Cheating for America– not on it!

The fact that Newt Gingrich is running for president, and actually has supporters for that position, makes my brain hurt and my heart sink. It inspires a despondence that I don’t care to dwell in, frankly. But I have to admit that the whole discussion about whether he asked his second wife (whom he married after cheating on the first) for an open marriage before leaving her and marrying the woman he was cheating with who became wife #3– gosh, it’s kind of hard to write that out– is fascinating to me. Apparently the serial cheating is bad, but not as bad as the notion of his having asked for an “open marriage.” And let’s be clear, if what former wife Marianne says is true, what Gingrich did wasn’t asking for an open marriage exactly. The words “open marriage” might have come out of his mouth, but what he was really asking for was to continue cheating with impunity. Reading those words, I could feel the collective cringing of Americans who are actually in open marriages– a consenting arrangement in which a couple decides together that each of them may have another partner or partners, with explicit permission– as their lifestyle’s reputation went further down the drain.

Newt has, of course, vehemently denied that he did any such thing. He has complained bitterly about the indignity of even being questioned on the subject, as if he wasn’t the same man who found it appropriate to lead impeachment proceedings against Clinton for lying about an affair. As if he isn’t the same man, running for the nomination of the same party, which trumpets family values as a reason to deny rights to gays. Apparently those family values allow room for serial cheating, divorce, and re-marriage, but not for things like consenting open relationships or affirmation of government-awarded rights and privileges for relationships between two people of the same sex. I admire the intentions of this suggestion on Yahoo! News that Gingrich could become an unwitting argument for gay marriage if elected president by being the living antithesis of family values, but that would both require Gingrich supporters and other opponents of gay marriage to acknowledge their inconsistency and further entrench the notion of gay marriage as somehow being equivalent to serial infidelity. The former is unlikely; the latter undesirable. And anyway, there are plenty of things that make Gingrich an extremely poor choice for president apart from that. Dan Savage– sex columnist/podcaster, influential gay rights advocate– has been having a field day with this issue. On Friday he wrote:

Let me be quite clear: Newt wasn’t claiming that the story about his six-year affair with a congressional staffer twenty years his junior was false—the third Mrs. Gingrich was there last night—just the story about Newt asking his ex-wife to agree to an open marriage. That was false. (Callista “Devout Catholic” Gingrich was down with the open marriage: “Callista doesn’t care what I do,” Newt allegedly told his ex-wife.) So… Newt Swingrich got a huge round of applause from a GOP debate audience packed with God-fearin’, traditional-marriage-lovin’, gay-marriage-hatin’ social conservatives… for insisting that he cheated on his second ex-wife for six years like a good Christian. He did not ask his second ex-wife for an open marriage. An honest open relationship was never on the table. Newt and Callista’s adulterous relationship was grounded in lies and deceit and betrayal from the start and Newt never wavered from that path. Newt never tried to negotiate an agreement—not even a retroactive one—that would have allowed him to sleep around and remain married. Newt did not ask his most recent ex-wife for an open marriage and he won’t ask any of his future ex-wives for an open marriage. Because that would be wrong. Clap clap clap. (Who are these friends who knew Newt and his second ex-wife and can “prove” her story is false? Were they present during these conversations between Newt and his second ex-wife?)

…which makes me very curious to hear what Savage thinks about this commentary by a psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, who insists that the “psychological data” of Newt’s infidelities would make him a strong president. Seriously. Yes, it’s on Fox News…of course. If you don’t want to go there, I’ll just quote some juicy bits for you:

As I have written before for Fox News Opinion, I don’t think voters belong in a candidate’s bedroom. But the media can’t seem to help itself from trying to castrate candidates for the prurient pleasure of the public.

Yeah, it’s the media’s fault. For reporting what people (rightly or wrongly) want to hear about, just as they did when it was Clinton’s cheating that made headlines. For informing the public, including Ablow, about the thing which Ablow is now going to say presents a good reason to support Gingrich as president.

