The Darwinian Science of the Natural Right to Punish in Lockean Liberalism

John Locke's liberalism depends ultimately on two inseparable doctrines--the idea of the state of nature and the idea that in the state of nature everyone has the "executive power of the law of nature."  These two ideas sustain the fundamental thought of Lockean liberalism--that each individual has a natural right to defend himself against those who use or threaten force that would deny his liberty, that the only proper role of government is to use force defensively against aggressors who have initiated force, and that each individual has the right to resist a government that itself becomes an aggressive user of force to threaten individual liberty.

Those two ideas--the state of nature and the natural executive power to punish--are empirical claims about human nature and human history.  Darwinian science can help us test those claims against the pertinent evidence.

I want to make a general point here about the study of political philosophy.  Much of the study of the history of political philosophy is rightly devoted to studying the history of ideas. But ultimately shouldn't our primary concern be judging the truth of those ideas based on our assessment of the relevant evidence?

So, for example, Darwinian anthropology can confirm the reality of the state of nature as the original condition of humanity by showing how our earliest hunting-gathering ancestors lived in nomadic foraging bands, in which all adults lived as equally free individuals, aggressively defending their autonomy against bullies who might try to dominate them.  This was the evolutionary state of nature in which human nature was shaped.  Some of my posts on this can be found here and here, with links to others.

Some of the scholarly commentators on Locke would object that Locke saw the state of nature as a moral fiction rather than as a historical reality.  John Dunn, for example, claimed that Locke's idea of the state of nature represents "neither a piece of philosophical anthropology nor a piece of conjectural history," because it has "no transitive empirical content whatsoever" (1969, 103).  Other scholars see Locke's state of nature as both historical reality and moral fiction (Ashcraft 1968, 1987; Waldron 1989).  And some others emphasize Locke's account of the state of nature as the natural history of primitive foraging bands like the American Indians (Myers 1998; Pangle 1988; Strauss 1953, 230-31).

The decisive evidence for Locke's state of nature as an anthropological historical reality is Locke's reliance on the many anthropological reports about the American Indians, which was part of the European intellectual interest in New World natural history arising from the European discovery of America (Arneil 1996; Batz 1974; Elliott 1972; Glat 1981; Martens 2016; Meek 2011).  I have emphasized the importance for Locke of books such as Jose de Acosta's The Natural and Moral History of the Indies (ST, sec. 102).  In his edition of Locke's Two Treatises, Peter Laslett provides footnotes with quotations from the books on America in Locke's library that echo Locke's description of the state of nature.  Studying such books led Locke to declare: "In the beginning, all the World was America," and therefore it is a "Pattern of the first Ages in Asia and Europe" (ST, secs. 49, 108).

Here I will turn to Locke's account of the natural right to punish, which he calls the executive power of the law of nature.  This will be followed by another post on the evidence from Darwinian anthropology supporting Locke's idea.

Locke claims that in the state of nature, there is a law of nature "that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions" (ST, sec. 6).  But then he immediately qualifies this no-harm principle by saying that one may rightly harm another in punishing someone for an offense against the law of nature.  This must be so because the law of nature could not be a true law if it were not enforced by punishment of those who violate it.  Enforcing the no-harm principle requires harming those who would harm us.

In the state of nature, Locke explains:

"The Execution of the Law of Nature is in that State, put into every Mans hands, whereby everyone has a right to punish the transgressors of that Law to such a Degree, as may hinder its Violation.  For the Law of Nature would, as all other Laws that concern Men in this World, be in vain, if there were no body that in the State of Nature, had a Power to Execute that Law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders, and if any one in the State of Nature may punish another, for any evil he has done, every one may do so.  For in that State of perfect Equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one, over another, what any may do in Prosecution of that Law, every one must needs have a Right to do" (sec. 7).

Notice that Locke does not rely on divine punishment to enforce the law of nature.  The law of nature, like all the other laws that concern "Men in this World" would be in "vain" if individual human beings did not punish the offenders of that law.  This punishment has two distinct purposes: restraint and reparation (secs. 8, 10-11).  Punishing for restraint is to prevent or deter misconduct, and everyone has the right to punish for this purpose.  Punishing for reparation belongs only to the injured party, who seeks some recompense for the damages he has suffered.

Locke indicates that this human punishment of offenders in the state of nature works at three levels.  Through first-party punishment, individuals punish themselves through conscience and guilt (secs. 8, 21, 122, 209).  Through second-party punishment, individuals punish their tormentor through retaliation and revenge (secs. 8, 10-11, 18-19).  Through third-party punishment, individuals can join with those who have been injured unjustly for a collective punishment of the offender (sec. 10).

Locke suggests, however, that there are at least three problems with relying on the individual right to punish to enforce the law of nature in the state of nature (secs. 123-126).

First, there's the problem of knowledge:  many individuals do not have a clear and unbiased knowledge of the law of nature.  In the Letter Concerning Toleration (43), Locke says that the American Indians are "strict Observers of the Rules of Equity and the Law of Nature."  But in the Second Treatise (sec. 123), he says that in the state of nature "the greater part" of men are "no strict Observers of Equity and Justice."  In fact, some men are so "degenerate" that they have no knowledge of the law of nature, and they become like wild animals in their violent attacks on others (ST, secs. 10-11, 128).

Second, there's the problem of partiality: individuals being partial to themselves often cannot render impartial judgment in their own cases, and they are often negligent or unconcerned in judging the cases of others.

