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Memorial Day: Soldiers and Civic Vice

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Americans tends to hold up soldiers as models of civic virtue. Might they instead be examples of civic vice? Might it be that the average employee at a for-profit business has more civic virtue than the average American soldier?

A few years ago, when writing The Ethics of Voting, I searched through maybe fifty or so books, ancient, early modern, and contemporary, looking for authors’ definitions of “civic virtue”. To my surprise, it turned out almost everyone had the same definition:

Civic Virtue =(def.) The disposition and ability to promote the common good over purely private ends.

Most writers on civic virtue agree on the above definition. Even skeptics who say there’s no such thing as civic virtue can accept it. (They just deny that there is any such thing as “the common good” or “society”.) This doesn’t mean they agree on everything, of course. They might disagree about what constitutes the “common good”, or what counts as “society”. They disagree about what kinds of activities count as possible avenues to exercise civic virtue. They also disagree about just how strong the disposition or ability to promote the common good must be before a person qualifies as having civic virtue.

There’s an interesting issue here. What do we say about people who have a strong de dicto desire to promote the common good, but who, because of unjustified and false beliefs about factual matters, tend to undermine it? For instance consider the following hypothetical person, Betty Benevolence:

President Betty Benevolence strongly desires (de dicto) to promote the common good of her society. However, she is negligent and irrational in how she forms beliefs about what it takes to promote the common good. She processes information in a highly biased and irrational way, and she is blameworthy for doing so. Thus, while she intends to make Americans richer, she chooses policies that hurt their pocketbooks. While she intends to promote justice, she chooses policies that undermine it. Etc. However, she still wants more than anything to promote the common good, even though she consistently undermines it.

Different theorists of civic virtue would dispute whether Betty counts as having civic virtue. For some, having a strong (de dicto) desire to promote the common good is good enough. For others, Betty counts as civically vicious, not virtuous, because she lacks proper knowledge of how to accomplish her ends and because she is negligent for lacking this knowledge.

What about American soldiers, at least those who have fought in recent battles and wars?

 

We shouldn’t assume that the typical soldier has heroic motivations. Many do. Many do not. Many join the military for less than noble motives, and even when they are in the military, they do not develop noble motives. However, for the sake of argument, let’s just imagine that all soldiers have a genuine and strong (de dicto) desire to protect and serve their fellow citizens.

Even if so, we then need to ask about whether they actually count as having civic virtue. For soldiers might be like Betty–having proper motivations but defective cognition.

Much of this depends on what we should say about American military policy. There are certain wars that are clearly and uncontroversially unjust wars: the second Cherokee War, the Chickamauga War, the Northwest Indian War, and pretty much every war the US fought against native Americans, the Mexican American War, the Spanish-American War, American involvement in World War I, and the second American war on Iraq. That’s just a short list. (To that list, I’d add almost every military action the United States has ever undertaken, including the American Revolution.) Now, I’m not planning to argue for these claims here. That said, it’s  worth noting that the people who defend a war have the burden of proof. Wars are presumed unjust until shown otherwise, and it is difficult to justify a war.

Let’s take the American Invasion of Iraq. Ex ante, the case for going to war was extremely weak. Thus, since by default war is presumed unjust until shown otherwise, ex ante, the war was unjust. Ex post, the case against the war is even stronger.

This meant that soldiers who fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom, to put it bluntly, assisted the United States government in perpetrating an unjust war and, moreover, they should have know better. Many soldiers believed that war was just, but they were negligent and blameworthy for that belief (as are/were you, if you support/supported the invasion).

In light of that, what should we say about soldiers’ civic virtue?

On this point, Will Wilkinson describes being asked to clap for soldiers on an airplane:

I hesitated to join the applause.

Hadn’t we known for years that the war was predicated on misinformation? Were we all so ready to agree that it was keeping Americans safe? It was, in fact, killing and wounding thousands upon thousands of Americans–many more than were killed on 9/11. Our troops, in turn, have killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who did nothing to any of us. Maybe the soldier on the airplane signed up to keep me safe and to protect our freedom. But why should we all have to agree that his choice was free of false assumptions? Why should we be expected to display our gratitude, to put our hands together, for what may in the end be a senseless waste of life and a squandering of national power?

Many soldiers intend to be my children’s protectors. But the facts seem to indicate they are my childrens’ enemies, and the enemies of justice and freedom. Should I clap for their good intentions or jeer at their bad actions and negligent behavior?

