Moral Health

Freedom of speech is a moral investment.  In the short run, there will always be moments when free speech does not seem worth having.  But in the long run, its dividends are without equal.  And the history of the world proves that.  Nearly every major social revolution that advanced equality and the welfare of human beings was occasioned by free speech and not its absence.  In the U.S., there would have been no Civil Rights or Women’s Movement without free speech.  Nor would gay and lesbians would have a social voice.  It is thus most disturbing when those who are the magnificent beneficiaries of free speech turn and oppose such speech in the name of protecting themselves.

Of course, we all agree that hateful ideology is undesirable.  The issue, though, is whether limiting speech is the solution to hateful ideology.  After all, so the argument might go, since we surely know that racism, sexism, and the like are wrong, no good can possibly come from allowing the expressions of such hateful ideologies—only harm and more harm.  As an aside, it is difficult to ignore the fact that moral objectivity has gained so much traction among many who think that values are merely subjective.  I mean these are often the same people whose retort to just about anything is “Who’s to say that this or that is good or bad, right or wrong?”  So one has to wonder just how did it turn out that suddenly we have so much clarity about a moral issue.  But let us set this aside; for there may be genuine limits to how much weight we should attach to the charge of inconsistency alone.  For it has been said that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds (Ralph Waldo Emerson).  And we most certainly should not want to be small-minded in our thinking about the matter.

There are two profound reasons why limiting speech is woefully problematic.  There is also is a third argument of a rather different sort that is also most important.

The first is that non-dominant groups are, themselves, constantly in a state of evolution; and that evolution is occasioned by new ways of thinking within the group.  The work of Carol Gilligan, the Harvard scholar, is a case in point.  Her classic work, A Different Voice, argues that women and men do not have identical moral sensibilities.  She maintained that women are more concerned about forgiveness and mercy; whereas men are more concerned about justice.   Her argument was quite antithetical to the dominant view that women and men are exactly alike except for a few bits of plumbing here and there.   Just so, her book had a dramatic impact upon feminist thought.  Not because all were persuaded by her argument, but because it occasioned novel ways of thinking about issues.  Feminism would have been less rich had this book been censored.

There was much opposition between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.  But oh how impoverished the black experience would be had one been allowed to silence the other.  Some prefer King to Malcolm; and for some it is the other way around.  Let there be no mistake, however.  It is in contradistinction to the one that we even more fully appreciate the contributions of the other.

The second consideration is that, limiting free speech is rather like never letting one’s child go out and play because she or he might get hurt.  This is crippling over-protection.  Our children must know how to cope with danger, though we do not intentionally expose them to danger.

Evil is neither impoverished nor intellectually bereft, as the likes of Hitler and Stalin show.  So occurrences of the ideology of hate in by articulate folks like, for instance, David Duke provides us with an opportunity to do something very important.  We prepare young thinkers for the possible dangers of the real world as we provide them with a remarkable form of affirmation, namely the opportunity to experience first-rate minds dismantling the arguments of hateful ideology.  And this ensures that our ideal of equality remains a living belief rather than becoming a dead dogma.

On the one hand: Times change.  New facts come on the scene; new perceptions are formed.  New challenges arise.  On the other: Human beliefs are dynamic in that they grow or decrease in strength depending upon the experiences that underwrite the beliefs or call the beliefs into question.  New challenges must be met head on rather dismissed simply because they are out of step without our ideological convictions.  For challenges dismissed often enough turn our beliefs into hollow convictions, which is another way of saying that the beliefs become a form of dead dogma.

There is, though, yet another reason for holding free speech sacrosanct.

Animals display emotions.  And while the emotions of humans may have a crispness that the emotions of animals lack, it is arguable that we have more of a difference in degree than in kind.  But a most defining difference is that human beings, unlike animals, have the capacity of language.  I would suggest that our human dignity is inextricably tied to our capacity for language.

The shortest utterances such as a “Thank You” can be surfeited with emotions or the lack thereof.  Though it takes not a second to utter the words “Thank You” we rarely miss the emotions or lack thereof that accompanied the utterance.  The utterance could be no more than a pro forma instance of politeness.  Or, it could display a depth of gratitude that kindles our very soul.

