Post truth politics: A partisan echo chamber

A recent Washington Post article describes a real-world example of how detached from truth politics can be. It also reveals how financially successful that post truth politics can be.

WaPo interviewed Paris Wade and Ben Goldman, the founders of the post truth, pro-Trump website LibertyWritersNews.com. Wade and Goldman are recent university graduates who were unable to get jobs that paid more than low wages. On discovering that post truth journalism could be financially lucrative, they started their new careers. The following illustrate the cognitive power and appeal of post truth journalism as practiced by Wade and Goldman:

1. Before starting LibertyWritersNews (LWN), Wade's revelation about the power of false information came from an article he wrote in about 10 minutes claiming proof that North Korea was experimenting on humans. He backed his fake story up with what Wade called a “totally misleading” photograph of a fleshy mass. Wade published the story and it made $120. According to the WaPO article, Wade observed that “it was a revelation: You have to trick people into reading the news.” (That Wade referred to the fake story as news instead of a fabrication reflects disregard for that bit of nuance)

2. Wade commented on a LWN article titled “THE TRUTH IS OUT! The Media Doesn’t Want You To See What Hillary Did After Losing... .” Wade observed that “nothing in this article is anti-media, but I’ve used this headline a thousand times. Violence and chaos and aggressive wording is what people are attracted to.” Goldman added “our audience does not trust the mainstream media. It’s definitely easier to hook them with that.” Wade added that “there’s not a ton of thought put into it. Other than it frames the story so it gets a click.”

3. In response to LWN articles, readers respond with things like (i) “YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I TRUST TO REPORT THE TRUTH” and (ii) “Arrest and hang him for war crimes” (in response to an old LWN article headline about George Soros, but with no connection to the article itself -- the old headline is reused because it keeps getting clicks). Wade and Goldman dismiss reader reactions like that. According to the WaPo article, “Goldman and Wade often tell each other they aren’t creating anything that’s not already there, that they’re simply fanning it, that readers know not to take their hyperbole and embellishments seriously. And even if the comments suggest otherwise, they try not to pay them too much attention.”

4. “There are times when Wade wonders what it would be like to write an article he truly believes in. ‘In a perfect world’, it would have nuance and balance and long paragraphs and take longer than 10 minutes to compose. It would make people think. But he never writes it, he says, because no one would click on it, so what would be the point?”

Indeed, why should any news or entertainment source bother with balance, nuance or any concern for truth in politics? What's the point? That's boring. And, it doesn't feel nearly as good as instantly responding to false realities that arouse irrational emotional responses. It require no conscious reason or effort but feels so very good.

Who knows? Maybe post truth politics is the ultimate in empty calories for the mind. It's just harmless brain candy, right?

B&B orig: 11/22/16

A New Contagious Disease: Trump Psychosis

Psychosis: a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.

Tribalism: the behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one's own tribe or social group, often in the face of underlying realities and reason that directly contradict tribe self-esteem or tribal political or social goals.

The December 7 issue of The Week magazine describes a new mental disease, that the medical division of B&B labels ‘Trump Psychosis’. The vector that spreads the disease is social media such as Facebook. The trigger is tribal political messaging, especially content that foments unwarranted emotions toward people and groups outside the tribe. The emotions typically constitute some combination of unwarranted fear, disgust, anger, hate, intolerance, distrust, xenophobia, homophobia, racism, bigotry and misogyny. The following true story shows just how severe this is for millions of Americans on the political right. How common TP is on the political left is not known, but is likely to exist to some extent.[1]

Christopher Blair's sarcasm gone horribly wrong: The Week’s story, Nothing on this Page is Real, describes how Christopher Blair, a liberal, decided to play a gotcha game with his Facebook page during the 2016 elections. It goes like this:

His wife had left for work and his children were on their way to school, but waiting online was his other community, an unreality where nothing was exactly as it seemed. He logged onto his website and began to invent his first news story of the day.

"BREAKING," he wrote, pecking out each letter with his index fingers as he considered the possibilities. Maybe he would announce that Hillary Clinton had died during a secret overseas mission to smuggle more refugees into America. Maybe he would award President Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for his courage in denying climate change.

