Andrew Sullivan: Dave Chappelle Is Right, Isn't He? →

There is controversy about Dave Chappelle’s recent Netflix special “The Closer.” I have watched “The Closer.” I think Andrew Sullivan has it right in his review: this is a comedy piece that will increase acceptance of transgender and transsexual folks. In the American population, Dave Chappelle sounds to me like he is at about the 75th percentile (or higher) in his acceptance of trans folks. What he says is likely to pull people who are at below his 75th percentile level in their acceptance of trans folks toward his 75th percentile level. And I don’t think folks at a higher percentile rank in their acceptance of trans folk are likely to be pulled down to a lower percentile by listening to Dave. Some people are upset that he is not at the 99th percentile in what he says. But he is moving people in the right direction. This shouldn’t be about ideology; it should be about getting people treated better.

Market Opportunities for Helping People Deal with Obesity-Causing Environmental Contaminants

Inspired by slimemoldtimemold’s blog series “A Chemical Hunger,” I have these four previous posts:

  1. Are Processed Food and Environmental Contaminants the Main Cause of the Rise of Obesity?

  2. Livestock Antibiotics, Lithium and PFAS as Leading Suspects for Environmental Causes of Obesity

  3. How Rising Anorexia Can Go Along with Rising Obesity: Both Can Be Caused By Environmental Contaminants

  4. How Lithium May Have Led to Serious Obesity for the Pima Beginning around 1937

Today I want to make the simple point that there are probably some market opportunities in helping people deal with these possibly obesity-causing environmental contaminants. First, people will be interested in tests for livestock antibiotics, lithium and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water. Second, people will be interested in knowing that uncontaminated water was used in food production. Third, people will be interested in bottled water or flavored sparkling water certified free of these contaminants. You can see what a fan I am of the latter from “In Praise of Flavored Sparkling Water.” (I would also like to know that the cans are BPA-free. Waterloo and La Croix brands are BPA-free, but information on this can be hard to find on other brands. Note that there are many other sources of BPA you should probably be worrying about more: liquids packaged in plastic and many types of processed food.)

The Federalist Papers #41: James Madison on Tradeoffs—You Can't Have Everything You Want

In the Federalist Papers #41, James Madison expresses the essence of tradeoffs beautifully:

… the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the GREATER, not the PERFECT, good …

Applied to constitutional design, this becomes:

… in every political institution, a power to advance the public happiness involves a discretion which may be misapplied and abused.

Not recognizing tradeoffs is a serious logical fallacy:

It cannot have escaped those who have attended with candor to the arguments employed against the extensive powers of the government, that the authors of them have very little considered how far these powers were necessary means of attaining a necessary end. They have chosen rather to dwell on the inconveniences which must be unavoidably blended with all political advantages; and on the possible abuses which must be incident to every power or trust, of which a beneficial use can be made.

That doesn’t mean that downsides of a given choice should be glossed over. They may outweight the upsides of that choice. And even if the upsides outweigh the downsides of the choice, the downsides need to be seen clearly so that they can be mitigated:

… in all cases where power is to be conferred, the point first to be decided is, whether such a power be necessary to the public good; as the next will be, in case of an affirmative decision, to guard as effectually as possible against a perversion of the power to the public detriment.

In the Federalist Papers #41, James Madison turns in particular to the power to maintain an army and a navy:

… was it necessary to give an INDEFINITE POWER of raising TROOPS, as well as providing fleets; and of maintaining both in PEACE, as well as in war?

Without directly quoting it, James Madison riffs on something George Washington reportedly said at the Constitutional Convention. Joe Carter says this in his blog post “5 Facts About the U.S. Constitution”:

There was a proposal at the Constitutional Convention to limit the standing army for the country to 5,000 men. George Washington sarcastically agreed with this proposal as long as a stipulation was added that no invading army could number more than 3,000 troops.

James Madison’s version of this point is:

How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation? The means of security can only be regulated by the means and the danger of attack. They will, in fact, be ever determined by these rules, and by no others. … If one nation maintains constantly a disciplined army, ready for the service of ambition or revenge, it obliges the most pacific nations who may be within the reach of its enterprises to take corresponding precautions.

In the same paragraph James Madison makes the telling point that fear of being conquered in war is such a strong motivation that leaders of a nation would be likely to disobey any constitution that, if obeyed, would doom them to being conquered. Thus, any constitution that tried to impose such limits would invite disrespect:

It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.

In the remainder of the Federalist Papers #41, James Madison suggests later numbers will deal with other issues besides national defense and makes a few other key points about national defense:

  • European powers present a great danger to the United States—as indeed they have presented to one another for a long time.

  • The states would present a great danger to one another if they each had their own army. Hence the total burden maintaining army and navy is likely to be much less if the main military force is a united one for the United States.

  • If the states are united, the wide Atlantic coupled with a strong navy can do a lot to keep them safe from European powers.

  • The navy is less dangerous to the liberty of the people than the army. Hence it is a good thing that a strong navy can go a long way in protecting the United States. (“The batteries most capable of repelling foreign enterprises on our safety, are happily such as can never be turned by a perfidious government against our liberties.”)

  • Though the proposed constitution allows Congress to authorize funds for army and navy for a two-year period, it does not prevent Congress from making such authorizations for only one year at a time.

  • The clause “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” is only talking about the power of taxation, while pointing generally to some of the appropriate purposes of taxation. It does not contain a separate unlimited power to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” The most nearly relevant powers are detailed later on in that section of the proposed constitution and are all subject to limits.

Below is the full text of the Federalist Papers #41 to give context:

FEDERALIST NO. 41

General View of the Powers Conferred by the Constitution

For the Independent Journal.

Author: James Madison

To the People of the State of New York:

