Coyne v. Wright on the Evolution of “God”

At the New Republic, Jerry Coyne has a withering review of Robert Wright’s popular new book, The Evolution of God. In response, Wright has made a list of Coyne’s misrepresentations, which convinced me that Coyne should indeed have been more careful. But Wright’s response focuses on the “trees” (Coyne’s individual distortions) and leaves Coyne’s criticism of Wright’s “forest” intact.

To wit, Wright points out that Coyne took a quote out of context in order to attribute to Wright “the claim” that “God” is behind humanity’s moral progress. But of course Wright doesn’t “claim” any such thing; he only suggests that it is plausible, as shown by a passage quoted by Coyne that was not, it appears, taken out of context: “Maybe natural selection is an algorithm that is in some sense designed to get life to a point where it can do something — fulfill its goal, its purpose.” Wright thinks that that purpose might have been the achievement of moral order.

As Coyne says, and as I confirmed by reading Wright’s afterword (entitled “By the Way, What Is God?”), this focus on possibilities, as opposed to what we might call provabilities, is “characteristic of Wright’s intellectual style.” But talking about what is possible is almost never enlightening or fruitful. Wright admits as much when he says that a personal God “presumably” does not exist; what he means is that the possibility is not disprovable, but we can and should nevertheless discount it. But the same sort of skeptical approach to “possibilities” vitiates Wright’s own argument. Read the rest of this entry »

The Optics of “Public Plan”

The new explanation for the mounting resistance to Democratic health care proposals is that people are confused, they don’t know what we’re getting into, and they prefer the devil they know. I think all that is true. But you have to follow up: why are people confused?

Obviously part of the problem is that they are being deliberately lied to. But there are probably relatively few people out there swallowing and regurgitating all the lies.

Why? Simple: relatively few people pay much attention to politics, and most people have a very low level of familiarity with the specifics of any particular issue. According to a recent Kaiser poll, only 27% of Americans are following the health care reform debate closely. There are strong believers on both sides of the issue, but the key, as it always is in American politics, is the mushy, ill-informed middle. Read the rest of this entry »

Conservatives and Class-Based Affirmative Action

I am always skeptical when conservative commentators (like Stuart Taylor and Ross Douthat) express their enthusiasm for class-based affirmative action as a replacement for racial preferences.

It’s not that I question their sincerity; they may really think that class-based affirmative action would be a good thing. But I can’t help but wonder, and doubt, whether that position is consistent with their reasons for opposing racial preferences.

After all, class-based affirmative action would punish some and lift up others based on personal qualities beyond their control, just like regular old affirmative action. It would lead away from “merit”-based evaluations, like SAT scores and written firefighting exams, which conservatives have tended to exalt as fair, valid, and total measures of worth. It would rely on making assumptions about individuals based on the group one assigns them to — assumptions like: “Bill, whose family makes $30,000 a year, must have overcome more hardship and thereby demonstrated more ‘merit’ than Fred, whose family makes $60,000 a year.” Such an assumption seems just as crude and potentially invalid as one in which the students are separated by race instead of class. Finally, mightn’t class-based affirmative action “congratulate its practitioners on their virtue, condescend to its beneficiaries, and corrode the [class] attitudes of its victims,” to borrow from Douthat?

Again, I know that all Douthat and Taylor have to say is “But I really do believe in class-based affirmative action,” and we’ll have to take them at their word. But this isn’t just about them: I am skeptical that the conservative movement, which for thirty years has been making claims like those sketched above, is suddenly going to embrace a policy that, at its core, accepts all of their opponents’ premises and violates all of their stated principles. Unless, of course, their “principles” aren’t really principles at all, but merely dressed-up anti-minority sentiment, in which case their call for class-based affirmative action begins to look like a ploy to take from blacks and give to whites. But Douthat and Taylor are thoughtful guys, so I’m sure that’s not their motivation. It seems that their position hinges on the idea that the poor, as a class, face greater obstacles than do black people, as a class. But I don’t see how you decide that treating people as members of categories, rather than as individuals, is suddenly a good thing when the categories are class-based rather than racial. Those are different kinds of categories, of course, but are they different in a morally relevant way?

