Moral Health

Of all the charges leveled against me at Syracuse University, the charge that I am arrogant is the one that intrigues me the most.  Some students have accused me of being arrogant; and of late, a few of colleagues in the Philosophy Department at Syracuse University have also accused me of being arrogant.  Of course, defending oneself against the charge of arrogance can almost seem to be self-defeating.  But just as one can rightly defend oneself against the charge of being mean-spirited or inconsiderate or selfish, it seems to me that one can also rightly defend oneself against the charge of being arrogant.

When I think of the arrogant, I think people who have a propensity for drawing attention to their accomplishments or people who are always reminding the other of (what they take to be their superior knowledge.

The arrogant are not to be confused with an individual who is justifiably self-confident.  The self-confident individual knows what her or his abilities (and limitations) are and, moreover, the individual generally knows how to bring those abilities into play at the right time.  We want a self-confident physician, but not an arrogant one.  We want a self-confident pilot, but not an arrogant one.  And so on.  Self-confidence is good; arrogance is bad.

What is particularly striking about the arrogant is the extent to which they are indifferent to their overshadowing others.  The arrogant seem not to care that someone else was trying to get in a word.

What is fascinating in all of this is that whether a person comes across as arrogant or self-confident is not exactly a simple matter.  We can have two equally talented people and yet one comes across as no more than self-confident whereas the other comes across as arrogant.  And the explanation for this, surprisingly, has something to do with our expectations.

There is a very straightforward sense in which we expect more from someone whom we take to be smart than from someone whom we take to be far less smart.  The smart person will be often thought to have lots of interesting thoughts about lots of things, whereas the far less smart person will be often regarded as being out of her or his league about lots of things.  So, for example, we might expect the distinguished literary scholar to have an interesting reflection regarding evolutionary biology, but not the stereotypical factory worker.  So it is, although neither person has done research in the area of evolutionary biology.

Of course, we might learn that the factory worker is not so stereotypical after all.  The reality, though, is that at the outset most of us will have lower expectations of the factory worker than we will have of the literary scholar.

So, the judgment with respect to arrogance or self-confidence is not as independent of the social image that we have of the person as most of us would like to think.  Of course, it can turn out that even someone whom we rightly regard as tremendously talented can also be arrogant.  This truth, though, does not change the reality that the social image that we have of a person typically has a bearing upon whether we judge the person to be arrogant or self-confident.

Now, of course, what surely follows from the above considerations is the simple truth that we can be mistaken in our assessment that a person is arrogant.  The “problem” with the stereotypical factory worker, who has done much to learn about evolutionary theory, is not that he is arrogant, but that she or he does not fit our image of what the typical factory worker knows.  That is, our stereotypical factory worker is not stereotypical at all.

Alas, I would venture to say that it is the rare professor who has not made a wrongful judgment of arrogance merely because a person’s background does not have the characteristic trappings of scholarship.

If the above remarks are right, then it is easy enough to imagine that from all directions ethnicity can be a factor in the mistaken judgment that a person is arrogant.  As is character of my style, let me start with the unusual case.

In my Philosophy 191 class recently, one of the most conservative-looking white guys that one could every lay two eyes upon remarked that abortion is a form of genocide against blacks.  People were struggling to keep their eyes in their eye-sockets as they heard those words rolling off his lips.

Now, let us imagine that this very same white guy has a black singing voice of the 50-Cent genre, contrary to his speaking voice.  Were he to tell people that he can sing like the black rapper 50-Cent, everyone in-the-know would laugh at him, be they black or white or whatever.  They would think of him as arrogant bordering on sheer foolhardiness.  Alas, they would be wrong.  By contrast, If a black were to claim that he could sing like 50-Cent that claim would have, at the very outset, an initial plausibility to it, unless one already knows that the black cannot sing.

Lisa Stansfield provides us with an actual case in point.  All sorts of people were stunned to learn that the singer of the 90s smash hit“All Around the World” is white rather than black.  And she is English, too.

The very poignant point, of course, is that even near the very end of the 20th Century, we still are influenced by ethnicity in terms of what sorts of talents we think that a person might have.  So it is whether we are white or black or Asian or Arabic or whatever.

If that is so, then it would be stunning if ethnicity did not still have some influence upon what we take the intellectual talents of a person to be.  Thus, when we think physics, for example, a black face is not the first image that comes to mind, although there is in actuality a National Society of Black Physicists.  By contrast, the face of an Asian would not faze us in the least.  About 20 years ago, I published an essay entitled “Rationality and Affectivity: The Metaphysics of the Moral Self”; and upon meeting a professional philosopher who very much admired the essay, the person remarked: “It would not have occurred to me to think that you are black”.

If the person’s remarks are any indication of things, it is safe to say that our perception of philosophy is much more like our perception of physics than not, although obviously physics requires a command of mathematics that is not required of philosophy (except in a few subfields of the discipline).  I have subsequently learnt from others that the primary focus of my research is race theory.  Have I written about race?  Absolutely!  But so has Ronald Dworkin; and no one thinks for a moment that race theory is the primary focus of his research.  I written much about friendship and forgiveness and the structure of evil.

