Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

What is Socialism?

Posted on by under Socialism

 

“If we are to achieve a real equality, the U.S. will have to adopt a modified form of socialism.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

What is socialism? Socialism aims to eradicate forever authoritarianism, bureaucracy, poverty, and war; not by increasing government power, but by increasing democracy, the power of ordinary people, in politics and the workplace.

This is not authoritarian socialism, State Socialism, or Communism. This is democratic socialism, libertarian socialism. It is a vision of a better world.

 

Citizen Control of the State

Socialists seek the “socialization” of political power through direct democracy, a form of government that already exists in Switzerland. As Polish socialist Rosa Luxemburg said, “There is no democracy without socialism and no socialism without democracy.”

How would you like to have a say — a direct say — in public policy? How would you like decision-making power? Under direct democracy, all public policy would be decided by national vote, from abortion rights to whether the nation should wage war. Instead of only voting once every four or eight years, concerned citizens will vote many times a year, on national policy. They will vote on education standards, whether to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, the federal budget, everything.

Socialism is the simple belief that the people should govern the politicians, not the other way around.

Citizens would have initiative rights for municipal, state, and national policy; that is, the ability to have a law or law change put before the people for a vote.

This is common at the local and state levels in the U.S. How did Colorado legalize marijuana in 2012? People gathered enough citizens on a petition, it was put on the ballot, the people voted, and it was done. No corrupt politicians in the way, swayed this way and that by lobbyists and their bribes. No bureaucracy, no unelected officials making decisions for the common people. Just socialized power.

Proposed laws would be available for reading online, under guidelines ensuring their readability and brevity (no more 1,000-page laws). There would be a required time for public debate before the vote, allowing people who choose to be active in politics to study the legislation, listen to media pundits scream at each other, sway others to their side, and finally make an informed, educated vote. Change will come through the battle of ideas, not the whims of corporations or power-hungry politicians.

Under socialism, the Supreme Court and the president would preserve a system of checks and balances. The people would essentially take the place of Congress, being able to overrule the president’s veto with a supermajority but not the Court’s.

Short term limits, the threat of veto, and the threat of immediate recall vote (perhaps even of the president) would keep officials in line with the desires of voters. If, say, two-thirds of Americans felt the president wrongly vetoed a measure passed by the people, he or she could be overruled by national vote, just as Congress can do today. If the president (or any politician) refused to enforce laws, a two-thirds majority vote could remove him or her from office immediately. Politicians must be terrified of the people.

To quote The Communist Manifesto, “The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat [common people] to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” Power to the people, as the radical leftist saying goes.

 

A Simpler Government

Clearly, when the people become the lawmakers government will be simpler and smaller, in that bureaucracy will be all but eradicated and corruption (such as corporations pouring vast sums of money into politicians’ campaign coffers to influence legislation) will be extraordinarily difficult (how does one bribe the entire citizenry?).

But to enact the laws the people demand, there will still need to be various federal departments, like that of education, labor, energy, and so on (the members of which would be elected and at risk of immediate recall by popular vote, much different than unaccountable cabinet members appointed by the president). Fortunately, having been stripped of much of their power through direct democracy, their main task would be simple: writing checks.

The smaller government of socialism doesn’t mean no more taxes, but nor does it mean outrageous taxes. It means refusing to spend trillions on bank bailouts, wars, and a global military machine. It means using tax wealth (garnered progressively, having the rich pay higher rates than the poor and richer companies pay higher rates than smaller ones, as most people support) to meet human needs, primarily in three areas: healthcare, education, and jobs. There is a need for other departments to handle other things, of course (national defense and Social Security payments spring to mind), but these are the big three:

Guaranteed Work and a Strong Minimum Wage. Socialists envision using tax dollars to fund local public work projects. Even in the economic boom times of capitalism, there are not always enough jobs for those who seek them, and tens of millions remain very poor through no fault of their own. (Today, 48% of Americans are poor or make low income, as 50% of U.S. jobs pay less than $34,000 a year, about $24,000 after taxes.) But with public work projects, taxes could cover a basic salary to otherwise unemployed workers to rebuild our inner cities and slums, clean streets or rivers, tutor struggling students, plant new trees, paint murals on buildings — any productive task that betters society in some way. This has been accomplished successfully in the past, such as during the Great Depression. Some American and Canadian cities are already paying homeless men and women to do similar work, helping them crawl out of extreme poverty.

Such work need not be permanent (though governments could theoretically help workers organize into new, self-sustaining worker co-ops if there existed a consumer base for their mission), nor organized by the federal government. Federal tax dollars can be distributed to city councils based on annual unemployment levels, and cities can decide what projects they need to focus on to improve their communities.

Local projects run by locals, coupled with a strong minimum wage for all Americans (which many studies show does not increase unemployment and only causes slight increases in prices), would mean food stamps, child tax credits, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and other forms of welfare (except those for the elderly, sick, and disabled) could be eliminated. Unemployment compensation will disappear — paying someone for 99 weeks without work in return is extremely wasteful. Under socialism, men and women will be paid to work (see What Conservatives Will Love About Socialism).

In this way, unemployment and poverty can be eradicated.

Guaranteed Healthcare. Likewise, the State will not own the hospitals (as it does in Britain today) — the doctors, nurses, and janitors would (see below). But the Department of Health would receive medical bills from hospitals and would cover the costs — at the very least covering the costs of expensive surgeries and prescriptions that today leave many bankrupt (in 2013, an estimated 645,000 bankruptcies were linked to massive medical bills; at the beginning of 2016, 20% of insured Americans were having difficulty paying their medical bills) or dead from preventable problems (45,000 a year in the late 2000s died as a direct result of not having health insurance).

Universal healthcare already exists in virtually every industrialized nation besides the United States, and much can be learned from their experience.

The French system is more efficient, more popular, and far less expensive per citizen and as a proportion of GDP than the American system. Sweden insures all citizens, but uses private doctors and competition to keep down costs. True, these systems are not perfect, for example often relying on heavier taxes. Yet they are popular, even taken for granted, and no one is dying from preventable illnesses. Healthcare is seen as a human right, not something you must have a good job or enough money to have. The U.S. is wealthier than any nation that has universal healthcare today — if they can manage, so can we (and notice these democracies have yet to mutate into horrific Communist dictatorships).

Guaranteed Education. Under socialism, the State will not own the schools. Teachers, paras, librarians, and janitors will own their schools; professors, students, and groundkeepers will own the colleges (see below). But schools and colleges can be funded similarly to today (though school funding will no longer be based on property taxes, which ensures poor inner-city neighborhoods have dismal schools and rich suburban neighborhoods have very fine schools — schools will be funded equally).