I will tell you what Mr. Gingrich’s personal history actually means for those of us who want to right the economy, see our neighbors and friends go back to work, promote freedom here and abroad and defeat the growing threat posed by Iran and other evil regimes. First, one note on what Mr. Gingrich’s married life, including his history of infidelity does not mean: It does not mean that Mr. Gingrich would be unfaithful to the United States of America or the Constitution of the United States. You can take any moral position you like about men and women who cheat while married, but there simply is no correlation, whatsoever—from a psychological perspective—between whether they can remain true to their wedding vows and whether they can remain true to the Oath of Office.

…whatever “remaining true to the Oath of Office” means. It sure doesn’t mean invading Iran, so far as I can tell. I agree that from a psychological perspective– from any perspective– cheating on one’s spouse doesn’t mean that one would be a bad president.  It doesn’t render a person incapable of working to create jobs, protect freedoms, decrease the deficit, or, you know, legalize gay marriage. Just saying.

I want to be coldly analytical, not moralize, here. I want to tell you what Mr. Gingrich’s behavior could mean for the country, not for the future of his current marriage. So, here’s what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich’s behavior during his three marriages: 1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him. 2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.  3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.  Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

My conclusion: Okay, so by that logic Richard Ramirez should be president. The “Night Stalker” who killed thirteen people in 1985 in a campaign of murder, rape, and eye-gouging should be campaigning for president instead, since he receives bags full of mail including marriage proposals at San Quentin where he’s been imprisoned for 23 years. Countless women want to “sign on for life” with a serial killer. I’m sure at least some of them are attractive, though I’m not sure why that matters. Ablow seems to think it important. Kissinger famously said that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and that most likely applies to the power to slaughter a dozen or so people with your own hands as well as to (potentially) do so to endless more as president. I’m guessing Ablow is one of those people who likes to complain that “chicks dig jerks” while simultaneously evaluating the worth of every man by the appearance of the women he manages to attract.

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation. Conclusion:I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.

My conclusion: Okay, I suppose lying in a hospital bed counts as “sitting down.” But what about the whole part where he wasn’t direct and unsparing up until he was? You know, the cheating part? Should we welcome a president who is lying to us up until he tells the truth, because he finally has concluded that he needs to “follow his heart”?  Gee, Congress, you know…I guess there aren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And I knew that all along. But I needed to follow my heart, and tell you the truth. I hope you can understand.

5) Mr. Gingrich’s daughters from his first marriage are among his most vigorous supporters. They obviously adore him and respect him and feel grateful for the kind of father he was. When I want to know who in a marriage (or, for that matter, a series of marriages) is the one who actually was aligned with their best interests, I never dismiss evidence of who the children gravitate toward and admire. In this case, they have judged the father who left their family, then remarried twice. And they judge him 10 out of 10. I only hope my own children love me and respect me as much when they are adults.

They probably will, because they’re your children. But they might not back you politically, because despite loving you and being directly related, they can see a distinction between respecting you and supporting you for public office. They might be more like John Huntsman’s daughters, or more like Rick Santorum’s nephew. They might speak out against you or not, depending on a multitude of convoluted factors beyond how they much they care for you. In short, like every other voter, their decisions are their own and there’s no particular reason that anyone else should agree with them.

So, as far as I can tell, judging from the psychological data, we have only one real risk to America from his marital history if Newt Gingrich were to become president: We would need to worry that another nation, perhaps a little younger than ours, would be so taken by Mr. Gingrich that it would seduce him into marrying it and becoming its president. And I think that is exceedingly unlikely.

*blurk* 

Yes, I get that that was supposed to be a joke. It earns the envy of lead balloons.

Dr. Keith Ablow, you will not be at all reassured to know, is a forensic, adult, and adolescent psychiatrist as well as head of Dr. Keith Ablow Life Coaching as of May, 2011. One can’t help but wonder how successful and happy are the marriages of the people whose lives he coaches, as well as whether Mrs. Ablow does a lot of looking over her shoulder.