As for the relevance of the black experience to philosophy, what I think is that there are fascinating ways in which the black experience can be extremely philosophically illuminating.  And that was the central point of “Upside-Down Equality: A Response Kantian Thought” — and not at all the character and structure of racism.   Interestingly, what I argued in the essay is that whites in South Africa have an understanding about equality generally that few individuals, be they black or white, in Europe and North American can grasp.

Putting these considerations together, perhaps one reason why a few of my colleagues think that I am arrogant may have more to do with their conception of the ethnicity of who should be a successful philosopher and, in particular, who should be a successful philosopher in the Syracuse University Department of Philosophy.  For just as in this blog-entry I have only drawn attention to two essays that I have published (and my blog-entries generally are not about my publications and accomplishments), I say next to nothing to my colleagues about the things that I have done professionally.  Indeed, I am not around them enough to do so.

Alas, when I arrived at Syracuse University Philosophy Department, the most successful of philosophers by far were all white: William Alston, Jonathan Bennett, and Peter Van Inwagen.  It is simply false nowadays that the most successful of philosophers in the Department by far are all white.  And that, I suspect, is a reality that no one saw coming.  Significantly, this could be a more disturbing truth to some old-timers than is the truth that the Philosophy Department no longer has the stature it once had.

The very idea that killing one’s son could be an honor because the son is gay is profoundly disturbing and rather difficult to fathom.  Yet, it appears that this is what Yahya Yildiz did to his son, Yamet Yildiz.  In the name of family honor and the honor of Islam, Yahya killed his son Yamet who, it would appear, was a quite talented young man in one of the most difficult of all fields, namely physics.  In terms of honor killing generally and, in particular, the honor killing of gays, Islam stands alone among the three monotheistic religions.

While many in traditional Christianity regard homosexuality as a sin, Christianity has never counseled killing gays; and there has been no practice of killing of gays as a form of honor among Christians.  The same holds for Judaism.  Indeed, it is very difficult to cite a passage from either the Old or the New Testament that would warrant the idea that killing gays is justified in the name of honor.  Thus, in this regard Islam stands alone among the three monotheistic religions.

It is often pointed out by defenders of Islam that it is a religion of peace.  I shall not debate that claim.  It suffices that many adherents of Islam have found a way to justify honor killing in the name of Islam—so much so that honor killings of some form or the other have been widely practiced in Islamic countries.  It will be remembered that there were honor killings of gays in Iraq.

Consider the following words from Surah 1 of the Quran:

190. Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors.

191. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.

The proper context for the above words may very well be that when Islam has been and is under attack.  Alas, what we know about human beings generally is that they are able to be very creative in extending the applicability of a passage if that is what they want to do.  Indeed, while the Quran itself never mentions suicide killers, any number of imams have a found a way of justifying such behavior in the name of Islam itself.  This is made abundantly clear by Farhad Khosrokhavar’s book, Allah’s New Martyrs.

Now, the Left can see that wrong of Christianity in just about any objectionable behavior that takes place, even when it is not common practice among Christians to commit such behavior and even when in fact Christians generally object to such behavior.

As we know, abortion-clinics have been bombed and doctors who perform abortions have been murdered by so-called radical Christians.  Many on the Left are quick to blame Christianity in general, notwithstanding the fact that it is not remotely plausible to construe Christianity as condoning such a thing and notwithstanding the fact that any person who does such a thing is part of a very fringe Christian group of the obnoxious Westboro Baptist Church variety.

The point here is this: Although honor killings—including the honor killing of gays—have considerable standing in Islamic countries, and nothing of the sort holds for countries throughout the world where Christianity dominates, the Left does not bother to criticize this aspect of Islam at all.  Quite the contrary, the Left seems to have a fetish for blaming George Bush for anything about the United States that they do not like rather than have the honesty to admit that there are some egregious forms of social injustice in the world that have nothing whatsoever to do with any ineptitude on the part of Bush.

President Barrack Obama seems to think that the United States has been so wrongheaded about so much that he needs to issue apologies for America to people all around the world.  Yet, he cannot seem to find a way to express his concern about the truly oppressive practices that prevail in Islamic countries and which are done in the name of Islam even if, alas, it turns out that strictly speaking the Quran itself does not license those practices.  It is in fact rather difficult to imagine George Bush being that intellectually agile with words.  Not so with Obama, however; for he is easily one of the most gifted speakers that America has seen in years.

It is equally disconcerting that Nancy Pelosi does not seem have anything to say about some of the horrific practices of Islam.  Then, too, where is Oprah Winfrey?  Nor have we heard anything from Hollywood.

