Ethics Newsline®

Chances are that Aristotle never heard of Baghdad. In his day, it was an unknown hamlet on the Tigris River, 1,200 miles east of Athens. He would certainly have heard of Babylon, the glittering Mesopotamian capital some 60 miles south of Baghdad. Babylon was captured by his pupil, Alexander the Great, in 322 B.C., nine years before the great philosopher died.

Niccolo Machiavelli would have heard about both Babylon and Baghdad, 1,900 miles east of Florence, but merely as historical curiosities. By the sixteenth century, as Machiavelli was writing on political expediency in his famous treatise The Prince, Babylon was a ruin. Baghdad, too, had already fallen into insignificance from its glory days in the ninth century as an Islamic capital second only to Constantinople in trade and cultural influence.

Now everyone’s heard of Baghdad, especially in London (2,500 miles west) and Washington (6,200 miles west). In both capitals the question is no longer whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) or the ability to make them. It is whether the public was wrongly persuaded to enter the war based on arguments that he did. Last week, two former British cabinet members, Robin Cook and Clare Short, publicly accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of dissembling in asserting that Saddam had ready access to WMDs. In Washington, there is pressure for a congressional investigation into whether President George Bush misled the U.S. public on that same point in the run-up to the invasion.

This is, at heart, a moral question — which is why Aristotle and Machiavelli both figure in the discussion. In describing his concept of the Golden Mean, Aristotle observed that moral virtue, to be excellent, “must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate” between an excess and a defect. It is a middle way, where (to use one of his examples) proper pride lies between the defect of undue humility and the excess of empty vanity. The result is a kind of moderation which, for Aristotle, characterized the highest virtues.

What would Aristotle have said about today’s discussions? Would he have found a zealous excess among those who use words like “lying” to describe the arguments used by Bush and Blair? Would he, at the same time, have found a closed-minded defect among those who refuse to subject the question to further public scrutiny? Can an Aristotelian balance be achieved by an impartial probing of the facts? Is the highest virtue gained by lowering the volume and asking careful questions about the rhetorical means through which these leaders brought their nations into this war?

Some would ask, Why bother? Just look at the polls. According to recent Gallup surveys, two-thirds of the U.S. public think Bush did not mislead them. When people were asked in February whether they were certain that Saddam had facilities to create WMDs, 55 percent said they were certain. Asked last week, only 44 expressed certainty that, before the war, he had that capability. Yet 56 percent of the public thinks the war was justified, whether or not he had that capability.

The public, then, seems to dismiss the issue of WMDs as the principal justification for going to war. Even if Saddam did not have such weapons, they say, the war was worthwhile, given the enormity of evils associated with his regime.

Which brings us to Machiavelli, whose name is often associated with the philosophical position that the end justifies the means. That precept, a perversion of the ends-based principle that measures the ethics of an action by its outcomes, provides only the wobbliest of moral standards. After all, if even the most evil methodologies are approved when they produce desired outcomes, what characteristics remain to distinguish evil from good — or to prevent the former from simply being redefined into the latter? Taken to extremes, the-end-justifies-the-means philosophy promotes a moral relativism wherein standards blur and everything equals everything else.

But is that, Machiavelli might ask, what’s happening right now vis-à-vis the Iraq debate? Was the end — removing Saddam — so desirable that the means whereby the public was persuaded to do so became irrelevant? Or has new information about the regime — its institutionalized terror, torture, and mass graves — legitimately shifted the grounds of the argument? Is it appropriate, in light of what we now know, to place more emphasis on lives actually being destroyed in Iraq prior to the invasion than on lives 6,000 miles away possibly put at risk by his alleged WMDs?

The answer is not insignificant. If we feel the WMD argument that persuaded us to go to war is not important, aren’t we saying, with Machiavelli, that ending that regime was worth any and all arguments used to make it happen? But if, on the other hand, we make it appear that the immense, real suffering of the Iraqi people is of only secondary interest in our drive to excoriate Bush and Blair for their past rhetorical stance, aren’t we abandoning Aristotle’s moderation by both ignoring genuine tragedy (a defect) while straining over historical interpretations (an excess)?