Blair had launched his website on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign as a practical joke among friends — a political satire site started by Blair and a few other liberal bloggers who wanted to make fun of what they considered to be extremist ideas spreading throughout the far right. In the past two years on his page, America's Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former President Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former President Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9.

"Nothing on this page is real," read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair's site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, amassing an audience of as many as six million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker.

Now he hunched over a desk wedged between an overturned treadmill and two turtle tanks, scanning through conservative forums on Facebook for something that might inspire his next post. . . . . He noticed a photo online of Trump standing at attention for the national anthem during a White House ceremony. Behind the president were several dozen dignitaries, including a white woman standing next to a black woman, and Blair copied the picture, circled the two women in red, and wrote the first thing that came into his mind. "President Trump extended an olive branch and invited Michelle Obama and Chelsea Clinton," Blair wrote. “They thanked him by giving him 'the finger' during the national anthem. Lock them up for treason!”

The white woman was not in fact Chelsea Clinton but former White House strategist Hope Hicks. The black woman was not Michelle Obama but former Trump aide Omarosa Newman. Neither Obama nor Clinton had been invited to the ceremony. Nobody had flipped off the president. The entire premise was utterly ridiculous, which was exactly Blair's point.

"We live in an Idiocracy," read a small note on Blair's desk, and he was taking full advantage. In a good month, the advertising revenue from his website earned him as much as $15,000, and it had also won him a loyal army of online fans. Hundreds of liberals now visited America's Last Line of Defense to humiliate conservatives who shared Blair's fake stories as fact.

“How could any thinking person believe this nonsense?” he said. He hit ‘publish’ and watched as his lie began to spread.

Shirley Chapian

It was barely dawn in Pahrump, Nevada, when Shirley Chapian, 76, logged onto Facebook for her morning computer game of Criminal Case. She believed in starting each day with a problem-solving challenge, a quick mental exercise to keep her brain sharp more than a decade into retirement.

For years she had watched network TV news, but increasingly Chapian wondered about the widening gap between what she read online and what she heard on the networks. One far-right Facebook group eventually led her to the next with targeted advertising, and soon Chapian was following more than 2,500 conservative pages, an ideological echo chamber that often trafficked in skepticism. Climate change was a hoax. The mainstream media was censored or scripted. Political Washington was under control of a “deep state.”

She lived alone, and on many days her only personal interaction occurred here, on Facebook. Mixed into her morning news feed were photos and updates from some of her 300 friends, but most items came directly from political groups Chapian had chosen to follow: Free Speech Patriots, Taking Back America, Ban Islam, Trump 2020, and Rebel Life.

Now another post arrived in her news feed, from a page called America's Last Line of Defense, which Chapian had been following for more than a year. It showed a picture of Trump standing at a White House ceremony. Circled in the background were two women, one black and one white.

"President Trump extended an olive branch and invited Michelle Obama and Chelsea Clinton," the post read. "They thanked him by giving him 'the finger' during the national anthem."

Chapian looked at the photo and nothing about it surprised her. Of course Trump had invited Clinton and Obama to the White House in a generous act of patriotism. Of course the Democrats — or "Demonrats," as Chapian sometimes called them — had acted badly and disrespected America.

"Well, they never did have any class," she wrote.

"Gross. Those women have no respect for themselves," wrote a woman in Fort Washakie, Wyoming. "They deserve to be publicly shunned," said a man in Gainesville, Florida. "Not surprising behavior from such ill bred trash." "Jail them now!!!"

Blair had fooled them. Now came his favorite part, the gotcha.

“OK, taters. Here's your reality check,” he wrote on America's Last Line of Defense, placing his comment prominently alongside the original post. “That is Omarosa and Hope Hicks, not Michelle Obama and Chelsea Clinton. They wouldn't be caught dead posing for this pseudo-patriotic nationalistic garbage. ... Congratulations, stupid.”

Blair didn't have time to confront each of the several hundred thousand conservatives who followed his Facebook page, so he'd built a community of more than 100 liberals to police the page with him. Together they patrolled the comments, venting their own political anger, shaming conservatives who had been fooled, taunting them, baiting them into making racist comments that could then be reported to Facebook. Blair said he and his followers had gotten hundreds of people banned from Facebook and several others fired or demoted in their jobs for offensive behavior online.