In the same way taxation today provides free K-12 education for all, this could be expanded to cover the cost of college, something many other democracies have already accomplished. College only being available to those who can afford it or those willing to take on massive debts is an enormous waste of human talent. Anyone ambitious and willing to work hard should be able to earn a degree, regardless of whether they come from a rich or poor family. (One might ask if everyone has a strong wage and a job, why should college or healthcare be paid for? The answer is obvious: Tens of thousands a year for tuition or tens of thousands in medical bills would still not be doable for many families making a guaranteed salary of even $40,000 or higher — particularly those with multiple children, more than one sick parent, etc.)   

The teachers and workers who run the schools must of course have as much independence from the State as possible, more than they have today. In reality, a society where each school had total control over its curriculum (and all else) wouldn’t necessarily be incompatible with a socialist society. Likewise, neither would families being able to choose between any school they wished. However, it seems likely this “privatization” would cause serious problems. Should public schools have the freedom to simply not teach a subject? To gut the study of black slavery, the Civil War, or all of social studies for instance? And wouldn’t families flock to schools that align with their preferences, quickly making public schools divided by religion, political persuasion, race, and class…even worse than today? This is why schools should not be businesses that compete for students and tuition fees. It’s why schools and teacher salaries should remain funded through the State. (People will of course still have the freedom to create private schools; we’re talking about public schools here.) 

It seems reasonable to maintain a system where your public school is based on where you live. Though this is not a perfect system (most blacks and whites, for example, do not live in integrated neighborhoods, meaning they don’t share schools), it seems to offer the best chance for students to befriend and learn from other students and teachers who are culturally and ideologically different. Further, it makes sense to have a national curriculum, to keep learning consistent enough between schools, to aid both students and teachers who move around the nation.

The curriculum, of course, would be designed by an elected Department of Education and approved by the majority of the people. Should evolution and climate change be taught in public schools? Let the majority decide. 

 

Worker Control of Businesses

Socialism would not only end authoritarianism and bureaucracy in the State, it would mean the same for the place American adults spend most of their lives: their jobs.

Workers would own their workplaces. In a capitalist society, a business is structured like a dictatorship: an owner or small group of owners, board members, and investors hold all the power and make all the decisions, including how company profits are used — to increase production, to open new plants or stores, invest in new technology, increase advertising, hire more workers, increase worker pay, increase owner pay, and so on.

Predictably, owners often award themselves huge sums of money and pay workers little, creating massive inequality. Predictably, in the U.S. today the 1% of wealthiest citizens own as much wealth as the bottom 95% of citizens. The bottom 80% of Americans own just 7% of the national wealth, while the top 1% owns 40%. Capitalism is the few growing rich off the labor of the many. After all, could Steve Jobs have built all these devices himself? He needed workers.

Adam Smith, an economist that inspired Karl Marx, wrote in The Wealth of Nations of a central conflict under capitalism: “The workmen desire to get as much as possible, the masters to give as little as possible.” (Conservatives worship Smith, but would squirm if they actually read some of his insights.)

Marx believed, as do modern socialists, that wealth is created by workers. It’s a very simple idea. Originally, it is the company founder creating the good or providing the service, but eventually the owner hires workers and takes a managerial role. Without workers, an owner cannot produce on a scale larger than him- or herself. Wealth is created by workers because workers directly provide the good or service that is sold by the owner.

That sale covers the cost of production, the cost of labor, and a little extra: profit the owner uses as he or she chooses. This means workers are not paid the full value of what they produce for the company. Socialists call it exploitation. It is a theft by someone who would not have that profit without the workers. So socialists say profit should be kept and controlled by the people directly responsible for generating it. Under a system where all workers are owners, there would be no owner-worker conflict; unions would thus be obsolete.

True, owners make decisions that can lead to more sales and more profits. Like investing in a new technology, for example. But to put it bluntly, owners are not needed. The top-down, authoritarian structure is not vital. The workers can wield that decision-making power and keep the profits of those decisions. Worker cooperatives — businesses that are owned and run by the workers — are more democratic than capitalist-structured firms. They are “socialist” because power and wealth are “socialized,” or shared equally, within a firm. They still compete with other businesses to provide the best products for the lowest prices (market socialism).

Hundreds of successful worker cooperatives exist in the U.S., with many more around the world, some with a few employees, others with tens of thousands. Decisions are made democratically, by the vote of each employee, or by elected managers. Decisions on hours, pay, schedule, new hires, investments in new technology, opening new stores, and everything else is made by discussion and vote. Profits are distributed more equitably, enriching everyone, not just the few. More workers means profits are further divided, but just like in capitalist firms, more workers also mean higher profits. These cooperatives were organized by ordinary people, not the government.

When workers own their workplaces, there is little chance they will decide to fire themselves and outsource their own jobs to poorer nations. Capitalists do this so they can pay workers pennies and follow fewer worker safety and environmental regulations. Worker-owners are less likely to poison the soil, water, and air of their own communities, or ignore workplace safety guidelines. New technologies no longer lead to mass firings — they allow everyone to work fewer hours while making more money! Both worker ownership and people’s control of government will work in tandem to prevent oil companies and weapons manufacturers (the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned of) from influencing the decision to wage war, as has occurred countless times in American history.

Unsurprisingly, workers-owners are happier, wealthier, more productive, and their businesses less likely to fold than capitalist firms. There are challenges, such as the ability to get credit from banks suspicious of co-ops, but they are in no way insurmountable. There is nothing to say in 200 years America will not be a nation of worker cooperatives, if that’s what people choose.

Marx saw worker cooperatives by 1864 as a

…victory of the political economy of labor over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labor need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the laboring man himself; and that, like slave labor, like serf labor, hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart.

To save the industrious masses, co-operative labor ought to be developed to national dimensions…

There are even some 60 American schools that have done away with authoritarianism, in their buildings at least, if not their districts.

Most private and public schools have top-down control, with the principal being the dictator at the top who makes all decisions on school policy and receives the biggest paycheck. So these experimental schools have simply done away with principals; teachers make all decisions, like hiring, curriculum, and school scheduling, democratically.

The Denver Green School in Colorado has a 4 day week for students, and on Fridays teachers, office personnel, social workers, and all other employees meet to discuss, debate, and vote on school policy. The Hughes STEM High School in Cincinnati has a principal, but he or she has equal power with teachers and cannot veto a democratic decision. Employees feel empowered, and in a profession with colossal turnover, the Avalon School in St. Paul has a teacher retention rate of 95-100%. Most teacher-led schools have on average fewer than 200 students, but larger schools are joining the trend, some with over 600. 

 

The Path to Communism?

Let it never be said that trying to accomplish these things will only lead to Communism. As you move toward democracy in politics and the workplace, you move away from Communism and State Socialism.

