Judging Religion

The New York Times had an excellent editorial today about defending the religious freedom of Muslims.

The hypocrisy it mentions (right-wing Christians trying to deny Muslims the ability to build mosques or wear religious garb in public, despite the fact that many of these are exactly the same accommodations Christians complain about not getting) is certainly one reason why this discussion is annoying. The other one is the common question of why the NYT would publish a defense of Islam, or why liberals would support it, given the religion's flaws.

I can certainly understand the sentiment, frankly. I don't hold Muslim views on gender roles in very high regard. I think Shariah law can be easily abused to oppress others. And I don't really like it when people propose laws that criminalize things like blasphemy and apostasy.

Then again, I don't hold a lot of Christian doctrine in these areas in very high regard either. (Or Jewish, particularly Orthodox Jewish, or Mormon, or some Buddhist sects... and so on.) If the best one can say about their religion is that its extremists aren't quite as bad as a different group's extremists, it's not a compliment. And any criticism I'm going to direct towards Muslims for their failings is going to fall on a number of other groups as well, whether that's for gender roles, using their religion as an excuse to obtain political power, trying to force others to live by religious laws, or any one of a number of other things.

That fairness I'm going to abide by in my criticisms also has to be applied to other matters of law as well. I can't deny only Muslims the ability to build mosques. I'd rather deny everyone the right to use their religion as an excuse to discriminate, but if we're going to allow Christians to do it, we're going to have to allow other groups to do it as well. I can deny Muslims the right to use Shariah law in many cases (like divorce) where it would be a burden on the other party's rights - but then, Christians can't just ignore divorce and marriage laws either, so that's still entirely fair.

Essentially, the point here is that any liberal defense of Islam extends exactly as far as the leeway we're willing to extend to any other religion and no farther. If any Christians have a problem with that - if they think our religious freedom laws grant too much ability for Muslims to infringe on others' rights - they might want to ask themselves who asked for those laws to extend as far as they do. And whether they're willing to live with the consequences of rolling them back.

Intelligence and Certainty

There's one line in particular in this editorial that deserves to be strongly highlighted:

Indeed it was precisely because they were well-informed that they were able to hold their opposing certainties so firmly...

There's a lot I don't like about the editorial, but its argument that more well-informed people paradoxically can make more errors in supporting questionable points is quite good.

It gets to the point where I actually trust someone less if they're particularly vocal about how rational and well-informed they are, particularly if they're using those traits to argue that they should be paid more attention than the obvious idiots they're talking with. Logic is an excellent tool, but it can be used to make bullshit seem acceptable just as easily as it can be used to actually find the truth; someone who is treating it as an incorruptible force for good isn't going to be watching out for the errors that can creep in.

There's also another point: It's usually a good idea to remind oneself that not everyone who comes to a different conclusion is going to be a useless idiot. That doesn't mean one has to find compromises or points of agreement, since it is always possible that even an intelligent person is completely wrong, but it usually helps avoid some degree of rancor if one remembers that most people do try to have reasons that sound good to them.

And one final detail - ultimately, this particular conservative author concludes that the accusations made against former President Clinton were more truthful than we were willing to admit, and that the accusations against Justice Thomas during his confirmation hearings are still vague and possibly unknowable. This matches up well enough with what the author might want to be true that I'm forced to conclude knowing all this is no magic wand to prevent bias either.

 

Law and Compassion

This entire blog post from Love Joy Feminism is worth reading, but there's one part I specifically want to focus on. Specifically, I want to talk about the roles of logic and emotion in our decision making, particularly when it comes to legal issues.

Law is certainly a field that does not generally lend itself to emotional appeals, and there are good reasons for that. Given that the extent to which people react to emotional appeals varies depending on the situation and the person, they aren't usually a good fit for a system that needs to treat people in similar circumstances as equally as possible.

However, our laws don't exist just to perpetuate themselves, nor are they always perfect and applied perfectly. Meeting the purpose of a justice system and accounting for its fallibility often will require some degree of mercy from the people enforcing it. Managing to do so while still treating everyone at least mostly equally is extremely difficult, but the other option (no mercy at all) leads to problems that are at least as bad in the long run.

Which brings me back to the original post and its remark:

Sessions’ insistence that his interpretation of the law is logical while others’ interpretations are polluted by emotions is no more reality than is the stereotype that men are “logical” and women are “emotional.” The reality is that we all have access to both, and that no one makes a decision based solely on one or the other.

Many people have trouble understanding how it's possible for arguments like Sessions' to include emotion when they're the ones (ostensibly) arguing for strict logic and reason while their opponents are making emotional appeals, as this point alleges. However, as I noted above, there are some very good reasons to temper justice with mercy... which means the decision to abandon any hint of compassion often has more to do with the desire to punish people or the desire to present a certain image than it does with a logical assessment of what best serves our justice system. Those may be a different type of emotional appeal than the typical stories you get out of criminal justice reform advocates, but they are still emotional appeals.

The Future of the Supreme Court

I largely agree with the idea in this editorial that the Supreme Court is headed for trouble. The increasing partisanship of its members is already damaging its credibility and respect. If that were the only consequence, it would be depressing but not too horrible; people not liking the court or its decisions wouldn't change how their powers are defined or make it possible to defy their decisions without consequences. However, as the court becomes increasingly partisan, I worry that we'll see more people selected for it and more people seeking nominations for partisan reasons rather than because they'll make good decisions about what the law means.

