A Question for Conservatives

Throughout history the practice of torturing captives has been commonplace in societies ranging from primitive tribes to higher civilizations. Under the influence of liberal and enlightenment ideas, torture was banned in much of European civilization during  the period  from the mid-1600’s to the early 1800’s, and its continued use in  the Middle East, east Asia, and perhaps Russia was seen as evidence of a residual barbarism in those societies.   By the beginning years of the 20^th Century the article on torture in the Encyclopedia Britannica was able to say that “the whole subject is now one of only historical interest as far as Europe is concerned “.  Of course the later rise of fascism and communism in that century proved the author wrong as European civilization experienced  a terrible reversion to barbarism.  

Torture was never legal in the United States, but last week Americans were reminded by a report from the US Senate that people in their government have resorted to torture in interrogating Muslim  prisoners suspected of being terrorists. I agree with those who oppose torture on ethical grounds and believe its use to be barbaric and to have no place in a free and civilized society.  

A number of conservatives have defended the practice.  I have a question for them. Many of them claim to revere the constitution. The constitution explicitly bans both inflicting cruel and unusual punishments and forcing a person to give criminal testimony against himself.  Ethical questions aside, how can self-proclaimed constitutional conservatives defend its use  it the light of that alone? 

Questions and Answers?

Transcriptions of a writer's conversations and off hand remarks sometimes can be interesting, useful, and even important. Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe is an outstanding example, for both its contents and  the insights it provides about the great man.  Boswell’s recollections in his biography of Samuel Johnson of their  conversations are probably the most famous example in English literature. Both are accepted as  attempts at accurate representations of what their subject said, within the limits of memory. Last week while looking around on Amazon’s web site, I learned about a book called Ayn Rand Answers which was described as transcriptions of her taped responses to questions in various venues including sessions after her speeches at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston. I was curious and so read a few of the reviews people had posted on the site. In doing so I found out about another strange controversy involving the custodians of Rand’s literary estate. 

It seems the transcriptions are not actual transcriptions at all, but edited versions with undisclosed redactions and interpolations by the editor and  the same bowdlerizing and  exegetical airbrushing  that observers have noticed in other compilations released through the estate. The critical reviewers cite various examples, enough, along with the editor’s statements about how he handled the material, to make their case.  In particular the editor mentions purposely omitting remarks in which  Rand in his opinion said things which contradict any of her  written pronouncements. (The few examples of changes mentioned by reviewers vary in importance with some seeming odd or even hard to understand, as when the editor deletes a positive comment about tobacco Rand made in an answer to a question about drugs and regulation. Since it is common knowledge that she, like many of her generation, was wrong about the dangers of smoking and suffered greatly for it, it is hard to see a point in this except perhaps to support the illusory notion that she was never wrong about anything.) 

This approach and pattern of behavior would be bad enough coming from anyone. From people claiming to represent a philosophy which rightly emphasizes facing the facts as they are and not pretending (or trying to convince others) they are otherwise, it is considerably worse, even bizarre. The people running the estate may prove nothing against the philosophy, but they surely do manage to give it a black eye.

The editor also notes that this book should not be considered part of objectivism, since Rand, being dead, did not sanction its publication or contents. Reading that, it is hard not to think of monks  and bishops and councils to determine which texts will be holy writ and which will not. Of course philosophies have no holy texts, just ideas,  and  the ideas can speak for themselves irrespective of  the strange behavior of any group of people who try to promote them.  So a person should laugh the editor and his pretentions of authority off. After all it is kind of funny, since, stripped of the pretentions, it almost amounts to claiming that Rand – to paraphrase a quote attributed to  Yogi Berra – didn’t say all those things she said.

Still, after reading some of the free sample at Amazon, I think I’ll probably  buy the book anyway, thinking it might  be interesting even if far from what it could and should be. 

Eric Garner and the Cops

People in New York are protesting in the streets after  the decision not to prosecute the cops who killed Eric Garner. They are right to do so.  This case does not have the ambiguity of the more publicized killing in Ferguson, Missouri. The event  was recorded  on video. Garner was not doing anything  actually wrong or harmful to anyone.  His so-called crime was selling untaxed cigarettes, and a group of cops jumped him, choked him as he shouted he could not breathe, and killed him. As a writer at Reason magazine said, harshly but accurately, he was in  a sense killed for city of New York revenue enhancement.

 

One can agree with conservative apologists for the police that Garner made a pragmatic mistake when he resisted (though it is easy to see how a person fed up with continued bullying and harassment might put pragmatism aside and imprudently but bravely stand up for himself) without thinking that absolves the cops who started the trouble by hassling Garner for no good reason and then brutalized and killed him.  It is usually imprudent  to resist the demands of armed and dangerous cops just as in a police state it is usually a bad idea to try to run when the Gestapo officers surround you and say “papiere, bitte”, but such practical considerations miss the point.   In a free society there are  no Gestapos, and the cops do not have the authority  to accost or abuse  or kill citizens who are not doing anyone harm.  America is far from  a police state, but neither is it a fully free society. It is somewhere in between, and since 2001 it has moved in the wrong direction.

As a start toward correcting  things,  Americans need to oppose and reverse the militarization of the police, the expansion of police powers  at all levels of government, and  the tendency to give enforcers of laws and rules  too much authority and leeway and to fail to hold them accountable for their misdeeds. It will not be easy. Too  many leftists tend to ignore or excuse abuses and  thuggery when the enforcers are employed by the federal government or the victims are people they hold in contempt (such as a Randy Weaver),  while too many conservatives tend to ignore or excuse abuses and thuggery when the enforcers are employed by local governments or  the victims are people they hold in contempt (such as an Eric Garner).   Both need to realize that dangerous police power is dangerous, and their friends will not always be the ones wielding it. 

Not Black Enough

A few weeks ago there was a brief controversy among media people who cover sports over rumors of unrest on the Seattle Seahawks football team because some of the other black players thought their quarterback Russell Wilson was not black enough, i.e. did not display what  the other players thought was appropriate behavior for a black man.  His sin apparently was being educated, articulate, reserved, and gentlemanly – behaving more in the manner of a Peyton Manning than a Jameis Winston. There is nothing unusual in this. For years people have noted the destructive tendency of many black people to ridicule blacks who do well in schools, use correct English, and generally lead responsible, respectable, and successful  lives for acting white or being Oreos. The present day notion of the appropriately black black man as a rough, vulgar, unschooled, undisciplined,  “urban” type  is well established and frequently promoted in the media and is commonplace among many black people.  

  

What is not noticed or mentioned enough, however, is how closely this view of authentic blackness resembles  the old stereotype of the ignorant, crude, unreasoning, irresponsible, un-teachable, dangerous black brute  propagated  by racists in the days of Jim Crow. The hypothetical man from Mars, the observer who looks at the facts alone without any preconceptions, would have trouble telling them apart.

In its effects, however, the new one may be worse.  While black people and leaders tended to resent the earlier  stereotype and often saw it as something to overcome and disprove,  too many  people of all races today embrace the new one and accept it as a norm for behavior from and expectations of black people. Charles Barkley said it well in commenting on the controversy over Russell Wilson. “For some reason, we have been brainwashed to think, if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you’re not black enough.” It is sad that so many black people have fallen for this. It is despicable that so many people – most of them white -  in the media, the entertainment industry, and politics are willfully doing the brainwashing. They do black people no service by positing so low a set of standards and expectations.