and it’s d–ned little), you can’t just say that you’re appealing to reality, because reality is so murky a concept; so I had to come up with a technical term for what I was doing.

John Brewer: Cornell has a College of Human Ecology, which until the ’60’s was the College of Home Economics (note that they didn’t have to change the initials). My maternal grandmother got her bachelor’s degree in Home Ec there back circa 1934. This is less weird than it might seem at first glance, because Cornell has always rejected the general Ivy League tendency to look askance at “Applied” anything — they’ve got an Ag School, a Hotel School, “ILR” (I think that’s “Industrial & Labor Relations — something New Deal / Five Year Plan like that) etc. Plus they’ve had female undergraduates since way back before 1900 without ever completely shunting them off into a separate school (a la Radcliffe, Barnard, Pembroke etc.).

Rob Dakin: Thanks for posting the Arendt thing. It has given rise to these thoughts:

It has always amazed me how casually people are able to break promises. Or, perhaps, they don’t consider a statement a ‘promise’ unless it is explicitly labeled as one when it is made. I have always felt absolutely obligated, if I tell someone that I’ll meet them at 5 PM, to be there at 5 PM (not 5:20), or to inform them in advance, if it’s not going to be possible. If I tell somebody that I intend to mail him a book, I do it: I feel absolutely obligated to do it. I always understood what was meant by the Indians in movies who crossed their arms on their chests and said “I have spoken” when they had completed a speech at the pow-wow: my word is my bond. I don’t think that this is ever trivialized by the circumstances.

As for the past, I can only assume that by ‘forgiveness’ it is meant that we should find a way to forgive ourselves for the messes we have made and the transgressions we have committed. Forgiving others is relatively easy, compared to letting go of past actions for which we condemn ourselves. There is no doubt in my mind that a bad conscience makes a positive future impossible.

Dakin again: Here’s a thought: a Christian is a person who thanks God not for the beauty of the dawn, but for the cross and the nails and the crown of thorns. A Christian is a loser whom the world is kicking the living s–t out of. Simone Weil thought this was good. Nietzsche thought this was bad. Was either of them correct?

Sandra Meisel: ARMED & DANGEROUS does a great injustice to David Drake, whom I know well and with whom I edited two anthologies. He’s a Vietnam vet who’s been trying to exorcise his own devils for thirty years by showing how war damages people. The blogger has somehow mistaken this for “pornography of violence.”

Try Drake’s REDLINERS about the redemption of a group of gravely traumatized soldiers to see what I mean. One would never, never get the idea that war is glorious from reading Drake. You might from Pournelle.

Pournelle I wish I hadn’t met but he’s a conservative Republican (who once worked for Mayor Yorty of LA). He served in Korea and was wounded there. He did a version of the Byzantine Nika riots (don’t remember the title)

which the blogger is deploring. Drake did his as COUNTING THE COST. Drake’s is more brutal but makes no pretence that anything good was accomplished.

Heinlein I saw but never met personally. His Libertarian ideas grate on my mind like fingernails on a blackboard. If you’re not tough and smart Heinlein has no use for you.

[Postscript:] Dave probably writes more authentically about the realities of war than anybody else in SF. The badly damaged veteran is a recurring figure, even in his fantasy stories. For somebody who wasn’t a bit authentic and shied away from direct representation of combat, see Gordon R. Dickson, whose research assistant and literary critic I was for 25 years.

Mitchell Freedman: Media bias exists, just not the way you think it does.

NY Times’ bias is one of elitism. Cultural elite, political elite and economic elite. What does this mean in practice? Cultural elite: The NY Times likes clergy who oppose the death penalty; they don’t like it when they oppose abortion or gays. The NY Times likes the hypocrisy of the Church on sex abuse cases as the editors/publishers are, ahem, secular elitists for the most part.

Political elite. The NY Times doesn’t like clean elections laws (public financing), but thinks some soft money limits are appropriate (kind of like “moderate” Republicans). They like “fair play” and such, which means they like “commissions” instead of hearing from everyday people.

Economic elite. God, does the NY Times hate unions and love the NAFTA, GATT/WTO consensus in Washington, DC. Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman have written vicious screeds against anti-globalization demonstrators and unionists. Not very “liberal” of them. And the NY Times no-name editorialists have long been against most minimum wage price increases for reasons that make Milton Friedman proud.

And as George Seldes and Upton Sinclair could have told you years ago, and it still exists, reporters don’t control how an article is ultimately printed, what its title is and where it’s placed.

The media bias exists and it does favor corporate advertisers’ interests. And when it doesn’t, it is rare. The sad part is the often deliberate (though not in your case, which is why I write to you) mislabeling of “liberal” without explaining what “liberal” really means. One is more correct to call it “corporate bias” than “liberal bias,” as even

culturally conservative friends of mine admit as well.

