This was a fascinating article, as I have come to expect from De Civitate. It is very timely, as I am likely to find my ballot in my mailbox when I next check it. However, I have to say, I often found myself deeply confused by the conclusions you came to in the course of your arguments.
It’s possible this is because there is a substantial gulf in our moral frameworks. Though I am not a San Francisco-style rationalist utilitarian, I am almost certainly have moral intuitions that allow for more cooperation with evil than you do. I was uncertain of how to go about trying to find out more, whether I could formulate a clarifying question (or several) that would help me at least figure out if I am disagreeing with you or just failing to understand the argument.
On consideration, I think focusing on Sophie’s Choice is the most productive path. Despite following along, and almost entirely agreeing with, your section explaining the foundations of the Catholic view of cooperation with evil, I don’t see how Sophie counts as providing any material cooperation.
What is it that Sophie is helping the Nazi do? Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t recall anywhere in the article where you actually state this directly (and, believe it or not, in addition to reading your whole article, I went back to re-read the relevant sections looking for this). What follows is my attempts to go through all the possible ways I could imagine Sophie being charged with material aid to the Nazi and why I think they don’t apply. In the end, I think Sophie makes a heroic sacrifice rather than a regretful compromise with evil.
First, Sophie did not physically deliver her child to the Nazi – the children were both forcefully taken.
Argument: I have not read the novel, and only watched the clip. It looks to me like both children have been ripped from her at the point that she makes the choice. It doesn’t look to me like she is passing her daughter over. Even if that is what is happening in the clip, does the whole case really hang on this? In a hypothetical Sophie’s Choice where my interpretation of the scene happened, does your whole position on the issue switch?
Second, Sophie does not operate, even under duress, any of the physical mechanisms by which her daughter gets killed. The Nazis do not ask her to shoot her daughter to save her son, or even so much as press a button.
Argument: I think this is just straightforwardly indisputable, except by an overly-literal and expansive sense of “physical mechanism” by which we conceive of the effect of her voice’s soundwaves hitting their ears and making chemical changes in their brain and so on. You know what I mean here – I’m talking triggers and buttons, not making a full account of a physicalist model of the mind.
Third, and the closest I can come to imagining, is that Sophie somehow helps the Nazi make a choice between which of her children to kill. An analogy here, to use your other primary example, is the roommate who helps the rapist decide which girl at the party to victimize.
Argument: This strikes me as also not very plausible. The Nazi has already decided to kill both her children. Her words are “take my daughter” but they have the same intention and effect as “let me keep my son.” As you say in the first section, “Sophie has saved her son at the cost of her daughter… She did not gas her child; she made a choice in order to save one of her children.”
Later on, you go further, saying that her choice was purely illusory all along. “Sophie never actually had a choice. The S.S. guard gave her the illusion of choice. He held 100% of the power. If Sophie had refused to pick a child, he might very well have followed through on his threat to kill them both. Then again, he might have spared one, or both. Likewise, once Sophie did choose one of her children, he might have killed both anyway, or killed the one Sophie didn’t choose. The power was always, entirely, in his hands.”
Given this, how is Sophie making a material contribution to the Nazi’s actions? We admit that her words did not empower or encourage the Nazi. The most they could have done is please the Nazi. To quote you again: “The only reason the S.S. guard gave Sophie the illusion of choice was to trick Sophie into immediate material cooperation with the murder of her own daughter. In the book, it is especially clear that the guard hates Sophie for her belief in Christ, and wants to strike at her by coaxing her into the greatest blasphemy of all.”
Are we truly going to say that denying the Nazi the satisfaction of this cruelty against a mother is worth her son’s life? That’s the moral? Let no evil-doer be amused, even if it means the death of your children?
Conclusion: I don’t see it. Perhaps it is so blindingly obvious that it need not be stated explicitly. Is simply the act of choosing to save one over the other (or choosing to save one instead of neither) sufficient to count as providing material cooperation? That’s all that I am left with, but I can’t imagine how that can be right.
Allow me an analogy:
Sophie and her two children are fleeing the Nazis, into the arms of the advancing Red Army, who will save them. However, the Nazis, determined to kill as many as possible before they are defeated, send 2 soldiers off to catch them. Each Nazi soldier is able to wrestle away one of her children and run off with them. Luckily, she spots a pistol on the ground, dropped by a different Nazi during their retreat. Sophie grabs the gun, knowing her only chance of saving her children is to kill or injure the fleeing Nazis carrying them off, she is too slow and weak to catch them. She picks up the weapon, but to her dismay, there is only one round remaining. She can’t kill both Nazis with one shot, so she has to choose – save one child, leaving the other to be taken, or do nothing and allow both Nazis to escape with both her children. She shoots the one carrying her son.
Does Sophie act wrongly here? What’s the moral difference with this situation vs. the one in Sophie’s Choice? To make the point more starkly, how is shooting the bullet to kill the Nazi carrying her son to his death different from shooting her words to kill the Nazi’s intention to carry her son to his death?
I have other objections to arguments in the article, but I think this is really at the core of our disagreement. I cannot understand how you can judge Sophie’s actions as material cooperation with evil, even granting your entire framework as laid out in the sections on Cooperation With Evil.
I agree with this take but perhaps on slightly different grounds: I don't accept that the Nazi had 100% of the power in this situation. I think Sophie had the power to influence him to kill only one of her children instead of both, by giving him the satisfaction of forcing her to choose between them. I think she knew that, and that's why she made her choice. If you don't think the power to influence others is real then I guess you think that all the ruthless capitalists who spend trillions of dollars on sales and marketing are fools.
She absolutely made the right decision (not that she would have been culpable at all for making the wrong decision under unimaginable duress). She doesn't deserve a guilt trip over it, she deserves therapy to process her trauma so that she can accept that she made the right choice and move on with her life.
Assuming for the sake of argument that Sophie has real power here, that would make her *more* complicit in the death of the child she chooses to have killed, not less (thus *more* guilty), so I'm not clear how taking the argument in this direction leads to the conclusion that she made the right decision.
It seems the only way you can reach that conclusion is by saying that it is right to do evil so that good may come of it (at least in extremis). That works if you are a utilitarian! I'm not really sure how it can work otherwise. But perhaps you have an unstated argument somewhere between "Sophie had power" and "Sophie made the right choice" that I'm not grokking.
I do agree that nobody needs to guilt trip Sophie, because she is guilt tripping herself plenty hard already. She *does* need help processing that guilt. But *really* processing it, not rejecting it. Help that insists she did nothing wrong isn't going to work. She'll know better, and (I think) that end in the same place: cyanide.
The key factor for me is that at least one of her children is going to die. So, it's not the trolley problem, because she's not putting a different person in harm's way instead of her children. In that case you could argue that she committed murder to save her kids.
She is not putting anyone *in* harm's way, she's being forced to choose whom she will take *out* of harm's way. That's not evil.
But how does she "choose whom she will take out of harm's way"?
She says to the guard: Kill this one. She may be doing it with the intention of saving the other one, but it is still formal cooperation: I choose this act, with this object (the killing of this child). The further end of the act is to take the other child out of harm's way, but that consequence goes *through* the act of consigning her other child to death.
The obvious objection (which you raised last night in person): what if she said instead, "Don't take my little boy"? Wouldn't saying it that way explicitly save one of her children without explicitly condemning the other, and therefore evade the problem of formal cooperation in the death of one of your children? So is this whole thing just a word game?
I don't think the objection stands up. As the article says, formal cooperation can be explicit or implicit. Within the context of the choice given by the SS man, saying the words, "Don't take my little boy" unmistakably implies her participation in the choice and her consent to the Nazis taking her little girl. It's still formal cooperation.
I repeat that the amount of personal guilt or culpability we should assign to Sophie is either zero, or so close to zero as makes no odds. My claim is only that, even if she is not culpable, her participation in the choice is formal cooperation, which is extremely damaging to her personally.
(I also continue to think that, even if we concede that Sophie has some kind of power here, it is *grossly* overconfident to say that "at least one of her children is going to die." I don't know how relevant that is, though.)
To be clear, you say formal cooperation here. In the article, you say immediate material cooperation. Is formal cooperation what you mean?
Whichever way, if we agree with you in her case, that it is wrong to make a choice when that would entail formal cooperation, or even immediate material cooperation, it is not at all obvious to me that that would carry over to less proximate forms of cooperation. Are there reasons to think so?
(For honesty's sake: I'm protestant, and would require more care than you've presented here to be convinced that your schema is correct, but I'm trying to work within it above.)
I'm not convinced that it would be wrong for her to choose one. Would it be wrong in the similar case, where she's choosing between herself and the child, to suggest that her child should be saved? My general sense is that few would say so, and yet, that seems the same in the details you present as relevant? (Unless perhaps consent/self-ownership is meaningful in whether people can be put to death, but that's an unusual take for anyone who (including me) is against euthanasia.)
Yeah, James, what about scenarios in which mortal peril is no one's fault, like a medical triage situation in which multiple patients could be saved with intervention but it's not possible to simultaneously intervene to save all of them? Are you saying the right choice in that scenario is to not make a choice?
Sophie is in a similar situation, it seems to me, and could make her choice based on a snap judgment of which child is most likely to survive the concentration camp.
> To be clear, you say formal cooperation here. In the article, you say immediate material cooperation. Is formal cooperation what you mean?
I promise I didn't do this to be cheeky, but literally at the moment you were writing this comment, I was editing the article to say "formal."
In another comment thread on this article a couple days ago (it was in response to Matt Mortarello), I agreed that the article erred in identifying Sophie's cooperation as immediate material, and I stated that I would edit the article as soon as I'd reviewed it for any downstream problems the edit might expose. It just took me a day and a half to get that done, which is why the edit came in mere seconds before or after you posted this comment.
Her cooperation was formal, and the article was in error.
> Whichever way, if we agree with you in her case, that it is wrong to make a choice when that would entail formal cooperation, or even immediate material cooperation, it is not at all obvious to me that that would carry over to less proximate forms of cooperation. Are there reasons to think so?
I think there are intuitive reasons to think that material cooperation with evil -- even more or less remote cooperation with evil -- is morally problematic.
Suppose you own a gun store (let's say it's in Somalia, where there are no gun laws). A man walks in and asks to buy a gun. He asks what kind of gun and bullet will definitely kill an adult human being at close range. You tell him, and then you ask why he would want to know that. The customer admits that he is buying a gun to kill his wife, and that he's going to do it as soon as he gets home. He is very convincing. You become certain you are talking to a psychopath.
Are there any moral problems whatsoever with selling him the gun? He doesn't put you under duress, he doesn't threaten violence, he simply offers you cash in exchange for a murder weapon. Is there any reason why that might not be okay?
If yes, then there are moral problems with somewhat-remote cooperation with evil, and you need to develop a moral framework for figuring out exactly how that works at different degrees of cooperation. I think the framework inevitably ends up looking something like the Catholic one. (If you're Protestant, I'll note that the Catholic framework has its ultimate roots in the Church Fathers, especially Augustine.)
And I tend to think that everyone will answer "yes."
I agree, this's a fascinating and thought-provoking article even though, on reflection, I still disagree with the bottom-line reasoning. And, after reflecting on your comment, I agree that we should dig in more to "Sophie's Choice."
Let me offer two other hypothetical analogies (your hypothetical being numbered (1)):
(2): Sophie thinks "My daughter is a good Christian and ready to face death. My son isn't ready yet." Her external level of cooperation is the same, but her inward reasoning is on a different level.
(3): Sophie somehow knows that this specific camp's head (was once friends with her daughter) / (is ideologically opposed to killing girls) / (something else), so she says "take my daughter" in reasonable hope that her daughter won't actually be killed. It's a very contrived scenario with the Nazis, but less so when we're stretching out the analogy to political choices in general.
That last one in particular seems like enough of a reach that I wonder whether we wouldn't be better off simply talking about political choices. I'm just having a hard time visualizing it. Does the head of the camp inspect every person who goes into the chamber to make sure she isn't an old friend / girl / other?
FWIW, though, I had to concede that OP is right that I misclassified Sophie's cooperation. Shoulda stated it was formal.
Thanks for reading and thinking it through, at any rate! I don't know where exactly you're coming from, ethically speaking, and I don't know what other objections you have, so all I can do is answer your question about Sophie's cooperation.
As of last night, when I posted this, my thinking was that Sophie's *consent* was the material element of her cooperation.
However, the very first thing I woke up to this morning was an email from a reader (who is smarter than me & has published in this area), which pointed out that consent cannot possibly be material cooperation, because consent is the *essence* of formal cooperation. Here is that email, in its entirety:
> I haven't gotten past the section entitled Sophie's Error yet, but there is a mistake here. Sophie's choice is not material cooperation at all. She has absolutely no material with which to cooperate. She is not making it possible, or easier, for the guard to kill the other one. Her action is pure formal cooperation. She says to the guard: Kill this one. She may be doing it with the intention of saving the other one, but it is still formal cooperation: I choose this act, with this object. (The object of the act, as opposed to the circumstances, further end, and consequences of the act, is another important piece of the moral puzzle.)
I think this email is correct. I was wrong to classify this as immediate material cooperation. Sophie's cooperation was formal. I'm going to have to publish a revision to that section tonight, but first I need to reread everything after that point to identify any downstream effects on my argument, so that my correction does not introduce more errors. (Then I will fret for a few hours about the impact on you lovely *readers* of my making such a stupid error.)
So my answer to your first several objections is: yes, you are correct, this is not material cooperation at all. It is formal cooperation.
With this correction, the difference in your fleeing-to-the-Red-Army hypothetical then, I suspect, becomes much clearer: in that hypothetical, Sophie does not consent to the killing of either of her children, she does not direct it, she does not participate in it -- however you want to put it, she doesn't do *that*. She can even continue attempting to chase down the other Nazi even though she is confident that she will not succeed! (Indeed, she should!)
As I said, I have no idea where that leads you to next, but I thank you for the thoughtful (and correct) correction!
I think it’s also a mistake to call what Sophie does consent or formal cooperation too. Let’s go back to the frat rape example. I think we agree that Sophie is a victim in any case, even if she ends up engaging in formal cooperation. So, I’m going to take the rape case from the perspective of the victim and build the analogy to Sophie from there.
For the sake of clarity, I’ll call the rape victim Cathie. She gets captured by several rapists and brought to an isolated room. She is pleading for her safe return. The leader of the group, having her at his mercy and being pure evil, decides it would be especially brutal for Cathie to feel somehow responsible for all this. So, rather than the whole group raping her in turn as was initially planned, he says, “I’ll give you a break – choose which of us will rape you and the rest will just hold you down.” Cathie replies it’s too awful to choose and begs again to be released to safety. The leader says, “if you don’t choose, it’s all of us.” And he turns to the others in his group who all start getting ready. Just as they are pushing her down onto the bed, she cries out “[guy 1] can do it!” with the hope that it will save her from being raped by the rest of them.
Is the claim that Cathie consents in some sense to being raped by guy 1? Or in some sense formally cooperates in this action? This seems really obviously false to me. If Cathie doesn’t consent in this situation, what’s the disanalogy to Sophie’s situation?
FWIW, I'm focusing on Sophie's Choice since you say about its connection to the broader argument: "If it seems wrong to you, perhaps my argument isn’t going to connect with you and you can skip the rest of this article." And I don't want to get too far ahead since this is a clear crux. I suppose I should wait on the revision, but it sounds to me like the change to a formal cooperation analysis might break the analogy to Sophie's Choice, while the existing material cooperation argument survives, in which case you might really just be saying that if the basic analysis of the moral considerations involved in material cooperation is a necessary point of agreement.
I like the Cathie example! Two observations about Cathie:
First, as you say, the gang rapists do this deliberately, in order to be especially cruel. They offer Cathie, essentially, an exchange: a significant reduction of immediate physical suffering in exchange for her verbal consent to one rape. I certainly agree that this is extremely cruel. The way I see it, the gang is (through extreme duress) pushing Cathie toward formal cooperation, and they believe (with good reason) that this formal cooperation will hurt Cathie *worse* than *multiple* additional physical rapes.
What isn't clear to me is why *you* see this choice as extremely cruel. If I understand your position (and I frankly suspect I do not), you believe that Cathie's verbal agreement to be raped by one of them is not formal cooperation, does not harm her, and therefore is not wrong. But if this verbal agreement doesn't harm her, then why is it cruel of the gang to put this choice to her in the first place? They're offering a reduction of physical suffering in exchange for (if I understand your position correctly) a harmless verbal token that means nothing and has no effect on Cathie.
Do you see what I'm getting at?
Maybe not, but perhaps my second observation will shed more light:
Versions of Cathie's situation seem to happen in real life fairly commonly. Under extreme duress, rape victims are often coerced into telling their rapist to proceed with the rape. This might take the form of an estranged partner "asking" for sex after making a clear threat of violence if the answer is anything but "yes," or an assailant demanding that the victim ask for more. Victims in this situation, fearing for their lives, very often give some form of verbal consent.
And, empirically, that seems to really mess them up quite badly! Rape victims who have been forced to consent to their own rape seem to struggle with deeper problems than those who do not. They tend to have a harder time recognizing what has happened to them as rape, making bizarre judgments even when the facts are as plain as day. It seems they tend to have a harder time recovering from the trauma, as well, even having come to grips with it, compared to those who were not coerced into this.
Let me make another analogy: suppose someone ("Stephie") is kidnapped by terrorists and is forced (at gunpoint) to pluck out her eyes for, I don't know, terrorist propaganda. Is she to blame for this act? Extremely minimally or not at all. Is she nevertheless wounded by this act? Yes! And did she perform this act? Yes. Her ultimate intention was to save her own life (a very good thing!), but the direct object of her action was to blind herself. Stephie's good intentions don't restore her sightedness.
So I suppose my basic position is that consent to an evil act is inherently damaging to one's interior, similar to how plucking out an eye is inherently damaging to one's exterior. Coercion or duress (or some other factor) might very well reduce (or even eliminate) the moral guilt one incurs for formal cooperation, but the damage occurs nevertheless. If that is true, then I think it is uncontroversial to say that it is morally obligatory to avoid voluntarily inflicting that damage under ordinary circumstances.
The Catholic position goes further than this basic position. The Catholic claim is that it is *always* morally obligatory to avoid voluntarily inflicting that damage. As I said in one of the footnotes, this is one area where Catholic thought breaks from the mainstream, and I won't bother trying to defend it.
On the other hand, how about a more modest claim? It is almost always morally *praiseworthy* to avoid coerced formal cooperation with evil, even if it is not morally obligatory. By that I mean only this: if the gang gave Cathie the choice of choosing one rapist, and Cathie's response were to spit in the gang leader's eye, and she then suffered the full wrath of the gang, I think we would all call this decision heroic, courageous, and a number of other very good things. Does that sound correct?
(I did not drive at this in the article, or even spell it out to myself beforehand, because I thought the Sophie-related material was an easy layup where nearly everyone's moral intuitions would line up with mine. Obviously I was completely wrong about this! Oh well! I'm glad the conversation is happening anyway!)
This is really interesting, and I appreciate you continuing the thread! I have to say I am surprised that this is your position, even though it seemed to follow from your previous claims. My tollens has been ponensed. We do seem to have very opposite intuitions here.
Just to answer some of your questions, which perhaps will clarify my view:
1. I think in the Cathie case, presenting the choice is cruel because its intent is to inflict further harm. I think whether it inflicts further harm is a matter of contingent psychology, however, not any moral failing. Ordinary human psychology is not perfectly attuned to the right and the good IMO. In other words, you can psychologically suffer and feel guilt for things that are not at all morally blameworthy and that a detached observer would say is not a thing to feel guilty about. This is often the perspective that a good psychological counselor is meant to bring.
2. As far as the morality of making the choice, in Cathie's case, I think she is free to choose either option, from the point of view of morality. (Ok, in my stricter moments I might say that she is obligated to choose the option she predicts will result in less harm to herself, the additional rapes or the psychological consequences of feeling like she in some way consented given her existing psychology. Duties to self are a part of morality that I don't have very confident views on.) In Sophie's case, my considered judgment at the moment is that she is morally required to choose one child, though I would not have heaps of blame to put on her for failing in this duty (she's under great duress).
