Moral Health

Much of the energy for abortion comes from the simple truth that whatever else is true, the fetus cannot really be a person just like you and I are.*  For no one thinks that that if we are forced to choose between saving the life of the mother (who has no children or other obligations) and saving the life of the fetus, then morality requires us to flip a coin.  No one thinks that, including those insist that the fetus is just as much of a person as you and I are.  So if an abortion may be induced in order to save the life of a mother, when the fetus is already a few months old, then it seems patently absurd to hold that what we have at the very moment of conception is a full-fledge person.  This points to why the issue of abortion confounds us so.  On the hand, it seems next to impossible to draw any well-defined boundaries with respect to whether we have a person or not.  On the other, the very idea that there are no boundaries proves deeply unsettling.

What exactly is the status of the fetus?  Suppose that a pregnant woman has an old and feeble dog that she dearly loves.  She carries her beloved pet up and down the stairs, so that the animal and her are always on the same floor of the house.  Alas, the doctor informs her that she can no longer do this without seriously endangering the health of the fetus she is carrying.  The woman opts for an abortion.  I shall assume without argument that surely there is something repugnant about such a choice; and in order to reach this conclusion we need not surreptitiously rely upon the idea that the fetus is a full-fledge person.  Even Thomson, whose essay is taken by many to have firmly established a woman’s right to have an abortion, thinks that there can be indecent reasons for having an abortion, as when a woman does so purely because coming to terms with the fetus would be interfere with having traveling plans. (more…)

In the matter of personal ties, there is nothing on the face of this earth that takes the place of experiences forged in the crucible of time.  A defining feature of modernity has come to be that we want what we want now, if not yesterday.  That sort of attitude may very well be applicable with technology; however, it fails mightily when it comes to interpersonal relationships.  I can only earn your trust over time.  I cannot do 50,000 things all at once and thereby have your trust.  For that only tells you how I have behaved at that moment.  It does not tell you how I shall behave over time.

I have said it before, but it is worth saying again.  On any given occasion, a mother’s single kiss has no significance whatsoever over.  But the accumulative effect of an insignificant kiss on a daily basis is none other than a tidal wave of affirmation against which the very gates of hell cannot easily prevail.

Human beings need time.  As a species, we take longer to mature than any other species.  The gestational period of some animals, such as whales and elephants, is longer.  But they leave the womb very nearly fit to take their place in the world.  They can certainly travel with the pack within weeks if not days.  We human beings leave the womb utterly helpless.  And it takes a good 12 or so years before we come even close too approximating the wherewithal of adults.  And technology has not changed that at all, even if youth reaching puberty at an earlier age.

This tells is something extraordinarily deep and profound about human beings.  There has been no transmogrification on the part of human nature owing to technology.  Accordingly, it is still the case that personal relationships take time and seasoning.  That may seem to be a downside.  But the downside has an upside.  When personal ties have been forged with honesty and goodwill over time, then they have fortitude—a durability, if you will—that very little can destroy.

It is easy to miss this if one focuses upon a single instance of not behaving in this or that way.  For in social interaction, it is exceedingly rare that a single instance is determinant of anything significant.

Part of what worries me enormously with modernity and recent assessments made by political theory is precisely the fact that people fail to appreciate the simple truth that the single instance in personal interactions is of little import.  Another way of putting the point is that modernity and political theory is failing to be mindful of human nature.

It is simply not possible for any human being (infants aside) to mistake a 5-year old human for a 25-year old.  I take the fact of the slowness with which human beings develop both physically and psychologically to be quite indicative of a deep, deep fact about human nature, namely that personal ties need to withstand the test of time.  There is no other way to measure stability of character, whatever the content of that character may be like.

