ReligiousLeftLaw.com

Fighting Trump's Fake Nationalism

Donald Trump pretends to be a nationalist. But, as David Brooks remarked a few days ago, you can’t be a nationalist when you hate half the country. In fact, Donald Trump rhetorically caters to a minority of the country while playing the big con even for them since it is obviously not in their interest to be robbed of health insurance or to watch the nation’s wealth be transferred to the already rich. A country governing for the few cannot be considered great.

The Republicans have long claimed to be the patriots. Democrats have let them get away with it. In part, this is because Democrats recognize a responsibility to help those beyond our borders. That recognition, however, should not be considered inconsistent with a national vision. As Robert Bellah understood, a nation needs a narrative that stands as a regulative and aspirational ideal of what the country stands for. In our case our best national narrative is a form of constitutional patriotism, a constitution standing for an inclusive democratic culture. As Josiah Royce maintained, it strives for a community rooted in memory, reverential yet critical of the past and the present, searching for the best in the tradition with an eye on the future. But constitutional principles and doctrine are not enough. A narrative needs flesh and bold human beings to inspire. To be sure, no human being is unflawed, even heroic figures. Great leaders help to establish a motivational source of what our commitment to national unity should be. It is possible to tell a story about our country that reads the Constitution in light of the Declaration of Independence and moves from John Winthrop, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington through Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Dewey, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and Barack Obama among others. It is a story that honors the kind of people we should be. It is a story that resonates with the message of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

New York Sues Exxon for Investor Fraud

For some time the Attorneys General of New York and Massachusetts have been investigating Exxon concerning misrepresentations it has made with regard to climate change. Exxon resisted discovery pursuant to these investigations on First Amendment grounds. Last week I mentioned that I was pleased to join with Free Speech for People as co-counsel in a Second Circuit Court of Appeals brief that refuted Exxon's contentions about the First Amendment. See here. We argued that Exxon had no First Amendment right to mislead consumers and investors.

Today, the New York Attorney General has finally concluded its investigation and has sued Exxon in the New York Supreme Court for New York County for defrauding its investors. The complaint is detailed and persuasive. See here. 

Work & Blogging Update

[Apart from posting this for reasons intrinsic to the material, I want to let readers know (although we never hear from you, I trust there’s still some out there) that my blogging will be a bit light for a spell while I’m doing this research and catching up on some tasks at the home front (perhaps this could spur some of our other ‘contributors’ to actually contribute something!).]

The research I am doing on Lokāyata/Cārvāka philosophical views (for an introductory presentation of same) and the preparation for a guest post at the Indian Philosophy blog on “Indian/Indic darśana(s) and hedonistic egoism” substantially and thankfully overlaps, although I am also quickly discovering the extent of my ignorance. One thing I have learned to date comes by way of the late philosopher B.K. Matilal (the link does not list all of his writings), who has pointed out the varied treatments of ethical virtues and ideas in Indian epic literature (e.g., the Mahābhārata, which of course contains the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Rāmāyana), in particular to the sundry meanings of dharma and the role of dharma in moral conflicts, some of which amount to moral dilemmas. Philosophical discussions of ethics or moral philosophy as such is virtually absent from the Indic darśana-s or philosophical schools (there are notable exceptions on occasion and especially in Mahāyāna Buddhism), be they orthodox or āstika (i.e., Vedic/śruti in inspiration if not justification) or heterodox (nāstika),* despite their ability to treat topics in logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and language with—comparatively speaking—considerable philosophical sophistication and insight. The epics falls under the heading of smṛti (memory; that which is remembered; worthy to be remembered) texts, or non-śruti (‘revelatory’) religious literature, which also includes the Dharmaśāstra-s (e.g., the Manusmṛti) and the Purāna-s (e.g., the Viṣṇu Purāna and the Śiva Purāna). Matilal urges us to examine these sources, as well as Indic literature generally for discussions of ethical ideas and principles or moral philosophy.