ETA: I love this exchange on Dispatches:

Tabby Lavalamp: Shouldn’t Ablow be concerned that during a possible term of President of the United States, Gingrich might want to resign to become President of Paraguay?eric:  Why, does the US have cancer? Randomfactor: Paraguay is nowhere near pretty enough.

Pictured: a human whose dignity is highly questionable

Said Michele Bachmann to members of Personhood USA on Tuesday night:

I want everyone to know that I recognize and respect the dignity of every human life from conception until natural death. This is not a check the box thing for me; this is the core of my conviction, this is what I would literally die for. We have a moral obligation to defend other people and the reason for that is because each human being is made in the image of likeness of a holy God.

Dignity, I think we can agree, is a state of being which makes an entity deserving of respect and ethical treatment. For Bachmann, this affordance is based on a fundamental belief about our relationship with and similarity to God. Every human was made by God and is in some way very like God, therefore it is wrong to end the life of one.

But…God created other creatures, and we end their lives all of the time. Yes, but those creatures were not “made in the image of likeness of a holy God.”

But…Bachmann is opposed to gay marriage, and telling people that they cannot marry the consenting adult of their choice denies their dignity, as surely does indefinite detention and torture. Yes, but defending the dignity of humans does not extend to protecting them from the consequences of immoral acts.

This is because for Bachmann, dignity is not a state that individual humans reach. It is something they are all afforded– whether they want it or not– by virtue of being members of a race specifically created by God to carry out his will. Killing people as punishment or in war is one thing, but in general the ending of a human life either in the womb or on the physician’s table is violating the will of God. It’s a violation of a covenant held with him, not with other humans. A human’s conduct can render it permissible to put him to death and subject to God’s judgment, but it cannot justify dignity– that comes from the fact of being God’s creation.

When the word “dignity” is invoked in conservative politics, you can bet the underlying message is a concern about messing with God’s product. This can take many manifestations, including abortion and euthanasia, but also stem cell research, cloning, and contraception. It has been a particular sticking point for former chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics Leon Kass, who famously cited sheer repugnance as an appropriate foundation for moral opposition to such things. In “Ew, gross! The prissy bioethics of Leon Kass,” Garance Franke-Ruta writes:

Man, to use Kass’s favored term, possesses a fundamental and irreducible dignity based on “the godlikeness of human beings” It is from this, he argues, that “the sanctity of human life” derives.  But it is the impact of the “dehumanizing challenges of the brave new biology” and technology on “ways of life” that concerns Kass, rather than the impact on living individuals: “We need to understand that there is more at stake in the biological revolution than just saving life or avoiding death and suffering. We must also strive to protect and preserve human dignity and the ideas and practices that keep us human,” he writes. The goal of bioethics should not simply be to solve technical problems involving specific procedures via the issuance of rules, but “concern for the moral health of our entire community.” Consequently, it is humane ideals, not just human individuals, that must be protected and defended “[i]n a world whose once-given natural boundaries are blurred by technological change and whose moral boundaries are seemingly up for grabs.”  Those boundaries have, he argues, been damaged by three decades’ worth of advocacy by feminists, relativists, liberals (and liberationists and libertarians of all stripes), and gays and lesbians. Abortion, the sexual revolution, contraception, and “the extramarital use of the Pill”–all these changes have threatened our ability to understand natural relationships, and hence have led to the easy acceptance of technological interventions, particularly in the reproductive sphere, that make us increasingly unnatural, “post-human” beings. 

When humankind takes control of its biological destiny in a way that gives someone like Bachmann or Kass moral qualms, you can count on the accusation of “playing God” to come up. As a rather heavily modified person myself (extensive dental work, LASIK surgery, a fervent dedication to birth control), I find this to be a head-scratcher. Would they prefer that we go without, for example, vaccines? In the case of the HPV vaccine almost certainly yes, because like the “extramarital use of the Pill” (I guess marital use of it is okay) it’s a means of manipulating the body to protect it from deleterious health effects resulting from immoral conduct, and hence undignified. Presumably people getting the MMR or shingles vaccine need not worry too much about being unnatural and post-human.