And Rob Dakin: I see Fox News (which I watch, even though I disapprove–check THAT out!), as an example of the “build it and they will come” syndrome. Despite the protestations of conservatives, the mainstream media have always been center-to-right in their orientation. At least this has been true from the vantage point of any person truly on the left. Chris Hitchens has been one of the few in that position (true left) who has been able to get on TV regularly in order to make that point. Prior to Fox News, however, there has not been on television a network that (almost) openly propagandizes for the right OR for the left. I think that no fair-minded individual who watches Fox News network consistently would deny that the network brazenly cheerleads for Republicans and conservative positions. Brit Hume is easily, EASILY the most biased anchor on television. To say that the success of Fox News is due to the fact that people choose to watch it, is not to say that you can’t have success by appealing to both the lowest common denominator of the public, and to the baser instincts of that targeted demographic. Success, as measured by quantity, does not imply high quality, particularly in the moral realm. The world being such as it is, it may even imply the opposite.

Well, I don’t watch Fox News hardly at all–or any TV news–it grates, especially now that they all do the “crawl” at the bottom of the screen. So I can’t speak to that part. I should clarify, though, that I wasn’t trying to imply that Fox is good because people like it. I was just trying to point out that people do have other choices, so if you try to explain the Democrats’ midterm electoral problems by saying, “The Right controls the media–look at Fox!”, then you still have to explain why people watch Fox when they have other options. That’s all.

Roy Sheetz: One way to look at the hierarchy of manners is with a personalist bias. Manners for social conversation ensure that we do not presume to force intimacies on others in an inappropriate situation as though they were just targets for invective practice or canvasses for our word-painting: “The Wonderfulness of Me and My Stuff: A continuing series.” Where the manners are themselves no longer appropriate is in situations of intimacy,

although there is etiquette for those situations too, but less formulaic. Thanks for bringing one of my favorite philosophers to the fore.

BTW, her response of the fixed and icy stare with rigid smile hissing “Thank you so much, you are nice to say so!” is the best response to the gratuitous insult that has ever been devised. The broken tape loop repitition of

“No thank you we have other plans” is also good for the importunate boor who WILL have you attend their social event.

Sean Kinsell: If you’ve been reading the Miss Manners books that you describe, may I encourage you (if no one has already) to start reading all her stuff from Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior on? She very frequently gives attention to the differences between manners and morals, even if she doesn’t, as you say, address the lives of the saints directly. The newer books are more topical, but, perhaps because the older ones are relics of my childhood, they seem to me to get at more of the Through the Looking Glass quality of navigating through human nature. She also has a wonderful way of advising people how they can properly channel properly felt spite–I don’t remember which book it’s in, but her advice to the cheated-on woman about how to make her husband and best friend feel miserable about the affair they’re having is immortal.

KairosPerson: I have to say, I’ve been pretty much on board with getting rid of Saddam for a while now, not least because I think it was an obligation last time around (even as a 21-year old college student, I was predicting “Don’t exceed the UN Mandate!” was going to bite us on the ass) and I think the case for Justice for 1991 depended in large part on undoing the evil (getting rid of saddam).

And I don’t have a large problem with pre-emption, at least as a theory. AND I find the reports of Saddam’s

involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center attack credible, as well as the Czech persistence in stating that Atta did in fact meet with an Iraqi intel guy a year before 9/11. Every time Safire or someone else quotes unnamed sources denying it, someone from the Czech government goes on the record to say, “It happened.” This is not the

behavior of people in doubt about the truth.

But, I think this VX gas story smells a little fishy. 1) If Saddam wants to give chemicals, he should give some that are a little more widely held, like Sarin. VX winding up in the NY Subway system is a neon roadmap to Baghdad (if you’ll pardon the overwrought metaphor). North Korea might have it, too, but they appear to be trying to force us back into negotiating with them, not trying to persuade us to annihilate them.

2) The timing is mightily convenient.

3) This administration knows how to play and read the papers, and the story has all the earmarks of something done to influence public opinion, but still retain some deniability. Only one source on the record, giving lots of winks and nods, but very few facts. 9 off-the-record sources saying “We get a lot of crappy reports, but this one didn’t look crappy.” No one important has actually said the transfer occurred, but the headline and lead make it clear that Very Important People think it did.

Now, it may well have happened, and these guys may well be doing their duty as they see it. But Tom Ridge

hasn’t secretly ordered a couple million gas masks for storage on subway cars (yea, I know VX works through

the skin too; it’s figurative) and then leaked it to the press. We’re still at Code Mauve (or whatever) on the Incomprehensible Threat Index, and so far as we have heard, local law enforcement aren’t cranking up the overtime hours of Transit police. These are all things you would expect to happen if the government really believed al-Qaeda had the ability to get rid of a few thousand or tens of thousand subway riders.

I’m not pretending, by the way, the article didn’t make me glad I’ll be done commuting for good in a few weeks, or that the prevailing winds blow from my apartment to downtown Boston, rather than the reverse. The amygdala is a fickle mistress. But my reason says this story is out there to sway the 75% anti-war types, not because it represents the administration’s belief about what happened in Turkey a few weeks ago.