Hm.

As far as I can tell, the Supreme Court Justices in oral arguments in this year's important Indian law case, Plains Commerce Bank v Long Family Land and Cattle Co., were pretty close to laughing Plains' attorney ("Mr. Banker," remarkably enough) out of court.

I'm happy to see that, because an adverse ruling in this case would be very, very bad for the ability of tribal governments to exercise even minimally coherent jurisdiction, something I've written about at some length.

At the same time, I kind of feel for the guy-- because, while he did not correctly describe the current state of the law, he did a pretty good job describing the first derivative of it. He plotted the dots of the various Supreme Court cases, drew the line connecting them, and extrapolated out to the next case. Several times he kind of stammers that he figures the Justices would want to keep going in the direction they've been going. In some areas of law, that's the right argumentative approach- you say "here are the principles underlying the caselaw, they successfully account for the trajectory and give it coherence, and we see that those principles get us this outcome in the case at hand, even though that's not actually what the current rules would say."

In Indian law, the correct answer to that is: "Principles? Coherence?" It's not always clear here that the Justices even remember what their own recent cases say, so they're left just looking at the place Banker wants to take them, not whether that place really does lie on the straight-line path connecting their previous cases. They seem to think it's a ridiculous place, which is true.

Anyway, it does now seem possible that the Court will find that the consent exception in Montana can be satisfied short of a non-Indian expressly choosing Indian law and tribal court jurisdiction. The Court has... not been in the habit of finding that the Montana exceptions could ever really be satisfied, which Banker appeared to be counting on. And it seems possible that the Court will reconcile the genuine tension in its caselaw about the relationship between adjudicatory jurisdiction and regulatory jurisdiction in favor of bringing them into line with each other.

These are both Good Things. Therefore I don't bet that they'll happen. In particular, I'm sure Kennedy is just playing with arguments in his exchanges with Banker-- his own past opinions mean that he's not really skeptical of Banker's view of non-members' rights. Oral argument can be like that sometimes; Justices explore ideas, and it's dangerous to treat that as if they were telegraphing their ultimate votes. But in the meantime, it's nice to see Scalia making Banker squirm, and to see at least some realization of how ridiculous the anti-tribal-jurisdiction arguments can become.

Over at the Legal Times blog, Tony Mauro notes a funny exchange between Roberts and Long's lawyer.

An important new paper

"Reassessing the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism"

"In 'The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,' Robert Pape presents an analysis of
his suicide terrorism data. He uses the data to draw inferences about how territorial
occupation and religious extremism afect the decision of terrorist groups to use
suicide tactics. We show that the data are incapable of supporting Pape's conclusions
because he 'samples on the dependent variable.' (The data only contains cases in
which suicide terror is used.) We construct bounds (Manski, 1995) on the quantities
relevant to Pape's hypotheses and show exactly how little can be learned about the
relevant statistical associations from the data produced by Pape's research design."

Great moments in multiculturalism and free speech


Marc Lebuis has

filed a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) for "hate propaganda" against Montreal salafi imam Hammaad Abu Sulaiman Al-Dameus Hayiti who officiates at the Association Musulmane de Montréal Est mosque. The complaint relates to his book L'Islam ou l'Intégrisme ? À la lumière du Qor'an et de la Sounnah downloadable from the Internet, and his extremist teachings that are also broadcast on the Internet.

The teachings of imam Al-Hayiti are suprematists, misogynistic and hateful. According to the imam, his fellow non-Muslims are "koufars" (unbelievers, infidels, impious), Québec women are perverse, and the population is "stupid and ignorant." The imam also calls for the destruction of the "idols" of the West: democracy, human rights, secularism, freedom and modernity. By disseminating his teachings on the Internet, the imam tries to win adherents to his extreme views.

The CHRC has launched an investigation against Maclean's and writer Mark Steyn for "hate propaganda" in relation to the publication by Maclean's of an article entitled "The Future belongs to Islam" (excerpts from Steyn's bestselling book "America Alone"). The investigation follows a complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress and four Toronto Muslim law students. This initiative is an attempt at censorship and an attack on freedom of the press, for which the CHRC acts as an enabler.

If the CHRC refuse to investigate my complaint, the public will be free to conclude that an institution meant to promote human rights is practicing a form of one-way absurd censorship. As a result, legitimate criticism of Islam is discouraged, while those who advocate the destruction of democracy and freedoms are protected. If the CHRC agrees to open an investigation, the writings of the imam will be exposed and scrutinized and, hopefully, discredited by the media. In the future, the media and the public will feel free to denounce subversive and hateful preachers without having to resort to the CHRC.

He continues to try to have it both ways in this follow-up press release:

1. If the CHRC refuses to consider my complaint (while currently investigating Maclean’s and Mark Steyn), we will be free to conclude that the CHRC defines its mandate as one of censorship of what any Muslim subjectively deems offensive or blasphemous, while protecting the spread of the Salafi ideology which advocates the destruction of democracy and the abolition of our freedoms. The CHRC will come out as an institution betraying its mandate and as being itself a threat to freedom and democracy.

2. If the Commission agrees to open an investigation (and regardless of the outcome), I will have directed the spotlights on the discourse of the imam and the Salafi ideology. The media and the public will be able to freely assess the dangerousness of this ideology and discredit it.[...]

Whatever the outcome of my complaint, I will have proved something. My sole purpose is to stimulate a public debate and strengthen freedom of expression.

