Initial Thoughts and Reflections: Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg

Regardless of political affiliation or inclination, I sincerely wish that we could have a national book club where everyone was encouraged to read Jonah Goldberg's Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy.

It took me the better part of the summer to get through it. This is not because of any flaw in the book, nor is it difficult to get through on any level. It's actively engaging and entertaining, in fact, despite the serious subject matter. No, the delay is entirely on me. First, I am busy. Second, and probably more importantly, the book was one that I definitely wanted to deeply engage with. Therefore, rather than getting the book on Audible and listening to it, I actually wanted to read the book, with a notebook near me for writing down quotes or thoughts and observations as I went.

Aside: This is definitely not a slam on audiobooks. I dearly love the format, and find it a great way to engage with a lot of my information intake these days ... but since I specifically listen to audiobooks when doing other things, it does not facilitate careful notetaking and reflection on the subject matter in the way that reading can. Reflection while reading is automatic, because you must consciously proceed to follow the author's flow of words, and the internal voice takes precedent. Reflection while listening, on the other hand, requires the active step of pausing the flow of the author's words (or ignoring their continued flow, at least) in order to reflect on your reaction to them. For comparison, while I very interested to read James Comey's Higher Loyalty, I felt no need to take careful notes on it, so an audiobook was a perfectly appropriate format ... and I finished it in a couple of days of listening, as I drove around town, did laundry, etc. Nor, for that matter, did I find 

I imagine that there is a world in which I would have read Suicide of the West and been very convinced that the biases and assumptions with which President Hillary Clinton is running America are probably dangerous and troubling. I dearly wish that we lived in such a world.

Goldberg's central thesis is focused on portraying admiration for something he refers to as "the Miracle" - which is, generally speaking, the Enlightenment and the subsequent growth of plurality, secular society, democracy, and capitalism - and expressing the concern that the tribalism, populism, nationalism, and identity politics of the title put those features of our society at risk.

Goldberg began work on the book prior to the 2016 election, so the transformation in his understanding of the thesis as he watched his own conservative party get taken over by a form of rampant nationalist populism is intriguing to witness. The book is a coherent, well-edited whole, so you don't see the gradual transformation take place as you move from page 1 to the final page, while Goldberg realizes that his own house is far from in order. No, instead, the tone throughout consistently recognizes that everyone is subject to these foibles of human nature.

Despite the fact that I no doubt am much more willing to give the state a free hand in trying to help people out than Goldberg is inclined to, I found very little in his criticism of this approach - or, indeed, in most of the arguments in his book - to take issue with. For the issues he brings up, if our concerns were placed a scale of 1 to 10, I'd imagine that in general we'd be off by a point or two here or there.

Intriguingly, one of the claims that he makes that I most took issue with was the following quote:

Indeed, as much as I hold Trump in contempt, I am still compelled to admit that, if my vote would have decided the election, I probably would have voted for him.

I am certainly not disagreeing that this is how Goldberg would have felt compelled, but given his own arguments, I am definitely disagreeing that this is how he should have felt compelled.  Even given all of his concerns about the statism and over-reliance on regulation embodied by the Obama administration, which would certainly have continued under a Clinton administration, by his own metrics there should not have been no contest that Clinton was the better choice.

There are a ton of arguments that I could make why Clinton wasn't as big a danger to America's values and "the Miracle" as Trump is, but let's focus on Goldberg's own points here.

At one point, he quotes some of Clinton's comments, such saying that Islam has "nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism," pointing out that she "painted with a broad brush in a single color and so did Trump." But there are two differences here, and both are ones that Goldberg is trying to highlight and then ignoring in the case of Clinton.

First is the nature of the "broad brush in a single color" being used. Clinton's comment is made in an attempt to demonstrate respect to good Muslim people, and to re-affirm (if incorrectly) that American society has a place for them and that Americans would to well to welcome and embrace them as a whole. This is 100% in accord with the arguments that Goldberg himself makes throughout the book.

Trump's comments about Mexico sending us their rapists and banning all Muslims, on the other hand, paints "with a broad brush in a single color" that is specifically at odds with the very American values that Goldberg is admirably defending.

Second is what this rhetoric covers up. Here, admittedly, Goldberg may well disagree with me, but I see absolutely no reason to believe that Clinton doesn't know that she was painting with a broad brush in a single color. Yes, she was making a rhetorically excessive statement in support of a higher principle (inclusiveness for peaceful Muslims), but in practice is there any reason to believe that this would inhibit her ability to implement security procedures when acting as President of the United States? Is Goldberg suggesting that she does not actually understand that there is a connection between Islam and terrorism that has to be considered by the intelligence and security communities?

