Calvin inKleinAtions

Kelly ponders in his latest, cleverly-named article, Calvin and Hobbes, if the views of sixteenth-century theologian Reformation leader John Calvin toward the poor have infested modern-day America's views of the poor. The implication is, I would think, that those who do not believe government welfare programs are (1) constitutional or (2) proper functions of government do not believe that the poor are worth helping, supporting, etc.

While this proposition is tidy, it is too clever by half and paints a view of the truth both too simple and one-sided. Calvin's theological positions on predestination cannot be used to suggest that Calvin generally blamed the poor for their own plight. While he was a staunch defender of private property as a means for Christians to provide for the needs of themselves and their families, he was just as adamant that Christians should use their earnings over and above their own needs to help the suffering and dispossessed.

In his commentary on Isaiah 58:7 Calvin writes,

Uprightness and righteousness are divided into two parts: first, that we should injury nobody, and second, that we should bestow our wealth and abundance on the poor and needy. And these two ought to be joined together, for it is not enough to abstain from acts of injustice, if you refuse your assistance to the needy, nor will it be of much avail to render your aid to the needy, if at the same time you rob some of that which you bestow on others….

By commanding them to ‘break bread to the hungry’ he intended to take away every excuse from covetous and greedy men, who allege that they have a right to keep possession of that which is their own. ‘This is mine, and therefore I may keep it for myself. Why should I make common property of that which God has given me?’ He replies, ‘It is indeed yours, but on this condition, that you share it with the hungry and thirsty, not that you eat it yourself alone. And indeed this is the dictate of common sense, that the hungry are deprived of their just right if their hunger is not relieved. That sad spectacle extorts compassion even from the cruel and barbarous.

I would submit that Kelly points to a strain in Christian (Protestant) ethics that brings to light a more nuanced difference between liberals and conservatives regarding the role of government in helping the poor. The difference between them is over how to help the poor, not whether to help the poor.

The conservative position draws forth from the old Protestant work ethic that work is a vital expression of service to God and the world and that a person cannot honor who they are in God if they do not contribute to the world through their work. When coupled with the ancient biblical mandate to God's people to make provisions for the poor, we are closer to understanding the conservative position that a man is only whole when he his working in his field of calling (what he was created to do, gifted to do, passionate about, etc) and that the social safety net is there for those who stumble as a temporary hand up to get back on his feet, not a hand out that consigns him to the downward spiral of dependence. This latter destroys a man's (and woman's) sense of self and short-circuits his or her ultimate potential contributions to society. Notice here the importance of the social safety net being provided by civil society, not civil government.

The liberal view that the only way to help the poor is through the government not only works over time to destroy the man and his sense of self and sense of obligation to the community, but it also works over time to destroy the community by creating a permanent underclass of dependence and by diverting the government from its own proper role in providing for the general welfare (the good of society as a whole) and the common defense. The fact that liberals suspect conservatives - or constitutionalists - of not caring for the poor unless they support a myriad of government welfare, wealth distribution programs betrays their own skewed view of government, community and what it means to be human.

On paradoxes: the mixing up of conservatives and liberals. Or Why the U.S. Can't deal with it's current debt crisis

Current uses of the words "conservative" and "liberal" have nothing to do with their traditional meaning. Well, that is not exactly true. They have, perhaps, too much to do with their traditional meaning given the fact that they seem to mean the same on the surface, but the animating spirit is completely different. Two hundred years ago, liberals believed in moving beyond personal government, in the form of the monarchy, to impersonal government, typically defined as what was then known as republican government. Conservatives sought to use the power of government to maintain the status quo and prop up existing power structures. There was not, however, any disagreement over the nature of man - that he needs restraint - or the proper role of that good government can play.

Over the course of the past one hundred years or so, these definitions were turned on their heads within the American context. Liberals became those who believed in the fundamental goodness of man for whom government could be used to advance the plight of man, and conservatives were those who, in the best spirit of the old Liberals, believed in the original sin of man who needed boundaries and hedges to keep an ordered society, those in government being no different (hence, separation of powers and checks and balances). The conservative commitment to republican values was, at heart, a commitment to the constitutional values that had made the experience of government a successful one, even if inefficient and unwieldy.