THE Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered under two general points of view. The FIRST relates to the sum or quantity of power which it vests in the government, including the restraints imposed on the States. The SECOND, to the particular structure of the government, and the distribution of this power among its several branches. Under the FIRST view of the subject, two important questions arise: 1. Whether any part of the powers transferred to the general government be unnecessary or improper? 2. Whether the entire mass of them be dangerous to the portion of jurisdiction left in the several States? Is the aggregate power of the general government greater than ought to have been vested in it? This is the FIRST question. It cannot have escaped those who have attended with candor to the arguments employed against the extensive powers of the government, that the authors of them have very little considered how far these powers were necessary means of attaining a necessary end. They have chosen rather to dwell on the inconveniences which must be unavoidably blended with all political advantages; and on the possible abuses which must be incident to every power or trust, of which a beneficial use can be made. This method of handling the subject cannot impose on the good sense of the people of America. It may display the subtlety of the writer; it may open a boundless field for rhetoric and declamation; it may inflame the passions of the unthinking, and may confirm the prejudices of the misthinking: but cool and candid people will at once reflect, that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the GREATER, not the PERFECT, good; and that in every political institution, a power to advance the public happiness involves a discretion which may be misapplied and abused. They will see, therefore, that in all cases where power is to be conferred, the point first to be decided is, whether such a power be necessary to the public good; as the next will be, in case of an affirmative decision, to guard as effectually as possible against a perversion of the power to the public detriment. That we may form a correct judgment on this subject, it will be proper to review the several powers conferred on the government of the Union; and that this may be the more conveniently done they may be reduced into different classes as they relate to the following different objects: 1. Security against foreign danger; 2. Regulation of the intercourse with foreign nations; 3. Maintenance of harmony and proper intercourse among the States; 4. Certain miscellaneous objects of general utility; 5. Restraint of the States from certain injurious acts; 6. Provisions for giving due efficacy to all these powers. The powers falling within the FIRST class are those of declaring war and granting letters of marque; of providing armies and fleets; of regulating and calling forth the militia; of levying and borrowing money. Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union. The powers requisite for attaining it must be effectually confided to the federal councils. Is the power of declaring war necessary? No man will answer this question in the negative. It would be superfluous, therefore, to enter into a proof of the affirmative. The existing Confederation establishes this power in the most ample form. Is the power of raising armies and equipping fleets necessary? This is involved in the foregoing power. It is involved in the power of self-defense. But was it necessary to give an INDEFINITE POWER of raising TROOPS, as well as providing fleets; and of maintaining both in PEACE, as well as in war? The answer to these questions has been too far anticipated in another place to admit an extensive discussion of them in this place. The answer indeed seems to be so obvious and conclusive as scarcely to justify such a discussion in any place. With what color of propriety could the force necessary for defense be limited by those who cannot limit the force of offense? If a federal Constitution could chain the ambition or set bounds to the exertions of all other nations, then indeed might it prudently chain the discretion of its own government, and set bounds to the exertions for its own safety.

How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation? The means of security can only be regulated by the means and the danger of attack. They will, in fact, be ever determined by these rules, and by no others. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions. If one nation maintains constantly a disciplined army, ready for the service of ambition or revenge, it obliges the most pacific nations who may be within the reach of its enterprises to take corresponding precautions.

The fifteenth century was the unhappy epoch of military establishments in the time of peace. They were introduced by Charles VII. of France. All Europe has followed, or been forced into, the example. Had the example not been followed by other nations, all Europe must long ago have worn the chains of a universal monarch. Were every nation except France now to disband its peace establishments, the same event might follow. The veteran legions of Rome were an overmatch for the undisciplined valor of all other nations and rendered her the mistress of the world. Not the less true is it, that the liberties of Rome proved the final victim to her military triumphs; and that the liberties of Europe, as far as they ever existed, have, with few exceptions, been the price of her military establishments. A standing force, therefore, is a dangerous, at the same time that it may be a necessary, provision. On the smallest scale it has its inconveniences. On an extensive scale its consequences may be fatal. On any scale it is an object of laudable circumspection and precaution. A wise nation will combine all these considerations; and, whilst it does not rashly preclude itself from any resource which may become essential to its safety, will exert all its prudence in diminishing both the necessity and the danger of resorting to one which may be inauspicious to its liberties. The clearest marks of this prudence are stamped on the proposed Constitution. The Union itself, which it cements and secures, destroys every pretext for a military establishment which could be dangerous. America united, with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat. It was remarked, on a former occasion, that the want of this pretext had saved the liberties of one nation in Europe. Being rendered by her insular situation and her maritime resources impregnable to the armies of her neighbors, the rulers of Great Britain have never been able, by real or artificial dangers, to cheat the public into an extensive peace establishment. The distance of the United States from the powerful nations of the world gives them the same happy security. A dangerous establishment can never be necessary or plausible, so long as they continue a united people. But let it never, for a moment, be forgotten that they are indebted for this advantage to the Union alone. The moment of its dissolution will be the date of a new order of things. The fears of the weaker, or the ambition of the stronger States, or Confederacies, will set the same example in the New, as Charles VII. did in the Old World. The example will be followed here from the same motives which produced universal imitation there. Instead of deriving from our situation the precious advantage which Great Britain has derived from hers, the face of America will be but a copy of that of the continent of Europe. It will present liberty everywhere crushed between standing armies and perpetual taxes. The fortunes of disunited America will be even more disastrous than those of Europe. The sources of evil in the latter are confined to her own limits. No superior powers of another quarter of the globe intrigue among her rival nations, inflame their mutual animosities, and render them the instruments of foreign ambition, jealousy, and revenge. In America the miseries springing from her internal jealousies, contentions, and wars, would form a part only of her lot. A plentiful addition of evils would have their source in that relation in which Europe stands to this quarter of the earth, and which no other quarter of the earth bears to Europe. This picture of the consequences of disunion cannot be too highly colored, or too often exhibited. Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America, and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.

