Moral Health

Mort Zuckerman offers a spot-on analysis of Barack Obama, who has fallen so low from such extraordinary heights.  See Zuckerman’s brilliant assessment at The Daily Beast.  Zuckerman’s remarks are particularly poignant because he is among those who had such high hopes for Obama.  10 months ago, it seemed that the only thing right-wingers or Republicans could do was try to find fault with Obama or reveal themselves to be unwilling to accept the reality that winds of change had blown across America.

Yet, a year after one of the most extraordinary elections ever, Barack Obama seems to be a remarkably weak man—an individual utterly lacking in presidential timbre.  The issue, obviously, is not his intellectual ability.  He obviously surpasses many in that regard.  And not even his enemies can deny that he is manifestly more intellectually capable than his predecessor, George Bush.  This proves to be a quite riveting point; for it shows that sheer intellectual wherewithal does not suffice to make one a great president.

The most telling observation made by Zuckerman is that for all Obama’s talk about change, the simple reality is that the Obama administration has proven to be the billboard for business-as-usual.  Only someone in utter denial—delusional, even—can fail to see the depth of corruption that has occurred under the Barack Obama administration.

The question that so forcefully presents itself is the following: How can it be that the very person who campaigned for change, and who captured the hearts of many by ever so articulately offering the hope of change, can have such corruption in his very own administration?  This would be rather like me claiming that I do not tolerating cell phone use in the classroom, all the while ignoring the fact that someone is texting right before my very eyes.

It is simply not possible that Obama cannot see the extraordinary corruption that has occurred under his administration.  So, the fact that he has been indifferent to it for all practical purposes is most revealing about him.

Perhaps the most damaging criticism of Barack Obama is that, in the end, he is manifestly not a man of integrity.  This follows quite simply from the fact that he saw what he saw in terms of corruption in his own party and he did nothing at all about it.  Indeed, he did not so much as even pretend to be concerned about all the corruption going on around him.  Winning is all that mattered to him—not winning in the right way.

One might very well intone that this criticism holds of politicians in general.  Alas, it is Obama who so very effectively raised the mantle of change—so much so that the one-time presumed presidential nominee, Hilary Clinton, found herself quite overshadowed by him.  She represented the same-old-same-old.  Obama represented change.

This brings me to the second aspect of Obama’s character that is to his detriment, namely that he is so besotted with his own orator skills that he fails to appreciate when he is missing the mark with others.  That is, he is so convinced of his own thought that he does not know how to take seriously the reality that others are a very long ways from being convinced by him. A rather different way of putting the point might be that he does not know how to take criticism seriously.

Oddly enough, this may have something to do with his success as a black—but not in the way that one might suppose.  I do not doubt for a moment his intellectual abilities; and people, including his mentors, are rightly impressed.  But for a black of his intellectual ability, there is the danger of whites being so excited about having a black who is truly talented that they refrain from subjecting his views to the same level of criticism to which they would subject the views of an equally talented white individual.

There is a form of white liberalism in universities that does blacks a disservice by not fully engaging blacks at the critical level.  Some of this is may be owing to a fear of being seen as racist.  Some of this may be equally owing to taking such tremendous delight in the success of a talented black that the whites do not concern themselves offering the full range of criticisms that a person might normally encounter.

A striking example Obama not being nearly as reflective as he should is the way in which he handled the Henry Louis Gates matter.  One could easily enough agree with Obama that racism is hardly dead in the United States without thinking for a moment that the Gates scenario was a very vivid example of the persistence of racism.  The Gates case was fraught with difficulties that at the very least made it clear that racism was not the most salient factor, if a factor at all.  So it could not serve as an illustration of the very thing that Obama claim moved him, namely that racism is hardly dead in America.  Commonsense delivered this conclusion.  Or so it does if, that is, one is sufficiently self-reflective.

People thought that George Bush was a bumbling idiot.  The irony of ironies is that Obama is proving himself not to be much better than Bush in that regard.  Bush, so it would seem, lacks the raw intellectual talent.  Obama, by contrast, is not bringing his considerable intellectual powers to bear by being fully reflective and self-critical.  This makes Obama his own worst enemy.

