The Volokh Conspiracy

I've at times complained about the Reverse Mussolini Fallacy. The Mussolini Fallacy is believing that, because Mussolini made the trains run on time (if he did), that excuses his other acts. The Reverse Mussolini Fallacy is believing that, because Mussolini made the trains run on time, making the trains run on time is bad.

A commenter to an earlier post writes:

Boston was one of the first, if not THE first, city to adopt the language suggested by privately produced DHS guides: "If you see something, say something." Apparently the comparison to Maoist China or Stalinist Russia does not worry these people. Reporting crimes is one thing. Reporting suspicions is quite another.

It's true that totalitarian regimes rely on citizens to report misconduct by their fellow citizens. But so must democratic and liberal regimes: The police can't be everywhere (and shouldn't be everywhere), so they rely on citizens to alert them about what they should investigate.

Nor is the "reporting crimes / reporting suspicions" distinction sensible here. Sometimes -- often -- a citizen observes something that isn't clearly a crime, but that seems suspicious, which is to say that might be evidence of a crime. You might hear screaming from your neighbor's house, but not be sure whether there was a crime or just a nasty argument. You might see someone pull a kicking, screaming child into a car; is that a kidnapping or just someone dealing with a tantrum? You might see someone leave a backpack in a subway; could that be a bomb, or did someone just forget his stuff? You often can't investigate further on your own -- it may be too risky, or outside your competence. Of course you should call the police.

Now there may well be times when you shouldn't call the police. The most obvious example is if the offense shouldn't be a crime in the first instance (if you tattled on a neighbor for saying anti-government things in Soviet Russia, that would be bad even if the statements were the crime, so you were "reporting [a] crime[]" rather than a "suspicion[]"), or if you think the punishment is likely to be grossly disproportionate to the crime. Sometimes demands of loyalty to friends or family may outweigh the demands of preventing harm to possible future victims of those friends or family; that's a really tough call, but I do suspect that -- rightly or wrongly -- I wouldn't turn in a family member for petty shoplifting. If you think that the police are bad enough, you might not want to help them at least unless the crime is very severe. And finally, if you have only the vaguest of suspicions, the possible crime isn't very severe, and you're afraid that the costs of bringing in the police (the hassle to the likely innocent target, plus the waste of time for everyone) exceed the benefits (the possibility that the target is indeed guilty), that might be reason not to call.

But the distinction can't, I think, be simply reporting crimes vs. reporting suspicions; nor can I fault an "If you see something, say something" program, at least unless the program is chiefly aimed at genuinely innocent conduct. (Critics of the war on drugs may fault such programs on this latter ground, but that's a separate argument from the one the commenter was making.) Helping the police catch criminals is generally good, and urging the public to do this is good, too. It becomes bad chiefly to the extent that the law being enforced is a bad law; and if that's so, then that should be the target of our argument, not the attempt to promote citizen reporting of crimes as such.

The Boston Herald reports:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is cracking down on the Hub’s hard-core hoodlums and even the taunting “Stop Snitchin’ ” T-shirts they wear . . . .

Menino vowed to combat the soaring crime rate. Among the steps: Sending city Inspectional Services Division officials to seize T-shirts emblazoned with the “Stop Snitchin’ ” message.

“It’s wrong,” Menino said. “We are going into every retail store that sells the shirts and remove them.”

The Herald reported the shirts were worn by the mother of a reputed gang member earlier this year during his trial for a shooting that killed 10-year-old Trina Persad.

The mayor did not say what legal authority ISD would cite in seizing the shirts from retailers. . . .

The T-shirts -- which sometimes bear a logo with an octagonal stop sign riddled with bullets -- have surfaced in Boston and cities across the nation including Baltimore and Pittsburg. Officials say the shirts are intended to intimidate witnesses to crime. Store owners say the shirts are a harmless novelty. . . .

Under certain circumstances, wearing a "Stop Snitchin" T-shirt may be intended to threaten certain people with violence, and may be likely to convey such a message; such action may properly be punished (given a properly worded statute), given the threat exception to the First Amendment. Also, court authorities may bar such shirts from being worn in courtrooms, which are not public fora, and which the government as landlord may impose substantial speech restrictions.