Over the past fifteen years, however, a phenomenal and dangerous blurring has occurred. The conservative paradigm has been petrified to the point that government itself is seen as the root of all problems. Rather than a properly-formed government being seen as a barrier against the more destructive inclinations of men, government of any kind is now seen as the barrier to all the good inclinations of men. It's some strange hibrid of the American-liberal vision in the goodness of men and the danger inherent in the original conservative perspective that the government that governs best is the one that rises the boat of the guilded interests. The rallying cry of the day is "No new taxes!"

On the other hand, the liberal paradigm has petrified to believe that government is the source of all goodness and the only savior of humanity. Because people are not to be trusted to conduct their affairs in honorable and virtuous ways, government regulates every possible area of life. Religion is banished from the public square, conviction is seen as the sign of a fanatic, so we are left with the only moral compass available to a society whose only remaining binding institution is the government: a thing must be deemed constitutional before it can be deemed moral. And since the ever-growing government has crowded out all room for virtue and compassion, welfare and social justice must be the business of federal agencies who, ironically, deliver the exact opposite of social security and medicare. It's some strange hibrid of the American-conservative vision in the evil of men and the danger inherent in the original liberal position that the government that governs best is impersonal. The plaintive cry of the day is "If we just spent more..."

These petrifications are racing toward each other over the current debate over whether to raise the federal debt limit and threaten to spectacularly collide with one another. The resulting wreck would have far-reaching consequences for us all, as the federal government's inability to pay its bills will lead to a default on the debt, the ruining of Treasury bills as a safe-haven for investments, and the meltdown of the financial sectors all around the world. This is serious business, and it is long past time for Congressional leaders and the President to come off their respective high-horses and do what is right for the country. A mixture of spending cuts, some tax increases, and more spending cuts will be necessary to fix the country's short-term debt problems. In the longer term, our fixation with debt will only be addressed through readdressing the boundaries of the federal government and reigning its activities back within its constitutionally-prescribed mandates.

The world indeed has been turned on its head.

Remember those little things called constitutional amendments?

On the venerable Balkinization blog, Guest blogger David Beatty asks if the U.S. Constitution is beloved or betrayed? While the American constitutional system still sets the standard for separation of powers, submission to the rule of law, and federalism, those outside the U.S. share a concern over what Beatty styles judicial politics and personality. Beatty writes:

It is more in the theory and practice of constitutional law that outsiders have come to the conclusion that American constitutionalism is not a practice to be emulated. One feature of the American model of constitutional democracy that many outsiders find particularly regrettable is how personal and partisan it has become, especially among the judges who sit on the Supreme Court.

While Beatty goes on to argue that this is regrettable and holds up South Africa as the model of the judicial function of rightly interpreting law and the facts of each case - what he styles a balancing approach - in reality this encourages the exact problem that Beatty accuses the U.S. Supreme Court of. The protections of law that the South African Supreme Court have carved out are the products of the judicial activism that has been so detrimental in the U.S., a la Roe v. Wade. The U.S. Supreme Court, as we all know, rarely finds common ground on how to interpret the Constitution. But at least they try. I'd rather have this than the real judicial politics and personalities driving in Beatty's South Africa Supreme Court counter-example. They are the ones drawing pre-ordained conclusions, unanchored from the shores of their own constitutional text.

It is beyond me why it is so hard to understand that we can add any protections we want to our Constitution. It's called an amendment.

 

Amar's Bill of Rights: The Misappropriation of the Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment, in many respects, is the closest thing to a right to privacy that can be found in our federal Constitution. This Amendment has become the bulwark of personal security and liberty in our country, even as we struggle to understand the limits our security should place on our liberty and the imposition that technology places on both. But in Chapter 4 of his book The Bill of Rights, Akhil Reed Amar argues that the Founders were not primarily building an individual right to security and privacy in the Fourth Amendment, rather they were providing another tool for civil juries to keep oligarchical and repressive governments in check.