Next to the effectual establishment of the Union, the best possible precaution against danger from standing armies is a limitation of the term for which revenue may be appropriated to their support. This precaution the Constitution has prudently added. I will not repeat here the observations which I flatter myself have placed this subject in a just and satisfactory light. But it may not be improper to take notice of an argument against this part of the Constitution, which has been drawn from the policy and practice of Great Britain. It is said that the continuance of an army in that kingdom requires an annual vote of the legislature; whereas the American Constitution has lengthened this critical period to two years. This is the form in which the comparison is usually stated to the public: but is it a just form? Is it a fair comparison? Does the British Constitution restrain the parliamentary discretion to one year? Does the American impose on the Congress appropriations for two years? On the contrary, it cannot be unknown to the authors of the fallacy themselves, that the British Constitution fixes no limit whatever to the discretion of the legislature, and that the American ties down the legislature to two years, as the longest admissible term. Had the argument from the British example been truly stated, it would have stood thus: The term for which supplies may be appropriated to the army establishment, though unlimited by the British Constitution, has nevertheless, in practice, been limited by parliamentary discretion to a single year. Now, if in Great Britain, where the House of Commons is elected for seven years; where so great a proportion of the members are elected by so small a proportion of the people; where the electors are so corrupted by the representatives, and the representatives so corrupted by the Crown, the representative body can possess a power to make appropriations to the army for an indefinite term, without desiring, or without daring, to extend the term beyond a single year, ought not suspicion herself to blush, in pretending that the representatives of the United States, elected FREELY by the WHOLE BODY of the people, every SECOND YEAR, cannot be safely intrusted with the discretion over such appropriations, expressly limited to the short period of TWO YEARS? A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself. Of this truth, the management of the opposition to the federal government is an unvaried exemplification. But among all the blunders which have been committed, none is more striking than the attempt to enlist on that side the prudent jealousy entertained by the people, of standing armies. The attempt has awakened fully the public attention to that important subject; and has led to investigations which must terminate in a thorough and universal conviction, not only that the constitution has provided the most effectual guards against danger from that quarter, but that nothing short of a Constitution fully adequate to the national defense and the preservation of the Union, can save America from as many standing armies as it may be split into States or Confederacies, and from such a progressive augmentation, of these establishments in each, as will render them as burdensome to the properties and ominous to the liberties of the people, as any establishment that can become necessary, under a united and efficient government, must be tolerable to the former and safe to the latter. The palpable necessity of the power to provide and maintain a navy has protected that part of the Constitution against a spirit of censure, which has spared few other parts. It must, indeed, be numbered among the greatest blessings of America, that as her Union will be the only source of her maritime strength, so this will be a principal source of her security against danger from abroad. In this respect our situation bears another likeness to the insular advantage of Great Britain. The batteries most capable of repelling foreign enterprises on our safety, are happily such as can never be turned by a perfidious government against our liberties. The inhabitants of the Atlantic frontier are all of them deeply interested in this provision for naval protection, and if they have hitherto been suffered to sleep quietly in their beds; if their property has remained safe against the predatory spirit of licentious adventurers; if their maritime towns have not yet been compelled to ransom themselves from the terrors of a conflagration, by yielding to the exactions of daring and sudden invaders, these instances of good fortune are not to be ascribed to the capacity of the existing government for the protection of those from whom it claims allegiance, but to causes that are fugitive and fallacious. If we except perhaps Virginia and Maryland, which are peculiarly vulnerable on their eastern frontiers, no part of the Union ought to feel more anxiety on this subject than New York. Her seacoast is extensive. A very important district of the State is an island. The State itself is penetrated by a large navigable river for more than fifty leagues. The great emporium of its commerce, the great reservoir of its wealth, lies every moment at the mercy of events, and may almost be regarded as a hostage for ignominious compliances with the dictates of a foreign enemy, or even with the rapacious demands of pirates and barbarians. Should a war be the result of the precarious situation of European affairs, and all the unruly passions attending it be let loose on the ocean, our escape from insults and depredations, not only on that element, but every part of the other bordering on it, will be truly miraculous. In the present condition of America, the States more immediately exposed to these calamities have nothing to hope from the phantom of a general government which now exists; and if their single resources were equal to the task of fortifying themselves against the danger, the object to be protected would be almost consumed by the means of protecting them. The power of regulating and calling forth the militia has been already sufficiently vindicated and explained. The power of levying and borrowing money, being the sinew of that which is to be exerted in the national defense, is properly thrown into the same class with it. This power, also, has been examined already with much attention, and has, I trust, been clearly shown to be necessary, both in the extent and form given to it by the Constitution. I will address one additional reflection only to those who contend that the power ought to have been restrained to external taxation by which they mean, taxes on articles imported from other countries. It cannot be doubted that this will always be a valuable source of revenue; that for a considerable time it must be a principal source; that at this moment it is an essential one. But we may form very mistaken ideas on this subject, if we do not call to mind in our calculations, that the extent of revenue drawn from foreign commerce must vary with the variations, both in the extent and the kind of imports; and that these variations do not correspond with the progress of population, which must be the general measure of the public wants. As long as agriculture continues the sole field of labor, the importation of manufactures must increase as the consumers multiply. As soon as domestic manufactures are begun by the hands not called for by agriculture, the imported manufactures will decrease as the numbers of people increase. In a more remote stage, the imports may consist in a considerable part of raw materials, which will be wrought into articles for exportation, and will, therefore, require rather the encouragement of bounties, than to be loaded with discouraging duties. A system of government, meant for duration, ought to contemplate these revolutions, and be able to accommodate itself to them. Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare. "But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter. The objection here is the more extraordinary, as it appears that the language used by the convention is a copy from the articles of Confederation. The objects of the Union among the States, as described in article third, are "their common defense, security of their liberties, and mutual and general welfare. " The terms of article eighth are still more identical: "All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury," etc. A similar language again occurs in article ninth. Construe either of these articles by the rules which would justify the construction put on the new Constitution, and they vest in the existing Congress a power to legislate in all cases whatsoever.

But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation!

PUBLIUS.

Links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

Another Kind of Police Brutality

One of the most severe forms of police brutality is inaction: when police don’t protect people from criminals. Recently, police have been committing this form of brutal inaction because of their pique at being criticized for the more direct and active forms of police brutality. This shouldn’t be. It is possible for the police to do their job effectively without mistreating people.

In the perhaps overpoliticized op-ed shown above (from which the next several quotations below are taken) Jason Riley makes some good points about what has happened in the wake of efforts to reduce active police brutality. Police are retaliating against criticism by shirking their jobs. The excuse is that they will be persecuted if they do their jobs. But that is acting as if rules for not mistreating people make it impossible to do effective policing. In any case, the police reaction to criticism has likely had an effect on crime rates. Jason gives some statistics:

Murders spiked by close to 30% in 2020, the biggest one-year increase since 1960. Aggravated assaults rose by 12%, and violent crime overall increased by 5.6% from 2019 levels. The left blames Covid-19, but the trend predates the pandemic. Violent crime, which more or less had been steadily declining since the early 1990s, began reversing course in 2015, not 2020. “Violent crime and homicide rates rose in the U.S. in 2016 for the second consecutive year, driven in part by a spike in murders in large cities,” the Journal reported in 2017, citing FBI data.

… Murders in Atlanta rose 62% from 2019 to 2020 …

… The Seattle Police Department investigated 73% more homicides in 2020 than it did a year earlier …

The link to police shirking to protest the protests against police can be seen in research by Roland Fryer and Tanaya Devi that Jason describes as follows:

A 2020 study by Harvard economist Roland Fryer and co-author Tanaya Devi assessed the impact of these “viral” incidents and noticed a disturbing pattern: police become less proactive, their contacts with civilians decline, and violent crime spikes. That’s what happened in Ferguson after Brown was shot by an officer, in Chicago when the same thing happened to Laquan McDonald, in Baltimore after Freddie Gray died in police custody, and in Minneapolis after a cop murdered George Floyd.

Backing up the idea that there is an impulse among police to protest the protests against police behavior by shirking is the fact that many police are implicitly protesting the protests against police by retiring:

300 police officers have retired or resigned from SPD [Seattle Police Department] in the past 18 months, offset by about 90 new hires …

While I think it is important to take seriously the possibility I am emphasizing that beat cops are pulling back to show their displeasure at being criticized rather than because they rationally fear punishment for diligently doing their jobs in an appropriate way, incentives to follow bad criminological theories probably operate among the higher ranks of those who lead policing. Jason points to these areas where what might be reasonable reforms directionally have badly overshot:

In addition to vilifying police, many states and cities have passed “bail reform” laws that limit the ability of judges to hold defendants until trial. Local prosecutors now brag about how few crimes they prosecute. California has effectively decriminalized shoplifting.

There is a long history of terrible discrimination by police in doing little when crimes are committed against Black people. In Jason Willick’s writeup of his interview with Robert Woodson, he quote Robert as follows:

“whenever a black created a crime against another black, it was ignored and minimized, right?” Similarly, “if a white committed a crime against a black, it was ignored. But if a black committed a crime against a white, it was harshly treated.” That, Mr. Woodson says, is “what we fought against” in the civil-rights movement.

To this day, lack of sufficient policing in Black areas is one of the most important types of structural racism in our country. This is, indeed, a much larger and more important element of structural racism in our nation than active police brutality against Blacks. But there is no reason police can’t both do a lot more stringent and active policing of Black areas to protect Black people from crime without mistreating innocent people in those areas. A lot of it is about attitude. It is even possible to do a form of “stop and frisk” and still treat people with great dignity.