Corzine in Big Trouble in NJ

Until today, I expected that New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine would, somehow, pull off a comeback against Republican Chris Christie, whom he has been trailing by double digits in the polls. Recent history was on his side. Granted, my experience with New Jersey elections doesn’t go back very far, but I do know that Christie Todd Whitman was the last Republican to win statewide office, and that was 12 years ago. Since then, we saw the retired Frank Lautenberg replace the corrupt Bob Torricelli on the Democratic ticket a mere month before the election… and win by 10 points. We saw Bob Menendez, a machine pol from Northern NJ, clean up against the squeaky-clean son of a popular Republican governor, Tom Kean. We saw Jon Corzine buy victory in two statewide races, despite being liked, let alone loved, by no one. And this was after his Democratic predecessor as governor, Jim McGreevey, got caught in a sex scandal that seemed shocking in those innocent pre-Craig/Foley/Spitzer/Ensign/Sanford days.

So I never really thought Corzine was in that much danger. A few hugs from Obama, a revelation (however tenuous) designed to dirty up Christie, and I thought he’d win in a squeaker.

But after today’s FBI roundup of corrupt New Jersey pols, I think he’s done. Even if his administration’s involvement in the scandal didn’t extend beyond the commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs. I think that these arrests are to Corzine what the Lehman Brothers bailout was to John McCain. They will make corruption the number one issue in the campaign, just as Lehman put the economy front-and-center. Corzine wanted to make this a proxy-national election, with himself as a stand-in for Obama, and I think he would have succeeded if this hadn’t happened. But now this is a local election, about New Jersey and its reputation and self-image. And turning out the Governor who was present during this embarrassment will be emotionally satisfying to us all.

Things might look differently in a few weeks, after we’ve learned the full story and it becomes clear whether this is as big a deal as it seems right now. But at best this is a major setback for Corzine, and I no longer see him pulling it out.

Public Opinion and the Supreme Court

James L. Gibson writes at The Volokh Conspiracy about the Supreme Court’s institutional legitimacy. He makes a number of claims, which I imagine are backed up by data and evidence:

1. The Supreme Court has a high level of institutional legitimacy.
2. This public support has been roughly constant for 25 years.
3. The more citizens know about courts, the more legitimacy they extend to them.
4. The “highly legitimizing symbols of judicial power” (robes, courthouses, “your honor”) are largely responsible for this enhanced respect among “knowledgeable” citizens.
5. The Court’s legitimacy went up after Bush v. Gore, as Republicans viewed it more favorably, and Democrats just as favorably as before, because they saw the decision as grounded in law, not politics… presumably because of the robes.

These claims lead to the conclusion that the Supreme Court “can get away with virtually any policy, so long as it is draped in the appropriate symbolic shroud.”

Now, a number of scholars (e.g. Robert Dahl) have argued that the Supreme Court is actually quite constrained by public opinion — there might be some lag time or some short period of trailblazing, but in the end, the Court won’t and can’t stand in the way of a determined and active political majority. It is “inevitably a part of the dominant national alliance,” as Dahl wrote.

If Gibson wants to contradict that idea, that’s his right. Where he runs into trouble is in trying to make this argument coexist with his tendency towards back-patting regarding the role of citizens in this courtroom drama. First, Gibson does not seem to think it even slightly objectionable that “legitimizing symbols” play the role that one might hope would be played by, you know, sound judicial decisions (of which Bush v. Gore was certainly not one). Second, he argues that the public, in addition to conferring legitimacy, actually extracts some degree of accountability from the Court. He writes, “Citizens who are unhappy with the Supreme Court can properly petition their legislative representatives, for instance, to change the jurisdiction of the institution, removing some types of cases from the Court’s docket.” Never mind that this is extraordinarily tenuous and generous — how is this supposed to sit with the claim that the Supreme Court can get away with anything so long as it maintains appearances?