Third, there's the problem of cost:  punishment can be too costly to execute, because the offender will fight back and inflict injury on those who try to punish him.

To solve these three problems, people will give up their powers in the state of nature for legislating, judging, and executing the law of nature (secs. 128-131).  They will consent to enter a political society with governmental institutions for legislating, judging, and executing positive laws for the whole community that conform to the law of nature.  This can solve the problem of knowledge, because the legislative power will publicly promulgate the laws.  This can solve the problem of partiality, because the judicial power will decide legal cases through impartial and fair judges.  This can solve the problem of cost, because the executive power will employ the collective force of the community to punish lawbreakers in ways that minimize the costs of punishment for individuals.  All of this should serve the common good of the whole community--in securing the natural rights of all individuals to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

Of course, this goal can never be fully achieved, because the inevitable conflicts of interest that arise in every community will incline those with political power to use that power to favor their own interests over the interests of others, and thus government will often fail to promote the public good in securing the natural rights of all.  If government becomes utterly tyrannical, then the rights of those being exploited are less secure under government than they would have been in the state of nature, because in a tyrannical government, the rulers can use the collective force of government to exploit the ruled (secs. 91-93).

If the government was imposed on the people by conquerors, and if the people never consented to that government, even if only by acquiescence, then they are still in a state of war in a state of nature, and they can exercise their natural executive power in violent resistance to their rulers (secs. 175-196J).

If the people did originally consent to their government, they can still rightly resist their government when it becomes tyrannical, because "the Obligations of the Law of Nature, cease not in Society" (sec. 135).  And so if government does not conform to the law of nature, individuals have the natural right to resistance in meeting force with force.

The question will always be "Who shall be Judge whether the Prince or Legislative act contrary to their Trust?" Locke's answer is "The People shall be Judge."  Or even "every Man is Judge for himself." They can "appeal to Heaven," as did Jephtha, which is to say that they can go to war against their government, and this dispute will be settled by battle (secs. 20-21, 239-243).

The assertion of natural rights depends on the forceful resistance to tyranny, which suggests that it is really true that might makes right.  Natural rights emerge in history as those conditions for human life that cannot be denied without eventually provoking the natural human tendency of individuals to forceful rebellion against exploitation. Thus it is that individuals claim their executive power of the law of nature in punishing those who violate their natural rights.

But then we might wonder why Locke refers to this teaching about the natural executive power as a "very strange Doctrine" (secs. 9, 13).  Leo Strauss and the Straussians--such as Michael Zuckert (1994)--have argued that Locke is intimating that this doctrine is "very strange" in the sense that it breaks with the traditional Aristotelian and Thomistic teaching about natural law.  As a statement of the traditional teaching, Strauss (1953, 222) cites a passage in Aquinas's Summa Theologica (II-II, q. 64, a. 3), in which Aquinas answers no to the question "Whether it is lawful for a private individual to kill a man who has sinned?"  Aquinas explains that only those with public authority to punish criminals can do this, not private individuals.

Strauss is silent, however, about the fact that a few pages after this passage, Aquinas answers yes to the question "Whether it is lawful to kill a man in self-defense?" (II-II, q. 64, a. 7).  Killing in self-defense is not murder as long as one's primary intention is to save innocent life from attack, and killing the attacker is an unavoidable side effect.  One can rightly kill an attacker in self-defense only when there is no non-lethal way to stop the attacker.  Contrary to Strauss's claim, this seems to coincide with Locke's teaching that when innocent life is threatened by an attacker, and there is no way to call in a public authority to stop the attack, then at that moment one has been put into a state of nature where one can use one's natural executive power to kill the attacker, thus enforcing the right of self-preservation in the law of nature (secs. 11, 16, 18).

Strauss is also silent about Aquinas's argument that vengeance (vindicatio) is lawful and virtuous so far as it moves us to punish harmful wrongdoers, either in defending ourselves from harm or in avenging a harm (II-II, q. 108, aa. 1-3).  Aquinas explains that vengeance belongs to the virtue of justice, and it expresses a natural inclination that we share with other animals who show an irascible power to retaliate against those who attack them.  This natural inclination to punish those who threaten us with harm expresses "natural right" (ius naturale).  (I have written a post on Aquinas's remarkable support for vengeance, in contrast to the turn-the-other-cheek teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.)  Obedience to law, Aquinas observes, depends on the fear of punishment (ST, I-II, q. 92, a. 2; q. 100, a. 9).  So, if there is a natural law, there must be a natural punishment.

This natural law of punishment through self-defense and vengeance was recognized by Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan, if only briefly, and then elaborated by Richard Cumberland in his Treatise of the Laws of Nature.  Cumberland's account was a likely source for Locke's idea of the natural executive power, as suggested by Strauss (1953, 222, n. 83) and Zuckert (1994, 364-65).

Near the end of Chapter 31 of Leviathan, Hobbes has a short section on "natural punishments."  Hobbes observes that natural laws are enforced by the natural punishments that arise as natural consequences of violating those natural laws.  So, for example, injustice is punished by the violence of enemies.  Or as he puts it in the Latin version of Leviathan, "those who use violence are punished by the violence of others; . . . and such are what I call natural punishments" (Hobbes 2012, pp. 572-73).