I am entertaining some possible reasons as to why ethics or moral philosophy was not systematically addressed in the philosophical schools, some of which I suspect are related to the fact that many people in contemporary society do not, of course (and for better and worse), learn their ethics or about moral philosophy from philosophers. Rather, as Colin McGinn writes in Ethics, Evil, and Fiction (1997), “literature is where moral thinking lives and breathes on every page:”

“Stories can sharpen and clarify moral questions, encouraging a dialectic between the reader’s own experience and the trials of the character he or she is reading about. A tremendous amount of moral thinking and feeling is done when reading novels (or watching plays and films, or reading poetry and short stories). In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that for most people this is the primary way in which they acquire ethical attributes, especially in contemporary culture.”

Or, in the words of Martha Nussbaum, “the terms of the novelist’s art are alert winged creatures, perceiving where the blunt terms of ordinary speech or of abstract theoretical discourse are blind, acute where they are obtuse, winged where they are dull and heavy.” The political scientist, Nobel laureate, and pioneer in the field of the psychology of judgment and decision making, as well as the computational modeling of human reasoning, Herbert A. Simon, put it rather more awkwardly this way: “most human beings are able to attend to issues longer, to think harder about them, to receive deeper impressions that last longer, if information is presented in a context of emotion—a sort of hot dressing—then if it is presented wholly without affect.”

A corollary obligation would seem to follow: novelists (or playwrights, poets…) have to get it right. In other words, if we look to the arts for our lessons in morality or ethics, it presumes or assumes we have some prior ability (or at least the critics are in possession of such) to discriminate morally knowledgeable, insightful, or significant literature from that which is unavailing, ethically speaking (as a product of family upbringing and early socialization and education). In brief, readers must have, minimally, a conscience, in combination with some level of ethical individuation and moral development and awareness that sets the stage for further moral understanding and growth such that these non-philosophical sources can indeed serve as “alert winged creatures.” This does not render the work of philosophers on ethics and moral philosophy irrelevant or redundant, let alone unnecessary; it only means we might recognize philosophy does not have, nor will it ever likely have, at least for most of us, pride of place when it comes to education in moral philosophy and virtuous living (that may seem obvious in many circles, but I think professional philosophers, for the most part, are reluctant to acknowledge this).

* The six orthodox (āstika) schools of Indic philosophy: (Navya-)Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Pūrva Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta. The schools are often grouped in pairs, thus: Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika (Logic and Atomism); (Classical) Yoga and Sāmkhya (Yoga and Discrimination or Distinctionism); Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and Uttara Mīmāṃsā or Vedānta (Prior Exegesis [of the Veda] and Later Exegesis or End of the Veda-s Metaphysics). The so-called nāstika schools (sometimes referred to as the śramaṇa tradition) include Ājīvika, Jainism, Buddhism, and Lokāyata/Cārvāka. (There are more than a few sub-schools in several of the above as well.)

“Go, and sin no more.”

[Comments on this hypothetical or thought experiment are welcome. I am particularly interested in learning how a Christian might explain the following as deeply mistaken based on reasons generated from within her Christian worldview.]

I am a sinful human being (since ‘the Fall’), in other words, more prone by nature to sin than to goodness. Jesus, the human incarnation of God, died a horrible if not humiliating death on “the Cross” for my sins. In other words, I alone could not seek and attain forgiveness for my sins, at least since Anselm (c.1033-1109), who argued in theological terms that humanity owed God a ransom of “satisfaction” for sin, a debt, however, that was unpayable owing to our lowly status (notice the feudal analogy or metaphor). Hence the significance of the Crucifixion: the Incarnation of God through Jesus Christ—innocent of sin and equal to God, so to speak—allows the Son to offer himself (a sacrifice, through suffering) to the Father on humanity’s behalf. In other words, Christ’s Passion, his sacrifice on the cross, was to make amends for our sins.