Gibson’s endgame is to attack the idea that “elite opinion should dominate” judicial policy making, but his case is confusing. Why would we want public opinion to hold sway if it is so malleable as to be affected by the sight of robes, and so lacking in normative value as to actually approve of a terribly reasoned decision like Bush v. Gore? Gibson wants to demystify and democratize the Court, but it seems to me that Dahl and his cohorts already did that — by pointing out that the Court is, by nature and necessity, in lockstep with democratic majorities, exactly the claim that Gibson seems to contradict.

Obama the Evil Genius?

In Unequal Democracy, Larry Bartels noted two interesting phenomena that, he says, partially account for Republican electoral success: first, voters are myopic in their assessment of economic performance, and tend to solely focus on how the economy fares during elections years, ignoring the performance in other years; and second, Republicans tend to preside over strong growth in election years, while Democrats preside over strong growth in off-years. Now, the flaws in Bartels’ study are pretty notable. First, and most obviously, it’s hard to discount the possibility of pure randomness when you can only consider 14 data sets (the number of elections Bartels surveys). Second, he provides no good explanation for how it might be that Democrats and Republicans systematically differ in the timing of economic growth. Bartels refers obliquely to the possibility that policy differences might explain it, but doesn’t even specify which policies he is thinking of.

I am reminded of all this by the conservative refrain (see, e.g., Robert Samuelson’s column) about how the stimulus package wasn’t really stimulating, but rather was a sop to liberal special interests. Many other commentators, not all of whom were hostile to the very notion of a stimulus, were concerned that the $787 billion would not be spent quickly enough.

What strikes me is that Obama and the Democrats, if they had read their Bartels, might have designed it this way. A stimulus that kicks in just in time for the midterms might well be preferable to one that kicks in during summer 2009, when nobody votes and which nobody remembers when it comes time to vote. And a recovery that begins next year will be at its strongest in 2012.

I don’t think Obama is an evil genius or that he values power for its own sake, so, no, I don’t think he planned it this way. And I think that the sooner the recovery starts, the better for his presidency. But the larger point is that the economy should be just as powerful a wind behind Obama’s back in 2012 as it was in 2008, which upsets Bartels’ theory and which no doubt upsets Mitt Romney.

Honoring Honduras’ Constitution

Over at The Plank, GW law professor David Fontana digs into a layer of constitutional complexity often missed in discussion of the crisis in Honduras.

He writes, “What is taking place in Honduras is actually a debate over an old and difficult question: Can a democratically enacted change to a constitution be itself unconstitutional?”

Here’s his quick run-down of the facts: “The crisis started when Zelaya called for a vote to determine whether or not a convention should be held to amend the constitution–and allow him to serve another term. The problem was that Article 239 of the Honduras constitution clearly prohibits a president from serving more than one term and indicates that anyone who tries to amend Article 239 should be removed from office and disqualified from performing any public responsibilities for ten years.”

Fontana then canvasses two opposing views on the nature of constitutions. On the one hand, there is the view that a constitution ought to admit any and all democratically enacted changes, even ones that contradict the existing constitution. This is “the American notion that a constitution should be amendable in just about any direction.” But then there’s the idea of putting up substantive roadblocks to certain kinds of amendments; Germany, for instance, “prohibits any amendments violating foundational norms like human dignity,” no matter how many votes they have.

I have no quarrel with this characterization of the two perspectives. But I think Fontana is misguided in saying that “where you come down on Honduras really depends on which view of constitutions you favor.” It seems to me that the people of Honduras already made a decision regarding the type of constitution they favor, and they apparently wanted one along the lines of the German model: they wrote into their supreme law a substantive barrier to a certain kind of amendment. It is not that all constitutions are either like America’s or like Germany’s. Both countries have valid and workable constitutional systems, and we cannot nullify the Honduran system by saying, as Fontana does, that Article 239 “flies in the face” of the American notion of constitutions. What distinguishes Zelaya’s attempt to circumvent Article 239 from an attempt to, say, deprive Montana of its two senators without its approval, or violate “human dignity” in Germany?