Obama reminds me of expression that is from an era gone-by: “Too smart for one’s own good”.  Not in my life-time have I seen a man take the office of President of the United States with as much hope on the part of the citizens of America as Barack Obama did.  Likewise, never have I seen a person more oblivious to the very hope that he had inculcated.  And it takes a very morally vapid person to be indifferent to the very deep, deep hope on the part of that she or he has inculcated.  If Obama is not such a person, I see no evidence that he is not.

As Zuckerman notes, it is possible for Obama to wrestle victory from what appears to be the jaws of defeat.  And I hope that such a thing happens.  If I am right, though, that will happen only if Obama takes himself seriously enough to engage in reflective self-criticism and to act accordingly.  He cannot commit another Henry Louis Gates snafu.  Nor can he ignore egregious behavior among members of his own party that is contrary to the very ideals that he espoused and with which he so mobilized the public.  Painfully, it is not at all clear that Obama is strong enough to be that kind of person, his enormous intellectual ability to the contrary notwithstanding.  That is a shame.

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For the record: Unlike Zuckerman, I did not vote for Barack Obama.  In fact, I did not vote for any presidential candidate.



It is one of the great ironies of life that being the victim of egregious injustice is not a gateway or stepping stone to being a champion of justice.  Indeed, one of the most compelling and inspiring examples in modern history of people putting themselves on the line in order to save others from the hands of evil concerns a group of people who are not known for their suffering, namely the people of Le Chambon.

Known for standing up to the might of Hitler’s army in order to save the lives of thousands of Jews, the people of Le Chambon were ordinary folks with a strong religious faith.  That is the distinguishing feature of the people of Le Chambon—not some egregious set of injustices that all or most its denizens had endured.

By contrast, when we look around the world at those who have endured egregious injustices, what we do not find is anything resembling a groundswell of commitment to doing what is just.  The proof of this point is the very world in which we live.  On the one hand, just everyone claims to be a victim of some injustice or the other.  On the other hand, the very prevalence of injustice makes it manifestly clear that precious few victims of injustice are much concerned with eradicating injustice.  For if most victims of injustice privileged justice, then the world already approximate some of paradise.

Certainly, what one does not find are countless cases where victims of injustice have gone out of their way to help other victims of justice.  So it is whether we are talking about the black hood or neighborhoods of poor white trash.

Of course, there are stellar examples of people who have been victims of injustice and who went on to put themselves on the line to help others.  But those stellar examples are very few and far between.  For example, if all blacks were as committed to the realization of justice as Martin Luther King, Jr. was: well, the hood would have another name—the foothills of justice, say.  Other neighborhoods would be synonymous with EMC: enriched moral recycling.

The explanation for this paradox of suffering is no doubt extremely complicated.  But surely part of the explanation is that victims of injustice seem to be far more inclined to wallow in self-pity than to see the good that they can do.  And as the people of Le Chambon remind us: the difference that makes all the difference is not money, but will.

These reflections in turn underwrite a very profound Aristotelian insight to be found in Book II of his Nicomachean Ethics, namely that good begets good and evil begets evil.  The exceptions, alas, prove the rule.  One profoundly important moral of these reflections is the very poignant truth that nothing is more conducive to a just society and world than raising just children.  For history shows that it is those with just moorings—as opposed to those who know injustice first-hand—who are more likely to make the greater sacrifice for a more just world.

Can people be insane?  Absolutely.  But we surely have reason to be weary of insanity as an excuse for antisemitic acts.  Yet, France’s court—la Cour d’Appel—ruled on 5 January 2010 that, by reason of insanity, a young Muslim by the name of Adel Amastaibou is not guilty of murdering a French Jew by the name of Sebastien Selam.  Amastabaibou claimed the following: “I am content that he is dead, the Jew bastard, the dirty whore Jew, the dirty Jew . . . . I killed Sebastien as Allah wanted”.  Needless to say, the Court’s ruling is about as implausible as it would be to claim that all Muslims are children of Satan.