Let's walk through Amar's development of his argument because, even if we do not wish to adopt the Founders' interpretation of the Fourth Amendment -- after all, there is a place for a right to privacy in our constitutional structure -- there are principles the Founders' view of the Fourth Amendment have to teach us.

The Fourth Amendment reads as follows:

 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The use of the word "people" in this Amendment rings with echoes of the context of the other Amendments employing this word -- the First, Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. This is the clarion call to the sovereignty of "We, the People of the United States." Amar imagines what the Amendment might mean for us if we take this popular sovereignty perspective alone in its interpretation:

 

On one reading, the amendment's language of "the people" could be read as reminding us that we must be especially watchful of government efforts to use search-and-siezure powers to interfere with people's political activities -- circulating petitions (literally the people's papers), attending political meetings (with the literal persons), assembling in a constitutional convention (which might be seen as a house of the people), and so on. But without more, this reading seems a bit too cute; surely, the main "houses" to be protected here are private abodes, not public assemblies.

Amar argues that the 1763 English case Wilkes v. Wood must have served as an influence for Madison:

 

Wood involved a famous cast of characters -- both the target of the government, John Wilkes, and the author of the opinion, Lord Chief Charles Pratt (soon to become Lord Camden), became folk heroes in the colonies.... Wilkes, a champion of the people and a member of Commons, had used the press to communicate with his constituents and criticize George III's ministry and majesty. When the government reacted by trying to use general warrants to suppress his political activity, breaking into his house and rummaging through his personal papers, Wilkes brought suit in Wood and successfully challenged the legality of those warrants. Wilkes also brought suit to challenge the "seizure" of his "person." (The government had imprisoned him in the Tower of London.) In a companion case to Wood, the lord chief justice ordered Wilkes released on habeas corpus on the ground of his Parliamentary privilege from arrest.

Madison quickly turns from the "political to the personal, from the 'the people' out-of-doors in conventions and suchlike to "persons" very much indoors in their private homes."

 

Yet even here, in taking the familiar talk of individual rights, we must be wary of anachronism and must not automatically assume that the right was essentially countermajoritarian. As with virtually every Bill of Rights provision thus far examined, the Fourth Amendment evinces at least as much concern with the agency problem of protecting the people generally from self-interested government policy as with protesting minorities against majorities of fellow citizens. A self-dealing and oligarchic government, after all, could threaten rights of the people collectively by singling out certain persons -- opposition leaders like John Wilkes, for example -- for special abuse. To counter this and other threats, the Fourth and Seventh Amendments armed civil juries, drawn from "the people," with special weapons to protect both individual persons and the collective people against a possibly unrepresentative and self-serving officialdom.

Reflect, for a moment, on the fact that the Fourth Amendment actually contains two different commands. First, all government searches and seizures must be reasonable. Second, no warrants shall issue without probably cause. The modern Supreme Court has intentionally collapsed the two requirements, treating all unwarranted searches and seizures -- with various exceptions, such as exigent circumstances -- as per se unreasonable. Otherwise, the Court has reasoned, the requirement that a neutral magistrate verify probable cause ex ante would be obviously frustrated -- the special safeguards of the warrant clause would be all but meaningless.

But this conflation of the warrant clause with the probable cause clause is not what the amendment says and effectively rewrites the amendment by adding a second sentence: "Absent special circumstances, no search or seizure shall occur without a warrant."

Amar invites us to rethink our assumptions:

 

To begin rethinking, consider the paradigmatic way in which Fourth Amendment rights were to be enforced at the Founding. Virtually any search or seizure by a federal officer would involve a physical trespass under common-law principles. An aggrieved target could use the common law of trespass to bring suit for damages against the official -- just as Wilkes brought a trespass action against Wood. If the search or seizure were deemed lawful in court, the defendant would prevail; but if, as in Wood, the search were found lawful, the defendant government official would be held strictly liable. There was no such thing as "good faith" immunity.