The goal of both democratic socialism and authoritarian socialism is the eradication of capitalism, but each has a different manner of going about it. Democratic (and guild, libertarian, etc.) socialism does so from the bottom-up, simply by workers (and even consumers or local communities) owning their workplaces. The government has no role except perhaps granting the lawful right of ownership. Communism destroys capitalism from the top-down, wherein the government owns all workplaces and organizes the economy and the workers according to a central plan. The people are supposed to own the government and thus the plan (this type of democratic nationalization is what Marx favored), but of course it doesn’t always work out that way.

Soviet Russia, for instance, was a command economy: top-down administration, an economy structured, ironically, like a single capitalist business. The iron fists of capitalists were replaced by the iron fists of dictators and unelected economic planners. This system is therefore called both state socialism and state capitalism in historical literature!

Opponents of socialism insist that these reforms — the government paying medical or tuition bills, expanded public sector work for the unemployed, worker ownership, and pure democracy — are a slippery slope to tyranny. Of course, Americans also insisted racial integration, Medicare, and social security would lead to authoritarianism! They were wrong. These types of arguments are often simply unfounded. Switzerland has direct democracy; a multitude of peaceful democracies in Europe and elsewhere have free college and healthcare; Germany requires large companies to have half their boards of directors elected by the workers (“codetermination”). Are these nations going to end up Communist dictatorships? When do we expect the gulags? Did New Deal programs destroy our right to start a business, work in a particular field, or vote for representatives? Did taxpayer-funded public schooling, small checks for the elderly, and covered healthcare bills for the disabled, very poor, and seniors?

It cannot be emphasized enough that direct democracy takes power away from the State and gives it to the people. True, the government has a role to play in footing bills, guaranteeing rights, and organizing and funding local work projects. (The right to workplace ownership would be in the same vein as minimum wage, workplace safety, anti-child labor, and anti-discrimination rights. You may see this as an evil government eradication of the right to be a capitalist owner, but rights are typically crushed by more ethical ones. The right of a worker to a minimum wage abolishes the right of the employer to pay him or her $2 per hour; the right of a person of color to be served at a restaurant ends the right of a white supremacist to deny him or her service; the right to workplace ownership makes history the right of capitalist exploitation and authoritarianism.) But direct democracy is the key to creating a government of, by, and for the people.

If you read the history of Marxism, the libertarian, democratic, and anarchistic socialists stood opposed to State Socialists like the Bolsheviks. There was a deep division between Marxists on bottom-up versus top-down control, which roughly determined who would go on to call themselves communists and who would call themselves socialists. In the Soviet Union, Communism crushed socialism through violence (read Anarchism, by Guerin, for a detailed and captivating study). The workers who took over their workplaces and their towns lost that power to the State at the end of a gun.

Perhaps nothing could better explain this dichotomy than an 1887 poem by Ernest Lesigne, a Frenchman. This was several decades after Marx and several before the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. It is called “Two Socialisms”:

There are two Socialisms.
One is communistic, the other solidaritarian.
One is dictatorial, the other libertarian.
One is metaphysical, the other positive.
One is dogmatic, the other scientific.
One is emotional, the other reflective.
One is destructive, the other constructive.
Both are in pursuit of the greatest possible welfare for all.
One aims to establish happiness for all, the other to enable each to be happy in his own way.
The first regards the State as a society sui generis, of an especial essence, the product of a sort of divine right outside of and above all society, with special rights and able to exact special obediences; the second considers the State as an association like any other, generally managed worse than others.
The first proclaims the sovereignty of the State, the second recognizes no sort of sovereign.
One wishes all monopolies to be held by the State; the other wishes the abolition of all monopolies.
One wishes the governed class to become the governing class; the other wishes the disappearance of classes.
Both declare that the existing state of things cannot last.
The first considers revolutions as the indispensable agent of evolutions; the second teaches that repression alone turns evolutions into revolution.
The first has faith in a cataclysm.
The second knows that social progress will result from the free play of individual efforts.
Both understand that we are entering upon a new historic phase.
One wishes that there should be none but proletaires.
The other wishes that there should be no more proletaires.
The first wishes to take everything away from everybody.
The second wishes to leave each in possession of its own.
The one wishes to expropriate everybody.
The other wishes everybody to be a proprietor.
The first says: ‘Do as the government wishes.’
The second says: ‘Do as you wish yourself.’
The former threatens with despotism.
The latter promises liberty.
The former makes the citizen the subject of the State.
The latter makes the State the employee of the citizen.
One proclaims that labor pains will be necessary to the birth of a new world.
The other declares that real progress will not cause suffering to any one.
The first has confidence in social war.
The other believes only in the works of peace.
One aspires to command, to regulate, to legislate.
The other wishes to attain the minimum of command, of regulation, of legislation.
One would be followed by the most atrocious of reactions.
The other opens unlimited horizons to progress.
The first will fail; the other will succeed.
Both desire equality.
One by lowering heads that are too high.
The other by raising heads that are too low.
One sees equality under a common yoke.
The other will secure equality in complete liberty.
One is intolerant, the other tolerant.
One frightens, the other reassures.
The first wishes to instruct everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to instruct himself.
The first wishes to support everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to support himself.
One says:
The land to the State.
The mine to the State.
The tool to the State.
The product to the State.
The other says:
The land to the cultivator.
The mine to the miner.
The tool to the laborer.
The product to the producer.
There are only these two Socialisms.
One is the infancy of Socialism; the other is its manhood.
One is already the past; the other is the future.

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By Conservatives’ Logic, Nearly All Americans (Including Them) Are Lazy

Posted on by under Politics

How do we explain the inability of poor Americans to earn a degree, find themselves a high-paying job, buy a fine house, and send their children to the best schools?

Were we to bother to study sociology and the economic realities of social class mobility (see Beyond Bootstraps: Why Poverty is So Hard to Escape), we’d see the problems are slightly more complex than a defect in poor people that better-off people simply don’t have. That is, we’d understand it’s not merely a lack of willpower, effort, ambition, common sense, or wisdom. This is not to say poverty doesn’t cause some people to lose hope, fall into depression, and give up, but this is an effect of social conditions, quite different from an alleged flaw in certain people that is somehow innate.

Yet, to many right-leaning Americans, those special defects are the sole cause of our poor neighbors’ plights. While this is a position largely rooted in a lack of knowledge and an ideology full of individualistic dogma, it is interesting to consider where such logic ends up if followed to its conclusion.

Note for a moment the obvious: Under conservative logic, even if 50% of jobs in the U.S. pay under $34,000 (some $24,000 after taxes) and if the cost of living is skyrocketing, and therefore 48% of Americans live in poverty or earn low-income, it still must be said that about half of Americans are lazy. Those are the current economic conditions in the U.S. (see The 56% of Americans With Under $1,000 in Savings: Poor Savers or Just Poor?), and if we are so eager to select an unwillingness to work hard as the root cause of unfavorable living conditions, there is no reason we couldn’t say half of Americans have some special defect. This would, of course, include many conservatives, likely many who engage in “blaming the victim.”