3. As I suggest above, I think it is not morally praiseworthy to refuse to choose in these situations. Indeed, I think Sophie's actions in the original work are heroic and praiseworthy precisely because she saves her son's life even at the cost of her own future anguish over the choice. I put it in the same category as pushing someone out of the way of an oncoming bus: risking your own safety for the sake of someone else's. In Cathie's case where she spits in the eye of the gang leader, I'd be tempted to call that rash or reckless, rather than courageous. It's one thing to steel oneself against evil being visited on you, and another to aggravate the risk to yourself with no hope for any gain. But I think since Cathie's own welfare is the only thing at stake, I wouldn't have especially strong views on what the all-things-considered right thing to do is.
As a slight aside, I was talking with my wife about this, and her reaction was to consider the case of King Solomon splitting the baby (I assume you're sufficiently familiar to not need the story rehearsed). Does the true mother formally cooperate with evil by consenting to the lying imposter being granted custody of her baby? Is she therefore wrong to insist on this when King Solomon offers the split as a compromise? Suppose Solomon credibly warned that he would follow through on the compromise if an alternate agreement could not be reached between the parties -- should she continue to only insist on the justness of her custody, come what may? We're not sure if this is analogous, but perhaps it gets at the point that when presented with nothing but bad options, obstinate rejection of the options can be reckless (and even wrong) rather than praiseworthy.
I do not see why you consider it formal cooperation. She clearly is not giving internal consent to the evil; she is against the evil. The formal object of the will is not loving the evil, but loving the good. The choice of sign seems to be important to you for some reason, as if Sophie saying 'don't kill my son' would be fine but 'kill my daughter' is not. Yet both signify the same internal state, so there is no moral difference. If there's a sin in the latter, it would be perhaps in an officious lie, since it is clear that she in fact does not will her daughter's death, so she is lying if she signals in some way that she does.
I will preface this by saying that I have never had the pleasure of voting for a winning candidate or ballot measure in my adult life, and that my current plan is to write in Governor Abbot because he has been the most competent Republican politician of my lifetime.
I think you should edit the section where to advise people not to vote at all. I say this because votes for the House, Senate, and local government is even more important as our Federal Executive grows more and more deranged. Don't cast a vote for President, but please do vote for those you can with good conscience.
I hate to add more complexity to an already long article, but I wonder if it matters that I fully believe that Trump will be legally prevented from taking office should he be elected, and therefore a vote for Trump is a vote for Vance (and chaos!) It would be more like telling a rapist where the girl is, knowing that there is a police officer already there on the lookout for said rapist. Your prior work has fairly convinced me that Trump is guilty of insurrection, and constitutionally this means that he cannot take office, even if voted in.
I wholeheartedly agree that people shouldn't decline to vote. That's both for the reasons you give, and because I think that it's important to show that you are willing to bother to vote but rather declining to support any candidate. It'll have the same impact on the results in this election, but it'll show up very differently in the aggregate statistics - which is the same practical impact a third-party vote is likely to have.
Personally, I've written in my friends many times for local offices, and one time I missed the deadline to request an absentee ballot, but I've never declined to vote.
I just kind of took it as read that everyone knew I meant don't vote for president (but still vote downballot in the races you can vote in), but, hey, fair point. I think an earlier draft had more explicit language saying something to that effect, so I'll see what I can dig up when I go in to make a revision tonight. Thanks for the note!
(Some of my downballot races are ALSO a nightmare where I will have to politely decline to cast a vote, but that's a my-state problem not an everyone-else problem. And even I have a few races where I can vote major-party with a clear conscience. I'll lose, but I'll have voted.)
P.S. I am very grateful to hear that my discussion of the insurrection has been convincing! My fear, and actually my expectation, is that it doesn't matter how convincing the case against Trump is: if We The People attempt to put Trump in office unconstitutionally, the Republicans in Congress and the justices of the Supreme Court will ensure that he stays there, exercising powers to which he is not entitled, regardless of what the Constitution says. The rule of law, unfortunately, is a choice, and it is one that we are (so far) actively declining to make. If he wins, though, mark my words, I'm going to try to find someone to bring a quo warranto action!
While my state of Ohio is Trumpy and non-battleground, it is most defintely a battleground state for control of the Senate. Both the abortion-friendly Democratic incumbent and the Trumpy GOP challenger are abhorrent, but the real issue is this: will the next President be opposed by a hostile Senate? That's what i want. How I feel the Presidential race is likely to go, will determine which party's candidate I vote for.
Choosing not to choose in Sophie's case is absurd. It's just as bad as choosing one child over the other if not worse. The only choice to not be complicit would be to fight in anyway possible. Passivity isn't absolution. When you know bad is going to happen and you fail to act you are then an accomplice... There isn't such a thing as complete powerlessness. I agree that the proximate is relational to the amount of power, but it is never zero.
I am very open to the claim that Sophie has some moral duty to engage in active resistance, even at the cost of her life. In Footnote 6, I set that question aside, but I could buy it.
On the other hand, I find it extremely implausible to say what you seem to be saying: Sophie *refusing* to consent to the execution of her own child is "just as bad if not worse" than *consenting* to the execution of her own child, as she did. I don't see how you get there.
That is to say: I'm definitely willing to consider the possibility that resistance is morally obligatory, passivity is a moral failure, and participating in the Nazi's game is a larger moral failure. But what you seem to be saying is that resistance is best, picking one of your kids to die is second-best, and passivity is worse, which seems... well, as you say, absurd.
But maybe one or both of us is misunderstanding the other, because I know you aren't prone to absurdity!
Fair enough. Let me attempt to unpack my thoughts... Might even lead me to change my mind:
First question for me is can we trust the Nazi to keep his word about his future actions. Some stories present this type of dilemma by having an antagonist prompt the protagonist to "put down the gun or I shoot the girl"... In most of those cases I wouldn't trust the bad guy to keep his word since his whole safety is predicated on the hostage being alive and once I don't have a way to retaliate I am as good as dead and the bad guy has no reason to comply. I told my kids recently, discussing the foundation of power, that it comes from you having something the other person wants (tabling for a moment that this works in your arguments favor, since once a choice is made Sophie would lose her power). Once you relinquish the thing the other person wants you lose most of your power. In this case though, the only power given to Sophie is the choice. I trust the Nazi at his word that someone will die. Maybe all. The likely case in this scenario is that the sadistic bastard (sorry for the language, but I think it is tame for what I would like to use and warranted to boot) wants to leave someone alive. If he wanted death, it was his to deal out. In this case, he wants suffering. He wants to show the frailty of human morality and faith. So I think we are safe to assume that he will leave someone alive, even if he might have removed their desire to live. It seems likely he will do just as he says, because it supports his desire. It compliments his character, which might be the nicest sounding insult I have ever written... (Continuing in another post because I am writing this on a phone...)
Next question seems to me what to do with the now clearer (still room for human absurdism/randomness) with the clear, presented options. Likely we should enumerate them:
1. Do nothing, both kids die.
2. Choose a kid, the other dies.
But let's back up and recognize the power Sophie does have and doesn't have and let's see if their are options that aren't presented.
First, Let's state some obvious areas where Sophie was close to powerless. She didn't seem to have the option to avoid participating in the Nazi's trolley dilemma (I am going to come back to this I think). She had very little physical power. She had no support on the Earth around her or at least one of a physical nature, meaning she might have been surrounded by the Trinity itself at that moment but nothing evident in the world around her.
What power did she have then? Did she have any? She did have some evidentially because she had something the Nazi wanted and in this power is granted. So we should explore that. She has power over the Nazi's paradigm meaning he wanted to justify his morals. "I dispose you because you are disposable. You are weak and worse yet you think yourself superior to me in your faith," my might be an adequate summary of his thoughts. He wants to support this. He wants to proclaim it, as all zealots want to when they have doubts in their hearts. When part of them knows they aren't on solid ground. So Sophie has power, and although it isn't physical it is substantial. The only power the Nazi has is actually quite frail when compared to the Christian faith and creed. The have worldly, physical power but we as Christians know, and this should be taught very young, that this world is not our home. That we don't live to live. We live for Christ. If we die, we are healed and saved and are no longer chained by fear, pain and death. Our actions don't save us (this might be something you bulk at given your Catholicism, but you may not too) in any way. They are only evidence of our faith and weak evidence at that. "Lord I believe, but help me with my unbelief."
So we come back around to options. We presented the superficial options presented. After reviewing the real power dynamic though we recognize there are other less evident options. They may seem similar options but the spirit of them are vastly different and they are based on the fact that the Nazi is powerless compared to God. So we lost them and the spirit of them. I think they all would benefit by speaking the Truth. That no matter what the Nazi does, Christ will greet whomever dies as long as they look to him for true saving. If I was Sophie I would prophesy this in the snake's face before acting. After, I would let go of my fear of death and then act as The Spirit willed me. If I felt it on me to fight in all ways I could think of I would do so until I was dead. If I was called to choose I would but stating that I was setting the child free and that we would see them in eternity, sooner or later (for me it would be sooner).
What I would not do is give the Nazi what they desired. I would not remove myself from the place of power my faith would, as it does now, give me. Freedom. True freedom from a love of this world that causes me to suffer unduly. Sophie's true failure was giving up her power thinking death is something ultimate. Letting the Nazi justify his paradigm.
Passivity enacted because of a fear of moral failure is the worst form of this since it not only reinforces the Nazi's view that Sophie should be looked down on, but also because it elevated death. It makes death more meaningful than it should be. Our Earthly lives are valuable things only if they serve God but we should not cling to them. I hate abortion, but not because the baby is destroyed. I don't believe they are destroyed ultimately. I believe I will see my child that was miscarried (what a fricked up phrase... My wife didn't fail to carry them... She didn't fail in any way... I know it doesn't mean this but I dispose even the thought). I hate abortion because of what it says about the heart of the one who chooses death of others over the helpless. The one who chooses their own possibilities through murder.
So I believe that the best option is to truly not play the Nazi's game by stating that his threat means nothing. And then showing fearlessness to prove it.
Hopefully that is clear enough... Again, I am preaching through my thumbs here. There are a couple of lingering thoughts but I am going to save them since they would only be MY footnotes and aren't necessary for you to at least get a gist of where I am coming from. One would be to discuss the kid's POV... But that would be long to thumb out and would roughly be the same argument as above with the added thought of no one goes to Hell be ause they didn't get enough chances to believe. I will elaborate on anything you wish though if you ask me to. Let me just be at a keyboard...
"So I believe that the best option is to truly not play the Nazi's game by stating that his threat means nothing. And then showing fearlessness to prove it."
I'm satisfied with this. "Prophesy, wield the Cross, and tell him Jesus died to free him from the sin he is committing" does seem like a better answer than "stand there and do nothing."
I am all for listening to the Spirit in the moment. I am convinced that, at that moment, the Spirit would not prompt you to choose a child. So, if this ever happens, and you hear a prompting to choose a child, employ big time discernment of spirits, because I'm pretty sure that's the devil.
I mention this because... have you ever read Silence, by Shusaku Endo? It's a tragic book about the comprehensive destruction of a priest under similar circumstances. (The ending is sometimes misunderstood as a happy ending.) There is a moment where the priest faces a similarly horrible choice, and he hears a voice in his head, pretending to be the Lord, advising him to do the bad thing for the greater good. He does, which destroys the faith of hundreds and his own.
But, yeah, on the whole, your approach strikes me as sound.
Abraham and Isaac. The Father and Jesus... I am not so sure there isn't presidence but I understand where you are coming from.
One thing I will say, that I avoided saying before, is that I don't think this is a great analogy for this election even if I do think it is an interesting moral dilemma.
Also, true faith in the redemption through The Christ can't be destroyed by any act...
Romans 8:38-39
So there was a bigger issue than the actions of the priest (will read) or even Sophie... It seems like a true misunderstanding of the Gospel.
I ruminated on this and I should have clarified that the misunderstanding of the Gospel is on the part of those losing faith, not you... I wasn't trying to be insulting. If you took it that way I apologize.
I agree that *true* Faith in Christ can't be destroyed by any act... but that's partly because true Faith in Christ *rules out* lots of acts, because those acts oppose Christ and the true faithful would never oppose Christ. For example, the devil *believes* in the redemption of believers through Christ, but he doesn't have true faith in it because he *opposes* that redemption!
I agree, though, that the priest in Silence did, in the end, misunderstand the Gospel, and probably in just about the way you think. He entered Japan too eager to be a martyr and, when the moment came, he lost that faith that was keeping him on the right path. (The Japanese persecution, incidentally, was the scariest persecution in the history of the world, at least to me.)
I join the opinion of Heaney, J, and I write separately to add that this US Presidential election and the last two US Presidential elections have been like the Battle of Wits scene in the 1980s classic movie The Princess Bride, where the correct answer is both cups have been poisoned by iocane powder and you’re a dead man if you choose either of them.
I cast my ballot for the American Solidarity Party nominees for President and Vice President in the last 2 presidential elections, and I did so again earlier this month via absentee ballot for the upcoming US Presidential Election. Peter Sonski and Lauren Onak are the Presidential and VP nominees in this year’s election, and you can go to http://www.petersonski.com/ to learn more about them and find out if they are on the ballot or, like in MN, have registered write-in candidate status (where if you write them in, the vote is actually tabulated, counted, and included in the official canvassing report for your state).
Simcha Fisher also has an excellent post on this topic as well. I don’t always see eye to eye with her, but I agree with what she says in this excerpt, regarding voting for major party candidates who do not align with her morals:
“And every time I vote this way, I stray a little further from even understanding clearly what I believe, or from feeling like it’s important, because my standards keep shifting out of sheer self-preservation. You have to change your standards if you don’t want to go insane. You have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, right?
But we have noses for a reason. They’re a gift from God to deter us from consuming things that will hurt us. Plug your nose long enough, you forget what noses are for. “
You and I have arrived at the same conclusion of what options are actually available, however our understanding of the facts which lead us to that position are different.
When I initially read your posts about what Trump did regarding the 2020 election and J6, I said that that seemed plausible and made sense. I also said that it presented as facts, things I was becoming aware of for the first time. Due to some circumstances outside of my control, my only source of national news during that timeframe in 2020 was bits and pieces of conservative talk radio. However, you were not an impartial voice on the matter in your posts. Thus, I said I would await SCOTUS to tell me whether or not Trump could be voted for. To the best of my knowledge, when they had the chance to say yea or nay, they said nothing meaningful. Perhaps it is cowardly of me, but I decided to outsource my judgement on the issue to SCOTUS (as long as the decision was not an obvious political hit-job, but that caveat did not come to pass, thankfully) about the time that the case was brought before them (as I said to James then). With SCOTUS unwilling to give a definitive answer, I conclude that Trump should not be removed from the list of acceptable candidates on that issue.
However, I come to the conclusion that we are still unable to vote for Team Trump, because I think that Trump, like Harris, is pro-abortion. Trump less so than Harris or Walz (which is a depressingly low bar to clear), but still to a sufficient extent that I cannot vote for him in clear conscience. The fact that Vance, an ostensibly Pro-Life Catholic from my new home state of Ohio, has been shedding all signs of being Pro-Life since joining the ticket is extremely disheartening.
Normally, I vote on election day because I think that that ought to be the only day on which ballots should be taken in. This year, I am also doing so because of some hope for some miraculous event which will change the options in front of me...
This is an article I feel I have so many comments on... that it would take too long to say all of them (some are in agreement, some are in disagreement). Perhaps later I will say more of them, but in the interests of time for now I'll try very much to constrain myself for now and just bring up two things: The first a comment, the second a question.
In regards to the comment, I think the repeated references to Sophie's Choice hurts the article. It's just not something you mention at the start and then bring up again towards the end, it's something you bring up a lot throughout the article. That distracts from the actual argument of the article on the election--or even on the general issues of cooperation with evil--because it makes the reader fixate on and want to debate that specific example rather than the broader issues, distracting from the more important parts of the article.
And this brings me to the question, one I was curious about. Suppose that between now and voting day, Donald Trump dies somehow. While he's still technically on the ballot, this effectively turns J.D. Vance into the Republican presidential candidate. How would that affect things for you? Similarly, what if this happens with Harris and Walz?
In hindsight, you are obviously correct that I should not have relied so much on Sophie. I did so because I assumed the entire reading audience would intuitively agree with me, and I could use that as bedrock to build toward further points. As it turns out, the reading audience does *not* share my intuition, and so this bedrock turned into sand.
Walz is fairly straightforward: everything I said against Harris can be said of Walz, and, in some ways, Walz has done even worse things. He is my governor, I have seen him up close, and I despise him. (In both debates, the Republican candidates were "fact-checked" by dishonest moderators about the circumstances of infants born alive after abortions in Minnesota. Those fact-checks were lies. I have been thinking about publishing something on this topic for De Civ, but I am not sure whether I can keep my temper sufficiently in check.) So if Harris died and Walz took the nomination, he would be an even easier "hell no."
Vance is a little more interesting.
I dislike Vance. I don't have as strong an opinion of him (I've had relatively little exposure), but my general impression is that he is somewhat more dishonest than your average Washington politician, and that's already extremely dishonest. I earlier linked an Edward Feser article which argued that a Trump victory could be bad for the pro-life movement, and many of his arguments apply equally to Vance. On the other hand, it's an open question whether Vance, as a dishonest man, would change his positions if he ascended to the top of the ticket.
Vance has not personally tried to overthrow the United States government, so that *is* a pretty big point in his favor, from where I'm sitting. He wasn't in the Senate at the time, so didn't cast any votes on impeachment or certification. Another point in his favor.
On the other hand, he is running on the ticket of a man legally not qualified to be POTUS, he's embraced Trump throughout despite the insurrection, he won't admit that Trump lost the election (but won't deny it, either, which is a small point in his favor), and he has said that he would have voted against certification. That's less bad from an insurrection standpoint but still extremely bad (I wrote about anti-certification votes pre-insurrection: https://www.jamesjheaney.com/2021/01/02/special-comment-on-the-cruz-electoral-college-objection/). He's still obviously *way too close* to Trump's lawlessness, maybe too close to justify voting for him under any circumstances.
But I haven't looked into him all that closely, and I will reserve judgment until Vance does actually end up on top of the ticket.
(One thing I'm very interested in seeing: after 2024, especially if Trump loses, how quickly and how clearly does Vance reverse position on this for the sake of setting up in 2028 run?)
Wow, James, that's impressive. I'm highly tempted to call that masterful tutorial in and analysis of Catholic moral theology, a classic exercise of Catholic moral overthinking, even if I largely agree with your eventual conclusion. I will say the "Sophie's choice" scenario, given the extreme duress involved, is not that helpful as far as the election is concerned, even if it helpe your background discussion of moral theology.
I generally agree with your description of Trump and Harris. However, we disagree somewhat on your analysis on the choice.
Contrary to your footnote, Kamala Harris has a conventional respect for the rule of law (if likely a risk to executive order overreach, a tendency started by Barack Obama and continued by Joe Biden). However, Kamala harris can't "codify Roe" without Congress passing a bill she could sign. Her executive leeway to promote abortion is therefore limited. All of this to say Kamala Harris cannot substantially commit the grave evil of expanding abortion by herself, making more remote the material cooperation with that evil of anyone voting for her. (If Harris were a Hitler with absolute power to carry out her plans, that would be different).
By contrast, Donald Trump is more than capable of attacking the rule of law all by himself with limited Congressional ability to block him. He will have a list of MAGA faithful to appoint in the executive branch, ready to do whatever he tells them to, placed using acting appointments, which he abused during his first term. he has made clear his desire to weaponize the Justice Department to harrass his "enemies". And then there's the Insurrection Act, which allows the President to call out the military for a broad list of domestic issues mostly at his description -- ripe for abuse. All that increases the material cooperation of any Trump voter, with the evil of attacking the rule of law -- the Constitution.
And that is even before analyzing the evil of attacking the rule of law versus the evil of abortion. I would argue the breakdown of civil order resulting from attacking the rule of law is more dangerous and a greater evil than widespread abortion, even of Roe is "codified". Ancient Rome, for all the evils of slavery and infanticide effectively promoted civil order, allowing the rapid spread of the gospel.
For those reasons, I believe a vote for Kamala Harris can be justified as the lesser evil -- that is, for a voter in a battleground state likely to influence the outcome. (I admit, it's a close call).
But like you, I live in a non-battleground state (Ohio) and I plan to vote for Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party. I have no desire to compromise my integrity, or risk my soul, by casting a vote for Harris if I don't absolutely have to. (Hooray for the Electoral College!).
