Moral Health

The overwhelming majority of teachers do not have sex with their high school students.  That is a good thing.  What is a bad thing, however, is that we are hearing more and more about cases of this sort.  Gary C. Lindsey, Matthew Hirschfelder, Scott A. Spies, and Malinda Dennehy are among recent instances.  A simple Google search under “teachers have sex with students” will turn up quite a list of individuals.  The website “HotforTeacher.Com” lists a quite a few teachers who are alleged to have had sex with a student.

Now, the question is why this shift?  Why is that nowadays it is becoming almost a common occurrence that teachings in schools are engaging in sexual behavior with their students.    I am going to offer a very simple explanation that is inspired by John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty.

Whether we like it or not and whether we believe so or not, the moral climate of the society in which we live makes a considerable difference.  The moral climate defines the basic norms and expectations that hold.  A boring example from the past would be that of a healthy young male giving her or his seat (on public transportation) to an elderly woman.  Time was when this was the norm.  Accordingly, an elderly woman needed only to board public transportation and the young man nearest to her would offer her his seat.  And if he did not, he would be the object of considerable scorn—moral disapprobation in Mill’s terms.

Of course, that day has long since past.  An elderly lady who boards public transportation these days cannot count on a young man giving his seat to her; and she is apt to be too afraid to approach any such male in this regard. 

What I have just described refers a specific aspect of the moral climate of respect that prevailed in the past.  Young men were very much animated by that expectation.  

The relevance of moral climate to teaching is as follows.  Nowadays, we do not have the respect that we used to have for teachers.  It is manifestly obvious that they do not have the moral authority that they used to have.  And this reality cuts in two ways.  One, of course, is that parents no longer side with teachers in the way that parents used to do in times past.  The other is that, unlike days of old, we no longer view teachers as pillars of moral excellence.

This shift has had a most unintended consequence, namely that the kinds of expectations that teachers now have of themselves have changed for the worse. 

As I have indicated, there was a time when the general public held teachers to a very high standard of moral excellence.  And my simple point is that this reality played an enormous role in teachers holding themselves to up to high moral standards.

Harlem Village Academy stands a most profound reminder of the excellences of which people are motivated to exhibit when excellence is expected of them.  Located in Harlem, as the name suggests, the students in this school excel; and the fundamental explanation for this is none other than that everyone has high expectations of them.  A great many of the teachers are White; and a great many of the students are either Black or Latino.  But the game plane is excellence rather than an excuse to make the charge of racism against a White teacher.

The rich expectations of an environment set a moral tone and the moral tone reverberates through the psyche of most of those in the environment.  This speaks to the very simple point that we are deeply influenced by the expectations that those in our community have of us.  And if this is right, then there is a very profound sense in which we are not as radically independent as liberal theory would have us believe. 

Treat teachers as if they were none other than a humanoid that stands in front of the classroom and who is to be sued no matter how frivolous the charge is and who, therefore, has no moral authority, then precisely what we get are teachers whose sense of sense of worth is radically lacking in affirmation.  Likewise, their sense of duty is radically lacking in affirmation.

Teaching was once seen as a moral calling.  This conception of teaching reverberated throughout the community.  It is just plain silly to think that this conception of teaching did not play a most significant role in underwriting the sense of worthy and duty that teachers used to have. 

And this much is clear: If the idea of teachers having a sense of duty were richly and majestically affirmed by the community, what would simply not be having is a proliferation teachers having sex with their students.  For that public affirmation in the community would be an ever present reminder of the appropriateness of such behavior with students and such public affirmation would stay the hand of most teachers in times of weakness.

The evidence of this comes from a most unexpected source, namely the sexual scandals in the Catholic Church with young people.  Priests knew that they would not be reported for their horrendously inappropriate sexual behavior with young boys.  In a word, the moral climate of the Catholic Church was such that there was no accountability on the part of the many members of the Catholic Church.  Of course, the public wanted no such thing.  However, priests took themselves to be morally superior to the “mere” members of the church; and the community of priests, bishops, and so forth constituted their own moral audience—a moral audience that was effectively indifferent to the sexual abuse of young people. 

Contrary to what is so often supposed: A society or a community with no moral expectations is not one that merely underwrites the liberty of individuals to choose as they please, it is also one that fails mightily to underwrite and sanctify the moral excellences that make for a more perfect union among individuals.