Hate is not a form of insanity.  The expression of hate is not a form of insanity.  And if there is anything that France’s Cour d’Appel should know, it is the two truths that I have just articulated.  The Court’s ruling is stupefying in light of (a) the two truths just articulated and (b) Adel Amastaibou’s behavior.  If mere hatred and its expression entailed insanity, then it would follow that the horrendous antisemitism of Nazi Germany is excusable by reason of insanity.  No one thinks that.  Not even France’s Cour d’Appel.

If Amastaibou were indeed insane, there would signs of it independent of his killing of Sabastien Salem.  And there are no such signs at all.  Amastaibou’s desire to kill Salem did not in any way interfere with Amastaibou’s daily activities or judgments about himself and others.  Indeed, there was not anything remotely self-destructive about his behavior.  So for instance there was no undue paranoia or suspicion of others on Amastaibou’s part.  Why, Amastaibou was not even under the delusion that Salem or some other “dirty Jew” wanted to kill him (Amastaibou).

Now, what is particularly disturbing about the Court’s ruling are the implications that it has for other horrendous forms of behavior.  If a so-called uncontrollable desire is all it takes to excuse a person from murder, then such a desire should also excuse child sexual abuse and a man’s rape of a woman.  After all, individuals who commit such acts are typically driven by very intense sexual desire.

Of course, it is just so much nonsense to say that such desires are uncontrollable.  Child sexual abusers never even attempt to abuse a child sexually right in plain sight of every one.  These abusers always exercise enough restraint to lure the child out of public view.  Likewise for those who commit rape.

I cannot imagine that the France’s Cour d’Appel would excuse child sexual abuse or rape in the absence of incontrovertible evidence of insanity.  This is why the Court’s excusing of Amastaibou’s behavior is so disconcerting and so utterly inexcusable and so very incomprehensible.  One can only wonder “What was the Court thinking?”

Equally disconcerting is the absence of public outcry.  In fact, France’s premiere newspaper, Le Monde, does not even report the ruling of the Cour d’Appel’s regarding Amastaibou.  A full search of the newspaper does not turn up a single entry; and this is with regard to a decision made by France’s highest court that was made 11 days ago—a decision that has enormous implications.  In fact, I came to learn of the Court’s decision by way of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the United States.  This would be rather like learning in France about a very important decision that had been rendered in the United States—say the Supreme Court’s decision against the death penalty in the case of child rape.

This brings me, finally, to the issue of antisemitism in France.  I hold a very simple view, namely that people generally do what they believe that they can get away with doing.  In the Old South, whites sometimes lynched blacks—in fact, even blacks sometimes lynched blacks (see p. 4 of my essay “Atrocities” in the Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience)—because, among other things, they knew that they could get away with doing so.  There would have been no lynching by anyone had everyone very good reason to believe that such behavior would be roundly reported to the local authorities and that there would be widespread protests against such behavior.

France has a very large Muslim population (about 10% of France’s 60 million people), and while no all Muslims dislike Jews, there most certainly is significant antisemitic sentiment among the Muslims in France.  The brutal murder in 2006 of young Jew by the name of Ilan Halimi stands as a most poignant reminder of that reality.  Halimi was murdered by Youssouf Fofona, a Muslim.

It is not paranoia at all to notice the following pattern.  A Muslim hates Jews and decides that killing this or that Jew would please Allah.  This was essentially the line of thought on the part of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Muslim who was apprehended during the Northwest flight to the United States on 25 December 2009.

Political correctness would have us—and no doubt the French—say that it is just as likely that a Jew or a Christian or a Buddhist might commit a senseless act of murder in the name of his or her religious beliefs as it is that a Muslim would.  The only problem with this politically correct point of view is that has no basis whatsoever in reality.  The issue is not whether all Muslims are would-be-terrorists.  Of course not.  That is a silly view.  I have taught a number of Muslim students; and it no more occurs to me to think that they are would-be-terrorists than it does to think that airplanes are submarines.

Just so, the reality is that with quite high frequency terrorists turn out to be Muslim.

The decision rendered by France’s Cour d’Appel reveals something that is most troubling, namely that whether we are in the air (travelling by airplane) or on the ground, we are all increasingly becoming hostages to terrorism—terrorism committed not just by anyone, but terrorism committed by Muslims in the name of Allah.  Once this simple truth is borne in mind, then it is so very easy to understand the decision by France’s Cour d’Appel that to claim that it is by reason of mental illness the Muslim Amastaibou is not guilty of murdering the Jew Selam.  Only someone who believes in the tooth fairy could think that decision by France’s Cour d’Appel had anything to do with Amastaibou’s lack of mental health.