Anselm’s formulation meshes well with the Gospel understanding of sin as a kind of debt that is relieved or forgiven with the expiatory sacrifice of Christ’s death, meaning we need no longer be enslaved by the power of sin. The Catholic Church adopted this doctrine in the 16th century, and the Reformation only reinforced its spiritual and moral psychology for those who broke from the Church: “O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood/to every believer the promise of God/The vilest offender who truly believes/That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.” Anselm’s interpretation is sometimes called the penal (or juridical) theory, as Christ has borne the penalty for sin instead of us. Because our sin is an infinite offence against God, it requires a correspondingly infinite satisfaction that only God can make (and did, through Christ).* This is not too different from “sacrificial” and “satisfaction” theories that claim Christ is the sinless offering who makes a universal expiation of the stain of sin, but under this conception Christ is not a substitute for us but more like a delegate or representative of humanity.

Given my proclivity for sin, or vice, or moral lapses, and so forth, I will invariably sin. But that’s OK, at least insofar as I know Jesus died for my sins; at any rate, I can ask for forgiveness and (might? can? will?) receive it. This is ripe for a perverse moral psychology: I know I will likely sin; I then in fact succumb to temptation (that knowledge alone makes it more likely!); I can live with my sin(s) and inevitable sinning, as it were, for I have been forgiven (ex ante) generally by Jesus—by way of substitutionary atonement—and, in any case, I can seek God’s forgiveness ex post facto, and be assured that it will be granted provided my faith and beliefs are sincere (and I happen to be particularly adept at convincing myself that is the case), including being truly remorseful, and thus reassuring myself that I will go and sin no more (or at least struggle to be good or deserve God’s unconditional love).

And yet, knowing what a miserable creature I am, that is, one who is constitutionally liable to sin, I know, at least in the back of my mind, that should the sinful occasion arise yet again, I am free, indeed quite likely, to repeat this mental and behavioral pattern of moral psychological evasion or rationalization if not religious absolution: after all, I am both forgiven in advance, and likely to be forgiven after the deed. What better reason to have for being a Christian!

* Anselm’s substitutionary atonement theory was theologically contested by a notion of exemplary atonement, the essence of which goes back to the French theologian Peter Abelard (1079-1142): “The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that God might illuminate the world by his wisdom and stir it to the love of himself.” This theory has been deemed “subjective” in comparison with the aforementioned “objective” theories. What is central to the exemplary theory is the extent to which God’s love is revealed through Christ, most poignantly in Christ’s acceptance of a brutal and unjust death. It is this—God’s unconditional love for us as embodied in the life and death of Jesus—which should move us to repentance. A corporate rather than individualist interpretation of atonement appears in the late 20th century with Liberation Theology that took hold in Central and South America. In this case, atonement is effected as reconciliation which, in turn, must be demonstrated as a living fact, at both the individual and collective levels. Alas, the exemplary theory has never been anything near as popular as Anselm’s formulation in Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant.

At some point in the future, I hope to discuss the ideological function of “substitutionary” and “satisfaction” theories of atonement, which “was both influenced by, and influenced penal thinking. It represented a construal of the crucifixion … which reinforced retributive thinking, according to which sin or crime have to be punished, and cannot properly be dealt with in any other way” (Timothy Gorringe, in his 1996 book, God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence, and the Rhetoric of Salvation).  I suspect those intellectual elites familiar with substitutionary and satisfaction atonement doctrines sensed their potential for moral psychological abuse and thus, it seems, an attempt was made to break the (actual or possible) mental and behavioral pattern of moral psychological evasion or rationalization if not religious absolution mentioned above with the incorporation of satisfaction doctrine into the criminal justice system’s doctrinal legal justification of (retributive) punishment. In short, when sinning amounted to a crime, a Christian justification for punishment (analogous to that suffered by Christ on the cross) was crafted which drew upon atonement doctrine in a manner designed to prevent the more egregious forms of moral evasion and denial (meaning the avoidance of any material or social consequences) wrapped in theological conceptions of atonement for one’s sins. Perhaps it was also effective in speaking to the guilt, residual and otherwise, that some or most habitual sinners no doubt felt, if only subconsciously, for both their sinning and the perverse moral psychology that promoted same.