One other comment. You linked to comments by Edward Feser and Steven Greydamus. One the one hand, I was appalled by Feser's acknowledging Trump's attempt to overturn the election, only to dismiss it). OTOH, Greydamus's approach is much closer to mine. A well-formed conscience, prayer and common sense, rather than a detailed moral analysis, suffices for most situations, including voting, which is almost always very remote material cooperation with whatever evil a candidate wants to do.
Since -- as you probably realize -- I wrote this article partly in a desperate hope of persuading you, specifically, I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that. Hooray for the electoral college indeed! It saved me from any responsibility in 2020 (though, alas, not 2024, at least not so far). This is a very good reason to refrain from a morally questionable vote.
These points are therefore purely academic, but I'll ask them anyway:
1. You write that "voting is almost always very remote material cooperation with whatever evil a candidate wants to do." In this article, I argued that voting is almost always very proximate (and absolutely necessary) material cooperation with the evils a candidate runs on doing. What led you to reject my thinking.
2. You write that a vote for Harris is less proximate than a vote for Trump because she is less likely to accomplish the evil she vows. In the article, I argued that it doesn't matter a whole lot if one candidate is more likely to enact his evil than the other candidate, if both candidates are running on evil. It doesn't increase your proximity from the evil at all, and it doesn't decrease your responsibility for it as much as you would like (not least because the future is so unpredictable). A vote for a candidate who intends evil is still unavoidably a vote for that intent, and for the degraded moral character that is capable of harboring that intention. What led you to a different conclusion? You don't really explain in this comment.
3. Lastly, I pointed out several Catholic texts that make it clear that the right to life is more fundamental than the rule of law. Indeed, if you don't have a universal right to life, Catholic teaching generally holds that you *do not have* a rule of law, properly speaking; you have an ordered tyranny of some sort. (Aquinas's treatise on law is fairly scathing about this sort of thing.) Yet you write that you see the rule of law as more fundamental than the right to life. I can see the argument for it, but it seems foreclosed, at least for Catholics, by existing teachings. What leads you to think that the Catechism, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Francis are all mistaken about the right to life being the more fundamental right?
(The Catechism and the popes could be mistaken; they sometimes are! But it's a nerve-wracking experience to disagree with them.)
> You write that "voting is almost always very remote material cooperation with whatever evil a candidate wants to do." In this article, I argued that voting is almost always very proximate (and absolutely necessary) material cooperation with the evils a candidate runs on doing. What led you to reject my thinking.
First of all, what does a vote for a candidate mean? In and of itself, it means only that the voter selects that candidate for office. That by itself is not evil, and it is only remote material cooperation with any evil the candidate might represent. (If the voter favors that evil, that would be formal cooperation of course). A voter could have any number of motivations for selecting their candidate. While you might argue some motivations sin against prudence if an evil is overlooked or discounted, that's different from formal cooperation.
Second, voting is not like a firing squad, where only one shooter with a live bullet is sufficient to execute the condemned. Your attempted analogy that it only takes one go-ahead voter is fallacious. In an election, it takes a plurality of voters to elect a candidate, a variable but large number, ranging from hundreds (or less) in a local election to millions in a Presidential race. That material cooperation, already remote (if formal cooperation is lacking) is diffused across all those voters.
I see you explicitly reject dilution of responsibility. I disagree. I reviewed your conclusion and honestly do not understand it. To me, at some point the connection between one individual voter and an elected politician becomes so tenuous that it ceases to have meaning from a moral standpoint.
And arguing that moral responsibility for candidates we vote for, is not diluted by great numbers, would also mean that owning stock, even via a mutual fund, in a corporation that does evil things (as most all of them do) does not shield individual shareholders from responsibility. The same principle applies there.
> You write that a vote for Harris is less proximate than a vote for Trump because she is less likely to accomplish the evil she vows. In the article, I argued that it doesn't matter a whole lot if one candidate is more likely to enact his evil than the other candidate, if both candidates are running on evil. It doesn't increase your proximity from the evil at all, and it doesn't decrease your responsibility for it as much as you would like (not least because the future is so unpredictable). A vote for a candidate who intends evil is still unavoidably a vote for that intent, and for the degraded moral character that is capable of harboring that intention. What led you to a different conclusion? You don't really explain in this comment.
The difference is which candidate is more able to effect the evil they intend. Also, there is the matter of the status quo. The evil of abortion has been a widespread reality in the US for over 50 years, remains legally available in much of the country, including the populous areas of the West Coast, the Northeast and the Great Lakes region. And even where it's illegal or heavily restricted, the options of out-of-state travel or online abortion pills remain available. Even with Congressional cooperation, Harris can only modestly increase the number of abortions.
On the other hand, Donald Trump can seriously, perhaps irreparably damage the rule of law, which is still (mostly) intact from his first 4 years and the 1/6 insurrection. Think of how the civil war scenario you laid out in your alternate history of the 2020 election would end democracy as we know it.
> Lastly, I pointed out several Catholic texts that make it clear that the right to life is more fundamental than the rule of law. Indeed, if you don't have a universal right to life, Catholic teaching generally holds that you *do not have* a rule of law, properly speaking; you have an ordered tyranny of some sort. (Aquinas's treatise on law is fairly scathing about this sort of thing.) Yet you write that you see the rule of law as more fundamental than the right to life. I can see the argument for it, but it seems foreclosed, at least for Catholics, by existing teachings. What leads you to think that the Catechism, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Francis are all mistaken about the right to life being the more fundamental right?
As a universal right, of course the right to life is more fundamental than the rule of law. However (and I hate saying this because it makes me sound like I'm making light of the great evil of abortion), the lives that are threatened by abortion are preborn lives, not all lives. Abortion can surely corrode the right to life of born people, no question. But it is not the same threat to the rule of law as in a totalitarian state where the secret police can execute virtually anyone at will. Nor (and this is more relevant to us) is abortion the same threat as a breakdown of social order where fandom violence imperils the lives of all of us.
There are many church teachings regarding abortion, because it is so prevalent in our time and because many see no moral problem with abortion (or see it as a "woman's right"). In contrast, few or no one doubt that the rule of law is a necessary good, so there is much less need for the Magisterium to teach on that matter as frequently as on abortion. That doesn't mean it's not important. I would guess there is not a significant magisterial document that discussed both abortion and the rule of law in anything like the same context, directly comparing the two.
None of that means that there is not moral responsibility for the grave evil of abortion on the one side, and the grave evil of attacking the rule of law on the other side. But it is possible to consider the degree of remote cooperation with either evil, with prudence, avoiding the intention of willing either evil, without taking on the responsibility for that evil. And in this election, abortion is already the status quo. Breakdown of the rule of law, is not.
But I agree that, if the choice need not be made, it is best not made.
(UPDATE: I edited my original 10/17 post to remove the final section and add the line above).
Before responding, I want to again reaffirm how very happy I am that this is merely an academic point between us. I'll also start with some things you're quite correct about.
> First of all, what does a vote for a candidate mean? In and of itself, it means only that the voter selects that candidate for office. That by itself is not evil,
This is true. A vote is an attempt to imbue a person with the power to act, on your behalf, with legal authority. In general (avoiding questions about qualifications), there's nothing inherently evil about doing that, so a vote is never *inherently* evil. Voting for the Antichrist himself (if he were at least 35 years old and a natural-born citizen) would not be *inherently* evil, even if Mr. Antichrist openly worked dark magic and happily announced, "I am the Antichrist! All hail our father below!" -- because imbuing someone with the power to act, on your behalf, with legal authority, has a morally neutral object.
The major question with voting, then, is not whether the voting act is inherently evil, but whether the vote cooperates too closely with too great an evil.
> (If the voter favors that evil, that would be formal cooperation of course). A voter could have any number of motivations for selecting their candidate. While you might argue some motivations sin against prudence if an evil is overlooked or discounted, that's different from formal cooperation.
This is also absolutely correct. I don't even have anything to add to it. Spot on, no notes.
> and it is only remote material cooperation with any evil the candidate might represent.
Here, we run into trouble.
You have, I agree, narrowed the field down: we have ruled out direct evil and formal cooperation. We also agree (I think) that it is not immediate material cooperation. But that still leaves nearly the full range of material cooperation! How did you jump from there to concluding that voting is "only remote material cooperation"? You haven't ruled out proximate material cooperation... and my whole argument is that voting IS proximate material cooperation!
Since it would be a lot to reread, here is my argument, in a nutshell: cooperation with evil is more proximate if it is more closely linked with the evil act. Imagine a gang execution:
* The gang leader who shoots the victim is the perpetrator. He commits a directly evil act. He has zero degrees of separation from the evil act.
* The gang lieutenant who hands the leader the gun is an immediate material cooperator. He also has zero degrees of separation from the evil act, because he is a participant. (If he agrees with the execution, he is also a formal cooperator, but let's focus on material cooperation here.)
* The fence who sold the lieutenant the gun under the table (knowing that it would likely be used for gang violence) was a pretty proximate mediate material cooperator. He has one degree of separation from the evil act.
* The person who sold the gun to the fence (knowing that the fence was involved in shady business but without any specific knowledge that he'd sell it to a gang lieutenant) was a more remote mediate material cooperator. He has two degrees of separation from the evil act.
* The gun manufacturer (who knows, statistically, that some guns will be used for murder) is an even more remote mediate material cooperator. He has three (or more) degrees of separation from the evil act.
Now let's take this and apply it to voting. When a politician takes office and uses his legal authority to commit an evil act, he is the perpetrator. People immediately surrounding him (like presidential aides) who assisted in the evil act are immediate accomplices. They have zero degrees of separation from the evil act and are all considered participants in it.
Voters who voted for that politician, however, have a degree of separation from the evil act. They didn't commit the act and they didn't directly assist.
However, they ONLY have one degree of separation. Each voter who voted for the politician acted directly to put the evildoer in power, knowing that the evildoer was planning to do evil. Therefore, their cooperation is very proximate, rather than particularly remote.
So when you cast a vote for an evildoer, even if you strongly disagree with the evil that candidate endorses, your vote is always proximate material cooperation with evil. For Catholics, this is relatively difficult to justify, and often impossible to justify for great evils.
[CONTINUED IN CHILD COMMENT - HOPEFULLY THIS IS ONLY A TWO-PARTER AND NOT A THREE-PARTER]
> In an election, it takes a plurality of voters to elect a candidate, a variable but large number, ranging from hundreds (or less) in a local election to millions in a Presidential race. That material cooperation... is diffused across all those voters. I see you explicitly reject dilution of responsibility. ...To me, at some point the connection between one individual voter and an elected politician becomes so tenuous that it ceases to have meaning from a moral standpoint.
What you call "dilution," I mostly refer to under the larger umbrella of "necessity". I agree with you that dilution is real and can reduce the seriousness of material cooperation. I just don't think that works for voting, specifically. I think I did a bad job explaining why in the article, so I'll try to expand on an argument I dashed off in one sentence in the article:
Suppose there is a candidate who is the lesser of two evils. We'll call her Senator Lesser. Senator Lesser is winning in the polls by a landslide margin: 70-30. She is clearly going to win. On top of that, you are a mystic with a long track record of predictive mystical visions, and you receive a vision from the Lord telling you that Senator Lesser is going to win so that you can begin preparing the Church for the trials that Senator Lesser will inflict on them. The imminent defeat of the greater evil (Governor Greater) is good news, but it's still going to be a really hard four years. Should you vote for Senator Lesser?
No, you shouldn't, and this is an easy call. You want a good thing: the defeat of Governor Greater. Voting for Senator Lesser is material cooperation in evil (I think it's proximate, but this argument works even if it were remote). You have two options: vote for Senator Lesser (cooperation with evil, but diluted), or don't vote for either (your hands are clean). No matter which option you take, the good you sought will be achieved, and you cannot cooperate with evil (even diluted cooperation) if you have a reasonably practical option available that avoids cooperation altogether. Therefore, in this case, you *must* take the option that keeps your hands cleaner: don't vote for either.
The same is true if you have absolute certainty that Governor Greater is going to defeat Senator Lesser. Voting for Senator Lesser isn't going to make Governor Greater lose, so your voting for Senator Lesser would be (diluted) cooperation with evil for absolutely no benefit. You therefore must not vote for either.
The same is true if you are certain that Senator Lesser is going to win 55-45. The same is true if you are certain that Governor Greater is going to win 51-49. The same is true even Senator Lesser is only going to win the election by 2 votes. If she is certain to win (or certain to lose) without your vote, then you have a moral obligation not to give your vote to her, because you would be cooperating with evil for no benefit. Which means that, in every situation where our vote would be diluted, it's automatically unjustified, because we could accomplish the same good without cooperating with evil.
Of course, we never do have absolute certainty that our vote isn't going to matter. We can't QUITE trust polls (even clear polls), and most of us don't get mystical visions from Christ. There is always the possibility that our vote *will actually be* truly decisive. For that reason, it is morally acceptable to cast a vote for a lesser-evil candidate if the outcome is uncertain and the benefit of cooperating is proportionate to the harm.
But the only reason this is justifiable is *because* our vote might be *truly decisive* -- the single vote that determines the outcome, with absolutely no dilution of our responsibility for that outcome. That's the context in which we have to evaluate the morality of our vote. We have to treat our vote as decisive, undiluted, and absolutely necessary, because, if it *were* diluted or in any way unnecessary, it would be *clearly* unjustified.
Does that make better sense?
> The difference is which candidate is more able to effect the evil they intend.
But my question was, why would that matter? To be sure, it definitely matters in an argument about which candidate is the lesser evil! But that's not my argument here. I'm open to the argument that Harris would, on balance, be the lesser evil, if all prudential factors were considered. But she wants to strip the right to life from innocent children. She has made this the center of her campaign. Even if she were unlikely to succeed in that (and I'm setting that question aside), her intention is so corrupt, and voting for her such a proximate cooperation with that evil intention, that it cannot be justified. The evils of the other candidate aren't the question in this argument.
> There are many church teachings regarding abortion, because it is so prevalent in our time and because many see no moral problem with abortion (or see it as a "woman's right"). In contrast, few or no one doubt that the rule of law is a necessary good, so there is much less need for the Magisterium to teach on that matter as frequently as on abortion.
This is a very minor point. My main point is that voting is very proximate material cooperation, and (because of the nature of voting) must be morally evaluated from the perspective of being absolutely necessary without factoring in any dilution. However, my understanding of the Magisterium is that the basic Catholic position is that, if the right to life is not universal, the rule of law has *already* ceased to exist. What remains is a kind of dark mirror image of law, one that directly opposes the law of human nature written on our hearts. (I am pulling this mainly from Aquinas's Treatise on Law at Summa I-II qq90-91, which technically isn't even magisterial, and the political encyclicals of Leo XII, which are.) So the right to life and the rule of law turn out to be intimately intertwined: you can't actually have one without the other, and voting for one in opposition to the other can only be a sick joke played by the Enemy. This, I think, is a major reason why American politics has deteriorated to the point that it has: after January 1973, the incoherence of our legal system, untethered from its anchor and unravelled at its foundation, would inevitably decay.
However, this is not central to my argument. Even if you are correct that the rule of law is even more fundamental than the right to life, cooperating with candidates who oppose both as openly as Trump and Harris would still not be justifiable.
> But I agree that, if the choice need not be made, it is best not made.
Amen, brother. Amen amen amen. I hope to God that we will never, ever face candidates this insanely bad ever again, so this kind of agonizing moral reasoning can go back to the Ivory Tower where it belongs.
Until then, may God turn His face back toward America and give it all the blessings we clearly do not deserve, whoever may win on November 5th.
How much of this article remains if I'm not convinced that Trump is an insurrectionist?
I'm inclined to think that he was deluded into thinking that he won, and acted accordingly, and that January 6th was not intended to be an insurrection. I think his speech should be read as it literally reads, not some esoteric reading based on things random trump followers said online. (That he wants his followers to go to the capitol, and, cheer on (or the contrary, depending), to peacefully voice their opinion, in order to give "pride and boldness" to the reluctant republicans. Notably, looking at the end here, he doesn't think the democrats will vote with him. That doesn't look like a coup!) That removes section 3 from relevance as one votes, I would think. Of course, January 6th was still horrible.
You ask for an at length addressing of the facts. But I have not read things all that deeply, and I don't have the time at the moment. (It is currently past 1, and I have church in the morning.)
> How much of this article remains if I'm not convinced that Trump is an insurrectionist?
Not much. If you remove the insurrection part, I think there are still several cases to be made against Trump, but they (1) are not as strong, and (2) on my rubric, they tend to fall under ordinary antipolitics rather than extraordinary antipolitics, which is the problem.
EDIT: also (3) I didn't make them in this article!
> You ask for an at length addressing of the facts. But I have not read things all that deeply, and I don't have the time at the moment. (It is currently past 1, and I have church in the morning.)
That's what they all say! Or some variation of it. "I think you're wrong but I'm not getting into the details."
(However, ditto. After 1, Mass in the morning, so I'm offline in 15 minutes.)
((Look at it this way, though: I don't really care too much if you reply here in a timely fashion. I care that you take enough time between now and election day to become significantly more acquainted with the facts about that day. From that point of view, you have nearly a month! Obviously, I commend my own writing on this above all else, but you could alternatively consider the J6 Committee Report, or at least its executive summary. They were obviously biased, but the lack of relevant response from Team Trump, even two years later, is deafening.))
Anyway, to address the article. This is responding to the other article. Nevertheless, I'm putting the response here.
I agree that Trump lost. But next you assert that he knew that that was the case. What is your argument for this? (I am looking at the paragraphs in that article running from "Most importantly for today" to "an important role in other crimes.") I won't go case by case, but each of the things you cite follows roughly the same form:
Person X presents solid arguments that Trump didn't win (or that some piece of evidence of fraud is wrong), to Trump.
Therefore, Trump knew that he didn't win.
But this doesn't follow! People often are presented with arguments that do not persuade them. This is not infrequently true even when the argument is correct. And as the politico article you link under the word "disagreed" says, there were few within Trump's inner circle who told him that he lost, and there were many sycophants. So why, then, if your own sources say that people whom he does not trust enough to be in his inner circle are the ones telling him that he lost the election, and if there are an abundance of sycophants to tell him he won, why do you think that he must have been known?
I've generally seen evidence elsewhere in the same direction, that he genuinely thinks that there is fraud—I vaguely remember seeing an article a few months ago that the Trump campaign was lacking cash because he wanted to commit a bunch of money to try to prevent there from being more fraud in this election, which would be against his interests (why not use ads?) unless he's genuinely convinced that that's a real threat.
You granted that believing the Eastman theory is not insurrectionary if he is already genuinely convinced that the election was fraudulent.
You say, that Trump tweeting "Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild!" indicates that he desired violent action. Your evidence? He had supporters who read it as such, and as he can't transgress the 25th amendment, that's probably what he meant. I think this is obviously not a strong argument. This sort of Trump supporter is not someone that I would trust to interpret roughly anything from anyone with any level of ambiguity in a manner authentic to authorial intent. (And he clearly could have and would have said more. For example, he could have pressed people to "be prepared for anything," which, to my (not expansive) knowledge, he did not do—telling them to be prepared for violence would clearly be in the interest of someone intending an insurrection.)
Next, you argue in the paragraph beginning with "the white house was aware" that Trump knew that there was a threat of violence. I agree, following the citations, that he knew that people thought that it would involve violence. It doesn't follow from that that he considered it all that seriously.
Trump didn't care that the people had weapons—I agree that he knew that they were armed, and didn't care. (Side note: please indicate that the emphasis on "me" was added, not in the J6 report.) I see no indication that he thought that they were planning to hurt people.
Then you pause, to say the following (to frame the speech):
-Trump knew his claims of fraud were false.
-"The only other option" available is the "1776 option" from his supporters, wherein the violently force what he wants.
-"will be wild"+no specifying that it's not violent indicates that he meant it was violent
-he's before a crowd, of whom he knows some are armed, and some intend violence
I think 1 is false; for 2, violent action is not the only option; for 3, no, not clarifying a tweet does not indicate that he agrees with everyone who reads it in a given way; for 4, it's not clear to me that he knows that some *in the present crowd* intend violence, instead of bloviating about it online.
Your arguments re: his speech. Essentially, you say that he uses words like "fight" and "strength," and some of his interpreters interpreted it as literal, so he meant it so. And this is the best interpretation, supposedly. These are hardly strong arguments—do you also take his post-assassination-attempt "fight, fight fight" as an invitation to violence? Well, let's look at his speech—you'll see that it doesn't fit what you've been saying.
