Freed To A Higher Standard

"Christ hath delivered us, he [Paul] says, from the yoke of bondage, He hath left us free to act as we will, not that we may use our liberty for evil, but that we may have ground for receiving a higher reward, advancing to a higher philosophy. Lest any one should suspect, from his calling the Law over and over again a yoke of bondage, and a bringing on of the curse, that his object in enjoining an abandonment of the Law, was that one might live lawlessly, he corrects this notion, and states his object to be, not that our course of life might be lawless, but that our philosophy might surpass the Law. For the bonds of the Law are broken, and I say this not that our standard may be lowered, but that it may be exalted. For both he who commits fornication, and he who leads a virgin life, pass the bounds of the Law, but not in the same direction; the one is led away to the worse, the other is elevated to the better; the one transgresses the Law, the other transcends it. Thus Paul says that Christ hath removed the yoke from you, not that ye may prance and kick, but that though without the yoke ye may proceed at a well-measured pace." (John Chrysostom, Commentary On Galatians, 5, v. 13)

"Why Derek Chauvin May Get Off His Murder Charge"

Here are six reasons why Derek Chauvin and the other three police officers involved in George Floyd's death may get off a murder charge:

1. George Floyd was experiencing cardiopulmonary and psychological distress minutes before he was placed on the ground, let alone had a knee to his neck.
2. The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) allows the use of neck restraint on suspects who actively resist arrest, and George Floyd actively resisted arrest on two occasions, including immediately prior to neck restraint being used.
3. The officers were recorded on their body cams assessing George Floyd as suffering from “excited delirium syndrome” (ExDS), a condition which the MPD considers an extreme threat to both the officers and the suspect. A white paper used by the MPD acknowledges that ExDS suspects may die irrespective of force involved. The officers’ response to this situation was in line with MPD guidelines for ExDS.
4. Restraining the suspect on his or her abdomen (prone restraint) is a common tactic in ExDS situations, and the white paper used by the MPD instructs the officers to control the suspect until paramedics arrive.
5. Floyd’s autopsy revealed a potentially lethal concoction of drugs — not just a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl, but also methamphetamine. Together with his history of drug abuse and two serious heart conditions, Floyd’s condition was exceptionally and unusually fragile.
6. Chauvin’s neck restraint is unlikely to have exerted a dangerous amount of force to Floyd’s neck. Floyd is shown on video able to lift his head and neck, and a robust study on double-knee restraints showed a median force exertion of approximately approximately 105lbs.

Let’s be clear: the actions of Chauvin and the other officers were absolutely wrong. But they were also in line with MPD rules and procedures for the condition which they determined was George Floyd was suffering from. An act that would normally be considered a clear and heinous abuse of force, such as a knee-to-neck restraint on a suspect suffering from pulmonary distress, can be legitimatized if there are overriding concerns not known to bystanders but known to the officers. In the case of George Floyd, the overriding concern was that he was suffering from ExDS, given a number of relevant facts known to the officers. This was not known to the bystanders, who only saw a man with pulmonary distress pinned down with a knee on his neck. While the officers may still be found guilty of manslaughter, the probability of a guilty verdict for the murder charge is low, and the public should be aware of this well in advance of the verdict.

I don't know how reliable these statements are. However, if these statements are true, and Chauvin et al aren't found guilty of murder for one or more of these reasons (though they may be found guilty of manslaughter), then this makes me wonder about something the left often argues. The left often argues it's better for ten guilty persons to go free than it is for one innocent person to be convicted. Will the left argue the same to keep the lynch mobs at bay?

Of course, legally sophisticated leftists may be able to argue against the relevance of Blackstone's ratio in this case, but I'm referring to popular sentiments from the left about Blackstone's ratio. That's primarily because it's typically the sentiments that are used to incite mobs and the like. Yet if leftists incite mobs to protest and even riot (like they already are doing well before a trial has even occurred) if Chauvin et al aren't found guilty of murder, then whatever leftists may think about the theoretical arguments pertaining to Blackstone's ratio, the theoretical evidently doesn't trump the pragmatic.

NB. I myself am not agreeing or disagreeing with Blackstone's ratio. However, in case anyone is interested, Alexander Volokh's piece offers some helpful background information.

2nd degree murder

Looking at the legal descriptions of third-degree and second-degree, elevation of the Floyd killing to second-degree is quite risky. It requires proving intent to kill, rather than depraved indifference to human life. That's a heavy legal burden.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 3, 2020

The military has no role in stopping the riots

To those who claim the military has no role in stopping anarchists and other criminals from tearing apart our cities: read a book.

