On Mandatory Government Vaccinations

The government has an interest in vaccinating its population.  Do citizens have a right against their being vaccinated?  Citizens have a right against the government not to be made to do what violates their conscience.  But, of course, this has limits, for one's conscience is fallible and given to error.  If the population of citizens who, out of a (false) religious belief do not believe they should have vaccinations, is small enough so as not to jeopardize the "herd immunity," the government should not force these citizens to be immunized.

Still, one's moral rights do not entitle one to put others in an unnecessarily high risk of harm.  This is why the blind do not have a right to drive on public roads. The more serious the disease is, the more the government should play a role in mandating vaccinations which are known to be effective and are known to have a small risk of negative side-effects.  This is for the common good.  The less serious the disease is, the less the government should play a role in mandating vaccinations (though the government still might have an interest in providing evidence for the cost/benefits of these vaccinations).

A Book I Just Read

Very entertaining and well written.  Josh recounts his year preparing for the U.S. memory competition, his interviews with competitors and scientists having to do with memory, and gives the reader a brief history of memorization in education.  If you want to learn how to profoundly increase your memory, this is a good book with which to start.  It should be required reading for people in the profession of educating children, even better, the classics he mentions which lay out the fascinating memory techniques almost all of us have forgotten.

When My Father Told Me He Wanted to Be a Woman

Denise Shick:

What was your biggest concern when you were nine years old? Was it trying to memorize your multiplication tables? Was it that the school cafeteria might serve your least favorite vegetable at lunch? Perhaps it was something more serious; perhaps your parents were talking of getting divorced. My biggest concern at age nine was how to keep my daddy’s secret, the one he revealed to me as we sat alone on a hill near our home. In a sense, I lost my dad that day, when he told me he wanted to become a woman.

As I tried to process that revelation, he blindsided me with another. He told me he never wanted to have children. To him, my siblings and I were mistakes, because we did not align with his desires.

His confessions left me confused and hurt. After all, I just wanted a dad who would love and cherish me, who would make me feel special as a daughter. I felt rejected and abandoned by my own father.
By the time I was eleven, my dad had begun to abuse me emotionally and sexually. Even so, I continued to keep my dad’s secret locked away, deep down in my heart.

My dad created a home environment that made me feel as if I was walking on pins and needles. His resentment over my possession of what he so deeply desired for himself—a woman’s body—turned into anger and abuse. As his desires intensified, he began to borrow my clothing. Many times I discovered my underclothes and tops under bathroom towels, or in the attic—often in places I had not been. I learned to organize my clothes just so, in order to know if he had been in my dresser drawers. When I confirmed that he’d worn an article of my clothing, I simply could not bring myself to ever wear that item again.

As an adolescent, I had to be careful about how I dressed. I always had to ask myself how he would react to my outfit. Would it make him so envious that he’d “borrow” it (without my consent, of course)? I began to hate my body. It was a constant reminder of what my father wanted to become. When I began to wear makeup, I had to block out the images I had of him applying makeup or eye shadow or lipstick. He was destroying my desire to become a woman.

Here is the rest.

Presidential Pitches

Mansplaining

Hopefully you don't need me to mansplain to you why this is funny; but if so (as a friend 'splained), I shall try to do so in an exceptionally clear and accurate manner.

Liturgy and Interchangeable Sexes

Peter Leithart:

First Timothy 2:12–14 is one of the texts most commonly cited in debates over women’s ordination: “I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, then Eve. And not Adam was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression.”

Some inside and outside the Church regard this text as prime evidence that Christianity is inherently misogynistic. Even for Christians who take the text at face value, it seems a thin reed. What hath Adam to do with the pastoral ministry?

Meet the Women Apologists

Andrea Palpant Dilley:

Holly Ordway began her conversion to faith in a casino in Reno, Nevada, surrounded by slot machines. She had just competed in a North American Cup fencing tournament and was having dinner with her coach and his wife. “One of the Narnia films had just come out,” Ordway told me. “Our discussion of the film led to the question, Does God exist?”