Child sexual abuse, more than any other wrong, convinces me that Aristotle’s account of moral upbringing is so very much on target.  It is next to impossible to imagine a child who has been raised in a loving parental environment turning out to be an adult who preys among children.  The child sexual predator presupposes considerable distortion of the psychological self on so very many levels. 

To state the obvious, part of what makes sex exciting is the simple fact that our sexual partner is suitably engaged and aroused by our sexual interaction with her or him.  And precisely that sort of thing is unequivocally missing in adult-child sexual interaction.  There is no room at all for the adult even to pretend that a child is animated in such a fashion.  This holds whether an adult is into S & M or not. 

Famously, Aristotle observed that we become just by doing just deeds as  part of our upbringing.  One very crucial step in that line of thought is that a child’s parents serve as the most substantive guide in the child’s life.  The child learns how to engage in this or that behavior through experiencing the behavior of his parents.  There is also verbal instruction, but as we shall see this is typically irrelevant with regard to the matter of sexual abuse.

When a child experiences the affection of his parents in the right way, that affection stands as one of the most profound forms of affirmation that a child could ever receive in her or his life.  It is also the case that such affirmation is radically asexual.  As I remarked in talking with Philosophy 191 students recently: No child would ever say “Mom, I have got a great song for you to hear” and then play Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It Own”.  No child would do that not even as a joke. 

No child would so behave though it would be absolutely stunning if this is because there had been a discussion between the parent and the child regarding the impropriety of sexual behavior on the part of a child towards her or his parent and vice versa.  I have never met a student who is a decent person who has had such a discussion with her or his parents.  The very need for such a discussion would already portent something radically wrong in the parent-child relationship. 

No child would play “Let’s Get It On” for her or his parents because the very nature and expression of parental love is radically incompatible with sexual feelings, and so are radically inappropriate with having sexual desire for one’s parents and with one’s parents having sexual for one.  And it is irrelevant whether one is gay or straight here.  A moment’s reflection reveals this has to be true.  Just as no child who is straight ever wants to have sex with the parent of the opposite sex, no child who is gay wants to have sex with the parent of the same sex. 

This is all so truly profound when one thinks about it.  We get a fundamental aspect of something as complex as sexual desire so tremendously right in terms of its expression simply in terms of how we are loved and loving treated by our parents and without ne’er a word regarding the matter ever being uttered.

Notice, too, that just as those with decent upbringing have never had a discussion about having sex with their parents, it is equally true that those with decent upbringing have never had a discussion about not having sex with a child.  The very idea of such a discussion is ludicrous.  Whatever “the birds and the bees” talk is about nowadays, it most certainly is not about teenage children refraining from having sex with little kids; for that is what a psychologically healthy teenage child is absolutely not into doing. 

Let conclude this blog entry with a few remarks from a different direction.  I hold that human beings are remarkably sensitive to the motives with which human beings behave.  There is no doubt at all that a child would recognize soon enough when a parental kiss or hug was more than an expression of parental affection.  But when parental love is as it should be, no child ever mistakes the sloppiest kiss from a mom as an expression of sexual interest.  This truth tells us how subtle behavior can be and also how tremendously attuned we can be to it.  Notice, also, the following interesting consequence: When parental love is as it should be, then one remarkable consequence of that reality is that we are very well attuned to the character of a very rich aspect of human behavior.  For we have as a foundation, the basis for making a most fundamental contrast between mere expression of affection, on the one hand, and romantic affection, on the other.  All of this flows simply from parental love at its best.

If the foregoing remarks are sound, then we have seen that Aristotle’s thought has a relevance that most would never attribute to him.  This, I believe, is philosophy as it should be.

I am grateful to my Philosophy 191 class at Syracuse University,
Spring 2010,  for inspiring these remarks.

Having an abortion should not be the subject of a woman’s tweets.  So it is whether one is for or against abortion.  Angie Jackson maintains that she is tweeting about her abortion experience, using RU486, because she wants to demystify what having an abortion is all about.  Does that explanation work for you?  I certainly hope not. 