In speaking, we do not just communicate our wishes or convey information, we also communicate the moral significance that something has for us at a visceral level.  And this is owing, in large measure, to the simple truth that both the choice of words in the utterance and the choice of order in which we uttered them are our own.  The man who chokes as he is proposing marriage conveys a meaning and significance that is over and above what is communicated by the words themselves.  This is precisely why two people can sometimes utter the exact same words, only to have it turn out that the utterances of one brings to tears to the eyes whereas the utters of the other barely has an impact upon us.

I suggest, then, that there is a connection between free speech and human dignity.  Free speech most certainly has its risks.  But its absence is more grim than one might suppose.  For in the absence of free speech—when women and me are required to make certain utters and avoid others, then there will be aspects of interactions cannot have that richness that is distinctly human.

In this respect, love and social equality are on a par with one another.  Words of romance are worthless unless they come from the heart.  This is why a thoughtful set of words written by one lover to the other beat the words of a Hallmark card any day.  With the relevant changes made, social equality is no different.  No amount of coercion by the politically correct police can substitute for genuine acceptance and affirmation.

Thus, the politically correct police are an anathema to the human dignity that makes social equality a reality.  So there may be something to the claim on the part of various non-dominant groups that they do not feel any more secure in society than they used to.  The surprise, though, is that it is the politically correct police themselves who, by their coercive manner, have precluded that very possibility.

I know of course that Mr. David Duke is persona non gratae on college campuses.  Still, I have a pretty good imagination; and I have always imagined a great debate between me and David Duke.  As is well known, Duke was at one point in time the personification of the idea that blacks and other minorities are intellectually inferior.  It is, obviously, a good thing that universities reject that view.

The mistake, of course, is in supposing that the rejection of that view entails precluding all public forums at the university that might involve David Duke or, in general, a debate of that view.  Not so, however.

I suggest that nothing would be more in keeping with the idea that all are equal than a masterful debate with David Duke or others of his persuasion.  Not because this would be tantamount to giving Duke a hearing.  But because it would give scholars the opportunity to show that David Duke’s views are utterly bankrupt.  And I maintained that seeing such a thing demonstrated through reasoned argument would be an absolutely wonderful and affirming experience for all.

You see, I hold the very simple view that nothing beats experience.  To be sure, there is nothing to be said for experiencing some thing.  For instance, I have never had a bone in my body broken.  And, quite frankly, I am not going to do anything to help matters along in this regard.  I most certainly am not going to do so that I may understand more fully the suffering of those who have suffered a broken bone.

Anyways, the point is not simply that nothing beats experience.  Rather, the point is that nothing beats the experience of excellence.  People can go around saying “I can do anything” or “I can be anything I want to be”.  This they can do until the cows come home, or whatever it is that cows do that makes the expression relevant here.  But such utterances are no substitute for actual instances of success.  Indeed, they become rather hallow in the absence of actual instances of success.  Nothing affirms one’s belief that one can perform an excellence like an unequivocal display of excellence on one’s part.

This truth points to why we must be so judicious with praise.  For we deflate its value if we offer high praise for anything that a person might do.  There is, to be sure, the wrong of with holding praise where praise is due.  Alas, this wrong is not corrected by praising a person no matter what.

Coming back to David Duke, I find that I am becoming increasingly cynical.  For instance, I am less persuaded than I used to be that people actually believe what they say.  David Duke is no dummy.  Hitler was no dummy.  Holding a morally reprehensible view does not suffice to make one intellectually bereft.

This is why I maintain that those who hold such views should be publicly debated.  That said, I want to acknowledge Mr. Brian Romm’s point.

What I take to be appropriate is not a shouting match where, say, liberal college students drown out every word that Duke utters with their boos.  There would be nothing to be said for bringing Duke to a campus for that.  One could simply show a picture of him or a film of him speaking.  And in turn folks could boo his image to their hearts content.

The truth, though, is that boos do not constitute an argument.  Accordingly, there really is a limit to how much satisfaction we should take in them.  Indeed, I worry when we take too much satisfaction in our booing another.  For I wonder whether our booing is masking a painfully reality, namely that we do not have in our intellectual arsenal the arguments that are necessary to show that the individual’s point of view—say, David Duke’s position—is intellectually bankrupt.

The kernel of racism is the view that blacks are intellectually inferior.  Accordingly, what would be far more affirming of the intellectual equality of blacks than booing him is blacks marshalling or witnessing the marshalling of compelling arguments against his view.

If this is right, then there is a most important respect in which contemporary liberalism is failing minorities.  Indeed, it may be more of the problem than not.