As they talked late into the night, she traveled through a Lewisian wardrobe that landed her in a mysterious new country. “I discovered it was possible to think rationally about the faith,” says Ordway. “There were arguments that at least stood up to preliminary testing. That was a fundamental aha moment, when my intellect was able to wake up and say, Okay, this is interesting. It was frightening and exciting.”

At the time, Ordway was in her early 30s and teaching literature and composition at a public college in Southern California. Since graduate school, she had thought of Christians as superstitious, Christianity as a “blemish on modern civilization,” and the Bible as a collection of fairy tales. “I was radicalized as an atheist and hostile toward Christians in general,” says Ordway.

Here is the rest.

"Two Faces of Tolerance"

Ed Feser:

What is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.

Herbert Marcuse

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

Given current events in Indiana, I suppose it is time once again to recall a post first run on the old Right Reason blog in March of 2007, and reprinted on this blog in December of 2009.  Here are the relevant passages, followed by some commentary:

To the charge that liberals are (or, given their principles, should be) in favor of X [where X = legalizing abortion, liberalizing obscenity laws, banning smoking on private property, legalizing “same-sex marriage,” outlawing the public advocacy of traditional sexual morality, etc. etc.], the standard liberal response goes through about five stages (with, it seems, roughly 5-10 years passing between each stage, though sometimes the transition is much quicker than that).  Here they are:

Stage 1: “Oh please. Only a far-right-wing nutjob would make such a paranoid and ridiculous accusation - I suppose next you’ll accuse us of wanting to poison your precious bodily fluids!”

Stage 2: “Well, I wouldn’t go as far as X. All the same, it’s good to be open-minded about these things. I mean, people used to think ending slavery was a crazy idea too…”

Stage 3: “Hey, the Europeans have had X for years and the sky hasn’t fallen. But no, I admit that this backward country probably isn’t ready for X yet.”

Stage 4: “Of course I’m in favor of X - it’s in the Constitution! Only a far-right-wing nutjob could possibly oppose it.”

Stage 5: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law…”

…

Fortunately, though, we can rely on conservatives to hold the line, and indeed to turn back liberal advances. Right?

Well, no, of course not. (You can stop rolling your eyes, I was being facetious.) For conservatives - or maybe I should say “conservatives” (since there’s very little that they ever actually manage to conserve, unless money is somehow involved) - seem to go through five stages of their own. Here they are:

Stage 1: “Mark my words: if the extreme left had its way, they’d foist X upon us! These nutjobs must be opposed at all costs.”

Stage 2: “Omigosh, now even thoughtful, mainstream liberals favor X! Fortunately, it’s political suicide.”

Stage 3: “X now exists in 45 out of 50 states. Fellow conservatives, we need to learn how to adjust to this grim new reality.”

Stage 4: “X isn’t so bad, really, when you think about it. And you know, sometimes change is good. Consider slavery…”

Stage 5: “Hey, I was always in favor of X! You must have me confused with a [paleocon, theocon, Bible thumper, etc.]. But everyone knows that mainstream conservatism has nothing to do with those nutjobs…”

End quote.  Now, where X = curtailing the free exercise of religion, at the time I first wrote those words I estimated that liberals were at about stage 2.  At this point it seems that many of them are at about stage 4, and a disturbing number of hotheads among them seem willing to push for stage 5 vigilantism.  Conservatives, meanwhile, seem mostly to be at about stage 3 of their own progression, and I suspect that not a few are at least flirting with Stage 4.

And so here is where we find ourselves in the land of the free and the home of the brave in April of 2015:

Prominent conservative politicians and churchmen have all essentially caved in on the substance of the dispute over “same-sex marriage.”  None of them will publicly express the slightest moral disapproval of homosexual behavior, and few even bother anymore with social scientific arguments supporting the benefits of children being raised by both a mother and a father.  Indeed, all of them are eager to express their deep respect for their fellow citizens who happen to be homosexual, vigorously to condemn “homophobia” and discrimination, etc.  Some of them are even happy to affirm “same-sex marriage.”  All they ask is that religious believers who on moral grounds disapprove of “same-sex marriage” not be forced to cooperate formally or materially with it.  The circumstances where this might occur are, of course, very rare.  No one is proposing that business owners might refuse to serve a customer simply because he or she happens to be homosexual.  What is in view are merely cases where a business owner who objects to “same-sex marriage” would be forced to participate in it, say by providing a wedding cake or wedding invitations.  Nor would his refusal to participate inconvenience anyone, since there are plenty of business owners who have no qualms about “same-sex marriage.”