Haiti versus the Tsunami of 2004.  Of course, there is no competition here.  We have two horrendous acts of nature that have ravaged the lives of so many human beings.  Yet, there is important difference between the Tsunami of 2004 and the earthquake in Haiti of 2010, namely that, increasingly, people think that corruption is so great that it is perhaps a mistake to send money to those who are desperately in need of help.  Why?  Because the thought on the part of many nowadays is that so much of the money will never reach the people who so very much in need of assistance.

In reading a discussion board of French people regarding whether or not individuals could be counted upon to offer any monetary assistance to the people of Haiti, I was struck by the number of people who said “No,” simply because they believe that so very much of the money would fail to reach the Haitian people.  And they cite as evidence the Tsunami of 2004.  Way too much of the money that people gave—and so very many people gave—failed to reach the victims of the Tsunami.

This extremely poignant truth bears considering.  For the observation here is not about Muslim being terrorists or Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being defiant, or North Korea making some insane move.  No, the observation decisively points a finger at the level of corruption that prevails throughout the world—a level of corruption so great that it prevents those desperately in need owing to a catastrophe from receiving the help that others have sacrificed so that in need could have some measure of sustenance.

What is more, the charge is not that the Left is corrupt, but not the Right.  Or that the Right is corrupt but not the Left.  A very general point is being made, namely that corruption prevails across the board, from politicians to associations whose very purpose, supposedly, is that helping those in need.

It is one thing to look the other way when an intoxicated individual asks for food.  It is quite another to refrain from helping those who clearly have been struck by a major natural disaster.

When associations and governments cannot be counted to help people struck by a natural disaster, then it is very, very clear that we have crisis in the world.  For there cannot be a more well-defined moment for people to set aside their differences and greed than in a situation when people have been struck by a major natural disaster.

So the depth of corruption in the face of tragedy tells us something most disturbing about the moral fiber of so many people in the world.

The question that we might naturally ask is: How did this happen?  The answer to that question might come from a Millard Fillmore cartoon that I received from a Mr. Plesser.  The cartoon as an elderly lady making the following remark:

I am finally starting to understand global interdependence.  When young Muslim men try to blow up airplanes . . . . I get stripped search.

In general, we have become so interested in appeasing those who might call us bigoted that we defy common sense in doing so.  Give me a society in which common sense flounders—and flounders mightily—and I will give you a society in which greed and corruption will manifest themselves in the face of the most horrific natural disasters.

It will be remembered that in the aftermath of Katrina looting was common.  Imagine how utterly and completely ineffective the Civil Rights marches would have been had looting been commonplace during that era.  Huge crowds of people came together and marched through streets; and yet not a store was looted.

A defining feature of common sense consists in being able to speak forthrightly—not to be confused with speaking maliciously.  Thus, common sense entailed being able to make criticisms: moral criticisms in some instances; intellectual criticisms in other instances.  Modernity has become increasingly reluctant to make either moral or intellectual criticisms—at least moral or intellectual criticisms that have any credibility.

Common sense was the back bone of a moral climate.  There were moral expectations that people had of one another and people were allowed to be public about those expectations.  There were moral criticisms that people rightly made of one another; accordingly, people understand the importance of making amends.  An example that illustrates both points at once would be the old value of a young man giving his place to an elderly woman.  People expected a young man to do so; and a young man who did not so behave could in fact be criticized.  Not nowadays, of course.

Needless to say, the absence of a moral climate constitutes the very fertile soil in which greed and corruption may take hold.

The Tsunami of 2004 stands as a watershed event.  We saw the greed and corruption there; and that affirmed what so many of already knew but did not want to believe, namely that nothing is off limits any more.  We now believe it.

Alas, the point of this essay is simple that greed that we saw in the midst of horrific natural disaster that was the Tsunami of 2004 had its genesis in a world that has lost common sense and so is therefore without a moral climate to speak of.  Six years later, in 2010, it is no longer possible to doubt this very simple truth.

