You misunderstand the purpose of the pardon. It was not being a good father.
It was to subvert further investigation of the Biden family influence peddling scheme. The fastest way to roll up organized crime ring is to arrest one member and give them immunity if they testify against everyone else. Hunter Biden might well have sold out his family to get out of prison.
This might be believable if a congressional committee hadn’t spent the last two years trying heartily — and failing — to find any evidence of that. Members of Biden’s own party have called for an impeachment vote multiple times. The committee chair has refused to do so because he knows it would fail.
This has nothing to do with impeachment. Obviously, Joe Biden will serve out his full term.
Do you honestly believe that Joe Biden is not concerned about criminal investigations? Not at all? If he has the slightest concern, a pardon is the obvious play. It really does not matter whether he is innocent or guilty.
I am sure that his personal lawyer would advise him to pardon Hunter, and his lawyer could not care less whether the Biden family is innocent or guilty.
Biden is concerned about criminal investigations - those into his son. He may also fear vexatious investigations instigated by Trump but experience tells us that once in office Trump will be too distracted to do very much.
I think Joe's primary concern is new investigations into the rest of the Biden family, including himself.
And the investigations could be done by state prosecutors as well.
A pardon of Hunter makes this far less likely, and Joe knows it.
Without a pardon, Hunter could easily have been given a plea bargain to cut his prison term in return for testifying against his own family, which could lead to serious prison time for other members of the family.
That is a traditional law enforcement tactic to deal with such a situation. It seems very likely that if there is an investigation that is the tactic that they would use. So Joe has a strong incentive to make it impossible.
You can do research on the tactic if you doubt me.
I think the students lied. Or to.be more charitable their stated preferences and the social utility of them outweighs a mere hypothetical consideration of a situation that would bring to light revealed preferences.
I agree, but qualifiedly. I think some lied, performatively. But others would really do it, because they're young and (being social sciences undergrads in current America??!!) probably deeply immerse in a certain "moral purity" culture, maybe ideological zeal to maintain said purity. The way some Komsomol youth would rat out their friends and family, and not to negligible consequences, but at the minimum a need to undergo a struggle session, and potentially expulsion, or even a trip to Kolyma one way.
I'm a bit surprised about Cornell students! But I actually suspect they were being dishonest rather than disloyal - like most survey respondents, they answered the "what would you do?" question as "what should you do?", and that weren't imagining actual friends whose life they'd be screwing up.
It would be odd if there is such a generational gap...
I'd help any of my close friends to dispose of a body, no questions asked.
If this were simply a father simply extending mercy to a drug addict son, I would agree that this would make sense. I also agree that obligations to family are not the same as those to strangers, contra Singer, but there's more here, isn't there?
Hunter's actions also benefited the father, probably to a very considerable sum, and thus this isn't merely a father acting like one. It's a father pursuing his own self interest and likely concealing influence peddling to which he was a beneficiary. Nothing noble in that.
Part of me thinks this is a continuation of the distrust in our institutions. I feel that if Biden had been followed by his chosen successor he'd have left his son unpardoned. But assessing his opponents, he felt they'd abuse their power with regards to his son.
As norms have been devalued I think this is a prudent step. I think that the disruptions of technology are shaking the foundations of societies across the world and people feel that their lives and the lives of the ones they love are in danger. As such people are grasping for any way to gain control over their situations. One way that makes feel people feel powerful and in control is to punish those they feel aren't in their camp.
By this action I think the president has signaled that he believes the next administration is untrustworthy.
I don't think it was completely about "favoring those we love". I think it was about the GOP hunting for something to charge Hunter with - because he was Biden's son. Maybe the question should be: should one political party go after the other political party's family?
As someone reading from a non-WEIRD country, I completely agree with Joseph Henrich. Ours is a society organized and operated along hierarchies and pockets of loyalties - starting with family, kin, tribe, religion, and then class.
It's a privilege for you to be able to argue for the value of prioritizing your personal constituency without having to grapple with the many ways in which this instinct, when left to run amok rather than being aggressively checked, can make any society (usually of multiple coalitions and loyalties) ungovernable. The rule of law becomes an alien idea on a fancy piece of paper and the apparatus of justice is activated and mobilized only in response to personal insults felt by powerful and well-resourced people. And because resources are expected to be allocated primarily along loyalty lines, corruption and misallocation are the norm.
Yes, it's true that we value family and friends and "our people" in my part of the world (Africa), but I think the overall benefits of this social moral system is weak when assessed in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency it affords in managing a conglomerate of people rather than just your own constituent.
Biden is not just an ordinary father, he is the President, doesn't he have the moral obligation to be impartial, not to be biased by social, political or personal status of the person he pardons?