Of course, it takes something extra in order to expect police to be better. I think one of the most straightforward mechanisms is to require bachelor’s degrees for police. There may be areas of American life where there is too much wokeness, but I’ll bet it is would lead to better policing if rank-and-file police were somewhat more woke than they are. And spending a little more time on woke college campuses could help accomplish that.

But wokeness is not enough. Religious and Enlightenment beliefs about the inherent dignity of each human being are also important to inculcate into the hearts of those who will implement the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Personal psychological development is also important, so inner demons don’t get taken out on others that police deal with in the course of their jobs.

All of this takes time, hence the important I see in a 4-year college degree for those who would be police. Of course, this will cost more in police salaries. If we want better police, we’d better not be defunding the police. If we are going to expect more from them than we have in the past, we need to give them more.

Why Do Almost All Diets Fail?

A friend asked me recently why almost all diets fail. The most basic answer is that I don’t know. But I do have some possible reasons:

First, we have what is now called a “lipostat” which has a gravitational pull bringing us back to a steady-state weight. As I write and quote in “How Rising Anorexia Can Go Along with Rising Obesity: Both Can Be Caused By Environmental Contaminants”:

In addition to arguing for environmental contaminants contributing to the rise in obesity—and anorexia—the “A Chemical Hunger” series of blog posts is also important in making the case for the powerful influence of a “lipostat.” A lipostat is a fat-regulating mechanism in your body that pulls us strongly toward a particular weight—a weight that can get pushed around by chemicals. Our lipostats invalidate the naive version of “calories in/calories out” that treats calories in and calories out as if they were entirely under our conscious control. One of the reasons this is wrong is fidgeting. Here is the relevant passage from the “Paradoxical Reactions” blog post:

… avoiding food and collecting cookbooks isn’t the lipostat’s only method for controlling body weight. It has a number of other tricks up its sleeve.

Many people burn off extra calories through a behavior called “non-exercise activity thermogenesis” (NEAT). This is basically a fancy term for fidgeting. When a person has consumed more calories than they need, their lipostat can boost calorie expenditure by making them fidget, make small movements, and change posture frequently. It’s largely involuntary, and most people aren’t aware that they’re burning off extra calories in this way. Even so, NEAT can burn off nearly 700 calories per day.

… people with anorexia fidget like crazy. A classic symptom of anorexia is excessive physical activity, even in the most severe stages of the illness. When one group measured fidgeting with a highly accurate shoe-based accelerometer, they found that anorexics fidget almost twice as much as healthy controls.

This kind of fidgeting is the classic response in people whose bodies are fatter than they want to be. In studies where people were overfed until they were 10% heavier than their baseline, NEAT increased dramatically. All of this is strong evidence that people with anorexia have lipostats that mistakenly think they desperately need to lose weight.

For some people, the lipostat is set too low; they are prone to anorexia. For many more people, the lipostat is set too high; they are prone to obesity. There is wide agreement that misregulation of the lipostat has something to do with our modern environment: the type of food available and now customarily eaten, patterns of activity or lack thereof, environmental contaminants, other social or environmental causes. It isn’t easy to change one’s lipostat—after all, for most people it got misregulated gradually over the course of many years, and short of doing something quite dramatic, one could expect it to take a long time to get back on track, even if you knew how. I’ll save the discussion of the dramatic until last. Until then, let me talk as if the lipostat is stuck.

Fortunately, lipostatic gravity doesn’t always win, just as the earth’s gravity still hasn’t brought the moon down. But just as the moon avoids coming down to earth by always staying in motion around the earth, (short of accomplishing the difficult task of getting at the root of lipostatic misregulation) counteracting lipostatic gravity requires a permanent change in behavior. As I write in “Kevin D. Hall and Juen Guo: Why it is So Hard to Lose Weight and So Hard to Keep it Off”: “permanent weight loss requires permanent changes in behavior.”

So, the second reason many diets fail is because many people conceive of a “diet” as something you do for a while to lose weight, in the expectation that the weight will then stay off even after return to the pattern of eating that prevailed before the “diet.” That doesn’t work very well. Go back to the old behavior and you are likely to go back to the old weight.

Third, the way many people do diets, they are quite painful. For one thing, many people try to cut back on calories while still eating high on the insulin index. If you do that, you will be hungry and miserable. The Minnesota starvation experiment proved that. But if you eat low on the insulin index, you will be much, much less hungry physically, and it won’t be so bad. (See “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid.”) Exactly how difficult differs from person to person, but it will be much, much less difficult.

To add to the physical misery of cutting back on calories while eating things that keep one’s insulin high, many people ramp up their internal self-criticism when they are on a diet. That makes them even more miserable than the physical discomfort alone would. (I’ve put a set of links on positive mental health at the bottom of this post that are relevant to avoiding this sort of thing.)

Being miserable physically and psychologically is likely to make you feel sorry for yourself. When you are done with your “diet” you might well compensate by eating bad stuff—perhaps even worse things than before you started the diet. And psychological misery might have other more direct hormonal effects on weight—more likely in the direction your lipostat is misregulated than in the opposite direction.

The fourth reason almost all diets “fail” is because people expect an unrealistically high dose-response. Many diets have been shown to bring people’s average weight down by a few pounds. But if people think it is only worth it keeping a new way of eating up if it brings their weight down a lot, then they might well give up.

So, what can work? Fasting. Fasting is a big dose. Done right, it isn’t that painful. (See “Fasting Tips.”) You can modify it to make it easier and it will still work. (See “My Modified Fast.”) It can be done periodically on an ongoing basis. It can be motivated as not just a way to reliably lose weight, but also as something that improves your health quite a bit even if you do little enough that your weight stays about the same.

Evidence is currently rolling in from many experimental trials showing the benefits of fasting. This is one area where I don’t have to make my usual complaint about crucial things being underresearched. Fasting is getting researched a lot these days.

As I prefigured early in this post, fasting might even be able to undo some of the misregulation of your lipostat. In particular, a fair bit of obesity is caused by diabetes and prediabetes. Fasting is a powerful treatment for diabetes and prediabetes. On that, take a look at the books of Jason Fung. (I list Jason Fung’s book The Obesity Code as one of “Five Books That Have Changed My Life.”)

For organized links to other posts on diet and health, see:

Posts on Positive Mental Health and Maintaining One’s Moral Compass:


Open Skepticism and Closed Skepticism

I am a believer. I am also a skeptic—an open skeptic. For almost 40 years, I believed Mormonism. Toward the end of that time I also believed critics of Mormonism and believed in evolution as something so important, it should play a more central role in my vision of life and the universe than it did in Mormonism. Now I have come to a good place as a nonsupernaturalist who appreciates the important truths that traditional religions—including Mormonism—have to offer.

My spiritual journey taught me something valuable for every domain of life, not just for religion: that there are two sides of skepticism as different as day and night.

Open skepticism listens to everyone it comes across, expecting to find at least 10% truth in what almost anyone says, as well as expecting at least 10% falsehood. That expectation of 10% falsehood in most everything it encounters makes it eager to hear what the next person will have to say.

Closed skepticism shuts out ideas that come from the wrong source, are expressed using the wrong terminology, contain an obvious error along with useful insights, or bear the trappings of an alien worldview.