Ethics may well be achieved through moderation. It’s rarely achieved through relativism. The ongoing discussion, if level-headed, may well reveal more truth about our political process than weapons inspectors will find on the ground in Iraq.

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

Draft version:
“Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.”

Edited version:
“The complexity of the Earth system and the interconnections among its components make it a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes, and develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions may affect the global environment in the future.”

– Text from a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report being criticized after the Bush administration required a rewrite of the section discussing global warming and its impacts. The drafts were leaked to the New York Times, which noted that “White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion.” Outgoing EPA head Christine Todd Whitman defended the report, telling the Times that she is “perfectly comfortable” with its edited contents. (“Report by the EPA Leaves Out Data on Climate Change,” New York Times, June 19.)

WASHINGTON
The Bush administration cannot be compelled to reveal the names of more than 700 people secretly arrested and isolated after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a federal appeals panel ruled last week.

In a bitterly split 2-to-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it would defer to the Bush administration on the matter, reported the Washington Post.

In doing so, the court rejected a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by more than 20 organizations seeking access to the names and other details of those detained in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Dismissing that suit, the court’s Republican appointees sided with the Bush administration and Justice Department head John Ashcroft, who say releasing even a single name could imperil national security.

“While the name of any individual detainee may appear innocuous or trivial, it could be of great use to al Qaeda in plotting future terrorist attacks,” Judge David Sentelle wrote in the panel’s ruling.

“It is more than reasonable to expect that disclosing the name of every individual detained in the post-September 11 investigation would interfere with that investigation,” added Sentelle, who was appointed by President Bush’s father.

The ruling allows the government to continue withholding detainees’ names, dates and locations of arrest, deportation or release status, as well as any filed charges, reported the Reuters news agency.

“We are pleased the court agreed we should not give terrorists a virtual roadmap to our investigation that could allow terrorists to chart a potentially deadly detour around our efforts,” Ashcroft said.

In a caustic dissent, the panel’s Democratic appointee, Judge David Tatel, rebuked his fellow justices for acceding to the Bush administration’s position and allowing secret arrests and detentions to continue.

“By accepting the government’s vague, poorly explained allegations, and by filling in the gaps in the government’s case with its own assumptions about facts absent from the record, this court has converted deference into acquiescence,” Tatel wrote.

“Citizens have a compelling interest in ensuring that their government does not … abuse one of its most awesome powers, the power to arrest and jail,” Tatel added, according to the Post.

Two weeks ago, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report cataloging “significant problems” in how the government has handled detainees, including holding people incommunicado for months without filed charges or access to lawyers, as well as instances of physical abuse, according to Reuters.

Plaintiffs in the case have promised to appeal.

WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court last week made it harder for the government to forcibly medicate mentally ill people on trial for nonviolent crimes, saying such a procedure — if done against the defendant’s wishes — may violate constitutional rights.

By a 6-to-3 vote, the court ruled in favor of St. Louis dentist Charles Sell, who has spent nearly five years in a federal prison awaiting trial on 63 counts of fraud and money laundering for allegedly submitting bogus medical claims to the government and insurance companies.

Sell, who has been diagnosed with “delusional disorder, persecutory type” and says he believes the federal government is persecuting him, is mentally unfit for trial, reported the Washington Post.

The federal government sought to forcibly medicate Sell so they could hold his trial — a process used on 285 federal defendants, 59 of them involuntarily, over a recent 12-month period, reported the Post.

Last week, the Supreme Court said the government had to prove that such forced medication must “significantly further” an “important” government objective in order for it to be a legal intrusion on a citizen’s autonomy.

Moreover, the court said, such medication must not have side effects — headaches, rashes, or other distracting ailments, for example — that could impede a defendant’s performance at trial.

“Has the government, in light of the efficacy, the side effects, the possible alternatives, and the medical appropriateness of a particular course of anti-psychotic drug treatment, shown a need for that treatment sufficiently important to overcome the individual’s protected interest in refusing it?” Justice Stephen Breyer asked in the majority opinion.

“This standard will permit involuntary administration of drugs solely for trial-competence purposes in certain instances,” Breyer wrote. “But those instances may be rare.”