The horror over the torture and killing of the gay student Matthew Shepard (1998) almost transmogrified into a day of national morning.  Surely, the Left does not think that the life of a citizen of the United States has greater moral worth than the life of a citizen of Turkey.  And consistency requires holding that if the United States is morally obnoxious in its failure to be fully accepting of gays, then the same moral assessment holds for any other country, be it Islamic or Christian or Jewish.  That is, in order for the Left to criticize Islam, it would have to acknowledge that there is indeed an objective morality; and that right and wrong is not just about who can yell the loudest or get the most votes.  The Left does not have the courage to do that; and Islamic radicals are counting upon that very reality.

Honor killings will continue in Islamic countries.  Likewise, the Left will continue to find a way to ignore that reality.

If there is one thing more than any that convinces me that President Barrack Obama is a hypocrite of major proportions, at least about some matters, it is the difference in treatment that Obama accorded Henry Louis Gates, on the one hand, and Kenneth Gladney, on the other.  If, as President Obama claimed, the run-in that Gates had with a white police officer is a reminder that America still has a ways to go in the matter of race relations, then what happened to Gladney is surely no less of a reminder that America still has a ways to go in the matter of race relations, albeit from a very different perspecvtive.

Whatever else freedom is about, it is about people having the right to their own views and a right to speak their views publicly in a non-violent way.  Yet, it is precisely that right that Kenneth Gladney was denied or, in case, attacked for exercising.  Indeed, he was attacked by numerous members of the group SEIU (Service Employee International Union).  It was considered unseemly for a Kenneth Gladney to demonstrate with Tea Party of individuals concerning government spending under the Obama administration.  Why?  Because Kenneth Gladney is a black man.  And the argument, I suppose, is that a black man is not supposed to be opposed to anything that Obama does, since Obama is America’s first black president.

Words cannot begin to do justice to how morally obnoxious the line of reasoning is here.  Surely, the thought cannot possibly be that the enslavement of blacks by blacks is superior to the slavery of blacks by whites.  Surely, it is not morally objectionable for whites to insist that all blacks think a certain way, but morally admirable for blacks to insist that blacks think a certain way.

To be sure, I understand the morally objectionable status of the Uncle Tom.  But when it comes to preventing someone from being an Uncle Tom, surely a morally decent white is as obligated to do so as is a morally decent black.  So it is, although a white and a black might take different strategies in their endeavor to prevent someone from being an Uncle Tom.  But then two blacks might very well need to take different strategies as well.  An extremely well-off black would probably not take the same approach as a very poor black.

But, to begin with, it is just so much nonsense to suppose that a black is an Uncle Tom merely in virtue of the fact she or he disagrees with President Obama’s spending policies, and publicly takes a stand against Obama.  That is rather like holding the utterly ridiculous view that any black (female or male) who marries or even becomes deep friends with a non-black is thereby self-hating.

If Obama’s economic policies undermine the financial stability of the United States, then Americans of every race, religion, and so forth will be worse-off, including—dare I say it—black Americans.  And one does not have to be a self-hating black to think that there are very serious problems with Obama’s economic policies.  Obama is contributing mightily to the debt that the United States owes to China.  Anyone who exercises a modicum of commonsense can see that this is a problem.

At the risk of saying something utterly obvious, but which nonetheless appears to be sufficiently sublime: Obama is not automatically right about economics or anything else simply in virtue of the fact that he is the first black president of the United States.

This brings me back to the contrast between how Obama responded to the Gates matter, on the one hand, and how Obama responded to the Gladney matter, on the other.  What I should like to know is why didn’t Gladney also get an invitation to the white house?  This would have been a wonderful opportunity for Obama to showcase the American ideal of free speech and respectful disagreement.

After all, who in fact was treated more disrespectfully: Gates who was asked by a white police offer for identification with respect to the home that he (Gates) was trying to enter without keys or Gladney who was beaten by several black members of SEIU for publicly expressing his opposition to Obama’s economic policies?

Gladney was exercising his constitutional right in the way that this has been done down through the ages.  What exactly was Gates doing over and above exhibiting a way too easily bruised ego?

If Obama had not made the gesture of inviting Gates to the White House, it would never have occurred to me to think that Obama should also have invited Gladney to the White House.  But Obama did the first to draw attention to the persistence of racism in America.

Well, nothing will ever convince me that Obama was unable to see the importance of affirming the freedom of blacks to disagree with one another—and even to disagree with a black president.  This would have been a way in which Obama could have affirmed the standing of all blacks—nay, all Americans‑‑by affirming Gladney’s right to disagree with even America’s first black president.  That simple gesture would have given race a transcendent quality that is rarely seen in politics.  The gesture would have been a way of taking a black person seriously that would have affirmed the equality of all to be reflective individuals.

Among other things, the gesture would have signaled to the media that a more fair-minded approach to news reporting is in order; and that would have gained Obama lots and lots of points across the board.