But the government may not ban the sale of such T-shirts -- which can of course be used to send nonthreatening (even if repugnant) messages, such as messages of solidarity with thugs, messages that thug culture is cool, or messages that reporting crimes to the police is wrong -- just because of the possibility that the T-shirts may be used to send unprotected threats. And the government certainly may not just seize the shirts without some such legal ban in place (as the ACLU points out, such a seizure would violate the Fourth Amendment and the Due Process Clause as well as the First Amendment). Just as cross-burning is constitutionally protected, unless it's done with the intent to intimidate (and seems likely to achieve this result), so is the sale and wearing of the T-shirts.

Thanks to reader Rich Carreiro for the pointer.

Science Proves It. Thanks to commenter Kim Scarborough for the pointer.

That's how a San Francisco Weekly article describe Craigslist.com. It's a funny locution — "taking millions." The problem, of course, is that online classified advertising is proving to be more convenient than newspaper advertisers both for advertisers and for buyers. Therefore, advertisers are going to sites like Craiglist.com; therefore, newspapers are getting less money; therefore, Craiglist is "taking millions" from the newspapers.

Now I should say that there is an underlying problem here; before the Internet, classified advertising funded newspapers' news departments, and the news departments in turn increased circulation and thus helped the advertisers. As advertising shifts to the Internet, news departments will have less funding. This, of course, was well-known; I wrote about it my 1995 Cheap Speech article, and I surely wasn't the first to observe it:

[N]ewspapers will lose a vast amount of classified ad revenue. This revenue accounted for forty percent of total newspaper ad revenue in the late 1980's; one commentator projects it will reach sixty percent by 2000. But paper classifieds are far inferior, for both buyers and sellers, to electronic classifieds that are untied to any newspaper.

A database of, say, all apartments for rent in the city would be much easier to search through than a newspaper classified section: . . . [T]he renter could ask for an instant list of all the one-bedroom apartments renting for less than $850 per month within three miles of UCLA, perhaps plus apartments that are a bit cheaper but a bit further, or more expensive but closer. The list should be more complete, because the information will be easier and cheaper to post. And the list should be timelier — the information will become available as soon as the landlord posts it, and can be removed as soon as the apartment is rented. Electronic classifieds are better on all counts than paper ones, and newspapers will have to adjust to a huge revenue loss when the paper classifieds stop coming in. . . .

[Footnote:] Newspapers can, of course, enter the classified market themselves. But the newspapers won't have any substantial edge over other service providers in this field. And even if a newspaper comes up with a fabulously profitable electronic classified service, the stockholders will probably be hesitant to use this service to subsidize a money-losing print operation.

The Internet, of course, makes publishing cheaper, so maybe an all-online non-classified-ad-supported site can fill some of the gaps that are produced as print newspapers have to cut back on their news departments. Nonetheless, it's possible that this business model will be still bring in less money to support news departments than the pre-Internet newspaper model did; worrying about the effect on newsgathering is thus quite legitimate.

But it seems to me much less sensible to cast this in terms of a more customer-pleasing business "taking millions" from you. The reality is that someone else is doing a much better job of serving the public than print classifieds ads are. Deal with that, and don't bellyache about how that someone else is a bad guy because he's outcompeting you and preventing you from making money (even if you hope to use that money for behavior that benefits the public).

Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer; he collects more comments on the story, including a reaction from the story's author.

UPDATE: Reader Aaron C. points, in the comments, to Frederic Bastiat's Candlemaker's Petition:

A PETITION From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting.

To the Honourable Members of the Chamber of Deputies.

Gentlemen: . . .

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us.

1. The Cal State Long Beach Daily 49er reports:

Ripped flyers hung off of the department of women’s studies door, . . . and derogatory statements written on those flyers . . . .

An “I Love Feminism” flyer posted on the office door had, “You should be ashamed of yourself” written below it. A flag poster also posted on the door had, “Liberalism is the path to socialism which is the path to communism. Be a good American and think Republican!” written on it. . . .