Now, here is what strikes me as quite sublime.  Words are no substitute for time.  At any given moment, I may aver with great conviction that I believe in punctuality or that I love France or that I am committed to taking my students seriously.  In saying these things, I may be absolutely sincere.  But here is what is true about me.  I have only been late for class once in 18 year of being a professor at Syracuse University.  And in the last 14 years, I have traveled to France more than I have traveled to any other place in the world—indeed, to any other place in the United States including New York City (a mere 250 miles from Syracuse as opposed to France, which is 3,600 miles from Syracuse).  Finally, I have managed to acknowledge dozens of students in my published writings.

When it comes to self-knowledge, there is not, and cannot be, a substitute for consistency of behavior over time.  I have shown up to class on time when I have been tired and weary, and when I have been intoxicated with emotional pain, and when I have despaired of the thought that I could make a difference.

Technology is wonderful.  But it has given us the illusion that even depth of character is something that can be had or ascertained at a moment’s notice.  The most that a moment will give, unless it is an extremely paradigmatic moment, is an insight that must be subject to further affirmation or disconfirmation (as the case may be).

Unfortunately, we are not grasping that.  Accordingly, we are running on empty and are wondering why.

Let me give a concrete illustration.  Being transient has come to be an acceptable part of modernity.  And in once sense that is an extremely good thing.  Certainly, I cannot criticize anyone for being transient.  But transience comes with an enormous price tag, namely the loss of stable ties and personal history.

Sometimes, of course, precisely what we want is to put that moment in time behind us.  We want to burn old bridge and build new ones to replace them.  Sometimes, though, what we so desperately need is the old well-trodden paths of nourishment.

On my view, it is no accident that personal relationships, especially romantic ones, are increasingly failing to fare well.  This is because these ties are being asked to bear a load that they cannot bear.

The communitarian point is that human beings are quintessentially social creatures.  This is not the same as saying that the right personal tie is all that a person needs in life.  We miss this point because we miss the simple truth that once upon time families were themselves a fundamental part of communities.  It was not just that Mary and Bob defined themselves in terms of one another, but Mary and Bob lived in a community and that community was also a constitutive part of their identity, though obviously not the most fundamental part.  This also meant that Mary and Bob found strength not just through interacting with one another, but through interacting with other members of the community.

It is a revealing feature of humanity that it is the extremely rare to find people whose only aim in life has been to be a recluse; and such people often strike us as problematic on a number of fronts.  What most human beings have often done, even in the context of being unjust, is to define themselves vis à vis others by, for example, having control over them.  And most evil people rarely commit evil alone.  Even the suicide-bomber is part of a network that affirms and re-affirms the so-called good that she or he does.  This tells us just how important human beings are to one another.

We begin life in desperate need of other human beings for many years after entering this word; and we typically end life in desperate need of other human beings for several years prior to expiring.  At the beginning and at the end, the character of the other matters more than words can tell.

We have no choice at the beginning.  The interesting issue, though, is this: Will we choose so badly along the way that at the end it is as if we had no choice, either?  Insofar as we make choices along the way that ignore the relevance of time to ascertaining the quality of a person’s character, then the answer to the question just raised will, most unfortunately, be an affirmative one.

We have all heard the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intention. I received an email asking for my thoughts regarding how not to commit adultery.  So I offer them.  Insofar as I have any advice on not committing adultery, it starts with the simple adage above.  First of all, human feelings are dynamic.  That is, they can change over time.  We can come to like people whom we did not like at all.  Likewise, we can come to detest people whom we could not live without.  Or, in any case, things cool off because people change.  So just how one feels about a person in the present is not necessarily a clue about how one will feel about that person in the future.   Lots of romantic ties have started between people who thought that there was not a chance in hell that anything romantic could or would happen between them.

With married couples my view is a very simple one: It should turn out that there are very, very few occasions when I am expressing gratitude and appreciation only to the wife.  And if there are lots occasions when I am doing that, then it seems to me that my interaction with her is not as it should be.

Expressions of gratitude and appreciation kindle warm and good feelings.  And it seems to me that part of what is involved in respecting a marriage is not kindling those feelings.  Momentarily, I shall say more about why I hold this view.