Consider a slightly analogous case, namely a women tweeting about giving birth because, after all, she wants to demystify the birthing experience.  Well, the problem in this case is that we have what surely constitutes a case of misplaced priorities.  However wonderful it might be for a woman to demystify the birthing experience to the world, surely she should be far more interested in bonding with her baby than sending out tweets at every step along the way.  The same holds if the father should be present.  Giving birth is one of the most remarkable things that a woman does in life; and while I have not a clue regarding the specifics of such a wonderful act, I would not want my dearest friend to tweet about it from the delivery room. 

Of course, whether to tweet or not about a very personal matter is a personal choice.  But that truth does not settle the question of propriety.  Abortion is certainly no more personal than giving birth.  Yet, it is manifestly clear to me that it would be abominable for a woman to tweet about her birthing experience.  Indeed, I would take her doing so as evidence that she is dysfunctional in some important way—there is a detachment from the moment that is out of order.

To be sure, having an abortion is just the opposite of giving birth.  So, there cannot be the same excitement about bringing life into the world.  But if a woman wishes to demystify abortion, it seems highly unlikely that sending tweets is the way to go.  For one thing, one cannot put enough information in single tweets to make tweeting about the experience really informative beyond what we already know.  For another, sending out tweets trivializes the abortion experience.  And whether one is for abortion or not, the experience should not be trivialized. 

Having watched Angie Jackson’s video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Ud3g2ymOM

I am more than a little persuaded that her motives are less than stellar and innocent.  There was not a word in her video that was informative or instructive.  That is, I do not think for a moment that anyone viewing her video would have a greater sense as to why using RU486 is less complicated than folks would have supposed.

In her video, Angie Jackson tells us that having an abortion, using RU486, is rather like having a miscarriage.  Well there: That certainly clears up everything.  Surely, any woman hearing that well grasp immediately that having an abortion using RU486 is entirely unproblematic.  I am being sarcastic; and, alas, that is the point. 

There is no reason whatsoever to think that typically women are worried about having an abortion; and for those who are worried, there is no reason whatsoever to think that such women are or will be re-assured by Angie Jackson’s tweets and YouTube video.  And given what she actually says, it is ludicrous to think that Jackson could really have been motivated by the concern to be re-assuring to other women who might think to have an abortion. 

What is more, Jackson tells us that she has significant health reasons for having an abortion.  Well, if that is the case, it is not at all clear what has been the point of twittering about the experience and posting a YouTube video.

Here are Angie Jackson’s concluding remarks:  ABORTION. 

“So I just want to let everybody know that you, too, can have an abortion if you want one.  It’s o.k.  It is not shameful; it is not secret.  It is not killing a child.  I have a little boy.  You guys have seen him on my video channel.  He is my world.  I want to stay alive be his mom a lot longer.  So I am having an abortion.  I hope everybody on YouTube has a great and godless day.  Peace.”

First, her words hardly sound like an individual aiming to offer insightful considerations regarding abortion for those with serious health concerns.  Second, it is surely the very rare person who would object to a woman having an abortion if the mother-to-be has serious health concerns that would arise if she proceeded with the pregnancy.  And in term of having an abortion whilst having significant health problems, she does not say anything that is remotely informative, let alone re-assuring.

Jackson tells us that “You, too, can have an abortion if you want one”.  And she ends with “Have a great and godless day”.  Her motivation was not to inform people about anything.  Rather, she used the pretext of being informative for no other reason than to flaunt the fact that she is having an abortion using RU486.  Whatever else is true, Angie Jackson should not be the spokeswoman for the pro-choice movement.  Why, Angie Jackson does not have enough intellectual horsepower to be the spokesperson for herself, let alone a social movement.

Watching corrupt politicians defend one another is most disconcerting.  Their behavior so poignantly invites the question “Have you no shame?”  And the very poignant answer to that question is a very unabashed: “No”.  Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel provide us with one of the latest example of corruption on the part of politicians, to say nothing of the past actions of New York Governor David Paterson with his personal chauffer David Johnson and, in particular, Johnson’s domestic abuse of Sherr-Una Booker (Johnson’s ex-girlfriend).

What stuns me more than anything is just how indifferent politicians have become to moral appearances.  People are doing things that are clearly and manifestly inappropriate; and they have no shame at all.  Indeed, if anything is true, politicians have mastered the art of claiming that an obvious wrongdoing is not so obviously a wrong after all.  That is rather analogous to a high school teacher having sex with a student and then claiming that she or he did not do anything inappropriate at all. 