Trump, on the other hand, seems to believe his rhetorical excesses about Muslims to quite a significant degree ... both in the moment he's making them, and when called out on them. There's nothing in his subsequent comments to really make it clear that he understands the differences between Islam and terrorism, or between dangerous and peaceful illegal immigrants for that matter.

Toward the end of the book Goldberg identifies the key elements of conservatism as twofold: Ideas matter and character matters. As flawed as Hillary's ideas and character may have been, on both of these accounts that Goldberg clearly values, she has to be held up as superior to Trump. Indeed, of the two candidates, by this metric (and many others) she was actually more fundamentally conservative than Trump actually was (or is).

All of this, of course, is to parse hairs over inconsequential differences. Goldberg's book, even when I disagreed with it, forced me to be far more critical of my assumptions and how different rhetoric that sounds good resonates through our society. Hell, he even convinced me that if I were to watch one of my favorite movies as a teenager, Dead Poet's Society, I would probably find that it is no longer appealing to my adult sensibilities.

And being forced to confront the flaws of one's own assumptions is, I think, the best that one can ever expect to get from a book.

The Religious Beliefs of Corporate Persons

I still think the Catholics should go with this
more-inspiring sigil for the modern age.

Back in 2012, well before it occurred to me that a corporation could be said to have religious beliefs, I commented on the idea of "corporate personhood."  I focused on this idea at length in that post, but recent events have made it worth looking at again.

Indiana RFRA and Corporations

In the 2010 Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court decided that these corporate entities had the ability for unlimited, unregulated political speech, which can also be made behind a mask of secrecy about the funding sources. And in the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, it was made clear that, at least for "closely-held corporations," they also had religious liberties.

This was recently codified into law in my home state of Indiana, as part of the controversial Indiana state-level version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which resulted in widespread concerns about discrimination of LGBT members. I happen to agree that the original wording of the law would have given some additional support for this sort of discrimination (which is already legal in Indiana, actually, due to no anti-discrimination protections for LGBT groups).

In comparing the Indiana and federal RFRA statutes, one difference that stands out is Section 7.3. In this section it seems that the Indiana law specifically sets very broad definitions of what sorts of organizations/institutions may make claims of having religious freedoms burdened, broader than the "closely-held corporation" rule from the Hobby Lobby decision:

(3) A partnership, a limited liability company, a corporation, a company, a firm, a society, a joint-stock company, an unincorporated association, or another entity that:

(A) may sue and be sued; and 

(B) exercises practices that are compelled or limited by a system of religious belief held by: 

(i) an individual; or 

(ii) the individuals; 

who have control and substantial ownership of the entity, regardless of whether the entity is organized and operated for profit or nonprofit purposes.

The question this leaves open is whether courts interpret the above wording as applying only to closely-held corporations, as the Supreme Court ruled for the federal RFRA under the Hobby Lobby case. Nothing in the wording above indicates to me any such limitation as being an inherent part of the law, so I think corporations can at least argue that the limitation doesn't apply. If a publicly-traded entity is owned 51% by people who want to invoke a claim under RFRA, it would seem like it should be allowed under this wording. A non-closely-held corporation that wants to exercise these sorts of religious interests is free to, at least, make the argument that they should be able to under the Indiana RFRA, in a way that they couldn't under the federal RFRA.

This is followed up by the other major difference between this legislation and others, which is Section 9:

Sec. 9. A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding. If the relevant governmental entity is not a party to the proceeding, the governmental entity has an unconditional right to intervene in order to respond to the person’s invocation of this chapter.

It seems that when applying the federal RFRA, there has been dissent within the courts about whether protected religious liberty can be claimed in a private dispute between individuals or not. The clear and unquestioned intended goal of RFRA was to provide defense of religious activity from government regulation, from what I can tell. Its use of the phrase "and obtain appropriate relief against a government" can be interpreted as restricting its claims to those of the government, or of including the government among those relief can be sought from. Different circuits have ruled different ways in this.

The wording of the Indiana law under Section 9 makes it explicitly clear that protections of religious liberty can be invoked in disputes between private individuals ... which, in conjunction with Section 7.3, would seem to mean that corporations can invoke religious liberty defenses in completely private disputes.

Against Corporate Personhood

This attribution is false, but I like the quote
and don't feel like changing the graphic.