Significantly, it does not matter whether we talking about a heterosexual marriage or a homosexual marriage.  If a close male friend of mine marries another man, then it seems to me that some forms of interaction between us are no longer in order.  Out of respect for their marriage, there will be gestures of good will that I would cease doing for him alone.  If I could include both in the gestures, then I would have no qualms in continuing with those gestures.

I understand all too well that two married people remain separate individuals.  I also understand, though, that in marrying one another, they have sworn off ties of romantic endearment with others.

There is, of course, a difference between romantic endearment and friendship.  But the two are on a continuum and there are aspects of overlap between them.

With my male heterosexual friends, the continuum involving friendship and romantic love has a very significant built-in-barrier, namely that neither of us has any interest in the other sexually.  This, in turn, makes it well-nigh impossible for expressions of gratitude and appreciation to transform into sentiments of romance.

It is one thing to express gratitude and appreciation to someone for saving one’s life.  It is quite another for one’s interactions with another to be such that expressions of gratitude and appreciation constantly range over small and personal things.  This allows too easily for gratitude and appreciation to transform into romantic sentiments, precisely because things have become intertwined with one’s personal life on a more or less daily basis.  There is fluidity in place.

By contrast, saving a person’s life is a very well-define act that does not have a re-occurring aspect to it.  So although the gratitude that one has is obviously enormous, it is so well-defined as not to be intertwined with a person’s life on a daily basis.  Thus, even if the person who did the saving is someone’s wife, that act and the corresponding gratitude does not cast any concern over the marriage itself.  If it did, then there was already something else going on in the first place.  But knowing me, I would probably send a letter to both the wife and the husband with the letter of gratitude to the wife included.  This move has the symbolic significance of acknowledging the marriage, even as the gratitude for saving my life is rightly expressed only to the wife.

There can be other well-defined acts owing to social conventions.  Secretary’s Day is an example of this.  Birthdays can be, too, provided that there is an opportunity to celebrate a spouse’s birthday in a public manner.  This allows for everything to run its course in a public way.  This allows for expressions of personal appreciation and goodwill to take place in a public forum.  Barring special circumstances, sending the very same gift to the person’s home changes its import.

What bothers many people about my approach is that it has the air of not trusting oneself.  This is not quite right, as I shall explain below.

Intentions are very ephemeral things.  Accordingly, having clarity about what we intend strikes me as of the utmost importance, especially as it pertains to romance and friendship.  And it seems to me best never to allow the opportunity for any misunderstanding than to do anything that would allow for there to be a single misunderstanding.  This, in turn, speaks very nicely to the issue of having trust in oneself.  It is easy to miss this if one focuses upon the wrong aspect of things.  We can affirm our intentions that nothing is to go wrong, and doing that requires engaging in the right sort of behavior, even symbolic behavior in some instances.

Thus, if I am at a married couple’s home having dinner with the wife and husband, he gets up to go to work, I invariably get up to leave as well.  This has enormous symbolic significance.  And it really is foolish to pretend that such things do not matter.  They matter all the time in all sorts of context.

As I said at the outset: To know something about romance is to grasp the reality that all sorts of feelings can get off the ground in ways that no one ever anticipated in the least.  And to know that one is the kind of person who can be counted on to never let any misunderstanding get off the ground is to know something very profound and wonderful about oneself.  And for others to have that confidence in one is for them to have a trust in one that is ever so precious.

It is one thing to have trust in ourselves.  There is much to be said for that.  But the issue of kindling feelings of romance in another person’s spouse is not just about us.  Inescapably, the issue here is also about whether another can trust us.  And it is striking to me how few ask that question.

When it comes to not undermining the marriage of others, I would say that one can trust oneself precisely when one has in point of fact earned the trust of others.  This requires more than never making a wrong move, but affirming in a myriad of ways our intentions that a wrong move is never to be made.  If we are not prepared to do that, then we are not us trustworthy as we suppose.  Indeed, it is far from clear that we can even trust ourselves.