The problem with the Supreme Court's modern approach is that the proper role of the jury is displaced, and the role of citizens to act as a check on the professional judiciary and powerful magistrates has been hijacked. General warrants are too, well, general, and the ability of juries to review facts and determine appropriate awards and damages for cases in which they deem rights were violated is compromised. As in our loss of understanding of the militia, the modern jury is a sad shadow of its former energetic self and fundamental structural principles of the original Constitution have been lost.

Jesus did not give us a theory. He gave us a meal.

Editor's Note: This is the first post on this blog that is of a pointedly religious nature. It has probably not been hard for readers to discern that this author is informed in his worldview by his Christian faith, but this is the first overtly Christian post I have released in this space. While I do not want to see the focus of this blog changed, I would, perhaps, like to toy with expanding it a bit.

Religion plays an undeniable part in forming how we as humans approach societal problems. I occasionally write on topics that are directly theological, such as this one, and while our Constitution rightly demands a separation of church and state in the implementation of government laws and policies, it does not and can not call for a debate sterile of religious perspective. The best such a vacuum would produce would be all questions of morality resolved solely through the unforgiving lens of constitutionality alone, and there is nothing human in that.

Reading through N.T. Wright's book Evil and the Justice of God has been more than the consumption of Yet Another Book. It's been a journey of discovery, and I highly recommend it for every Christian who is looking for answers to the infamous Problem of Evil. Because you won't find answers here. At least not the ones you think you're looking for.

That sounds contradictory, I know. Let me explain.

Since the atrocious and evil terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, I have noticed a significant increase in questions regarding the nature of evil and what God, if He exists at all, is doing about it. People like the New Atheists have used the existence of evil as one of the best arguments that God cannot exist. Others have not lost all hope for the existence of God, per se, but they do not see how God can be all-powerful if He is good. Otherwise, the argument goes, He would not allow evil to flourish and dominate.

Christians have responded with a number of rebuttals and theories, and many of these are quite satisfactory. At least as far as they go. For people looking for theoretical answers and philosophical insight, these might provide some entertaining rejoinders. The best of these (known to me) is not recent, however. You will find no better defense of Christianity in this field of inquiry than C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain.

Nevertheless, these sterile and, in some ways, inhuman theoretical defenses miss the point and leave people in real pain untouched, uncomforted, and, if possible, more miserable. Most of the pain I have felt in life has been because of childhood issues and events that were beyond the fault or control of my immediate family. A large portion of my early twenties was spent running away from who I was and searching for a way, anyway, to recreate myself after my own image of who I thought I should be. It was not until I met the woman who would become my wife that my journey of healing and reconciliation began. It wasn't until I found acceptance as who I was that I was able to come to grips with where I had been. It was only then that I stopped running and searching for an illusive shadow that could never have been. My wife saved me, and she continues to do so every day.

This is how theories miss the point. Pain is real, and it requires real people, real events, real interaction to come to grips with pain and deal with it. N.T. Wright gets this, and in his book Evil and the Justice of God, he shows that orthodox Christianity gets this as well. Wright starts the book by taking Western society to task for its inadequate and immature response to evil. Since the Enlightenment, we have tried to outrun evil through technological progress and the thing we call civilization. We have thought evil merely a lack of provisions and opportunity that could be solved with enough money, technology and stuff. Two world wars, repeated genocides, perpetual hunger among the world's lost billion, and the spectre of nuclear holocaust has snapped our illusions that evil is something we can conquer on our own. However, the response of postmodernism has been anemic at best. Acknowledging evil as a real and personal force, we now don't know what to do about it. So we do nothing.

Wright then surveys what the Old and New Testaments have to say about evil and God's response to it. Over a span of a thousand years, the Scriptures consistently acknowledge the presence of evil in the world, and they persistently insist on the goodness and omnipotence of God. Yahweh created the universe, so it is good. But it is also contaminated, and God is working through His people to set things right. And that's it. No defense of God. No theory as to why evil is here and why God, given who the Bible says He is, does not eradicate it.