A First Amendment Right to Deceive Consumers and Investors?

Proud to have joined as co-counsel with Free Speech for People in opposing Exxon's attempt to defend against investigations of the Attorneys General of New York and Massachusetts by resorting to the First Amendment. Exxon has no First Amendment right to mislead consumers and investors. https://freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018Oct16_ExxonBrief_PressRelease_v3.pdf

Susan Collins and Unwarranted Praise

In her Saturday Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan praises Susan Collins’s defense of now Justice Kavanaugh as the voice of reason. She notes that Collins supported nominees of Republican and Democratic Presidents. She indicts Democrats for attempting to scuttle the nomination from the start. She does not mention the behavior of the Republicans in scuttling the nomination of Merrick Garland. Nor does she mention that Collins did not support Garland.

Neither Noonan nor the “voice of reason” discuss (1) the apparent perjury of Kavanaugh; (2) his open display of partisanship; or (3) his shocking shows of temper coupled with inappropriate respect for sitting Senators.  Kavanaugh would properly have been disqualified for any one of these reasons. A “voice of reason” would have squarely dealt with all of the major issues, but Collins did not do that. It was far from the “master class in thoroughness” described by Noonan.

Collins supposed that Kavanaugh was a centrist because he agreed with Garland 93% of the time. But she does not discuss what was at stake in the 7% of cases where they disagreed. Despite all of Kavanaugh’s negatives, do you suppose the right would have fought so hard to confirm him if they thought he was a centrist judge?

Having ignored many key issues, Collins does confront the question of sexual assaults. She says that Ford’s account was not corroborated. True, none of the witnesses who Ford said were at the house were able to support her account. But given the nature of her account only Kavanaugh or Judge could have done so, and their credibility is strongly at issue. Collins does not discuss the fact that Ford discussed the incident years before Kavanaugh was nominated. Whatever weight is to be put on this (I would think considerable weight) it is corroborating prior consistent evidence. A master class in thoroughness would not ignore it.

Finally, Collins has referred to the FBI investigation as quite thorough. But we know, and so does she, that White House counsel restricted the scope of the investigation in order to protect Kavanaugh. A thorough investigation could have corroborated Kavanaugh’s perjury and prior inappropriate sexual conduct. To conclude that no corroboration exists (when some does) and to solemnly declare its absence when the FBI was restricted so that they would not find it is the antithesis of fairness, reason, and respect for Dr. Ford. To claim that the F.B.I. report was thorough is blatant hypocrisy.

A Sundry Syllabus for Individual Flourishing & General Emancipation In a (would-be) Democratic Society

A couple of times a year I post notice of the unannotated bibliographies available (along with other published and unpublished writings) at my Academia page. This is the latest list, which thus includes additions since the last posting. These lists vary widely in length. The two principle constraints are books, in English (although a few lists have articles as well).

1. Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Addiction
2. Africana & African American Philosophy
3. After Slavery & Reconstruction: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights, Freedom, and Equality in the U.S.
4. Salvador Allende and the Quest for Socialism
5. B.R. Ambedkar
6. American Indian Law (this list goes considerably beyond ‘law’)
7. Samir Amin (3 September 1931 - 12 August 2018)
8. Analogy & Metaphor
9. Anarchism: Philosophy & Praxis
10. Animal Ethics, Rights, and Law
11. The Arab World: Modern & Post-Modern
12. Attica Prison Uprising (September 9, 1971 – September 13, 1971): Notes, Timeline, and Essential Reading
13. The Bedouin
14. Beyond Capitalist Agribusiness: Toward Agroecology & Food Justice
15. Beyond Capitalist-Attenuated Time: Freedom, Leisure, and Self-Realization
16. Beyond Inequality: Toward the Globalization of Welfare, Well-Being and Human Flourishing
17. Bioethics
18. Biological Psychiatry, Sullied Psychology and Pharmaceutical Reason
19. Blacks and Food Justice: A Guide to Resources
20. Blacks on the (Radical) Left
21. The Black Panther Party
22. On Boxing — Sweet Science & Brutal Agon
23. Buddhism
24. Buddhism & Psychoanalysis
25. Capital Punishment
26. César Chávez & the United Farm Workers
27. Christianity
28. Classical Chinese Worldviews
29. Comparative Law
30. Conflict Resolution and Nonviolence
31. Constitutionalism
32. Contract Theory & Promises
33. The Corporatization, Commodification, and Distortions of Formal Education—Diagnosis, Etiology, Prescription, and Therapeutic Regimen
34. Criminal Law: Municipal (Domestic) and International
35. Death & Dying
36. Democratic Theory
37. Detroit: Labor & Industrialization, Race & Politics, Rebellion & Resurgence
38. Dreams and Dreaming
39. Ecological & Environmental Politics, Philosophies, and Worldviews
40. Emotions
41. Ethical Perspectives on Science & Technology
42. Famine: History, Causes, and Consequences
43. Frantz Fanon
44. Freudian and Post-Freudian Psychology
45. The Life, Work, & Legacy of Mohandas K. Gandhi
46. Genocide
47. Global Distributive Justice
48. The Great Depression & The New Deal
49. Health: Law, Ethics & Social Justice
50. Hinduism
51. The History, Theory & Praxis of the Left in the 1960s
52. Human Nature and Personal Identity
53. Human Rights
54. Ethics, Law, and Politics of Immigration & Refugees
55. Indic (or Indian) Philosophy
56. Individual & Shared Responsibility
57. International Criminal Law
58. International Law
59. Modern Iran
60. Islam, the Arts, and Aesthetic Experience
61. Islam & Muslims in the United States
62. Islamic Studies
63. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
64. The Jain Tradition
65. Judaism
66. Law and Literature
67. Toward an Understanding of Liberalism
68. Marxism
69. Marxism (or ‘the Left’), Art & Aesthetics
70. Marxism and Freudian Psychology
71. Toward a Marxist Theory of International Law
72. Mass Media
73. Nonviolent Resistance in the Middle East (with an emphasis on the Palestinian struggle)
74. Nuclear Weapons
75. Pan-Africanism, Black Internationalism, & Black Cosmopolitanism
76. Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory
77. Philosophy, Psychology, & Methodology for the Social Sciences
78. Philosophy & Racism
79. Toward a “Realist” Political Psychology
80. Punishment and Prison
81. Radical Catholicism (The Catholic Worker Movement, Liberation Theology…)
82. Science and Religion
83. Science and Technology
84. Slavery
85. Social Security & the Welfare State
86. South African Liberation Struggles
87. Sufism
88. Sullied (Natural & Social) Sciences
89. Terrorism
90. Torture: moral, legal, and political dimensions
91. Transitional Justice
92. Utopian Imagination, Thought & Praxis
93. The Varna & Caste System in India
94. Vietnam War
95. Violent Conflict & the Laws of War
96. Women as Intellectuals in the European Enlightenment
97. Workers, the World of Work, and Labor Law
98. Zionist Ideologies

The cat is on the mat.

In Western philosophy, there are lots of “cats on mats” (e.g., ‘The cat is on the mat’). It does have a nice ring to it, unlike, say, “The dog is on the couch” or “The hamster is in the cage” or “The rat is at my bare feet.” I thought it worth mentioning after seeing this well-worn declarative sentence yet again in a work by Nicholas Rescher in which he discusses the epistemic significance and warrant of the notion of presumption (about which I hope to post anon). One of my favorite passages invoking this stock philosophical locution comes from Hilary Putnam’s Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge University Press, 1981):