Cumberland's Treatise, first published in 1672, was one of the first attempts to refute Hobbes's theories.  In arguing that Hobbes was inconsistent with himself in denying the obligations of the law of nature in the state of nature, Cumberland points out that Hobbes's remarks about "natural punishments" show how, even in the state of nature without any civil government, human beings are naturally inclined to vengeance against those who violate the law of nature, which provides the natural sanction for that law of nature.  And since human beings are equal in their liberty in the state of nature, each individual would have the equal natural right to punish wrongdoers, so that the likely costs of wrongdoing would outweigh any likely benefits.  Consequently, even those men who might be so evil as to lack any conscience that would recognize God's punishment of sin could not escape the punishment coming from human vengeance against injustice (Cumberland 2005, I.26, V.25).

The crucial point here is that for natural law to be truly natural, it cannot depend upon belief in divine law enforced by eternal rewards and punishments from God as the moral lawgiver.  A purely natural law can be sanctioned by the natural human propensity to punish violent injustice, which expresses a natural inclination to vengeance shared with other animals.

This is an important element of the Lockean liberal argument for religious liberty and toleration.  If the good moral order of any society depends on certain religious beliefs, this supports using legal coercion to enforce those religious beliefs.  But if the natural moral law can be enforced by natural punishments, regardless of religious beliefs, then there is no justification for legally compelling belief in religious doctrines thought to sustain moral conduct.  This point is clear in Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration, where he argues that it is unjust for the European conquerors of America to use legal coercion to compel the American Indians to convert to Christianity, because these "innocent Pagans" are "strict Observers of the Rules of Equity and of the Law of Nature, and no ways offending against the Laws of the Society" (Locke 2010, 40, 76-77).  The natural right to punish those who violate the laws of nature enforces those laws without any need for religious beliefs about divine punishment.

Here, then, is the fundamental idea of Locke's natural executive power, implicit in the thought of Aquinas and Hobbes, developed by Cumberland, and elaborated by Locke.

Once we have traced this idea in the history of ideas, the next step for the serious student of political philosophy is to test the truth of this idea by formulating some testable predictions that follow from this idea, and then we must gather and assess the relevant empirical evidence.  I can think of at least seven testable predictions.

1.  In the human prehistoric foraging era and in ethnographies of foraging bands, we should see evidence for retaliatory violence by individuals acting against other individuals who harm them or threaten to harm them.

2.  We should see evidence for vengeful violence in some nonhuman animals, particularly those closely related to humans.

3.  We should see evidence for a natural human propensity to punish cheaters in experimental games.

4.  We should see evidence for neural mechanisms in the human brain for first-party, second-party, and third-party punishment.

5.  We should see evidence in human natural history for weapons and social mechanisms that reduced the costs of punishment.

6.  We should see evidence in human history that the establishment of bureaucratic states during the agrarian era had a generally pacifying effect in reducing human violence.

7.  We should see evidence in human history of resistance to tyrannical dominance and support for political institutions favoring some approximation to the equal liberty of the evolutionary state of nature.

I have written various posts on how Darwinian science might confirm these predictions.  I will say more in some future posts.


REFERENCES

Aquinas, Thomas. 1981. Summa Theologica. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics.

Arneil, Barbara. 1996. John Locke and America: The Defense of English Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ashcraft, Richard. 1968. "Locke's State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction?" American Political Science Review 62: 898-915.

Ashcraft, Richard. 1987. Locke's Two Treatises of Government. London: Allen and Unwin.

Batz, William G. 1974. "The Historical Anthropology of John Locke." Journal of the History of Ideas 35: 663-670.

Cumberland, Richard. 2005. A Treatise of the Laws of Nature. Ed. Jon Parkin. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Dunn, John. 1969. The Political Thought of John Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Elliott, J. H. 1972. "The Discovery of America and the Discovery of Man." Proceedings of the British Academy 58: 101-125.

Glat, Mark. 1981. "John Locke's Historical Sense." Review of Politics 43: 3-21.

Hobbes, Thomas. 2012. Leviathan. 3 vols. Ed. Noel Malcolm. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Locke, John. 1988. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Locke, John. 2010. A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings. Ed. Mark Goldie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Martens, Stephanie. 2016. The Americas in Early Modern Political Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Meek, Ronald. 2011. Social Science and the Ignoble Savage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Myers, Peter C. 1998. Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Pangle, Thomas. 1988. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Strauss, Leo. 1953. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Waldron, Jeremy. 1989. "John Locke: Social Contract Versus Political Anthropology." Review of Politics 51: 3-28.

Zuckert, Michael. 1994. Natural Rights and the New Republicanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Could Trump's Denial of Presidential Greatness Make the Republic Great Again? Woodward's Book

It is good for America that Donald Trump is not a great president, because this can teach Americans that a republican form of government does not depend on presidential greatness.

The republican government designed by the American Constitution gives the primary powers of the national government to the Congress, which is to be the central body for deliberation about national policies.  The executive and judicial branches of the national government and the state governments contribute to the process of political deliberation within a system of checks and balances in which no one person or group can have predominant power.

Abraham Lincoln warned in his Lyceum Speech of 1838 that the greatest threat to the American republic would come from the rise of ambitious men who would seek the glory and distinction of becoming the national leader--men like Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon--acting outside the rule of law.  But now, far from worrying about populist Caesarism as a threat to republican government, many Americans have accepted the argument of the American Progressives for presidential government--a form of government in which the President becomes the great Leader of the People who rules by executive decrees that have not passed through any deliberative lawmaking in the Congress.  I have written about this in a previous post in 2008.