Rather, we are given an insight into the breaking heart of God who is here with us, breaking into the world to advance His Kingdom. We meet a first-century Palestinian rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, who lives for those around Him and is killed for His efforts. In His execution on the cross, we see all of the forces of evil in the world (personal, political, social, demonic) focus all their energies and do their worst to kill God. And they succeed!! But the extraordinary claim of the Scriptures is that God raised Jesus from death and made evil impotent. It has done its worst and failed. Now, through the power of the Spirit, followers of Christ are called to spread the work that Jesus started throughout the world, appropriating God's action for our time and place.

So what do we have for an answer to evil? A person. An event. Ourselves.

In the end, Wright does not wonder that the Church has not settled on a specific theory of atonement, of what Christ did for us on the cross. While each one of our theories offer a valuable insight into what occurred, none of them present the whole picture. Wright offers the answer to which all Christians should return and keep at the forefront of our faith and practice: "[W]hen Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal."

The morality of fairy-tales

If you really read the fairy-tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other—the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales. The whole happiness of fairyland hangs upon a thread, upon one thread. Cinderella may have a dress woven on supernatural looms and blazing with unearthly brilliance; but she must be back when the clock strikes twelve. The king may invite fairies to the christening, but he must invite all the fairies or frightful results will follow. Bluebeard’s wife may open all doors but one. A promise is broken to a cat, and the whole world goes wrong. A promise is broken to a yellow dwarf, and the whole world goes wrong. A girl may be the bride of the God of Love himself if she never tries to see him; she sees him, and he vanishes away. A girl is given a box on condition she does not open it; she opens it, and all the evils of this world rush out at her. A man and woman are put in a garden on condition that they do not eat one fruit: they eat it, and lose their joy in all the fruits of the earth.

–-G.K. Chesterton, All Things Considered

The connection between evil acts of a country and the responsibilities of its leaders

Revered computer scientist Donald Knuth has a page on "Infrequently Asked Questions". (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/iaq.html) and questions #4 and #5 do a good job of bringing up the issue of the moral responsibility a country's leaders have to its citizens.

I don't have any answers to his questions but would to avoid discussing them can't help but to implicitly spread the guilt around among the willfully silent.

It's a question for the ages, what does a society do when its leadership commits hubris? 

Ungovernable Nation?

Frank Pasquale writes in Law blog Balkinization on The Tragic Sense of Health Insurance Reform. Pasquale engages in a level-headed yet anguished look at both the potential good and the potential problems / challenges that are seeded in the health care reform bill just voted out of debate by the Senate last night.

Pasquale's last paragraph is worth quoting in full, which summarizes well the more in-depth insight contained in the rest of the article:

By passing this reform bill, Democrats will jettison whatever "populist" credentials they once had, opting instead for an early-twentieth-century "progressive" vision of technocratic alliance between corporate and government experts. However many disastrous missteps the FIRE industries make, this is the only arrangement that the media will credit as responsible governance. We'll commence an endless argument (read: notice and comment rulemaking and subsequent administrative adjudications) over what constitutes an adequate baseline of coverage, what is the fair share of revenue for middlemen like insurers, and what regulatory infrastructure can best vindicate the entitlements (and impose the burdens) specified by the bill. But the fundamental victory of reform--the national commitment that no one should have to choose between death or bankruptcy when confronted with a serious illness--will also endure. The tragic paradox is that the Democrats can only achieve this great cultural and ideological victory by becoming identified with the very interests that only they are willing to confront.

While this is, I think, the best bill one could hope (if one is so inclined) that Congress could produce in this day and time (and as good of one as any Congress in the last 100 years could have produced - probably better because of all we have learned through experience with our current insurance-based system), the fact that we are having this debate (idealism vs. realism in government's accomplishing public policy aims) is telling of something more fundamentally broken.