We know that it is possible for parents to be over-protective.  This does not mean that the parents are not well-intentioned.  Rather, it points to the truth that their good intentions are not by themselves sufficient.  Good intentions are not sufficient in other aspects of life as well.

I believe in equality.  And I believe that I can out argue David Duke any day of the week.  I believe that I can do so squarely and fairly.  Thus, I do not need boos from the audience as a crutch.  Not only that, I maintain that my belief in equality would be rather vapid if I were not willing to debate in a fair manner a person like David Duke.

If I am even remotely right, then a most point truth is that college campuses have been more than a little over-protective of minorities.  Campuses have become an environment in which people pat themselves on the back for all having the same views and for vituperatively denouncing those do who do not embrace their views.  While this may feel good to others, this mindset has continuously left me feeling empty.  We all believe in equality.  And we spend next to no time earnestly presenting the other side so that its weaknesses can be revealed.

This is precisely why a debate with David Duke or someone like him is so very important in the struggle for equality.  And, of course, this applies with equal force to all aspects of that struggle: women versus men; Asians versus non-Jews.  And so on.  Mill’s point, quite simply, is that the best proof that the other side holds a mistaken view is that we can show that its best arguments are unsatisfactory.  And in order to do that precisely what we may need is our worse enemy rather than our best friend.

The argument of this essay makes explicit a view that Mill presumably held, namely that in adequately arguing against the best views that the opposition can present we provide ourselves with a most profound measure of affirmation both morally and psychologically (or both).  This is because we are no longer merely telling ourselves that this or that view is intellectually bankrupt.  No, we have moved way beyond that; for we have then experienced the view as being intellectually bankrupt precisely because the arguments of the view’s most articulate have been shown to be inadequate right before our very eyes.  That would be a majestic moment that no amount of booing can produce, as I assume Brian Romm so nicely grasped.

Thus, a most poignant question arises: Are we up to the task?  Once upon a time, I would have thought that the answer was obviously an affirmative one.  However, we have become a boo-based culture.  Accordingly, it is no longer clear to me that we are.

Having children is one thing; truly caring for them another.   If the novel, Sophie’s Choice, is any indication of real parental love, then a certain attitude prevalent in society is woefully misguided.  .  Perhaps it is just a fantasy.  But the idea is extraordinarily profound and moving, namely that a mother’s love is so great that she would rather die herself than see her children harmed.  In the Old Testament, there is the story of two female prostitutes claiming that a child is theirs (I King 3: 16-28).  King Solomon orders the child cut in half.  One woman continues clamoring for the child; the other is willing to give up the child so that he may live.  Solomon orders the child given to the latter woman.

His reasoning was rather simple: A mother’s love is so altruistic that she would rather see her child alive and well than dead, even if seeing the child remain alive meant that he would be raised by another woman.  There is no gainsaying the power of Solomon’s point.  Surely no mother would rather see her child dead.

The relevance of these introductory remarks is this: We live in a culture that has become a little too besotted with the idea that blood is thicker than water—so much so that parents themselves are prepared to harm their children.  (more…)

As everyone knows, diversity is all the rage on college campuses.  Indeed, to hear some people tell it, diversity is more important than education itself.  Now, the most obvious question on the face of this earth is following: How did it come to pass that diversity became more important than education at, of all places, colleges and universities.  This ought to be an oxymoron: rather like saying that the point of going swimming is to stay dry or that one is fasting in order to feel full or that one is buying useless things in order to practice spending money.

As is so often the case in life, a good thing seems to have gone awry.  Diversity?  Fine.  But it should not be placed above education.  It has become to be this way owing to the rhetorical force of the charge of racism.  If you can call my mom a slut, I can perhaps do you one better.  I can’t.  But I am sure that someone can.  But if a minority, especially a black, calls a white person a racist: well, there is next to nothing that the white can do to diffuse the charge.  And therein lies the problem.

The expression “You are a racist” has pretty much become a peformative utterance.  That is, one makes it so simply by saying that it is so.  Accordingly, the need for evidence in support of the charge has been rendered utterly irrelevant.  Needless to say, that is a problem.