One clear measurement of Presidential Caesarism in American government is the stunning increase in the number of executive orders signed by the president, in which the president attempts to rule by decree without congressional lawmaking.  From Reagan to Trump there has been a steady increase in these executive orders.  There was a big increase with Obama, who explicitly identified himself as a Progressive promoting a Progressive view of Presidential Government.  But now Trump has surpassed even Obama in this signing of executive orders that have not been subject to congressional debate.  One can see this at the website for the American Presidency Project, where there is a chart comparing Trump with the previous four presidents in the number of executive orders issued during their first 100 days.

Now that Trump is nearing the middle of his first term, we can look back over his behavior in the White House and judge the quality of the deliberation about policy in his Presidential Government.  Bob Woodward's new book--Fear: Trump in the White House--is a good account of Trump's attempt to rule by executive decree, and it shows how dangerous this is.  In fact, it is so dangerous that many of Trump's own appointees in the White House and the Executive Branch have tried to protect the country from the consequences of his erratic impulsiveness.  As the writer in the recent anonymous Op-Ed essay in the New York Times has written, "many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office."  This is what Woodward identifies as the "administrative coup d'état" in the Trump administration, in which those around Trump have "worked together to derail what they believed were Trump's most impulsive and dangerous orders" (xix).  This is the chaos created by Presidential Caesarism.

One illustration of this in Woodward's book occurred in early September 2017.  For many months, Trump would impulsively have an idea and then say, "I want to sign something."  He would start scribbling an order or dictate it to someone.  His advisors would tell him that his authority to issue executive orders was often restricted by law.  They would "slow walk"--stall and delay--his orders until he forgot about what he had ordered.  And sometimes when they saw a draft of an executive order on his desk, they would secretly remove it; and because of his short attention span, he wouldn't ask about it if the draft was not laying on his desk.

So, for example, Trump wanted the United States to get out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).  "We've talked about this ad nauseam," Trump said.  "Just do it. Just do it. Get out of NAFTA. Get out of KORUS. And get out of the WTO.  We're withdrawing from all three" (264).

Many of Trump's advisors--including Gary Cohn, Rob Porter, Jim Mattis, H. R. McMaster, and John Kelly--defended these free trade agreements.  In particular, they argued that KORUS was vital to American interests, not only economically but also militarily.  The free trade agreement with South Korea was part of an alliance against the threats from North Korea.  This included the stationing of 28,500 U.S. troops in the South and top secret intelligence operations  If North Korea launched a missile with a nuclear warhead to attack the United States, it would take 38 minutes to reach Los Angeles.  The intelligence operations in South Korea could detect  a missile launch in North Korea within seven seconds, allowing the U.S. time to shoot it down.  Detecting such a missile launch in Alaska would take 15 minutes, which could be a fatal time difference.  For these and other reasons, withdrawing from the free trade agreement with South Korea could have disastrous consequences.  On September 1, Trump said: "All right, we're not going to do it today.  It's not that we're not going to do it, but all right, we won't do it today" (265).

But some of Trump's advisors--particularly Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross--were opponents of free trade agreements who urged Trump to leave KORUS.  On September 5, Cohn, Porter and others saw a draft letter on Trump's desk in the Oval Office--probably written by Navarro and Ross--that gave notice to the President of South Korea that the U.S. would withdraw from KORUS.  Cohn removed the letter.  "I stole it off his desk," Cohn later said.  "I wouldn't let him see it.  He's never going to see that document.  Got to protect the country."  Trump's mind was so disordered that he never noticed the missing letter (xviii-xix).

Woodward concludes from this:

"The reality was that the United States in 2017 was tethered to the words and actions of an emotionally overwrought, mercurial, and unpredictable leader.  Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president's most dangerous impulses.  It was a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world" (xxii).

The fundamental problem here is that the Congress has in many ways abdicated its constitutional responsibilities by delegating its powers to the president.  In Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to "lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises," to "regulate commerce with foreign nations," and to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper" to carry out these specific powers.  And while the President has the power to negotiate treaties with foreign nations, the ratification of treaties requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate (Article 2, Section 2).  So this clearly gives Congress the legislative power over foreign trade agreements.  But in some of its legislation for foreign trade agreements, the Congress has given the President discretionary power to renegotiate or withdraw from trade agreements, which has created the possibility that the President could withdraw from a free trade agreement without Congress's approval.

Most international free trade agreements have been approved as congressional-executive agreements by a majority vote of each house of Congress.  All of these agreements include clauses allowing for withdrawal from the agreement after advance notice to the other parties.  The Trade Act of 1974 applies to most free trade agreements, and one provision in Section 125 of that Act states that "The President may at any time terminate, in whole or in part, any proclamation made under this chapter."  It is not clear whether Congress could prevent the President from terminating a trade agreement.  Other legislation seems to give the President broad authority in this area.  The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to investigate whether imports threaten the national security of the United States, and based upon the Secretary's report, the President can "take such other actions as the president deems necessary to adjust the imports of such article so that such imports will not threaten to impair the national security."  This has allowed President Trump to declare high tariffs against Canada and other countries because imports from those countries threaten the national security of the United States.  (Some of these questions about the relative powers of the Congress and the President over free trade agreements are taken up by Brandon Murrill in a paper for the Congressional Research Service.)