“That's kind of an ironic comment coming from pure trailer trash [Chapian just happens to live in a trailer she painted purple], don't you think? You're a gullible moron who just fell for a fake story on a Liberal satire page. Welcome to the internet. Critical thinking required.”

Chapian saw the comments after her post and wondered as she often did when she was attacked: Who were these people? And what were they talking about? Of course Michelle Obama and Chelsea Clinton had flipped off the president. It was true to what she knew of their character. That was what mattered.

A Muslim woman with her burqa on fire: like. A policeman using a baton to beat a masked antifa protester: like. Hillary Clinton looking gaunt and pale: like. A military helicopter armed with machine guns and headed toward the caravan of immigrants: like.

Instead of responding directly to strangers on America's Last Line of Defense, Chapian wrote on her own Facebook page. “Nasty liberals,” she said, and then she went back to her news feed, each day blending into the next.

That is Trump Psychosis. Ms. Chapian and millions of others on the political right have it.[1] It would be very interesting if the liberal mob that attacks people that Blair tricks would switch to tactics that treat misled people with respect and calmly explain the error and why it arose. Despite Blair's Facebook page stating that everything there is a pack of lies, thousands of people with Trump Psychosis ignore that and believe the lies because they feed the deranged fantasy the psychosis induces. Would calm, non-insulting explanations make any difference? There is no way to know. Mr. Blair and his army of gotcha minions would need to agree to try the experiment.

From what this observer can tell, this kind of mental disease was not possible until (1) the rise of social media, and (2) the rise of a tribal national leader like Trump who holds truth and sound reason in open contempt. Journalists and researchers have noticed the tribal, emotional contagion that Trump spreads and it seems that social media is the perfect vector for this tribal disease.

The social media basis for Trump Psychosis raises the question of what is the balance of social good to social bad of social media. Is it about 50:50? Or, could social media be more bad than good, say, about 40% good and about 60% bad? Maybe over time an answer to that might become clearer. Just how much deeper the disease will spread into American society is unknowable, so the matter of cost-benefit cannot be assessed.

Poor Ms. Chapian. She has been deceived and used by tribal Trump, tribal conservatism, tribal populism and a tribal republican party that can no longer accept or deal with reality, facts and reason. How much is she to blame for her disease? About 50:50? Or, is she about about 60% responsible and her tribe about 40% responsible? What responsibility, if any, do Mr. Blair and his attacking gotcha minions bear for anything? It is all based on constitutionally protected free speech. Some people make a living by posting empty brain candy online for political tribe members to mindlessly enjoy.

Finally, if Trump Psychosis isn't a real disease, then what is it? Is this really within the scope of what is considered normal mental functioning for adult Americans? Does it matter that people like this can vote?

Footnote:
1. Trump psychosis exists on the political left. Millions of Americans trust sources that pander to leftist political tribalism. Sites that defend Russia and spread anti-American and anti-European Union lies and propaganda influence many people.

B&B orig: 12/10/18

Israeli Lobby Power Quashes US Criticism of Israel

The Washington Post describes a brazen example of US pro-Israel lobby power: “Last week, Marc Lamont Hill, academic, activist and media personality, addressed the United Nations at its commemoration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Hill’s speech was a bold call because it countered U.S.-led orthodoxy clinging to a two-state solution despite a one-state reality in which Palestinians are neither sovereigns of their own state nor citizens of Israel. Hill’s closing words, imploring international actors to support Palestinian freedom ‘from the river to the sea’, effectively demanded the dismantlement of an apartheid regime and the establishment of a bi-national state. In that sense, his views are commensurate with leading voices critical of the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet apologists for Israeli policies quickly mobilized a vicious smear and harassment campaign. CNN responded by firing Hill, and the chairman of Temple University’s board of trustees said he was searching for ways to essentially punish Hill, a media studies professor there.

His speech forms an important part of a renewed manifestation of Black-Palestinian solidarity, itself a component of a longer legacy of black internationalism and Third Worldism. In this sense, his speech echoed a discourse and vibrancy once emblematic of diplomatic revolutionary efforts at the United Nations that had receded in the folds of a collapsed internationalism.

The U.N. General Assembly established the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in 1977 in the wake of systematic U.S. efforts to undermine an international resolution to the question of Palestine. This U.S. intransigence formed part of its imperial global role, ranging from military interventions in Vietnam to its diplomatic protection of apartheid South Africa in the U.N. Security Council.