I can imagine certain conservative types having the following reaction: “Oh, you’re just some sniveling, ungrateful college professor, who uses the very freedoms American soldiers win for you to castigate them. You should get on your knees and thank them.” Well, it’s at least logically possible that I deserve that rebuke. However, the facts seem to indicate otherwise.
UPDATE:

Michael Carey writes in the comments:

I think you misunderstand the role of civic virtue with respect to soldiers.  Civic virtue is a way for society to incentivize behavior…

Thus, if we are able to commit as a society to grant soldiers high status regardless of whether the wars we have them fight are just, then soldiers with civic virtue will fight those wars at a discount.

I think he’s right, as an empirical claim, that this is one reason we’ve tended to valorize soldiers no matter what. At the same time, I worry that it’s a dangerous social norm.

 

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  • Michael Carey

    I think you misunderstand the role of civic virtue with respect to soldiers.  Civic virtue is a way for society to incentivize behavior.  It is when people have a quality that makes them want to do what we (society) want for some reason other than desire for money or power.  When they feel a desire for honor or the respect of society, that is civic virtue.

    We promote civic virtue because it is a way to get relatively cheap social cooperation and societies with a strong sense of civic virtue on average probably have some advantage over societies that do not.

    Under this understanding, whether the war that society chooses is just is totally irrelevant.  Society chose it (via their president or congress), and soldiers do the dirty work partially for pay and partially for honor or respect.  We grant them this respect so that we don’t have to pay them as much to risk their lives (and so we have more control over them in situations where their lives are in immediate danger).

    Thus, if we are able to commit as a society to grant soldiers high status regardless of whether the wars we have them fight are just, then soldiers with civic virtue will fight those wars at a discount.

    (Note:  I am an officer in the Air Force and fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom.  No, I don’t think it was justified and yes, I think I deserve respect for fighting.)

  • I understand your worry about our tendency to valorize soldiers, but I think Michael Carey’s comment is pretty much on point. A society that totally lacked this tendency would eventually have no one to defend it at such a time when that defense became legitimately necessary. I’m not necessarily “grateful” to soldiers for fighting the wars they have fought in the past few decades, but I do respect them for their sacrifice.

    I don’t think this is an irrational position. There are some virtues which warrant respect even when they are misdirected. Even “Betty Benevolent” deserves some respect, but I would also add that there seems to be some distinction to be made based on relative amounts of power. A person who takes on that much responsibility for the well-being of a society ought to have a proportional amount of respect for the need to be well-informed in her decisions.

    I also think most bloggers on this site are too rationalistic in their attitude toward tradition. In this case, I see a considerable lack of respect for time and place, which has always been an important part of the way in which society transmits civic virtue. Writing a Memorial Day post about how soldiers may not deserve so much respect after all is, to put it mildly, in bad taste. There is a time to criticize, and a time to honor.

    • If the content of this post is incorrect, then this is a bad time to write this. If the content is correct, then it’s the right time to write this.

      • That is, if many soldiers really do tend to exhibit civic vice and really are enemies of freedom and justice, then we should counteract the undeserved praise they are about to get.

        • No, that’s exactly where you’re wrong. It seems you just don’t understand the concept of “sacred,” but most people do. Writing this doesn’t “counteract” anything. It will either (1) isolate you even more from mainstream thinking, or (2) blow up in your face.

          • I think I understand the concept of the “sacred”, but it seems that belief in the sacred does far more harm than it does good, and we’d do better to dispense with it.

          •  There is most likely a neurocorrelate of  ‘sacredness’ or there is no such state of mind at all. I respond to societal behaviors like sacredness or I would become a sociopath — someone so far outside the norm as to be emotionally disabled with respect to almost everyone in my environment. People who behave this way often end up living under cardboard boxes down by the river. We could just as well rid ourselves of eating protein and carbs as feeling sacredness.

          • Damien S.

            Haidt’s moral foundations probably applies here.  Conservatives base on purity, authority, and tradition as well as harm and fairness.  Liberals focus on the last two.  Libertarians skip all five and focus on freedom.  Sense of ‘sacredness’ is real but it’s not universal, whether for genetic or cultural reasons, nor is universality about what’s considered ‘sacred’.

  • I was an officer in the Army Reserves for about 8 years after college. Never activated, though I came close a few times.
    I left the Reserves, despite the very attractive retirement benefits, for a number of reasons. Partly, I just don’t think I was a good fit, dispositionally speaking. But a big part of my concern was ethical. Serving in the military involves committing to kill people simply because the government tells you to, regardless of your judgment of the merits or justice of the military conflict as a whole or the particular act of killing. I simply didn’t think that this was something I could do in good conscience.
    Indeed, it wasn’t clear to me that this was something that anyone ought to be able to do in good conscience. I’m not a pacifist, and so I think that having some sort of military is justifiable. Perhaps the solution is to abolish the standing army, or to greatly expand the role of conscientious objections. I’m not sure about the right public policy. But I was pretty confident about the kind of decision I couldn’t live with, personally.

