brief introduction

Hi, I'm Brian Kierland, and I'm running a part-time but fully serious write-in presidential campaign. My current goal is to get 1000 votes in Idaho, 250 votes in Missouri, and 250 votes throughout the other 48 states. Between now (9/13/08, start date of my campaign and this blog) and Election Day, I will continue to make posts in this blog, which will gradually make clear where I stand on the issues, etc.

I am single, never married (though once upon a time a "co-mortage-payor", as she liked to put it), 35 yo, agnostic, a quasi-vegetarian (I now occasionally eat humanely raised meat), and a professor of philosophy at Boise State University.

I grew up in Boise, Idaho, got my BA in philosophy from College of Idaho, my PhD in the same from Princeton, taught at the tenure-track level for two years at Augustana College, for five years at University of Missouri (in neither case leaving on bad terms or with an expectation of not getting tenure), returning to Boise this fall to teach at BSU as their new tenure-track hire.

Some of my non-professional and non-political interests include tennis, soccer, basketball, ping-pong, foozball, physics, mathematics, reading contemporary fiction (though haven't had much time for this recently), listening to music (especially a lot of fairly recent indie pop and rock), and walking and playing with my dog, Maya.

I have never been convicted, let alone accused (by the authorities), of a crime beyond automobile speeding. I have smoked pot (including the inhaling part) and eaten magic mushrooms, but have not done any other kind of illegal drugs.

I have never served in the military, but I did register for military service when I turned 18.

On religion, I am agnostic. But I am not anti-religious in at all the way many agnostics and atheists are. I acknowledge all the good (though also all the bad) that has been done in the name of religion. I also think that real Christianity (as opposed to the very non-Jesus-like Christianity of the neo-cons ... more on that soon) would, in almost every case, support very laudable and worthwhile political goals.

My moral philosophy is basically that of utilitarianism: what ought morally to be done is what maximizes overall happiness (for any creatures capable of happiness, including non-human ones). But I do realize how demanding this standard is, and so acknowledge a qualification to the effect that it is reasonable to abstain from overly demanding personal sacrifice. This qualification also applies, I think, to non-individual/corporate agents (at lease those acting on the behalf of individuals), most importantly in this context: the US. Although I do not believe that, at a deep moral level, it is better for the more deserving (e.g., the harder-working) to fare better, I think it is likely that, to a large extent in most cases, law and policy should be written "as if" this were the case. The idea here is to craft law and policy to motivate individuals, by way of expectations about how they will fare, to do their part in maximizing overall happiness. (In my view, however, an important exception here is health care. I think everyone should be legally entitled to it, at least to some minimal but still significant level.)

I am on the fence about whether utilitarianism also needs to be qualified in respect of fairness/equality. However, similar to issues of deservingness, I think in practice, as a political leader and craftsman of law and policy, this will rarely matter. Given diminishing margins of utility, there will almost always be a utilitarian preference for more fair/equal states of affairs, at least given normal facts about human psychology and society.