Here, too, one can more or less see how the charge of racism came to have this force.  It is not altogether unreasonable to think that blacks (by and large) might be more in tune with whether or not a piece of behavior is racist than whites.  But from this, what does not follow is that the charge of racism needs no evidence in support of it.  The truth, if it is a truth, that a black is more apt to be in tune with whether or not a piece of behavior is racist is very much compatible with another truth, namely that the black needs to marshal evidence in support of his claim that he is made.  And this is how it should be. (more…)

If there was one lesson more than any other that we learn from Aldous Huxley masterful book, Brave New World, it is that happiness and human dignity are two fundamentally different goods; and, moreover, it turns out that happiness shorn of dignity is a most pitiful state of affairs.  Of course, precisely what made the novel such an extraordinary fantasy when it was written is the very fact that the very idea of severing happiness from human dignity seemed to be just that: a pure fantasy.

To be sure, there were the isolated cases of someone on drugs who had those marvelous temporary highs.  But that took place against a seemingly immutable backdrop of two convictions.  One was that such a way of being was unacceptable.  The other was that only people who were in some way indecent or irresponsible did such a thing.  Induced happiness, if you will, was seen to be a sham precisely because it did not flow from the dignity of the person.

John Stuart Mill thought it obvious that it was better to be an unhappy human being than a satisfied pig.  And while philosophers have come up with clever ways to challenge Mill’s statement, the truth of the matter is that it still strikes a most responsive chord with us.  Why, it is inconceivable that a sane human being would, via a gene transformation machine, choose to be a pig in order to have the pleasure of wallowing in mud all way, whilst giving no thought at all to tomorrow.

We may want a carefree life, but we want it as a human being and not as a pig.  And that was Mill’s very simple and ever so immutable point.

Now here is the problem: No one would choose give up dignity for happiness, where this is a matter of going directly, in say 24 hours, from a state of affairs with dignity to a state of affairs that offers happiness without dignity.  The same holds for getting old.  No sane person would choose today to be elderly tomorrow.  Yet, we do become older.  Not only that we prefer doing so to the alternative, namely dying.

Here is where Brave New World becomes haunting.  Granted that we would never choose an immediate exchange of dignity for happiness.  The question, though, is this: Might we increasingly make choices that in effect constitute an exchange of dignity for happiness?  That is, might we unwittingly exchange dignity for liberty?  Not all at once, but bit by bit by bit.

The answer, I am afraid, is an affirmative one.

Consider this.  I find that I have come to accept the reality that when I make a phone call to a large business, I shall begin the matter by first listening to a machine and then either punching in numbers or giving verbal answers to the questions that the machine poses to me.  I have learnt that there often maneuvers that make it possible to bypass the machine.  Alas, I have also learnt that in some cases I cannot do so.

So there I am having a “conversation” of sorts with a machine.  Today, this matter continues to rub me the wrong way.  But what particularly bothers me is my speculation regarding the future, namely that increasingly I shall be having “conversations” with a machine in order to get things that I want or need.

Then I consider that the point shall come when I, too, am no longer bothered by the fact that I am having a “conversation” with a machine.

But now add to the above scenarios robots that can provide basic customer service at the grocery story: say, grocery-robot can give me a fresh piece of chicken or a half-pound of the cheese that I want.

My view of this is that the backdrop of human dignity, as I shall say, has been diminished.  In one respect, service without a human being is no less service, as one has gotten just what one wanted.  The advantage is that one avoids the downside of human contact: the short-temperedness or rudeness or whatever.  But the other side, however, is that such service is entirely shorn of any and all potential for human warmth.  There is not even the potential for a smile or a pleasant exchange.  There is no possibility for anything to happen that would make one’s day a better day.

Person-to-person service can have many drawbacks.  After all, it is true enough that there are times when we don’t want to have conversation or to put on a “happy face”.  Just so, service that is provided entirely by machines leaves no possibility whatsoever for an unexpected moment of affirmation that lifts one’s very soul.  And human dignity is inextricably tied to those moments.

And when we have become so habituated to service by machines, then will pills that give us the “mood” we need or want for the moment seem abhorrent?  I think not.  Quite the contrary, in a world where service is provided by machines, pills that give us the “mood” we need or want for the moment will very much strike as a very appropriate way of dealing with our reality.

And there you have it.  I have without much effort at all described a world in which, bit by bit, dignity has been exchanged for happiness.  I maintain that I could not have done that were it not the case that a certain kind of trajectory is already in place.  We are already becoming use to efficiency replacing human contact; and mood-altering drugs are already a part of life, as the drugs of ritalin and prozac make so poignantly clear.  Where this will end is not clear to anyone.