In any case, it is clear that the Congress has the constitutional power to alter existing laws or to pass new laws that prohibit the President from changing trade agreements without congressional approval. The question, however, is whether the Congress has the will to exercise its constitutional powers to constrain the President.  If the Congress refuses to do this, then those people in the White House who see the danger to the country from a man like Trump must act to frustrate his plans, which creates the chaos that we now see in the White House.

Another example of the unconstitutional turn away from Republican Government to Presidential Government is the Congress's allowing the President to usurp the congressional power for declaring war.  Declaring war is one of the clearly enumerated powers of the Congress.  In the debates over the ratification of the Constitution, some critics charged that the Constitution would set up the President as an elected monarch.  In The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton answered this charge by pointing out the powers of the British Monarch that the President would not have--most importantly, the power to declare war, which belonged to the Congress.

Remarkably, in teaching college courses in American politics, I have asked students who has the power to declare war; and many say it's the President.  Despite what the Constitution says, this is correct!  Because the Congress has given this congressional power to the President.

Consider, for instance, the war in Afghanistan.  It's the longest war in American history--soon to be 17 years--with no end in sight.  There has never been a congressional declaration of war for Afghanistan, and therefore there has never been any formal deliberation by Congress about whether that war is justified.  After the attacks of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush attempted to get a formal declaration of war from Congress comparable to the declaration of war after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  He failed to get this declaration.  But he did persuade Congress to pass the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists," which was passed as a joint resolution by Congress three days after the 9/11 attacks.. This resolution declares that "the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons."

Two months later, George W. Bush used this authorization to launch an invasion of Afghanistan, although there was no evidence that the state of Afghanistan had attacked the United States or approved any such attack.  Of the 19 people said to have committed the 9/11 attacks, 15 were from Saudi Arabia!  Although the government of the Taliban was overthrown, the U.S. with its NATO allies has never been able to defeat the Taliban insurgency.  Moreover, it was never clear as to exactly what the mission of the U.S. was in Afghanistan.

When Obama came into office in 2008, he promised to end the war.  Instead, U.S. troop levels increased to 100,000 in 2011.  After trying to completely withdraw, Obama decided to return.  When he left office in 2016, there were over 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Trump had campaigned on a promise to end the war in Afghanistan because it was a waste of money and lives in a war that could not be won.  Then, on August 18, 2017, Trump met with the National Security Council to decide on a new strategy for the war.  Jeff Sessions and Keith Kellogg argued for pulling out of Afghanistan.  CIA Director Mike Pompeo argued for expanding the CIA paramilitary role to replace the regular military soldiers.  H.R. McMaster, the National Security advisor, and Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, argued for continuing the war while adding 4,000 troops.

As Woodward indicates, Trump was adamant in declaring "I want to get out."  But he was finally persuaded by Mattis that withdrawal from Afghanistan would create a sanctuary for terrorists, who could use their base in Afghanistan to launch another 9/11 style attack on the U.S.  Trump approved a 60-page strategy memo signed by McMaster.  On August 21, he gave a nationally televised speech endorsing this new strategy and insisting three times in the speech that the goal was to "win."

Trump did not read McMaster's strategy memo, because Trump refuses to read anything longer than one page.  So he did not see the statements buried in the memo saying "Stalemate likely to persist in Afghanistan" and "Taliban likely to continue to gain ground" (258).  And, indeed, one year later, the Taliban has continued to gain territory.

Woodward reports that after Trump's NSC meeting on August 18, Trump called Senator Lindsay Graham:

"'You're the first person I called,' Trump told Graham. 'I just met with the generals. I'm going to go with the generals.'"

"'Well, Mr. President, that's probably the smartest thing any president could have done.'"

"'That was a hard one,' Trump said. 'It's the graveyard of empires.'  It was a reference to a book by Seth G. Jones on Afghanistan."

"'It's my luck the only book you ever read was that one,' Graham joked."

"Trump laughed along" (259).

It's clear, however, that neither Graham nor Trump has read Seth Jones's book--In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (2010).  Jones tells the history of Afghanistan over thousands of years in which colonial invaders--from Alexander the Great to the British and the Russians--have failed to win in a country dominated by tribal warlords.  And he shows how the U.S. has failed to learn the lessons of that history in sinking into a quagmire of endless war with no possibility of victory.

Donald Trump is incapable of seriously deliberating about any issue of policy, such as trade agreements or the war in Afghanistan.  Secretary of State Tillerson has said: "He's a fucking moron" (225).

But the real problem is not that Trump lacks the moral and intellectual virtues necessary for deliberation.  The problem is that the Constitution designed a Republican Government in which the Congress would be the primary deliberative body.  There is no reason to believe that any President can take the place of Congress in providing deliberation.

As citizens in a Republic, Americans should not demand great leadership from their presidents.  They should demand that their presidents serve a republican structure of government in which deliberation on policy is found primarily in the Congress.

Some of my previous posts on Trump's chimpanzee personality can be found here, here, here, and here.

Evidence for Rousseau's Pure State of Nature as Solitary But Not Asocial: Lemurs, Galagos, Tarsiers, and Orangutans

I have argued (here and here) that the evolutionary science of primatology provides no evidence for Rousseau's claim that the earliest ancestors of human beings lived in a pure state of nature in which individuals lived utterly solitary and asocial lives.  Rousseau wondered whether savage man in the pure state of nature might have been an orangutan, and so "a sort of middle point between the human species and the baboons."  But studies of orangutans have shown that while adult individuals, and particularly male adults, often seem to be solitary, they do have a loose social structure.  Mothers are bonded to their offspring, their communities are organized around a dominant adult male who is intolerant of other adult males, and these communities have cultural traditions.  Consequently, orangutans provide no evidence for Rousseau's pure state of nature.