I find this topic so interesting because for example, although I want to comfort friends who have done wrong and are now paying for it, I find it extremely conflicting if it goes against my own morals. If a friend was to cheat on their husband and then seek reassurance for feeling so guilty, I would want to comfort them but i would find it difficult because it would go against my own deep rooted morals/beliefs. How does one navigate that!? I find it confusing, how does one balance empathy and morality
Confusion analects 13:18 The Duke of Sheh told Confucius: "In my land, there are righteous men. If a father steals a sheep, the son will testify against him." Confucius said, "The righteous men in my land are different from this. The father conceals the wrongs of his son, and the son conceals the wrongs of his father. Virtue is to be found in this.”
“everyone should value their own children more than they value everybody else”
I think one can go further:
“everyone should value specifics more than generics”
(Notice that this statement is itself generic)
This is because generics depend upon specifics - if you’ve never encountered a child then your knowledge of Children is going to be relatively impoverished. If we were to collectively lose sight of this fact, Children would eventually become a static nexus of words, definitions, images, symbols, and narratives - and any child which didn’t perfectly conform to those expectations would be discarded. That is to say, all children would be discarded (and eventually also the concept of Children, if anybody was still around to conceive it).
By contrast, attending to specifics enriches generics. For example, attending to the peculiarities of specific children may reveal characteristics previously hidden in the generic Child - a certain stubbornness, strong moral convictions, an ontology which is inclusive of the imaginal, resilience to falling over, a tendency to catch a cold, and so forth. This leads to my next point…
The desire to see something grow is agape - the highest form of love. Only by valuing specific children higher than the generic Child can we allow the generic Child to truly grow. By valuing the specific above the generic, we are loving the generic to the utmost. So in reality it’s not one verses the other, but a misunderstanding of precedence.
Are there any generics which should be valued above specifics? Consider the generic Generic. The generic Generic is what affords us the capacity to conceptually differentiate generics (eg. the concept of Children) from specifics (eg. the concept of a specific child). This differentiation is what gives meaning to the concept “everyone should value specifics more than generics”. Therefore one could make the case that the Generic is more valuable than any specific (although I’m not sure if I would want to make that case or not). The Generic might actually be considered an aspect of God, but I don’t know enough theology to say any more on the matter.
Finally, I suspect Biden is right to pardon his son because it demonstrates valuation of a specific above a generic - and it also does this publicly. His role as a president is to value the generic American, but his role as a father is to value a specific human being, and - as I’ve tried to make the case - it’s this latter act which ultimately gives the former meaning.
That’s quite a jumble of thoughts - curious if they resonate with anyone.
I "think" I will not kill anybody tonprolong my child's life. I, of course, wish I never find out if this image of myself is accurate. However, if I had to spend money that could save a thousand strangers children to save my own child, I would definitely do it. Heck, I would spend the money that can save a million children just on my own, if it can save her.
Surely it was because the graduate students probably didn't have children, that they took the sterner line. They did have mothers and fathers but maybe the child-parent relationship is asymetrical.
PS my children are adopted so no genes in play, but I would 100% pardon them (as I already have done many times!).
1. I made some"mana"-points on manifold today, as I took bets: Will Joe pardon Hunter - and I bet: yes, he will. When this was given a likelihood of ca. 20% even after the election (so nothing to lose for ol' Joe)! So, yeah, people seemed confused. Turned out, they were.
2. I am a foreigner, my only relevant info was that blogs mentioned, Joe loves his son. I can imagine not loving a son, who went bad - but if I did love him, sure I would do as Joe did. The only bad thing is, that Joe lied about not to use the pardon. But then, he is a politician, right?
3. That is why for us European this US-system of "pardoning" seems so strangely monarchistic and archaic. Law rulez. Kick out that option - or make it much less direct.
4. I assume, those hyper-correct students just lied. To you, to the audience and possibly to themselves.
5. The blood of my child is no more red than the blood of others (Jewish teaching), but would I press the button "get a new heart for my kid" knowing it would 'kill some other kid somewhere', but no one would ever know? Yes, I would. Would I have Steven Pinker, Tyler Cowen or Scott Alexander killed to make me/my family live much longer? No, I would not. (Pinker and Cowen are older and have no kids ... and they mostly did their thing ... so I am tempted in their case... . Any archbishop worth saving would refuse to be saved prior to others. As would Scott, I am afraid.)
You misunderstand the purpose of the pardon. It was not being a good father.
It was to subvert further investigation of the Biden family influence peddling scheme. The fastest way to roll up organized crime ring is to arrest one member and give them immunity if they testify against everyone else. Hunter Biden might well have sold out his family to get out of prison.
Joe Biden was protecting himself, not his son.
This might be believable if a congressional committee hadn’t spent the last two years trying heartily — and failing — to find any evidence of that. Members of Biden’s own party have called for an impeachment vote multiple times. The committee chair has refused to do so because he knows it would fail.