    • Aeon Skoble

      Two other solutions: 1, (ideal world) no state and radical privatization of all uses of defensive force; 2, (non-ideal world) limiting the role of the military to, you know, defense. 

  • CFV

    “including the American Revolution”? That’s surprising for me. You would want to remain under British rule?

    “Let’s take the American Invasion of Iraq. Ex ante, the case for going to war was extremely weak.”

    Well, not everyone would have agreed: http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/journal/19_2/special_issue/5190.html

    • Damien S.

      Well, if I put the right spin on what I learned in school, it was a war driven by a minority of the people (1/3 Rev, 1/3 Loyal, 1/3 neutral) for the sake of not paying taxes in return for having been protected from the French and their Indian allies, and for the sake of not having to respect British treaties with the Indians and continuing to steal their land.

      • Actually, the King demanded that the colonists pay their tribute to him in gold, which they did not have much (or any) of. They were using colonial script at the time. When the colonists refused to pay, the King sent troops to enforce his rule – the colonists fought back. Self-defense. Pure and simple.

        That’s far different than invading a sovereign country that posed no immediate threat to us, along with the “shock and awe” of watching our taxpayer dollars being dropped on the heads of unsuspecting Iraqis. 

        They don’t hate us for our freedoms, they hate us because we’re a bunch of terrorist bastards.

        • Actually, Damien – I apologize. It looks like I was posting that against your comment, I was not. I like your comment. 

      • CFV

         Thanks for the response Damien! It seems that I have a bit naïve and romantic vision of the American Revolution.

        • Damien S.

          You’re welcome.

          For clarity I should note: by ‘school’ I meant through high school, not graduate studies on American history or something; just looking at the right aspects of the standard narrative. I don’t feel I have enough primary grasp of the history to have a solid opinion.  And I assume the more positive standard elements (no taxation without representation; mercantilist policies toward the colonies) aren’t baseless.  But those usually get the highlight or spin, and one can look at the other side, as I did.

          (Also: tar and feathering: amusing prank of humiliation, or hideous torture of having hot tar poured all over your skin?  Even if not that hot, how do you get it off?)

          • CFV

            Ehhh??? What do you mean with what you put it between brackets?

          • Damien S.

            I have no idea what you’re asking.

          • CFV

             Oh, I see what you meant:

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFWZ925zK0A

            However, one thing is having a just cause for going to war (jus ad bellum), another is to waging that war properly, morally speaking (jus in bello).

      • Aeon Skoble

        Wasn’t just about the taxes.  The Declaration has, what, three pages of grievances?  And when years of petitioning for redress resulted in increased crackdowns, they eventually decided to resist with force. 

  • Dale Miller

    Arguably, at least, it promotes the common good for us to have a military and for the members of the military to submit themselves to civilian control. If civilian leaders misuse the military, then perhaps this says more about their lack of civic virtue than that of the members of the military themselves. 

  • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

    Let me add the following friendly amendment to your claim that: “people who defend a war have the burden of proof. Wars are presumed unjust until shown otherwise.” Any war undertaken for the avowed purpose (although not necessarily the sole purpose) of removing from power a mass-murdering, war criminal dictator, whose terrorized subjects desire to, but are unable to depose him on their own, and which succeeds in removing said murderous dictator from power and replacing him with a government with a vastly better human rights record, is presumptively just. 

    • I have a better idea Mark. Since we are justified in our wars (removing those damned dictators), we must presume we are more righteous in our governance. Therefore, let’s just bomb the hell out of everyone (after we create all those jobs building bombs) and make President Obama King of the World. That would be logic of our being “the policeman of the world,” wouldn’t it? 

      Then we can have one currency like the euro and we’ll all be in poverty like Greece.

      • Damien S.

        Bah!  Stick with tradition!  One currency like the gold standard and poverty like Greece!

    • Michael J. Green

      …That’s not an amendment, that’s your attempt at satisfying the burden of proof. A presumption doesn’t make much sense when it’s loaded with so many contentious conditions.

      I’ll put forth this bold proposition: Any killing done in honest self-defense is presumptively just. Any public event conducted with the proper licensing and permits is presumptively legal.

      • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

        I don’t think so. Its still a presumption, because nothng I said is inconsistent with reaching a judgment in a particular case that the war was wrong on an all things considered basis.

    • RickDiMare

      ” . . . and replacing him with a government with a vastly better human rights record, is presumptively just.”

      When the lives of American military are told to block foreigners who are hell-bent on stopping the influence of privately-owned American corporations, why is it enough to replace foreign “war criminal dictator[s]” with a tax/economic/monetary system that merely has “a vastly better human rights record?”

      Asked differently, “Why does intervention in foreign affairs not require that the deposed tyrannical system be replaced by a legal system similar to one that governs U.S. statehood or U.S. territory status?

  • Joseph Stromberg

    My mentor, the late Bill Marina, disposed of the 1/3  1/3  1/3 business  years ago: William F. Marina, “The American Revolution and the Minority Myth,” Modern Age, 20 (Summer 1976), 298-309.

    Actually, the question raised in Jason Brennan’s post is very timely, especially now that the Occupant of the Mighty Office is hectoring us all to model ourselves on the military.

    Down here in Georgia we have another war to add to your list.

  • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

    One other thought. You have evaulated the civic virtue of soldiers exclusively on the justice/injustice of the conflicts in which they have recently fought. This is a fudamental error of logic. The existence of a military willing to fight in defense of a country has, at last arguably, a deterrent effect on potential aggressors. You may discount this, but your failure to even address it is an elementary mistake.

    • It’s just a blog post, Mark, not an academic paper.

  • Dshapiro

    I see Joseph Stromberg beat to the punch re the myth that the American Revolution was only supported by a minority of the population. Here’s a link to another article by Willam Marina on this subject: http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1398

  • This is a tough one. I don’t recall who said it but, “Wars will cease when men refuse to fight.” On the other hand, we can’t control what other countries decide to do, so there would seem to be real civic virtue in volunteering to “man the gates” in a purely defensive posture.

    I served for nine years but when I signed up we weren’t at war anywhere and I mainly did it for economic reasons. In that time we had the first Gulf War although I wasn’t directly involved (really, not that many troops, particularly sailors, overall were involved).

    If we had gotten involved in what I felt was an unjust war I believe I would have felt obligated to serve my tour of duty (contract) but not to re-enlist. I think we can distinguish between the soldier who unexpectedly finds himself in such a conflict and someone who directly volunteers.

    I honestly don’t know how much weight to give to honestly, but mistakenly, thinking you are doing the right thing. Especially when your culture is telling you so strongly that it’s a virtue. Is everyone expected to be a moral genius?

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  • Or maybe because his feelings were genuinely ambiguous. Or maybe he doesn’t feel an obligation to get in people’s faces at every opportunity; that’s more of a conservative thingy. I also have no reason to believe that philosophers are naturally immune to cognitive dissonance; they’re just trained to work their way through that and look at things more dispassionately.

    If you read my post above, you know that I served in the military so I’m not a pacifist or a “pussy.” And, yes, I’m proud of my service because I believe that a large part of being a man is defending your home and family, and in a world of belligerent nation-states part of defending your home is defending your country. I know some here feel no allegiance to nations, but that’s just the way the world actually is, instead of some fantasy of how it should be.

    On Sept. 11, 2011, I had been a civilian for ~14 years. When I saw the destruction wrought on that day I was furious. I wanted to smash and kill. I had fantasies of nuking Mecca and Medina in retribution. Even though I was watching all this on CNN from the remove of a small town in Kansas, and though I have no real connection to NYC beyond having driven through it on I-95 a couple times, I genuinely took it personally. My home, my family, my tribe had been brutally attacked. At that moment I sincerely wished that I was still in the Navy so I could at least feel like I was doing something.

    I even looked into National Guard duty and to my chagrin found out I was too old, even with prior service. I consoled myself that it was just as well; surely this wasn’t actually cause for a shooting war. We weren’t attacked by a state; these were terrorists–criminals–and the response would surely be more police work than military. Interpol, CIA, Special Ops. Maybe our kick-ass Seal Teams would do the dirty work and I could feel at least a bit of vicarious pride through that channel.

    Then we started bombing Afghanistan. At first I cheered. And then the reports of civilian casualties mounted. Men, women, and children who’d had as much to do with the attacks as my dead grandma. And I started to wonder what the point was.