But there is no need to stop there. If one insists that a lower class person hasn’t made it to the middle class yet due to lack of effort, why would one not say the same of a middle class person who has yet to make it to the upper class? America has some economic mobility, but not enough to escape the conclusion that the vast majority of us are entirely lazy. Consider an excerpt from “Beyond Bootstraps” that discusses income levels (there are five, the “quintiles”):

A 2007 study found that a minority, 34% of Americans, manage to reach a higher quintile (for example, moving from the lowest to the second quintile). Yet “children of middle-income parents have a near-equal likelihood of ending up in any other quintile, presenting equal promise and peril for those born to middle-class parents.” 42% of people born into the lowest quintile die there, and the vast majority of those who escape the lowest quintile die in the second lowest. The very poorest and the very richest are those least likely to leave the social class in which they were born.

This is not a temporary problem. In 2014, economists found children have about the same chances of economic advancement that children had 50 years ago.

The majority of Americans will die in the social class in which they are born, because in many interesting ways social class perpetuates itself. If the mark of laziness is the inability to better one’s social condition to a substantial degree, it appears only 34% of Americans are without this innate defect. 66% of us, according to conservative logic, are not working hard enough — we are not rising to new income levels. (True, those in the top quintile can’t “escape” or rise into a higher quintile, so perhaps we can say the percentage of lazy Americans is a bit lower, but you understand what I’m getting at.)

If the majority of Americans do not advance to a higher social class, and the root cause of an inability to pull yourself up by your bootstraps is lack of effort, the only sensible conclusion is that the majority of Americans lack willpower and ambition. It couldn’t be that our neighbors in the lower class, the middle class, and the upper class work equally hard to better their lives in whatever ways are available to them, whether it’s taking a second job at a fast food joint or figuring out the best marketing strategy for your global corporation’s products.

This demonization of the poor as lazy and flawed is not only a poor substitute for explanations that consider economic realities, it logically must include both better-off people and countless conservatives who perpetuate this sort of nonsense.

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Where Does Morality Come From?

Posted on by under Religion

How do we know know what’s right and wrong? Is it something we are born with, acquired knowledge, or both? Does it come from a deity or can it be explained through science and anthropology? Are some ideas universal — held by all people in all societies in all ages — or is that nonsense? Is morality static or does it change over time? These are the questions that broaden our understanding of what it means to be human.

 

Religion-based arguments

In The End of Reason, Christian evangelist Ravi Zacharias writes:

When you assert that there is such a thing as evil, you must assume there is such a thing as good. When you say there is such a thing as good, you must assume there is a moral law by which to distinguish between good and evil. There must be some standard by which to determine what is good and what is evil. When you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver…

Objective moral values exist only if God exists. Objective moral values do exist. Therefore, God exists.

This posits that there is an Objective Morality, a code of decent behavior society did not teach us — it was placed within us by God. The existence of this law means we know what is right and what is wrong, but we have the free will to choose either. Even if it goes against all learned behavior, the ways our culture taught us to think and act, we still instinctively know what is good and what is evil.

The weakness of this idea is obvious. If I believe in some sort of Objective Morality, it is only because I already believe in God. Objective Morality cannot be proven; it’s speculation, without basis or evidence. What good is an argument that uses an abstraction to try to prove an abstraction? Plus, this is an example of circular reasoning (when your conclusion is inherent in a premise; when you start with what you’re trying to end up with). Objective Morality and God are essentially the same thing. What good is it to say, “I believe in God because I believe in God’s Moral Code for Man”? Both require belief in something supernatural; both require simple faith, because there is no observable proof. Abstractions can’t rationalize abstractions, so those who posit morals come from Santa have as much evidence (specifically none) as those who insist they come from Yahweh.

But C.S. Lewis would have heartily agreed with Zacharias’ claim that “Objective moral values do exist.” Apparently, it was Lewis’ thoughts on a moral force that governed man’s behavior that led him to believe in God! He devotes the first five chapters of Mere Christianity to the topic. He writes there are two reasons Objective Morality must be true:

The first is…that though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great — not nearly so great as most people imagine — and you can recognize the same law running through them all…

The other reason is this. When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? If not, then of course there would never be any moral progress… The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard…but the standard that measures two things is something different from either.

Regarding the second reason, apparently there’s no chance the standard you’re using to compare two sets of morals might be your own. If I’m comparing the cultural moralities of the Ancient Chinese with those of the 17th century French, couldn’t I be using the moral values of my own present society to decide which is better? If my society doesn’t practice human sacrifice, wouldn’t I frown upon societies that did — and might that change if my society did practice such things?

As for Lewis’ first point, if we engage in a serious study of history, do we actually find that differences in morality are “not really that great”? Let us see.

 

Wildly Different Human Natures

In the appendix of his Abolition of Man, Lewis lists identical laws from across the globe, spanning many historical epochs; he notes how many civilizations had rules such as “Do not kill” and “Obey your father and mother.” So true, but note he does not list any darker edicts societies had in common: laws relating to slavery, the persecution of women, execution for dissenting political or religious beliefs, etc.

This is the first place his argument starts to break down. The positive laws that man had in common Lewis would say are evidence for an innate understanding of how we are supposed to behave according to an Objective Morality set by God; but more sinister laws he would claim to simply be evidence of how man chooses to do what’s wrong much of the time, how “none of us are really keeping the Law of Nature.”

This is highly convenient. So the Spartans who thought it morally acceptable to destroy disfigured babies, the Aztecs who thought it right to slaughter thousands in a single day of human sacrifice, the Jews who thought it God’s will to stone to death homosexuals, those laws can be constructed by societies of men who chose wrong over right. They couldn’t possibly represent how man innately thought he was supposed to act (but why not? Why could one not say the common oppression of women aligned with God’s standard of right?) In sum, the laws mankind designed are only evidence for an Objective Morality if they align with my present Judeo-Christian values! This reasoning is hollow as well. One could say murdering disfigured infants was a value imparted by a deity and he or she would have just as much evidence (specifically none) as one who says this act was a violation of a deity’s “Law of Nature.”

Look at homosexuality, considered immoral or moral depending on the person, society, and age. Lewis writes the Objective Morality is what men “cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey.” Thus, if homosexuality is wrong according to the Objective Morality, gay men and women would know their feelings and actions were wrong (as many but not all Christians argue). Homosexuals of course don’t feel they are choosing their sexual orientation or consciously rejecting an instinct toward what is right or natural or good. A Christian might say they just don’t recognize the moral push, which would obviously make the idea of Objective Morality worthless, or one might say they are lying, which would merely point out the existence of Objective Morality could never be proven based on opinion surveys.

Where Lewis’ argument collapses, however, is that the differences concerning morality between time and cultures are as “great” as any imagination could conjure.