Nelson Lund--the author of Rousseau's Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy--has responded in the comments on a previous post by saying that I have misinterpreted both Rousseau and the orangutan studies.  Rousseau's "nascent man" is not "utterly solitary," Lund says, because Rousseau acknowledges that mothers care for their offspring, and individuals in the state of nature do "perhaps" recognize one another individually.  According to Lund, the life of orangutans looks "much like" this--"an original asocial state of nature in which our ancestors lacked speech and did not form families."

After thinking more about this, I will now say that while there is evidence that some primates--lemurs, galagos, tarsiers, and orangutans--live largely "solitary" lives, they are still social animals, and therefore there is no evidence Lund's "original asocial state of nature."  There is some evidence, however, that the earliest form of social organization in primate evolution was solitary but social.  So Rousseau could be right if we identified his "nascent man" in the pure state of nature as being like those primates who are solitary but not asocial.

Primatologists distinguish three basic categories of social organization--solitary, pair-living, and group-living.  All primates--nonhuman and human--are social animals.  So even "solitary" primates are still "social."  One primatologist explains:

"By definition, the adults of solitary primate species are typically encountered alone during their period of activity . . . . Because mothers may associate with their offspring, because some individuals may form sleeping groups regularly, because communication among neighbors by sounds and odors is widespread, and because individuals meet conspecifics regularly, 'solitary' should not be confused or equated with 'asocial.'  Instead, this term simply reflects the fact that, unlike those of group- and pair-living species, activities of individuals are not synchronized in a manner that results in permanent spatial association, and thus primatologists encounter solitary primates as single individuals most of the time.  A solitary lifestyle is therefore a highly complex and rather challenging system to study" (Kappeler 2012, 24).

About a third of all primate species are solitary in this sense.  Most of these solitary species are lemurs, galagos (also known as bushbabies), or tarsiers.  All of these small primates are nocturnal.  Orangutans are the only solitary ape species, and they are the only solitary species that is diurnal.  Could this be Rousseau's "nascent man"?

                                                                The Mouse Lemur

                                                   The Southern Lesser Galago

                                                        The Western Tarsier

                                                                   Orangutans

Lemurs are endemic to Madagascar.  Galagos are found in Africa and Asia.  Tarsiers are limited to the Indonesian archipelago and the Philippine islands.  Orangutans in the wild are found only in Borneo and Sumatra.

Shultz et al. (2011) studied the genetic distances and phenotypic social-structural similarities of 217 living primate species, which showed that social organization tends to be similar among closely related species--and thus suggesting that social structure is genetically determined.  They also concluded that the earliest primates lived some 72 Mya as solitary foraging individuals who came together only for mating.  Then, multimale/multifemale groups appeared first some 52 Mya.

One could infer from this that the earliest hominids lived in multimale/multifemale promiscuous social bands, as is true for chimpanzees today (Gintis et al. 2015).  But still the earliest primate ancestors of these hominids would have been a solitary but social species.  

If Rousseau's "nascent man" is this kind of animal--a solitary but not asocial primate--then the evidence of primatology can be seen as confirming Rousseau's speculation about the pure state of nature.

In some of Rousseau's writing, however, he suggests that in the pure state of nature, each individual is completely solitary and thus asocial.  For example, in the Social Contract, Rousseau says that the natural condition for man is for each individual to be by himself "a perfect and solitary whole" (un tout parfait et solitaire) (Book II, Chapter 7).  If that is what Rousseau means by "nascent man," then the primatology of the "solitary but not asocial" primates cannot support his pure state of nature.


REFERENCES

Gintis, Herbert, Carel van Schaik, and Christopher Boehm. 2015. "Zoon Politikon: The Evolutionary Roots of Human Political Systems." Current Anthropology 56:327-353.

Kappeler, Peter M. 2012. "The Behavioral Ecology of Strepsirrhines and Tarsiers." In The Evolution of Primate Societies, eds. John C. Mitani, Joseph Call, Peter M. Kappeler, Ryne a. Palombit, and Joan B. Silk, pp. 17-42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shultz, Susanne, Christopher Opie, and Quentin D. Atkinson. 2011. "Stepwise Evolution of Stable Sociality in Primates." Nature 479:219-222.

The Resistance to Trump inside the Trump Administration: Bad Character Does Matter

The New York Times has just published a remarkable Op-Ed essay that is anonymous, because the author is a senior official in the Trump administration identified as "part of the resistance inside the Trump administration."  It is said that the author must remain anonymous to keep his job.

The author claims that "many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations," although they "want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous."

The author says:

"The root of the problem is the president's amorality.  Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making."

"Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets, and free people.  At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings.  At worst, he has attacked them outright."

I agree that the root of the problem is the president's amorality.  In previous posts (here and here), I have argued that the fundamental problem with Trump is that he lacks both the moral and intellectual virtues of a good person, and that he suffers from a grandiose narcissism.  I am shocked that many conservatives don't see this as a problem, but I am encouraged to see that some of the conservatives in his administration do recognize this as a dangerous problem for the country, and they are doing what they can to frustrate Trump's bad impulses.