“[F]act, (or truth) and rationality are interdependent notions. A fact is something that it is rational to believe, or, more precisely, the notion of a fact (or a true statement) is an idealization of the notion of a statement that it is rational to believe. [….] [B]eing rational involves having criteria of relevance as well as criteria of rational acceptability, and…all of our values are involved in our criteria of relevance. The decision that a picture of the world is true (or true by our present lights, or “as true as anything is”) and answers the relevant questions (as well as we are able to answer them) rests on and reveals our total system of value commitments. A being with no values would have no facts either. The way in which criteria of relevance involves values, at least indirectly, may be seen by examining the simplest statement. Take the sentence ‘The cat is on the mat.’ If someone actually makes this judgment in a particular context, then he employs conceptual resources—the notions ‘cat,’ ‘on,’ and ‘mat’—which are provided by a particular culture, and whose presence and ubiquity reveal something about the interests and values of that culture, and of almost every culture. We have the category ‘cat’ because we regard the division of the world into animals and non-animals as significant, and we are further interested in what species a given animal belongs to. It is relevant that there is a cat on the mat and not just a thing. We have the category ‘mat’ because we regard the division of inanimate things into artifacts and non-artifacts as significant, and we are further interested in the purpose and nature a particular artifact has. It is relevant that it is a mat that the cat is on and just something. We have the category ‘on’ because we are interested in spatial relations. Notice what we have: we took the most banal statement imaginable, ‘the cat is on the mat,’ and we found that the presuppositions which make this statement a relevant one in certain contexts include the significance of the categories animate/inanimate, purpose, and space. To a mind with no disposition to regard these as relevant categories, ‘the cat is on the mat’ would be as irrational as ‘the number of hexagonal objects in this room is 76’ would be, uttered in the middle of a tête-à-tête between young lovers. Not only do very general facts about our value system show themselves in our categories (artifacts, species name, term for a spatial relation) but, our more specific values (for example, sensitivity and compassion), also show up in the use we make of specific classificatory words (‘considerate,’ ‘selfish’). To repeat, our criteria of relevance rest on and reveal our whole system of values.” — Hilary Putnam

Power and "Mob Rule"

Senate Republicans are complaining about “mob rule.” You would not guess that the Republicans control the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. You would not know that the number of Republican representatives in the House vastly exceeds what they would be entitled to if majority rule prevailed. You would not realize, as Michael Tomasky observed in the New York Times that the 54 Senators who voted for Justice Gorsuch received 54 million votes while the 45 Senators who voted against him received more than 73 million votes. You would not guess that 4 of the current Justices have been appointed by Presidents who were elected despite losing the popular vote.

This is not democracy, but it is no secret that the Senate is undemocratic. Nonetheless, the Framers hoped the Senate would be a deliberative body that would act in the public interest. Instead, the Senate Republicans (together with the House Republicans) have tried to deprive millions of health insurance, and they have succeeded in passing multi-billions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthiest people and corporations in society at the expense of the poor and the middle class. Moreover, the notion that the Senate is a deliberative body has gone by the board. Important bills were introduced and voted upon without hearings and study by the Senate as a deliberative body. In considering Judge Kavanaugh, the Republicans concealed millions of documents and voted without a serious investigation of credible sexual assault claims or of the many possibilities for counts of perjury.  Raw power has taken the place of deliberation.

Finally, the Republicans have shrunk from criticizing a narcissistic, racist, sexist, incompetent President because they do not want to offend his Republican base. This is not “mob rule,” but it is a far cry from legitimate rule. Revolution might not be pragmatic, but Republican rule is not worthy of minimum respect either.

So, what of this attempt to distract by complaining about “mob rule”? It turns out that these privileged white male suits do not like protests. Admittedly, some protests are illegal and are not protected by the First Amendment. But the sexist plutocrats deserve to be screamed at. Protests are not “mob rule,” and we should not forget that we have a national holiday to honor a protester who violated the law to further the public interest and combat injustice. The Republicans will pretend to celebrate Martin Luther King day, but few of us should take them seriously.