This has nothing to do with impeachment. Obviously, Joe Biden will serve out his full term.
Do you honestly believe that Joe Biden is not concerned about criminal investigations? Not at all? If he has the slightest concern, a pardon is the obvious play. It really does not matter whether he is innocent or guilty.
I am sure that his personal lawyer would advise him to pardon Hunter, and his lawyer could not care less whether the Biden family is innocent or guilty.
Biden is concerned about criminal investigations - those into his son. He may also fear vexatious investigations instigated by Trump but experience tells us that once in office Trump will be too distracted to do very much.
I think Joe's primary concern is new investigations into the rest of the Biden family, including himself.
And the investigations could be done by state prosecutors as well.
A pardon of Hunter makes this far less likely, and Joe knows it.
Without a pardon, Hunter could easily have been given a plea bargain to cut his prison term in return for testifying against his own family, which could lead to serious prison time for other members of the family.
Gosh!! A fully fleshed conspiracy theory.
No conspiracy.
Just individual incentives. The President does not need to cooperate with anyone to issue a pardon.
I was thinking of the 'organised crime ring'.
That is a traditional law enforcement tactic to deal with such a situation. It seems very likely that if there is an investigation that is the tactic that they would use. So Joe has a strong incentive to make it impossible.
You can do research on the tactic if you doubt me.
Yes, I believe you about the tactic. It happens here in England too!!!
I think the students lied. Or to.be more charitable their stated preferences and the social utility of them outweighs a mere hypothetical consideration of a situation that would bring to light revealed preferences.
I agree, but qualifiedly. I think some lied, performatively. But others would really do it, because they're young and (being social sciences undergrads in current America??!!) probably deeply immerse in a certain "moral purity" culture, maybe ideological zeal to maintain said purity. The way some Komsomol youth would rat out their friends and family, and not to negligible consequences, but at the minimum a need to undergo a struggle session, and potentially expulsion, or even a trip to Kolyma one way.
I'm a bit surprised about Cornell students! But I actually suspect they were being dishonest rather than disloyal - like most survey respondents, they answered the "what would you do?" question as "what should you do?", and that weren't imagining actual friends whose life they'd be screwing up.
It would be odd if there is such a generational gap...
I'd help any of my close friends to dispose of a body, no questions asked.
If this were simply a father simply extending mercy to a drug addict son, I would agree that this would make sense. I also agree that obligations to family are not the same as those to strangers, contra Singer, but there's more here, isn't there?
Hunter's actions also benefited the father, probably to a very considerable sum, and thus this isn't merely a father acting like one. It's a father pursuing his own self interest and likely concealing influence peddling to which he was a beneficiary. Nothing noble in that.
Part of me thinks this is a continuation of the distrust in our institutions. I feel that if Biden had been followed by his chosen successor he'd have left his son unpardoned. But assessing his opponents, he felt they'd abuse their power with regards to his son.
As norms have been devalued I think this is a prudent step. I think that the disruptions of technology are shaking the foundations of societies across the world and people feel that their lives and the lives of the ones they love are in danger. As such people are grasping for any way to gain control over their situations. One way that makes feel people feel powerful and in control is to punish those they feel aren't in their camp.
By this action I think the president has signaled that he believes the next administration is untrustworthy.
I don't think it was completely about "favoring those we love". I think it was about the GOP hunting for something to charge Hunter with - because he was Biden's son. Maybe the question should be: should one political party go after the other political party's family?
amazing
As someone reading from a non-WEIRD country, I completely agree with Joseph Henrich. Ours is a society organized and operated along hierarchies and pockets of loyalties - starting with family, kin, tribe, religion, and then class.
It's a privilege for you to be able to argue for the value of prioritizing your personal constituency without having to grapple with the many ways in which this instinct, when left to run amok rather than being aggressively checked, can make any society (usually of multiple coalitions and loyalties) ungovernable. The rule of law becomes an alien idea on a fancy piece of paper and the apparatus of justice is activated and mobilized only in response to personal insults felt by powerful and well-resourced people. And because resources are expected to be allocated primarily along loyalty lines, corruption and misallocation are the norm.
Yes, it's true that we value family and friends and "our people" in my part of the world (Africa), but I think the overall benefits of this social moral system is weak when assessed in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency it affords in managing a conglomerate of people rather than just your own constituent.
Biden is not just an ordinary father, he is the President, doesn't he have the moral obligation to be impartial, not to be biased by social, political or personal status of the person he pardons?