I was also encouraged to see the author of this essay paying tribute to John McCain, as I did in my last post.  "Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them."

John McCain, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Rumbold: The Liberal Rhetoric of Dying Speeches

The burial of John McCain on Sunday at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, brings to a close five days of memorials and services that were planned out months ago by McCain himself as his dying message to his country and the world.  His message employs the liberal rhetoric of equal human dignity and aristocratic honor expressed in the Declaration of Independence and rooted in evolved human nature.  This is the same liberal rhetoric expressed in the dying speeches of Thomas Jefferson in 1826 and Richard Rumbold in 1685.  In McCain's dying speech, this liberal rhetoric of human dignity and honor is directed against the illiberal tribalism of Donald Trump.  Without ever mentioning the name of Trump, the audience is invited to see the subtle disdain for Trump's narcissistic vulgarity and his denial of equal human dignity.

This falls into the predominant category of social commentary today--"we're not talking about Trump, but we really are."

In McCain's Farewell Statement and in the eulogies at Washington National Cathedral by Meghan McCain, Joe Lieberman, Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, one can see five themes in McCain's liberal rhetoric as opposed to the tribalistic rhetoric of Trump.  (All of these statements can be found at the John McCain website.)

The first theme is that human beings achieve honor by serving good causes that are greater than themselves.  McCain says: "Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves."  Lieberman says: "I heard John say those words hundreds of times, particularly to young people."  There is a clear contrast to Trump's narcissistic presumption that there is no cause bigger than himself.

The second theme is that those good causes bigger than ourselves can be found in what McCain calls "America's causes--liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people."  The equal dignity of all human beings is affirmed by all of the speakers, and often it is identified with the Declaration of Independence.  The America of John McCain, Meghan McCain says, is "the America of Abraham Lincoln--fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal."  Obama points to "a common creed that all of us are created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights."

Notice the combination of aristocratic honor and egalitarian dignity, which denies the common claim that the modern liberal concept of dignity rejects the ancient aristocratic concept of honor.  The signers of the Declaration of Independence affirmed the equality of rights of all men while also pledging to one another "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

McCain was born into an elite family of military honor--one of the most renown military families of American history going back to the American Revolution.  Both his grandfather and his father were distinguished admirals in the Navy.  One of his early relatives was on General George Washington's staff, and even Washington himself was a distant cousin.  When his North Vietnamese captors discovered that his father was the Supreme Commander of the Pacific Fleet, they offered to release him early.  He refused, because he did not want to be given special treatment over the other prisoners of war.  Later, when Kissinger was negotiating the end of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese again offered to release McCain early.  Kissinger refused, and in his eulogy he tells the story of meeting McCain for the first time; and McCain told him: "Thank you for saving my honor."

The third theme is that to affirm the good cause of equal human dignity as a universal truth is to deny tribalism.  McCain warns: "We weaken our greatness when we confuse our nationalism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change that they have always been."  Lieberman says that the greater cause to which McCain devoted his life was "America, not so much the country defined by its borders, but the America of our founding values, freedom, human rights, opportunity, democracy and equal justice under law."  Kissinger observes that McCain thus combined realism and idealism in his foreign policy by arguing that the security of the United States required that America be respected both for its power and for its ideals, which required promoting respect for human rights around the world.  McCain's warning against illiberal tribalism is obviously a warning against Trump and those like him "who confuse our nationalism with tribal rivalries."

The fourth theme was best stated by George Bush: "At various points throughout his long career, John confronted policies and practices that he believed were unworthy of his country. To the face of those in authority, John McCain would insist: We are better than this. America is better than this."

Without Bush explicitly mentioning it, the audience could easily infer that Bush was remembering how vehement McCain had been in denouncing the torturing of prisoners under Bush as a violation of American moral principles and international law--a policy that Trump has said he would like to continue.

And, of course, "American is better than this" really means "America is better than Trump."  Trump has provoked his critics like McCain to appeal to those distinctively American and yet universal principles of the Declaration of Independence as a standard for condemning Trump and denying his claim to speak for "American greatness."  It is notable that Trump never mentions the principles of the Declaration, and that even one of his supporters--Senator Lindsey Graham--had to tell him "America is an idea, not a race."

Finally, the fifth theme of the McCain memorial statements is unusual for eulogies--the imperfections of the person being celebrated.  McCain himself, in his Farewell Statement, says: "I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them."  Almost every speaker at McCain's memorials said something about his imperfections, while praising him for his willingness to admit his failures.  Most often they mentioned his explosive temper.

They did not mention his more morally seriously mistakes, such as his signing a public confession given to him by his captors in Vietnam, which came after some especially brutal torture.  The confession was read over speakers at his camp, and a copy reached his father.  He later admitted that this was one of his great moral failures.

Meghan McCain said: "Dad, I know you were not perfect.  We live in an era where we knock down old American heroes for all their imperfections when no leader wants to admit to fault or failure.  You were an exception and gave us an ideal to strive for."

So, in a nice rhetorical twist, McCain could exemplify a heroic ideal even with his imperfections because he admitted his faults, at a time when leaders like Trump--that "very stable genius"--deny that they have any faults.

This contrast between McCain and Trump--again without directly mentioning Trump--was made most dramatic by Meghan Trump: "The America of John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold.  She's resourceful, confident, secure.  She meets her responsibilities.  She speaks quietly because she's strong. America does not boast because she has no need to.  The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great."