Patrick Lee and Robert P. George (the latter of which served on the President’s Council on Bioethics with Kass) presented a slightly more nuanced view of things in their essay The Nature and Basis of Human Dignity, while still relying on “nature” as their justification:

The dignity of a person is that whereby a person excels other beings, especially other animals, and merits respect or consideration from other persons. We will argue that what distinguishes human beings from other animals, what makes human beings persons rather than things, is their rational nature. Human beings are rational creatures by virtue of possessing natural capacities for conceptual thought, deliberation, and free choice, that is, the natural capacity to shape their own lives. These basic, natural capacities to reason and make free choices are possessed by every human being, even those who cannot immediately exercise them. Being a person thus derives from the kind of substantial entity one is, a substantial entity with a rational nature—and this is the ground for dignity in the most important sense. Because personhood is based on the kind of being one is—a substantial entity whose nature is a rational nature—one cannot lose one’s fundamental personal dignity as long as one exists as a human being.

So, what makes one worthy of dignity is rationality, and humans (and humans alone) have dignity because they are the kind of beings whose nature is rational, even if the specific human in question is not rational at all either permanently or at the time of consideration. He/she belongs to the rational community by virtue of being of the right species, and that’s good enough. This consideration, as Lee and George later note in their essay, is to make clear that it can’t become permissible to abuse the dignity of the mentally disabled, which is admirable enough. They clarify that

While membership in the species Homo sapiens is sufficient for full moral worth, it is not in any direct sense the criterion for moral worth. If we discovered extra-terrestrial beings of a rational nature, or learned that some terrestrial species have a rational nature, then we would owe such beings full moral respect. Still, all members of the human species do have full moral worth because all of them do have a rational nature, though many of them are not able immediately to exercise basic capacities.

So if one of us should happen upon a rational chicken one day, it apparently renders the entire species dignified because that would show that it is the “nature” of chickens to be rational, even if many of them (i.e., every single other chicken) are not able immediately to exercise basic capacities. Goodbye, KFC.

That’s not a very realistic consideration, however. What’s more realistic is that humans, like every other species we have encountered, are closer to a “rational nature” at some points of their lives than others. That is, they are differently capable depending on the point in their ontogeny, their development. Lee and George are prepared to declare that this period of a human’s life decides humanity’s “nature,” and therefore its dignity. But why? Are we any less human at those points in life when we have not yet become rational, or when we’ve left rationality behind, or if we never really were in the first place? How can something be your “nature” if it’s not even a trait that can accurately be attributed to you? Even traits that will eventually apply to every single one of us sound frankly bizarre to describe as our nature– we all will, for example, die. Is it then our nature to be dead? They reply:

I have understood that the one nature, subject to death, is entailed by the other nature, composite living being, and from that knowledge I then advert to the thought of the individuals which possess those natures.

Then would it not be more fitting to describe the nature of humans regarding reason as subject to being rational? It sounds a lot more tenuous that way, but it’s certainly more truthful.

Lee and George use all of the buzz words and rhetoric one would employ if one wanted to argue that there is something essential to humans which separates them from other species as deserving moral consideration, regardless of what kind of human a specific individual is– a soul. A soul which, again, does not really belong to us but is actually on loan from God, which explains why the intentional death of a fetus which has not developed the cognitive capacity to understand what “dignity” is, and the intentional death of a human in a mentally vegetative state who has long since permanently lost the capacity to understand the same are both nevertheless affronts to their dignity, whereas the natural death of either is not. This also explains why although a rational nature (whether you are actually rational, or not) makes one a person and therefore in possession of full moral worth and dignity, exerting that rational nature in order to decide to end one’s own life is not permissible. That just wouldn’t be dignified.