Indeed, it is interesting that Fontana mentions how “the rise of the Nazis demonstrated how a determined group could exploit the democratic process to horrific ends.” That certainly explains Germany’s constitutional system. But does it not also explain Article 239? Might Honduras not have consciously chosen to guard against this particular evil, forgoing the good that can, sometimes, be achieved by an infinitely malleable constitution? In the context of Latin American history, guarding against populist but ultimately undemocratic strong-arming was probably a good idea. Which is not to pronounce a verdict upon the actions of the coup-launchers, but only upon Zelaya.

The Evil Assumption Underlying Ricci

Drew Westen, writing for The New Republic,  is the first commentator I have seen who has hit on a key assumption made by the five-man Ricci majority: the belief “that in a racially diverse city with a racially diverse fire department, it is perfectly plausible that the best candidates for leadership are all white.”

This might seem an unfair characterization of the conservatives’ position. How could a reasonable person believe such a thing, especially in an era when our president, the most important leader in the country, is a black man?  Surely the majority acknowledged that New Haven’s written and oral exam was flawed, but argued that the city had to live with the test it chose, because it had created an expectation that the test results would be used.

Well, the majority did make that argument, although, as Justice Ginsburg noted, it’s a flawed one: “The legitimacy of an employee’s expectation depends on the legitimacy of the selection method…. Title VII surely does not compel the employer to hire or promote based on [a flawed test].”  In the second paragraph of her opinion, she noted that nobody has “a vested right to promotion.”

Furthermore, the majority opinion does in fact rely on the pretension that New Haven’s exam was — I hesitate to say perfect — without major flaws. That assessment, unavoidably, rests on the assumption Westen identifies: that an unflawed test could produce such racially lopsided results, and therefore that white men must simply be better candidates for fire-department leadership positions, as a class, not as individuals, than black men.

Thus Justice Kennedy’s statement that New Haven “rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white” (emphasis added).  Justice Alito adds the insulting insinuation that the test results were thrown out to please some two-bit race-mongering black preacher. The possibility that the test results might be invalid, might be the result of a terrible method of evaluation, is not taken the least bit seriously.

Though the legal ruling may not do so, the majority’s assumptions and reasoning absolutely tear the heart out of the idea of disparate impact: no longer should government agencies or private businesses be suspicious of their evaluations if they produce results that defy logic, defy the assumption that blacks and whites are equal. Instead, they should just say to themselves, perhaps blacks and whites aren’t equal after all; maybe the white guys are just going to be better firefighters, or policemen, or middle managers, or whatever.

Killing such a pernicious line of reasoning is worth the price of upsetting the white firefighters’ “legitimate expectations.”

A Simple Preventive Measure: Provide Nutrition Facts

With all the hullabaloo surrounding the public option, it’s easy to overlook some of the other interesting features of potential health care reform. For instance, what exactly are these “preventive measures” that senators and pundits always talk about in the abstract, but about which we never seem to hear details?

This morning I haphazardly discovered one such measure, thanks mostly to Matt Lauer. This morning, as I ate my fiber-rich cereal topped with banana, blueberries, and skim milk (my personal preventive measure), I watched Matt do a feature on making smart choices in chain restaurants. He lined up five or six ungodly sandwiches from places like Chili’s and Ruby Tuesday, next to each of which was a slightly-less-ungodly alternative, invariably a pallid-looking grilled-chicken concoction. The placards displaying nutritional information (e.g., 1,900 calories for a burger topped with onion rings from Outback) were not even the most powerful reminder of the unhealthiness of much restaurant fare. That would be the mammoth bowls of French fries or plates of glazed donuts that were said to have equivalent amounts of sodium, or saturated fat, or cholesterol as their respective ungodly counterparts.

Watching this, I thought to myself, surely there are millions of people who would eat a huge gooey burger topped with blue cheese, knowing obliquely that it is “bad for you,” but who wouldn’t eat 17 orders of fast-food French fries if they knew that’s what they were effectively doing. And surely, if we got people to stop doing the former, we could cut down on obesity, diabetes, heart disease… and huge medical bills to treat those conditions.