Contemporary renewals of Black-Palestinian solidarity have faced aggressive attacks by the U.S. liberal establishment. In 2016, Black Lives Matter (BLM) member groups published a platform outlining domestic and international policy toward the advancement of black freedom. It squarely endorsed solidarity with Palestinians. In the section on U.S. foreign policy, it described Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as tantamount to genocide and endorsed the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel.

The concerted attacks on Hill not only represent a liberal heterodoxy and double standard on the question of Palestine. They also fit into a legacy of repressing black internationalists and the black radical tradition in the United States. Ironically, this episode is making vividly clear what a transnational movement has proclaimed for decades: Black and Palestinian struggles are entwined and represent a joint struggle for freedom. In its attempt to squash this trend, the liberal establishment, led by CNN, has inadvertently made this movement even stronger.”

Writing on the same incident, The Nation comments: “CNN fired its popular commentator the Temple University professor and public intellectual Marc Lamont Hill last week. Contrary to most reporting, Hill was not actually fired as a result of the speech he gave at the United Nations on November 28—he was fired as a result of powerful pro-Israel forces, most notably the Anti-Defamation League or ADL, who used the speech to demand that he be fired.

Dr. Hill’s comments were not anti-Semitic; they were anti-oppression, rooted in history and calling for a common humanity, grounded in the rights of all people, whether Palestinian or Jewish, African or European, black or Native American, Latinx or white.

Early in his speech Hill noted that ‘while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that all people are ‘born free and equal in dignity and rights,’ the Israeli nation state continues to restrict freedom and undermine equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as those in the West Bank and Gaza.’”

As always, the Israel-Palestine dispute is bitterly contested and each side routinely accuses the other of lies, propaganda, bad faith and insane levels of brutality and hate. When Prime Minister Rabin was murdered by a political extremist with a gun in 1995, it seemed apparent then that the peace process was dead and would never lead to a solution. That turned out to be true from the end of 1995 until today, 23 years later.

Given the fact that there will never be a free and independent Palestinian state, America really should rethink the US-Israel alliance. At present, it looks like the Palestinian people are forever doomed to live in poverty, misery, blinding rage and actual imprisonment. Is that what America stands for? Apparently it is.

For context, the cost-benefit of the alliance to the US over the years since 1948 is in the hundreds of billions in aid and repercussions for the alliance. The total arguably approaches $1 trillion.*** The US also suffers political fallout from supporting Israel, which has hampered global US interests and arguably efforts at global peace.

***
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel
https://www.wrmea.org/002-may/distorting-u.s.-foreign-policy-the-israel-lobby-and-american-power.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver (a significant part of bin Laden's rationale for attacking the US on 9/11 was the US-Israel alliance)
https://www.thebalance.com/cost-of-afghanistan-war-timeline-economic-impact-4122493 (Afghan war cost)

B&B orig: 12/11/18

Are Political Moral Beliefs Out Of Control?

In 2004, Paul Graham, a computer scientist and entrepreneur, wrote an essay on his blog about the power of moral fashion. This topic seems timely and broadly applicable to society and politics. He wrote:

Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it.

What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.

If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where you went: you'd have to watch what you said. Opinions we consider harmless could have gotten you in big trouble. I've already said at least one thing that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble when he said it—that the earth moves.

I want to do more than just shock everyone with the heresy du jour. I want to find general recipes for discovering what you can't say, in any era.

The Conformist Test

Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think what you're told.

The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.

Like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes. And anyone who makes the same mistakes probably didn't do it by accident. It would be like someone claiming they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were a good idea.

Trouble

What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at things people do say, and get in trouble for.

Of course, we're not just looking for things we can't say. We're looking for things we can't say that are true, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. . . . . The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

Although moral fashions tend to arise from different sources than fashions in clothing, the mechanism of their adoption seems much the same. The early adopters will be driven by ambition: self-consciously cool people who want to distinguish themselves from the common herd. As the fashion becomes established they'll be joined by a second, much larger group, driven by fear. [9] This second group adopt the fashion not because they want to stand out but because they are afraid of standing out.