Open skepticism feels like curiosity. Closed skepticism feels like an intellectual version of self-righteousness.

As I touch on in “The Unavoidability of Faith,” we are forced to live by faith simply because there is so much that is unknown, yet we must make decisions. It is much better to face the unknown with the reward for having been an open skeptic—a mind full of the ideas from many sources—than with the intellectual impoverishment that is the comeuppance of a closed skeptic.

Don’t miss my Unitarian-Universalist sermons on my blog

Also, don’t miss Noah Smith’s religion posts:

  1. God and SuperGod

  2. You Are Already in the Afterlife

  3. Go Ahead and Believe in God

  4. Mom in Hell

  5. Buddha Was Wrong About Desire

  6. Noah Smith: Judaism Needs to Get Off the Shtetl

  7. Why Do Americans Like Jews and Dislike Mormons?

  8. Render Unto Ceasar

  9. Original Sin

  10. Islam Needs To Separate Church and State

  11. Noah Smith—Jews: The Parting of the Ways

  12. Noah Smith: You With the Fro

  13. The Fight of the Ages: Pain and Death

  14. Noah Smith: Sunni Islam is Failing

Other Posts on Religion:

Posts on Positive Mental Health and Maintaining One’s Moral Compass:

What the Typical Rate of Improvement in Various Technologies Means for the Future—Christopher Mims

Christopher Mims is one of my favorite technology writers. He reported on a fascinating paper by Anuraag Sing, Giorgio Triulzi and Christopher Magee, “Technological improvement rate predictions for all technologies: Use of patent data and an extended domain description” a few weeks ago. (This paper is ungated.)

It turns out that different detailed areas of technology have had very different rates of technological progress in the recent past, which provide useful information for predicting their rates of progress in the future. Quoting from his September 18, 2021 Wall Street Journal article, “New Research Busts Popular Myths About Innovation,” here are some of the tidbits that Christopher Mims extracts from the paper and related research (bullets added to separate passages):

  • Robotics, for example, is improving at the rate of 18.5% a year, which sounds like a lot, except that the average rate of improvement for the more than 1,700 technologies the researchers studied is 19% a year.

  • … the MIT researchers have found through the patent literature that a principal driver of the steady shrinking of microchip circuitry has been improvements in laser technology.

  • In research yet to be published, Dr. Farmer and other members of his group compared the rates of improvement in solar photovoltaic technology and nuclear power, and found that while the cost per watt of solar power is now 0.1% what it was 70 years ago, the cost of nuclear power actually went up.

    “So if you’re talking about the future, it isn’t nuclear; and if you’re an investor, you should know that, and if you’re a student, becoming a nuclear engineer isn’t something I would recommend to anybody,” says Dr. Farmer.

The paper's method is to fit rates of productivity growth in 30 technological domains to details of patent data as the right-hand-side variables and then extrapolate that function of patent data to many, many more technological domains. As Anuraag Sing, Giorgio Triulzi and Christopher Magee write:

As shown in Benson and Magee (2015b) and, more recently, by Triulzi et al. (2020), once a patent set for a technology domain has been identified, it is possible to estimate the yearly rate of performance improvement for that domain. In these two papers the authors tested several different patent-based measures as predictors of the yearly performance improvement rate for 30 different technologies for which observed performance time series were available. By far, the most accurate and reliable indicator is a measure of the centrality of a technology's patents in the overall US patent citation network, as shown in Triulzi et al. (2020). More precisely, technologies whose patents cite very central patents tend to also have faster improvement rates, possibly as a result of enjoying more spillovers from advances in other technologies and/or because of a wider use of fast improving technologies by other technologies, proxied by patent citations.

This should all be taken with a grain of salt, but it provides interesting predictions for the rate of progress in finely-sliced (“granular”) technological domains that will be testable in the future—say by choosing a random sample to do a detailed study of productivity for.

Some of the key tables in the paper give very interesting detail. First, how narrow the domains are is clear from this list of the ten predicted to have the highest rate of technological improvement:

These ten all seem in fairly closely related domains. The list of the twenty predicted to have the slowest rate of technological improvement is more variegated:

The table that gives the most comprehensive sense is that for the 50 biggest domains. Unfortunately, it is ordered by size of domain rather than by growth rate, but there is a lot of useful information in it:

The claim that rates of progress in particular domains are fairly constant raises the issue of why there are noticeable technology shocks at the macro level. Here is how I see things:

  • Technologies improve in narrow domains at different rates; several narrow domains can often be reasonably close substitutes.

  • At some point one technology overtakes a status-quo technology by enough that the insurgent technology goes through an S-shaped logistic curve to widespread adoption.

  • Because of transition costs, the insurgent technology has to be significantly better at that point.

  • The technology shock seen in aggregate data corresponds to the steep part of the S-curve, when adoptions are happening fast (or rather, completions of the transition due to adoptions are happening fast).

  • The exact time when an insurgent technology will overtake a status-quo technology could be predicted much better than it is by macroeconomists—after all, there is warning in the early-adoption part of the S-curve before the steep part of the S-curve.

  • Though there is little doubt that the method will be debated, papers like this are are start toward what we need in order to better predict macroeconomic technology shocks.

Christopher Mims’s Wall Street Journal article has a hint of the kind of thing I am arguing. Christopher writes:

Bill Buxton, a researcher at Microsoft Research and one of the creators of the interface on which modern touch computing is based, articulated in 2008 a theory that distills some of the insights of this research into a simple concept. He calls it the “long nose of innovation,” and it describes a graph plotting the rate of improvement, and often adoption, of a technology: a period of apparently negligible gains, followed by exponential growth.

How Lithium May Have Led to Serious Obesity for the Pima Beginning around 1937

The slimemoldtimemold.com series “A Chemical Hunger” has been a mother lode for things worth talking about in understanding the rise of obesity. I have written three posts in reaction already:

  1. Are Processed Food and Environmental Contaminants the Main Cause of the Rise of Obesity?

  2. Livestock Antibiotics, Lithium and PFAS as Leading Suspects for Environmental Causes of Obesity

  3. How Rising Anorexia Can Go Along with Rising Obesity: Both Can Be Caused By Environmental Contaminants

Overall, I find the argument persuasive that there is some role for environmental contaminants (such as livestock antibiotics, lithium and PFAS) in the rapid rise of obesity since 1980. Sometimes the author goes too far by suggesting that another thing is not contributing because it doesn’t explain part of the observed pattern. But there is every likelihood that environmental contaminants and other causes are contributing to the rise in obesity in general. It may be that the facts can’t be explained without environmental contaminants as part of the picture, but it is easy for other factors to contribute to an overall upward trend both before and after 1980.

A good example of this is that obesity rose across the board for Native Americans as their diets and other aspects of their lives modernized, but obesity rose especially sharply for the Pima, beginning in 1937. The slimemoldtimemold blog focuses on this issue in response to the following comment to that blog:

In another comment, u/evocomp raises a number of points, the most interesting being:

The famous Pima Indians of Arizona had a tenfold increase in diabetes from 1937 to the 1950s, and then became the most obese population of the world at that time, long before 1980s. Mexican Pimas followed the trend when they modernized too.

