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| Groping for a running mate? (Imagine the Democrat reaction if Trump did this.) |
One nice thing about philosophy is how it exposes bad ideas for what they are, irrespective of their popularity or trendiness.
At last night's Democratic debate, front-runner Joe Biden made explicit that he will only consider a woman for a running mate. His opponent, Bernie Sanders, wouldn't commit outright to that position, but he's leaning heavily in that direction.
Proposition: The person most qualified for the job is the one who should get that job.
Democrats, the people who supposedly represent the progressive and enlightened mindset in America, now deny this Proposition. (Or at least some trendily large majority now denies it. How much stink are they raising about Biden denying the VP opportunity to any men?)
Now, common sense and justice say that to deny the Proposition, one should come up with a really compelling overriding reason, because otherwise the Proposition is eminently plausible, so much so that it should serve as a basis for social policy - the reason being that common sense and justice find (in application to employment policies) discrimination against people on the basis of characteristics other than their qualifications for the job, to be repugnant, the sort of thing that a country such as ours (the United States) is supposed to have gotten away from. Only reactionaries or some such deplorables would favor non-merit-based employment discrimination. Right?
Well, apparently, it is now the reactionary position (if you listen to Joe Biden and his supporters and enablers and fellow-travelers) to oppose the kind of sex discrimination that Biden & co. now explicitly support! Apparently the default view is that opposing sex discrimination is now a sexist position itself, and that perhaps intellectual resources need to be marshaled to use misrepresentation and shaming tactics against such opposition. I wish I weren't exaggerating the nature of the moral absurdity going on here.
You don't have to ask what I think about this. Just ask what an established, high-reputation sage like Socrates or Aristotle would say about this. At the very least they would (I think) say that there had damn well be really good reasons why employment discrimination on the basis of sex should be reintroduced after supposedly having been widely repudiated in the USA and other nations.
So what would those really compelling reasons be?
I can't think of a single one.
I can think of reasons that would weigh in the consideration of candidates for employment - the standard 'diversity'-based reasons pertaining to what can be gained from differences in perspectives and background or life experience. But I can't think of any reason whatsoever that should be categorically overriding. Biden has said that being a woman is, in itself, a categorically overriding reason.
He has categorically ruled out considering a man as a running mate. This is equivalent to an employer saying "men need not apply." (I was going to say, it's the equivalent of an employer tossing the applications from men into the trash bin immediately, but by the principle of interpretive charity we cannot assume that Biden is being that dishonest, deceptive, and dastardly. He's openly advertising his sex discrimination so that no men need waste their time presenting their credentials to him for consideration.) Does that seem reasonable, something possibly endorsed by justice and common sense?
Why on earth should anyone even have to spend their time asking these questions? Philosopher's question: how much more of a departure from common sense and justice does this stuff have to be, before Democrats & co. raise a stink? (As Dennett would say, better pump those intuitions, turn the intuition knobs up to 11 if you have to. The Democrats/Biden are at a 10, it looks like.)
But again, don't consider what this here blogger has to say, because what the hell do I know. Just imagine instead an Aristotle bringing all his analytical weight to bear on this kind of question, and/or use your conscience (which should come to the same thing). I don't know what language an Aristotle would use, but I think it's fucking ridiculous, what the Demo-rats have become after decades of intellectual atrophy and hubris. 'Philosophers' in the academy should be all over this kind of thing, but I'm not expecting that to happen because they're mostly 'politically correct' Democrats and politics tends to compromise intellectual integrity (hence the boldfaced hypocrisy of the 'academic freedom' rationale for tenure).
[Addendum 3/17/20: Turley appears to be among the few within the commentariat with the integrity/honesty to call out Biden's blatantly discriminatory pledge for what it is. Has the pandemic news been distracting the rest of them, or something? Not likely. Biden's moral offense here is red-flag obvious to anyone who pays attention to politics. If this isn't a no-brainer, then what is? How is this possibly anything other than Biden being caught dead to rights? (Note that the most upvoted anti-Turley comments below his article offer nothing of substance. So much for the credibility of "likes"/upvotes as a gauge of quality or honesty.) I think intellectual dishonesty can take various forms. I don't think it's rampant, but I don't think it's rare, either. In politics especially, lots of people quite lazily (i.e., dishonestly) if not recklessly caricature and smear adversaries' positions (contrary to Mill's advice about knowing the opinions of adversaries in their most plausible and persuasive form), and they give their own side a pass for bad things, quite a lot. (So, well, yeah, in politics, dishonesty is kinda rampant.) And I think those who are readily in a position to call out Biden for his pledge, and yet fail to do so, are being dishonest.]