In short, what conservatives are proposing is not only extremely modest, but is being defended in the name of their opponents’ own principles, the most liberal of principles, viz. the Jeffersonian principle that it is tyrannical to force someone to act against his conscience, and the Rawlsian principle that a pluralistic society should strive as far as possible to respect and keep a just peace between citizens committed to radically different moral, philosophical and religious views. 

And for taking this paradigmatically liberal position, they are widely and shrilly denounced by liberals as… “bigots,” “haters,” “intolerant,” comparable to the Ku Klux Klan and the upholders of Jim Crow.

Meanwhile, some liberal business owners fire employees who take this conservative position, while others refuse to do business in a state that adopts it.  Other liberals routinely refuse even to discuss the merits of the conservative position but merely hurl insults and try to shout down and intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with them.  And when a particular business owner affirms that customers who happen to be homosexual are welcome in her restaurant, but also says that she would not agree to cater a hypothetical “same-sex wedding,” she finds herself suddenly subjected to a nationwide Two Minutes Hate, with an online mob actively seeking to destroy her livelihood and reputation -- some of them even proposing to burn down the restaurant or kill its owners.  Even some mainstream liberals, while not condoning such violence, suggest that the restaurant owner had invited this abuse.

And liberals have winked at or even embraced the ethos and tactics of the lynch mob in the name of… tolerance, freedom, and pluralism, of love and compassion and opposition to bigotry.

How have we descended into such Orwellian insanity? 

It’s all about sexual equality

Read the rest.

The Wrongly Named "Human Rights Campaign" in Arkansas

Here is a link to the website of the so-called "Human Rights Campaign" which has been waging a war against the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Arkansas.

What are the human rights that the HRCampaign is hell-bent to protect (or enforce)?  Exactly what they are is not at all clear from their website.  For sure, one of the human rights is not a right against the government such that the government cannot "substantially burden" a person's religious beliefs unless the government is pursuing a "compelling government interest" and does so in a way that is "narrowly tailored," or pursues the "least restrictive means" to accomplish the task of fulfilling the government interest.  Nor is it the right to private property.

A human right is a species of a moral right.  A human right is not a legal right.  One might have a human right to life even if there are no laws in one's sorry government  on the books for a time protecting such a right (a government, say, run by certain utilitarians. Perhaps it protects such right de facto but not de jure).  Or if that example does not suit you, substitute another human right that the government fails to legally afford one by governmental means.

A human right is a right that all humans have.  A right to receive a social security check might be a legal right.  It might also be a moral right (say, if the government promises to give you one by an act of legislation), but it is not a right that all humans have.  It is not even a right that all U.S. citizens have.  It is only a right for those sixty-five and older.

One of the alleged rights that the HRCampaign appears to be trying to uphold is a right to be made a cake for a gay-wedding.  But this certainly is not a human right, since, for one, not all humans are gay.  Is the relevant right a right to have a baker bake you a cake?  That cannot be a human right either, for some small societies have no bakers.  First note, that an alleged right to have a baker bake you a cake is a positive claim right, not a negative right.  A negative claim right is  a right against your doing something to me.  (Most moral rights are negative rights).  A positive claim right is a right to your doing something for me.  But in the absence of bakers there is no positive right to the baker's services because there are no bakers.

Is the human right a right to having-a-cake-baked-for-you-by-a-baker-if-there-were-bakers?  If that is the case, then it would seem that all moral rights are human rights, since similar conditional clause could be added to almost any right.

I suggest that human rights are basic rights which are not expressible in the gerrymandered way above which I have placed in bold.  If that is correct, then what is or are the relevant human rights which the HRCampaign is promoting?