Paul Appelbaum, president of the American Psychiatric Association, which sided with the government in the Sell case, criticized the ruling as burdensome and inconclusive.

“The decision leaves more work for the courts to do. In outlining these criteria, the court has not said how to balance them,” Appelbaum told the Post.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
Canada is set to become the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriages, after Belgium and the Netherlands.

Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien has announced that the government will not appeal two appellate court rulings in British Columbia and Ontario that found the exclusion of same-sex unions from the definition of a legal union to be unconstitutional.

While public opinion polls show that Canadians are roughly evenly split over sanctioning such unions, with a slight majority in favor, the prime minister acknowledged that the laws of Canada have to keep pace with the evolution of Canadian society.

However, to ensure that political and social divisions over the matter are kept to a minimum, the prime minister also indicated that the government would draft legislation that will sanction same-sex civil marriages, while allowing different religions to determine what would constitute a valid religious marriage.

Once the legislation is drafted, it will be submitted to the Canadian Supreme Court for an advisory opinion as to its constitutionality. Following such a ruling, the legislation will then be put to a free vote in the Canadian Parliament, without the direction of party whips as to how each member must vote.

The premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein, has indicated that the province would not hesitate to use the so-called override or “notwithstanding” clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to prevent same-sex marriages receiving the sanction of the law.

Some constitutional specialists, including this author, doubt that the province of Alberta has the power to invalidate a federal law in the province under the override clause of the Charter, which allows legislatures to validate their legislation despite a ruling of unconstitutionality by the courts.

There are media reports that Canadians from other provinces, as well as same-sex couples from the United State, have begun arriving in Canada to be legally married.

TULIA, Texas
After four years in prison, 12 people convicted of drug charges based on the discredited testimony of an allegedly racist police officer were released last week following intervention by lawyers from around the country.

The 12 people, all of them black, were among 46 people, nearly all of them black, arrested by police on drug charges during a pre-dawn raid in July 1999, reported the New York Times.

The raid was instigated by a white narcotics agent, Tom Coleman, who spent 18 months undercover, during which he used no video or audio surveillance, kept incomplete notes, and worked alone.

Although no drugs, weapons, paraphernalia, or other evidence of drug dealing was found during the arrests, juries in Tulia took the undercover operator at his word and convicted the defendants.

Coleman was given the Texas Lawman of the Year award shortly after the bust, reported the Times.

After the juries quickly started slapping the mostly black defendants with stiff sentences of 20 to 90 years, remaining defendants started signing bogus guilty pleas in exchange for lighter sentences.

Two years ago, things started falling apart after one defendant proved that she had been in Oklahoma at the same time Coleman testified she was selling drugs in Texas, reported the Times.

After teams of lawyers from across the country took a look at Coleman’s cases and began asking questions, hearings were launched, headed by retired judge Ron Chapman.

In April, Chapman concluded that Coleman had “falsified reports, misrepresented the nature and extent of his investigative work, and misidentified various defendants during his investigation,” reported the Washington Post.

Shortly thereafter, Texas governor Rick Perry signed a special bill urging the release of the Tulia prisoners, and Coleman was charged with three counts of aggravated perjury in a separate case. Coleman faces 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each of the perjury charges, according to the Reuters news agency.

“It is because of a grave failure of the criminal justice system that these people were robbed of four years of their lives,” said Vanita Gupta of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Last week’s action does not clear the defendants’ criminal records — a process that could take as long as two years in appellate courts, according to the Associated Press.

Nor do the recent events leave many of the defendants in the good graces of the townspeople of Tulia, who say the revived cases have caused the town to be widely and unfairly labeled as racist, noted the Times.

ST. LOUIS
In what was seen by many as yet another sign of the continued struggle for reform in the Catholic Church, former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating resigned as chairman of the National Catholic Review Board, an oversight panel comprised of lay Catholics charged with overseeing reform efforts following the recent sexual abuse scandals.

According to the Associated Press, Keating’s resignation stems from backlash at comments he made during an interview with the Los Angeles Times in which the former governor, FBI agent, and federal prosecutor likened certain Catholic Church officials to the mafia for their refusal to cooperate with ongoing investigations.