Increasingly, momentary happiness is easy enough to attain.  Yet, the happiness seems to have no meaning to it.  Not only that, the happiness seems not to come from within the individual but to be ineliminably tied to some external thing.  This, I suggest, is happiness shorn of dignity.

The shadowy monster that made Brave New World so haunting has left the pages of this wonderful classic, and has taken up lodging among us.

No doubt that there are many morals to be drawn from all of this, but one of them is surely the following: It is possible for so many of us to become what just about none of us want to, become because we pay so little attention to the details of the journey we are making called life.

Philosophy 191 at Syracuse University

There is a very profound respect in which liberalism has failed students in college, and is continuing to fail them.  This is because when it comes to matters involving race liberalism has become more than a little too content with the invoking the rhetorical force of the charge of racism when in fact there are arguments that can be presented.  And one most untoward consequence of this is that some fundamental beliefs of the American society are turning out to be no more than dead dogma rather than living beliefs—a distinction that was introduced by John Stuart Mill in his masterful essay On Liberty.

Like any reasonable person, I understand that there have been injustices in the world; and that blacks have been the object of some of these injustices.  Injustices of this sort typically fly under the banner of racism.  From this truth, however, what does not follow is that the charge of racism is always the best explanation for an argument that purports to show that superiority of whites.  Today in lecture (18 April 2006), I presented the following argument that was presented by a member of the KKK:

1.  The list of geniuses includes, among others, the following:

Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, Kant, Hume, Rousseau, and so on.

2.  All of these individuals are an X.  Hence, none of these individuals is of the Y or Z or W or . . . whatever race except the X race.

3.  Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that as a race Xs are more intelligent than members of the Y race or the Z race or the W race . . . or any other race.

Now, as it happens, the above KKK argument does not work; and I asked my class to explain why.

In passing, I should point out that the KKK argument is complicated by the reality that KKK folks hate Jews; yet, two Jews are on that list.  So a KKK person can say that he or she is not blind to talent even when that talent displays itself in people who are despised by KKK folks.

Getting back to the argument: There are two kinds of responses that are immediately offered.  One I shall label the genius uplift response; the other I shall label the victim of racism response.  According, to the uplift response, there are lots of blacks that belong on that list: e.g., Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Hendrix, and George Washington Carver.  There is no denying the talent of these names.  But let us see.

I think that Elton John and Stevie Wonder are on a par with one another when it comes to musical talent.  Yet, surely Elton does not think for a moment, and rightly so, that he is on a par with Mozart or Beethoven.  So, by parity of reasoning, it follows that Stevie Wonder is not on a par with Mozart or Beethoven, and not think such a thing.  Nor, for that matter is, Aretha Franklin.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was also mentioned as someone who should be on the.  I would place him on the same plane as Winston Churchill.  Neither, though, makes that very dis-tinguished KKK list.

As for George Washington Carver, there is no doubt that he had considerable talent.  But he was no Darwin or Freud or Einstein.  No doubt, Carver was Nobel Prize material.  Yet, many Nobel Prize winners do not hold a candle to Darwin or Freud or Newton or Einstein.  So the uplift response proves to be rather unsuccessful.

The victim response insists that were it not for the vicious racism that blacks have suffered down through the years, then there would be blacks on the list.  I presume that this is true.  And as one student observed, it may very well be that Shakespeare did really do all that writing, but some blacks instead.

The victim argument may very well have more weight in the minds of my students than the uplift argument.  The problem with the victim argument is that it still leaves one empty-handed.  It is rather like saying that one would have earned a Ph.D. had one gone to graduate school.  Unless one has done something that makes this claim manifestly obvious, there is a respect in which the claim rings hollow.  That blacks would have been on the list had things been otherwise is no substitute for being on the list.  I do not think that any genuine satisfaction derives from running around saying “I could have been on that list”.

You see, the problem with the victim argument is that it still privileges the list in a way that requires an explanation for why blacks are not on it.  Accordingly, I think that those who spend so much time advocating the uplift argument miss a marvelous opportunity to advance a much more im-portant argument.  A far better strategy would be to show that, in the relevant respects, not much turns on not being on the list.  I presented that argument in lecture today.

What does the KKK argument show about the intelligence of Xs?  It most certainly does not show that any random X chosen is apt to be more talented than any random non-X chosen.  That is to say, from the fact that only Xs are on the list, what does not follow at all is that only Xs are gifted or likely to be gifted.  After all, only human beings are on the list, too.  Less flippantly, from the fact that only Xs are on the list does not show that there is a strong correlation between being an X and being on the list.  There could not possibly be.