The military has intervened to maintain public order since the Whiskey Rebellion. Here are a few recent examples.

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) June 2, 2020

In 1957, President Eisenhower ordered soldiers to enforce integration of Little Rock schools against a racist mob.

This was a dark episode in my state’s history, but Ike was right:

“Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of the courts.”https://t.co/WOo6Fyep9x

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) June 2, 2020

In 1967, President Johnson ordered the 82nd and 101st Airborne to stop deadly race riots in Detroit.

LBJ: “We will not tolerate lawlessness... This Nation will do whatever it is necessary to do to suppress and to punish those who engage in it.”https://t.co/ICyQ7JfbmH

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) June 2, 2020

The next year, 13,000 troops were called to protect Washington, D.C. from riots that erupted after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The city didn’t recover for decades, but federal troops staunched the bleeding.https://t.co/jw2L27DNmu

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) June 2, 2020

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush ordered the Army’s 7th Infantry and 1,500 Marines to quell the Rodney King riots burning down LA.

Bush 41 knew that King had been unjustly treated—“what I saw made me sick”—but he knew deadly riots would only multiply the victims.

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) June 2, 2020

The carnage caused by domestic terrorists and other criminals threatens all law-abiding citizens, including peaceful protestors.

We must do everything possible within the law to restore peace in the streets—that mission can and should include our troops.

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) June 2, 2020

Homeschooling

Alex Harris is a Harvard law grad (JD). He's also a former law clerk for both Neil Gorsuch and Anthony Kennedy. He defends homeschooling against a Harvard law professor who believes homeschooling should be presumptively banned. And interestingly he's one of apostate Joshua Harris' younger brothers.

When the Bible rubs us the wrong way

1. The Bible contains some teachings that rub modern readers the wrong way, including Christian readers. Including devout Christian readers. How should we respond?

I've been a Christian for 44 years. I became a Christian when I was 16. For as long as I can remember, I've always taken the position that Christianity (shorthand for biblical Christianity) is a package deal. Take it or leave it. To be a Christian at all involves prior commitment to certain things. That's the buy-in. You know what you're getting going in. The Bible isn't classified. Certain things are priced-in. That's the nature of a revealed religion. If you're not prepared to accept it, then the alternative isn't to reinvent Christianity, but to drop the pose and admit that you don't think it's true. Don't try to change it. 

2. When the Bible teaches something that rubs us the wrong way, that's an opportunity to think hard and find the wisdom in something that we'd ordinarily reject without giving it a second thought. One of the problems with "progressive Christianity," apart from incoherence, is that it has no capacity to learn anything from the Bible because it rejects out of hand anything in scripture that challenges its prejudices. 

3. There's nothing necessarily wrong with finding certain biblical teachings disturbing or bothersome. The opposite of progressive Christianity is a passive unthinking piety that's afraid to wrestle with these issues for fear it will result in loss of faith.

But it's good to grapple with these issues, from a standpoint of faith, because probing the rationale for biblical teachings that we may find shocking or unnerving may force us to achieve a better understanding of the wisdom behind biblical teaching. Don't push it away. Sometimes hard truths have the greatest potential for enlightenment. To revolutionize our superficial assumptions. 

4. Take OT ethics. Many readers find certain OT teachings repugnant. And they never get beyond their repugnance. They wince and turn the page. At best the file it away as something incomprehensible. 

People who object to OT ethics are apt to be intellectually frivolous. They lack the intellectual patience to seriously explore and work through the issues. They're just dismissive. They don't think there's anything true or good to be understood in such teachings. They don't find anything worthwhile because they don't expect anything worthwhile and they're not looking for anything worthwhile. So I can't say that I'm terribly sympathetic to their lazy reaction. I understand what they find objectionable, but they don't make a good-faith effort to go beyond that snap judgment. 

5. As I've said before, even if you don't believe in the Bible, it would be prudent for atheists to approach the OT from the standpoint of a cultural anthropologist. An academic field archeologist who lives with a tribe or people-group to understand their society from the inside out. He brings critical sympathy to the task. He may initially find some of their customs baffling, barbaric, and irrational. But he makes a good-faith effort to learn what motivates the customs. Perhaps, on closer examination, the customs are understandable adaptations to their circumstances. They may not be great customs, but if they were living under better circumstances, they'd have better customs. They've been thrust into a particular situation, and it isn't easy to cope. 