“To act like La Cosa Nostra and hide and suppress, I think, is very unhealthy,” Keating told the Times. “Eventually it will all come out.”

Calling Keating’s comments “the last straw,” Los Angeles cardinal Roger Mahony vowed to seek the former governor’s ouster at a meeting of U.S. bishops in St. Louis later in the week.

However, Keating beat Mahony to that step earlier in the week, offering his resignation to Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops.

In the letter, which was shared with the AP, Keating wrote: “My remarks, which some bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate. I make no apology. To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church.”

Keating did, however, praise many leaders of the Church, including Bishop Gregory, for their positive leadership and determination to get to the bottom of the scandal and make necessary changes.

Many saw Keating’s resignation as yet another blow for reform. Steve Krueger, spokesman for Voice of the Faithful, a lay activist group seeking changes in the church after the sex abuse scandals, told WCVB in Boston: “Governor Keating was a passionate believer in the truth and he pursued it passionately. At a time when the church needs to be doing exactly that.”

Adding to the church’s troubles last week, Bishop Thomas O’Brien of the Phoenix Diocese was charged with involvement in a fatal hit-and-run accident.

According to the New York Times, Bishop O’Brien also acknowledged that he had been involved in the sexual abuse crisis by protecting several priests from sexual abuse complaints. Bishop O’Brien has resigned.

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania
Martin Grass, the former head of Rite Aid Corp., pleaded guilty last week to charges of conspiracy in a deal with federal prosecutors that could put him behind bars for up to eight years.

Grass, the former chairman and CEO of Rite Aid and the son of its founder, was accused of trying to dupe investors, regulators, and investigators looking into the drugstore chain’s $1.6 billion overstatement of profits in the late 1990s.

In last week’s deal, entered days before his case was headed to trial, Grass pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud Rite Aid and its shareholders and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, reported the Associated Press.

In exchange for Grass’s guilty plea, the government agreed to drop charges of securities fraud, obstruction of jury proceedings, witness tampering, mail fraud, wire fraud, and lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Last week’s plea calls for Grass to pay a $500,000 penalty and forfeit $3 million in misused funds. The deal also calls for an eight-year prison sentence, though that may be reduced in exchange for his promised cooperation in prosecuting other Rite Aid executives.

Two weeks ago, Rite Aid’s former chief financial officer also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Two others — the firm’s former vice chairman and chief counsel, as well as its current vice president for pharmacy purchasing — have also been indicted, reported the AP.

“Mr. Grass and his associates had a very large appetite, a greedy appetite,” U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Marino said after the plea hearing last week. “They’re getting their just desserts today.”

WASHINGTON
The former head of a union-owned insurance company last week refused to answer congressional questions about $6 million in stock deals that benefited labor leaders between 1998 and 2000.

Robert Georgine, former chairman and chief executive of Ullico Inc., exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when questioned about his role in the stock trades that came at union members’ expense.

“While I am confident that I have done nothing wrong, on the advice of my attorney, I respectfully decline, based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment,” Gerogine told the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee.

Georgine, who is under investigation for helping orchestrate the suspected insider trading, was forced to resign his post last month in the wake of the scandal, reported the New York Times.

“There are many questions that remain unanswered about the Ullico scandal, and rank-and-file union members deserve answers,” Committee chairman Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at the hearing.

“At the very same time that union leaders were joining the chorus of well-deserved criticism of Enron and others for corporate misconduct, Ullico set up a system of insider stock deals that made millions for the board at the expense of rank-and-file union members,” Boehner charged.

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana
Guidant Corp. last week pleaded guilty to felony charges that the firm lied to government safety regulators by concealing thousands of injuries and a dozen deaths caused by a medical device it says it will pull from the market.

The charges center on the company’s Ancure “stent-graft” device, which is surgically implanted to prevent the body’s main artery from rupturing, reported the Reuters news agency.

While a Guidant subsidiary reported 16 deaths and 172 malfunctions caused by the device, it concealed evidence of nearly 2,500 additional malfunctions and 12 additional deaths in 2001, according to press reports.