So if you want to figure out what we can't say, look at the machinery of fashion and try to predict what it would make unsayable. What groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to suppress? What ideas were tarnished by association when they ended up on the losing side of a recent struggle? If a self-consciously cool person wanted to differentiate himself from preceding fashions (e.g. from his parents), which of their ideas would he tend to reject? What are conventional-minded people afraid of saying?

This technique won't find us all the things we can't say. I can think of some that aren't the result of any recent struggle. Many of our taboos are rooted deep in the past. But this approach, combined with the preceding four, will turn up a good number of unthinkable ideas.

Graham's essay continues in that vein.

Are moral fashions out of control in America in terms of undue bad effects on free speech? Graham points out that people with opinions that cannot be voiced can simply keep quiet, but with the caveat “I admit it seems cowardly to keep quiet.” People who voice such opinions sometimes face repercussions that include loss of a job or a whole career. Sometimes loss of life is the result.

This essay is striking in view of the four moral values that underpin the anti-bias ideology that B&B advocates. Belief in two of those values, fidelity to truth and facts and application of less biased or less flawed reasoning to truth and facts arguably constitutes a mindset that defines the contours of opinions that cannot be voiced.

But is that really true?

How does one evaluate perceptions of reality, thinking and opinions based on lies, deceit or unwarranted emotional manipulation? What is the balance of social and political good vs bad in that? More bad than good? Variable, depending on circumstances? In the beholder’s eye?

Probably mostly in the beholder’s eye under the circumstances the beholder is in when exposed to heresy.

What would the anti-bias ideology tend to do to people who express opinions that cannot be expressed? Based on the intent behind the ideology, that would depend on whether the opinion or thinking is based on dark free speech*** or honest free speech. If it is honest free speech that is speaking, anti-bias would do nothing about it other than confront honest mistakes in fact or reason, if any, and make whatever counter arguments there may be.

*** Dark free speech: Lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity, unwarranted emotional manipulation such as fomenting unwarranted fear, anger, hate, intolerance, disgust, bigotry, etc.

On the other hand, if heresy or contested ideas rely on dark free speech, should that be subject to repercussions? Does it matter if the person is working for a business when the speech is made? Why should society tolerate dark free speech, even if it is legal, constitutionally protected speech?

On some college campuses, speakers have been blocked from speaking due to the content of their messages. The term liberal snowflake bubbles up. What if the speaker's message is a mix of honest free speech and dark free speech? Does the ratio, say 20% honest and 80% dark, or vice versa, make any difference? The intent behind anti-bias is to make dark free speech less socially tolerable, and that could lead to acceptance of shutting off legal opportunities to squelch speech that contains ‘too much’ dark free speech.

In science there are some ideas that may have some science credibility, but are intensely upsetting to many people. One of those ideas is that whites are more intelligent than blacks. Another is that genetic factors lead to more men being more exceptional than women due at least in part to more genetic diversity among men compared to women. Jobs and careers maybe have been adversely affected by expressing those ideas, even though the speaker was employing honest free speech. Is that an out of control moral fashion?

Obviously, the difference between honest and dark free speech is the speaker’s intent. Honest mistakes have to be allowable because to err is human and always will be. But it is also human, at least for some humans, to lie, deceive and emotionally manipulate. Is there a justifiable basis for moral backlash against dark free speech? Who gets to decide? What backlash is acceptable, e.g., should a political speaker who uses non-trivial amounts of dark free speech to advance the speaker’s personal, political or economic agenda be subject to some form of censure or public rebuke? Should scientists subject to harsher penalties because the whole point of science is, in essence, an anti-bias endeavor? What about an employee who releases information embarrassing to a company?

B&B orig: 12/13/18

Poll Data Suggests Most Americans Disbelieve Trump's False Statements

The Washington Post just released poll data showing most Americans disbelieve most of Trump's false and misleading claims. That is good news. WaPo writes:

Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans — including fewer than 4 in 10 Republicans — believe these or several other prominent claims by the president, according to the poll.

The poll sought to determine what Americans believe — the truth or the president. The Post has never conducted this type of poll before and it serves as the most comprehensive examination of whether Trump’s false and misleading claims have taken root among the broader American public.

Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers — about 1 in 6 adults in the survey — did majorities accept several, though not all, of his falsehoods as true.