Alas, what we know is that President Obama did not take the opportunity to affirm Gladney in this way.  And Obama is too smart and too perceptive not to have appreciated the point.  This is why in the end I hold that Obama is rather hypocritical regarding the equality of blacks in America.  He is much more worried about his office than the equality of blacks in America.  Thus, it is much more important to him that blacks in the United States go around acting like lemmings in unthinkingly fawning over the fact that he, Obama, is America’s first black president than that blacks should be reflective things for themselves regarding what he (Obama) is doing for the country.  And the proof par excellence of Obama’s indifference to reflective blacks who might take issue with him is none other than the fact that Obama somehow managed to miss the story of Kenneth Gladney.

It is reported that those blacks who attacked Gladney called him a “nigger”.  Well, by his obliviousness to the Gladney matter, it turns out that in so many unspoken words President Barrack Obama has paid Kenney Gladney exactly the same “compliment”.

Cheryl Roberts of Wales is one of my heroines.  I have never met her; and I do not suppose that I ever shall.  She is one of my heroes because she unquestionably did the right thing, although this involved entrapping her husband.  No lack of will on her part; no excuses on her part; no ambivalence on her part.  Upon suspecting that her husband was using chat rooms to lure young under-aged teenage girls into having sex, Ms. Roberts set out to entrap her husband.

As I remarked in the blog-entry regarding Nidal Hasen, there are some things that are unmistakably clear.  Unless an adult is part of squat team to entrap those who prey on children (as with To Catch a Predator), an adult has no business whatsoever in a chat room for children.  And it is this simple truth that animated Cheryl Roberts with regard to the behavior of her husband David Roberts.

Upon suspecting that he was entering chat rooms for under-aged teenage girls, she used a different computer and entered the same chat room, pretending to be a 14-year old girl.  And you guessed it: Cheryl’s husband took the bait, showing nude pictures of himself to the presumed 14 year old girl (who in fact was none other than his wife).

Cheryl Roberts is to be commended for the extraordinary presence of mind that she displayed from the moment she suspected her husband of inappropriate behavior to the end of the matter in the court room, where her husband was sentenced.

Her behavior reminds of a most fundamental moral truth that goes against the present-day mindset.  It is commonly said that love is blind, where the claim that one loves a person becomes nothing more than an excuse to tolerate wrongdoing on the part of that individual.  There is even a song with the lyrics “Love is Blind”.

Quite simply, tolerating immoral behavior is not a sign of love at all.  Rather, it is a sign unabashed cowardliness.  The best way to see this is by noting that the love of another cannot possibly be understood as an excuse to tolerate that person’s harming another.  Whatever else is true, I cannot be a morally decent person and at the same time give the person whom I love permission to harm others.

It is precisely this sort of clarity and moral will that Cheryl Roberts brought to her assessment of her husband’s behavior—a man to whom she had been married for 20 years and with whom she had 2 children.

What is lost on many now days is that being a decent and caring person is nonetheless compatible with there being lines in the sand that one draws.  There are times when indeed we can be helpful and supportive.  The spouse or friend who drinks too much would be an excellent case in point.  Notice, though, that drinking too much is not a wrong that is formally tied to wronging another person.

Of course, in this complicated world, taking a stand against wrongdoing is enormously compounded by a wealth of legalities which could end up making an individual worse-off for trying to do what is right in reporting a wrongdoer.  Indeed, without putting ourselves at risk, we are typically not in the position to obtain direct evidence that a person is doing or has done something wrong.  But even in these instances, we most certainly can end our association with a person.

Fortunately, Ms. Cheryl Roberts did not have to put herself at risk at all.  She needed only to use another computer in order to enter the chat room for young under-aged teenagers that her husband was entering.  Alas, it is her determination to entrap her husband and then to use the evidence against him that tells that she is indeed a woman of extraordinary character.

One might very well ask: Why did not Ms. Cheryl Roberts stay with her husband and try help him to heal from his sickness?  For she could have first approached her husband about the matter.  Now, not only might that move have put her in danger, since he might have threatened her, but it is also the case that talking to her husband about the matter would have certainly resulted in her being subject to tearful pleas from him: “Oh please, honey, don’t do that.  I promise you I won’t ever again enter a chat room for young under-aged teenage girls again”.  Even the most determined person can be moved by tearful pleas.

Thus, what so marvelously impressed me about Ms. Cheryl Roberts is that she entirely circumvented that sort of scenario by going straight to the law enforcement officers and presenting them with the evidence that she had obtained.  It is this move that tells us that she is a person of enormous character.  She knew what she had to do and she flawless accomplished that task, without in any way making herself vulnerable to pleas from her husband, or even to threats from him.  It is this kind of clarity and moral resolve that one rarely sees nowadays.

If more people in the world had the kind of moral clarity and moral resolve that Ms. Cheryl Roberts has the world would undoubtedly be a much better place.  And this is so on two accounts.  For one thing, lots more wrongdoing would be reported.  For another, the moral climate of societies would be significantly better.