First, note what he wants Pence to do: "All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people."
He wants the states to reassess, thinks he will win. Note that he is not thinking that this will be done that day. I think this might be fundamentally incompatible with your belief that he intended to install himself as president that day. He repeats that a few other times; that's not some misspeak or something.
Second, let's look right near the end: "The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
What is he thinking here: clearly he does not anticipate the crowd doing anything that would sway the democrats, but only something that would sway the Republicans. Clearly, then, this isn't a threat of violence, as compulsion would not maintain the disagreement between Republicans and Democrats. Rather, he wants his supporters to push the Republicans towards having "pride and boldness." This doesn't sound attack-ish. This fits with the "peacefully and patriotically make your voice heard" quote, that you dismissed as not representative of the tenor of your speech.
Trump from 1:19-3:38. Yes, obviously Trump knew and wanted his people to enter the capital, and didn't want to dismiss them. But I don't think that is in itself a form of insurrection, when what he wanted was merely them to be present and asserting their position towards Congress—is there any evidence that he intended violence?
You compare it to Philip Thomas. First, it's not clear to me that this was actually an insurrection. But allowing that it is, it's not clear to me that the Philip Thomas case was passive. Nor (second) is failure to perform one's duty the same as an active transgression. And (third)
(It would probably help a lot if I knew more about what exactly his supporters were doing and what Trump knew. I'm pretty sure I'd heard that people were ushered inside at some point? What did the people do?)
Re: Pence. I don't see what the actual tweet says. More important is the response to the chanting, but is Trump privately considering hanging possibly merited actually a suggestion that it happen? I haven't seen any indication to think so.
(Additionally, it's not clear that this is towards "a treasonable purpose" in your definition of insurrection. You say the treasonable purpose is the suspension of the 12th amendment. But you said that adopting the Eastman plan is in no way insurrectionary? In the speech, he says, "The Constitution doesn't allow me to send them back to the States. Well, I say, yes it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can't vote on fraud. And fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules." That looks to me like the thinks that the Constitution intends for what he's doing to be okay—I'm pretty sure Michael Stokes Paulsen has also argued that there are cases of necessity in which the literal text of the constitution may be ignored.)
Trying to encourage the Senators, etc. Yes, I don't see how this is insurrectionary, if his endorsement of his supporters exerting pressure is fine.
I'd like to make clear that I think that January 6th was very bad. But I do not think it was an insurrection. A year or so ago, when I was first reading the section 3 things, I think you generally did a pretty good job convincing me about section 3, but that Trump was an insurrectionist always seemed like the most tenuous part.
Chiefly, then:
-Your arguments that Trump knew are quite weak—he seems genuinely to have believed that the election was robbed from him.
-The speech seems to indicate that Trump was not attempting to violently seize victory, but rather to, without violence, give the states another chance to certify it, preferably the "right" way this time.
-You didn't present the case that the mob going to the capital was an insurrection, so I'd still need to see that to be convinced.
What do you think? Does this meet your standards of making an argument? What else should I know/what is wrong?
I typed a reply to you, but, when it was all said and done, I discovered that (due to Substack comment box character limits) it would have spanned some 6 comments. This seemed unwieldy, so, rather than posting 6 comments in succession, I copied it all to a Word document and put the document on the Internet:
I apologize for any inconvenience, but hopefully you'll agree that it's less inconvenient than the alternative.
("Or... you could write shorter comments?" my wife says from the other room. "You could just reply to everyone with 'No. <Heart Emoji>'?" Ha ha ha, in a pig's eye, my dear wife.)
Regarding other arguments against voting for Trump:
First, you argue that "You weigh up costs and benefits and Trump just doesn't reliably pay out enough to be worth the certain cost." I think I don't buy in enough into your ethical schema for this to be personally persuasive, but I can see why that would apply for you. (Though perhaps: why is this not an argument against voting in general, as there will always be a chance that representatives will do bad things? Would the only time that you could be confident that it's okay for you to vote be during times of, as you put it, extraordinary politics?)
Second, you argue that Trump is way too pro-choice. I'm pro-life, and I agree that I'm disappointed in the shift towards a somewhat more ambiguous stance on abortion. I am a little curious what exactly you mean by salience, here, though: my instinct would be to put salience as talking about where their positions are different in an important way—perhaps if we broke up the issue of abortions into many separate issues (abortion in the first three months, abortion in cases of rape, federal vs. state bans, abortion in the ninth month) then it would no longer be the case that there would be salient differences in which he takes a problematic position. Or am I wrong on that—is salience measured in some other manner than between the viable candidates of the election? But whatever is the case, I think I'm not convinced enough of your overall schema, as mentioned elsewhere—I'm more okay with weighing competing negative effects than you are.
Now to 2020:
Regarding Trump's knowledge:
You present three reasons (along with a parallel analogy).
>1. Before the election he laid the groundwork…
At first, I thought that this was plainly disanalogous, but then I realized what you probably must have meant (Bannon and other similar officials saying that they'd declare victory, even if it isn't really clear) vs what you said (Trump raising concerns about fraud) would be evidence that this is dishonest. Yeah, I think that's good reason to approach things with a little more skepticism.
>2. …belief that the election was stolen was a *condition* of being within his inner circle.
To me, that isn't terribly indicative of dishonesty. At least at that point in time, his focus would have been in large part on the election. Not much point in having around those who are just going to be pushing back the whole time. (Yeah, I get that having dissenting voices can be good; he evidently did not in this context. This can surely be a point towards culpable ignorance—one ought not to echo-chamber oneself, especially if one is in places where one's opinions matter as much as do those of the president, and when the people in question have strong incentives in your favor.)
>3. Trump was actively deceiving his supporters [in the Raffensperger instance]
The Raffensperger happening could plausibly be a mix of not taking a reference to a link to be a good response, combined with a not-too-precise memory of what precisely happened, and the all-too-common tendency to only take answers that agree with one's own as legitimate.
What's my assessment of this: these were good points, though not dispositive. I think I'm more inclined to read the fraud claims as sincere, but I will admit the willingness to claim victory when it's not quite apparent provides significantly more reason to cast doubt on that.
Eh, I'm inclined to think that he was in a pretty bad information environment, full of yes-men. But sure, I'll grant that he was likely culpably ignorant.
Re: Trump's behavior in this election
I think this ( https://archive.is/Ct8IS ) might have been the one I was thinking of, although that had less on that than I remembered. I think I must have been lurking twitter at some point, and seen slightly more commentary on it, but I have no idea where, or maybe there was a second article. The pertinent part is:
"But what might have bothered him most was the RNC’s priorities: McDaniel was continuing to pour money into field operations, stressing the need for a massive get-out-the-vote program, but showed little interest in his pet issue of “election integrity.”
“Tell you what,” Trump said to Wiles and LaCivita. “I’ll turn out the vote. You spend that money protecting it.”"
And they took over the RNC, and used the money differently. I think this does indicate that he's worried about fraud.
See also, from the same article: "Wiles could not answer the question of whether the 2020 election had actually been stolen. “I’m not sure,” she said, repeating the phrase three times.
And her boss?
“He thinks he knows,” Wiles said."
It's a very good article; I certainly endorse reading the whole thing.
Re: violence in "will be wild"
You're right, your claim was more modest. Fair point regarding that these cannot just be analyzed separately.
Re: what Trump wanted with Pence and the electoral votes.
Am I reading you correctly here as saying that: yes, you recognize that Trump was asking for states to be contested, for state legislatures to reevaluate and issue new certifications, and then for them to reconvene and have another electoral count? But you are saying that you think that that second count was also intended to be done dishonestly, with a parallel slate of electors?
Do you have evidence for this? Or am I misreading you?
It doesn't make too much sense to me that he would be willing to submit false slates of electors in earnest in the future, but at that time only be asking for a state recertification.
Re: Eastman plan and insurrection, thanks, that clears that up, the difference is treason. Thanks for mentioning thoughts on treason, since that's essential, at least, per your definition of insurrection in the other article. What then is treason?
Re: coercion and certification in Trump's speech
Yes, that's roughly what I was saying—or, at least, that the chief thing determining who would be willing to do that would be how much they can be cowed by fear, not political opinions. (Note that that's the opposite of the reasoning used in the speech: that it would be about giving the moderate Republicans boldness (I guess he's modeling them as knowing better, but weak?), not fear for their lives.) Sure, you're right that those can bleed into each other to some extent, but I think that this is at least evidence that he was not there pushing for a violent insurrection.
Regarding violence at J6:
I'm admittedly woefully underinformed as to what exactly was occurring, where people were, the level of violence involved. I was aware, though, that both people entered without force, and others entered by force. To me, using force to enter doesn't feel very insurrection-y. (And I'm now wondering if "insurrection or rebellion" in the 14th amendment is intended to refer to uprisings, whether they're in order to prevent the imposition of force to enforce some specific laws (insurrection) or a settled state of opposition to the legal authorities altogether (rebellion). I haven't seen a better account of how the words differ, so I'm going to tentatively hold that for now, despite not checking on contemporary usage. I don't think January 6th looks like either, because their objective was not to secure a zone exempt from US law.)
>Trump wanted his people inside the Capitol, he had sworn an oath that required him to dismiss them, and he repeatedly refused.
I don't think inaction looks like aid or comfort. Is this wrong?
> it is impossible to read Trump's 2:24 PM tweet in good faith with full knowledge of the context and NOT conclude that this tweet was an attempt to direct the mob against Mike Pence. (A direction they accepted.) This was participation in the insurrection
Upon thinking about it, I definitely agree that what Trump was saying was conscientiously public, and that the people in the capital were among the target audience, though I'm not necessarily convinced that that indicated that they were to take specific action against Pence. (Side note: another possible argument that you could use is that this tweet indicates that Trump thought that it was over, that Pence had made his final decision, and so everything after was more clearly insurrectionary. I don't think that works, because I don't think that he thought that it was entirely over.)
>Again again on #2: Once the insurrection began, no American, but least of all the President of the United States, was entitled to knowingly advance the goals of the insurrection, but Trump did.
I don't think this is true. As an example, let us consider the US civil war. Among the chief goals there was to secure the continued existence of slavery among the lower states of the United States. Yet the act of supporting the continued existence of slavery in the South would surely not be insurrectionary, in and of itself, if there were such people who continued to accept the legitimacy of Congressional government over the South. Admittedly, the causality is more complex than that simple case, as you point out that Trump could have called people off, but I think that gets a little at what I'm trying to say.
>formal cooperation
I agree that Trump would have been happy should they have succeeded in their goal of intimidating the congressmen into going along with the Eastman plan.
I'm not at all as convinced of that with Pence—that reads to me as something of a flippant remark rather than an actual aim.
I think my current view on the factual things is that (enumeration to make assertions distinct, and, should you wish, easy for you to refer to, not to assert a strict temporal sequence):
1.Trump was genuinely concerned about fraud.
2. He intended to contest the election in any unclear situation, which, given the concern about fraud, was subjectively pretty much all of them, and claim victory given any situation where people will believe him, which is most situations.
3. That happened. He lost, but more narrowly than the polls expected.
4. There was not fraud on a widespread scale. Nevertheless, his supporters repeatedly found more-or-less dubious evidence that could point in this direction, all of which he read, and which was advocated before by people that he trusted.
5. Trump rejected people who disagreed with him as wrong and somewhat dishonest, given that he thought the fraud was obvious.
6. With the help of lawyers, they developed the alternate slates of electors scheme, submitted such slates, and developed legal plans for January 6th.
7. Trump calls for a rally to be held on January 6th.
8. This is read by his more radical followers as indicating violence.
9. Trump, not wanting to downplay things (he, after all, wants people to be there and be enthusiastic), does not bother to clarify that it is peaceful.
10. Trump requests guardsmen.
11. Trump holds a speech on January 6th.
12. In the speech, he is not speaking in favor of any use of violence on the congressmen.
13. That reflects his intent at that time—he probably did not intend violence towards the congressmen.
14. Trump did not plan to have himself be declared the president-elect that day.
15. Trump returns back. His people, as he willed, go to the capital.
16. Some of their entry is by force; Trump probably was in favor of them entering in that way.
17. Nevertheless, he would still not have intended violence against the congressmen.
18. Upon learning that Pence dismissed the Eastman plan, Trump tweets out his disapproval.
19. The intent to me of that quote is not entirely clear. But he likely still intended them to continue trying to pressure the Congresspeople, given the closing words that "USA demands the truth!"
20. I do not think that the quote was intended to push them to kill Pence.
21. The phone calls to pressure the Congressmen does not endorse violence against the congressmen.
And introducing the 14th amendment:
22. To "engage[]" in an insurrection contemplates an active role.
23. As does "give[] aid or comfort."
24. Trump's speech does not suffice, as he was not contemplating violence.
25. Following his speech, he did not engage or give aid or comfort, as he did no actions actively which would aid them.
26. In the previous point, "aid them" is not merely accomplishment of their aims—his reinstatement as president—but refers to aiding them as an insurrection, in respect of their use of force.
27. More specifically, Trump's tweet is not engaging in insurrection, because he is not directly furthering it. He is not giving aid or comfort, because it does not help it.
28. Trump's failure to act does not engage in insurrection, nor aid, nor comfort, because those are all passive.
29. Trump's calls to people did not engage in insurrection, nor give aid or comfort to them. (See 26)
I think the specific things that would most help to convince me are:
1. Evidence that Trump had prior insurrectionary intent, rather than things being something of an on-the-fly development, with the use of force, evacuation etc.; or
2. Evidence or arguments that some deeds, after they started to take place, involve Trump taking action to further the insurrection; or
3. Arguments that, actually, the 14th amendment covers some of the things that we're talking about. (Say, that dereliction would count, or that specific actions that we are agreed Trump took would fall within the purview of the amendment.)
I think the question I would most appreciate an answer to is this: if Trump's followers would have gone to the capitol, entered by force, against the resistance of the capital police (up to this point, matching what happened), entered the congressional chambers (that have, for some inscrutable reason, not been evacuated), and then merely done ordinary protest things—cheering, booing, chanting, etc.—before going home without further conflict, would they have been insurrectionists, in your book?
If so, it's quite obvious that Trump incited them, you have a nearly open-and-shut case (at least, should that be granted), there's no point to most of this argument, and we can move on with our lives. If not, the relevant violence is not merely the violence of entry, but the prospect of continued violence after entering (or is this wrong?).
I thank you for the kind words at the end. As is evident, I don't think you've convinced me yet, but you've made some good points.
Given that this is long, don't feel compelled to answer in full if you lack the time. The things that I would be most interested in getting an answer to are: would you consider merely the violence of entry and their continued presence insurrectionary? And how convincing do you find the evidence from that one article linked that Trump continues to have concerns about election fraud?
Though no one else would get it, I'd be quite amused if you made a post that was just 'No. <Heart Emoji>'. Probably not a good idea, though.
In terms of the original Sophie's choice question, I mostly agree with you: Sophie was being pressured to play a rigged game, and choosing not to play is (probably) the best choice available to her. A runner-up choice might have been informing the officer that if he cared so much, he could flip a coin himself.
However, an interesting variant occurs to me:
Let's say you wake up on the peak of a two-way greased ramp: one greased slope to your right, one greased slope to your left, and a small ridge you can balance on in the center.
The moment you wake up, all the handholds and resting platforms retract. you can only stay balanced on the ridge summit as long as you're awake and have strength in your limbs.
there are two giant buttons, at the bottom of either ramp. If your body falls on one button, family member A dies, if your body falls on the other button, family member B dies.
There is no escape, no food, no water, no explanation for who placed you in this situation or why. Just clearly marked signs and your two family members trapped in soundproofed glass deathtrap cages, rigged to the buttons.
Now, in that situation, the obviously correct answer is to stay awake for as long as you possibly can, balanced on the ridge between the two chutes for as long as you possibly can. And pray for rescue.
But.... you know that unless rescue arrives, you're going to collapse from hunger, dehydration, or sleep deprivation eventually, and that when you do, your body is going to slide down one or the other of the chutes, basically at random, and then trigger one of the death-buttons.
In that situation.... is it completely unthinkable to 'bias' which SIDE of the ridge the majority of your body weight is resting on ahead of time, so that when you finally do collapse, you have a pretty good guess which family member will die?
I'm inclined to say that doing so is sometimes understandable.... Say, if it's a choice between sacrificing an 18-yr-old son vs an 18-month-old-daughter, the son has a clear duty to sacrifice himself for the daughter, and both of you KNOW that, and know that the other one knows that, so 'resting' your body so that it's 'more' leaning in the direction of the son for when your grip eventually fails is understandable... not ideal, but understandable.
Because it's either that or call the trap-designer's bluff, and try to break your way out of the trap early, by deliberately getting close to one of the buttons while you're still awake and full of energy attempting to hack it, and risking the fact that you'll probably still trigger that button... which is also an understandable choice to make, but risks an earlier death of one family member.
I'm not certain how this applies to a political dilemma, unless maybe you were picking which state to pre-cache your survival supplies in, in case of total governmental downfall? But it's a fun thought experiment.
Combining political incompetence with a theological system of structural hypocrisy, only to trip on the moral philosophy from the get-go. All the while assigning a crime to an innocent man, therefore, perpetuating evil, in spite of all of the words trying not to.
You're indirectly mentioned in this article! It's the sentence, "Not a single Trump supporter has ever finished that article and even made an argument for why I am wrong."
After ruminating on this article, I still think there're several other adjacent situations that can complicate the question you're talking about. When you tell an evildoer "yes, go do it" in the expectation that he'll do it, I agree, that's sinful cooperation. However, I think there're several adjacent situations where it isn't sinful.
To start from the example you give of a rapist friend going to a party:
(1) You know the police know about all this, and they're going to be at the party ready to catch your acquaintance in the act. You say "go do it!" with the reasonable expectation he won't actually be allowed to commit any rape - in fact, you're trying to help him get caught. This might be risky, but it isn't cooperation at all.
(2) Like (1), except the police aren't going to be able to catch him with enough evidence to arrest him, but they're going to be standing there making sure he doesn't commit any rapes. (At least, as far as you know.) You say "go do it" in hopes he'll still have a fun time at the party without any raping. This still isn't cooperation.
(3) There's a medical emergency at the party, and your acquaintance is the closest doctor. You say "get over there!" in reasonable expectation that he'll save some people's lives. If he also commits a rape while he's there... ouch. But I still don't think this's cooperation, since you weren't encouraging him in the sinful part; you were encouraging him in a very good thing.
(4) Blend of (2) and (3). Your buddy's a doctor needed to save lives at the party; and you expect there to be police there to keep him from any raping.
All these three hypotheticals have plausible analogies in the world you call "extraordinary antipolitics." (A very apt and memorable name; thanks!) When you look at the two candidates promising two different atrocities as parts of their two different platforms - well, their platforms also contain other things. They could contain some very important good things.
When you're casting a vote for a candidate, I don't see how you're necessarily endorsing each point of their platform. You're providing some help or encouragement, yes, to a general plan. Under antipolitics, that sadly includes an atrocity. But under our system of checks and balances, there are other parts (analogous to the police in my hypotheticals) that might hold back some of those atrocities. Given this, I believe it can be moral to vote for someone under extraordinary antipolitics - at least when you reasonably believe they won't be able to carry out their particular atrocity.
Though, you've convinced me this exception is smaller than I originally believed! To jump back to your Sophie's Choice analogy: consider the real-life people who were faced with the choice of supporting the Nazis or Soviets! Life was not friendly to either group... and looking back, I can easily see the most moral choice was to not make a choice.
Sadly, in practice, we're usually faced with a different question. They might be checked, or might not. There might be police at the party, or might not. I think we differ on how much risk the candidates in the current election pose, but either way I still think it's moral in principle to decide to weigh the odds. Though even if we disagree here, I think it's important to talk about the clearer question.
This was a fascinating article, as I have come to expect from De Civitate. It is very timely, as I am likely to find my ballot in my mailbox when I next check it. However, I have to say, I often found myself deeply confused by the conclusions you came to in the course of your arguments.
It’s possible this is because there is a substantial gulf in our moral frameworks. Though I am not a San Francisco-style rationalist utilitarian, I am almost certainly have moral intuitions that allow for more cooperation with evil than you do. I was uncertain of how to go about trying to find out more, whether I could formulate a clarifying question (or several) that would help me at least figure out if I am disagreeing with you or just failing to understand the argument.