At its best, compassion is a most majestic gesture from one soul to another.  Misplaced compassion, by contrast, is the handmaiden of evil.  At its best, compassion looks beyond one’s own needs to the needs of another.  Misplaced compassion, on the other hand, is none other than a display of self-serving gestures masquerading as concern for the other.  For with misplaced compassion, the real concern is not so much that the other is made better off but that one feels good about oneself and that one looks good in the eyes of others.

Contrary to what one might suppose, these remarks have everything to do with state of affairs in the United States with regard to the issue of diversity; and these remarks have everything to do with the state of affairs in the Middle East.

Everyone agrees that the racism of the past was wrong.  But from this erstwhile truth, there arose the absurd view that blacks can do no wrong.  Any shortcoming on the part of blacks can be explained by reference to the past of racism.  With the Muslim Arabic world, there can be no doubt that, in various ways, Muslim Arabs have been mischaracterized and mistreated.  But once again, this erstwhile truth has given rise to the utterly absurd view that any criticism of Muslim Arabs is racist.  Utter the word “God” in school and one is imposing one’s religious values upon other.  But say “Allah”, and guess what: one is merely be true to one’s traditions.

The attitude that I have just described in the preceding paragraph is the embodiment of Leftist ideology.  And it is precisely the ideology of the Left that is handing the victory to Evil on a silver platter.

Evil exploits opportunity.  And at present, the most remarkable opportunity to exploit is the charge of racism.  And the Left has absolutely mastered the art of showing misplaced compassion to those who readily make that charge.

Here is a picture of dead American soldiers who strung up on a bridge in Iraq.  This is incredibly obnoxious and barbaric behavior.  And so it is whether one is for or against the war in Iraq.  But try to find someone from the Left to condemn it.  It would be easier to find a needle in a haystack.  But if you want to see a display of self-righteous indignation on the part of the Left: well, let an American soldier do anything wrong and that is deemed to be proof par excellence that America is an evil nation.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I hold the quite simple view that when American soldiers make mistakes they should be reprimanded accordingly.  It would never occur to me to think otherwise.  But my problem, apparently, is that when I see despicable behavior on the part of members of the Muslim Arabic world, I think that moral outrage with regard to the behavior in question is just as appropriate.

But Arabic Muslim militants can do any despicable thing that they damn well please to an American soldier and the Left will find a way to excuse it or, even worse, to avoid even acknowledging it.  Perhaps it is cultural pluralism that explains why Muslim Arabs film time and time again the beheading of a captured American soldier.  Surely, it could not be about exploiting the media.  They chop off the head of their captives and we don’t.  That is all there is to it.  This differences makes it pluralism.

Best of all, though, as an excuse, if not justification, for their behavior is that the fact that we have wronged them in the past.  Unless you are white, then being a victim of a past systematic wrong gives one moral indemnity.  I should point out that non-whites, too, can fail to be the beneficiary of moral indemnity if, as in my own case, these non-whites fail to see racism as the explanation for everything that goes wrong in a minority person’s life.  I believe that racism no more explains violence in the black community than it explains why it snows in the winter rather than in the summer.  There was far less violence in black communities when racism was far more prevalent and vicious.

But never mind that.  Just turn to talk about the vestiges of racism, and one’s butt is covered.  It has been said that anything that explains everything explains nothing.

But let me say more about the situation in the Middle East.  As best I can tell, the Left thinks that Hamas and Hezbollah are peace friendly groups that Israel is radically mischaracterizing as folks who would kill innocent Israeli citizens.  Again, when the president of Iran says that he wants Israel blown off the map, the Left has to think that this is but a sarcastic way of speaking and that there is not an ounce of sincerity too his words.

The president of Iran does not seem to think that.  But why on earth should the Left let what he actually think get in the way of its ideology?

One consequence of Leftist ideology with regard to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah is that it can make no sense for Israel to defend itself against them.  This is because allowing for self-defense on the part of Israel implies that these groups are doing something that is wrong or, at the very least, unintentionally harmful to Israel.  And the Left ruled out the possibility that these groups can do such a thing.  This, in turn, makes self-defense on Israel’s part incoherent.