Judge Kavanaugh and Moral Responsibility (or evasion)

(The remarks that follow assume one has read Neil H. Buchanan’s piece, ‘The Kavanaugh Travesty: A Roiling Brew of Alcohol and Entitled Self-Righteousness,’ that I linked to on Facebook yesterday.)

I find it more than plausible that Kavanaugh fancies himself as deserving of the privileges and feelings of superiority that are often part and parcel of being a member of the entitled meritocracy in this country, although I suspect he subscribes to the principle of noblesse oblige by way of easing his conscience, hence the frequency of first-person references (as a possessive pronoun) to a “lifetime of public service,” the “coaching of young girls” and so forth. In addition, we might plausibly if not reasonably infer that he believes his feelings of contempt, anger (if not rage), and defiance (for example) are justified because the accusations of sexual assault and accounts of his drunken behavior have spilled over onto and thus sullied the images of sanctimonious purity with which he and his supporters have painted his roles as a “son, husband and dad.” That portrait, in conjunction with the “good name” his legal career has—in both his mind and the minds of his supporters—etched in stone, serve as sacred artifacts or insignia of his meritocratic entitlement. Still, one wonders how a person of his intelligence and “fine breeding” as it were, can live in good conscience with an abundance of evasions and lies that typically add up to denial and self-deception.

I’ll hazard a guess: the (often perverse) moral psychology intrinsic to substitutionary atonement doctrine in Catholicism which, I believe, is intimately tied to the Church’s teachings and practices of sacramental confession requiring “disclosure of sins (the ‘confession’), contrition (sorrow of the soul for the sins committed), and satisfaction (‘penance,’ i.e. doing something to make amends for the sins),” are at least a necessary condition to a possible if not plausible psychological explanation. Assuming Kavanaugh is a “good Catholic,” the moral psychology of substitutionary atonement in conjunction with the act of confession permits him to view his past behavior in a far more forgiving and excusing light than the rest of us (at least those of us who do not believe in substitutionary atonement or practice sacramental confession) and again, in his mind at least, thus serves to rationalize or pardon his expressions of anger and defiance at those believed responsible for soiling the sacred signs associated with his “good name” (as well as the conspicuous lapse in the kind of judicial temperament one associates with a candidate for the Supreme Court). One result of putting things in this psychological and theological framework is that it suggests or implies the possibility that Kavanaugh does not see himself as truly evading moral responsibility, for such responsibility as is relevant was assumed and faced in the theological precincts and moral psychological context of his Catholic faith.

The principle and praxis of democratic inclusion during the New Deal

At The Living New Deal, they’ve just added pages (and wonderful photos!) that introduce the programs intended to address the conspicuous and enduring problem of our nation’s historic “exclusion of neglected, oppressed and marginalized people in American life.” This principle of democratic inclusion was implemented in sundry programs designed to help “the elderly, women and people of color, as well as the disabled and refugees.” The rationale for adding this material to their site is well explained as follows:

“The New Dealers were, in every case, faced with a daunting task of overcoming long-established patterns of discrimination and social hierarchy, and they could only do so much in reversing ingrained opinions, habits and power relations across this country.

Nevertheless, there has not been enough appreciation of the way New Dealers tried to subvert the existing social order on a wide front. In fact, the accomplishments of the era’s progressive policies were substantial. In this section, we summarize the achievements of the New Deal that helped bring marginalized and racialized Americans into the mainstream and advance the causes of racial justice and gender equality. We focus on eight groups: elders, women, disabled, and Jewish refugees, plus the four major racial categories, African-Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans. We conclude the section with a photographic essay on inclusion of diverse peoples in New Deal work projects, called ‘Working Together.’

Histories of the New Deal have often noted its failures to overcome the barriers of race, gender, religion and more in American life. The New Deal revolutionized many aspects of US society and politics, but it ran up against many harsh realities of an imperfect social order that blocked and distorted the goals of reformers in the government. It would be unfair, however, to blame the New Deal for racial and other policies that were rooted in the larger contours of American society. Yet, recently there have been far too many voices criticizing the New Deal for racism and discrimination and too few looking carefully into the record to discern what the New Deal did and did not do to correct racism, misogyny and other injustices.