Why?  Because there are millions upon millions of Xs who are manifestly and unambiguously not on the list.  Likewise for millions and millions of Ys or Ws or whatever.  No X can look at himself and think that it was just as likely that he or the other person would be on the list as not.  For if anything is true it is true that it notoriously unlikely that anyone would be on that list; and it does not matter whether the person is an X or a non-X.   But then it follows from all of this that with regard to intelligence Xs as such and Ys as such and Ws as such are all on the same plane.

The probability of being on the list is painfully small and equally small whether one is an X or a Y or a W or what-ever race.  9 or so people on the list out of millions and millions of people of one racial group is statistically the same as 0 people on the list out of millions and millions of people from another racial group.

This argument does not in any way downplay the extraordi-nary contributions of the people who are intellectual giants.  It merely points out that nothing of any signi-ficance follows with regard to one race or the other given the simple fact that all on the list turn out to be white.

This argument thus diffuses the standing of the list.  So no non-X need find the list in any way threatening because non-Xs are not on the list.

Returning back to Mill’s distinction between living beliefs and dead dogma, I trust that the class can see that I have done something extremely important.  Without in any way resorting to either the uplift or the victim argument, I have completely diffused the argument pre-sented by the KKK person.  And it seems to me that, prior to lecture, way too many of this class could not even envision this possibility.

Worse, it seems to me that one of the deep and painful shortcomings of political correctness is that it is much too willing to avail itself of the charge of racism rather than look for what in fact would be a far effective and devastating argument.  The uplift argu-ment cheapens the intellectual contributions of a Darwin or a Freud or a Mozart.  In this regard, the victim argument is a better argument.

On the other hand, there is a straightforward sense in which advocates of the victim argu-ment are held hostage by the very ideology that they eschew.  That blacks or members of any other group are not on the list is problematic only if not being on the list represents something nega-tive about the intellectual wherewithal of blacks or others as a race.

Showing that this is not the case is actually better than making the charge of racism.  Thus, it seems to me that for some invoking the charge of racism is rather like a drug to which one is addicted.  And the proof of this is that some continued appealing to the victim argument even after I had given the argument that I gave regarding the fact no significance at all, regarding the matter of intelligence between the races, attaches to the fact that all the members of the list are white, since the racial composition of the list does not show that Xs as a group are in any way more likely to be more intelligent than non-Xs.

The power of the argument that I have given, if the argu-ment is sound, is that it renders otiose both the uplift and the victim arguments—not by denying the reality of racism, but by drawing attention to the truth that the best explanation for apparent differences be-tween races may have noth-ing at all to do with race precisely because the ap-parent differences turn out to be just that: merely apparent rather than real.

Cynthia McKinney deserves an award.  Alas, the Darwin Award would not suffice.  That award is for people who do utterly stupid things, as when a person tests a gun by pointing it at his face and then firing it.  McKinney makes those who qualify for the Darwin Award seem amazingly intelligent.  She deserves the Dinosaur-Ostrich Award.  This is the award that goes to a person whose ass is too big to fit in the door and whose brain is too small to grasp what a door is.

There is no need to rehearse the story by now; for at this point it is all but impossible for anyone even remotely aware of events not to have heard of the story.  But it pains me to no end that McKinney even dared to suggest racism might have been a factor.  I wonder how long will blacks go on playing the race card when it is so manifestly clear that nothing of the sort is true.  And I further wonder how long will white liberals continue to be so plagued by “white guilty” that they lack the courage to call the charge of racism just so much nonsense when, alas, that is the case.  If ever the charge was out of order, it was in this case.  Ms. McKinney was not wearing the lapel-pin that members of Congress aware for admittance to the building.  And a guard rightly asked her for identification. (more…)

Im not entirely stunned that a man exposed himself on a subway in New York City.  One figures that if such a thing is going to happen anywhere in the United States: New York City is the place.  What absolutely stuns me, however, is that the man essentially defended his behavior.  And one just has to ask how we did we get to the point in society where a person would defend exposing himself in a manifestly public setting.  That people have exposed themselves is nothing new.  But stridently defending such behavior on one’s part most certainly is.  And this new piece of behavior cries out for an explanation.