Other statements like “Support a Democratic Iraq” and “See beyond your ignorance” were written on other flyers posted on the office door. . . .

Gee, you eloquent young conservatives (I assume this is on-the-level vandalism, in part because I'd think that any hoax vandalism would be a titch more aggressive-sounding), any ideas on better ways — both more ethical and more persuasive ways — to express your views than defacing others' views?

2. But wait, it gets better: Here's a response, printed in the same newspaper:

Someone vandalized the women's studies department in the early morning hours of Nov. 15. One example was "You should be ashamed of yourself," written on a feminism poster.

To scribble on the posters of a department that stands for equal rights, free speech and ending discrimination on the basis of sex is misguided and hateful. In the attempt to voice their opinions, the vandals hoped to quiet an entire department. . . .

There are many sides to every argument, but by destroying the property of a liberal department to fill it with messages of freedom and democracy, it ultimately supports the utter removal of our right as citizens to disagree with one another. . . .

Unless you want to live a cookie-cutter, apathetic, lemming-like existence, grow some and spark a real debate instead of acting childish and using a blue Crayola marker to scribble your uninformed, useless hate speech on our posters.

OK, I'm with you on the destruction of property, but if "You should be ashamed of yourself" is "hate speech," haven't we defined "hate speech" down quite a bit? Also, why exactly should it matter whether the department stands for equal rights, free speech, and ending discrimination, or — as other departments do — for sound mathematical knowledge or for more reading of Shakespeare?

Yeah, I know it's just a college, and these are just college students. Still, I've been hoping for something a little better.

Just wanted to echo Orin's post, and urge to read Posner's opinion. This isn't some liberal judge on the Ninth Circuit slamming the immigration bureaucracy -- it's a moderate conservative, citing many opinions from the Seventh Circuit (which has a reputation as being pretty sane). When he starts the opinion with, "In the year ending on the date of the argument, different panels of this court reversed the Board of Immigration Appeals in whole or part in a staggering 40 percent of the 136 petitions to review the Board that were resolved on the merits," it seems to me that people should pay attention.

A recent Corner post quotes an e-mail that says that comparing Bush's and Churchill's rhetoric "is [comparing] apples and oranges," presumably meaning "comparing two things that can't properly be compared."

But (as I noted before), we compare apples and oranges all the time! We compare them by price, by how much we like the taste, by likely sweetness and ripeness, by how well they'll go in a tasty fruit cocktail, and so on. In fact, every time we go to the store and buy apples rather than oranges — or vice versa — we are necessarily (if implicitly) comparing apples and oranges. You too have compared apples and oranges, and have been quite right to do so.

Seems to me that the phrase should instead reflect two items that really are radically dissimilar — say, "comparing apples and democracy," or "comparing oranges and the multiplication table." Now those comparisons really would be hard to conduct.

UPDATE: Reader Q the Enchanter says he often uses "apples and orangutans."

This is a placeholder post for comments on the questions I posted below. Please do not use it to answer those questions, or to criticize others’ answers to those questions.

Below, I asked a subset of our religious readers a question that I think many irreligious readers might want to know the answer to. Now, I’d like to ask our irreligious readers a question that I think many religious readers might want to know the answer to. Again, I ask this out of respect to for your views, not disrespect: I want people on the other side to understand your views.

Let me therefore ask a question of those irreligious readers that believe that certain things — murder, rape, robbery, and more — are morally wrong. Irreligious people, like religious people, often feel this very strongly, and are willing both to act and to refrain from acting based on these judgments. They might, for instance, refuse to do certain things that are practically advantageous to them because they think they would be wrong; or they may do certain things that are risky or costly because they think that these actions are needed to prevent wrong. I’d love to hear your thoughts, if you fall in the category given above. I have also asked a related question of a subset of my religious readers, so don’t feel like I’m only picking on one side here.

Here’s the question: Many of your beliefs might flow logically (perhaps not syllogistically, but using logical argument) from other beliefs. But at some point, you must reach what one might call a moral axiom that you can’t logically demonstrate. You doubtless find this axiom appealing. Yet why do you accept it?