Pasquale makes passing reference in his article of America as "an increasingly ungovernable nation." Given the premise, I don't think that this is a fair characterization of the people or the underlying constitutional system of the United States. As the only military and economic superpower in the world, we have done, and are still doing, enough things right along the way. Rather, what some have termed "ungovernable" is an observation on the overreaching omnipresence of the modern-day federal government.

Americans have been through too much history and are too enamored with natural rights to ever countenance a scheme of direct socialist governance. We are dedicated to the fundamental soundness of the free enterprise system. However, we realize that there are holes in which the free market, left unregulated, do not work for the common good in areas where such is indispensable. Namely, in the self-same areas as called out by Pasquale's reference to "FIRE industries": finance, insurance, and real estate. Of course, Pasquale's point is to add the health care industry to this pot.

So, one of the great experiments in American governance has been an attempt to have government (mostly the federal government) step in to this breech and either regulate these industries or work in collaboration with them to bring about the results needed by society as a whole. One problem (if not the problem) is that this has been done divorced of constitutional principles. In a system set up to honor and promote the energies and risk-taking of the individual (the original concept of public education was to support this bias), coordination through government of massive industries and segments of our society's economic activity can at best be only a Lernaean Hydra, remedies applied to a body that is naturally resistant to such foreign substances.

If the goal of society is to implement the policies most favorable to the common good, then twenty-first century China is an excellent case study. When the ruling Communist Party oligarchs decide that the country needs to go in a particular direction, e.g., invest in solar power technologies and infrastructure, then it gets done. But such policies are implemented with the common good in mind (as defined by the ruling elite) and not the rights of individual citizens. Such is the trade off. But the question must be posed: What good is a society that does not pursue justice and rule of law for its citizens? Even Plato concedes that the philosopher-king is who is because he is just.

Obviously, the Chinese example is the opposite extreme of what we see in American principles of governance, but that is the point. The American Constitution is dedicated to, first, individual rights and freedom and, second, limited, constrained government. In too many ways, the twentieth and twenty-first century American government has broken loose of its constitutional constraints, and it is this, more than any other factor, that has created the conditions for the current debate. If we are ungovernable, it is only because the United States were (yes, subject / verb agreement is correct in the sense I mean to here employ) not set up to be governed by an omnipresent government coordinating the various segments of our complex, energetic society.

That American businesses and markets do not in many ways act for the common good is here readily acknowledged. But the remedy for this shortcoming is not more and bigger government. Rather, the remedy is to be found in the return to the principles held by the Founders and Western political tradition: personal responsibility and one's sense of duty to neighbor and fellow man, rooted in the justice and watching eye of Providence. It is fashionable in this day and time to be suspicious of the civil religion. Nevertheless, for 200 years it performed the service of knitting Americans together to provide for the common good out of love. That it is no loner given space to do so and that our form of government can not do so is the true present crisis and what, if anything, makes us "an increasingly ungovernable nation."

Our Brothers' Keepers

Once, during a discussion about abortion, I made the argument that if we allow the government to tell citizens that they can not abort a pregnancy, philosophically it was similar to allowing the government the power to tell citizens that they must abort a pregnancy. Needless to say, that discussion did not resolve the issue; we'll probably eradicate world hunger or achieve world peace first.

In reexamining this argument, I wondered how easy it would be to reword a given prohibition to reverse the wording while keeping the dictate intact. For instance if we passed a law stating "No citizen shall be allowed to abort a pregnancy"; assume for the sake of argument that we've already agreed on the definition of the term abortion. The exact procedures are moot because we want to focus on the wording of the prohibition and not on the technicalities of the definitions or shades of grey. Picking abortion is done solely to start with an issue that is easily construed in terms of black and white.

If the law says, "You shall not abort" it could just as easily have been written as "You shall carry to term regardless". So even though the wording only states an action which can not be taken, it implicitly mandates the opposite action.

China already condones abortion through euphemistically named "One Child" policy. While China does not officially force abortions, there continue to be reports nonetheless. "You shall have up to one child" turns into "You shall not have more than one child".