English author Chris Harman (How Marxism Works) writes:

“Human nature” does in fact vary from society to society. For instance, competitiveness, which is taken for granted in our society, hardly existed in many previous societies. When scientists first tried to give Sioux Indians IQ tests, they found that the Indians could not understand why they should not help each other do the answers. The society they lived in stressed co-operation, not competition.

The same with aggressiveness. When Eskimos first met Europeans, they could not make any sense whatsoever of the notion of “war.” The idea of one group of people trying to wipe out another group of people seemed to them crazy.

In our society it is regarded as “natural” that parents should love and protect their children. Yet in the ancient Greek city of Sparta it was regarded as “natural” to leave infants out in the mountains to see if they could survive the cold.

He notes that the structure of society changes human nature (“‘Human nature’ as we know it today is a product of our history, not its cause”). Obviously, being born into a society that stresses cooperation and pacifism will create a child of a different nature than one born into a culture that emphasizes competition, individualism, self-servitude, and patriotic war. People today consider it “human nature” that man is too competitive and greedy to move beyond capitalism, but ignore how humans behaved for nearly 100,000 years, in an age called “primitive communism” by historians. Richard Lee, an anthropologist, writes, “Before the rise of the state and the entrenchment of social inequality, people lived for millennia in small-scale kin-based social groups, in which the core institutions of economic life included collective or common ownership of land and resources, generalised reciprocity in the distribution of food, and relatively egalitarian political relations.”

There are many other examples of vastly different human morals in other ages and places.

People in some cultures did not consider forced genital mutilation, human sacrifice, sexism, racism, polygamy, homosexuality, slavery, or murder wrong — but others did. Many Europeans thought divorce a sin, but to the Iroquois it was no big deal. In Somaliland and among the Formosa people, a man had to commit murder to be considered deserving of a wife. Other cultures of the time would be horrified at the very thought, as most are today. In ancient Greece, homosexuality was mainstream and a natural part of society — men who were happily married to a woman often openly had a male partner as well. But the Jews murdered homosexuals (similarly, the prevalence of patriarchy, racism, and so forth vary widely). They further murdered people for not being virgins, for rebelling against parents, going too close to the Tabernacle, working on a holy day, believing in a God other than Yahweh, and many other nonviolent crimes — ideas of right and wrong that changed drastically over time. The Catholic Church considered condom use a sin until 2010; the ancient Romans created condoms from the skin of vanquished enemy soldiers. Just over 100 years ago, the U.S. age of consent for sex was about 10 years old (in Delaware it was 7), and it wasn’t a big deal to most Americans — most being Christians. Today folks think and feel differently. In some cultures, like the Tibetans, one wife had many husbands. In others, like the Mormons or Mongols, one husband had many wives. It was common practice in some societies to lend one’s wife to a guest. Some groups embraced tattoos, but the ancient Greeks considered them a desecration of the body. To some, infanticide was unforgivable, but to others common practice (Plato recommended it to prevent overpopulation). Hebrew, African, Asian, and Australian tribes forced genital mutilation on their young — still others thought it right to castrate themselves to prevent sin, or to punish others for crimes. At the exact same time Middle Eastern and American men were desperate to make sure women revealed no skin in public, women elsewhere were shirtless just like men. (See The Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell and “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish,” Bertrand Russell.) In some societies, women breastfed piglets. People in other times and places might consider that wrong (see Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond). In India, Hindu women would sometimes burn themselves to death at their husbands’ funerals in a ritual called sati. The later British occupiers thought this wrong, so they banned it. European Christian societies spent over a thousand years torturing, murdering, and warring with nonbelievers, something unthinkable today.

And of course, within a single culture at any given time there is debate over what is right or wrong.

This is because morality is affected by many factors: geography, resources and wealth, political institutions (would any argue democracy doesn’t change the way people think?), class structure, religion (a powerful force indeed), education and literacy, traditional or commonly-held ideas, scientific progress, individual observation and experience, family dynamics, economic systems, and so on, all varying within a complex society. And these interact with and affect each other; Will and Ariel Durant wrote in The Lessons of History, “Political forms, religious institutions, cultural creations, are all rooted in economic realities.”

Consider the fierce disagreement over slavery in the United States. Racism and slavery were cultural creations, and we can see how economic circumstances affected them. Geography and climate did not make slavery as economically sensible in the North (tobacco and cotton did not grow well), and thus it slowly died out; thoughts on the moral status of slavery changed with it. While Quakers preached abolition in the North, Protestant preachers in the South upheld slavery as ethical, as “God’s Will,” pointing to many Bible verses (see The Slave Community, John Blassingame). Slaveowners saw nothing wrong with slavery, but black slaves certainly did.

Today there is much debate among Christian sects and individuals over what is right or wrong, concerning sex before marriage (and other sex acts besides intercourse), homosexuality, alcohol and drug use, war, assisted suicide, condom and contraceptive use, etc. Whether one is religious or not, there is always debate about when to lie (is it morally right if a killer just asked where your family is hiding?), when to kill (is it morally right if you’re a soldier and your government told you to?), and so on.

Clearly, human values are fluid and varied, constructed by those who came before you, determined by the society into which you were born. Your society, and your place in it, will decide how you think and feel about everything, from violence to competition to sex.

 

A More Scientific Answer

Readers who object, “You can’t compare ethics in ancient times to modern times!” or “Other cultures thought horrible things were morally right because they didn’t believe in (the Judeo-Christian) God or have his laws!” are not thinking critically. An Objective Morality is clearly nonsense, even if those objections are spot on.

First, an Objective Morality (an innate sense of right or wrong) would not require people to know Yahweh. You can claim people just need to accept Christ, then they will know how to live, according to guidelines in the Bible — yet obviously that is not innate, it is acquired knowledge. Second, if Objective Morality exists, one would think it would be constant between ancient and modern times. Why should people think it morally right to commit mass human sacrifice, or enslaved people, long ago, but not today? Christians tend to think Jesus Christ came along, gave a message of love and peace, and changed the rules. But again, this is acquired knowledge; it was a message apostles had to go out and preach. Further, it does not explain the ethical advancements made by societies that aren’t Christian. How could Confucius and Buddha have conjured a Golden Rule, and their followers put it into practice, long before Christ or Christianity even existed?

One might suppose an all-powerful God could change humanity’s innate moral compass over time, but like God himself this is not provable, and unlikely to convince anyone who does not already believe in him — that is, anyone who trusts that morality can change over time according to societal factors and advancements.

In sum, there is no evidence of Objective Morality. Lewis’ idea that the differences between “moral ideas of one time or country and those of another…are not really very great” is clearly absurd. His belief that your standard of judgement must be supernatural (not a predictable result of your current society) is without evidence and ignores better explanations. Zacharias’ insistence that because you have decided one thing is evil and another thing good is devoid of any rational thought or understanding of how, when, and where you are born builds your moral code. And again, using an unfounded idea to prove another unfounded idea is laughable to any thinking person. Proving Objective Morality exists is as impossible as proving God exists.