There are, after all, many rivals. Just to list a few: We should seek the greatest good for the greatest number of humans; the greatest good for the greatest number of my fellow citizens of a certain country; the greatest good for me and my family; the greatest good for me; the greatest good for all sentient species on the Earth; the greatest good for humanity in all future generations. We should not initiate force or fraud against others; we should not engage in force or fraud against others even if they initiate it; we should not initiate force but we may initiate fraud; “others” should only include humans; “others” should include all animals that can feel pain; “others” should include all animals that have more than some threshold of intelligence. We should do only those things that we would be willing to have all others do; some of us should do whatever we want to do, because we’re superior to others; we should do those things that are best for us, since others are going to do the same in any event.

Now if you believed that there was a God who created the world, who was concerned with human affairs, who in some measure controlled access to a happy afterlife, and who made his will known by delivering a book that chronicled both his prescriptions and a list of miracles that he himself had performed, you might choose as an axiom “Do what God tells me to do.” This itself wouldn’t be an open and shut argument; but I think that, if the factual assertions behind it were accurate, it would have substantial plausibility.

But you don’t believe this. Why then do you order your life around some particular moral axiom that you can’t logically support, especially when disregarding this axiom could save you a lot of hassle? Or do you think that you can indeed logically support your choice of axiom, without calling on some other axioms that you can’t logically support — and, if so, how?

In any event, I’d love to hear your thoughts, if you fall in the category given above. I also ask below a related question of my religious readers, so don’t feel like I’m only picking on one side here.

Note, though, an important rule applicable only to the comments to this post and its mate: I want only comments that try to answer these questions, not those that argue against the answers, or that criticize the answers, even politely. I do reserve for myself the blogger’s prerogative of adding updates that clarify the question or ask for clarifications to the answers. But because I want people to feel as free as possible to express their deeply held views, in this instance I would rather that they do so without risk of criticism from fellow commenters.

Remember: The point of this thread is so that religious people are more able to understand the other side, not so that we can have a debate on this question.

Those who really want to comment on the questions generally, rather than to answer them (or to criticize the answers), may do so in the comments to this placeholder post.

My sense, from reading comments and reader e-mail, is that this blog has many articulate and thoughtful readers who are pretty deeply religious, and many who are pretty deeply irreligious. I wonder whether this might make room for a good opportunity for each side to see what the other thinks.

I’m not expecting or intending to convert anyone in either direction — just to enlighten people about others’ world views, by asking each side to explain themselves about something that I think the other side really is curious about. I have many friends, both deeply religious and deeply irreligious, whom I much respect. Precisely because I respect people on both sides of this question, I think it’s helpful for people on the other side to understand more about how intelligent and moral people on the other side come to the conclusions they do. I am not claiming that the questions I will pose are unanswerable; in fact, I’m asking you to answer them, so the other side can understand why you think what you think.

Let me start by asking a question of those religious readers who might roughly be described as “believing in miracles”: those who believe that in the last (say) 10,000 years God (or some divine power) has done things that don’t normally occur in our experience (or in our experience as aided with various observational tools), such as brought about a resurrection, literally spoken from a burning bush, brought a literal angel to visit someone, and the like. If you don’t believe in this — if, for instance, you only believe in a creator-God who doesn’t intervene in human affairs, or you believe that God acts only through normal behavior (for instance, by inspiring human beings to do certain things) — then the question is not for you.

Here’s the question: I suspect that you are a normally and healthily skeptical person. If someone claims that he has seen something that doesn’t normally occur in our experience — for instance, seen a werewolf, a ghost, or even an extraterrestrial — you’re probably pretty skeptical. If the claim is based on hearsay, for instance when someone says that there were werewolves in the Middle Ages because there are various books that report on their existence, you’re probably even more skeptical. And that’s so even if the claims are religious. There are, after all, lots of religions other than your own that make their own factual claims, whether about an angel visiting Joseph Smith, about the actions of Hindu gods, about an alien named Xenu, etc. (I am not claiming that these religions are morally or theologically equivalent, only giving them all as examples of religions that make factual assertions about which members of other religions are skeptical.)