Slimemoldtimemold fully agrees that there is a mystery to be explained:

The Pima people, sometimes called Pima Indians, are a group of Native Americans from the area that is now southern Arizona and northwestern Mexico. In the United States, they are particularly associated with the Gila River Valley.

What evocamp describes is well-documented. The Pima seem to have had normal rates of diabetes and obesity in 1937, but both increased enormously by 1950, and by 1965 the Arizona Pima Indians had “the highest prevalence of diabetes ever recorded.” By 1970 the diabetes rate was around 40%, and by 2016, around 50%. The numbers on obesity are less specific, but it was also increasing and also very high by the 1970s.

The timeline here is very surprising — before 1970, obesity rates worldwide were almost always 10% or less. This is clearly a mystery that needs to be accounted for, so we really appreciate evocamp pointing us to this example.

Moreover, this was a pattern not seen at that level for other Native American groups:

There were many other groups of Native Americans living in largely similar conditions all over the country, but none of these groups were around 40% obese by 1970. It can’t be food or shelter or oppression by the US government because these things were more or less common to all groups …

Why then? Here is the proposed explanation:

… the difference between the Pima and other Native Americans is that the Pima were being exposed to huge doses of lithium in their food and water and other groups weren’t.

The Pima did seem to be exposed to a substantial dose of lithium in their groundwater:

The report also notes that “lithium is found in the groundwater of the Gila Valley near Safford.” There’s also this USGS report which says a Wolfberry plant (genus Lycium) “was sampled on lands inhabited by the Pima Indians in Arizona; it contained 1,120 ppm lithium in the dry weight of the plant.” To give that number some context, “an average of 150 ppm lithium in the ash and 25.8 ppm in the dry weight of all plants that were collected in both closed and open arid basins is considerably higher than the average of 1.3 ppm in dry weight reported for plants growing in a nonarid climate.” There was serious lithium contamination in this valley as early as 1974!

Also regarding the 1974 source, another USGS report says, “Sievers and Cannon (1974) expressed concern for the health problem of Pima Indians living on the Gila River Indian Reservation in central Arizona because of the anomalously high lithium content in water and in certain of their homegrown foods.”

We couldn’t have cherry-picked this example, because u/evocomp proposed it.

Overall, this is a very interesting piece of evidence that we should be worrying about lithium in our water supply—both in drinking water and in water used on farms.

For organized links to other posts on diet and health, see:

The Federalist Papers #40: James Madison Argues the Constitutional Convention Had the Warrant to Make Its Proposal—and Its Advice Should Be Taken Even If Not

Having now read forty of the Federalist Papers in order to blog about them, I find myself agreeing with a common opinion that James Madison is a more incisive writer than Alexander Hamilton. the Federalist Papers #40 is a good example of James Madison’s clear writing and thinking.

The Federalist Papers #40 responds to the criticism that the Constitutional Convention exceeded its authority in proposing a constitution so dramatically different from the Articles of Confederation it was tasked to amend. James Madison makes the following arguments:

  1. The charge given to the Constitutional Convention from two different meetings urging such a convention was, in fact, quite broad, and urged a substantial change, using the following language (with, presumably, emphasis by James Madison):

    • … such convention appearing to be the most probable mean of establishing in these States A FIRM NATIONAL GOVERNMENT …

    • REVISING THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

    • ALTERATIONS AND PROVISIONS THEREIN, as shall, when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed by the States, render the federal Constitution ADEQUATE TO THE EXIGENCIES OF GOVERNMENT AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION

    • SUCH FURTHER PROVISIONS

  2. To the extent the charge to the Constitutional Convention was ambiguous, priority should be giving to the statement of the ends to be achieved over the means to that end; hence, for example, “alterations and provisions therein” should be interpreted liberally if necessary to further the aim of a “firm national government” “adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the union.”

  3. The proposed constitution keeps the fundamental principles of the Articles of Confederation—with the exception of the rules for the ratification of the constitution, which are not raising much objection. In particular, these aspects of the proposed Constitution have precedent in what was happening under the Articles of Confederation:

    • “the States should be regarded as distinct and independent sovereigns”

    • “members of the government should derive their appointment from the legislatures, not from the people of the States? One branch of the new government is to be appointed by these legislatures; and under the Confederation, the delegates to Congress MAY ALL be appointed immediately by the people, and in two States [Connecticut and Rhode Island] are actually so appointed.”

    • “Do they require that the powers of the government should act on the States, and not immediately on individuals? In some instances, as has been shown, the powers of the new government will act on the States in their collective characters. In some instances, also, those of the existing government act immediately on individuals. In cases of capture; of piracy; of the post office; of coins, weights, and measures; of trade with the Indians; of claims under grants of land by different States; and, above all, in the case of trials by courts-marshal in the army and navy, by which death may be inflicted without the intervention of a jury, or even of a civil magistrate; in all these cases the powers of the Confederation operate immediately on the persons and interests of individual citizens.”

    • “Do these fundamental principles require, particularly, that no tax should be levied without the intermediate agency of the States? The Confederation itself authorizes a direct tax, to a certain extent, on the post office. The power of coinage has been so construed by Congress as to levy a tribute immediately from that source also. But pretermitting these instances, was it not an acknowledged object of the convention and the universal expectation of the people, that the regulation of trade should be submitted to the general government in such a form as would render it an immediate source of general revenue? Had not Congress repeatedly recommended this measure as not inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Confederation?”

    • “… in the new government, as in the old, the general powers are limited; and that the States, in all unenumerated cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and independent jurisdiction.”

  4. Making the stated principles and aims of the Articles of Confederation actually effective was inevitably going to look like a radical transformation:

    • “The truth is, that the great principles of the Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered less as absolutely new, than as the expansion of principles which are found in the articles of Confederation. The misfortune under the latter system has been, that these principles are so feeble and confined as to justify all the charges of inefficiency which have been urged against it, and to require a degree of enlargement which gives to the new system the aspect of an entire transformation of the old.”

  5. As proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, there is an inherent right of the people to frame a government for themselves that supersedes any particular set of established forms. Moreover, there is ample precedent for innovations that bend the established forms where there is a consensus that it is the right thing to do. Indeed, the establishment of the Continental Congress must be seen as an example of this.

  6. The Constitutional Convention did not adopt, it merely recommended. Surely, any group is at liberty to recommend something. The legitimacy of the Constitution rests on its ratification, not on the manner in which it was proposed. And there is relatively little dispute that ratification by the people of nine states would be a legitimate way to establish a compact between those nine states.

  7. The members of the Constitutional Convention had a duty to make the best recommendation they could, trusting the people to judge whether that was, in fact, a good recommendation.

These text behind these points is not confined to this order. But each of these points is clearly stated. Judge for yourself the power of James Madison’s prose. Below is the full text of the Federalist Papers #40:

FEDERALIST NO. 40

The Powers of the Convention to Form a Mixed Government Examined and Sustained

From the New York Packet
Friday, January 18, 1788.