If the Commission agrees to open an investigation, then core rights of religious liberty and freedom of expression will be chilled, and if the Commission fines Hayiti the latter's rights will have been violated. This is not a legal weapon to invoke in order to make a point about the weapon itself.

But one gets the strong sense that Lebuis wouldn't at all mind seeing Hayiti punished for his speech and writings. One can argue (correctly) that the Steyn prosecution is illegitimate and violates freedom of speech; or one can grind an axe against disfavored Islamic speech. Can't credibly do both, and the latter urge undercuts the former principle.

Immigration conference schedule

Cosmopolitan Duties and Domestic Consequences : The Case of Immigration

Montreal Political Theory Workshop – April 18th, 2008
Faculty Club, McGill University

Contemporary immigration regimes are increasingly scrutinized from a perspective of global justice. Do these regimes contribute to global injustice? Should we change immigration regimes in order to redistribute access to individual opportunities more fairly? Should we open our borders to the global poor? What would the consequences be for host societies? These are some of the important and timely questions the speakers at this year’s MPTW conference will address.

10 am
Welcoming remarks: Christine Straehle, UQAM

10:15
Shelley Wilcox, San Francisco State University: "Immigrants Admissions in the Non-Ideal World"

10:45
Joseph Carens, University of Toronto: "Open Borders Revisited"

11:15
Discussion by Ryoa Chung, University of Montreal

11:30
Open Discussion

12:30
Lunch

2:00
Patti Lenard, Harvard University: "Do Theories of Historical Redress Apply to Immigrants?"

2:30
Christine Straehle, UQAM: "Immigration, Trust and the Welfare State"

3:00
Discussion by Dominique Leydet, UQAM

3:15
Open Discussion

RSVP emmanuelle.richez@mail.mcgill.ca

Poor John!

That's the chorus I sing several times when I happen to have the chance to give a lecture on Adams' thought. A brilliant thinker, constantly out of synch with his times; a true man of virtue who showed how much more to life there is than virtue; outshone as the champion of independence by Paine, whom he despised, and Jefferson, whom he promoted; horribly miscast as ambassador to France; an anachronistic Presidency; etc. Deeply admirable and all wrong all at the same time.

I haven't been able to watch much of the HBO series, but the early part of tonight's episode, with Adams excluded from Cabinet and the Senate alike, inescapably brough "Poor John!" to my lips a good five or six times.

CFP: Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy

Via Will Roberts:

Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy
La société canadienne de philosophie continentale

Call for Papers

The Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy will hold its annual conference on October 30 – November 1, 2008, at the University of Montreal, Quebec.

We invite papers or panels on any theme relevant to the broad concerns of continental philosophy. Please submit complete papers (no more than 4500 words) and a brief abstract (150 words). If you are submitting a panel proposal, send only a 750 word abstract for each paper. Please prepare your paper for blind review as an attachment in Word.

All submissions (in French or English) must be sent electronically by June 1, 2008, to:
Diane Enns, CSCP President, ennsd@mcmaster.ca If you are a graduate student, please identify yourself as such in order to be eligible for the graduate student essay prize. The winner will be announced at the annual conference and considered for publication in the following spring issue of Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy.

Habermas on shariah and overlapping jurisdictions

From The Chronicle:

Religious Intelligence reports that the acclaimed German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has spoken in support of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the subject of Shariah.

The archbishop, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, caused a stir in February when he said there might be room in Britain for “overlapping jurisdictions” between national law and Shariah, or Islamic law. He suggested that “individuals might choose in certain limited areas whether to seek justice under one system or another.” [...]

Writing this month in a German journal, in an article adapted from a March talk at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, Habermas, according to Religious Intelligence, “accepted the contention of secularists who insist on the ‘absolute essentialness of equal inclusion of all citizens in civil society.’”

“Religious citizens and religious communities should not only assimilate on the surface level. They must embrace the secular legitimisation of the community within the premises of their own belief,” he said.

“However, the state must make room for religious belief and avoid rushing to reduce the polyphonic complexity of the spectrum of public voices because it cannot be certain that this might not sever society from the meager resources that generate meaning and identity.”

Some material from the linked "Religious Intelligence" article:

Habermas also questioned the contention that modernisation presumed secularisation and necessarily lead to a diminished role for religion in the public sphere. Europe was entering a post-secular phase, and its loss of religious beliefs was the exception not the rule, he argued.

America was the “spearhead of modernization,” he noted, but "the vibrancy of American religious communities and the unchanging proportion of America's religious committed citizens" belied the theory of secularisation going hand in hand with modernity.

America “seems to exemplify the norm, while Western rationalism that was once supposed to serve as model for the rest of the world is actually the exception,” he said.

The task facing society was to find the proper balance between the claims of religion and culture against the democratic imperative, becoming aware “of the fact that the other is a member of an inclusive community of citizens of equal rights, in which equal citizenship and cultural difference complement each other."

Muslims in Europe "must not only superficially adjust to a constitutional order. They are expected to appropriate the secular legitimation of constitutional principles under the very premises of their own faith,” Habermas said.

However, secularists must also enter a complementary learning process, for if they continued to reject the people with a religious mindset, they were abandoning the mutual recognition that shared citizenship entails.

Secular citizens must remain open to the possibility that even religious utterances, when translated into a secular context, can have meaning for them. "As not everything can be achieved by political decision and legal enforcement,” Habermas concluded.