Perhaps in this blog-entry I am merely capturing a reality that is personal: For both the Tsunami of 2004 and Katrina, I was immediately moved to give.  While I shall no doubt give in this instance as well, I am profoundly struck by the reality that the occurrence of horrible natural disaster in Haiti does not have the same emotional tug for me.  Nor do I sense it in those around me.

Showing a measure of respect for those who commit evil strikes me as a wonderful idea in principle but a horrendous idea in practice.  The real question, alas, is it possible for us to respond to evil behavior on the part of a group in precisely the way that the evil members deserve to be treated without becoming evil in turn?

Of course, in a basically just society an evil person here and there is easy enough to handle.  But a society full of individual people is a different matter entirely.

I am guided here by an insight from Plato’s Republic.  Punishment is as it should be only if a person will indeed be morally healed.  Increasingly, it seems to me that it is a mistake to think that punishment is worthwhile in and of itself.

If one supposes that the world would be a better place without evil people, then what exactly is gained by keeping such individuals in prison?  Of course, there is the issue of being mistaken.  And that is a reason to be extremely careful.  Interestingly, most of the mistakes seem to be tied to judgments based upon circumstantial evidence.  With lot and lots—indeed, the vast majority of cases—the judgment of wrongdoing is tied to concrete and irrefutable evidence.

When we have concrete and irrefutable evidence that a person has committed a horrendous crime, what is the point of keeping the person alive?  Why, as the European Union, is doing so a more humane thing to do?  Indeed, in what sense is keeping the person alive more humane?

The frequently made claim is that taking the life of an evil person who has destroyed the life of one more persons makes those who take that person’s life just as evil as that person is.  I have never understood that argument.  Indeed, precisely what the argument does is trivialize the very thing that is of the utmost importance to understanding human being, namely motivation.

Two people can perform the exact same act, but with very, very different motivations behind their doing so.  We all know that.  Indeed, the very thing that we want to know in many cases is not what a person did but why the person did what she or he did.

We cannot hold that motivations make all the difference in the world and at the very same time insist, but without argument, that the putting a murderer to death makes one as evil as the murderer.  I do not see what makes keeping a murderer alive a particularly humane thing to do.  Quite the contrary, it might reveal a lack of courage and moral fiber on the part of those who insist upon doing so.  After all, who says that doing the right thing is always easy?

If, for instance, my dearest male friend of 20 years should rape a woman, then surely I need to put some distance between me and him, notwithstanding all the wonderful things that we have shared.  Or so it is until that person merits forgiveness.  Yet, there is nothing at all easy about distancing oneself from a dear friend of 20 years.  Nothing at all.

What we know is that generally prisons do not rehabilitate.  Indeed, we know that prisons are often extremely fertile ground for wrongdoing.  This simple truth casts further doubt upon the claim that keeping an egregious wrongdoer alive but in prison is the more humane thing to do.  Would someone please tell me what exactly is so humane about putting a person in a context where she or he will either be a victim of evil or perhaps will have to become even more evil in order to avoid becoming a victim of evil?

As I noted earlier, a most common objection to the death penalty is that the wrong person may be put to death.  But if prison is as horrific as it seems to be, I fail to see how incarcerating the wrong person for 20 years, say, is somehow considerably less harmful if prisons are as horrific a place as people claim that they are.  This is to privilege being alive above the horrific reality of the experience itself, as if merely being alive militates against the horror that one endured.  A man who was routinely raped in prison for 20 years might surely think otherwise.

John Stuart Mill pleaded for capital punishment on precisely the grounds that it is the more humane thing to do.  So far I have yet to hear a very good argument against him.

Decent people seem rather indifferent to the horrors that prisoners endure.  Is keeping people alive such a significant psychological threshold that being more accepting of the death penalty—and so accepting of the death penalty for a greater range of criminal behavior—would render society more morally numb?  Indeed, more morally numb than we have already become?  Alas, if this question admits of an affirmative answer, that is anything but obvious.

The moral of the story may very well be none other than that displays of humanity should have limits.  And that may require moral courage and self-discipline than most of have.