So “right” and “wrong” are simply ideas, and feelings associated with those ideas (perhaps we feel horrible when we cheat on our spouse and happy when we help others). Morality is relative, changing, unique to each person. It doesn’t exist outside the individual, except by common acceptance — when more than one person begins to believe executing non-virgins is right, that slavery is wrong, and so on. But how did morality arise in the first place?

Morality is “innate” only in the sense that the behavioral gene variants that allowed homo sapiens to better survive were passed on to later generations. Societal factors discussed above, like the growth of capitalism, the emergence of democracy, the weakening of poverty, the rise and fall of religions, and scientific discoveries, will greatly affect moral thought. But there is also scientific evidence to suggest a blueprint for our morality emerged that aided our survival — in the same way all other species developed habits of feeling and behavior that allowed them to better pass on their genes.

Consider why we experience sexual lust and love. A lucky offspring with a random genetic mutation that pumps higher levels of hormones (dopamine, serotonin, and other neurological drugs) into the brain during casual interaction or sex is more likely to seek out more partners, have more children, and pass on the genetic variation before the bitter end. In this way, the species survives better (natural selection).

I preface with this because understanding that “feelings,” “drives,” and “behaviors” are developed through natural selection is crucial to understanding evolutionary morality. Genes determine behavioral characteristics, so as with lust, love, anger, fear, etc., there were certain genes relating to how we feel when we treat others in specific ways that persisted and certain others that did not, some that helped survival and others not so much. One can see how strength in numbers can aid food acquisition and defense, but it goes deeper. Biologist Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion:

We now have four good Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous or ‘moral’ towards each other. First, there is the special case of genetic kinship. Second, there is reciprocation: the repayment of favours given, and the giving of favours in ‘anticipation’ of payback. Following on from this there is, third, the Darwinian benefit of acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness. And fourth…there is the particular additional benefit of conspicuous generosity as a way of buying unfakeably authentic advertising [attracting mates by caring for others].

As humans and our predecessors evolved, those with genetic inclinations to take care of others were more likely to survive. Those who inherited solely aggressive, selfish traits were less likely to survive. And so the gene pool of “good” morals slowly grew. Modern experiments with infants show that even humans three to ten months old demonstrate a rudimentary understanding of empathy for those hurting, fairness for those who have less than others, and a keen interest in seeing kindness rewarded and meanness punished (see Shermer, The Moral Arc). This is not to say that self-preservation, fight or flight, and other such instincts did not evolve right along with them, for they did, but these are not mutually exclusive things. The genetic instinct to care for one’s young accompanies the genetic willingness to fight or kill for one’s resources, one’s home, etc. Both are in the interest of survival. Evolution explains both moral and immoral behavior and urges. These instincts arose before humans had large enough brains to develop the concept of right and wrong; the concept itself arose from these evolutionary instincts, from how it felt to do this or that.

This is not to say all species evolved in this manner. Ours just happens to be one that did. Our primate ancestors evolved to treat each other in certain ways and experience certain feelings following such treatment, and they survived best because of this (we inherited these evolutionary instincts, just like our ape cousins did, and as we evolved we gained the mental capacity to have more complex, abstract thoughts of how we should behave, and those thoughts of right and wrong changed in different eras and places). But other species evolved to behave in other ways. There are many creatures that abandon or devour their young, survive solely by stealing the food of others, and all sorts of nasty things!

According to Dawkins, homo sapiens are similar to many species that care for their young or even younger siblings (for example: bees, ants, wasps, termites, naked mole rats, meerkats, acorn woodpeckers), give something away and expect the favor returned later (vampire bats pay debts in regurgitated blood), build a positive individual reputation to ensure others will provide help in a time of need (primates), and show-off one’s generosity in order to attract a mate (Arabian babblers). Studies reveal that mice show increased concern when familiar mice suffer compared to unfamiliar mice, monkeys starve themselves to save other monkeys from electric shocks, and chimps and dogs are more or less fair to each other when fed (Harris, The Moral Landscape). Species like elephants mourn their dead.

It goes without saying it wasn’t religion that birthed this morality. Our closest cousins on the tree of life, the apes, share many of our moral feelings and behavior. It has been found that Bonobos attempt to control their temper, are happier and manage emotions better if they are loved by a parent, and are quick to hug, kiss, and pat an upset or stressed companion. But apes aren’t particularly religious, one would think. True, one can say God implanted morals into animals as well as humans, but there is no way to prove this and it is not necessary to explain the phenomenon — it all makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.

Overall, not only do many creatures experience the same emotions humans do, many mourn over separation and death, punish cheating, dislike betrayal and unfairness, prefer equality, reconcile after fighting, give gifts of gratitude, comfort others, care for the young of others, form friendships, cooperate and share, help or save others with no benefit for doing so, etc.—and not just when interacting with their own species (see Recio, Inside Animal Hearts and Minds). Our ancestors were much like them — morality was instinct, instinct that aided survival. As our brains evolved and grew larger, we were able to have more complex thoughts on how we should act.

Morality, driven by evolution, came before religious beliefs or complex human societies. It was the trial and error of new gene combinations, and the predator and sexual pressures of natural selection.

Dawkins continues:

Through most of our prehistory, humans lived under conditions that would have strongly favoured the evolution of all four kinds of altruism. We lived in villages, or earlier in discrete roving bands like baboons, partially isolated from neighboring bands or villages. Most of your fellow band members would have been kin, more closely related to you than members of other bands–plenty of opportunities for kin altruism to evolve. And, whether kin or not, you would tend to meet the same individuals again and again throughout your life–ideal conditions for the evolution of reciprocal altruism. Those are also ideal conditions for building a reputation of altruism, and the very same ideal conditions for advertising conspicuous generosity.

By any or all of the four routes, genetic tendencies towards altruism would have been favoured in early humans. It is easy to see why our prehistoric ancestors would have been good to their own in-group but bad–to the point of xenophobia–towards other groups.

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Either God Changes or He’s Psychotic: Comparing Testaments Old and New

Posted on by under Religion

What should you make of a deity that instructs you to murder your homosexual friends on Monday, but to love them and treat them with kindness on Wednesday? All because of what happened on Tuesday?

This is the summation of “God’s Plan” outlined in the Old and New Testaments, and many absolutely appalling crimes, committed by man and God alike, could be substituted in for homosexuality: God deceiving, murdering, humiliating, and selling people; men oppressing women, committing genocide, sacrificing humans, enslaving innocents, and executing people for nonviolent crimes — all according to God’s laws, commands, or acquiescence. Yes, the use of a few days is tongue in cheek, but what is 1,000 years to an eternal God?

