by Zack Beauchamp
DiA's J.F. analyzes Florida's failed policy of forcing welfare recipients to submit to drug tests:
Perhaps saving money was never really the point of the program. … [P]erhaps the point of the drug-testing program was for Florida's government to signal its disapproval of poor people using drugs, and if it took a massive government intrusion into people's lives, establishing a precedent for suspicionless drug testing on an entire class of people, and paying to defend themselves against lawsuits filed by civil-liberties groups to do that, so be it.
This "signalling" thing isn't just applicable here – it's a cause of serial policy failure. People decide something is wrong ("drugs/boycotts of Israel/prostitution/shari'a law are wrong!") and decide the government must ban those things because THEY ARE WRONG! Glossed over here is whether or not the government actually can get rid of those things. The point isn't policy analysis, it's expressing disapproval in the strongest possible fashion. Naturally, the policies adopted on these grounds perpetually backfire because the policies themselves are irrelevant to the actual aim: expressing moral disapproval in the strongest possible fashion.
The "expressivist" theory in moral philosophy holds that moral statements, properly speaking, don't mean anything: they're just strong expressions of approval or disapproval. But governing isn't mere words: bad policy hurts real people's lives. Expressivist policymaking is a recipe for catastrophe.
The Dish 