Let us be clear at the outset that a handful of the New Deal’s hallmark programs were marred by fundamental exclusions. The Social Security Act and National Labor Relations Act both made an exception for agricultural and domestic workers – effectively a means of preventing African, Latino and Asian-Americans from enjoying their benefits and protections. The Federal Housing Administration adopted rules that cemented residential segregation into the landscape of US cities. Native Americans saw their livelihoods badly damaged by big water projects like the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams on the Columbia River, which interrupted salmon migrations on which the tribes depended. And, the most flagrant case of racism was Executive Order 9066, which imprisoned some 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast as the country went to war in 1942 – President Roosevelt’s single worst decision and a blight on his legacy.

Nevertheless, we need to look more carefully into the political foundations for these failures of the New Deal to treat people equally and inclusively. The biggest reason for the omissions in the Social Security system and labor protections was the power of Southern Democrats in Congress (cheap black labor was fundamental to the economic order of the south); President Roosevelt had to defer to the Dixiecrats in order to keep the New Deal Coalition together to get his programs passed at all.

The FHA rule that red-lined racialized neighborhoods – meaning that it was hard for minorities to secure mortgages and become homeowners – was written by the chief lobbyist of the National Association of Real Estate Boards. Realtors had every reason to favor racial segregation that conformed to prevailing white prejudices, and they had the political clout to see that it became federal policy.

Another case of political expediency was FDR’s capitulation to war hysteria in the widespread calls for Japanese internment, backed by a notorious record of anti-Asian agitation on the West Coast where internment took place.

A more subtle reason for the New Deal’s failures was deference to local governments in the selection of projects and distribution of funds in a variety of public works projects. That is why segregation ruled in public housing, WPA work teams and CCC camps in Jim Crow country (but not throughout the country). On the one hand, deference to localism was a strength of the New Deal because it allowed local people to choose projects they wanted and gave local politicians a stake in federal programs. On the other hand, localism crippled the national government’s ability to force change from above.

It is well to remember that the New Deal also had to cope with deeply held beliefs by the vast majority of Americans about the indolence of the unemployed, women’s place in society, the superiority of the White Race, the threat of immigration, and the worth of the disabled. It was not enough to change federal policies; the dominant culture had to be eroded. New Deal arts and cultural programs did a great deal on this front, as well. Government-sponsored writers, painters and performers were free to depict working people as heroes, to honor native cultures, and to put women in the spotlight. New Deal artists portrayed national life in dramatically new ways that included a host of ordinary Americans, featured African Americans in prominent roles and gave voice to the disenfranchised.

A striking example of New Deal rethinking of American society was the Federal Writers Project (FWP) chronicles of the experience of African Americans. Hundreds of first-person accounts of former slaves were transcribed, an unparalleled resource for historians and citizens alike. FWP writers produced such classics as James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Richard Wright’s scathing account of life under Jim Crow, Twelve Million Black Voices. Alan Lomax and others were paid to travel the South recording the songs of folk and blues musicians, creating a magnificent repository of folk music. Federal Security Administration (FSA) photographers compiled a superb visual account of popular life and suffering of all races.

In short, The New Deal generated a political and cultural revolution that began to transform the country and lay the foundation for later achievements in Civil Rights, disabled rights, women’s rights, senior citizen programs, and better treatment of Native Americans.”

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I invite our readers to visit these informative and well-documented pages, which include marvelous photographs from this period with each section.

Some Relevant Bibliographies:

• Democratic Theory
• The Great Depression & The New Deal
• Social Security and The Welfare State
• Workers, the World of Work, and Labor Law

Please Note: The photos here lack the detailed descriptive information that individually accompanies each of them at their respective pages on the site.