6. Now I'm not a cultural relativist. I'm not suggesting that we should be nonjudgmental. After immersive study, the anthropologist might well be justified in concluding that some of the customs are willfully stupid and wantonly cruel. 

But we need to understand things before we're in a position to render an informed judgment. In particular, an atheist is in no position to just assume that his provincial social conditioning is automatically superior to mine. That's arbitrary and lacks a capacity for critical self-awareness. Village atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens revel in lampooning OT ethics, but from the standpoint of a cultural anthropologist, their knee-jerk reaction is hidebound, ethnocentric, and question-begging. The same applies to "progressive Christians". 

7. In that regard, this is an interesting and provocative lecture on OT ethics by a noted scholar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7RfNe00NEg

To summarize, paraphrase, and expand on his explanation:

i) OT law is not utopian. It's not first and foremost about the promotion of virtue.

Rather, it's about damage control. What to do when things go wrong. Where to go from there. Given a bad situation, what are the realistic options? 

This is, after all, a penal code. A criminal law code. Something has already gone wrong. 

It's like pulling the pin on a live grenade. The options after you pull the firing pin are very different from the options before you pull it. Once you pull the pin, it's too late to go back to kinder gentler alternatives. 

ii) OT law has practical aims. It settles for limited, obtainable goods rather than ultimate, unobtainable goods. Curtailing evil.  Fixing what can be fixed. Regulating what can't be abolished. Preventing things from getting even worse. 

iii) Lawmakers are constrained by what's possible. That's why they forbid theft but they don't command generosity. God has chosen to place himself under such constraints. To some degree, God accommodates himself to our wickedness. OT law is a necessary compromise or concession to our fallenness. Not part of God's ultimate plan for human beings, but about how to God negotiates with this group at a particular time and place (OT Jews) to survive, relatively faithful and civilized long enough for the promise to come to fulfillment.

iv) The purity codes existed to differentiate Jews and heathen Gentiles. That's defunct. Christians properly distinguish which laws are just for OT Jews and which for God's people in general. 

8. In general, I think Provan's analysis is insightful and sound. Many unbelievers who blindly rail against OT ethics would benefit from taking these rudimentary distinctions into account. Problem is, many unbelievers don't seek understanding. They are lazy. They just want to feel superior. 

9. Having said that, I have some disagreements with Provan. He's an egalitarian, I'm a complementation. So he has a different take on Gen 1 and OT legislation for women than I do.

10. In addition, he seems  to be a freewill theist who believes that God must operate under the same constraints as human lawmakers. God is stymied by what is feasible, given the autonomy of human agents to thwart his will. 

That's not my own explanation, so I'd reframe the issue. There are constraints on God's field of action, but in a different way. God has different world histories at his disposal. I'm the end-product of a particular past. I exist because I have a particular set of linear ancestors. If God changed certain variables in the past, that would change the future, including my future. I don't exist in that future. So there are tradeoffs. 

God made a world designed for second-order goods. Eliminating certain evils has the side-effect of eliminating the compensatory goods. Goods that only exist as a result of prior evils. God didn't create a perfect world, a utopian world, but a world with redeemed losers like me. The ideal lies at the end of the process, not the beginning. 

Like a sports team where the coach doesn't pick the best players. These aren't the most talented players. His primary goal isn't about winning every game, but cultivating masculine virtues. Camaraderie, loyalty, and brotherly love. He prefers to work with losers. To reclaim losers. Rescue the lost. Give them a second chance.  

11. Finally, it's good to study how to be faithful in trying times. Life is rough. If a remnant of OT Jews could stay faithful despite harsh circumstances, that sets an example for Christians.  

No place to hide

The following is from the China Law Blog:

This [Chinese cybersecurity] system will apply to foreign owned companies in China on the same basis as to all Chinese persons, entities or individuals. No information contained on any server located within China will be exempted from this full coverage program. No communication from or to China will be exempted. There will be no secrets. No VPNs. No private or encrypted messages. No anonymous online accounts. No trade secrets. No confidential data. Any and all data will be available and open to the Chinese government...All this information will be available to the Chinese military and military research institutes. The Chinese are being very clear that this is their plan.

I hope American businesses and businesses in general won't put money ahead of morals when dealing with China. Unlike (apparently) LeBron James and the NBA.