Last week, Guidant pleaded guilty to 10 felonies, agreeing to pay $92.4 million in federal penalties.

Guidant pulled Ancure from the market in March 2001, worked with regulators, and resumed selling the device in August 2001, reported Reuters.

Guidant says the device, once implanted, is safe and that the death and malfunction rates were consistent with those experienced during trials of the device, which were vetted by the government before approval.

“No patient with the (implant) is at risk as a result of this matter, and the implant continues to demonstrate excellent long-term clinical results,” Guidant said, according to the Reuters report.

While doctors praise the device for its durability and non-invasiveness, which saves patients the three- to six-month recovery period normally associated with such a procedure, Guidant last week said it will shut down production of Ancure, citing a loss of consumer trust.

“I’ve already had two patients call me today … who wanted to know if they were having a Guidant graft, because if they were, they didn’t want to have it,” vascular surgeon John Golan told Reuters.

At least 14 civil lawsuits and five shareholder suits have been filed over the issue, reported the Associated Press.

CHICAGO
U.S. doctors agreed last week to curb drug companies’ access to their patients, adopting a new “shadowing” policy that puts tight restrictions on sales representatives seeking to sit in on patient exams.

The new rules, adopted last week by the American Medical Association (AMA), are designed to protect both patients’ privacy and doctors’ prescription-writing habits from the spreading influence of drug sales reps.

In recent years, drug firms have sought greater access to doctors, wedging the door open with informational junkets, office calls, and job shadowing they say helps sales reps better understand their clients’ duties and needs.

The practice has raised prescription rates of promoted drugs — as well as eyebrows from critics, who contend that the reps’ influence and visiting rights may be pushing the limits too far, reported the Associated Press.

In response, the AMA last week adopted a new set of guidelines designed to bolster privacy rights by requiring sales reps to get the explicit permission of patients before sitting in on exams.

The new policy follows a voluntary code of conduct adopted last year by the pharmaceutical industry, calling on firms to disclose contractual deals with doctors and curb the dispensing of gifts.

That code has been criticized for its voluntary nature and apparent lack of teeth — charges rejected by the industry’s trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, according to the AP.

LIMA, Peru
Peru’s parliament last week resumed an investigation into the forced sterilization of more than 300,000 rural women by government squads hoping to slow population growth.

The government’s Human Rights Commission is looking into allegations that the sterilization campaign was conducted without adequate medical supplies, oversight, or permission from patients.

More than 320,000 women were made infertile by teams of doctors hired as part of the government’s “Voluntary Contraception Surgery” program, designed to curb population growth, reported the BBC.

The commission is looking into charges that the government failed to properly evaluate women for the procedure, failed to education them sufficiently beforehand, failed to do needed follow-up, and forced doctors to meet quotas, creating a climate of fear.

As a consequence, 18 women died from post-surgery complications while thousands more suffered psychological problems, Prime Minister Luis Solari charged, according to the BBC.

The sterilizations also shifted rural demographics, leaving many communities to cope with aging populations unsupported by succeeding generations, noted the BBC.

Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, who allegedly authorized the sterilization campaign, fled the country in 2000 and faces charges of treason, corruption, and authorizing death squads.

From the Gallup News Service:

“There has been little change since last year in Americans’ expressed confidence in the major institutions in American society. Americans remain most confident in the military, followed by the police, the presidency, the church or organized religion, and banks. Americans remain least confident in health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and big business.

“None of this year’s confidence ratings are substantially different from those measured last year in Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions poll. Notably, despite the highly publicized New York Times scandal in which a young reporter was found to have fabricated and plagiarized material in many of his stories (leading to the resignation of the paper’s top two editors), the public’s confidence in newspapers did not change significantly from last year. Americans’ confidence in the church has rebounded slightly from its all-time low last year.

“Thirty years ago, The Gallup Poll began routinely asking Americans to rate their confidence in a number of American institutions….

“The list of institutions included in the question has varied from year to year, although a core list of institutions has generally been included each time the confidence question has been asked. This year’s poll included 15 institutions. Most of the discussion that follows is based on the analysis of the percentage of Americans registering a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in each institution. The results range from a high point of 82 percent who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military, down to the low point of 17 percent who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in HMOs….