When I think of wrongdoing, I am struck by the fact that what contributes to the thriving of wrongful behavior is the silence of so many.  Most people in the Old South never lynched anyone.  Alas, what is true is that those who participated in lynching could count upon the silence of those who never lift a finger to lynch anyone.

Ms. Cheryl Roberts is my hero because she did not remain silent when she could so very easily have taken that path.  She took a stand against the man whom she married and with whom she had two children.  If every priest who know about the sexual abuse that was going on in the Catholic Church had taken a stand against those priests who were committing that horror, it is safe to say that hundreds, if not thousands, of young boys would not been sexually abused.

Silence is one form that the fertile soil for evil deeds takes.  Ms. Cheryl Roberts is a most wonderful reminder of the good that we can do if only we refuse to be silent in the face of evil.  Most of us are not likely to catch someone doing wrong in the way that Ms. Roberts did.  But in the face of wrongdoing, we all have options.  And one of those options to end ties with those who do what is wrong.  And doing that is also a display of moral resolve.

For this very moment, and may there be many more: Ms. Cheryl Roberts is the poster child for exhibiting moral clarity and exercising moral resolve.  May the blessings of God be with her.

If one wanted an indisputable indication that the United States of America will not survive, the answer comes from the response to a very simple question: Who owns America?  China is an answer that comes quickly to mind.  But it would not matter whether the response is China or Egypt or Australia or any other country.  The simple point is that the U.S. is deeply in debt; and it is other countries, primarily China and Japan, who are holding that debt.  But folks in politics, including Obama himself, are proceeding as if this extraordinary debt were not a reality at all.

Indeed, we seem to be more worried about political correctness than pursing our economic good of not being so very financially dependent upon China and Japan.  So, there are all sort of silly explanations for why no one thought it odd that Nidal Malik Hasan was contacting the terrorist group Al-Qaeda.  Indeed, I have heard it said that “Diversity is the military’s greatest strength”.  To me, that is rather like saying that when it comes to the pilot of commercial jets, we should strive for diversity rather than competency.

The more general point, though, is that something has gone terribly wrong when we bend over backwards to be politically correct all the while drowning in a sea of debt.

Alas, the absurdness of political correctness may speak to what is indeed the problem.  We as a nation have mastered the art of overlooking the absolute obvious.  We have become geniuses at doing so.  And it is that simple reality that bespeaks our downfall.

Before anyone should think to call me a pessimist, let me note the following: If I am on a jet and I see that one of the engines has just fallen off, it is not pessimism—but good old fashion realism—that warrants my assessment that the flight I am on is in big, big trouble.

Tuning our focus upon the United States again, my claim is that we have mastered the art of overlooking the obvious.  Hasan is one example.  Here is another one.  Jesse Jackson has implied that Arthur Davis is an Uncle Tom because Davis did not vote for the healthcare bill.  Needless to say, the healthcare bill does not even come close to being a piece of civil rights legislation.  The bill does not accord blacks a benefit in society that all other members of the society already have.  There are poor whites and poor blacks and poor Asians and so on.  In voting against the healthcare bill, Davis was voting against the way in which all of these individuals would benefit from the bill.

How did Jackson miss the obvious: If one thinks that no one should benefit in a certain kind of way, well guess what: It follows that one also thinks that not even blacks should benefit in that way.  How does that line of thinking on the part of a black make the black anything remotely resembling an Uncle Tom?  Jackson could even think that Davis is reasoning foolishly about matters.  However, reasoning foolishly hardly make one an Uncle Tom.

From the very outset, I have held that the change that so many have hoped that President Barack Obama would put in place could come about only if there was a spirit of cooperation on the part of the members of society.  This means something unbelievably simple, namely that positive change is not going to happen as long as groups remain single-minded in the pursuit of their own special interests.  Change was simply not going to happen all by itself.

This point brings me back to the enormous debt that the United States has.  It does not take genius to see that if every special interest group sacrificed merely a little something, then the collective sacrifice would make an enormous difference in terms of bringing down America’s enormous debt.  Yet, this ever so obvious point is one that so few individuals seem to grasp.  In particular, President Barack Obama is not making this point.  Or, more generally, he is not leading by example.

The protests by primarily students in California over the Regent’s decision to increase tuition stand as a truly striking illustration of the point that I am making.  As we all know, California is on the brink of going under financially. As I watched the protesters on television, I thought to myself “Who, on their view, should make any sacrifices to keep the state from going under financially?”  And so rather like a nation of lemmings, the way too many U.S. citizens are proceeding along as if America’s extraordinary national debt were quite insignificant.

What is astonishing to me is that a man who is indeed a truly gifted speaker, namely President Barack Obama, is not using the California financial crisis as an opportunity to make a John F. Kennedy-like call upon Americans generally to sacrifice something for the good of the country.  This is the same man who found time to intervene on behalf of Henry Louis Gates.