Update:
See also this post from political theorist Simone Chambers on Habermas' view of religion in the public sphere.

Mexican federalism

Article 45 of the Mexican Constitution reads:

" The States and Territories of the Federation shall keep their present area and boundaries as of this day, provided no difficulties arise concerning them." [emphasis added]

If anyone happens to know anything about either the origins of this unusual verbiage, or any jurisprudence that has arisen on what constitutes a difficulty arising, please let me know.

Newly posted on SSRN

Montesquieu's Constitutional Legacies, forthcoming.

The only guide you'll ever need...

to campus architecture.

Call for workshop proposals:
“Balancing Federal Systems: Implications for Politics and Policy”

The International Political Science Association’s Research Committee 28
Comparative Federalism and Federation
is inviting contributions to its Annual Conference to be held on
Friday-Saturday, October 3-4, 2008

Hertie School of Governance
Berlin, Germany

Co-sponsor: Standing Group on Federalism and Regionalism,
European Consortium for Political Research

Host: Hertie School of Governance, Berlin

A defining characteristic of federal systems across the world is their exposure to constant shifts of power(s) between levels of government. Indeed, the balancing and rebalancing of power between levels of government and among constituent units is often the very purpose of federal government and, more generally, multilevel governance. Symmetries and asymmetries may result from underlying trends that transform the nature of federal systems over time as well as from conscious reform efforts. Horizontal and vertical power shifts affect politics as well as policies.

We are calling for contributions that speak to the balancing and rebalancing of federal systems in a comparative manner. Contributions may, for example, address institutional and constitutional questions pertaining to the territorial and non-territorial accommodation of diversity or the organization of state, local, and indigenous government. We also invite contributions that examine how shifts in the federal balance of power affect the way administrative challenges are solved and particular policy problems are addressed. We hope to discuss the themes outlined in four subsequent sessions under the following headings:

* Conceptual issues of federalism and multilevel governance
* Administrative challenges in multilevel governance arrangements
* Non-territorial accommodation of cultural, religious, and linguistic rifts
* Policy challenges and intergovernmental relations

The Conference, including both workshop panels on the two days and RC 28’s Business Meeting late Friday afternoon, will be hosted by the Hertie School of Governance located in the heart of Berlin between the Brandenburg Gate and Alexanderplatz. The Conference will take place from 9:30 am on Friday until 3 pm on Saturday. A joint event is also planned on Friday evening, after the Business Meeting. Participants are expected to pay for their travel and lodging costs. Upon review of proposals and acceptance to the workshop, you will receive information regarding travel and lodging at reduced conference rates.

Proposals should be submitted by May 1st, 2008 to: Sonja Walti, American University and Hertie School of Governance, contact: tel. +1 202 885 3738, walti@american.edu

IPSA-RC28: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ipsarc28/

I'm going to live forever, part XXVI

Caffeine's health benefits, continued:

Daily caffeine 'protects brain'

Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why.

A vital barrier between the brain and the main blood supply of rabbits fed a fat-rich diet was protected in those given a caffeine supplement.

UK experts said it was the "best evidence yet" of coffee's benefits.

See the roundup of earlier related stories here.

Conference reminder: Market Failure

Tomorrow at U de M.

Participants :
Geoffrey Brennan (Australian National University / Duke University)
Peter Dietsch (Université de Montréal)
Jean-Marie Dufour (McGill University)
Daniel Hausman (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Colin Macleod (University of Victoria)
Claude Montmarquette (CIRANO)
Wayne Norman (Duke University)
François Vaillancourt (Université de Montréal)

Was non-visible, but now I'm seen

While there's no lovely way to talk about the unlovely category "non-whites in traditionally white-dominated societies"-- it's a rump category in its nature, a category defined not by things its members have in common with one another but just by not being this other thing that is taken for granted as normal-- I have to say that I'm not at all fond of the Stats-Canada phrasing "visible minority," used over and over again in this article. It's the kind of thing that poses as being more polite than the alternative (we're not defining people with reference to whiteness by calling them nonwhite!) but that is wholly dependent on the shared understanding of what's being euphemized. What's visible about them? It's not the fact that, like most corporeal beings, they reflect light rather than transparently passing it through. It's not, e.g., their dress (Hasidim are not included, a south Asian in a business suit is). "Visible" just means "nonwhite skin color that we think we can pick out of a crowd"-- though it includes all Arabs, south Asians, and (bizarrely) Latin Americans, while excluding all Mediterranean Europeans, and I highly doubt anyone who thinks they can reliably "visibly" distinguish all of the former from all of the latter.

It's also syntactically ugly.

"If current immigration trends continue, Canada's visible minority population will continue to grow much more quickly than the non-visible minority population," Statistics Canada said, projecting they will account for one in five of the total population by 2017.

Quick: Does the "non-" in "non-visible minority population" modify "visible", meaning that the category is something like "white ethnics [e.g. Greeks, Italians, Jews-- ex hypothesi "invisible" minorities"] or does it modify the whole concept "visible minority," meaning that the category is the whole rest of the population?

I think that Stats Canada means the latter, but according to the rules of English usage with which I'm familiar I think they've said the former. Either way, having to throw around the usage "non-visible" over and over again draws yet further attention to what's going on, since non-visibility isn't actually a trait of any of the people being described.