But how to make people face these alimentary choices directly, with full (or, in econo-speak, “perfect”) information? Obviously one way is simply to require that restaurants disclose nutritional information in easy-to-read places, preferably right on their menus or big menu boards. “Texas Ranch Bacon Cheeseburger” (or whatever)  doesn’t sound quite so appetizing when you see “1,440 calories” and “1,800 mg sodium” next to it. New York City has the most famous such law, requiring eateries with more than 15 locations nationwide to post calorie counts on their menus. Philadelphia recently passed a stronger law, requiring disclosure of not just calorie counts but saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, and carbohydrates on printed menus (just calories on the big boards in fast-food restaurants). California is the only state with a nutrition-disclosure law.

Though perhaps not as controversial as a ban on trans fats like NYC’s, which impinges more obviously on Americans’ beloved freedom to make terrible, costly choices, a nationwide nutrition-disclosure requirement seems to me like one of those good ideas that might die a quick, quiet death in that graveyard of good ideas, the United States Senate. Various food-industry groups and fast-food company spokespeople will adopt the comfortable rhetoric of choice in order to defend denying people the information necessary to make choices. They may even evoke the “free market” in defense of information asymmetry, which, as economists know, always leads to a distortion of what consumers’ choices would look like in a real, pure market. These objections, of course, are and will be ridiculous. Nobody thinks the “free market” is harmed by my knowing that a serving of cereal contains 13 grams of sugar, or that a can of Dr. Pepper contains 40. Why it should be any different for food served in restaurants is beyond me.

In any case, the Senate HELP Committee health care reform proposal includes a calorie-disclosure requirement. It’s not perfect: I would like to see a national regulation modeled off Philadelphia’s, because calorie counts are only part of the nutritional picture. And I think that, in an ideal world, the regulation would apply to all restaurants, not just chain ones. I can see why the issue is tackled that way: for one thing, fast food and chain restaurants attract poorer clientele, who are more likely to be insufficiently educated about proper nutrition; for another, they are easier to demonize because everybody, even those who frequent such places, knows that they’re bad for you. But there’s no reason other than political calculation to exempt a 16-ounce Wagyu steak from a law covering a Texas Ranch Bacon Cheeseburger.

So, let’s hope that the HELP Committee’s proposal, which is a good start, does not die in the markup process, and that it is incorporated, if it’s not already, into other health care reform proposals. I’ll eat to that.

Get Real Re: Rationing

The Republican fear-mongering about health care “rationing” does not stand up to reasonable scrutiny, such as that provided here by David Leonhardt of the NY Times. All societies must make distributive choices, and it is sheer utopian fantasy to think we could ever provide everyone with all the health care they want, or even need.

Another, related issue that doesn’t get enough attention is that the GOP’s antipathy towards rationing  would seem to protect inefficient, unhelpful health care. You would think “rationing” could only be bad if the item being rationed were, you know, good, but the Republicans don’t even like the idea of assembling data and best-practices information and making them available to doctors. If a certain procedure or treatment works well, it won’t be “rationed” by such harmless regulations. So the Republicans are essentially defending the sacred right of doctors to be wrong.

Another interesting , oft-overlooked irony is the fact that the last time the Republican Party had a health care plan of its own, “rationing” was a quite explicit goal of theirs. What do you think Sen. McCain meant when he talked about consumers taking “individual responsibility,” and becoming “much more responsible in health care costs”? The goal of his health care plan was to force consumers to put more skin in the game by exposing them directly to the costs of health insurance, giving them insufficient funds with which to purchase it, and forcing down insurance costs using the bluntest instrument possible, the consumers’ inability to purchase adequate coverage. You might say the consumer would be doing the rationing rather than the government, but that is not the reality of it: the quality of health insurance would be determined by the seemingly arbitrary amount of the government’s tax credit.

It would be useful to remember such things when dealing with demagogues like Mark Steyn who suggest that President Obama is going to lower costs by euthanizing old people. The claim is not just crass, offensive, and blind to the unavoidable hard choices of policy making, but shockingly lacking in self-awareness to boot.