But if this stance does not count as giving Evil the victory, then I do not know what does.  Oh yes I do: Israel could aim all of its missiles at itself ! ! !

Now, I do not suppose that Israel is perfect. And I have been there enough times to know, first hand, that it is not.  But I have noticed that no place is perfect.  In fact, I more than a little perturbed over how much imperfection I seem to be finding all over the place.

Israel is certainly not perfect.  But I don’t think that either Iran or Egypt or Lebanon just barely miss the mark of perfection.  And I certainly do not think that groups like Hamaz and Hezbollah are anywhere close to being perfect.

So the problem is not perfection versus imperfection, but self-defense in an environment where imperfections can be found across the board.  For instance, the sexism in the Middle East ought to have the Left sitting sackcloth and ashes, in a state of utter despair.  Oh right, there is that pluralism thing again.  Sexism is only wrong in America.  I keep thinking that wrong is wrong, no matter who commits the act in question.  I have got to get over that.

In any case, the point is surely clear.  If not even self-defense is permissible, on Israel’s part, because groups like Hamas and Hezbollah or the Muslim Arabic world in general can do no wrong, then precisely what follows, surely, is that Evil has been handed the victory on a silver platter.  If this is right, then we have the following very surprising conclusion.  The biggest obstacle to peace may not be groups like Hamas or Hezbollah, after all.  Rather, it is the Left.  For the Left has done more to excuse the utterly vicious and despicable behavior of these groups than anything that these groups could have ever done for themselves.

So to begin just about where I started: Misplaced compassion is the handmaiden of Evil.

*    *    *

I was inspired to write this entry by Stu Bykofsky, who wrote one of the most remarkable essays I have ever read on the Middle East.  The essay is entitled “Would World be Better Off Without Israel?

Below is the text of the essay that I wrote on Wednesday, 1 February 2006.  In view of the present circumstances in the Middle East, I print it here again, word-for-word.

In the early 90s, hope was in abundance.  The Berlin Wall fell and Nelson Mandela was freed.  And while these things are now just a part of our social backdrop, they are events that stunned the world, giving rise to unprecedented jubilation—and hope that the world could indeed become a better place.

But here we are just over a decade later; and it would seem that anyone who thinks that the world will become a better place has to be delusional.  In fact, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the world is poised for World War III.  Many will rush to blame the foreign policy of the United States.  However, I am sure that the root of the problem does not lie there.  The point here is not that U.S. foreign policy is flawless.  Hardly.  But that its flawed foreign policy, does not serve up World War III.

The lightening rod, of course, is the Middle East.  Iran wants Israel blown off the map, and challenges the very reality of the Holocaust.  Neither of these can be considered a reaction to the foreign policy of the United States.

Then there is the simple reality that Iran is determined to become a nuclear power.  There is no reason whatsoever to think that Iran is going to back down, owing to pressure from both the European Union and the United States.  And when Iran does become a nuclear power, there is little reason to think that it will not target Israel.  As an aside, the hatred of Israel has little, if anything, to do with the Palestinian people.

Now one scenario is that Israel will sit by and wait for a nuclear attack from Iran.  Another is that Israel will launch a pre-emptive first strike.  True, this latter approach may still mean the demise of Israel.  All the same, this beats passively waiting to be blown to smithereens.  And if Israel launches a pre-emptive first strike, her Arabic neighbors will surely attack.  After all, the newly elected Hamas also has as one of its aims the destruction Israel.  And if these things do not give us World War III, then nothing will.

Quite simply, nuclear weapons in the hands of a leader driven by pure hate is utterly problematic.  This observation points to one profound difference between then and now.  There has always been hatred in the world, as even the most cursory glance at world history makes abundantly clear.  The difference, though, is that there has not always been the means to act upon that hate with utterly devastating consequences.  Surface-to-air missiles, land mines, and explosive devices of every sort have all made it possible for anyone to participate ever so easily and readily in the act of destroying others.