Let me conclude by tying a number of points together.  Like all skills, the capacity for rational reflection is sustained only if rational reflection is something in which we regularly engage.   With the ascendency of political correctness rational reflection began to diminish; for there is something akin to a direct correlation between the rise of political correctness and the decline of rational reflection.  And zero-tolerance is but the sibling of political correctness.  In both cases, the very relevant particulars of the circumstances are made irrelevant to an utterly eviscerated conception of equality.

We cannot publicly sanctify this way of thinking without rendering ourselves masters at not taking into account what is actually relevant to the reality of our lives.  The seeming indifference that most Americans have to the national debt is an example par excellence of way too many Americans doing just that, namely failing to grasp that the national debt is in effect an ever tightening noose around the neck of the United States.  Grasping this truth does not require being an economist, let alone a Nobel Prize winner in economics.  All that one needs in order to see the undeniable horror of America’s debt is what used to pass for none other than common sense.  But, alas, the rumor would appear to be true, namely that common sense is dead.

It is ironic that a nation that found the morally commendable will to end slavery should turn out to lack the will to end its own economic demise.

This United States will surely flounder as a nation given the present non-sense with regard to political correctness.  If we find a kiddy-porn magazine in a person’s home, then that individual is open to suspicion whether the person is Jewish or Muslim or black or white or Asian or Latino or whatever.  Of course, it could turn out that the magazine is there because the person just took it away from another family member.  The point, obviously, is that the onus is very much on the person (in whose home the kiddy-porn magazine is found) to proffer an excusable explanation for the magazine being there.  That is possible, but certainly immediate suspicion is absolutely warranted.

We get a different kind of suspicion if we find blood on a butcher knife that a person has in his home and we know that the individual is a vegetarian who does not hunt animals.  Again, it is a suspicion that can be properly addressed.  But, once more, only a fool would not have immediate concern.

Contacting Al-Qaeda is surely an analogous case in which immediate suspicion is warranted—suspicion that may be properly addressed given the appropriate explanation.  However, it is just plain silly to suppose that if the person is a Muslim soldier, as in the case of Nidal Malik Hasan, then any such suspicion constitutes some form of bias against Muslims.  Why?  Because precisely what we know is that Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization—an organization committed to using killing others as a means of advancing its ends.

I do not think for a moment that all American Muslim are would-be murderers or disloyal United States citizens.  I have Muslim colleagues and Muslim students; and, quite frankly, it is easier to think that I might get drunk (and so far that has never happened) than it is to think that these individuals are would-be murderers or disloyal United States citizens.  But then it is also the case that I cannot imagine any of these individuals contacting Al-Qaeda.

Alas, the same holds for all the other individuals whom I take to be decent.  And guess what?  If anyone I know should contact Al-Qaeda, I would be immediately concerned unless I was given a very good explanation.  For instance, it is certainly reasonable to wonder how easy it is to make contact with an Al-Qaeda person; and I can imagine this being the research aim of an individual.

Perhaps the aim of Nidal Malik Hasan was just that.  However, there is virtually no reason at all to think that Hasan’s attempt to contact Al-Qaeda was research in the endeavor to see how easy Al-Qaeda could be contact.

Saying that America is a free country and that people have a right to contact whomever they please does not vitiate the point that in contacting certain kinds of individuals invite ever so reasonable concerns.  Even in a free country, adults in a chat-room for children invite reasonable concerns.  Alas, MSNBC’s Chris Mathews seems not to grasp this point—at least not with respect to contacting Al-Qaeda.  He asks: “What is wrong with contacting Al-Qaeda?”

Asking what is wrong with contacting Al-Qaeda is rather like asking what is wrong with an adult going into chat-rooms for children.  If one has a damn good reason, then the answer is: Nothing.  In either case, though, it takes quite a bit to have a reason that warrants such behavior.  In the case of chat-rooms for children one could be out to catch child predators.  In the case of Al-Qaeda, one could be out to catch a key enemy figure and being Muslim gives one an advantage in that regard.  Well, it simply cannot be said that Nasen has this motivation for contacting Al-Qaeda.

I understand, of course, that there can be truly objectionable attitudes towards Muslims.  Truth be told, however, there can be objectionable attitudes towards the members of any group.  The minority person who thinks that all whites are racist has just as much of an objectionable attitude as someone who, for example, thinks that all Jews are cheap.

What is more, I am prepared to say that there is indeed something to be said for giving individuals the benefit of the doubt.  Alas, that does depends on what the stakes are.  I am prepared to give a person the benefit of the doubt if she or he is in, for example, the adult section of Craigslist; for I assume (as I have never been there) that the adult section is not just about finding sexual liaisons.

No less true, however, is that some actions do not warrant the benefit of the doubt.  If the kiddy-porn magazine that Opidopo has in his home is one that he just took away from his father, then that magazine really needs to be gone within the next day or so.  This is because such a magazine is so morally repulsive that there is no room for a person to be indifferent to the fact that it is in her or his home.