Do I think that Michele Bachmann has actually read Lee and George, or Kass, or anyone like them, in order to form the foundation of her unshakable defense of the inherent dignity of human life? Nah. But she’s read the Cliff’s Notes and pulled all of the relevant talking points, and while seeking the office of president but not having served on the President’s Council on Bioethics, she comes right out and says it’s because we’re made in the image of God. In that regard she is not making an argument palpably different from Lee and George or Kass, but one that is a lot less subtle and most likely a good deal more honest.

Not allowed to be right about anything.

After posting a clip from Bill Maher’s show in which the comedian mocks the Republican presidential  candidates, Ed Brayton got some flack from readers complaining that they wouldn’t watch it because Maher has established himself as having some pseudoscientific views, specifically being anti-vaccination. When Ed expressed confusion about why that would mean refusing to listen to Maher’s comments on a completely unrelated issue, one response was:

Well Ed, sometimes people are annoyed to find that an idiot agrees with some of their positions. They feel, for whatever incredibly odd reason, that having a blithering idiot as a spokesperson is not the very best strategy they could hope for.  Examples for me are Maher and Hitchens. Great to hear them when they support me — both have a way with words (Hitchens even writes his, maybe Maher does his as well) — but I will always feel that their effectiveness is undercut by the fact that on some major — really major — issues they are idiots.

My reaction to this is utter bafflement. First, that it’s apparently an option between “supportive of my views” and “blithering idiot.” But mainly because I don’t understand why appreciating some things a person– especially a comedian– has to say means that you have somehow adopted him/her as your spokesperson.  What a mantle of responsibility to lay on someone you’ve never met, let alone never employed to speak for you! It’s as though public figures aren’t allow to have views of their own.

The ad hominem fallacy is not, as many confusedly believe, a statement that an argument is fallacious when it involves an insult to someone. It’s a statement that it’s fallacious to believe that you have discredited someone’s argument by disparaging something irrelevant about them, usually his/her character: Joe may sound like he has a good point about the feasibility of legalizing marijuana, but he’s a thief– don’t listen to him. Ronnie has a lot to say about public healthcare, but he’s a Republican and so can’t be trusted. Bill Maher might have something funny/insightful to say about the presidential election, but he’s an anti-vaxxer so I won’t listen. What?

If someone has valuable thoughts to offer, those thoughts can be appreciated without adopting that person’s worldview wholesale and allowing him/her to speak for you on every matter.  It’s important to realize this because no one in a position to advocate publicly for ideas that you hold dear is going to agree with you on everything. Nor are they infallible– everyone is wrong about at least a few things. At least.  They’re not even infallible in whatever area you find them to be dead-on. Christopher Hitchens is remarkably politically savvy, but that doesn’t mean he was correct in endorsing the invasion of Iraq. Nor, for that matter, did such an endorsement make him an idiot– it simply made him (in my view) wrong.  Richard Dawkins knows his arguments for and against the existence of God, but that doesn’t mean he was right to chastise Rebecca Watson for speaking out about a creepy come-on at a conference for atheists. There’s a certain of irony in the fact that both Hitchens and Dawkins are considered icons of the skeptical movement, yet so many within that movement are reluctant to be skeptical of them.  It’s as though continuing to evaluate claims on their own merits rather than the people making those claims is just too taxing, and so after identifying some heroes of skepticism people are content to turn their brains off and allow those heroes to do the thinking for them. Not very skeptical, that, whether you agree that Hitchens and Dawkins were wrong on these specific issues or not.

Having opted out in many realms of life so far, and being very accustomed to the idea, I realize that my feeling of repugnance for the practice of adopting uncritical acceptance of public figures as spokespeople is uncommon. But it’s something that should become more widespread, if ideas are really what is important rather than the mouths from which they come. A good idea is a good one no matter who is expressing it, and the same in reverse for a bad one. Let’s not be afraid to criticize our heroes when they’re wrong, or too willing dismiss everything a villain has to say as false and invalid. That’s what intellectual honesty requires.