On consideration, I think focusing on Sophie’s Choice is the most productive path. Despite following along, and almost entirely agreeing with, your section explaining the foundations of the Catholic view of cooperation with evil, I don’t see how Sophie counts as providing any material cooperation.
What is it that Sophie is helping the Nazi do? Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t recall anywhere in the article where you actually state this directly (and, believe it or not, in addition to reading your whole article, I went back to re-read the relevant sections looking for this). What follows is my attempts to go through all the possible ways I could imagine Sophie being charged with material aid to the Nazi and why I think they don’t apply. In the end, I think Sophie makes a heroic sacrifice rather than a regretful compromise with evil.
First, Sophie did not physically deliver her child to the Nazi – the children were both forcefully taken.
Argument: I have not read the novel, and only watched the clip. It looks to me like both children have been ripped from her at the point that she makes the choice. It doesn’t look to me like she is passing her daughter over. Even if that is what is happening in the clip, does the whole case really hang on this? In a hypothetical Sophie’s Choice where my interpretation of the scene happened, does your whole position on the issue switch?
Second, Sophie does not operate, even under duress, any of the physical mechanisms by which her daughter gets killed. The Nazis do not ask her to shoot her daughter to save her son, or even so much as press a button.
Argument: I think this is just straightforwardly indisputable, except by an overly-literal and expansive sense of “physical mechanism” by which we conceive of the effect of her voice’s soundwaves hitting their ears and making chemical changes in their brain and so on. You know what I mean here – I’m talking triggers and buttons, not making a full account of a physicalist model of the mind.
Third, and the closest I can come to imagining, is that Sophie somehow helps the Nazi make a choice between which of her children to kill. An analogy here, to use your other primary example, is the roommate who helps the rapist decide which girl at the party to victimize.
Argument: This strikes me as also not very plausible. The Nazi has already decided to kill both her children. Her words are “take my daughter” but they have the same intention and effect as “let me keep my son.” As you say in the first section, “Sophie has saved her son at the cost of her daughter… She did not gas her child; she made a choice in order to save one of her children.”
Later on, you go further, saying that her choice was purely illusory all along. “Sophie never actually had a choice. The S.S. guard gave her the illusion of choice. He held 100% of the power. If Sophie had refused to pick a child, he might very well have followed through on his threat to kill them both. Then again, he might have spared one, or both. Likewise, once Sophie did choose one of her children, he might have killed both anyway, or killed the one Sophie didn’t choose. The power was always, entirely, in his hands.”
Given this, how is Sophie making a material contribution to the Nazi’s actions? We admit that her words did not empower or encourage the Nazi. The most they could have done is please the Nazi. To quote you again: “The only reason the S.S. guard gave Sophie the illusion of choice was to trick Sophie into immediate material cooperation with the murder of her own daughter. In the book, it is especially clear that the guard hates Sophie for her belief in Christ, and wants to strike at her by coaxing her into the greatest blasphemy of all.”
Are we truly going to say that denying the Nazi the satisfaction of this cruelty against a mother is worth her son’s life? That’s the moral? Let no evil-doer be amused, even if it means the death of your children?
Conclusion: I don’t see it. Perhaps it is so blindingly obvious that it need not be stated explicitly. Is simply the act of choosing to save one over the other (or choosing to save one instead of neither) sufficient to count as providing material cooperation? That’s all that I am left with, but I can’t imagine how that can be right.
Allow me an analogy:
Sophie and her two children are fleeing the Nazis, into the arms of the advancing Red Army, who will save them. However, the Nazis, determined to kill as many as possible before they are defeated, send 2 soldiers off to catch them. Each Nazi soldier is able to wrestle away one of her children and run off with them. Luckily, she spots a pistol on the ground, dropped by a different Nazi during their retreat. Sophie grabs the gun, knowing her only chance of saving her children is to kill or injure the fleeing Nazis carrying them off, she is too slow and weak to catch them. She picks up the weapon, but to her dismay, there is only one round remaining. She can’t kill both Nazis with one shot, so she has to choose – save one child, leaving the other to be taken, or do nothing and allow both Nazis to escape with both her children. She shoots the one carrying her son.
Does Sophie act wrongly here? What’s the moral difference with this situation vs. the one in Sophie’s Choice? To make the point more starkly, how is shooting the bullet to kill the Nazi carrying her son to his death different from shooting her words to kill the Nazi’s intention to carry her son to his death?
I have other objections to arguments in the article, but I think this is really at the core of our disagreement. I cannot understand how you can judge Sophie’s actions as material cooperation with evil, even granting your entire framework as laid out in the sections on Cooperation With Evil.
I agree with this take but perhaps on slightly different grounds: I don't accept that the Nazi had 100% of the power in this situation. I think Sophie had the power to influence him to kill only one of her children instead of both, by giving him the satisfaction of forcing her to choose between them. I think she knew that, and that's why she made her choice. If you don't think the power to influence others is real then I guess you think that all the ruthless capitalists who spend trillions of dollars on sales and marketing are fools.
She absolutely made the right decision (not that she would have been culpable at all for making the wrong decision under unimaginable duress). She doesn't deserve a guilt trip over it, she deserves therapy to process her trauma so that she can accept that she made the right choice and move on with her life.
Assuming for the sake of argument that Sophie has real power here, that would make her *more* complicit in the death of the child she chooses to have killed, not less (thus *more* guilty), so I'm not clear how taking the argument in this direction leads to the conclusion that she made the right decision.
It seems the only way you can reach that conclusion is by saying that it is right to do evil so that good may come of it (at least in extremis). That works if you are a utilitarian! I'm not really sure how it can work otherwise. But perhaps you have an unstated argument somewhere between "Sophie had power" and "Sophie made the right choice" that I'm not grokking.
I do agree that nobody needs to guilt trip Sophie, because she is guilt tripping herself plenty hard already. She *does* need help processing that guilt. But *really* processing it, not rejecting it. Help that insists she did nothing wrong isn't going to work. She'll know better, and (I think) that end in the same place: cyanide.
The key factor for me is that at least one of her children is going to die. So, it's not the trolley problem, because she's not putting a different person in harm's way instead of her children. In that case you could argue that she committed murder to save her kids.
She is not putting anyone *in* harm's way, she's being forced to choose whom she will take *out* of harm's way. That's not evil.
But how does she "choose whom she will take out of harm's way"?
She says to the guard: Kill this one. She may be doing it with the intention of saving the other one, but it is still formal cooperation: I choose this act, with this object (the killing of this child). The further end of the act is to take the other child out of harm's way, but that consequence goes *through* the act of consigning her other child to death.
The obvious objection (which you raised last night in person): what if she said instead, "Don't take my little boy"? Wouldn't saying it that way explicitly save one of her children without explicitly condemning the other, and therefore evade the problem of formal cooperation in the death of one of your children? So is this whole thing just a word game?
I don't think the objection stands up. As the article says, formal cooperation can be explicit or implicit. Within the context of the choice given by the SS man, saying the words, "Don't take my little boy" unmistakably implies her participation in the choice and her consent to the Nazis taking her little girl. It's still formal cooperation.
I repeat that the amount of personal guilt or culpability we should assign to Sophie is either zero, or so close to zero as makes no odds. My claim is only that, even if she is not culpable, her participation in the choice is formal cooperation, which is extremely damaging to her personally.
(I also continue to think that, even if we concede that Sophie has some kind of power here, it is *grossly* overconfident to say that "at least one of her children is going to die." I don't know how relevant that is, though.)
To be clear, you say formal cooperation here. In the article, you say immediate material cooperation. Is formal cooperation what you mean?
Whichever way, if we agree with you in her case, that it is wrong to make a choice when that would entail formal cooperation, or even immediate material cooperation, it is not at all obvious to me that that would carry over to less proximate forms of cooperation. Are there reasons to think so?
(For honesty's sake: I'm protestant, and would require more care than you've presented here to be convinced that your schema is correct, but I'm trying to work within it above.)
I'm not convinced that it would be wrong for her to choose one. Would it be wrong in the similar case, where she's choosing between herself and the child, to suggest that her child should be saved? My general sense is that few would say so, and yet, that seems the same in the details you present as relevant? (Unless perhaps consent/self-ownership is meaningful in whether people can be put to death, but that's an unusual take for anyone who (including me) is against euthanasia.)
Yeah, James, what about scenarios in which mortal peril is no one's fault, like a medical triage situation in which multiple patients could be saved with intervention but it's not possible to simultaneously intervene to save all of them? Are you saying the right choice in that scenario is to not make a choice?
Sophie is in a similar situation, it seems to me, and could make her choice based on a snap judgment of which child is most likely to survive the concentration camp.
> To be clear, you say formal cooperation here. In the article, you say immediate material cooperation. Is formal cooperation what you mean?
I promise I didn't do this to be cheeky, but literally at the moment you were writing this comment, I was editing the article to say "formal."
In another comment thread on this article a couple days ago (it was in response to Matt Mortarello), I agreed that the article erred in identifying Sophie's cooperation as immediate material, and I stated that I would edit the article as soon as I'd reviewed it for any downstream problems the edit might expose. It just took me a day and a half to get that done, which is why the edit came in mere seconds before or after you posted this comment.
Her cooperation was formal, and the article was in error.
> Whichever way, if we agree with you in her case, that it is wrong to make a choice when that would entail formal cooperation, or even immediate material cooperation, it is not at all obvious to me that that would carry over to less proximate forms of cooperation. Are there reasons to think so?
I think there are intuitive reasons to think that material cooperation with evil -- even more or less remote cooperation with evil -- is morally problematic.
Suppose you own a gun store (let's say it's in Somalia, where there are no gun laws). A man walks in and asks to buy a gun. He asks what kind of gun and bullet will definitely kill an adult human being at close range. You tell him, and then you ask why he would want to know that. The customer admits that he is buying a gun to kill his wife, and that he's going to do it as soon as he gets home. He is very convincing. You become certain you are talking to a psychopath.
Are there any moral problems whatsoever with selling him the gun? He doesn't put you under duress, he doesn't threaten violence, he simply offers you cash in exchange for a murder weapon. Is there any reason why that might not be okay?
If yes, then there are moral problems with somewhat-remote cooperation with evil, and you need to develop a moral framework for figuring out exactly how that works at different degrees of cooperation. I think the framework inevitably ends up looking something like the Catholic one. (If you're Protestant, I'll note that the Catholic framework has its ultimate roots in the Church Fathers, especially Augustine.)
And I tend to think that everyone will answer "yes."
I agree, this's a fascinating and thought-provoking article even though, on reflection, I still disagree with the bottom-line reasoning. And, after reflecting on your comment, I agree that we should dig in more to "Sophie's Choice."
Let me offer two other hypothetical analogies (your hypothetical being numbered (1)):
(2): Sophie thinks "My daughter is a good Christian and ready to face death. My son isn't ready yet." Her external level of cooperation is the same, but her inward reasoning is on a different level.
(3): Sophie somehow knows that this specific camp's head (was once friends with her daughter) / (is ideologically opposed to killing girls) / (something else), so she says "take my daughter" in reasonable hope that her daughter won't actually be killed. It's a very contrived scenario with the Nazis, but less so when we're stretching out the analogy to political choices in general.
That last one in particular seems like enough of a reach that I wonder whether we wouldn't be better off simply talking about political choices. I'm just having a hard time visualizing it. Does the head of the camp inspect every person who goes into the chamber to make sure she isn't an old friend / girl / other?
FWIW, though, I had to concede that OP is right that I misclassified Sophie's cooperation. Shoulda stated it was formal.
Thanks for reading and thinking it through, at any rate! I don't know where exactly you're coming from, ethically speaking, and I don't know what other objections you have, so all I can do is answer your question about Sophie's cooperation.
As of last night, when I posted this, my thinking was that Sophie's *consent* was the material element of her cooperation.
However, the very first thing I woke up to this morning was an email from a reader (who is smarter than me & has published in this area), which pointed out that consent cannot possibly be material cooperation, because consent is the *essence* of formal cooperation. Here is that email, in its entirety:
> I haven't gotten past the section entitled Sophie's Error yet, but there is a mistake here. Sophie's choice is not material cooperation at all. She has absolutely no material with which to cooperate. She is not making it possible, or easier, for the guard to kill the other one. Her action is pure formal cooperation. She says to the guard: Kill this one. She may be doing it with the intention of saving the other one, but it is still formal cooperation: I choose this act, with this object. (The object of the act, as opposed to the circumstances, further end, and consequences of the act, is another important piece of the moral puzzle.)
I think this email is correct. I was wrong to classify this as immediate material cooperation. Sophie's cooperation was formal. I'm going to have to publish a revision to that section tonight, but first I need to reread everything after that point to identify any downstream effects on my argument, so that my correction does not introduce more errors. (Then I will fret for a few hours about the impact on you lovely *readers* of my making such a stupid error.)
So my answer to your first several objections is: yes, you are correct, this is not material cooperation at all. It is formal cooperation.
With this correction, the difference in your fleeing-to-the-Red-Army hypothetical then, I suspect, becomes much clearer: in that hypothetical, Sophie does not consent to the killing of either of her children, she does not direct it, she does not participate in it -- however you want to put it, she doesn't do *that*. She can even continue attempting to chase down the other Nazi even though she is confident that she will not succeed! (Indeed, she should!)
As I said, I have no idea where that leads you to next, but I thank you for the thoughtful (and correct) correction!
I think it’s also a mistake to call what Sophie does consent or formal cooperation too. Let’s go back to the frat rape example. I think we agree that Sophie is a victim in any case, even if she ends up engaging in formal cooperation. So, I’m going to take the rape case from the perspective of the victim and build the analogy to Sophie from there.
For the sake of clarity, I’ll call the rape victim Cathie. She gets captured by several rapists and brought to an isolated room. She is pleading for her safe return. The leader of the group, having her at his mercy and being pure evil, decides it would be especially brutal for Cathie to feel somehow responsible for all this. So, rather than the whole group raping her in turn as was initially planned, he says, “I’ll give you a break – choose which of us will rape you and the rest will just hold you down.” Cathie replies it’s too awful to choose and begs again to be released to safety. The leader says, “if you don’t choose, it’s all of us.” And he turns to the others in his group who all start getting ready. Just as they are pushing her down onto the bed, she cries out “[guy 1] can do it!” with the hope that it will save her from being raped by the rest of them.
Is the claim that Cathie consents in some sense to being raped by guy 1? Or in some sense formally cooperates in this action? This seems really obviously false to me. If Cathie doesn’t consent in this situation, what’s the disanalogy to Sophie’s situation?
FWIW, I'm focusing on Sophie's Choice since you say about its connection to the broader argument: "If it seems wrong to you, perhaps my argument isn’t going to connect with you and you can skip the rest of this article." And I don't want to get too far ahead since this is a clear crux. I suppose I should wait on the revision, but it sounds to me like the change to a formal cooperation analysis might break the analogy to Sophie's Choice, while the existing material cooperation argument survives, in which case you might really just be saying that if the basic analysis of the moral considerations involved in material cooperation is a necessary point of agreement.
I like the Cathie example! Two observations about Cathie:
First, as you say, the gang rapists do this deliberately, in order to be especially cruel. They offer Cathie, essentially, an exchange: a significant reduction of immediate physical suffering in exchange for her verbal consent to one rape. I certainly agree that this is extremely cruel. The way I see it, the gang is (through extreme duress) pushing Cathie toward formal cooperation, and they believe (with good reason) that this formal cooperation will hurt Cathie *worse* than *multiple* additional physical rapes.
What isn't clear to me is why *you* see this choice as extremely cruel. If I understand your position (and I frankly suspect I do not), you believe that Cathie's verbal agreement to be raped by one of them is not formal cooperation, does not harm her, and therefore is not wrong. But if this verbal agreement doesn't harm her, then why is it cruel of the gang to put this choice to her in the first place? They're offering a reduction of physical suffering in exchange for (if I understand your position correctly) a harmless verbal token that means nothing and has no effect on Cathie.
Do you see what I'm getting at?
Maybe not, but perhaps my second observation will shed more light:
Versions of Cathie's situation seem to happen in real life fairly commonly. Under extreme duress, rape victims are often coerced into telling their rapist to proceed with the rape. This might take the form of an estranged partner "asking" for sex after making a clear threat of violence if the answer is anything but "yes," or an assailant demanding that the victim ask for more. Victims in this situation, fearing for their lives, very often give some form of verbal consent.
And, empirically, that seems to really mess them up quite badly! Rape victims who have been forced to consent to their own rape seem to struggle with deeper problems than those who do not. They tend to have a harder time recognizing what has happened to them as rape, making bizarre judgments even when the facts are as plain as day. It seems they tend to have a harder time recovering from the trauma, as well, even having come to grips with it, compared to those who were not coerced into this.
Let me make another analogy: suppose someone ("Stephie") is kidnapped by terrorists and is forced (at gunpoint) to pluck out her eyes for, I don't know, terrorist propaganda. Is she to blame for this act? Extremely minimally or not at all. Is she nevertheless wounded by this act? Yes! And did she perform this act? Yes. Her ultimate intention was to save her own life (a very good thing!), but the direct object of her action was to blind herself. Stephie's good intentions don't restore her sightedness.
So I suppose my basic position is that consent to an evil act is inherently damaging to one's interior, similar to how plucking out an eye is inherently damaging to one's exterior. Coercion or duress (or some other factor) might very well reduce (or even eliminate) the moral guilt one incurs for formal cooperation, but the damage occurs nevertheless. If that is true, then I think it is uncontroversial to say that it is morally obligatory to avoid voluntarily inflicting that damage under ordinary circumstances.
The Catholic position goes further than this basic position. The Catholic claim is that it is *always* morally obligatory to avoid voluntarily inflicting that damage. As I said in one of the footnotes, this is one area where Catholic thought breaks from the mainstream, and I won't bother trying to defend it.
On the other hand, how about a more modest claim? It is almost always morally *praiseworthy* to avoid coerced formal cooperation with evil, even if it is not morally obligatory. By that I mean only this: if the gang gave Cathie the choice of choosing one rapist, and Cathie's response were to spit in the gang leader's eye, and she then suffered the full wrath of the gang, I think we would all call this decision heroic, courageous, and a number of other very good things. Does that sound correct?
(I did not drive at this in the article, or even spell it out to myself beforehand, because I thought the Sophie-related material was an easy layup where nearly everyone's moral intuitions would line up with mine. Obviously I was completely wrong about this! Oh well! I'm glad the conversation is happening anyway!)
This is really interesting, and I appreciate you continuing the thread! I have to say I am surprised that this is your position, even though it seemed to follow from your previous claims. My tollens has been ponensed. We do seem to have very opposite intuitions here.
Just to answer some of your questions, which perhaps will clarify my view:
1. I think in the Cathie case, presenting the choice is cruel because its intent is to inflict further harm. I think whether it inflicts further harm is a matter of contingent psychology, however, not any moral failing. Ordinary human psychology is not perfectly attuned to the right and the good IMO. In other words, you can psychologically suffer and feel guilt for things that are not at all morally blameworthy and that a detached observer would say is not a thing to feel guilty about. This is often the perspective that a good psychological counselor is meant to bring.
2. As far as the morality of making the choice, in Cathie's case, I think she is free to choose either option, from the point of view of morality. (Ok, in my stricter moments I might say that she is obligated to choose the option she predicts will result in less harm to herself, the additional rapes or the psychological consequences of feeling like she in some way consented given her existing psychology. Duties to self are a part of morality that I don't have very confident views on.) In Sophie's case, my considered judgment at the moment is that she is morally required to choose one child, though I would not have heaps of blame to put on her for failing in this duty (she's under great duress).
3. As I suggest above, I think it is not morally praiseworthy to refuse to choose in these situations. Indeed, I think Sophie's actions in the original work are heroic and praiseworthy precisely because she saves her son's life even at the cost of her own future anguish over the choice. I put it in the same category as pushing someone out of the way of an oncoming bus: risking your own safety for the sake of someone else's. In Cathie's case where she spits in the eye of the gang leader, I'd be tempted to call that rash or reckless, rather than courageous. It's one thing to steel oneself against evil being visited on you, and another to aggravate the risk to yourself with no hope for any gain. But I think since Cathie's own welfare is the only thing at stake, I wouldn't have especially strong views on what the all-things-considered right thing to do is.