False claims commonly made by Democrats are more widely believed than those made by the president. For instance, 46 percent of adults incorrectly believe there are more people in prison for selling or possessing marijuana than for all violent crimes, an assertion made by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in June. That compares with 22 percent who correctly said violent criminals were more common in prison.

Where Americans get their information is a significant factor in determining what they believe.

Among adults who say Fox News is one of their top two sources for political news, 33 percent believe in Trump’s false claims tested in the poll, on average, compared with 21 percent of those who say Fox is not a main news source.

Americans who count MSNBC and CNN as one of their top two news sources are somewhat more likely to reject Trump’s falsehoods but are also more likely to believe false statements made by Democrats. On average, 44 percent of MSNBC viewers and 40 percent of CNN viewers believe false Democratic claims, compared with 30 percent of those who say MSNBC is not a primary news source and 28 percent who do not primarily watch CNN.

More than 6 in 10 Americans say they believe fact-checking organizations when they conclude that Trump has made a false claim. Just about half are confident in similar assertions in newspapers and on cable news.

If that poll data holds up, it is some evidence that Trump's constant lies and polarizing rhetoric have not made all people gullible enough to believe his constant stream of lies and BS.

What the poll apparently did not ask is how people feel about being lied to or BSed on. It is possible that many or most do not think very negatively about it, maybe dismissing it as politics as usual, but a little worse.

For people who hold lies and BS (disregard for truth) as core moral political sins, the evidence of Trump's lies, deceit and BS should render him as judged to be unfit to serve. Maybe even deserving of removal from office. That pro-truth mindset is one thing the anti-bias ideology is intended to instill in the American people. Unfortunately, the poll suggests we are probably not there yet in terms of moral indignation:

The Post poll also suggests Republicans have grown less concerned about presidents being honest than they were a decade ago. A separate question in the Post poll finds that clear majorities across party lines say it is never acceptable for political leaders to make false statements. But 41 percent of Republicans say false claims are sometimes acceptable “in order to do what’s right for the country,” while 25 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of independents say the same.

B&B orig: 12/14/18

Taxation and Religious Liberty: The Walz Decision on Tax Exemptions

...The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment [ against separation of church and state ], exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.
...Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? ~ James Madison, author of the First Amendment and of Memorial and Remonstrance

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness... ~ Thomas Jefferson, The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

...all civil states with their officers of justice in their respective constitutions and administrations are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual or Christian state and worship.

...they say that the civil power may erect and establish what form of civil government may seem in wisdom most meet, I acknowledge...that a civil government is an ordinance of God...

But from this grant I infer...that the sovereign, original, and foundation of civil power lies in the people... And, if so, that a people may erect and establish what form of government seems to them most meet for their civil condition...

And, if so, that the magistrates receive their power of governing the church from the people, undeniably it follows that a people...have...a power to govern the church, to see her do her duty, to correct her, to redress, reform, establish, etc. And if this be not to pull God and Christ and Spirit out of heaven, and subject them unto natural, sinful, inconstant men, and so consequently to Satan himself, by whom all peoples naturally are guided, let heaven and earth judge... ~ Roger Williams, A Plea for Religious Liberty

In November, 1969 a case was argued before the Supreme Court in which the appellant, Frederick Walz, sought to prevent the state of New York from exempting churches from taxation. Walz lost his case, and as a consequence it became law in the United States, that religious organizations should be exempted from paying taxes. The Chief Justice in the Case, Warren Burger ( of the famed "Warren Court" ), argued the majority decision this way:

It is sufficient to note that, for the men who wrote the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, the "establishment" of a religion connoted sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity. In England, and in some Colonies at the time of the separation in 1776, the Church of England was sponsored and supported by the Crown as a state, or established, church; in other countries, "establishment" meant sponsorship by the sovereign of the Lutheran or Catholic Church...The exclusivity of established churches in the 17th and 18th centuries, of course, was often carried to prohibition of other forms of worship...

The Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment are not the most precisely drawn portions of the Constitution. The sweep of the absolute prohibitions in the Religion Clauses may have been calculated, but the purpose was to state an objective, not to write a statute. In attempting to articulate the scope of the two Religion Clauses, the Court's opinions reflect the limitations inherent in formulating general principles on a case by-case basis. The considerable internal inconsistency in the opinions of the Court derives from what, in retrospect, may have been too sweeping utterances on aspects of these clauses that seemed clear in relation to the particular cases, but have limited meaning as general principles.