Author: James Madison

To the People of the State of New York:

THE SECOND point to be examined is, whether the convention were authorized to frame and propose this mixed Constitution. The powers of the convention ought, in strictness, to be determined by an inspection of the commissions given to the members by their respective constituents. As all of these, however, had reference, either to the recommendation from the meeting at Annapolis, in September, 1786, or to that from Congress, in February, 1787, it will be sufficient to recur to these particular acts. The act from Annapolis recommends the "appointment of commissioners to take into consideration the situation of the United States; to devise SUCH FURTHER PROVISIONS as shall appear to them necessary to render the Constitution of the federal government ADEQUATE TO THE EXIGENCIES OF THE UNION; and to report such an act for that purpose, to the United States in Congress assembled, as when agreed to by them, and afterwards confirmed by the legislature of every State, will effectually provide for the same. "The recommendatory act of Congress is in the words following:"WHEREAS, There is provision in the articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, for making alterations therein, by the assent of a Congress of the United States, and of the legislatures of the several States; and whereas experience hath evinced, that there are defects in the present Confederation; as a mean to remedy which, several of the States, and PARTICULARLY THE STATE OF NEW YORK, by express instructions to their delegates in Congress, have suggested a convention for the purposes expressed in the following resolution; and such convention appearing to be the most probable mean of establishing in these States A FIRM NATIONAL GOVERNMENT:"Resolved, That in the opinion of Congress it is expedient, that on the second Monday of May next a convention of delegates, who shall have been appointed by the several States, be held at Philadelphia, for the sole and express purpose OF REVISING THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such ALTERATIONS AND PROVISIONS THEREIN, as shall, when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed by the States, render the federal Constitution ADEQUATE TO THE EXIGENCIES OF GOVERNMENT AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION. "From these two acts, it appears, 1st, that the object of the convention was to establish, in these States, A FIRM NATIONAL GOVERNMENT; 2d, that this government was to be such as would be ADEQUATE TO THE EXIGENCIES OF GOVERNMENT and THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION; 3d, that these purposes were to be effected by ALTERATIONS AND PROVISIONS IN THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, as it is expressed in the act of Congress, or by SUCH FURTHER PROVISIONS AS SHOULD APPEAR NECESSARY, as it stands in the recommendatory act from Annapolis; 4th, that the alterations and provisions were to be reported to Congress, and to the States, in order to be agreed to by the former and confirmed by the latter. From a comparison and fair construction of these several modes of expression, is to be deduced the authority under which the convention acted. They were to frame a NATIONAL GOVERNMENT, adequate to the EXIGENCIES OF GOVERNMENT, and OF THE UNION; and to reduce the articles of Confederation into such form as to accomplish these purposes.