As a slight aside, I was talking with my wife about this, and her reaction was to consider the case of King Solomon splitting the baby (I assume you're sufficiently familiar to not need the story rehearsed). Does the true mother formally cooperate with evil by consenting to the lying imposter being granted custody of her baby? Is she therefore wrong to insist on this when King Solomon offers the split as a compromise? Suppose Solomon credibly warned that he would follow through on the compromise if an alternate agreement could not be reached between the parties -- should she continue to only insist on the justness of her custody, come what may? We're not sure if this is analogous, but perhaps it gets at the point that when presented with nothing but bad options, obstinate rejection of the options can be reckless (and even wrong) rather than praiseworthy.
I do not see why you consider it formal cooperation. She clearly is not giving internal consent to the evil; she is against the evil. The formal object of the will is not loving the evil, but loving the good. The choice of sign seems to be important to you for some reason, as if Sophie saying 'don't kill my son' would be fine but 'kill my daughter' is not. Yet both signify the same internal state, so there is no moral difference. If there's a sin in the latter, it would be perhaps in an officious lie, since it is clear that she in fact does not will her daughter's death, so she is lying if she signals in some way that she does.
Just beginning my journey now but absolutely love that the article begins with introducing intermission breaks
Classic James!
I will preface this by saying that I have never had the pleasure of voting for a winning candidate or ballot measure in my adult life, and that my current plan is to write in Governor Abbot because he has been the most competent Republican politician of my lifetime.
I think you should edit the section where to advise people not to vote at all. I say this because votes for the House, Senate, and local government is even more important as our Federal Executive grows more and more deranged. Don't cast a vote for President, but please do vote for those you can with good conscience.
I hate to add more complexity to an already long article, but I wonder if it matters that I fully believe that Trump will be legally prevented from taking office should he be elected, and therefore a vote for Trump is a vote for Vance (and chaos!) It would be more like telling a rapist where the girl is, knowing that there is a police officer already there on the lookout for said rapist. Your prior work has fairly convinced me that Trump is guilty of insurrection, and constitutionally this means that he cannot take office, even if voted in.
I wholeheartedly agree that people shouldn't decline to vote. That's both for the reasons you give, and because I think that it's important to show that you are willing to bother to vote but rather declining to support any candidate. It'll have the same impact on the results in this election, but it'll show up very differently in the aggregate statistics - which is the same practical impact a third-party vote is likely to have.
Personally, I've written in my friends many times for local offices, and one time I missed the deadline to request an absentee ballot, but I've never declined to vote.
I just kind of took it as read that everyone knew I meant don't vote for president (but still vote downballot in the races you can vote in), but, hey, fair point. I think an earlier draft had more explicit language saying something to that effect, so I'll see what I can dig up when I go in to make a revision tonight. Thanks for the note!
(Some of my downballot races are ALSO a nightmare where I will have to politely decline to cast a vote, but that's a my-state problem not an everyone-else problem. And even I have a few races where I can vote major-party with a clear conscience. I'll lose, but I'll have voted.)
P.S. I am very grateful to hear that my discussion of the insurrection has been convincing! My fear, and actually my expectation, is that it doesn't matter how convincing the case against Trump is: if We The People attempt to put Trump in office unconstitutionally, the Republicans in Congress and the justices of the Supreme Court will ensure that he stays there, exercising powers to which he is not entitled, regardless of what the Constitution says. The rule of law, unfortunately, is a choice, and it is one that we are (so far) actively declining to make. If he wins, though, mark my words, I'm going to try to find someone to bring a quo warranto action!
While my state of Ohio is Trumpy and non-battleground, it is most defintely a battleground state for control of the Senate. Both the abortion-friendly Democratic incumbent and the Trumpy GOP challenger are abhorrent, but the real issue is this: will the next President be opposed by a hostile Senate? That's what i want. How I feel the Presidential race is likely to go, will determine which party's candidate I vote for.
Choosing not to choose in Sophie's case is absurd. It's just as bad as choosing one child over the other if not worse. The only choice to not be complicit would be to fight in anyway possible. Passivity isn't absolution. When you know bad is going to happen and you fail to act you are then an accomplice... There isn't such a thing as complete powerlessness. I agree that the proximate is relational to the amount of power, but it is never zero.
I am very open to the claim that Sophie has some moral duty to engage in active resistance, even at the cost of her life. In Footnote 6, I set that question aside, but I could buy it.
On the other hand, I find it extremely implausible to say what you seem to be saying: Sophie *refusing* to consent to the execution of her own child is "just as bad if not worse" than *consenting* to the execution of her own child, as she did. I don't see how you get there.
That is to say: I'm definitely willing to consider the possibility that resistance is morally obligatory, passivity is a moral failure, and participating in the Nazi's game is a larger moral failure. But what you seem to be saying is that resistance is best, picking one of your kids to die is second-best, and passivity is worse, which seems... well, as you say, absurd.
But maybe one or both of us is misunderstanding the other, because I know you aren't prone to absurdity!
Fair enough. Let me attempt to unpack my thoughts... Might even lead me to change my mind:
First question for me is can we trust the Nazi to keep his word about his future actions. Some stories present this type of dilemma by having an antagonist prompt the protagonist to "put down the gun or I shoot the girl"... In most of those cases I wouldn't trust the bad guy to keep his word since his whole safety is predicated on the hostage being alive and once I don't have a way to retaliate I am as good as dead and the bad guy has no reason to comply. I told my kids recently, discussing the foundation of power, that it comes from you having something the other person wants (tabling for a moment that this works in your arguments favor, since once a choice is made Sophie would lose her power). Once you relinquish the thing the other person wants you lose most of your power. In this case though, the only power given to Sophie is the choice. I trust the Nazi at his word that someone will die. Maybe all. The likely case in this scenario is that the sadistic bastard (sorry for the language, but I think it is tame for what I would like to use and warranted to boot) wants to leave someone alive. If he wanted death, it was his to deal out. In this case, he wants suffering. He wants to show the frailty of human morality and faith. So I think we are safe to assume that he will leave someone alive, even if he might have removed their desire to live. It seems likely he will do just as he says, because it supports his desire. It compliments his character, which might be the nicest sounding insult I have ever written... (Continuing in another post because I am writing this on a phone...)
Second que
So we trust the Nazi to be a Nazi.
Next question seems to me what to do with the now clearer (still room for human absurdism/randomness) with the clear, presented options. Likely we should enumerate them:
1. Do nothing, both kids die.
2. Choose a kid, the other dies.
But let's back up and recognize the power Sophie does have and doesn't have and let's see if their are options that aren't presented.
First, Let's state some obvious areas where Sophie was close to powerless. She didn't seem to have the option to avoid participating in the Nazi's trolley dilemma (I am going to come back to this I think). She had very little physical power. She had no support on the Earth around her or at least one of a physical nature, meaning she might have been surrounded by the Trinity itself at that moment but nothing evident in the world around her.
What power did she have then? Did she have any? She did have some evidentially because she had something the Nazi wanted and in this power is granted. So we should explore that. She has power over the Nazi's paradigm meaning he wanted to justify his morals. "I dispose you because you are disposable. You are weak and worse yet you think yourself superior to me in your faith," my might be an adequate summary of his thoughts. He wants to support this. He wants to proclaim it, as all zealots want to when they have doubts in their hearts. When part of them knows they aren't on solid ground. So Sophie has power, and although it isn't physical it is substantial. The only power the Nazi has is actually quite frail when compared to the Christian faith and creed. The have worldly, physical power but we as Christians know, and this should be taught very young, that this world is not our home. That we don't live to live. We live for Christ. If we die, we are healed and saved and are no longer chained by fear, pain and death. Our actions don't save us (this might be something you bulk at given your Catholicism, but you may not too) in any way. They are only evidence of our faith and weak evidence at that. "Lord I believe, but help me with my unbelief."
So we come back around to options. We presented the superficial options presented. After reviewing the real power dynamic though we recognize there are other less evident options. They may seem similar options but the spirit of them are vastly different and they are based on the fact that the Nazi is powerless compared to God. So we lost them and the spirit of them. I think they all would benefit by speaking the Truth. That no matter what the Nazi does, Christ will greet whomever dies as long as they look to him for true saving. If I was Sophie I would prophesy this in the snake's face before acting. After, I would let go of my fear of death and then act as The Spirit willed me. If I felt it on me to fight in all ways I could think of I would do so until I was dead. If I was called to choose I would but stating that I was setting the child free and that we would see them in eternity, sooner or later (for me it would be sooner).
What I would not do is give the Nazi what they desired. I would not remove myself from the place of power my faith would, as it does now, give me. Freedom. True freedom from a love of this world that causes me to suffer unduly. Sophie's true failure was giving up her power thinking death is something ultimate. Letting the Nazi justify his paradigm.
Passivity enacted because of a fear of moral failure is the worst form of this since it not only reinforces the Nazi's view that Sophie should be looked down on, but also because it elevated death. It makes death more meaningful than it should be. Our Earthly lives are valuable things only if they serve God but we should not cling to them. I hate abortion, but not because the baby is destroyed. I don't believe they are destroyed ultimately. I believe I will see my child that was miscarried (what a fricked up phrase... My wife didn't fail to carry them... She didn't fail in any way... I know it doesn't mean this but I dispose even the thought). I hate abortion because of what it says about the heart of the one who chooses death of others over the helpless. The one who chooses their own possibilities through murder.
So I believe that the best option is to truly not play the Nazi's game by stating that his threat means nothing. And then showing fearlessness to prove it.
Hopefully that is clear enough... Again, I am preaching through my thumbs here. There are a couple of lingering thoughts but I am going to save them since they would only be MY footnotes and aren't necessary for you to at least get a gist of where I am coming from. One would be to discuss the kid's POV... But that would be long to thumb out and would roughly be the same argument as above with the added thought of no one goes to Hell be ause they didn't get enough chances to believe. I will elaborate on anything you wish though if you ask me to. Let me just be at a keyboard...
Oh boy... I need to fix some typos but hopefully it doesn't detract too much. I will properly edit when I get home.
"So I believe that the best option is to truly not play the Nazi's game by stating that his threat means nothing. And then showing fearlessness to prove it."
I'm satisfied with this. "Prophesy, wield the Cross, and tell him Jesus died to free him from the sin he is committing" does seem like a better answer than "stand there and do nothing."
I am all for listening to the Spirit in the moment. I am convinced that, at that moment, the Spirit would not prompt you to choose a child. So, if this ever happens, and you hear a prompting to choose a child, employ big time discernment of spirits, because I'm pretty sure that's the devil.
I mention this because... have you ever read Silence, by Shusaku Endo? It's a tragic book about the comprehensive destruction of a priest under similar circumstances. (The ending is sometimes misunderstood as a happy ending.) There is a moment where the priest faces a similarly horrible choice, and he hears a voice in his head, pretending to be the Lord, advising him to do the bad thing for the greater good. He does, which destroys the faith of hundreds and his own.
But, yeah, on the whole, your approach strikes me as sound.
Abraham and Isaac. The Father and Jesus... I am not so sure there isn't presidence but I understand where you are coming from.
One thing I will say, that I avoided saying before, is that I don't think this is a great analogy for this election even if I do think it is an interesting moral dilemma.
Also, true faith in the redemption through The Christ can't be destroyed by any act...
Romans 8:38-39
So there was a bigger issue than the actions of the priest (will read) or even Sophie... It seems like a true misunderstanding of the Gospel.
Also, sorry for not editing... Been a bit crazy for me lately.
I ruminated on this and I should have clarified that the misunderstanding of the Gospel is on the part of those losing faith, not you... I wasn't trying to be insulting. If you took it that way I apologize.
None taken!
I agree that *true* Faith in Christ can't be destroyed by any act... but that's partly because true Faith in Christ *rules out* lots of acts, because those acts oppose Christ and the true faithful would never oppose Christ. For example, the devil *believes* in the redemption of believers through Christ, but he doesn't have true faith in it because he *opposes* that redemption!
I agree, though, that the priest in Silence did, in the end, misunderstand the Gospel, and probably in just about the way you think. He entered Japan too eager to be a martyr and, when the moment came, he lost that faith that was keeping him on the right path. (The Japanese persecution, incidentally, was the scariest persecution in the history of the world, at least to me.)
Blissenbach, M, concurring
I join the opinion of Heaney, J, and I write separately to add that this US Presidential election and the last two US Presidential elections have been like the Battle of Wits scene in the 1980s classic movie The Princess Bride, where the correct answer is both cups have been poisoned by iocane powder and you’re a dead man if you choose either of them.
I cast my ballot for the American Solidarity Party nominees for President and Vice President in the last 2 presidential elections, and I did so again earlier this month via absentee ballot for the upcoming US Presidential Election. Peter Sonski and Lauren Onak are the Presidential and VP nominees in this year’s election, and you can go to http://www.petersonski.com/ to learn more about them and find out if they are on the ballot or, like in MN, have registered write-in candidate status (where if you write them in, the vote is actually tabulated, counted, and included in the official canvassing report for your state).
Simcha Fisher also has an excellent post on this topic as well. I don’t always see eye to eye with her, but I agree with what she says in this excerpt, regarding voting for major party candidates who do not align with her morals:
“And every time I vote this way, I stray a little further from even understanding clearly what I believe, or from feeling like it’s important, because my standards keep shifting out of sheer self-preservation. You have to change your standards if you don’t want to go insane. You have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, right?
But we have noses for a reason. They’re a gift from God to deter us from consuming things that will hurt us. Plug your nose long enough, you forget what noses are for. “
https://www.simchafisher.com/2024/10/10/im-tired-of-throwing-my-vote-away-so-im-voting-asp/
All to say, well done, Mr. Heaney!
I respectfully concur and I join your opinion in full!
You and I have arrived at the same conclusion of what options are actually available, however our understanding of the facts which lead us to that position are different.
When I initially read your posts about what Trump did regarding the 2020 election and J6, I said that that seemed plausible and made sense. I also said that it presented as facts, things I was becoming aware of for the first time. Due to some circumstances outside of my control, my only source of national news during that timeframe in 2020 was bits and pieces of conservative talk radio. However, you were not an impartial voice on the matter in your posts. Thus, I said I would await SCOTUS to tell me whether or not Trump could be voted for. To the best of my knowledge, when they had the chance to say yea or nay, they said nothing meaningful. Perhaps it is cowardly of me, but I decided to outsource my judgement on the issue to SCOTUS (as long as the decision was not an obvious political hit-job, but that caveat did not come to pass, thankfully) about the time that the case was brought before them (as I said to James then). With SCOTUS unwilling to give a definitive answer, I conclude that Trump should not be removed from the list of acceptable candidates on that issue.
However, I come to the conclusion that we are still unable to vote for Team Trump, because I think that Trump, like Harris, is pro-abortion. Trump less so than Harris or Walz (which is a depressingly low bar to clear), but still to a sufficient extent that I cannot vote for him in clear conscience. The fact that Vance, an ostensibly Pro-Life Catholic from my new home state of Ohio, has been shedding all signs of being Pro-Life since joining the ticket is extremely disheartening.
Normally, I vote on election day because I think that that ought to be the only day on which ballots should be taken in. This year, I am also doing so because of some hope for some miraculous event which will change the options in front of me...
This is an article I feel I have so many comments on... that it would take too long to say all of them (some are in agreement, some are in disagreement). Perhaps later I will say more of them, but in the interests of time for now I'll try very much to constrain myself for now and just bring up two things: The first a comment, the second a question.
In regards to the comment, I think the repeated references to Sophie's Choice hurts the article. It's just not something you mention at the start and then bring up again towards the end, it's something you bring up a lot throughout the article. That distracts from the actual argument of the article on the election--or even on the general issues of cooperation with evil--because it makes the reader fixate on and want to debate that specific example rather than the broader issues, distracting from the more important parts of the article.
And this brings me to the question, one I was curious about. Suppose that between now and voting day, Donald Trump dies somehow. While he's still technically on the ballot, this effectively turns J.D. Vance into the Republican presidential candidate. How would that affect things for you? Similarly, what if this happens with Harris and Walz?
In hindsight, you are obviously correct that I should not have relied so much on Sophie. I did so because I assumed the entire reading audience would intuitively agree with me, and I could use that as bedrock to build toward further points. As it turns out, the reading audience does *not* share my intuition, and so this bedrock turned into sand.
Walz is fairly straightforward: everything I said against Harris can be said of Walz, and, in some ways, Walz has done even worse things. He is my governor, I have seen him up close, and I despise him. (In both debates, the Republican candidates were "fact-checked" by dishonest moderators about the circumstances of infants born alive after abortions in Minnesota. Those fact-checks were lies. I have been thinking about publishing something on this topic for De Civ, but I am not sure whether I can keep my temper sufficiently in check.) So if Harris died and Walz took the nomination, he would be an even easier "hell no."
Vance is a little more interesting.
I dislike Vance. I don't have as strong an opinion of him (I've had relatively little exposure), but my general impression is that he is somewhat more dishonest than your average Washington politician, and that's already extremely dishonest. I earlier linked an Edward Feser article which argued that a Trump victory could be bad for the pro-life movement, and many of his arguments apply equally to Vance. On the other hand, it's an open question whether Vance, as a dishonest man, would change his positions if he ascended to the top of the ticket.
Vance has not personally tried to overthrow the United States government, so that *is* a pretty big point in his favor, from where I'm sitting. He wasn't in the Senate at the time, so didn't cast any votes on impeachment or certification. Another point in his favor.
On the other hand, he is running on the ticket of a man legally not qualified to be POTUS, he's embraced Trump throughout despite the insurrection, he won't admit that Trump lost the election (but won't deny it, either, which is a small point in his favor), and he has said that he would have voted against certification. That's less bad from an insurrection standpoint but still extremely bad (I wrote about anti-certification votes pre-insurrection: https://www.jamesjheaney.com/2021/01/02/special-comment-on-the-cruz-electoral-college-objection/). He's still obviously *way too close* to Trump's lawlessness, maybe too close to justify voting for him under any circumstances.
But I haven't looked into him all that closely, and I will reserve judgment until Vance does actually end up on top of the ticket.
(One thing I'm very interested in seeing: after 2024, especially if Trump loses, how quickly and how clearly does Vance reverse position on this for the sake of setting up in 2028 run?)
Wow, James, that's impressive. I'm highly tempted to call that masterful tutorial in and analysis of Catholic moral theology, a classic exercise of Catholic moral overthinking, even if I largely agree with your eventual conclusion. I will say the "Sophie's choice" scenario, given the extreme duress involved, is not that helpful as far as the election is concerned, even if it helpe your background discussion of moral theology.
I generally agree with your description of Trump and Harris. However, we disagree somewhat on your analysis on the choice.
Contrary to your footnote, Kamala Harris has a conventional respect for the rule of law (if likely a risk to executive order overreach, a tendency started by Barack Obama and continued by Joe Biden). However, Kamala harris can't "codify Roe" without Congress passing a bill she could sign. Her executive leeway to promote abortion is therefore limited. All of this to say Kamala Harris cannot substantially commit the grave evil of expanding abortion by herself, making more remote the material cooperation with that evil of anyone voting for her. (If Harris were a Hitler with absolute power to carry out her plans, that would be different).
By contrast, Donald Trump is more than capable of attacking the rule of law all by himself with limited Congressional ability to block him. He will have a list of MAGA faithful to appoint in the executive branch, ready to do whatever he tells them to, placed using acting appointments, which he abused during his first term. he has made clear his desire to weaponize the Justice Department to harrass his "enemies". And then there's the Insurrection Act, which allows the President to call out the military for a broad list of domestic issues mostly at his description -- ripe for abuse. All that increases the material cooperation of any Trump voter, with the evil of attacking the rule of law -- the Constitution.
And that is even before analyzing the evil of attacking the rule of law versus the evil of abortion. I would argue the breakdown of civil order resulting from attacking the rule of law is more dangerous and a greater evil than widespread abortion, even of Roe is "codified". Ancient Rome, for all the evils of slavery and infanticide effectively promoted civil order, allowing the rapid spread of the gospel.
For those reasons, I believe a vote for Kamala Harris can be justified as the lesser evil -- that is, for a voter in a battleground state likely to influence the outcome. (I admit, it's a close call).
But like you, I live in a non-battleground state (Ohio) and I plan to vote for Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party. I have no desire to compromise my integrity, or risk my soul, by casting a vote for Harris if I don't absolutely have to. (Hooray for the Electoral College!).