I find this topic so interesting because for example, although I want to comfort friends who have done wrong and are now paying for it, I find it extremely conflicting if it goes against my own morals. If a friend was to cheat on their husband and then seek reassurance for feeling so guilty, I would want to comfort them but i would find it difficult because it would go against my own deep rooted morals/beliefs. How does one navigate that!? I find it confusing, how does one balance empathy and morality
Reflecting on this further and realising my empathy for someone close seems to depend on the level of harm caused
Confusion analects 13:18 The Duke of Sheh told Confucius: "In my land, there are righteous men. If a father steals a sheep, the son will testify against him." Confucius said, "The righteous men in my land are different from this. The father conceals the wrongs of his son, and the son conceals the wrongs of his father. Virtue is to be found in this.”
“everyone should value their own children more than they value everybody else”
I think one can go further:
“everyone should value specifics more than generics”
(Notice that this statement is itself generic)
This is because generics depend upon specifics - if you’ve never encountered a child then your knowledge of Children is going to be relatively impoverished. If we were to collectively lose sight of this fact, Children would eventually become a static nexus of words, definitions, images, symbols, and narratives - and any child which didn’t perfectly conform to those expectations would be discarded. That is to say, all children would be discarded (and eventually also the concept of Children, if anybody was still around to conceive it).
By contrast, attending to specifics enriches generics. For example, attending to the peculiarities of specific children may reveal characteristics previously hidden in the generic Child - a certain stubbornness, strong moral convictions, an ontology which is inclusive of the imaginal, resilience to falling over, a tendency to catch a cold, and so forth. This leads to my next point…
The desire to see something grow is agape - the highest form of love. Only by valuing specific children higher than the generic Child can we allow the generic Child to truly grow. By valuing the specific above the generic, we are loving the generic to the utmost. So in reality it’s not one verses the other, but a misunderstanding of precedence.
Are there any generics which should be valued above specifics? Consider the generic Generic. The generic Generic is what affords us the capacity to conceptually differentiate generics (eg. the concept of Children) from specifics (eg. the concept of a specific child). This differentiation is what gives meaning to the concept “everyone should value specifics more than generics”. Therefore one could make the case that the Generic is more valuable than any specific (although I’m not sure if I would want to make that case or not). The Generic might actually be considered an aspect of God, but I don’t know enough theology to say any more on the matter.
Finally, I suspect Biden is right to pardon his son because it demonstrates valuation of a specific above a generic - and it also does this publicly. His role as a president is to value the generic American, but his role as a father is to value a specific human being, and - as I’ve tried to make the case - it’s this latter act which ultimately gives the former meaning.
That’s quite a jumble of thoughts - curious if they resonate with anyone.
Yeah I like that
I "think" I will not kill anybody tonprolong my child's life. I, of course, wish I never find out if this image of myself is accurate. However, if I had to spend money that could save a thousand strangers children to save my own child, I would definitely do it. Heck, I would spend the money that can save a million children just on my own, if it can save her.
Surely it was because the graduate students probably didn't have children, that they took the sterner line. They did have mothers and fathers but maybe the child-parent relationship is asymetrical.
PS my children are adopted so no genes in play, but I would 100% pardon them (as I already have done many times!).
1. I made some"mana"-points on manifold today, as I took bets: Will Joe pardon Hunter - and I bet: yes, he will. When this was given a likelihood of ca. 20% even after the election (so nothing to lose for ol' Joe)! So, yeah, people seemed confused. Turned out, they were.
2. I am a foreigner, my only relevant info was that blogs mentioned, Joe loves his son. I can imagine not loving a son, who went bad - but if I did love him, sure I would do as Joe did. The only bad thing is, that Joe lied about not to use the pardon. But then, he is a politician, right?
3. That is why for us European this US-system of "pardoning" seems so strangely monarchistic and archaic. Law rulez. Kick out that option - or make it much less direct.
4. I assume, those hyper-correct students just lied. To you, to the audience and possibly to themselves.
5. The blood of my child is no more red than the blood of others (Jewish teaching), but would I press the button "get a new heart for my kid" knowing it would 'kill some other kid somewhere', but no one would ever know? Yes, I would. Would I have Steven Pinker, Tyler Cowen or Scott Alexander killed to make me/my family live much longer? No, I would not. (Pinker and Cowen are older and have no kids ... and they mostly did their thing ... so I am tempted in their case... . Any archbishop worth saving would refuse to be saved prior to others. As would Scott, I am afraid.)
A few thoughts:
1. It's possible to love people.
2. The love we have for one person is likely not the same (quantitatively or qualitatively) as the love we have for another person.
3. It is usually easier to SHOW love to someone near than to someone far.
4. We lack the capacity to show more than superficial love to large numbers of people or to people who are distant from us.
5. Loving my children (which I do) is compatible with loving other children (which I do), though will normally look very different.
6. I am responsible for my own children (and others near to me) in ways I am not responsible for others.
7. I am also responsible TO my children - and to others.
8. As a Christian, I take myself to be responsible to God. Part of my responsibility to God entails love and responsibility for (and to) others.