The most obvious question that arises is this: How did this moral climate come about?  How did it come to pass that people can do what is obviously wrong and claim, without an ounce of shame, that their behavior was not morally unacceptable?  Indeed, people are no longer concerned with even the very appearances of morally inappropriate behavior.

Trips down memory lane have their limits; for such “trips” may simply tell us no more than that times have changed.  Not so in this case, however.  Time was when at the very least people were very much concerned making sure that things looked the right way.  And the fact that this might not be the case was often enough a reason to refrain from the behavior in question.  The following is a simple example.

I know a number of married couples.  In each of these cases, though, my primary communication is with the husband and not the wife.  The explanation for this unbelievably simple: appearances.  The issue is not whether women and men are equals on all accounts, both morally and socially.  Of course, they are.  Rather, by maintaining my primary communication with the husband, I thereby show a deep and fundamental respect for the basic intimacy that is a defining feature of married couples.  Most importantly, my behavior keeps even the suspicion of wrongdoing at bay.  Such is the significance of appearances. 

In the case of marriage, we can pretend that appearances do not matter because after all we are rational creatures.  But the journey from the heights of pure rationality to the cluttered and ever changing road of reality makes it unequivocally clear that appearances do matter. 

Just as appearances matter in a basic matter of social interaction between women and men, where marriage is involved, it is equally true that appearances matter in all aspects of life where exhibiting morally right behavior is a matter of great significance. 

So we have Charles Rangel using his position as Chairman of the powerful House tax writing committee using in his position in obviously inappropriate ways.  And then we have Nancy Pelosi showing him unequivocal support.  Then we have David Paterson preventing or derailing the prosecution of his aid David Johnson for Johnson’s domestic abuse of a Booker (the aid’s ex-girlfriend).  In both cases, what we have is a brazen show of indifference to moral appearances.  In particular, what is made manifestly clear is that individuals are much more committed to maintaining power than doing what is morally right.  I hold the following very simple principle: It is impossible to be a morally decent person and, at the very same time, be indifferent to how things appear.  And so the utter indifference to appearances that we are seeing on the part of politicians reveals the depth of moral corruption that exists among them.

The obvious question that presents itself is this: Why have individuals become so indifferent even to moral appearances?  The answer, I believe, is a painfully simple one, namely the move to moral relativism.  If anything is a reason not to set our moral sights high, surely moral relativism is.  Of course, moral relativism is perhaps not the outright rejection of moral values.  Just so, moral relativism undermines the idea that there are moral ideals to which all individuals should subscribe.  Thus, moral relativism undermines a sense of public accountability that fully animates the behavior and thought of all. 

Moral objectivity places a deep and inexorable conception right and wrong in the public space.  Accordingly, all are reminded in countless ways, both explicitly and inexplicitly, of the standard of moral excellence that are expected of us.  It is the very rare person who does not stand in need of such reminders.  Or, to put the point another way, the absence of reminders in the public space will result in the weakening of resolve for all but the strongest of individuals. 

In a way that most of us would never have imagined: We are reaping what we have sown.  Moral excellence in general requires a moral climate.  To suppose otherwise is rather like supposing that children will come to have an excellent vocabulary although they rarely interact with anyone who exhibits such excellence.  Not happening.

Elisabeth Badinter, the distinguished French scholar and professor at the École Polytechnique, has published a new book entitled Le conflit: La femme et la mere (Flammarion 2010).  In the book, Professor Badinter mourns the fact that women are increasingly valuing the role of motherhood over the realization of their talents and skills in the work place.  For she thinks that this is tantamount to none other than a return to male dominance.  A moment’s reflection should suffice to show that this is not so at all.  It is in this regard that I find the views of Dr. Laura Schlessinger so very telling and to the point.

The issue, of course, is not whether women are capable of doing brilliant things in the work place.  We know that they are.  To be sure, there are men who cannot seem to wrap their mind around this truth.  However, the point most certainly cannot be that unless every man accepts women as fully equal, then the struggle must go on.  I say this because unanimity regarding matters of equality would appear to be an impossibility, whether we are talking about the sexes or ethnic groups.  Indeed, there are women who believe that women are superior to men with regard to morals; and there are blacks who believe that blacks are superior to whites with respect to morals.