Before continuing, I should note that I have taken a rather informal survey regarding whether or not we are on the verge of World War III.  For you see, I honestly thought that I was just being silly.  The surprise is that everyone to whom I have mentioned this possibility has concurred.  Ordinary folk who are just trying to get on with their lives sense that something horrendous is in the offing.  Worse than that: People have the sense that it will happen much sooner than later.

Of course, this is all rather informal.  Yet, I am struck by the fact that not since the late 60s has the possibility of World War III seemed so utterly real either to me or to folks with whom I have an occasional chat.

Returning to the issue of hate, I should like to draw attention to one of the most important lessons to be learnt from Nazi Germany.  The lesson is that excusing hatred invariably produces a social catastrophe of major proportions.  Excusing hatred is a case of being too clever for our own good.

On my view, we sit at the brink of world disaster because the nations of the world have found a multitude of excuses for excusing hatred.  And we shall surely reap what we are sowing.

A few years back, I made the following remarks to someone:

1. Neither Muslim Arabs nor Jews are perfect
2. The loss of innocent Arabic life is wrong; the loss of innocent Jewish life is wrong
3. We have problem if either Muslim Arabs or Jews lose sight of the truth of (1) and (2).

I thought that I had presented a set of incontrovertibly true.  Alas, the person became angry.   You tell me: How could any morally decent person disagree any of the above claims?

World War III shall occur because the nations of the world have found one excuse after another not to present a united front with respect to the truth of claims (1) – (3).

So if I am right, then the hatred of Israel is but part of the problem.  The other part is our cultivated moral impotence.  Literally, we are excusing ourselves into oblivion.

All you need is love !  This sentence is not just the title of one the songs sung by perhaps the most famous group in the history of popular music, namely the Beatles, it also captures the sentiment that many have in society regarding the power of love.  The thought seems to be that if we have romantic love for someone, then things will eventually turn out well no matter how great that the differences that divide us might be.  In a word, it is said that love conquers all, which was sung by the group Yes.

Among the various refrains that Dr. Laura has consistently sounded on her radio program, the thesis that perhaps stands first among them is that “Love is not enough”. (more…)

I take it to be an incontrovertible truth that nothing is like rape.* Thus, I take it to follow from this that suggesting that one has been violated in a way analogous to rape when all that happened is that one was the object of a sexist slur is unequivocally wrong.  It is wrong on three accounts: First of all, it distorts the harm that one has suffered by exaggerating it.  Second, it desensitizes us in that it is the moral equivalent of crying wolf.  Third, doing so contributes to a climate of mistrust.  These points hold mutatis mutandis for a racial event like lynching.

Of course, language evolves.  My favorite example of this is the word “shit”.  Two decades ago, there was absolutely no way to use that word as a compliment.  Back then, one could have said, and people often did say, “He was one bad mother fucker”.  And that was a compliment.  But it was still not possible to use the word “shit” as a compliment.  It took some 20 years for that to happen: “Man you are the shit”.

However, the way in which we use the word “violate” does not reflect an evolution of language.  Rather, it reflects an abuse of language.  For the point of calling something a violation is not to render salient some feature of suffering that had heretofore gone unnoticed.  Quite the contrary, the point is to call to mind a level of suffering that in point of fact one has not endured.

I fully concur that a bunch guys yelling sexual names at woman walking down the street is absolutely wrong.  And I also understand that under some circumstances (such as when she is walking alone at night) a woman can justifiably feel threatened by that sort of thing.   But in the typical case, say a bunch of construction workers yelling at a woman, in broad daylight on a busy street, there is no real threat.  More importantly, there is no sense in which it can be said that the woman was raped.  Not every sexist wrong is tantamount to rape.