The solutions the editorial proposes, though, don't seem much like good solutions to me. If anything, they seem to argue that we can't fix the problem.

Term limits for the Supreme Court, in particular, isn't a minor change for an institution that was originally designed to have some independence from the electorate's whims. Doing that certainly would limit some of the negative consequences of increased partisanship, but it'd also increase the focus on partisanship when selecting nominees. Given that the problem we've identified is too much focus on partisanship, that seems like a rather contradictory solution at best - then again, if we can't actually reduce partisanship, we may have to do something like this eventually.

And adding more judges is just a temporary patch on the problem, and that only in the unlikely event that it works correctly. If we used it to add some moderates with good judgment, then we could potentially rely on those people to be the swing votes whether or not their partisan colleagues were led astray by bias or not. But adding such people isn't a guarantee; in fact, given that the problem is that the process for selecting justices is being increasingly warped by partisan concerns, it's more likely than not that we wouldn't get people who could help. And even if we did, any balance we'd get would only last as long as it took for a future president to backslide again.

The third solution the article suggests - that existing justices will moderate their views as necessary to ensure the court doesn't end up becoming too partisan - is probably the best idea from my point of view. The problem, of course, is that the same independence which allows them to do that without facing the wrath of the electorate also makes it impossible to force them to do it.

In the long run, I think we need to do a better job of selecting people to nominate - more useful confirmation hearings, for example. Probably, for that matter, we need to look at what makes conservative and liberal judges different at all levels, not just the Supreme Court. Of course, coming to an agreement on which we ultimately want more of is probably not going to happen any time soon.

Book Journal: Sins of Empire

I should probably be reading the second book in this series, since it's the one I haven't read, but it's been long enough since I read the first one that I wanted to remind myself what was actually going on here before I jump back in. (This happens to me more often than I would expect, given how good my memory usually is, but it's not like I actually mind.)

Sins of Empire is the start of the second series written by Brian McClellan. It's set in the same world as his first, although it centers on a different part of the world. I really like both; they've got a lot of interesting political intrigue, fight scenes, and a very interesting magic system. The magic system in particular feels very interesting and relevant even in a world that's closer to Napoleonic War tech than the typical fantasy setting that features magic. The fact that some of it uses gunpowder as a power source for magic probably helps in that regard.

The whole thing does get a bit convoluted (which is probably part of the reason why I'm having to re-read it in order to remember all the things that happened), but that doesn't make it any less entertaining.

Double Standards

There's one other reaction (actually, there's probably more than that, but only one more I think I'll bother mentioning) to the accusations made by Dr. Ford regarding Judge Kavanaugh that I think is worth mentioning.

Specifically, there's a lot of Republicans who are arguing that they can't possibly give way on his nomination over this, because otherwise it would teach Democrats that they can just keep coming up with sexual assault allegations to derail their candidates and nominees with.

... Okay, I suppose that's just a specific example of the third response I mentioned in my last post. But I think it's worth mentioning in more detail, because it's gained quite a bit of traction for something that should be quite easy to disprove. Namely: If it's that easy for the Democrats to just come up with accusations of this sort, why isn't it more common?

One of the primary highlights of accusations that are generally believed, for example, is multiple women accusing the same person, so why would the Democrats only come up with one accusation to use against Kavanaugh if they could just make more? Or, if you prefer, why aren't more allegations of misconduct showing up in close Senate or House races? There are far more of those than there are accusations right now.

This isn't the sort of idea that can be used to discuss any specific incident, of course. However, I think it's important to remember that sometimes what we're not seeing happening can be important.

Responding to an Accusation

I'd put the responses I've seen to the accusation that Judge Kavanaugh attempted to rape someone in high school into one of three categories:

1. It was more than 30 years ago; who cares?

2. There's no way to be certain whether this is even true or not; therefore we should ignore it.

3. What a convenient time for these allegations! This is obviously fake.

I don't find any of them convincing. It's interesting, in fact, how neatly this captures many of the problems the #MeToo movement has been trying to highlight.

The first is probably the one I have the most sympathy with, since I can readily see how someone would change over the decades into someone who would never do such things again, if not actually help and support victims. The problem, though, is that I don't give all that much credit to someone that changes that way because they're lucky. If the person in question can talk about how they've changed and what caused it, then I'd be much more inclined to extend forgiveness... but even then I don't believe it's required for anyone else to do the same.

Basically, redemption is not something one can claim simply because it's been long enough since they last did something wrong.

The second is an extremely common error as far as dealing with these allegations are concerned: the idea that something that is not legally actionable cannot be dealt with at all. There are limits to what can be done outside of our legal system, and that's as it should be; we've set things up so that (in theory, at least) the most severe punishments we hand out only get used when a high standard is met. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to look at a case where we're only barely more than 50% certain the accusation is true in the same way as a case where we're 90% certain it's true.

Basically, we should be willing to take some actions to support and defend victims and interfere with accused people, depending on how credible the accusations are.

Then the third is just flat-out ridiculous. The fact that many people who absolutely insist on not destroying other people's reputations without very good evidence are willing to throw around accusations of malicious false reports without any better evidence than a possible motive is amusing and kind of depressing. Believing that we can't prove the accusations true is one thing, but that doesn't necessarily imply that making them in the first place was a crime.