    And I watched the build-up to war in Iraq and I was really confused. Iraq? What the hell was that about? The hijackers were mostly Saudi’s. The final straw was when Pres. Bush got on TV and said he “… didn’t really care about Bin Laden.” The single worst crime to ever be committed on U.S. soil and he “didn’t care” about catching the perpetrator? WTF??!!

    Now I’m not a friggin’ genius but I’m not dumb either. Whatever these wars were about they had very, very, little to do with defending our country; my home. And that makes them unjust. And that means that in theory our armed forces were violating their solemn oath of office which requires you to not obey unlawful orders. That’s a hell of a moral burden to put on a rank soldier, but the generals? That’s a different story.

    And so… yeah. I’m ambivalent about clapping for soldiers, too.

    • Or maybe because his feelings were genuinely ambiguous

      “despite my conviction” I’d say unequivocally not; ergo, pussy

      BTW, thank you for your service

      •  You’re welcome. But let me try this again.

        I’m an atheist. My family is Christian. When I attend family get-togethers and holidays like Thanksgiving, and there is a meal, there will be a saying of “Grace.”

        I will bow my head, fold my hands, and close my eyes in silence. I do this out of respect and consideration. I could make some kind of big show of contempt for their beliefs, but what in the world could that possibly accomplish?

        It’s called “social grace” and Mr. Wilkinson showed far more in his situation than you are currently displaying.

        • shemsky

          Nicely done, Rod.

        • I’m quite familiar with protocol and respectful silence is appropriate but if you cannot see the irony in a man who succumbs to social pressure while he criticizes bravery, then so be it

  • j_m_h

    Jason, which action do we consider a act of civic virtue? 

    A person contracts to provide some service and later finds out the results of their service are producing something many people consider “bad” but do not result in the activity being illegal. The person can either suck up the unpleasantness complete the contract or the person unilaterally break their contract.

    Which ideal do we want to highlight in any given situation? Both involve personal sacrifice to uphold socially beneficial institutions an actions.

    Seems to me we need to look more at the political process, the representatives, and the citizenry and not the soldiers if we want to talk about civic virtue, armed services and war.

    Now, I do agree that those in the armed services should not merely follow orders, and the military is very good at convincing young soldiers that they should not second guess their officers’ orders and that normal law, and even Constitutional law, doesn’t apply at all. It is true that in certain areas there are technical and procedural differences but the underlying morals are almost identical.

    The other think to point out is that when we ” valorize soldiers”  we lump all into the category or combat services but for every combat solider — at least in the Army — there are 5 to 6 additional soldiers who are supporting that soldier but no where near the fighting. There is a lot of administration in these bureaucracies and those members of the service face no more risk that any other citizen. In other words, not all soldiers deserver to be given any special status in today’s modern military structure. 

    • A person contracts to provide some service and later finds out the
      results of their service are producing something many people consider
      “bad” but do not result in the activity being illegal. The person can
      either suck up the unpleasantness complete the contract or the person
      unilaterally break their contract.

      I think this is a good point. Also, Jason asks whether “…it might be that the average employee at a for-profit business has more civic virtue than the average American soldier?” 

      Doesn’t that depend on the business? What about the bartender, liquor store owner, tobacco farmer, pornographer, or casino employee? These are all legal occupations that nonetheless could easily construed as contributing to various miseries up to and including death. At least the soldier is ostensibly killing for some reason other than profit.

      I know for many military persons–as well as myself–the primary reason for enlisting is simple employment; to provide food and shelter for their family. Others may be there for the educational benefits that civilian society doesn’t offer.

      How far do libertarians want to go down the path of morally criticizing someone for acting in their own self-interest economically? You don’t seem to like it much when liberals do that.

  • SimpleMachine88

    Of course it’s civic virtue, it’s just the civic people are being virtuous to isn’t always virtuous.  If there’s a problem, that’s it. 

    If you have a problem with the wars we fight, don’t vote for the people who declare them.  Take it out on the politicians, or on us Americans for basically being warmongers, not the soldiers.  It’s hard to criticize someone for us not being worth the sacrifices they make on our behalf.

  • Dave Fisher

    Am I alone in thinking it is tacky to have so many posts that are anti-soldier on a day when we are supposed to be remembering soldiers? I have had relatives give years of their life (and some their lives) in defense of their country and I find all these posts rather disgusting

    • ossicle

      It’s not anti-soldier, it’s much more nuanced and exploratory than that.  So I don’t know how alone you are, but it’s not tacky.

    • j_m_h

      Is it tacky to limit the comments to “soldiers” when that largely only means Army?

      BTW, Memorial Day is not about remembering those in the armed services but about those who died in the armed services.