“There has been a slight recovery of confidence in the ‘church or organized religion’ this year. The percentage of Americans who expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church rose from 45 percent last year to 50 percent this year.

“Last year’s 45 percent level was the lowest measured in Gallup Poll history, perhaps not surprisingly, given the extraordinarily negative publicity last year given to the Catholic Church relating to the priest sex abuse scandals. The current 50 percent, while up from last year, is the second-lowest rating Gallup has recorded for this institution. Both last year’s and this year’s measures sharply contrast to the results obtained in the 1970s through the mid-1980s, when two-thirds of the public said it had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church….

Newspapers

“If ever there was a year in which some observers might expect Americans’ confidence in newspapers to drop, it would be this year. The saga of Jayson Blair, the young New York Times reporter who was discovered to have plagiarized and fabricated stories, was prominently featured in the press, including the cover of at least one major weekly newsmagazine. The scandal was ultimately so significant that it became a major factor in the unprecedented resignation of the two top New York Times editors.

“Despite this, we simply don’t find much change in Americans’ confidence in newspapers this year. Thirty-three percent of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers, compared with 35 percent last year. Indeed, as recently as 1994, an even lower 29 percent of Americans gave newspapers a high confidence rating….

“The 82 percent confidence rating for the military this year is the second highest in Gallup’s history — just slightly lower than the 85 percent confidence level recorded in March 1991, just after the victorious end of the Persian Gulf War. After subsiding in the interim, the military’s confidence rating again increased to 79 percent last June, up from 66 percent the year before, which reflected in part the continuing aftereffect of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the military’s role in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. Outside of the March 1991 reading, military confidence ratings had been in the 60 percent range throughout the 1990s. The low point for ratings of confidence in the military came in 1981, less than a decade after the end of the Vietnam War, and just as President Ronald Reagan was beginning his efforts to boost the U.S. military to combat communism and the influence of the Soviet Union.

Banks

“Banks have been slowly but surely gaining confidence over the past five years, climbing from a 40 percent confidence rating in 1998, to a 50 percent confidence rating this year. The current 50 percent rating is the highest since 1987….

Congress

“Confidence in Congress — now at 29 percent — is little changed over the last several years, and about midrange compared to the last 30 years…. As noted, this year’s 29 percent confidence rating for Congress is unchanged from last year, but both years’ ratings remain slightly higher than what was recorded through the 1990s.

“Very few Americans (22 percent) have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in big business. That’s not surprising, given the lingering impact of the Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, ImClone, and Martha Stewart scandals that have rocked the business world. Confidence in big business fell to 20 percent last year from 28 percent the year before, but confidence levels for big business have never been high….

Gender

“There are no major differences in confidence in institutions by gender, with a few exceptions:

• “Women’s confidence in the church is 12 points higher than men’s confidence.
• “Men are eight points and nine points more confident in the Supreme Court and in the medical system than women are.
• “Women express slightly more confidence in television news and newspapers than men do.

Age

“Younger Americans are generally more confident than older Americans in most of the institutions tested in this year’s poll.

“Those aged 18 to 49 are particularly more likely than those 50 and older to express high levels of confidence in newspapers and television news, the medical system, in HMOs, in organized labor, and in big business.

“The older group expresses more confidence than younger Americans in the church and in the military.

Partisanship

“Republicans are more confident than Democrats in 10 of the 15 institutions tested.

“It is not surprising to find that Republicans are overwhelmingly more confident in the presidency, reflecting the fact that their party controls the White House….

“Similarly, the data show that Republicans are more confident in Congress than are Democrats (not surprising given that both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans). And, perhaps because the Supreme Court is viewed as conservative in its overall nature and/or because of the court’s role in deciding the 2000 election in Bush’s favor, Republicans are more confident in the Supreme Court than are Democrats.

“Republicans also express more confidence than Democrats in the military, banks, big business, the police, the church, and in the medical system.

“Democrats, on the other hand, are considerably more confident than Republicans in organized labor and in public schools, and more confident than Republicans in newspapers.”

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

– Voltaire (French writer, 1694-1778)