The other option, of course, is that God changed enormously for the better, spending his younger years a monster but eventually growing up and embracing the ethics of love and mercy. As the idea of a changing God is flatly rejected by Christians (as is the idea of God being manmade and changed by man over time), there is little more to say on the matter.

Instead, believers insist Jesus Christ came (on Tuesday) to do away with all the old, barbaric laws, usually pretending that God himself didn’t write those very laws or personally order the Hebrews to commit atrocities like the slaughter of women and children, as documented in the link above. For those who actually read their Bible and acknowledge these crimes are God’s Will, careful consideration must be made as to what this means concerning God’s character and his “plan.”

Man’s story in the Bible can be divided into 3 parts.

In Part One, man and woman were created and were sinless; this allowed them to dwell with a sinless God in the Garden.

In Part Two, man and woman sinned; the consequence for this was separation from God and the prospect of facing his judgement not only after death but here in this world. Punishments were immediate, either by man or by God. He destroyed the elderly, men, women, and children through flood and fire from Heaven to abolish evil and punish sin, not just ending their lives but, presumably, sending them straight to Hell. 

The way to avoid eternal torture was to stay true to God, live according to the laws of scripture (no matter how many people you had to kill), and pray and offer sacrifices to atone for your sins. According to Christians, if this had not been the way of doing things, God would not have been Good, since by definition everything he does is Good. If he did not command the Hebrews to execute rebellious sons, or ban disabled persons from approaching the holy altar, he was imperfect.

In Part Three, the death and resurrection of Christ offered respite from God’s wrath and judgement. Jesus died as painfully as each sinful person deserved, a single sacrifice to atone for all sin, so the old ways of doing things became unnecessary. God no longer needed to punish evil (during an evildoers’ lifetime) to be Good, nor did man. God’s righteous judgement was therefore confined to the afterlife. The way to avoid Hell was then to believe in Christ’s resurrection and live for him.

What’s interesting about Part Two is that God actually thought it would be a good idea to hand authority to carry out his judgement to men. This put quite a high degree of trust in Jewish leaders and the community at large. How many people died for crimes they did not commit? How many executions were based on sloppy investigations, prejudice, or personal vendettas?

One can only hope God stepped in to prevent such blunders, hopefully saving virgin girls suspected of being non-virgins from execution (the actual non-virgins, of course, got what they deserved). Or perhaps God brought to Heaven those falsely condemned, and punished those who wrongly accused them. Still, one might wonder: Wouldn’t it have been smarter for God to keep such authority for himself, to avoid tragic accidents in the administering of justice?

According to God’s Plan, the time was simply not right for such an idea until after Jesus was resurrected. In Part Three, judgement was withheld until death for those who didn’t believe, and lifted completely for those who did. The death of Jesus ended the period of God pouring wrath upon the earth; even the billions who never heard of Christ were spared, at least until they died and went to Hell (or got a free pass, if you’re one of those “liberal Christians” who thinks such things). Plus, the authority to carry out God’s judgment no longer rested with men. Now leaders and communities were encouraged to help the rebellious son (for it is not the well who need a doctor, but the sick), accept and love a disabled person as if he were Jesus, and preach the Good News to worshippers of other gods all across the globe, rather than murder them. If God did not command these things, he could not be Good.

There are two ramifications of all this.

First, if this was the plan of an all-knowing, unchanging God, he consciously decided that for several thousand years he would slaughter evildoers and send them to Hell, and encourage the Jews to do the same, before offering humanity an end to his own wrath and slaughter!

According to Christians, man’s sin is the true problem. Yet obviously God’s reaction to that sin makes a dramatic, predetermined shift. For 4,000 years, between the fall of man and the salvation of man, righteousness required God to intervene in our world and kill sinners, and instruct man to kill sinners. Then this wrathful God took human form and died, taking a bullet for the sinful people born or living in the 1st century A.D. and onward, accepting his own punishment he used on the wicked. After this, righteousness required God to refrain from intervening in our world to punish evil (saving that for after death), and to instruct man to love sinners, giving sinners their natural lifespans to hear about and accept forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

The second ramification is that if you were born during those 4,000 years, you were simply unlucky.

Are you a homosexual? Someone of a different faith? Someone living on land a God you’ve never heard of claimed for a people you’ve never met? That is unfortunate, for you were born at the wrong place and the wrong time. You will be killed and spend eternity in Hell. People were sinners in Part Two and sinners in Part Three, but you were born in the former and this poor happenstance means you, also a sinner, will be executed rather than loved by the followers of this God.

He dealt you a hand far worse than someone born after 33 A.D., putting you at a distinct disadvantage, as judgement is at this time immediate, and is enacted on Jews and non-Jews alike, by God and man alike. You will have a harder time making it to old age and avoiding Hell, as you have less time here and a slimmer chance to become a devout disciple of God.

Clearly, an omnipotent God could have (and a moral God would have) thought up a plan where the Hebrews were encouraged to love, forgive, and live in peace with one another the moment they left the Garden, where everyone was given a chance to live to old age rather than being snuffed out at God’s hand or man’s. “Thou shalt not kill” could have included rebellious sons; surely humanity could have handled that…surely a loving God would command it.

But that was not this God’s plan. There had to be unimaginable suffering, widespread death, and brutal oppression for a nice long while, to punish all humanity for the actions of two ancestors in a Garden.

Any deity that would construct a plan like this is both wicked and a madman.

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The Corruption of the DNC

Posted on by under Politics

Democratic National Committee chairwoman and former co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign Debbie Wasserman Shultz, when asked by The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah if there was any merit to the accusation that the DNC was working to impede the Bernie Sanders campaign, replied, “As powerful as that makes me feel, I’m not doing a very good job of rigging the outcome or blocking anyone from being able to get their message out.”

She then explained her position required her to have “thick skin,” to deflect false accusations. “If I have to take a few punches in order for them to be able to make sure they get their message out, so be it.”

In this way, Wasserman Shultz deftly rearranged the cast of characters. All of a sudden, she was the one trying to “make sure” candidates could “get their message out” — not the liberals criticizing her for failing to do exactly that, liberals who in her view are the ones at fault (for throwing “punches,” false accusations, which somehow would silence candidate voices). Noah did not address this obvious evasion, nor the specific criticisms of Wasserman Shultz and the DNC.

The truth is that the DNC has, during Wasserman Shultz’s tenure, taken steps to make it harder for Bernie Sanders and other underdog Democratic candidates to get their messages out. And before her tenure, the DNC created a system that would indeed rig the outcome in favor of the politically well-connected and powerful.

While the DNC scheduling only six debates drew much criticism, it’s actually the same number they scheduled in 2004 and 2008. The difference in this election is a punishment was concocted to ensure the candidates couldn’t participate in unsanctioned debates, that is, debates not sponsored by the DNC. In 2008, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ended up having over two dozen total debates because they were allowed to meet in unsanctioned debates.