Here's how I, as a small business owner of a sole proprietorship that operates without corporate protections and have looked into whether I need those protections, view the way a corporation functions:

A corporation is an entity that is used to perform an act on behalf of an individual or individuals, in a way that isolates the individual from harm. Should an individual attempt to use a corporation to perform an act, retribution strikes the corporation rather than the individual. The corporation may be terminated only by bankruptcy or willful dissolution, but is otherwise immortal. Even if terminated in this way, it may pass its essential essence along to another entity which, in most particulars, may function as essentially identical to the original entity in service of the owner. The person behind the corporation is unharmed, except by the inconvenience of having to create a new entity.

Gamers and fantasy readers will recognize this:

It is a construct of some kind, possibly a necromancer's undead minion, a golem, a wizard's homoculous, or some other kind of summoned/crafted proxy creature. In Shadowrun, it would be Rigger's robotic drone (or a corporation, since they have those in Shadowrun too).

So, essentially, we now have immortal non-human entities with the ability to amass wealth for unlimited political speech and able to invoke religious beliefs in disputes with other people and corporations.

I do not think this is a good outcome.

Because, simply put, corporations are not people.

The corporation does not, as a corporation, possess the ability to have a religious belief or conviction, it can only express the religious beliefs and convictions of the owners. Any claim to religious liberty, and the ability to exercise religious liberty, is only as a second-hand consequence of the rights held by the individual who runs the corporation. Those rights are protected for the individual, and may be protected as expressed through a corporation, but the corporate entity itself does not possess those rights.

There may be many perfectly valid reasons for supporting the broad freedom of corporations to serve as the means of expressing personal liberties held by their owners, but corporate personhood is not among them.

You'll hear all kind of people quoting nonsense about how corporations are people, but this diminishes the richness and complexity of what it means to be a person. It is offensive in every way, and as a rhetorical tool needs to end.

Open Letter to the Boy Scouts of America

Photo from Instructables

I sent the following e-mail to the Boy Scouts of America last week, when they announced that they were reconsidering the ban on homosexuals in the organization. They have since delayed the decision until their National Annual Meeting in May. I don't expect this message to change anyone's view on the issue, of course, but it is the view of someone who profoundly respects the Boy Scouts of America and their values, and so I hope is a viewpoint that is taken into consideration during the deliberations:

Subject: Eagle Scout & father supporting inclusive scouting

Dear Boy Scouts of America,

I am writing to you today to offer my thoughts on your upcoming Feb. 6 vote regarding lifting the national ban on homosexuals serving in Scouts. As an Eagle Scout and a father, the current discriminatory practices of the Boy Scouts of America - specifically the bans on homosexuals and atheists - has been deeply troubling to me. This stance has always affected me strongly, because my father is a homosexual. My parents divorced when I was young and my father lived in a nearby town, so for much of my formative years the primary male influences in my life were the Scouting leadership. My father, a teacher with a distinguished career of educating and mentoring young people, was not allowed to take part in this extremely influential part of my life. I couldn't even invite him to come on the occasional trip.

I fully support the BSA's efforts to protect youth in their care from harm, but open homosexuals are not threats in this area. Molesters and predators are not open about their sexual preferences, they use secrecy as a means of preying on victims. An open homosexual who is leading a Scout troop would have an even stronger vested interest in making sure that nothing happens to any of the youths under his charge. And the idea that lesbian mothers are *any* threat to male youths is absolutely ludicrous on every level.

As someone with family members and close friends who are homosexuals, I have wrestled with the decision of how to proceed in relation to Scouting now that I am a father. My wife and I have discussed it frequently. Our son is in Cub Scouts, which was a very difficult choice for us. I have seriously considered returning my Eagle Scout badge in protest. We both, however, strongly believe in the core values that Scouting represents. We believe that the organization is an absolute benefit to youth.

We also feel, however, that one of the values which Scouting needs to embrace more fully is inclusiveness, which I feel is implicit in virtues of Helpfulness, Friendliness, Courteousness, Kindness, and Bravery (and, for many religions at least, Reverence). We want to be involved in leadership roles within the Scouting organization, but cannot in good conscience do this if we would be forced to enforce exclusionary policies to which we object.

The values that are offered by Scouting are critically important to the youth of our nation. Children of gay and lesbian couples, as well as gay youth themselves, deserve equal access to this organization. There may be difficulties and challenges in handling the logistics of such an inclusion in a way that is equitable to everyone, but if Scouting is to continue to thrive and to maintain its position as an organization that represents American values, it must change this policy. Otherwise, it will wither away as an archaic reflection of antiquated prejudices ... and rightly so.

I urge you to make the right decision for the future of the Boy Scouts of America ... and if you do, know that my family and I will be proud to be associated with this organization.