Why then do you believe the factual assertions that form the basis of your religion? If, for instance, you wouldn’t believe a claim that Joe Schmoe rose from the dead, why do you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? My sense is that irreligious people really do want to know this.

Before you answer this in the comments, let me point to a couple of answers that I think are incomplete, and that would at least require more elaboration.

(1) The argument by design: Even if the complexity of the world suggests that some intelligent being created it (a separate matter from the one I’m describing here), this doesn’t tell us whether this being continues to perform extraordinary actions, much less whether he has performed particular extraordinary actions.

(2) A scripture’s consistency with certain historical accounts: Even if there is historical evidence for the nonextraordinary claims mentioned in a holy book (e.g., historical evidence that a religious figure named Jesus Christ existed roughly 2000 years ago in Judaea), this doesn’t tell us about the validity of the extraordinary claims mentioned in that book. We’re all familiar with accounts that combine factually accurate statements with fanciful ones; many ancient historical works, for instance, fall in that category.

(3) Inspiration: Some religious people report that they feel in their hearts that certain things are true, even if they can’t prove them. (In fact, both religious people and irreligious people tend to take this view about many moral issues; here, though, the question relates to factual events, not moral judgments.) Yet we all know that these feelings can often be mistaken: It’s natural, for instance, for people to feel strongly that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and many people did believe that for millennia, yet they were mistaken. And that was something consistent with what appears from our everyday experience.

Why should we give credence to factual beliefs that are inconsistent with our everyday experience? Even if we strongly believe them, shouldn’t we be skeptical about them? Again, note that millions of other people feel in their hearts the truth of certain other religious factual claims. For many such claims, it can’t be that both you and they are right. Why doesn’t that lead you at least to agnosticism on the question?

(4) Faith: Likewise, some people say that they have faith in their religion’s factual assertions, and that the whole point is to take them on faith. Yet I take it that you don’t take on faith most other people’s assertions about supernatural phenomena, whether secular (werewolves) or religious (claims of other religions). You probably even think less of people who are too willing to take on faith claims about extraterrestrials, vampires, reincarnation, and the like. Why do you take on faith the religious claims that you do accept?

(5) The social and moral value of religiosity: Many people argue that religious belief, including belief in miracles, is important to make people more moral, and to help society survive. But even if that’s so, that doesn’t seem like an argument in favor of the belief’s being factually correct, rather than useful.

In any event, I’d love to hear your thoughts, if you fall in the categories given above. I also ask above a related question of my irreligious readers, so don’t feel like I’m only picking on one side here.

Note, though, an important rule applicable only to the comments to this post and its mate: I want only comments that try to answer these questions, not those that argue against the answers, or that criticize the answers, even politely. I do reserve for myself the blogger’s prerogative of adding updates that clarify the question or ask for clarifications to the answers. But because I want people to feel as free as possible to express their deeply held views, in this instance I would rather that they do so without risk of criticism from other commenters.

Remember: The point of this thread is to help irreligious people (or religious people that don’t share the belief in miracles) understand the other side’s thinking, not to have a debate (though such understanding may eventually help debate in other forums).

Those who really want to comment on the questions generally, rather than to answer them (or to criticize the answers), may do so in the comments to this placeholder post.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education posts an e-mail from the University's Interim Chancellor:

Effective immediately, UW-Eau Claire is suspending practices and policies prohibiting resident assistants from organizing, leading or recruiting for certain activities in the rooms and residence halls where they live.

I concluded the suspension is necessary after an initial campus review found that there have been inconsistencies in how the practice has been communicated to resident assistants and because UW System has announced that it will appoint a system-wide advisory committee that will provide guidance about RA activities.

The policies and practices in question prohibit RAs from organizing, leading and recruiting for certain activities in rooms and residence halls where they live and have supervisory authority over other students. Those include partisan politics and religious activities. . . .

Very glad to hear it, and hope the suspension becomes permanent. FIRE deserves credit for its work in this matter, and many others; for more details on the incident, see here.