Larmore on Taylor

Charles Larmore reviews A Secular Age in TNR. It's a severe review that highlights important philosophical differences between the two, a very critical review that leaves me more interested in reading the book, not less, though I'm sure I will think Larmore is right on most of the questions that divide the two Charleses. A thoughtful and thought-provoking essay in its own right (unsurprisingly); highly recommended.

We cannot live in a secular age without some view about what it means to have left behind an age of faith. The trouble is that these views generally take the form of "subtraction stories." They portray the modern world as having come into being by sloughing off the illusions of religion and letting the human condition finally appear for what it has been all along. Accounts of this sort, Taylor maintains, embody a fundamental mistake about modernity. They miss the fact that to see nature as operating by laws of its own, not by God's purposes, and to see society as bound together by human interests, not by sacred ritual, depends on a substantive set of values, cognitive and moral, that are by no means the universal property of mankind, but have come to be espoused in the West for historically contingent reasons. Our secular age did not arise by a process of subtraction, but through the creation of a whole new conception of man and world.

Secularization can mean three different things, all of them distinctive features of modern Western society. First, there is the separation between church and state, emerging in the seventeenth century after one hundred years of religious war in Europe and transferring the basis of political authority from divine will to notions of consent and individual rights. No longer sustained by public affirmation and enforcement, religion has turned into a private affair, and as a result it has lost its influence over more and more people. And so secularization also involves--this is its second sense, for Taylor--the all-too-familiar decline of religious belief in the West.

Yet these two developments could not have occurred, he claims, without a fundamental alteration in worldview. There had to emerge a conception of nature and society which Taylor dubs "the immanent frame." This is his third, and decisive, notion of secularism. The natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine, came to be so sharply marked off from one another that making sense of the world around us appeared possible in this-worldly terms alone. Only within such a framework could political community dispense with the aura of religious unity, and people find ways of giving meaning to their lives without looking beyond the human realm. Only on this basis could belief in God cease to be the immediate and uncontroversial certainty that it once was, the inescapable backdrop to every thought and endeavor, and become instead a possibility that on reflection people might either endorse or reject--"one option among others and frequently not the easiest to embrace."

How, according to Taylor, did this intellectual revolution take place? Obviously, the rise of modern science played a great role. But in order for scientific inquiry to take off in the form that we recognize today, nature had to be emptied of the spirits, portents, and cosmic purposes that once seemed a fact of everyday experience. It had to be conceived as fundamentally an impersonal order of matter and force, governed by causal laws. This conception of nature was itself the expression of a new attitude toward the world that Taylor calls "disengagement," the distancing outlook of "the buffered self." People learned to stand back from the forces of nature around them (as well as within them), and to regulate their actions so as no longer to feel at the mercy of hidden powers, and thus to turn the vast expanse of matter in motion before them into a domain for prediction and control. Nature ceased to be mind- like, full of the signs and wonders invoked in Shakespeare's plays, and became instead a neutral object of sober inquiry for the only minds there are, namely our own.

What inspired this shift was not, Taylor insists, a decision to dispel the mists of religion and look reality at last squarely in the face. It was instead a new ethic of self-possession and instrumental manipulation, which exalted "the independent, disengaged subject, reflexively controlling his own thought- processes, 'self-responsibly,' in Husserl's famous phrase." Contrary to one well-known but naive sort of subtraction story, modern science did not arise through the substitution of observation for fantasy. It involved the systematic combination of experiment and mathematics, designed (as Bacon and Kant said) to "put nature on the rack" and "constrain it to give answers to questions of reason's own devising." Epistemology, Taylor claims, is ultimately rooted in ethics. We form our beliefs in accordance with conceptions of method and evidence that tell us in effect how we should respect our dignity as thinking beings in dealing with a world where truth is elusive. And these ideals of intellectual virtue vary from one historical epoch to the next.

[...]

Taylor's other main line of apologetic argument is little better. It leans on his thesis that epistemology is ultimately rooted in ethics. People who claim that there is no warrant for religious belief, given what science now tells us about the world, fail to see that modern science has been driven by certain intellectual values--in particular, by the values of rational control and individual conscience--which arose historically, and within a Christian context. From the standpoint of faith, therefore, these values can still take on the spiritual hue that they once possessed. And being historically contingent, they have more the character of a "new construction" than a "simple discovery." Consequently, they are open to revision. Constructed, Taylor cautions, is not supposed to mean merely invented. "To say that these [values] are 'constructions' is not to say that the issues here are unarbitrable by reason." And yet "their arbitration is much more complicated, like that between Kuhnian paradigms, and also involves issues of hermeneutical adequacy."

Readers familiar with the lay of the land in contemporary philosophy will know that bringing in the fuzzy business of "paradigm shifts" and "hermeneutics" is a sure way to guarantee that the issues will not be settled. Some straightforward reflection shows that, at least in the case of the disenchantment of nature, the underlying values are more than simply "constructed." Imagine that, having drained the natural world of all magical powers and secret sympathies and reconceived it as an impersonal order of causal laws, physics had remained what it had largely been like in antiquity and the middle ages--a mere succession of different theories, each one a fresh speculation. That, of course, is precisely what did not happen. Modern science became a cumulative and publicly verifiable enterprise. New theories deepened the understanding of nature already achieved by their predecessors, which is as much as to say that science at last got on the track of the truth.