Given what Al-Qaeda is about, trying to contact those involved in the group is not at all like trying to contact an organization involved in saving the whales or an organization like Habitat for Humanity or even an organization that promotes drinking beer for health.  I am skeptical about the idea of beer as a means to health.  But freedom is indeed about the right to make stupid choices.  It is certainly about the right to determine whether a given option is stupid or not.

The idea of Muslims serving in a branch of the American military no more concerns me than does the idea of Italian born and raised persons working as pilots for an American airline.  In the case of the pilots, I require simply that they be fluent in English.  Anything less than fluency is unacceptable.  And for any person serving in a branch of the American military, I require considerable loyalty to America.  Anything less is unacceptable.

In the absence of some form of authorized research, any military person contacting Al-Qaeda would be a cause for alarm.  If that person is Muslim, well: the reason for concern does not change one iota.  Far from being a form of bias against Muslims, what we have is none other than a manifest form of commonsense.  A disloyal soldier of any ethnic group is not fit to serve in the military.  And at this point in time, a military personnel who contacts Al-Qaeda of her or his own accord is as clear an indication as we could want that the person’s loyalty to American forces is very much suspect.

Insofar as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews cannot see this he is clearly a fool.  Worse, he is a morally dangerous person.

Trips down memory lane can be terribly boring.  After all, the times change.  Well, the murdering of a 4-year old by a 14-year old is most haunting reminder of this truth.  30 or 40 years ago—perhaps even more recently than that, the very idea of a 14-year old murdering a little child was entirely unthinkable.  And “murder” is the right word choice here, because the 14-year old drowned the 4-year old in the bathtub and then put the 4-year old in a the clothes dryer to conceal the dead child’s body.

This brings me to a set of morally beautiful reflections by Ben Stein, which he put forward this past summer on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary. Stein poignantly observes that we as a society keep wondering why today’s children are engaging in utterly appalling behavior while, at the very same, we do little if anything to reinforce the ideas of respect and decency.

The 14-year old about whom I began this essay had committed the wrong of sodomizing a 4-year old.  It was when the 4-year old threatened to tell his own mom that the 14-year old decided that it was best to kill the child.

What is interesting here is how quickly and methodically the 14-year went about doing this.  It is almost as if he had already had a plan in the event that things went wrong.  And this is where Ben Stein’s observations are strikingly relevant.

The very idea that people are not influenced by that to which they are repeatedly exposed is just so much nonsense, as the former McDonald’s commercial “You deserve a break to day” makes so abundantly clear”.  All sorts of people found themselves humming that tune.  And then there was Wendy’s 1984  commercial with the elderly lady asking “Where’s the beef?” Asking “Where’s the beef?” became a part of common parlance for awhile.  Clara Peller was the actor.

Needless to say, constant sex and violence on television most surely provides a subliminal moral blueprint for many a youth; and surely this is what happened with the 14-year old.  He did not have to think about what to because he had most certainly received a flood of subliminal message regarding how to dispose of living people who are “in the way” or who might get us in trouble by “telling on us”.

Notice, too, that in the name of loving our children, we as a society have taught children be completely disrespectful of their elders.  There was a time when any elderly person could have said to any teenager “Young lady/man don’t do that.  Behave yourself”.  And just about every teenager would have been respectful enough to comply at least while the elderly person was still present.  Nowadays, of course, an elderly person who dared utter such a remark to teenager would almost certainly be verbally assaulted—if not physically threatened.  Are we better off?  Surely not!

Memory Lane is not a virtue in and of itself.  Clearly, there is much about the past that we have rightly discarded.  But we know for certain that something has gone terribly wrong in a society when the young teenagers of that society are committing crimes which, once upon a time, only hardened criminals committed.

Ben Stein asks: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?  Whatever else is true, the idea of God reinforced the idea of reverence.  And while no world of humans is perfect, an inescapable truth is that a world which takes reverence seriously will automatically be a better world than one which does not take reverence seriously.  And if there is no God, the current trajectory would suggest that we are better off with the myth that there is one than with the reality that God does not exist and, therefore, anything goes.

The saying is that one reaps what one sows.  Modernity is fashioning a crucible of out which a basic disregard for human life is becoming the main ingredient that overflows into the crevices of human action.  An moral indifference that once upon a time took years of hardened experience to develop is now seamlessly fashioned by the moral vapidness of the things that we routinely valorize on a daily basis.

Let me conclude by putting the point as follows.  Between doing that which is ignoble and doing that which is noble, the lesson that society is unmistakable teaching the young is none other than the view that it is the ignoble deed that wins the audience and the ratings and the contracts.  To be sure, news reporters sometimes make mention of the noble deeds that this person and that person has done.  But it is extremely rare that these noble deeds are the deeds that make for a tremendous publicity splash.  No, it is the right sort of ignoble deed that does.

Against a relentless backdrop of valorizing ignoble behavior just about everywhere, is it really surprising that a 14-year old murdered a 4-year old by drowning the child?  I think not.