At this point, the audience in Washington National Cathedral applauded loudly, the only time any speaker elicited applause, because this was the most evident rebuke to Trump.

Since McCain carefully organized all of this while he was dying, this can all be seen as his dying speech to America and the world invoking the principle of equal human dignity as the universal moral ideal inherent in human nature that sets the alternative to the tribalism of Trump.

In this way, McCain's dying speech belongs to a liberal rhetorical tradition that includes Thomas Jefferson and Richard Rumbold.  In the spring of 1826, Jefferson was dying at Monticello.  He struggled to stay alive into the summer.  July 4th of 1826 would be the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  The city of Washington, D.C. was planning a special celebration.  Roger Weightman, the Mayor of Washington, invited Jefferson to attend and give a speech.  Jefferson had to write a letter to Weightman declining the invitation because his illness made travel impossible.  Jefferson knew that his letter to Weightman on June 24th would be his last speech.  And it was a time when he worried that in America and elsewhere in the world, the principles of the Declaration were under attack from despotic movements.  And so, like McCain this past week, Jefferson pointed back to the principles of equal liberty in the Declaration:

"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.  That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion.  All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.  The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.  These are grounds of hope for others.  For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."

Over the next few days, Jefferson faded in and out of consciousness.  Those around his bed said that when he awoke, he asked whether July 4th had arrived, as if he wanted to survive to that day.  He died on July 4th.  Amazingly, John Adams died on the same day in Braintree, Massachusetts.  The two surviving signers of the Declaration of Independence had died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration.  As the news spread across America, there were eulogies and sermons celebrating this obvious miracle of Divine Providence to signal the sacred sanction for the principle that all men are created equal and endowed with natural rights that should be secured by governments with the consent of the governed.  Thus did the deaths of Jefferson and Adams on this day support the rhetorical elevation of the Declaration--and particularly its principle of the equal liberty of all human beings--to be the defining statement of America's moral standard as a universal standard for the world.

In his dying speech, Jefferson used a metaphor--"that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God"--that he remembered from Richard Rumbold's dying speech in 1685.  Rumbold was a radical Whig who had fought in Cromwell's army during the Civil War.  Having been convicted of high treason for plotting to kill the King, the statutory punishment was to be hanged, beheaded, and quartered (cut into four pieces).  In his speech in Edinburgh before his execution, He denied the charge that he was antimonarchical:

"It was ever my Thoughts, That Kingly Government was the best of all, Justly Executed; I mean, such as by our ancient Laws; that is, a King, and a Legal Free Chosen Parliament.  The King having, as I conceive, Power enough to make him Great, the People also as much Property as to make them Happy; they being as it were contracted to one another.  And who will deny me, that this was not the Just Constituted Government of our Nation? How absurd is it then for Men of Sense to maintain, That though the one Party of the Constract breaketh all Conditions, the other should be obliged to perform their Part? No; this Error is contrary to the Law of God, the Law of Nations, and the Law of Reason."

So a monarchy could be just only if bound by a contract with the people, because a king had no natural or divine right to rule over others without their consent.  He ended by saying:

"This is a deluded Generation, vail'd with Ignorance, that though Popery and Slavery be riding in upon them, do not perceive it; and though I am sure there was no Man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the World with a Saddle on his Back, neither any Booted and Spur'd to Ride him; not but that I am well satisfied, that God hath wisely different Stations for Men in the World, as I have already said: Kings having as much Power as to make them Great, and the people as much Property as to make them Happy." 

Rumbold could have derived his claim that all men are equal in their liberty from the dominion of others and his metaphor of horses and riders from the English Levelers and from Algernon Sidney, who was executed in 1683 for the treason of writing a defense of republican government in his Discourses Concerning Government. Sidney had declared that "man in his first condition" is "naturally free" from subordination to any other man, except for the temporary authority of parents over children, and thus the liberty of the people is a gift from God and Nature.  Thus must be so unless one could see that God "caused some to be born with crowns upon their heads, and all others with saddles upon their backs" (III.33).

The reference to "man in his first condition" indicates Locke's state of nature, which can be understood as the original life of human ancestors in foraging bands in which human nature was first shaped for a natural condition of equal liberty without government, in which the disposition of some few to assert dominance over others was checked by the counterdominance by which people protected their autonomy against bullies.  The modern revolutionary resistance to tyrannical dominance without consent of the people could be seen as an expression of this evolved propensity of human nature as formed in prehistoric foraging bands.

If this is true, this would support McCain's appeal to the equal liberty and dignity of all human beings asserted in the Declaration of Independence as a universal cosmopolitan principle of human rights. This would also have supported McCain's proposals for immigration reform, allowing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Trump's nativist tribalism must reject this in claiming that in fact human beings are defined by their racial or ethnic nationalism, which must be protected through strict limits on immigration from countries with different national identities.

This nativist denial of the Declaration of Independence has occurred previously in American history.  Abraham Lincoln saw this in the nativism of the No Nothing Party.  The nativists were a movement of native-born Protestants who saw immigration from countries like Ireland and Germany as a corruption of American government and culture, and thus they sought severe restrictions on immigration and the rights of foreigners.

Lincoln declared:

"I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people?  Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.  As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.'  We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.'  When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.'  When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy" (Letter to Joshua Speed, August 24, 1855).

The Republican Party has moved far away from being the Party of Abraham Lincoln to being the Party of Donald Trump.