The Court has struggled to find a neutral course between the two Religion Clauses, both of which are cast in absolute terms, and either of which, if expanded to a ... logical extreme, would tend to clash with the other.

Justice Berger thus argues, in strict contradiction to the logic of religious freedom as expressed by its Constitutional author and his direct influences, that the state "[ may ] force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment," and that it may "compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors", even to " [ deprive ] him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness...". He does this on the basis that the "utterances on...these clauses...have limited meaning" and "tend to clash" with each other.

There are a number of key aspects of Berger's decision, which beyond the questionable legal view of these Constitutional "utterances" include arguments from finance, from history, from jurisprudence, and reason. The financial argument is perhaps the most transparently false and misleading argument he makes, where he claims:

The legislative purpose of the property tax exemption is neither the advancement nor the inhibition of religion; it is neither sponsorship nor hostility...It ... has not singled out one particular church or religious group, or even churches as such; rather, it has granted exemption to all houses of religious worship ...The State has an affirmative policy that considers these groups as beneficial and stabilizing influences in community life and finds this classification useful, desirable, and in the public interest...

and, having argued that exemptions neither advance nor inhibit religion, goes on to say

Granting tax exemptions to churches necessarily operates to afford an indirect economic benefit, and also gives rise to some, but yet a lesser, involvement than taxing...Obviously a direct money subsidy would be a relationship pregnant with involvement and, as with most governmental grant programs, could encompass sustained and detailed administrative relationships for enforcement of statutory or administrative standards, but that is not this case...

...The grant of a tax exemption is not sponsorship, since the government does not transfer part of its revenue to churches, but simply abstains from demanding that the church support the state...The exemption creates only a minimal and remote involvement between church and state, and far less than taxation of churches. It restricts the fiscal relationship between church and state, and tends to complement and reinforce the desired separation insulating each from the other.

We tend to view the pronouncements of the Supreme Court as being not only definitive, but carefully elucidated, reasoned, and generally coherent if not necessarily agreeable. Americans do not, as a rule, consider the quality of jurisprudence in this regard so much as they side with or against its outcome. This is perhaps the opposite of the apolitical purpose to which the Court is supposedly dedicated, which should above all rely on the quality of its argument to mandate its conclusion. This being the case, it seems straightforward that those decisions which have no such mandate, for which the legal reasoning is weak or spurious or even in contradiction to the facts, ought not be considered prudential but entirely political and thus a questionable ruling especially in terms of stare decisis, or legal precedence.

I think Justice Burger's majority opinion fails to satisfy the test of a reasoned, coherent conclusion arrived at by a process of law rather than by political exigency. His financial argument is only the most obvious failure: it claims simultaneously that tax exemptions are and are not financially supportive of religion, that it does not represent the state transferring revenue to churches - just try arguing that before the IRS and see how far it gets you - and that "direct money" would be a clear violation of the First Amendment, when in fact the only sense in which tax exemptions are not a "direct" payment is in Congressional parlance - not law, not finance, and certainly not in practical effect. Further, the supposition that exempting churches from the same responsibilities owed by all other citizens somehow represents a lesser involvement by the state is to fundamentally oppose the idea of religious freedom as expressed by Jefferson, Madison, Locke, and Williams. Indeed, Burger's finding absolutely contradicts the very argument Madison made which won religious liberty its place in the Constitution, where such a law " violates equality by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle, by granting to others peculiar exemptions."

Q U E S T I O N S :
1) Would you consider it a gift if your landlord or mortgage holder forgave you your rent for a given period? Would you have extra money in your account you might not have had otherwise? Would the landlord have less than he might have otherwise had?

2) If the answer to 1) is "yes", then on what basis can tax exemptions not be considered support for religion?

3) If such exemptions are support, and if the vast majority of churches which receive them are Christian in religion, then is this not " sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity"? Does this not meet Burger's own definition of the violation of the Establishment Clause?

R E F E R E N C E S :
James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments
Thomas Jefferson, A Plea for Religious Liberty
John Locke, A Letter Concerning [ Religious ] Toleration
Justice Warren Burger, Walz Majority Decision

B&B orig: 12/15/18