There are two rules of construction, dictated by plain reason, as well as founded on legal axioms. The one is, that every part of the expression ought, if possible, to be allowed some meaning, and be made to conspire to some common end. The other is, that where the several parts cannot be made to coincide, the less important should give way to the more important part; the means should be sacrificed to the end, rather than the end to the means. Suppose, then, that the expressions defining the authority of the convention were irreconcilably at variance with each other; that a NATIONAL and ADEQUATE GOVERNMENT could not possibly, in the judgment of the convention, be affected by ALTERATIONS and PROVISIONS in the ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION; which part of the definition ought to have been embraced, and which rejected? Which was the more important, which the less important part? Which the end; which the means? Let the most scrupulous expositors of delegated powers; let the most inveterate objectors against those exercised by the convention, answer these questions. Let them declare, whether it was of most importance to the happiness of the people of America, that the articles of Confederation should be disregarded, and an adequate government be provided, and the Union preserved; or that an adequate government should be omitted, and the articles of Confederation preserved. Let them declare, whether the preservation of these articles was the end, for securing which a reform of the government was to be introduced as the means; or whether the establishment of a government, adequate to the national happiness, was the end at which these articles themselves originally aimed, and to which they ought, as insufficient means, to have been sacrificed. But is it necessary to suppose that these expressions are absolutely irreconcilable to each other; that no ALTERATIONS or PROVISIONS in THE ARTICLES OF THE CONFEDERATION could possibly mould them into a national and adequate government; into such a government as has been proposed by the convention? No stress, it is presumed, will, in this case, be laid on the TITLE; a change of that could never be deemed an exercise of ungranted power. ALTERATIONS in the body of the instrument are expressly authorized. NEW PROVISIONS therein are also expressly authorized. Here then is a power to change the title; to insert new articles; to alter old ones. Must it of necessity be admitted that this power is infringed, so long as a part of the old articles remain? Those who maintain the affirmative ought at least to mark the boundary between authorized and usurped innovations; between that degree of change which lies within the compass of ALTERATIONS AND FURTHER PROVISIONS, and that which amounts to a TRANSMUTATION of the government. Will it be said that the alterations ought not to have touched the substance of the Confederation? The States would never have appointed a convention with so much solemnity, nor described its objects with so much latitude, if some SUBSTANTIAL reform had not been in contemplation. Will it be said that the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES of the Confederation were not within the purview of the convention, and ought not to have been varied? I ask, What are these principles? Do they require that, in the establishment of the Constitution, the States should be regarded as distinct and independent sovereigns? They are so regarded by the Constitution proposed. Do they require that the members of the government should derive their appointment from the legislatures, not from the people of the States? One branch of the new government is to be appointed by these legislatures; and under the Confederation, the delegates to Congress MAY ALL be appointed immediately by the people, and in two States [Connecticut and Rhode Island] are actually so appointed. Do they require that the powers of the government should act on the States, and not immediately on individuals? In some instances, as has been shown, the powers of the new government will act on the States in their collective characters. In some instances, also, those of the existing government act immediately on individuals. In cases of capture; of piracy; of the post office; of coins, weights, and measures; of trade with the Indians; of claims under grants of land by different States; and, above all, in the case of trials by courts-marshal in the army and navy, by which death may be inflicted without the intervention of a jury, or even of a civil magistrate; in all these cases the powers of the Confederation operate immediately on the persons and interests of individual citizens. Do these fundamental principles require, particularly, that no tax should be levied without the intermediate agency of the States? The Confederation itself authorizes a direct tax, to a certain extent, on the post office. The power of coinage has been so construed by Congress as to levy a tribute immediately from that source also. But pretermitting these instances, was it not an acknowledged object of the convention and the universal expectation of the people, that the regulation of trade should be submitted to the general government in such a form as would render it an immediate source of general revenue? Had not Congress repeatedly recommended this measure as not inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Confederation? Had not every State but one; had not New York herself, so far complied with the plan of Congress as to recognize the PRINCIPLE of the innovation? Do these principles, in fine, require that the powers of the general government should be limited, and that, beyond this limit, the States should be left in possession of their sovereignty and independence? We have seen that in the new government, as in the old, the general powers are limited; and that the States, in all unenumerated cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and independent jurisdiction. The truth is, that the great principles of the Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered less as absolutely new, than as the expansion of principles which are found in the articles of Confederation. The misfortune under the latter system has been, that these principles are so feeble and confined as to justify all the charges of inefficiency which have been urged against it, and to require a degree of enlargement which gives to the new system the aspect of an entire transformation of the old. In one particular it is admitted that the convention have departed from the tenor of their commission. Instead of reporting a plan requiring the confirmation OF THE LEGISLATURES OF ALL THE STATES, they have reported a plan which is to be confirmed by the PEOPLE, and may be carried into effect by NINE STATES ONLY. It is worthy of remark that this objection, though the most plausible, has been the least urged in the publications which have swarmed against the convention. The forbearance can only have proceeded from an irresistible conviction of the absurdity of subjecting the fate of twelve States to the perverseness or corruption of a thirteenth; from the example of inflexible opposition given by a MAJORITY of one sixtieth of the people of America to a measure approved and called for by the voice of twelve States, comprising fifty-nine sixtieths of the people an example still fresh in the memory and indignation of every citizen who has felt for the wounded honor and prosperity of his country. As this objection, therefore, has been in a manner waived by those who have criticised the powers of the convention, I dismiss it without further observation. The THIRD point to be inquired into is, how far considerations of duty arising out of the case itself could have supplied any defect of regular authority. In the preceding inquiries the powers of the convention have been analyzed and tried with the same rigor, and by the same rules, as if they had been real and final powers for the establishment of a Constitution for the United States. We have seen in what manner they have borne the trial even on that supposition. It is time now to recollect that the powers were merely advisory and recommendatory; that they were so meant by the States, and so understood by the convention; and that the latter have accordingly planned and proposed a Constitution which is to be of no more consequence than the paper on which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation of those to whom it is addressed. This reflection places the subject in a point of view altogether different, and will enable us to judge with propriety of the course taken by the convention. Let us view the ground on which the convention stood. It may be collected from their proceedings, that they were deeply and unanimously impressed with the crisis, which had led their country almost with one voice to make so singular and solemn an experiment for correcting the errors of a system by which this crisis had been produced; that they were no less deeply and unanimously convinced that such a reform as they have proposed was absolutely necessary to effect the purposes of their appointment. It could not be unknown to them that the hopes and expectations of the great body of citizens, throughout this great empire, were turned with the keenest anxiety to the event of their deliberations. They had every reason to believe that the contrary sentiments agitated the minds and bosoms of every external and internal foe to the liberty and prosperity of the United States. They had seen in the origin and progress of the experiment, the alacrity with which the PROPOSITION, made by a single State (Virginia), towards a partial amendment of the Confederation, had been attended to and promoted. They had seen the LIBERTY ASSUMED by a VERY FEW deputies from a VERY FEW States, convened at Annapolis, of recommending a great and critical object, wholly foreign to their commission, not only justified by the public opinion, but actually carried into effect by twelve out of the thirteen States. They had seen, in a variety of instances, assumptions by Congress, not only of recommendatory, but of operative, powers, warranted, in the public estimation, by occasions and objects infinitely less urgent than those by which their conduct was to be governed. They must have reflected, that in all great changes of established governments, forms ought to give way to substance; that a rigid adherence in such cases to the former, would render nominal and nugatory the transcendent and precious right of the people to "abolish or alter their governments as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness," [Declaration of Independence] since it is impossible for the people spontaneously and universally to move in concert towards their object; and it is therefore essential that such changes be instituted by some INFORMAL AND UNAUTHORIZED PROPOSITIONS, made by some patriotic and respectable citizen or number of citizens. They must have recollected that it was by this irregular and assumed privilege of proposing to the people plans for their safety and happiness, that the States were first united against the danger with which they were threatened by their ancient government; that committees and congresses were formed for concentrating their efforts and defending their rights; and that CONVENTIONS were ELECTED in THE SEVERAL STATES for establishing the constitutions under which they are now governed; nor could it have been forgotten that no little ill-timed scruples, no zeal for adhering to ordinary forms, were anywhere seen, except in those who wished to indulge, under these masks, their secret enmity to the substance contended for. They must have borne in mind, that as the plan to be framed and proposed was to be submitted TO THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES, the disapprobation of this supreme authority would destroy it forever; its approbation blot out antecedent errors and irregularities. It might even have occurred to them, that where a disposition to cavil prevailed, their neglect to execute the degree of power vested in them, and still more their recommendation of any measure whatever, not warranted by their commission, would not less excite animadversion, than a recommendation at once of a measure fully commensurate to the national exigencies. Had the convention, under all these impressions, and in the midst of all these considerations, instead of exercising a manly confidence in their country, by whose confidence they had been so peculiarly distinguished, and of pointing out a system capable, in their judgment, of securing its happiness, taken the cold and sullen resolution of disappointing its ardent hopes, of sacrificing substance to forms, of committing the dearest interests of their country to the uncertainties of delay and the hazard of events, let me ask the man who can raise his mind to one elevated conception, who can awaken in his bosom one patriotic emotion, what judgment ought to have been pronounced by the impartial world, by the friends of mankind, by every virtuous citizen, on the conduct and character of this assembly? Or if there be a man whose propensity to condemn is susceptible of no control, let me then ask what sentence he has in reserve for the twelve States who USURPED THE POWER of sending deputies to the convention, a body utterly unknown to their constitutions; for Congress, who recommended the appointment of this body, equally unknown to the Confederation; and for the State of New York, in particular, which first urged and then complied with this unauthorized interposition? But that the objectors may be disarmed of every pretext, it shall be granted for a moment that the convention were neither authorized by their commission, nor justified by circumstances in proposing a Constitution for their country: does it follow that the Constitution ought, for that reason alone, to be rejected? If, according to the noble precept, it be lawful to accept good advice even from an enemy, shall we set the ignoble example of refusing such advice even when it is offered by our friends? The prudent inquiry, in all cases, ought surely to be, not so much FROM WHOM the advice comes, as whether the advice be GOOD. The sum of what has been here advanced and proved is, that the charge against the convention of exceeding their powers, except in one instance little urged by the objectors, has no foundation to support it; that if they had exceeded their powers, they were not only warranted, but required, as the confidential servants of their country, by the circumstances in which they were placed, to exercise the liberty which they assume; and that finally, if they had violated both their powers and their obligations, in proposing a Constitution, this ought nevertheless to be embraced, if it be calculated to accomplish the views and happiness of the people of America. How far this character is due to the Constitution, is the subject under investigation.

PUBLIUS.

Links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

An Example of How Mormons Teach Personal Responsibility

In “Mormonism Has More Important Things to Preach than the Purported Evils of Gay Marriage,” I write:

Mormonism is one of the key reservoirs of belief in personal responsibility these days—that by dint of effort, one can make one’s own life better and contribute to making the world a better place.

Jordan Peterson tells the story of giving a talk about personal responsibility to students at Harvard—who had to be quite accomplished to get admitted—and having many come up afterward to tell him how meaningful that message was to them and how no one had ever given them that message of personal responsibility like that. I got that message of personal responsibility growing up in Mormonism. I am grateful for that. This is the kind of message that Mormonism should be telling the world, going up against the tide that emphasizes injuries and rights without sufficiently balancing that emphasis by also talking about responsibility and personal agency.

At the top of this post is a recent example of Mormon’s being taught personal responsibility—that they can make a difference in their own lives and for the world. It isn’t exactly how I would teach personal responsibility, but it does a good job of getting the basic message across.