One other comment. You linked to comments by Edward Feser and Steven Greydamus. One the one hand, I was appalled by Feser's acknowledging Trump's attempt to overturn the election, only to dismiss it). OTOH, Greydamus's approach is much closer to mine. A well-formed conscience, prayer and common sense, rather than a detailed moral analysis, suffices for most situations, including voting, which is almost always very remote material cooperation with whatever evil a candidate wants to do.
Since -- as you probably realize -- I wrote this article partly in a desperate hope of persuading you, specifically, I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that. Hooray for the electoral college indeed! It saved me from any responsibility in 2020 (though, alas, not 2024, at least not so far). This is a very good reason to refrain from a morally questionable vote.
These points are therefore purely academic, but I'll ask them anyway:
1. You write that "voting is almost always very remote material cooperation with whatever evil a candidate wants to do." In this article, I argued that voting is almost always very proximate (and absolutely necessary) material cooperation with the evils a candidate runs on doing. What led you to reject my thinking.
2. You write that a vote for Harris is less proximate than a vote for Trump because she is less likely to accomplish the evil she vows. In the article, I argued that it doesn't matter a whole lot if one candidate is more likely to enact his evil than the other candidate, if both candidates are running on evil. It doesn't increase your proximity from the evil at all, and it doesn't decrease your responsibility for it as much as you would like (not least because the future is so unpredictable). A vote for a candidate who intends evil is still unavoidably a vote for that intent, and for the degraded moral character that is capable of harboring that intention. What led you to a different conclusion? You don't really explain in this comment.
3. Lastly, I pointed out several Catholic texts that make it clear that the right to life is more fundamental than the rule of law. Indeed, if you don't have a universal right to life, Catholic teaching generally holds that you *do not have* a rule of law, properly speaking; you have an ordered tyranny of some sort. (Aquinas's treatise on law is fairly scathing about this sort of thing.) Yet you write that you see the rule of law as more fundamental than the right to life. I can see the argument for it, but it seems foreclosed, at least for Catholics, by existing teachings. What leads you to think that the Catechism, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Francis are all mistaken about the right to life being the more fundamental right?
(The Catechism and the popes could be mistaken; they sometimes are! But it's a nerve-wracking experience to disagree with them.)
James, how dare you make me think!
> You write that "voting is almost always very remote material cooperation with whatever evil a candidate wants to do." In this article, I argued that voting is almost always very proximate (and absolutely necessary) material cooperation with the evils a candidate runs on doing. What led you to reject my thinking.
First of all, what does a vote for a candidate mean? In and of itself, it means only that the voter selects that candidate for office. That by itself is not evil, and it is only remote material cooperation with any evil the candidate might represent. (If the voter favors that evil, that would be formal cooperation of course). A voter could have any number of motivations for selecting their candidate. While you might argue some motivations sin against prudence if an evil is overlooked or discounted, that's different from formal cooperation.
Second, voting is not like a firing squad, where only one shooter with a live bullet is sufficient to execute the condemned. Your attempted analogy that it only takes one go-ahead voter is fallacious. In an election, it takes a plurality of voters to elect a candidate, a variable but large number, ranging from hundreds (or less) in a local election to millions in a Presidential race. That material cooperation, already remote (if formal cooperation is lacking) is diffused across all those voters.
I see you explicitly reject dilution of responsibility. I disagree. I reviewed your conclusion and honestly do not understand it. To me, at some point the connection between one individual voter and an elected politician becomes so tenuous that it ceases to have meaning from a moral standpoint.
And arguing that moral responsibility for candidates we vote for, is not diluted by great numbers, would also mean that owning stock, even via a mutual fund, in a corporation that does evil things (as most all of them do) does not shield individual shareholders from responsibility. The same principle applies there.
> You write that a vote for Harris is less proximate than a vote for Trump because she is less likely to accomplish the evil she vows. In the article, I argued that it doesn't matter a whole lot if one candidate is more likely to enact his evil than the other candidate, if both candidates are running on evil. It doesn't increase your proximity from the evil at all, and it doesn't decrease your responsibility for it as much as you would like (not least because the future is so unpredictable). A vote for a candidate who intends evil is still unavoidably a vote for that intent, and for the degraded moral character that is capable of harboring that intention. What led you to a different conclusion? You don't really explain in this comment.
The difference is which candidate is more able to effect the evil they intend. Also, there is the matter of the status quo. The evil of abortion has been a widespread reality in the US for over 50 years, remains legally available in much of the country, including the populous areas of the West Coast, the Northeast and the Great Lakes region. And even where it's illegal or heavily restricted, the options of out-of-state travel or online abortion pills remain available. Even with Congressional cooperation, Harris can only modestly increase the number of abortions.
On the other hand, Donald Trump can seriously, perhaps irreparably damage the rule of law, which is still (mostly) intact from his first 4 years and the 1/6 insurrection. Think of how the civil war scenario you laid out in your alternate history of the 2020 election would end democracy as we know it.
> Lastly, I pointed out several Catholic texts that make it clear that the right to life is more fundamental than the rule of law. Indeed, if you don't have a universal right to life, Catholic teaching generally holds that you *do not have* a rule of law, properly speaking; you have an ordered tyranny of some sort. (Aquinas's treatise on law is fairly scathing about this sort of thing.) Yet you write that you see the rule of law as more fundamental than the right to life. I can see the argument for it, but it seems foreclosed, at least for Catholics, by existing teachings. What leads you to think that the Catechism, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Francis are all mistaken about the right to life being the more fundamental right?
As a universal right, of course the right to life is more fundamental than the rule of law. However (and I hate saying this because it makes me sound like I'm making light of the great evil of abortion), the lives that are threatened by abortion are preborn lives, not all lives. Abortion can surely corrode the right to life of born people, no question. But it is not the same threat to the rule of law as in a totalitarian state where the secret police can execute virtually anyone at will. Nor (and this is more relevant to us) is abortion the same threat as a breakdown of social order where fandom violence imperils the lives of all of us.
There are many church teachings regarding abortion, because it is so prevalent in our time and because many see no moral problem with abortion (or see it as a "woman's right"). In contrast, few or no one doubt that the rule of law is a necessary good, so there is much less need for the Magisterium to teach on that matter as frequently as on abortion. That doesn't mean it's not important. I would guess there is not a significant magisterial document that discussed both abortion and the rule of law in anything like the same context, directly comparing the two.
None of that means that there is not moral responsibility for the grave evil of abortion on the one side, and the grave evil of attacking the rule of law on the other side. But it is possible to consider the degree of remote cooperation with either evil, with prudence, avoiding the intention of willing either evil, without taking on the responsibility for that evil. And in this election, abortion is already the status quo. Breakdown of the rule of law, is not.
But I agree that, if the choice need not be made, it is best not made.
(UPDATE: I edited my original 10/17 post to remove the final section and add the line above).
Before responding, I want to again reaffirm how very happy I am that this is merely an academic point between us. I'll also start with some things you're quite correct about.
> First of all, what does a vote for a candidate mean? In and of itself, it means only that the voter selects that candidate for office. That by itself is not evil,
This is true. A vote is an attempt to imbue a person with the power to act, on your behalf, with legal authority. In general (avoiding questions about qualifications), there's nothing inherently evil about doing that, so a vote is never *inherently* evil. Voting for the Antichrist himself (if he were at least 35 years old and a natural-born citizen) would not be *inherently* evil, even if Mr. Antichrist openly worked dark magic and happily announced, "I am the Antichrist! All hail our father below!" -- because imbuing someone with the power to act, on your behalf, with legal authority, has a morally neutral object.
The major question with voting, then, is not whether the voting act is inherently evil, but whether the vote cooperates too closely with too great an evil.
> (If the voter favors that evil, that would be formal cooperation of course). A voter could have any number of motivations for selecting their candidate. While you might argue some motivations sin against prudence if an evil is overlooked or discounted, that's different from formal cooperation.
This is also absolutely correct. I don't even have anything to add to it. Spot on, no notes.
> and it is only remote material cooperation with any evil the candidate might represent.
Here, we run into trouble.
You have, I agree, narrowed the field down: we have ruled out direct evil and formal cooperation. We also agree (I think) that it is not immediate material cooperation. But that still leaves nearly the full range of material cooperation! How did you jump from there to concluding that voting is "only remote material cooperation"? You haven't ruled out proximate material cooperation... and my whole argument is that voting IS proximate material cooperation!
Since it would be a lot to reread, here is my argument, in a nutshell: cooperation with evil is more proximate if it is more closely linked with the evil act. Imagine a gang execution:
* The gang leader who shoots the victim is the perpetrator. He commits a directly evil act. He has zero degrees of separation from the evil act.
* The gang lieutenant who hands the leader the gun is an immediate material cooperator. He also has zero degrees of separation from the evil act, because he is a participant. (If he agrees with the execution, he is also a formal cooperator, but let's focus on material cooperation here.)
* The fence who sold the lieutenant the gun under the table (knowing that it would likely be used for gang violence) was a pretty proximate mediate material cooperator. He has one degree of separation from the evil act.
* The person who sold the gun to the fence (knowing that the fence was involved in shady business but without any specific knowledge that he'd sell it to a gang lieutenant) was a more remote mediate material cooperator. He has two degrees of separation from the evil act.
* The gun manufacturer (who knows, statistically, that some guns will be used for murder) is an even more remote mediate material cooperator. He has three (or more) degrees of separation from the evil act.
Now let's take this and apply it to voting. When a politician takes office and uses his legal authority to commit an evil act, he is the perpetrator. People immediately surrounding him (like presidential aides) who assisted in the evil act are immediate accomplices. They have zero degrees of separation from the evil act and are all considered participants in it.
Voters who voted for that politician, however, have a degree of separation from the evil act. They didn't commit the act and they didn't directly assist.
However, they ONLY have one degree of separation. Each voter who voted for the politician acted directly to put the evildoer in power, knowing that the evildoer was planning to do evil. Therefore, their cooperation is very proximate, rather than particularly remote.
So when you cast a vote for an evildoer, even if you strongly disagree with the evil that candidate endorses, your vote is always proximate material cooperation with evil. For Catholics, this is relatively difficult to justify, and often impossible to justify for great evils.
[CONTINUED IN CHILD COMMENT - HOPEFULLY THIS IS ONLY A TWO-PARTER AND NOT A THREE-PARTER]
> In an election, it takes a plurality of voters to elect a candidate, a variable but large number, ranging from hundreds (or less) in a local election to millions in a Presidential race. That material cooperation... is diffused across all those voters. I see you explicitly reject dilution of responsibility. ...To me, at some point the connection between one individual voter and an elected politician becomes so tenuous that it ceases to have meaning from a moral standpoint.
What you call "dilution," I mostly refer to under the larger umbrella of "necessity". I agree with you that dilution is real and can reduce the seriousness of material cooperation. I just don't think that works for voting, specifically. I think I did a bad job explaining why in the article, so I'll try to expand on an argument I dashed off in one sentence in the article:
Suppose there is a candidate who is the lesser of two evils. We'll call her Senator Lesser. Senator Lesser is winning in the polls by a landslide margin: 70-30. She is clearly going to win. On top of that, you are a mystic with a long track record of predictive mystical visions, and you receive a vision from the Lord telling you that Senator Lesser is going to win so that you can begin preparing the Church for the trials that Senator Lesser will inflict on them. The imminent defeat of the greater evil (Governor Greater) is good news, but it's still going to be a really hard four years. Should you vote for Senator Lesser?
No, you shouldn't, and this is an easy call. You want a good thing: the defeat of Governor Greater. Voting for Senator Lesser is material cooperation in evil (I think it's proximate, but this argument works even if it were remote). You have two options: vote for Senator Lesser (cooperation with evil, but diluted), or don't vote for either (your hands are clean). No matter which option you take, the good you sought will be achieved, and you cannot cooperate with evil (even diluted cooperation) if you have a reasonably practical option available that avoids cooperation altogether. Therefore, in this case, you *must* take the option that keeps your hands cleaner: don't vote for either.
The same is true if you have absolute certainty that Governor Greater is going to defeat Senator Lesser. Voting for Senator Lesser isn't going to make Governor Greater lose, so your voting for Senator Lesser would be (diluted) cooperation with evil for absolutely no benefit. You therefore must not vote for either.
The same is true if you are certain that Senator Lesser is going to win 55-45. The same is true if you are certain that Governor Greater is going to win 51-49. The same is true even Senator Lesser is only going to win the election by 2 votes. If she is certain to win (or certain to lose) without your vote, then you have a moral obligation not to give your vote to her, because you would be cooperating with evil for no benefit. Which means that, in every situation where our vote would be diluted, it's automatically unjustified, because we could accomplish the same good without cooperating with evil.
Of course, we never do have absolute certainty that our vote isn't going to matter. We can't QUITE trust polls (even clear polls), and most of us don't get mystical visions from Christ. There is always the possibility that our vote *will actually be* truly decisive. For that reason, it is morally acceptable to cast a vote for a lesser-evil candidate if the outcome is uncertain and the benefit of cooperating is proportionate to the harm.
But the only reason this is justifiable is *because* our vote might be *truly decisive* -- the single vote that determines the outcome, with absolutely no dilution of our responsibility for that outcome. That's the context in which we have to evaluate the morality of our vote. We have to treat our vote as decisive, undiluted, and absolutely necessary, because, if it *were* diluted or in any way unnecessary, it would be *clearly* unjustified.
Does that make better sense?
> The difference is which candidate is more able to effect the evil they intend.
But my question was, why would that matter? To be sure, it definitely matters in an argument about which candidate is the lesser evil! But that's not my argument here. I'm open to the argument that Harris would, on balance, be the lesser evil, if all prudential factors were considered. But she wants to strip the right to life from innocent children. She has made this the center of her campaign. Even if she were unlikely to succeed in that (and I'm setting that question aside), her intention is so corrupt, and voting for her such a proximate cooperation with that evil intention, that it cannot be justified. The evils of the other candidate aren't the question in this argument.
> There are many church teachings regarding abortion, because it is so prevalent in our time and because many see no moral problem with abortion (or see it as a "woman's right"). In contrast, few or no one doubt that the rule of law is a necessary good, so there is much less need for the Magisterium to teach on that matter as frequently as on abortion.
This is a very minor point. My main point is that voting is very proximate material cooperation, and (because of the nature of voting) must be morally evaluated from the perspective of being absolutely necessary without factoring in any dilution. However, my understanding of the Magisterium is that the basic Catholic position is that, if the right to life is not universal, the rule of law has *already* ceased to exist. What remains is a kind of dark mirror image of law, one that directly opposes the law of human nature written on our hearts. (I am pulling this mainly from Aquinas's Treatise on Law at Summa I-II qq90-91, which technically isn't even magisterial, and the political encyclicals of Leo XII, which are.) So the right to life and the rule of law turn out to be intimately intertwined: you can't actually have one without the other, and voting for one in opposition to the other can only be a sick joke played by the Enemy. This, I think, is a major reason why American politics has deteriorated to the point that it has: after January 1973, the incoherence of our legal system, untethered from its anchor and unravelled at its foundation, would inevitably decay.
However, this is not central to my argument. Even if you are correct that the rule of law is even more fundamental than the right to life, cooperating with candidates who oppose both as openly as Trump and Harris would still not be justifiable.
> But I agree that, if the choice need not be made, it is best not made.
Amen, brother. Amen amen amen. I hope to God that we will never, ever face candidates this insanely bad ever again, so this kind of agonizing moral reasoning can go back to the Ivory Tower where it belongs.
Until then, may God turn His face back toward America and give it all the blessings we clearly do not deserve, whoever may win on November 5th.
How much of this article remains if I'm not convinced that Trump is an insurrectionist?
I'm inclined to think that he was deluded into thinking that he won, and acted accordingly, and that January 6th was not intended to be an insurrection. I think his speech should be read as it literally reads, not some esoteric reading based on things random trump followers said online. (That he wants his followers to go to the capitol, and, cheer on (or the contrary, depending), to peacefully voice their opinion, in order to give "pride and boldness" to the reluctant republicans. Notably, looking at the end here, he doesn't think the democrats will vote with him. That doesn't look like a coup!) That removes section 3 from relevance as one votes, I would think. Of course, January 6th was still horrible.
You ask for an at length addressing of the facts. But I have not read things all that deeply, and I don't have the time at the moment. (It is currently past 1, and I have church in the morning.)
> How much of this article remains if I'm not convinced that Trump is an insurrectionist?
Not much. If you remove the insurrection part, I think there are still several cases to be made against Trump, but they (1) are not as strong, and (2) on my rubric, they tend to fall under ordinary antipolitics rather than extraordinary antipolitics, which is the problem.
EDIT: also (3) I didn't make them in this article!
> You ask for an at length addressing of the facts. But I have not read things all that deeply, and I don't have the time at the moment. (It is currently past 1, and I have church in the morning.)
That's what they all say! Or some variation of it. "I think you're wrong but I'm not getting into the details."
(However, ditto. After 1, Mass in the morning, so I'm offline in 15 minutes.)
((Look at it this way, though: I don't really care too much if you reply here in a timely fashion. I care that you take enough time between now and election day to become significantly more acquainted with the facts about that day. From that point of view, you have nearly a month! Obviously, I commend my own writing on this above all else, but you could alternatively consider the J6 Committee Report, or at least its executive summary. They were obviously biased, but the lack of relevant response from Team Trump, even two years later, is deafening.))
Re: (3) I'd be glad to hear them, then!
Anyway, to address the article. This is responding to the other article. Nevertheless, I'm putting the response here.
I agree that Trump lost. But next you assert that he knew that that was the case. What is your argument for this? (I am looking at the paragraphs in that article running from "Most importantly for today" to "an important role in other crimes.") I won't go case by case, but each of the things you cite follows roughly the same form:
Person X presents solid arguments that Trump didn't win (or that some piece of evidence of fraud is wrong), to Trump.
Therefore, Trump knew that he didn't win.
But this doesn't follow! People often are presented with arguments that do not persuade them. This is not infrequently true even when the argument is correct. And as the politico article you link under the word "disagreed" says, there were few within Trump's inner circle who told him that he lost, and there were many sycophants. So why, then, if your own sources say that people whom he does not trust enough to be in his inner circle are the ones telling him that he lost the election, and if there are an abundance of sycophants to tell him he won, why do you think that he must have been known?
I've generally seen evidence elsewhere in the same direction, that he genuinely thinks that there is fraud—I vaguely remember seeing an article a few months ago that the Trump campaign was lacking cash because he wanted to commit a bunch of money to try to prevent there from being more fraud in this election, which would be against his interests (why not use ads?) unless he's genuinely convinced that that's a real threat.
You granted that believing the Eastman theory is not insurrectionary if he is already genuinely convinced that the election was fraudulent.
You say, that Trump tweeting "Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild!" indicates that he desired violent action. Your evidence? He had supporters who read it as such, and as he can't transgress the 25th amendment, that's probably what he meant. I think this is obviously not a strong argument. This sort of Trump supporter is not someone that I would trust to interpret roughly anything from anyone with any level of ambiguity in a manner authentic to authorial intent. (And he clearly could have and would have said more. For example, he could have pressed people to "be prepared for anything," which, to my (not expansive) knowledge, he did not do—telling them to be prepared for violence would clearly be in the interest of someone intending an insurrection.)
Next, you argue in the paragraph beginning with "the white house was aware" that Trump knew that there was a threat of violence. I agree, following the citations, that he knew that people thought that it would involve violence. It doesn't follow from that that he considered it all that seriously.
Trump didn't care that the people had weapons—I agree that he knew that they were armed, and didn't care. (Side note: please indicate that the emphasis on "me" was added, not in the J6 report.) I see no indication that he thought that they were planning to hurt people.
Then you pause, to say the following (to frame the speech):
-Trump knew his claims of fraud were false.
-"The only other option" available is the "1776 option" from his supporters, wherein the violently force what he wants.
-"will be wild"+no specifying that it's not violent indicates that he meant it was violent
-he's before a crowd, of whom he knows some are armed, and some intend violence
I think 1 is false; for 2, violent action is not the only option; for 3, no, not clarifying a tweet does not indicate that he agrees with everyone who reads it in a given way; for 4, it's not clear to me that he knows that some *in the present crowd* intend violence, instead of bloviating about it online.