Now consider Taylor's thesis that this process has been driven by an ethic of rational manipulation and self-discipline, which was a modern innovation. This thesis is true, and he is right to insist on its importance. But the proper conclusion to draw is this: if this ethic is a "construction," it is a "discovery" as well. Developing it has been tantamount to learning what is the most fruitful attitude toward nature, at least if our aim is to know how it works. There is no room in this case for playing off "construction" against "discovery," as Taylor tendentiously tries to do. Discoveries are no less real for being historically contingent.[...]

There is the more worrisome matter of Taylor's general attitude toward life.

Taylor appears to think that living at cross-purposes with ourselves is intolerable, a human failure. In his view, we need to give our dilemmas a "spin, " and "leap" to conclusions about how they are to be handled. But why? Is not being drawn in contrary directions an abiding feature of the human condition? Would we not do better to get used to the fact that our lives are always fraught with essential contradictions and ambiguities? Why should we prefer Taylor's quick fixes to the great enterprise of learning to live with ourselves and our circumstances? Our secular age is certainly of two minds, divided as it is between an ethic of rational control and human well-being and a longing for some deeper structure of meaning beyond. Yet on Taylor's own account, the age of faith was unstable, too--a post-Axial compromise between Christ's teachings and pre-Christian survivals that spawned throughout the medieval period one reform effort after another. We have never been, and we will never be, at one with ourselves.

Fundamental conflicts may go unacknowledged, of course. And once we perceive them, we can no doubt find philosophers--spin doctors, really--who will teach us how to make them vanish by a misleading use of words (such as glib oppositions between "open" and "closed," "construction" and "discovery"). But problems, when they are genuine, cannot be talked away. They disappear only when they are actually solved, by our finding better ways, backed up by reasons, of making sense of the world. And even then, the result is bound to bring some new source of inner conflict in its wake. This is not secular. It is human.

Now online

Theorists and Actors: Zhang Shizhao on "Self-Awareness" as Political Action, by Leigh Jenco, Political Theory 2008; 36: 213-238.

Adam Smith's Critique of International Trading Companies: Theorizing "Globalization" in the Age of Enlightenment, by Sankar Muthu, Political Theory 2008 36: 185-212.

Tips for advisors

Professor Fabio, of Grad School Rulz fame, has added an important entry on rules for advisors. Not a one of them is much more than basic common sense, decency, and professionalism... and yet...

Market Failure workshop

PROGRAMME
Z-260, Pavillon Claire McNicoll, 2900 chemin de la tour, Montréal
April 4

9.30 coffee
9.45 Introduction

10.00-11.30 Colin Macleod (Victoria), François Vaillancourt (Montréal)
There are circumstances where fixing market failures leads to a conflict with individual preferences. What are the justifications for, as well as the limitations of overriding individual preferences in such cases?

11.30 Lunch (Bistro Olivieri, Cote-des-neiges)

13.15-14.45 Geoffrey Brennan (ANU / Duke), Daniel Hausman (Wisconsin-Madison)
Can government intervention make things worse? If so, can we identify criteria to gauge the chances of government intervention to fix market failure?

14.45 Coffee break

15.00-16.30 Claude Montmarquette (CIRANO), Wayne Norman (Duke / Université de Montréal)
Companies regularly exploit and even exacerbate market failures in the search for profit. What is their responsibility in fixing market failure, and how can they be encouraged to live up to it?

16.30 Coffee break

16.45-18.15 Peter Dietsch (Université de Montréal), Jean-Marie Dufour (McGill)
What impact does market failure have on inequalities of income? Does market failure in this sense justify redistribution?

Good luck with that

Just got a "could you, or anyone you know, be on the radio" call-- for a French-speaking American Republican political commentator in Montreal.

I'm guessing that slot on the radio show will end up unfilled...

Marty on Wright

The Chronicle carries a striking tribute from one of the leading contemporary scholars of religion, Martin Marty.

Through the decades, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has called me teacher, reminding me of the years when he earned a master's degree in theology and ministry at the University of Chicago — and friend. My wife and I and our guests have worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he recently completed a 36-year ministry.

Images of Wright's strident sermons, and his anger at the treatment of black people in the United States, appear constantly on the Internet and cable television, part of the latest controversy in our political-campaign season. His critics call Wright anti-American. Critics of his critics charge that the clips we hear and see have been taken out of context. But it is not the context of particular sermons that the public needs, as that of Trinity church, and, above all, its pastor.
[...]
Now, for the hard business: the sermons, which have been mercilessly chipped into for wearying television clips. While Wright's sermons were pastoral — my wife and I have always been awed to hear the Christian Gospel parsed for our personal lives — they were also prophetic. At the university, we used to remark, half lightheartedly, that this Jeremiah was trying to live up to his namesake, the seventh-century B.C. prophet. Though Jeremiah of old did not "curse" his people of Israel, Wright, as a biblical scholar, could point out that the prophets Hosea and Micah did. But the Book of Jeremiah, written by numbers of authors, is so full of blasts and quasi curses — what biblical scholars call "imprecatory topoi" — that New England preachers invented a sermonic form called "the jeremiad," a style revived in some Wrightian shouts.

In the end, however, Jeremiah was the prophet of hope, and that note of hope is what attracts the multiclass membership at Trinity and significant television audiences. Both Jeremiahs gave the people work to do: to advance the missions of social justice and mercy that improve the lot of the suffering. For a sample, read Jeremiah 29, where the prophet's letter to the exiles in Babylon exhorts them to settle down and "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile." Or listen to many a Jeremiah Wright sermon.