I have no idea what a verbal rape is.  I understand that it is a metaphor.  The problem is that it is a metaphor that crumbles very quickly under inspection.  Thus, “He verbally raped me” is not at all like “Her words uplifted me”.  Rape is by definition an exceedingly coercive physical act.  And a bunch of words full of sexual innuendo yelled from the top of a building cannot possibly constitute a form of physical coercion, notwithstanding how wrong and despicable such utterances are.

What is more, and this gets to the very heart of the matter, In order to grasp the wrong of such words, we do not need to construe those words as a form of rape.  And doing so, far from making for a better world, contributes mightily to mistrust.  I would be a fool to trust any woman who might turn the slightest discomfort I might cause her into a charge of having been violated, where this is meant to call to mind the harm of rape.

In this respect, feminism has mightily damaged relations between women and men rather than enhanced them.  On the one hand, women have (in the name of social progress and equality) become more sexual than ever.  On the other, the charge of having been violated can get off the ground more quickly than a balloon full of helium.

As my opening remarks would suggest, I hold that in a similar vein the misuse of the charge of racism has done more to hurt racial relations in America than to help them.  The white student who was reading the newspaper in my class this past semester was certainly disrespectful.  But this was no more an act of racism than saying “I love you” to an audience of fans is an act of sex.  And it is wrong and malicious for anyone to characterize his behavior that way.  Indeed, every indication is that the student rather admires me.  Either that, or he is one damn good actor !

For the record, a black female student did exactly the same thing a few years earlier.  Was she racist?  Presumably not.  But we do not need that charge in order to capture the level of her disrespect at that moment.  The two students were equally disrespectfully in exactly the same way: one black student; one white student.  Fancy that.  Utter parity between a black and a white.

At any rate, if I were white, I can assure you that I would generally avoid black people like a plague.  For nothing would perturb me more than to find myself open to the charge of racism for the least innocent thing that I did that a black person did not like.

Some of the graduate students who have served as my teaching assistants absolutely detest my teaching style.  It would be foolish and rather mean of me to suppose that this reflects subtle racism on their part.  The irony here is that one of the most conservative graduate students in the Syracuse University Philosophy Department seems to be quite comfortable with my teaching style.

Equality across all dimensions has to be underwritten by trust.  And in the absence of actual physical violence, nothing more quickly undermines trust than exaggerated charges of abuse.

In this regard equality requires an enormous sense of responsibility.  In particular, it requires that we distinguish an isolated instance from a general moral climate.  In the Hill-TV fiasco, Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor failed to do just that, excoriating the entire campus as if just about any and all white folks on campus applauded the silliness committed by the few culprits in question.  There will always be isolated instances of moral stupidity and moral wrong.  But it is most morally inappropriate to take an isolated instance as being representative of an entire community.  The rush to do so has done enormous harm by utterly destroying the good will that was in place.

In this regard, Chancellor Cantor did not make Syracuse University a more welcoming place for blacks.  Quite the contrary, she made it a more hostile place in that most whites have become increasingly more weary of trusting blacks.

She fanned the flames of hostility; and I regard this as unforgivable.  For anyone who thinks that I am exaggerating here, I invite you to point to the moral difference between Brawley falsely accusing several white men of rape and the Chancellor falsely accusing the entire Syracuse University of community of being racist on account of the Hill-TV fiasco.

If the wrong committed ain’t a rape or a lynching, then do not try to turn to turn it into such with a host of verbal metaphors that invite such a conception of the wrong.  For this does two morally unacceptable things at once.  On the one hand, it denies the moral progress that has been made.  On the other, it sullies the moral character of the innocent.  There can never be a justification for doing either.

The hyperbolic exaggeration of the least harm has cast a horrendous pall of ill-will over the climate of America.  What is gained in the short-run, namely public acts of self-flagellation and out of court monetary settlements, will be lost in the long-run, namely a deep sense of trust and good will.  This is the foresight problem that I spoke about in an earlier blog-entry on Tocqueville.  And America is losing that battle in spades.

________________

*This blog-entry was prompted by an email that I received regading the blog-entry, ”Moral Pain and Moral Blame” that was posted Friday, 7 July.