Is it a human right to respect?  In the baker-type court cases there is no evidence that any of the gay couples were not afforded the basic respect that comes from being a human.  None were treated as if they were not human beings.

What then?

A right to have a business treat one like everyone else?  But businesses do not treat everyone the same.  Businesses justly discriminate against thieves who want to steal their goods, liquor stores discriminate against people who look young and do not have proper identification, and so on and so forth.

Now Playing

From "The Dude"

Or Joe Cocker:

 

Or Elvis Costello and Co.:

Or from The Man:

Now Playing: Property of Jesus

Now Playing: Maundy Thursday Edition

"What the Foes of the Religious Freedom Law Get Wrong"

A reader recommended the following article for inspection.  The title of the post is the title of the Daily News article by S.E. Cupp.  

Cupp has some good observations:

The Indiana law, based on dozens of laws already enacted in other states, does not give businesses a “get out of gay free” card, if you will. It does, however, allow a business owner to raise religion as a defense when an anti-discrimination lawsuit is presented. There are no assurances that this defense will be upheld by a court of law.
But the outrage over Indiana’s law is outrageously inconsistent. Are Connecticut and Massachusetts, two liberal states with similar laws (whose governors are, not incidentally, mulling runs for President), also “backwards” and “intolerant”?
What about all the businesses that have scolded Indiana or threatened to pull out or halt expansion? Apple CEO Tim Cook, who came out himself last year, tweeted his disappointment in Indiana, saying that “Apple is open for everyone.” Apple still does business in Russia, though, where discrimination against gays isn’t merely a possibility but in fact codified into law. The company did briefly halt sales in Russia on Tuesday — not because of its laws endangering the rights of gays but because of the ruble’s plunging value.  

Hillary Clinton tweeted that she was “sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today.” But Clinton is happy to receive donations to her Clinton Global Initiative from Saudi Arabia, where homosexuals are actually beheaded.

But I take issue with other details in the article, specifically in the paragraphs I shall label [A] [B] and [C]:

Baptists Switch to Wine: Grapejuice Companies Concerned

The Christian Post:

Grape juice companies are concerned about their profit margin after the nation's largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, announced it would stop using grape juice and begin using wine for communion on April 1 this year.

Southern Baptists use communion grape juice for a ceremony known as the "Lord's Supper." In the ceremony, the grape juice is called "the blood of Christ," or "the blood of Christ but not the actual blood of Christ," when speaking to Catholics.

U.B. Duped, a spokesperson for Jester's, the largest supplier of communion grape juice, announced Wednesday it would cut back on production and may cut its work force "thanks to those stinkin Baptists."

Former SBC President Frank Page told The Christian Post he was outraged that Jester's would consider "profitcy more important than prophecy," then quickly added that he knows "profitcy" is not a real word, but as a Southern Baptist preacher he is required to make it rhyme.

In other interviews with CP, Southern Baptist leaders expressed mixed feelings about the change.

Current SBC President Ronnie Floyd was excited about the move.

"I look forward to any change that makes communion more like the original Last Supper," he said, adding that he will also celebrate with bare, recently washed feet, and point out people who have betrayed him.

Here is the rest.

When Opposing Laws Like Arkansas's and Indiana's Cost Lives

Once again, First Things' R.R. Reno:

None of the dire outcomes predicted by those campaigning against the Indiana RFRA have materialized in jurisdictions that already have versions of the law. Aside from the specific matter of participation in a gay wedding, there has not been a single case in which someone has claimed a religious right to refuse to serve or sell to gays or lesbians. Employment? There exists only one case from 1985—and in that case the court denied the claim to a religious exemption from anti-discrimination laws. Facts belie the outcry and expose it for the propaganda effort that it is.

This campaign of misinformation comes at a cost. For some people, RFRA protection is a matter of life and death.

Take Mary Stinemetz, a Jehovah's Witness in Kansas who needed a liver transplant but would not accept a blood transfusion for religious reasons. To get such an operation, she would have to go a hospital in Nebraska. Kansas Medicaid, which had a policy of only covering in-state procedures, refused to cover the transplant (even though the Omaha procedure would have cost less than the in-state one with a blood transfusion).