One may properly ask whether or how Jeremiah Wright — or anyone else — experiences a prophetic call. Back when American radicals wanted to be called prophets, I heard Saul Bellow say (and, I think, later saw it in writing): "Being a prophet is nice work if you can get it, but sooner or later you have to mention God." Wright mentioned God sooner. [...]

It would be unfair to Wright to gloss over his abrasive — to say the least — edges, so, in the "Nobody's Perfect" column, I'll register some criticisms. To me, Trinity's honoring of Minister Louis Farrakhan was abhorrent and indefensible, and Wright's fantasies about the U.S. government's role in spreading AIDS distracting and harmful. He, himself, is also aware of the now-standard charge by some African-American clergy who say he is a victim of cultural lag, overinfluenced by the terrible racial situation when he was formed.

Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet.

Now available

Jason Ferrell, Political Science, McGill: "The Alleged Relativism of Isaiah Berlin," Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy Volume 11, Issue 1 March 2008, pages 41 - 56.

Added to the reading list

From the new issue of the European Journal of Political Theory:

"Modern Natural Law Meets the Market: The Case of Adam Smith"
Amit Ron

Philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries who worked within the tradition of modern natural law became interested in political economy in part as they attempted to reconcile two conflicting images of economic activity. On the one hand, from the legal point of view economic activity was understood as a morally neutral and benign activity that could be regulated by simple and clear rules of justice. On the other hand, it was seen as a realm of political struggle, manipulation, deceit and the exercise of hidden forms of domination. This article examines the legal and moral contexts of Adam Smith's excursion into political economy by interpreting the roles played by these two images of the market in the theory of value articulated in book I of The Wealth of Nations.

"Commerce and Corruption: Rousseau's Diagnosis and Adam Smith's Cure"
Ryan Patrick Hanley

Modern commercial society has been criticized for attenuating virtue and inhibiting the ethical self-realization of its participants. But Adam Smith, a founding father of liberal commercial modernity, anticipated precisely this critique and took specific measures to circumvent it. This article presents these measures via an analysis of his response to the critique of liberal commercial modernity set forth by Rousseau. It principally argues that Smith's distinctions of the love of praise from the love of praiseworthiness, and the love of glory from the love of virtue, were elements of a normative moral education that sought to elevate civilized man's corrupted self-love, and thereby recover within modern commercial society a respect for ethical nobility.

"Locke, Waldron and the Moral Status of 'Crooks'"
Rebecca Kingston

This article provides an assessment of Jeremy Waldron's arguments (in God, Locke and Equality and his subsequent 'Response to Critics') that Locke provides us with a compelling version of liberal equality. A close examination of the case of the criminally convicted in The Second Treatise shows how Locke's commitment to the principle of equality is compromised. This is revealed in part through recourse to contextualist considerations. This leads to the suggestion that Waldron's principled rejection of contextualist approaches to the history of political ideas can lead to a distorted understanding. It also suggests a need for a more thorough consideration of how a substantive principle of moral equality should apply in the field of criminal justice and in liberal democracy more generally.

The Root

The fact that I linked to two different pieces on it yesterday, and the fact that I've found it consistently interesting reading about Obama in the past week, prompts me to say: Have you noticed The Root?

The Root is a daily online magazine that provides thought-provoking commentary on today's news from a variety of black perspectives. The site also hosts an interactive genealogical section to trace one's ancestry through AfricanDNA.com, a DNA testing site co-founded by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who is also The Root's Editor-In-Chief. The Root aims to be an unprecedented departure from traditional American journalism, raising the profile of black voices in mainstream media and engaging anyone interested in black culture around the world.

Maybe you've read it without noticing it, because Slate links to Root stories transparently-- you might think you're clicking on a Slate story and find yourself transported over. It's a sister company to Slate, both being owned by the Washington Post. But it's pretty different from the New-Republic-cute-twist-derived voice that characterizes a lot of Slate (not that there's anything, or at least very much, wrong with that). It's strikingly intellectually serious for a general-interest website owned by a general-interest media concern-- and no, I don't only say that because of the prominence of my friend and former colleague Melissa Harris-Lacewell among the contributors. Have a look.

Neutrality conference schedule


Liberal Neutrality: A Re-evaluation
Montreal, May 1-3 2008
Thursday, May 1
Leacock 232, McGill University


9.00 - Opening
Commentator: Daniel Weinstock (University of Montreal)
9.15-9.55 Peter De Marneffe (Arizona State University) “The Possibility and Desirability of Neutrality”
9.55-10.35 Jacob Levy (McGill University) “Is Neutrality Sustainable?”

10.35-10.50* Break

10.50-11.30 Ruwen Ogien (CNRS-Paris) “A Minimalist Justification for State
Neutrality”

11.30-11.50 Comment
11.50-12.30 Discussion
* Lunch

Commentator : Joe Heath (University of Toronto)
1.45 - 2.25 Richard Arneson (University of California, San Diego) “Neutrality and Political Liberalism”
2.25-3.05 Alan Patten (Princeton University) “Religious Accommodations and Liberal Neutrality”

3.05- 3.20 *Break

3.20- 4.00 George Crowder (Flinders University) “Neutrality and Liberal Pluralism”

4.00- 4.20 Comment
4.20- 5.00 Discussion

Friday, May 2
Commentator: Arash Abizadeh

9.00-9.40 Christine Sypnowich (Queen’s University) “Human Flourishing : a New Approach to Equality”
9.40-10.20 George Sher (Rice University) “Perfectionism and Democracy”

