uite obviously, the three items mentioned in the title of this blog-entry are rather unrelated—unless, perhaps, one wants to say that each represents some sort of flaw.  That, however, is not the tactic that I shall take.  Indeed, I want to put American Slavery on one side and the other two—the war in Iraq and Paris Hilton—on the other.  This is because initial reflections regarding American Slavery some hundreds of years ago raise deep, deep questions regarding the way in which we think about the latter two.  As one might imagine, the issue of moral objectivity comes into play.

If American Slavery reveals anything, it reveals that moral right and wrong has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people concur with the view in question.  For time was when the majority of people throughout the world clearly supposed that there was nothing wrong with slavery in general or the enslavement of blacks in particular. 

Needless to say, we don’t look back and say “Slavery was all right back then, but it is terribly wrong now, because most people nowadays think that slavery is wrong unlike what most people back then thought”.  Surely, the right or wrong of slavery—like the right or wrong of rape or gratuitous killing—has nothing whatsoever to do with what most people think.  The issue of slavery, however, serves the discussion well precisely because an about-face did occur in the way in which people thought about slavery. 

It is, of course, absolutely wonderful that most people nowadays take slavery to be morally wrong.  But the point, obviously, is that it is not this fact that makes slavery wrong.  Not at all.

The relevance of these remarks to the war in Iraq and Paris Hilton is that many people seem to think that public opinion alone determines what is right about these matters. 

At the very height of American Slavery, the Quakers grasped the insight that slavery is wrong.  And they acted accordingly.  They did not take a poll to see whether or not they should revise their opinion.  It is most frightening to think that if we were fighting the issue of American Slavery today, where the sentiments regarding slavery were identical to those of yesteryear, a poll would be taken and it would determined that people with a Quaker-like mindset should simply be ignored as being out of step with the majority. 

We have been deluged with stories about Paris Hilton going to jail (just as we were deluged with stories about Anna Nicole Smith).  It is as if no issue in the world was more important than the news about Paris Hilton (or Anna Nicole Smith).  But surely that cannot possibly be right. 

Now, I have been informed by a most reliable source that the media focuses upon a Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith story because as a matter of fact that is what the public wants to hear about.  I do not dispute that assessment.  Rather, the assessment is a source of deep concern to me; for it is indicative of the fact that we as a Americans have a deep, deep problem with perspective in terms of our assessment of what is important. 

It is the very same public that generally thinks that the war in Iraq is morally wrong. 

Now, I am not going to argue the issue of the war here.  Rather, I merely wish to make the following observation.  Suppose that every time a person saw the slightest expression of affection between a couple (not heavy petting), but the sort of beautiful smile that only lovers can give to one another): suppose that every time a person saw such behavior, the individual stormed out of the room in disgust.  Needless to say, I would hardly put my trust in that individual’s assessment of social interaction between romantic couples. 

Accordingly, it would seem that if the vast majority of people in a society think that what happened to Paris Hilton (or Smith’s death) is the most newsworthy story for not merely an hour but for days and weeks to come, then surely there is reason to believe that their perspective in general regarding what counts as important is not to be trusted. 

As we know, people can be right but for the wrong reasons.  Unfortunately, this is not very comforting.  After all, some people thought that black slavery was wrong because proximity to blacks tainted the moral character of whites.  This gets to the right conclusion regarding slavery but for a reason that is massively unsatisfactory. 

All the people who think that the news about Paris Hilton going to jail is the most important story to come along in weeks or even months could be right in thinking that the war in Iraq is wrong and utterly misguided.  But the problem is that their reasons for thinking that the war is wrong are likely to be massively unsatisfactory.  The right conclusion is not enough.  One also needs the right reasons for that conclusion.  And once more, as the case of American Slavery most poignantly reminds us: public opinion as such is not at all a measure of truth.

I have effectively said what we all know, namely that numbers as such are not a measure of truth.  A sentence like “Everybody thinks that” can rightly have its intended force only because it is elliptical for “Every right thinking or decent individual thinks that”. 

The proviso “right thinking” or “decent individual” puts very strong constraints on what counts as an acceptable reason.  Thus, the utterance “Everybody thinks that rape is wrong” has the force it has precisely because it is implicitly understood that we radically discount the views of those who think rape is wrong merely because "it takes too much effort while yielding too little satisfaction". 

We need moral objectivity.  We need it to make sense of the wrong of slavery and the wrong of rape.  We need for individuals to embrace the right reasons for why these deeds are wrong.

But something has gone frighteningly wrong.  I have heard people make the following utterance: “In my opinion rape is wrong”.  My question, of course, is always “What on earth is the point of saying in your opinion?”  And I am stunned by the number of people (including feminist female students among them) who, rather than immediately drop the words “in my opinion”, go on to talk about not wanting to impose their views upon others. 

Insofar as this counts as moral progress, it is extremely frightening.  It is moral progress that makes Paris Hilton the most important news story to break in months.  And it is moral progress that would have left blacks enslaved or, in any case, it would have left the existence of slavery subject to an opinion poll.  Against, this backdrop much of what people say regarding the war in Iraq is utterly meaningless to me.  And I trust that you now understand why.  This I can say without at all taking a stand on the war; and, indeed, I have very scrupously not done so in these remarks.