Americans Split on Private Property versus Marxism

This is frightening.  A virtual majority of Americans now hold a belief which entails that someone who, for religious reasons, refuses to serve a same-sex couple for their wedding (on and with their own property) should be fined and ultimately imprisoned (which is what happens if you don't pay your fines).  49% seem to hold (perhaps not consciously) that they have a right to your working for them and to your property.  They have a right to your forced-labor even if you object on religious grounds.  They have partial ownership in your labor, your goods, and over you.

Oh, but you are free not to have your business.  We'll throw you a bone (hippies are heroes after all).  As a commenter on Facebook writes:

PEOPLE need to be protected, not businesses. If you don't want to serve customers, don't open a business. 

Got that?  If you own your own business, apparently you don't count as a person.  BAKERS don't need protection, PEOPLE do.  If you own a business, you have no need for government protections.  (We run on the Democratic loot and pillage economic model).  If you don't want to serve somebody, too bad.  You'll be forced to do it or "free" to close up shop.

We are moving towards a society that does not believe in private property.

Suppose I decide to start selling cakes from my house.  Does everyone then have a moral right to come into my house such that I have a moral obligation to let you in?  Of course not.  It's MY HOUSE not YOURS or the GOVERNMENT'S.  As long as I am not harming you and your most basic needs can be met without coming into my house, it is up to me and my family to determine who comes in and when.  (Sure, I can have morally illegitimate reasons for not letting you in, but we're not talking about my reasons but the right to let you in or not apart from whatever reasons I have for or against).

You have no right to come in as you please, no right to my doing business with you in my house, nor do I have an obligation to let you in or do business with you (again, aside from extreme cases.  If you get into a wreck outside my house when there's an impending tornado going down the street, and I'm the only one with the available means to assist you, I have a duty to give you safety and shelter.  Your value as a person gives you a right to life which trumps my desire to watch TV such that, in that case, I have no right not to let you in.  In fact, I have a duty to get off my butt and lend a hand).

Now suppose I buy the property next to my house.  I make another building with living quarters.   Half the time I bake at one house and half the time I also sleep in that house.  Do you have a right to come into that other building (whenever you want or during the hours I've posted) such that I have a moral obligation to let you in now?  Why think that?  The other building is as much mine as the previous one.  Suppose I start sleeping in the other building only one night a week and selling cakes out of it six days a week.  Do you then have a right to my selling you a cake such that I have an obligation to do business with you?  Why then and not before?  Suppose I stop sleeping in the building entirely and put a sign up on the building which says "Bakery."  Do you then have a right to my selling you a cake such that I have a correlative moral duty to sell you the cake?  Why then and not before?

Does a black businessman have a moral right not to sell to China?  Yes (though it might be prudent to do so).  He has that right and we have a duty not to force him to sell to China.  Does a black businessman have a moral right not to sell to Americans?  Sure, why not? Does a black businessman have a moral right not to sell to Chinese women?  If he has a right not to sell to China, then surely he has a right not to sell to Chinese women.  Does a black businessman have a moral right not to sell to American women?  If he has a right not to sell to Chinese women then surely he has a right not to sell to American women.  Does a black businessman have a moral right not to sell to white American women?  If he has a right not to sell to American women then surely he has a right not to sell to white, American women (though our friend at this point might not have much of a business!)

Does he have a right not to sell to white women simply because they are white and (as he believes) all whites are white-devils?  No.  No one has a moral right to act on the basis of racist and thus immoral reasons.  No one has a moral right to act on the basis of immoral beliefs.  Nonetheless, in a free, non-Orwellian country, we should not want the Thought Police regulating all of our beliefs, especially our religious beliefs which do not harm others or infringe on their basic rights.  The black business owner is a racist, but racists who do not harm others should not go to jail.  Instead of using brute FORCE, one can (if one is able to) use reasons.

There is no basic moral right to have a baker bake you a cake (more on this in a later post).  If you want a cake baked, you are free to BAKE ONE YOURSELF.

Me on the Axe With the Band in NYC

More about our band here.