The surprise, if that is the word for it, is that any of continue to be surprised.

Saudi Arabia is crucifying a child rapist.  International Rights Groups think that Saudi Arabia is goning too far.  I, myself, wonder, from time to time, if it can be said that a person effectively defeats his claim to a right to life by the evil that he commits.  In Saudi Arabia the person who is being crucified is a person who raped not 1 but 5 children; and he left 1 of those children in the desert to die.  The rapist is 22 years old.

Since reading the story—indeed, several versions of the story—I have asked myself over and over again: What in fact is so wrong with putting to death this rapist of 5 children?  In what sense is killing him barbaric or an instance of lowering ourselves to his despicable immoral level?  For one thing, we are not talking about someone who merely committed a robbery, which in and of itself is no trivial thing.  Nor again are we talking about the raping of an adult.  While there is nothing at all acceptable about raping an adult person, there are nonetheless numerous reasons for holding that raping a child is even worse.  Raping a child is to take an act which is already utterly despicable, namely rape, and to render that very despicable act even more heinous.

So what exactly is so wrong with putting to death this rapist of 5 children?  Well, the argument cannot be that if killing is wrong, then it is wrong no matter what.  Certainly, no one really accepts that line of thought, as the case of self-defense makes abundantly clear.  Few, if any, think that we may not kill in self-defense.

The principle we hold, then, is not simply that killing is wrong, but rather that the killing of innocent people is wrong.  Now some wrongs reveal none other than a flagrant disrespect for life.  More to the point, the wrongs would not be committed but for the fact that the individual committing them has a complete disregard for the victim’s humanity.  Just as there can be a measure of justice among thieves, it is possible for even a hardened criminal to reveal some sensitivity to the humanity of the person he is wronging.  There are worse and worse and yet worse ways to what is unquestionably wrong.

The death penalty for a mere robbery makes no sense to me.  But anyone who cannot see the vast moral difference between a mere robbery, on the one hand, and the raping of 5 children, on the other, surely has fundamental moral and psychological problems.

If it is obvious that this 22-year old rapist of 5 children deserves as sentence of life in prison, then there is the following question that presents itself: Why should taxpayers bear the costs of maintaining such a person in prison until he dies?  Exactly how does the argument go that respect for life requires this of society?  And how exactly does the argument go that a person deserves to be kept alive no matter how heinous the wrong is that he committed.

In a marvelous essay entitled Lettre ouverte aux Américains pour l’abolition de la peine de mort by Benjamin Menasce and Michel Taube, the issue of the arbitrary and unequal application of the death penalty in the United States is very poignantly raised.  No state-backed punishment should be applied arbitrary and unequally; and no do doubt this applies above all to the death penalty.

So if the law is that anyone who has raped 5 children should be put to death, and this is law is applied in a non-arbitrary manner, what exactly would be wrong with putting such individuals to death?  In what way would not putting such individuals to death serve to underwrite respect for human life?

We already know from the case of self-defense that not any instance of killing constitutes having disrespect for life.  And surely we can move beyond self-defense in this regard.  Imagine that someone is brutally attacking your dear old beloved grandmother; and either you kill the attacker or watch your dear old beloved grandmother be killed by that person.  Is there really anyone who would not kill the attacker in order to save the life of her or his dear old grandmother?  I really do not think so.  Is there anyone who thinks that killing the attacker would constitute a lack of respect for human life?  Again: I do not think so.  Yet, what we have in this instance of killing the attacker in order to save the life of grandmother is surely not a case of self-defense.

So when we have someone who has raped 5 children and left one in the desert to die, how exactly is disrespect for life being shown merely in virtue of putting that person to death?  Why, indeed, is it not the other way around?  Just how much life is respected is being shown by putting to death the rapist of 5 children?  Why?  Because the damage which that person has done to the children, at least collectively, is so heinous that keeping that person alive might very well be construed as diminishing the moral worth of the children.

Whatever else is true, equal respect for all human life cannot possibly mean that we treat all human life in the same way, as the case of punishment alone shows.  Is the following thesis indefensible?  An individual can show such a disregard for life that no money whatsoever should be spent keeping person alive.  This might hold particularly for repeated offensives of a certain kind.  Indeed, this might hold only for repeated instances of a certain kind.

For me, raping 5 children readily crosses that moral threshold.  Human Rights Groups correctly point out that, for instance, putting someone to death for robbery or even cutting off the person’s hands constitutes a disrespect for human life.  And it is plausible to argue that crucifixion does too, since that constitutes making a public display out of the punishment of death—perhaps even a form of amusement.

So, while I disagree with decision in Saudi Arabia to crucify the man who raped 5 children, I can see no good reason at all why putting him to death is not morally acceptable vis-à-vis keeping him alive in prison until he dies.  Many have asserted, but no one has shown, that respect for life requires keeping a person alive no matter how heinous a crime she or he has committed.