Using another example, capital punishment, we could conceive of a law which says, "Thou Shall Not Kill" it implicitly demands "Thou Shall Protect Life". A capital punishment law which allows the State to kill someone could state "Causing the death of a person (through means described as "In the first degree") is punishable by death" is effectively saying, "The State shall kill those who commit first degree murder." If we really believe in the principle of "Thou shall not kill" then capital punishment must by necessity claim an exception in the definition of what the term 'kill' means. Killing usually means ending a living persons life. Allowing the State the power to define exceptions makes the commandment not to kill into a morally relative value "Thou shall not kill... unless the State says it's ok" which could include self-defense, war, defense of others, or the state ordering the killing of a citizen which it feels is deserving of the ultimate punishment. One counter argument has been "they don't deserve to live" or "they lost their right to life when they took another's". If I don't deserve to live, then I deserve to die. If a State uses it's sovereign power to execute someone unjustly, upon whose soul does the responsibility for a wrongful death rest? Since a State does not have a soul in and of itself, then evil done by the State must then be shared by the people of that State, unless it can be determined to have a singular responsible ruler, a 'Unitary Executive' if you will. If the State can not be held responsible for it's own moral failings, then that leaves the people who actually carry out the misdeeds. The hooded executioner,for example, who either cares not about such metaphysical questions or uses their faith in the infallibility of their leaders judgement as a shield against the possibility of personal guilt.


"Thou shall not covet" (stealing is illegal) becomes "Thou shall be content with what you have and your opportunities to change what you have." (No short-cuts to wealth, only follow the culturally acceptable avenues." Of course I'm paraphrasing here but I'm wandering through examples, trying them on for size to see whether there is an example which disproves the idea.

Summary: You must do X is equivalent to You shall not do non-X, or You must not do X becomes You must do non-X.

In programming-speak, (X == true) is the same as (X != false) .

Voices from the Past

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

- Barry Goldwater


Remember, ignoring torture for the sake of security is not a defense of liberty. And ignoring crimes committed by the previous administration, for the sake of not rocking a political boat, is not justice.

Bonhoeffer on Bush

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his writings published as "Letters and Papers From Prison", provides mankind with a strong statement on morality and the relationship between a citizen and the State. While Germany was under Hitler's grip, there were well educated men who understood that their duty was to follow orders, unlike Bonhoeffer who understood that to allow an evil to be committed was morally the same as to commit the evil yourself. We can't blame this divide on education or its lack. Otto Thorbeck, the judge over Bonhoeffer's trial, had the same classical education as Bonhoeffer; studying Antigone, Iliad, The Oddyssy, and The Bible. Works which provide guidance as to the meaning of good vs evil, justice, wisdom, and duty. If you don't believe in absolute good or evil, you could easily make the case that it is permissible to act in a normally unjust manner when the circumstances permit, that enacting the injustice on the orders of others does not sully ones own soul, or in other words sometimes it's ok to kill.

Bonhoeffer suffered the punishment of the State rather than acquiesce to the idea that the State is the arbiter of what is Absolutely Good or Absolutely Evil. If the State says that a prisoner is a traitor and needs to be sentenced to death, it isn't the individual's place to disagree. That is what Thorbeck believed, he was just doing his duty. Bonhoeffer didn't have to be imprisoned but faced certain persecution with the conviction that what Germany was doing was wrong and to not speak or act out would be equally wrong of him, a sin of omission.

So, what questions does this pose?

- Whose place is it to determine what is good or evil?
- Does a State have a soul? a conscience?
- If a State is soulless, upon whose soul falls the burden of evil acts done in the State name?
- If an action is evil when committed by an individual, can a State, on its own authority, declare that act to be just and legal when done in the State's name?
- When is it the duty of a Citizen to disobey the State?
- How should we feel about a society that allows the State to commit evil acts?

I expect to follow this piece with others where the lessons of various books that have made history can teach us about life in the modern age. Next would be Homer's Iliad.