Fellow lawprof Mark Scarberry asked the following on a lawprof list; I asked him for permission to post it here, and he graciously gave it:

Twenty-four Democratic members of Congress (including nine from California) have written to the Los Angeles Times to "object" specifically "as Members of Congress" to the dismissal of Robert Scheer, a long-time LA Times columnist. See [here] (by way of [HughHewitt.com]).

I suppose that if a similar letter came from the administration, objecting to the dismissal at the same time of the LA Times conservative political cartoonist Michael Ramirez, we would hear complaints that the administration was intimidating the press in violation of the values underlying the First Amendment.

I wonder whether list members think that the 24 members of Congress should have considered those constitutional values and refrained from writing such a letter "as Members of Congress."

My view is that it's not improper for Congressmen to write such a letter; I doubt that a newspaper will find it particularly intimidating (in the sense of threatening government action, as opposed to threatening public condemnation). Nonetheless, it struck me as an interesting question that was worth reporting.

in court opinions, but check out this 5-page district court opinion — pretty amusing. Its title: "Order Denying Maaf's Motion To Preclude the French Phrase 'Queljeu Doit-On Jouer Vis-A-Vis Des Autorites De Californie?' as Used in Mr. Simonet's Notes from Being Translated as 'What Game Must We Play with the California Authorities?'"

Thanks to my friend and former classmate Rob Dell Angelo for the pointer.

As best I can count, the conservative faculty at Harvard consists of John Manning, Adrian Vermeule, Jack Goldsmith, Charles Fried, plus (probably) Einer Elhauge, Bill Stuntz, Mary Ann Glendon, Kip Viscusi, and a few others, amounting to perhaps 15 members of an 81-member tenure ladder faculty. If Harvard Law School is "listing" (I take in the sense of "leaning") "right" because of them, then I'm pleased to hear how weighty each of them must be.

Cathy Young has some interesting observations. Some key excerpts:

In 1996, Jonathan Rauch wrote that if same-sex marriage is to succeed, it must become the general norm in the gay community, not just another lifestyle option. At least so far, that does not seem to be happening in Holland.

Also in the past 10 years, the overall marriage rate has dropped, from 5.4 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1994 to 4.5 per 1,000 in 2004. More heterosexual men and women are entering into civil partnerships — which are much more easily dissolved — instead of marriage; in 2004, about 7% of new male-female legal unions were civil partnerships. This does not prove, as Stanley Kurtz has argued, that same-sex marriage undermines heterosexual marriage; the drop in marriage rates is undoubtedly due to many complex factors. However, one can plausibly argue that the changing attitudes toward marriage that make same-sex marriage possible may also be related to overall lower marriage rates. . . . .

Why am I pointing this out? Because, while I fully support legal rights for same-sex partners, I think both sides in the marriage debate have been prone to unwarranted and exaggerated claims about the social impact of same-sex marriage. The legalization of same-sex marriage has not, as some have claimed, led to polygamy in the Netherlands. But at least so far, it has not created a "marriage culture" among gays and has not boosted marriage among heterosexuals. As we continue our own discussion of same-sex marriage, we need to have all the facts on the table.

UPDATE: Dale Carpenter has a thoughtful response in the comments, and Cathy responds in turn.

here's the Swedish Supreme Court's decision from today holding that Ake Green, a minister, couldn't be punished for his anti-homosexuality sermon. Green had been sentenced to a month in prison; an appellate court set that punishment aside, and now the Swedish Supreme Court has affirmed the appellate court's decision. If anyone can translate this into English, I'd be delighted to post it, and I'm sure many people will be very interested in it. (Naturally, if you know of an existing English translation, I'd be glad to see it, too.)

When should people report crimes to the police, especially when the crimes are done by people who are (1) friends, (2) associates, or (3) others who inform the person in his professional capacity, and expecting confidentiality? That's a really tough question, but here is an example, from a Slate column last week, of how not to deal with it (emphasis added):

In maintaining his silence, Woodward, more than anyone else in the Plamegate scandal, has upheld the highest standards of journalistic integrity and discretion. Perhaps this is because, more than anyone else, Woodward understands the tenuous and often strained relationship between a powerful government and its citizens. (Whether Woodward—who has made his career as a journalistic watchdog, attentively patrolling executive power run amok—had s