10.20-10.35 * Break

10.35-11.15 Steven Wall (Bowling Green State University) “Pluralistic Perfectionism and Restricted Neutrality”

11.15-11.35 Comment
11.35-12.15 Discussion
* Lunch

Commentator : Colin Macleod
1.30-2.10 Stephen Macedo (Princeton University) “Neutrality and Public Reason”
2.10-2.40 Anthony Appiah (Princeton University) “Expressive and Instrumental Neutrality”

2.40- 2.55 *Break

2.55-3.35 Charles Larmore (Brown University) “Principles and Applications”

3.35- 3.55 Comment
3.55- 4.35 Discussion

Saturday, May 3d
Graduate Students and Young Scholars Workshop
Panel 1 : Characterizing Neutrality
Commentator : Geneviève Rousselière
9.00-9.20 Alexa Zellentin (Keble College, University of Oxford) “Neutrality as a Twofold Principle”
9.20-9.40 Marc Rüegger (Fribourg University) “Neutrality and Toleration as a Political Virtue”
9.40.10.00 Christopher Lowry (Queen’s University) “Beyond Equality of What: Sen and
Neutrality”
10.00-10.10 Comment
10.10-10.45 Discussion
10.45-11.00 * Break

Panel 2 : Neutrality and Perfectionism
Commentator : Colin Macleod
11.00-11.20 Oran Moked (Columbia University) “Perfectionism, Economic (Dis)incentives and Political Coercion”
11.20-11.40 Ben Colburn (University of Cambridge) “Neutrality, Anti-perfectionism and
Autonomy”
11.40-11.50 Comment
11.50-12.15 Discussion
12.15 * Lunch
Panel 3 : Should Neutrality Be Thought On Epistemological Grounds?
Commentator : Roberto Merrill
1.30-1.50 Mariano Garreta-Leclercq (University of Buenos Aires) “A New Epistemological Argument In Support of Liberal Neutrality”
1.50-2.10 Ian Carroll (Nuffield College, University of Oxford) “Neutrality and Moral Scepticism - A Contractarian Approach”
2.10-2.30 Chad Horne (University of Toronto) “Liberal Neutrality and the Asymmetry Argument”
2.30-2.40 Comment
2.40-3.15 Discussion
3.15-3.45 Break

Panel 4 : Neutrality Applied to Specific Policies
Commentator : Daniel Weinstock
3.45-4.05 Larry Sanger (Citizendium Project) “A Defense of Expository Neutrality”
4.05-4.25 Patrick Turmel (University of Toronto) “Liberal Neutrality and the Polycentric City”
4.25-4.45 Andrew Lister (Queen’s University) “Public Reason, Liberal Neutrality and (Same-Sex) Marriage”
4.45-4.55 Comment
4.55-5.30 Discussion
*5.30 End of the Workshop

Other views

Some interesting and provocative (and mutually incompatible) concerns and dissents about and comments about things left unsaid in Obama's big race speech. This seems to have been a major public philosophy moment; it's worth having a look at some of the responses to it that aren't just (even if they are also) celebrations. I'm especially interested in the range of reactions that engage with Jeremiah Wright as if he's not just an eccentric grandmother in the attic, but someone whose views matter for good or for ill. It happens that these are all from people I know and like and respect-- but one of the nice things about having people with a wide range of political views whom I know and like and respect is that I can be surprised by views to which I'm nonetheless inclined to give some benefit of the doubt.

My former colleague Michael Dawson:

But I'm worried it was it too little, too late.

It was too little in that while addressing race it equated white racial resentment (which scholars know is really just a more polite label for white racism) with the black anger and skepticism that comes out of past and current racial discrimination.

I suspect blacks will give Obama a break on this score, but those comments will not satisfy those large segments of white America that harbor racial resentment. It was too little when he argued that we can move forward toward racial justice for all without the "need to recite…the history of racial injustice."

It was too little because even though he strongly and correctly argued that today's racial disadvantage is based on the white supremacy of the past, we know that many, many whites do not connect the black situation today to either the injustices of the past or the present.

The history must be retold if a case is to be made to explain black disadvantage in this period. It was unfortunate when he implied that blacks were not willing to come together in multi-racial coalitions now or in the past. In the great populist and labor multi-racial coalitions of the late 19th century and early 20th century, during the Civil Rights era, and in modern times it was whites liberals and progressives that walked away from those coalitions with the predictable result of sparking much greater support for black nationalist movements such as those of Marcus Garvey, the Black Power movement, and Min. Louis Farrakhan.

Another former colleague, Melissa Harris-Lacewell [NB: This piece was written before the speech, but it differs from the approach of the speech pretty fundamentally.]

[Frederick] Douglass, like Wright, was speaking as a patriot and as a Christian. Douglass, like Wright, was speaking out of an honored tradition in black church life. Douglass, like Wright, was speaking in the tradition of biblical prophets.

In his 1993 text, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth, historian Wilson Moses labeled this tradition the black jeremiad. Like Rev. Wright himself, it is named for the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was among the biblical truth tellers who regularly warned the government that divine destruction was imminent if the nation continued to oppress the powerless. Frederick Douglass was a master of the jeremiad.

He called slavery a curse to the nation and argued that, "we shall not go unpunished." He said it was the patriotic duty of blacks "to warn our fellow countrymen" of the impending doom they courted and to dissuade America from "rushing on in her wicked career" along a path "ditched with human blood, and paved with human skulls."