Your arguments re: his speech. Essentially, you say that he uses words like "fight" and "strength," and some of his interpreters interpreted it as literal, so he meant it so. And this is the best interpretation, supposedly. These are hardly strong arguments—do you also take his post-assassination-attempt "fight, fight fight" as an invitation to violence? Well, let's look at his speech—you'll see that it doesn't fit what you've been saying.
First, note what he wants Pence to do: "All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people."
He wants the states to reassess, thinks he will win. Note that he is not thinking that this will be done that day. I think this might be fundamentally incompatible with your belief that he intended to install himself as president that day. He repeats that a few other times; that's not some misspeak or something.
Second, let's look right near the end: "The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
What is he thinking here: clearly he does not anticipate the crowd doing anything that would sway the democrats, but only something that would sway the Republicans. Clearly, then, this isn't a threat of violence, as compulsion would not maintain the disagreement between Republicans and Democrats. Rather, he wants his supporters to push the Republicans towards having "pride and boldness." This doesn't sound attack-ish. This fits with the "peacefully and patriotically make your voice heard" quote, that you dismissed as not representative of the tenor of your speech.
Trump from 1:19-3:38. Yes, obviously Trump knew and wanted his people to enter the capital, and didn't want to dismiss them. But I don't think that is in itself a form of insurrection, when what he wanted was merely them to be present and asserting their position towards Congress—is there any evidence that he intended violence?
You compare it to Philip Thomas. First, it's not clear to me that this was actually an insurrection. But allowing that it is, it's not clear to me that the Philip Thomas case was passive. Nor (second) is failure to perform one's duty the same as an active transgression. And (third)
(It would probably help a lot if I knew more about what exactly his supporters were doing and what Trump knew. I'm pretty sure I'd heard that people were ushered inside at some point? What did the people do?)
Re: Pence. I don't see what the actual tweet says. More important is the response to the chanting, but is Trump privately considering hanging possibly merited actually a suggestion that it happen? I haven't seen any indication to think so.
(Additionally, it's not clear that this is towards "a treasonable purpose" in your definition of insurrection. You say the treasonable purpose is the suspension of the 12th amendment. But you said that adopting the Eastman plan is in no way insurrectionary? In the speech, he says, "The Constitution doesn't allow me to send them back to the States. Well, I say, yes it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can't vote on fraud. And fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules." That looks to me like the thinks that the Constitution intends for what he's doing to be okay—I'm pretty sure Michael Stokes Paulsen has also argued that there are cases of necessity in which the literal text of the constitution may be ignored.)
Trying to encourage the Senators, etc. Yes, I don't see how this is insurrectionary, if his endorsement of his supporters exerting pressure is fine.
I'd like to make clear that I think that January 6th was very bad. But I do not think it was an insurrection. A year or so ago, when I was first reading the section 3 things, I think you generally did a pretty good job convincing me about section 3, but that Trump was an insurrectionist always seemed like the most tenuous part.
Chiefly, then:
-Your arguments that Trump knew are quite weak—he seems genuinely to have believed that the election was robbed from him.
-The speech seems to indicate that Trump was not attempting to violently seize victory, but rather to, without violence, give the states another chance to certify it, preferably the "right" way this time.
-You didn't present the case that the mob going to the capital was an insurrection, so I'd still need to see that to be convinced.
What do you think? Does this meet your standards of making an argument? What else should I know/what is wrong?
Hello again!
I typed a reply to you, but, when it was all said and done, I discovered that (due to Substack comment box character limits) it would have spanned some 6 comments. This seemed unwieldy, so, rather than posting 6 comments in succession, I copied it all to a Word document and put the document on the Internet:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xdqj3karg25cz10en9v2p/Reply-To-Mastricht-re-Insurrection.docx?rlkey=imiq7f0obs59ellkt99dix16x&dl=0
I apologize for any inconvenience, but hopefully you'll agree that it's less inconvenient than the alternative.
("Or... you could write shorter comments?" my wife says from the other room. "You could just reply to everyone with 'No. <Heart Emoji>'?" Ha ha ha, in a pig's eye, my dear wife.)
Thank you!
I'll address it here.
Regarding other arguments against voting for Trump:
First, you argue that "You weigh up costs and benefits and Trump just doesn't reliably pay out enough to be worth the certain cost." I think I don't buy in enough into your ethical schema for this to be personally persuasive, but I can see why that would apply for you. (Though perhaps: why is this not an argument against voting in general, as there will always be a chance that representatives will do bad things? Would the only time that you could be confident that it's okay for you to vote be during times of, as you put it, extraordinary politics?)
Second, you argue that Trump is way too pro-choice. I'm pro-life, and I agree that I'm disappointed in the shift towards a somewhat more ambiguous stance on abortion. I am a little curious what exactly you mean by salience, here, though: my instinct would be to put salience as talking about where their positions are different in an important way—perhaps if we broke up the issue of abortions into many separate issues (abortion in the first three months, abortion in cases of rape, federal vs. state bans, abortion in the ninth month) then it would no longer be the case that there would be salient differences in which he takes a problematic position. Or am I wrong on that—is salience measured in some other manner than between the viable candidates of the election? But whatever is the case, I think I'm not convinced enough of your overall schema, as mentioned elsewhere—I'm more okay with weighing competing negative effects than you are.
Now to 2020:
Regarding Trump's knowledge:
You present three reasons (along with a parallel analogy).
>1. Before the election he laid the groundwork…
At first, I thought that this was plainly disanalogous, but then I realized what you probably must have meant (Bannon and other similar officials saying that they'd declare victory, even if it isn't really clear) vs what you said (Trump raising concerns about fraud) would be evidence that this is dishonest. Yeah, I think that's good reason to approach things with a little more skepticism.
>2. …belief that the election was stolen was a *condition* of being within his inner circle.
To me, that isn't terribly indicative of dishonesty. At least at that point in time, his focus would have been in large part on the election. Not much point in having around those who are just going to be pushing back the whole time. (Yeah, I get that having dissenting voices can be good; he evidently did not in this context. This can surely be a point towards culpable ignorance—one ought not to echo-chamber oneself, especially if one is in places where one's opinions matter as much as do those of the president, and when the people in question have strong incentives in your favor.)
>3. Trump was actively deceiving his supporters [in the Raffensperger instance]
The Raffensperger happening could plausibly be a mix of not taking a reference to a link to be a good response, combined with a not-too-precise memory of what precisely happened, and the all-too-common tendency to only take answers that agree with one's own as legitimate.
What's my assessment of this: these were good points, though not dispositive. I think I'm more inclined to read the fraud claims as sincere, but I will admit the willingness to claim victory when it's not quite apparent provides significantly more reason to cast doubt on that.
>culpable ignorance
Eh, I'm inclined to think that he was in a pretty bad information environment, full of yes-men. But sure, I'll grant that he was likely culpably ignorant.
Re: Trump's behavior in this election
I think this ( https://archive.is/Ct8IS ) might have been the one I was thinking of, although that had less on that than I remembered. I think I must have been lurking twitter at some point, and seen slightly more commentary on it, but I have no idea where, or maybe there was a second article. The pertinent part is:
"But what might have bothered him most was the RNC’s priorities: McDaniel was continuing to pour money into field operations, stressing the need for a massive get-out-the-vote program, but showed little interest in his pet issue of “election integrity.”
“Tell you what,” Trump said to Wiles and LaCivita. “I’ll turn out the vote. You spend that money protecting it.”"
And they took over the RNC, and used the money differently. I think this does indicate that he's worried about fraud.
See also, from the same article: "Wiles could not answer the question of whether the 2020 election had actually been stolen. “I’m not sure,” she said, repeating the phrase three times.
And her boss?
“He thinks he knows,” Wiles said."
It's a very good article; I certainly endorse reading the whole thing.
Re: violence in "will be wild"
You're right, your claim was more modest. Fair point regarding that these cannot just be analyzed separately.
Re: what Trump wanted with Pence and the electoral votes.
Am I reading you correctly here as saying that: yes, you recognize that Trump was asking for states to be contested, for state legislatures to reevaluate and issue new certifications, and then for them to reconvene and have another electoral count? But you are saying that you think that that second count was also intended to be done dishonestly, with a parallel slate of electors?
Do you have evidence for this? Or am I misreading you?
It doesn't make too much sense to me that he would be willing to submit false slates of electors in earnest in the future, but at that time only be asking for a state recertification.
Re: Eastman plan and insurrection, thanks, that clears that up, the difference is treason. Thanks for mentioning thoughts on treason, since that's essential, at least, per your definition of insurrection in the other article. What then is treason?
Re: coercion and certification in Trump's speech
Yes, that's roughly what I was saying—or, at least, that the chief thing determining who would be willing to do that would be how much they can be cowed by fear, not political opinions. (Note that that's the opposite of the reasoning used in the speech: that it would be about giving the moderate Republicans boldness (I guess he's modeling them as knowing better, but weak?), not fear for their lives.) Sure, you're right that those can bleed into each other to some extent, but I think that this is at least evidence that he was not there pushing for a violent insurrection.
Regarding violence at J6:
I'm admittedly woefully underinformed as to what exactly was occurring, where people were, the level of violence involved. I was aware, though, that both people entered without force, and others entered by force. To me, using force to enter doesn't feel very insurrection-y. (And I'm now wondering if "insurrection or rebellion" in the 14th amendment is intended to refer to uprisings, whether they're in order to prevent the imposition of force to enforce some specific laws (insurrection) or a settled state of opposition to the legal authorities altogether (rebellion). I haven't seen a better account of how the words differ, so I'm going to tentatively hold that for now, despite not checking on contemporary usage. I don't think January 6th looks like either, because their objective was not to secure a zone exempt from US law.)
>Trump wanted his people inside the Capitol, he had sworn an oath that required him to dismiss them, and he repeatedly refused.
I don't think inaction looks like aid or comfort. Is this wrong?
> it is impossible to read Trump's 2:24 PM tweet in good faith with full knowledge of the context and NOT conclude that this tweet was an attempt to direct the mob against Mike Pence. (A direction they accepted.) This was participation in the insurrection
Upon thinking about it, I definitely agree that what Trump was saying was conscientiously public, and that the people in the capital were among the target audience, though I'm not necessarily convinced that that indicated that they were to take specific action against Pence. (Side note: another possible argument that you could use is that this tweet indicates that Trump thought that it was over, that Pence had made his final decision, and so everything after was more clearly insurrectionary. I don't think that works, because I don't think that he thought that it was entirely over.)
>Again again on #2: Once the insurrection began, no American, but least of all the President of the United States, was entitled to knowingly advance the goals of the insurrection, but Trump did.
I don't think this is true. As an example, let us consider the US civil war. Among the chief goals there was to secure the continued existence of slavery among the lower states of the United States. Yet the act of supporting the continued existence of slavery in the South would surely not be insurrectionary, in and of itself, if there were such people who continued to accept the legitimacy of Congressional government over the South. Admittedly, the causality is more complex than that simple case, as you point out that Trump could have called people off, but I think that gets a little at what I'm trying to say.
>formal cooperation
I agree that Trump would have been happy should they have succeeded in their goal of intimidating the congressmen into going along with the Eastman plan.
I'm not at all as convinced of that with Pence—that reads to me as something of a flippant remark rather than an actual aim.
I think my current view on the factual things is that (enumeration to make assertions distinct, and, should you wish, easy for you to refer to, not to assert a strict temporal sequence):
1.Trump was genuinely concerned about fraud.
2. He intended to contest the election in any unclear situation, which, given the concern about fraud, was subjectively pretty much all of them, and claim victory given any situation where people will believe him, which is most situations.
3. That happened. He lost, but more narrowly than the polls expected.
4. There was not fraud on a widespread scale. Nevertheless, his supporters repeatedly found more-or-less dubious evidence that could point in this direction, all of which he read, and which was advocated before by people that he trusted.
5. Trump rejected people who disagreed with him as wrong and somewhat dishonest, given that he thought the fraud was obvious.
6. With the help of lawyers, they developed the alternate slates of electors scheme, submitted such slates, and developed legal plans for January 6th.
7. Trump calls for a rally to be held on January 6th.
8. This is read by his more radical followers as indicating violence.
9. Trump, not wanting to downplay things (he, after all, wants people to be there and be enthusiastic), does not bother to clarify that it is peaceful.
10. Trump requests guardsmen.
11. Trump holds a speech on January 6th.
12. In the speech, he is not speaking in favor of any use of violence on the congressmen.
13. That reflects his intent at that time—he probably did not intend violence towards the congressmen.
14. Trump did not plan to have himself be declared the president-elect that day.
15. Trump returns back. His people, as he willed, go to the capital.
16. Some of their entry is by force; Trump probably was in favor of them entering in that way.
17. Nevertheless, he would still not have intended violence against the congressmen.
18. Upon learning that Pence dismissed the Eastman plan, Trump tweets out his disapproval.
19. The intent to me of that quote is not entirely clear. But he likely still intended them to continue trying to pressure the Congresspeople, given the closing words that "USA demands the truth!"
20. I do not think that the quote was intended to push them to kill Pence.
21. The phone calls to pressure the Congressmen does not endorse violence against the congressmen.
And introducing the 14th amendment:
22. To "engage[]" in an insurrection contemplates an active role.
23. As does "give[] aid or comfort."
24. Trump's speech does not suffice, as he was not contemplating violence.
25. Following his speech, he did not engage or give aid or comfort, as he did no actions actively which would aid them.
26. In the previous point, "aid them" is not merely accomplishment of their aims—his reinstatement as president—but refers to aiding them as an insurrection, in respect of their use of force.
27. More specifically, Trump's tweet is not engaging in insurrection, because he is not directly furthering it. He is not giving aid or comfort, because it does not help it.
28. Trump's failure to act does not engage in insurrection, nor aid, nor comfort, because those are all passive.
29. Trump's calls to people did not engage in insurrection, nor give aid or comfort to them. (See 26)
I think the specific things that would most help to convince me are:
1. Evidence that Trump had prior insurrectionary intent, rather than things being something of an on-the-fly development, with the use of force, evacuation etc.; or
2. Evidence or arguments that some deeds, after they started to take place, involve Trump taking action to further the insurrection; or
3. Arguments that, actually, the 14th amendment covers some of the things that we're talking about. (Say, that dereliction would count, or that specific actions that we are agreed Trump took would fall within the purview of the amendment.)
I think the question I would most appreciate an answer to is this: if Trump's followers would have gone to the capitol, entered by force, against the resistance of the capital police (up to this point, matching what happened), entered the congressional chambers (that have, for some inscrutable reason, not been evacuated), and then merely done ordinary protest things—cheering, booing, chanting, etc.—before going home without further conflict, would they have been insurrectionists, in your book?
If so, it's quite obvious that Trump incited them, you have a nearly open-and-shut case (at least, should that be granted), there's no point to most of this argument, and we can move on with our lives. If not, the relevant violence is not merely the violence of entry, but the prospect of continued violence after entering (or is this wrong?).
I thank you for the kind words at the end. As is evident, I don't think you've convinced me yet, but you've made some good points.
Given that this is long, don't feel compelled to answer in full if you lack the time. The things that I would be most interested in getting an answer to are: would you consider merely the violence of entry and their continued presence insurrectionary? And how convincing do you find the evidence from that one article linked that Trump continues to have concerns about election fraud?
Though no one else would get it, I'd be quite amused if you made a post that was just 'No. <Heart Emoji>'. Probably not a good idea, though.
In terms of the original Sophie's choice question, I mostly agree with you: Sophie was being pressured to play a rigged game, and choosing not to play is (probably) the best choice available to her. A runner-up choice might have been informing the officer that if he cared so much, he could flip a coin himself.
However, an interesting variant occurs to me:
Let's say you wake up on the peak of a two-way greased ramp: one greased slope to your right, one greased slope to your left, and a small ridge you can balance on in the center.
The moment you wake up, all the handholds and resting platforms retract. you can only stay balanced on the ridge summit as long as you're awake and have strength in your limbs.
there are two giant buttons, at the bottom of either ramp. If your body falls on one button, family member A dies, if your body falls on the other button, family member B dies.
There is no escape, no food, no water, no explanation for who placed you in this situation or why. Just clearly marked signs and your two family members trapped in soundproofed glass deathtrap cages, rigged to the buttons.
Now, in that situation, the obviously correct answer is to stay awake for as long as you possibly can, balanced on the ridge between the two chutes for as long as you possibly can. And pray for rescue.
But.... you know that unless rescue arrives, you're going to collapse from hunger, dehydration, or sleep deprivation eventually, and that when you do, your body is going to slide down one or the other of the chutes, basically at random, and then trigger one of the death-buttons.
In that situation.... is it completely unthinkable to 'bias' which SIDE of the ridge the majority of your body weight is resting on ahead of time, so that when you finally do collapse, you have a pretty good guess which family member will die?
I'm inclined to say that doing so is sometimes understandable.... Say, if it's a choice between sacrificing an 18-yr-old son vs an 18-month-old-daughter, the son has a clear duty to sacrifice himself for the daughter, and both of you KNOW that, and know that the other one knows that, so 'resting' your body so that it's 'more' leaning in the direction of the son for when your grip eventually fails is understandable... not ideal, but understandable.
Because it's either that or call the trap-designer's bluff, and try to break your way out of the trap early, by deliberately getting close to one of the buttons while you're still awake and full of energy attempting to hack it, and risking the fact that you'll probably still trigger that button... which is also an understandable choice to make, but risks an earlier death of one family member.
I'm not certain how this applies to a political dilemma, unless maybe you were picking which state to pre-cache your survival supplies in, in case of total governmental downfall? But it's a fun thought experiment.
Combining political incompetence with a theological system of structural hypocrisy, only to trip on the moral philosophy from the get-go. All the while assigning a crime to an innocent man, therefore, perpetuating evil, in spite of all of the words trying not to.
I believe that's what one calls painful irony.
You're indirectly mentioned in this article! It's the sentence, "Not a single Trump supporter has ever finished that article and even made an argument for why I am wrong."
After ruminating on this article, I still think there're several other adjacent situations that can complicate the question you're talking about. When you tell an evildoer "yes, go do it" in the expectation that he'll do it, I agree, that's sinful cooperation. However, I think there're several adjacent situations where it isn't sinful.
To start from the example you give of a rapist friend going to a party:
(1) You know the police know about all this, and they're going to be at the party ready to catch your acquaintance in the act. You say "go do it!" with the reasonable expectation he won't actually be allowed to commit any rape - in fact, you're trying to help him get caught. This might be risky, but it isn't cooperation at all.
(2) Like (1), except the police aren't going to be able to catch him with enough evidence to arrest him, but they're going to be standing there making sure he doesn't commit any rapes. (At least, as far as you know.) You say "go do it" in hopes he'll still have a fun time at the party without any raping. This still isn't cooperation.
(3) There's a medical emergency at the party, and your acquaintance is the closest doctor. You say "get over there!" in reasonable expectation that he'll save some people's lives. If he also commits a rape while he's there... ouch. But I still don't think this's cooperation, since you weren't encouraging him in the sinful part; you were encouraging him in a very good thing.
(4) Blend of (2) and (3). Your buddy's a doctor needed to save lives at the party; and you expect there to be police there to keep him from any raping.
All these three hypotheticals have plausible analogies in the world you call "extraordinary antipolitics." (A very apt and memorable name; thanks!) When you look at the two candidates promising two different atrocities as parts of their two different platforms - well, their platforms also contain other things. They could contain some very important good things.
When you're casting a vote for a candidate, I don't see how you're necessarily endorsing each point of their platform. You're providing some help or encouragement, yes, to a general plan. Under antipolitics, that sadly includes an atrocity. But under our system of checks and balances, there are other parts (analogous to the police in my hypotheticals) that might hold back some of those atrocities. Given this, I believe it can be moral to vote for someone under extraordinary antipolitics - at least when you reasonably believe they won't be able to carry out their particular atrocity.
Though, you've convinced me this exception is smaller than I originally believed! To jump back to your Sophie's Choice analogy: consider the real-life people who were faced with the choice of supporting the Nazis or Soviets! Life was not friendly to either group... and looking back, I can easily see the most moral choice was to not make a choice.
Sadly, in practice, we're usually faced with a different question. They might be checked, or might not. There might be police at the party, or might not. I think we differ on how much risk the candidates in the current election pose, but either way I still think it's moral in principle to decide to weigh the odds. Though even if we disagree here, I think it's important to talk about the clearer question.