By the way, here's a recent photo from Hong Kong:

The ethics of plea bargaining

I wonder about the ethics of plea bargaining. Suppose the accused is guilty of a serious crime. In that situation, it may well be in his self-interest to cop to a lesser charge.

However, even that is unjust. If he committed a more seriously crime, he shouldn't get off with a lighter sentence. Perhaps, though, that can sometimes be justified by the fact that in a less than ideal world, we must often compromise. It's better to settle for something then settle for nothing if you can't get everything you want. 

Be that as it may, there are more troubling scenarios. Take a case where the defendant is either innocent or guilty of a minor crime, but the prosecutor threatens him with indictment for a serious crime. That generates several major ethical problems:

i) It creates enormous opportunities for prosecutorial misconduct.

ii) If a prosecutor doesn't have the evidence to charge the accused with an actual crime, then he shouldn't be charged in the first place, or pending charges should be dropped. 

iii) It engineers a terrible dilemma for an innocent defendant. A fateful risk assessment. On the one hand, if the defendant refuses the deal and the prosecutor either drops the charges or fails to secure a conviction, then that's better than serving time. On the other hand, there's the risk of conviction for an even more serious, trumped up charge, if the defendant refuses the deal. That's quite a gamble. 

iv) It coerces innocent defendants to confess to a crime they didn't commit. Under duress, they are made to lie by admitting to a crime, when in fact they committed no crime. That's straight out of Kafka. 

v) A basic rationale for plea bargains is to incentivize the accused to implicate someone higher up the food chain. While there can be some merit in that strategy, it's offset by loss of credibility if the accused incriminates someone else to save his own skin. Is an extorted confession of guilt credible? 

How to talk your way out of a ticket

The standard way to talk your way out of a ticket is to be a pretty girl. The décolletage does the talking. That works just about everywhere except the Bay Area, where a pretty girl has about as much sway with the average SFPD officer as a crucifix with a Hassidic vampire.

Paul Washer has another technique, which might work for men:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc5KspPo7Y0

Judaism and exceptions to abortion

Ben Shapiro writes:

But for the sake of clarity, here is my position on the morality and law of abortion: (1) I believe abortion is murder because life begins at conception; (2) I believe that the government has an interest in stopping murder; (3) I believe that there should be exceptions for when the mother’s life is in danger, including when her mental health prevents her from carrying her to term.

I disagree with the second half of his third point. I don't see how a mother's mental health or rather illness (e.g. post-partum depression) is an exception, constituting endangerment to her life, though it could be a mitigating factor. If someone shoots and kills an innocent person, but is found to have been mentally ill at the time, would this mean their killing an innocent person is an exception to murder? Again, I could see how it'd be a mitigating factor in the trial - like I could see how it wouldn't necessarily be, say, first or second degree murder - but I don't see how it wouldn't be murder in general.

(In fairness, this is a reason why Shapiro is an orthodox Jew rather than an evangelical Christian, as Shapiro's interlocutor wrongly alleges. Orthodox Jews evidently make exceptions for abortion that evangelical Christians would not.)

Roe, Roe, Roe your boat, gently down the radical left's progressively irrational dystopian dream

Here is an example of a pro-abortionist on the verge of an apoplectic fit against the possibility that Roe v. Wade will be overturned if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed:

Human knowledge and technology have reached the point where the womb has become a sort of Pandora's Box. Whereas in the past, societies could gloss over the seemingly impossible details of the beginnings of human life and accompanying rights because it was all a mystery or an act of God, that's no longer an option for modern society.

The "life begins at conception" position is really the ultimate slippery slope. If we're going to afford full rights to a single cell, then we're going to have to:

• Establish some kind of monthly monitoring system of all womb-bearing humans to know when a new human enters the picture. This would be incredibly invasive. To the point where I doubt even the staunchest, most misogynistic supporter would be thrilled to have a government official probe his wife's vagina every month.

• Every natural, self-aborted pregnancy (something like 70-90% of all conceptions) would trigger an investigation and likely charges of involuntary manslaughter against the woman.

• It would open any women found to be pregnant up to criminal charges on the basis of any unhealthy behavior on her part that could potentially elevate the risk for miscarriage.

• The logical outcomes of making zygotes US citizens is either Handmaid's dystopia or the sterilization of all humans and the move to artificial wombs and test tube babies.

The alternative is education, contraception, and rights begin at birth.