But Wasserman Shultz said in September 2015: “The candidates will be uninvited from subsequent debates if they accept an invitation to anything outside of the six sanctioned debates.” Her reasoning? “If you don’t have the national party put a reasonable number of debates on the schedule and insist that the number is adhered to, it starts to spiral out of control and the entire contest becomes built around the debate schedule.” She said too many debates would eat up candidates’ resources and time, forcing them off the campaign trail.

In other words, candidates for the Democratic nomination can’t be trusted to decide for themselves how to spend their time and resources — more nationally-televised debates, exposing the views of candidates to millions, is a strategy so silly, ineffective, and wasteful it must be closely curtailed.

Whether or not the DNC meant to aid Clinton with this decision (this writer suspects the former), it did precisely that. Any candidate with as high name recognition as Clinton would be aided by limiting the national exposure of little-known rivals like Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley. The Clinton campaign pushed for fewer than eight debates.

In 2008, the candidates at least had the freedom to join unsanctioned debates if they so chose; they were able to respond to Americans calling for more debates and media outlets offering to host them, without a DNC stamp of approval. By punishing candidates who step out of line (banning them from DNC debates), the DNC tightly controlled the candidates — when the candidates should be influenced by the people and address their wishes. The DNC made a strike against freedom and republican democracy, and gave Clinton an edge, all at once. Later, the DNC yielded to pressure for more debates.

Perhaps this was all completely innocent. But there was another issue.

To some, the consistency of the debates falling on nights with massive television audiences distracted by other programs seems too remarkable to be coincidence. In November, the Iowa debate happened to fall on a night the University of Iowa was playing Minnesota in the highly popular Floyd of Rosedale trophy game — analysts predicted this would tank Iowa viewership. A debate in December took place while NFL teams from two of the five largest media markets in the U.S. met for a playoff game; it also happened to be six days away from Christmas, when many Americans travel, and the opening weekend of a highly-anticipated Star Wars sequel. A debate in January fell on a three-day weekend and the night of another big NFL playoff game.

Later, as the campaigns negotiated a debate in New York, the Clinton campaign pushed for a debate on April 4, the night of an NCAA tournament game that featured Syracuse, a New York university. A Sanders spokesman called the suggestion “ludicrous.”

Again, whether or not this was intentional, the effect is the same. It protects the well-known front-runner at the expense of the underdog. Had the DNC and Clinton been interested in getting as wide an audience as possible, they would have gladly rescheduled the debates around popular sporting events and holidays. Also, weekdays are well-understood to get more viewers than weekends.

Further, Bernie Sanders supporters will not soon forget the DNC voter data breach just before the Iowa contest. The DNC voter database temporarily allowed Sanders’ national data director to look at Clinton’s voter data. The DNC quickly barred Sanders from his own voter data. The Sanders campaign fired the data director (who only viewed the information, doing nothing nefarious with it), but the DNC maintained the restriction, causing an uproar. Liberal website U.S. Uncut wrote:

The move was unprecedented as a punishment for any campaign. Even Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor, started a petition calling for Sanders’ file to be reinstated. David Axelrod, former adviser to President Obama, equated the DNC’s punishment to “putting the finger on the scale” for Clinton.

Massive pressure, including a federal lawsuit filed by Bernie Sanders himself against the DNC, forced Wasserman Shultz and her colleagues to back down and restore Sanders’ access.

Later, the Sanders campaign accused the Clinton campaign of using funds meant for the DNC.

[Update, 11/2/2017: According to Donna Brazile, who later replaced Wasserman Shultz, Clinton loaned a broke DNC millions in exchange for “control” over it almost a year before her nomination (the DNC is supposed to be neutral until after the nomination). According to Brazile, Clinton had control over DNC strategy, money, staff, communications, mailing, and so forth. This would have allowed Clinton to avoid donation limits to campaigns (instead fundraising through the party and then laundering it to her campaign, just as the Sanders campaign said) and influence the DNC’s work in each state in a way that favored her and hurt Sanders. Brazile is actually the one who leaked debate questions to Clinton during the campaign. 

The next day, NBC News published the agreement Brazile referred to, supporting her claim while adding some clarifications. “The arrangement pertained to only the general election, not the primary season, and it left open the possibility that it would sign similar agreements with other candidates. Still, it clearly allowed the Clinton campaign to influence DNC decisions made during an active primary, even if intended for preparations later [for the general election].” During the primary season, the Clinton campaign appeared to have “oversight over how its money was spent” (“joint authority,” to quote the agreement), and the DNC agreed to find a communications director “acceptable to HFA [Hillary For America]” by September 2015, long before Clinton was nominated.]

And of course, the controversial superdelegates (or “unpledged delegates”) might still hand the nomination to Clinton against the will of the voters. Superdelegates (delegates from each state that do not have to vote for candidates according to state election results, but can vote as they wish) have never given a nomination to a candidate that did not also win the majority of everyday voters. However, it is still possible disaster is on the horizon. This is an undemocratic system that without question must be abolished. The very possibility of such an outcome, the very fact that Democratic voters must worry whether their voice — and their voice alone, not 712 current and former Democratic politicians — will select their nominee for president is an embarrassment. Not even the GOP has such a system!

Debbie Wasserman Schultz said of the superdelegates, “Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.” This statement is brutally honest, considering both the history of superdelegates and the potential for Bernie Sanders, the voters, and democracy itself to be simply dismissed in the near future.

There are other issues to consider: Wasserman Shultz’s fundraising failures, her leaving a DNC finance chair caught illegally raising money for Clinton unpunished, the DNC offering office space to the Clinton campaign but not to her rivals’, Wasserman Shultz filling convention committees with Clinton supporters, so on. All these things have caused deep divisions in the Democratic Party. Nearly 75,000 people signed a petition demanding Wasserman Shultz resign, 207,000 signed a petition to demand the superdelegates follow state election results. Serious reforms are needed.

Intelligent people cannot deny tactics like these mock the notion of fairness and the ideals of democracy (the fact that Clinton herself is hopelessly corrupt only makes this situation darker). Rewarding those actions would, in the view of this writer, be a grave mistake. It would be a wonderful way of preserving the status quo, encouraging a corrupt DNC to continue on this path. If the people do not tighten the leash, there is no reason why DNC methods of manipulation could not grow more extreme later on.

Because, dear reader, while you may plan to vote for Hillary Clinton this year, there is nothing to say four, eight, twelve, or sixteen years from now there will not come along a “grassroots activist,” an underdog, that you prefer to the establishment candidate the superdelegate system, and other systems, are designed to protect.

When that happens, you will look back at 2016 and realize where you could have taken a stand against said systems, you worked to preserve them.

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