The first thing worth noting pertains to the issue of community standards.  In his famous essay entitled The Enforcement of Morals, Lord Patrick Devlin made the very simple point that society needs a sense of moral standards in order to survive.  And although John Stuart Mill was a staunch defender of liberty, it is also the case that he recognized the importance of moral disapprobation.

If there is one difference between now and then, where then is a mere 20 years ago, it is that moral disapprobation has itself become the object of much disapprobation.  We want things to be better without wanting to say that anyone is doing or has done anything wrong.  Sometimes it is indeed the case that no one has done anything wrong.  A person who has an unexpected heart attack while driving, which results in his crashing into a person’s home, has not done anything wrong.

Alas, a great deal of life is not like that at all.  The harms that many people suffer are not a result of some unexpected failure of health or the constellation of the stars, but are owing to deliberate wrongdoing or willful negligence on the part of individuals.  And it is mistake to carry on as if things were otherwise.

To be sure, it is important not to be edacious in our concern to blame people.  As with kindness, one can go overboard with moral blame.  The alternative to going overboard, though, is not to set moral blame aside entirely.

But that is what we have done.  If, for example, a neighborhood is dangerous because it is surfeited with the crime of murder, it has become inappropriate to say that; for then it is said that one harbors some inappropriate bias.  I would that I were joking about this.  Alas, I am not.  I have heard just this line of thought regarding one of the dangerous neighborhoods in Syracuse.  The only bias that I see is a prudent concern for one’s safety, which any psychologically healthy person should have.

But this is just the point.  It is plainly absurd to object to expressing moral disapprobation over the killings that are going on a neighborhood.  But if we have been beaten into silence when it comes to condemning murders in a neighborhood, then over what can we express moral disapprobation.

If one engages in a kind of moral transitivity here with respect to moral criticism, then the following seems to hold: If expressing moral disapprobation over murder is inappropriate, then there will be lots and lots of lesser wrongs over which it will also be wrong to express moral disapprobation.

Offhand, it seems to me that between the act of indecent exposure and the act of murder, the latter is far, far worse.  So if one is acting morally inappropriate in expressing moral disapprobation over murders that are occurring in a neighborhood, then surely it is woefully inappropriate to express moral disapprobation over indecent exposure.  Or so it is if we accept a principle of moral transitivity with respect to moral criticism.

So there you have it: The basis for an explanation for why Mr. Daniel Hoyt thinks that his behavior of indecent exposure is just fine.  Once we deem moral disapprobation out of order, then a kind of social check of our moral values is thereby removed.  It may be true that some people can sustain high moral values all by themselves, but that is extremely rare.  Most of us need reminders that take various forms.  Moral disapprobation is one such form that a reminder can take, where the idea is not to excoriate the person but to draw attention to a transgression that has taken place.

Quite simply, then, silencing moral disapprobation has the effect of denying the reality of moral transgressions.  Moral disapprobation underwrites and affirms our commitment to moral standards.

In general, what we feel comfortable saying is not independent of the moral standards of our society in general or our community in particular.

It is mistakenly supposed that moral criticism amounts to more than a form of harshness.  Not so it.  It amounts a form of moral husbandry—a kind of moral self-preservation, if you will.  When done in the right way, moral criticism is a way of sanctifying the moral excellences that we want to anchor and to animate our lives.  When done in the right way, moral criticism is a way of avowing to one another the standards that we hold precious, and so of the expectations that we have of ourselves and one another.  And as we know, the kinds of expectations that people have of us can be ever so significant.

High expectations have occasioned considerable excellence.  Low expectations, by contrast, have licensed considerable mediocrity.  We know this to be true in the intellectual realm.  It is a mistake to suppose that the same idea does not hold in the moral realm.  It is the high regard that others have for me that so animates me.

It is not that I am given to flights of immorality.  Rather, it is simply that the high regard that others have for me give me a reason that I would not have otherwise to do what is right; and in trying times that makes a difference.

Mr. Daniel Hoyt lives in a society that has lost its moral backbone, and so that which shapes moral sensibilities.  Of course, he cannot hear the absurdity of his views.  For society no longer provides the kind of moral echo that makes that reality a possibility.  It did once upon a time.  For, as I have noted, indecent exposure is not new.  But time was when those who engaged in this despicable act would not have thought it even plausible to suppose that there was nothing wrong with so behaving.  Certainly, none would have voiced such view even if he held it.  It is not moral progress at all that such is no longer the case.  And no small part of the problem is that with the rejection of moral disapprobation we cannot see how far down the abyss of immorality we have fallen.