Jeremiah Wright is a modern Douglass. Both men are like the Old Testament prophets who condemn the injustice and corruption of the rulers of their government.

This week Barack Obama was pressured to denounce Jeremiah Wright. But in the hundred years following the end of the Civil War more than five thousand African Americans were lynched and not a single president denounced the atrocities. Because of this history, black patriotism is complicated.

Black patriots love our country, even though it has often hated us. We love our country, even while we hold it accountable for its faults.

I understand why the Obama campaign felt they had to distance themselves from Wright's post 9-11 comments. But I am worried that Obama has missed a chance to talk about the rich and complex tapestry of black religious life. Not all black people are Christian. Not all belong to large, urban churches. Even fewer worship with such an outspoken, unapologetically political minister. But Trinity UCC does represent an important segment of black religious tradition. It is not scary, racist or un-American. Quite the opposite, Rev. Wright is integral to the broad prophetic tradition that informs many black churches.

Prophetic Christianity allowed African Americans to retain a sense of humanity in the face of our country's racism. Like many people of faith, black Americans have to grapple with how an all-loving and all-powerful God can coexist with evil.[...]

I attended Trinity United Church of Christ during the seven years I lived in Chicago. Although I do not know him personally, I heard Rev. Wright preach on dozens of Sundays. His sermons soothed my broken heart while I divorced, they eased my mental anguish when my sister was ill, and they helped give me strength as I watched the destructive power of racism, sexism and homophobia within my Chicago community. In short, his words did what a pastor's words are supposed to do. I am grateful for Jeremiah Wright and for his prophetic witness.

Political theorist William Galston:

Senator Obama's speech moved me, as I suspect it did most listeners. As a onetime speechwriter, I admire its artful construction, rhetorical brilliance, and historical reach. But it left a basic question unanswered: What, if anything, did Obama do in response to what he now acknowledges he heard Reverend Wright say? Did he raise his concerns with other members of the congregation? With Reverend Wright himself? Was he seriously enough disturbed to consider leaving Trinity for another church? By embedding his own life in the larger narrative of race in America, Obama is implicitly saying that these questions don't matter. But they do, because they present a window on his character and help us judge what kind of president he would be.

Like Walt Whitman, Obama presents himself as someone who contains multitudes, someone whose ancestry and life-history embodies the American experience as a whole. There is some truth to this. But it is a suspiciously convenient stance, because it enables him to evade contradictions and avoid hard choices. Successful leaders must know when to draw lines and say no. They must accept that as they do so, they will leave some people out and make some enemies. Many Americans will wonder whether Senator Obama's sincere, burning desire to forge unity out of division leaves him unable or unwilling to acknowledge lines that must not be crossed. And they will wonder how a campaign built on the political centrality of unifying rhetoric can argue that good deeds somehow counterbalance divisive hate speech from a minister in a position to influence the views of thousands of parishioners? Is this really the moral equivalent of the senator's grandmother?

Obama cannot disown Rev. Wright because, he says, "he has been like family to me." Like family, perhaps; but in the last analysis, not family. We do not choose our parents; we do choose our mentors and spiritual advisors. I do not believe Senator Obama yet understands how questionable his choice appears to many Americans of good will, including those who intend--as I do--to vote for him if he becomes the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

Will Wilkinson:

Obama says the real problem is not that an American of a different ethnic background might take your job (that was the context), but that a non-American might. But let’s not dwell on that Mexican, Canadian, or Chinese guy who gets that job. Who cares about them? Well, if you think it for a second, you might care. So let’s try to remove from our thoughts the very real, yet non-American people who often gain immensely from outsourcing and pin it on all corporations. Well, Obama can’t have it both ways. It matters not to the individual American whether she has lost her job to someone in South Dakota, where it is cheaper to do business, or to someone in a whole different country. It matters not to the individual American whether he has lost his job to father of four in India or a new robot arm in North Carolina. In attacking offshore outsourcing Obama encourages in one breathe the zero-sum mentality he condemns in another. It may be possible to induce a spell of internal cooperation by framing it as part an external conflict, but it can’t last. By threatening growth, protectionism encourages internal conflict over the division of a smaller pie. As Obama evidently knows, that’s when racial lines are the most salient, when divisive zero-sum thinking prevails.

I’m convinced that Obama holds himself to a higher moral standard than the typical politician, and think that this speech was proof of that. But he guts his own aspirations when he stops short and preaches conflict at the point where preaching unity is no longer expedient.

Russell Arben Fox (who celebrated his 5-year blogiversary this week):

I'm familiar with some of Reverend Wright's sermons, having listened to more than a few of them from various sources over the years; two of my colleagues here at Friends U., in fact, have attended and taken student groups to TUCC when they've visited Chicago on several occasions. And let me just say this: leave aside all the arguably justifiable anger and the class-based suspicions for the moment, if you can; if you're a serious and conservative Christian, give the full range of TUCC's message a try. To be sure, it is a heavily race-conscious church...but then, so were Martin Luther King's revival meetings. If you can accept and get past that, you'll find that it is far more doctrinal, evangelical and Biblically-grounded than you might expect. Obama may be a member of the elite, but frankly, anyone who has been willing to listen to those messages of repentance and salvation for 20 years, and whose been willing to build his marriage and fatherhood through such a church, deserves a lot more credit from the religious among us than he's gotten so far.