At any rate, Laura Schlessinger’s point is twofold: (1) If adequately informed women would prefer to devote their lives to raising children rather than excelling in the work place, then surely there is nothing wrong with women making that choice?  (2) There something majestic about motherhood that has no equal in terms of other activities.

There are good reasons why we suppose that (2) is true.  In their evolutionary reasons why (2) is true.  These reasons fall under the category of parental investment.  Women put their lives on the line to bring a child into the world.  For that very reason, it stands to reason that there is a bond between mother and child that has no equal between father and child.  This is why in the movie “Sophie’s Choice,” for example, it is the mother rather than the father who is asked to choose which son shall live and which son shall die.

Such a choice would of course be painful for the father.  However, because the mother has brought each child into the world, such a choice has a pain for the mother that simply has no equal in the life of the father.  This we instinctively grasp.

At any rate, what intrigues me is that Professor Elisabeth Badinter has entirely discounted this reality regarding women and motherhood.  Or, to put the point another way, it is as if Badinter takes motherhood to be on a par with any other task that a woman perform.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I do not believe that biology is destiny.  I do not think for a moment that a woman must become a mother.  Even if there is a certain “pull” in that direction, I certainly think that a woman might resist that pull.  None of us can do everything; and a woman might very well think that all things considered she would rather do something else rather than be a mother.

Just so, it is surely understandable why a woman might want to become a mother.  I mean if we can understand why a man might want to become a father, then surely we can understand a woman’s wanting to become a mother.  And if a woman should bring life into the world, why would she not want to stay home and nurture the very life that she brought into the world?

What can be more incongruous than bringing life into the world and then having someone else raise it?  Why, nowadays, we seem to attach more importance to interacting with our cars and gadgets than we do with the children whom we bring into the world.

In a word, Dr. Schlessinger’s point is that there is no greater gift a mother can give to her child than staying home and raising the child. This follows from the simple truth that every child wants to be loved; and nothing is more conducive to that feeling than the presence of a parent.  The mother stands as first choice in this regard owing to the sublime truth that the child issues from her body.

The heart of Badinter’s problem is that she is too busy seeing equality as a measure for measure activity.  Women and men are moral equals; and it is a poignant truth that we see that we see that reality more clearly now than we saw it in the past.  But this moral equality hardly means that women and men match one another in their behaviors.

What never ceases to amaze me is that we accord moral “natural” differences to ethnic groups than we do to women and men.  So it is although it is a brute fact that the differences we accord to ethnic groups have no moorings whatsoever in evolutionary theory.  This brings out the power of ideology.

Badinter is a brilliant philosopher.  However, she is driven by an ideological view of women.  She thinks of motherhood as a form of oppression and that reveals none other than a deep, deep hostility towards both women and, in particular, children.

One does not have to believe that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant in order to grasp that there is an extraordinary majesty to motherhood.  I believe no such thing.  I have never believed such a thing.  Yet, I regard motherhood as a tremendous gift.  Likewise, I have enormous respect for women who have excelled in roles that do not pertain to mothering.  Indeed, I am entirely at-ease the mother and the brilliant female research scientists.  Just so, my enormous respect for each woman flows from two very different sources, just as my enormous respect for a male fire fighter and a male professor flows from two very different sources.  I can see marvelous moral equality in all of these.  It is such a pity that Professor Elisabeth Badinter cannot.

It is very reveling that so often people talk about freedom and then they insist that another is free only if she or he is acting as they want that person to act.  Even the Almight holds that human beings are perfectly free to go against His will.  So it is very striking indeed that people often accord human beings less freedom than God does.

Zero Tolerance is increasingly turning out to mean zero common sense.  The way some schools now implement the idea of zero tolerance it is tantamount to believing that a person is actually sick when the individual utters “I am sick of this mess”.  For the moment, no one responds to the utterance “I am sick of this mess” by exclaiming “Oh my goodness, let me call a doctor”.  So we know that commonsense still has some purchase upon reality.

Alas, when it comes to the assessment of things in schools it is manifestly clear that common sense has taken a leave of absence.

Case 1: A fourth grader is sent to the principal’s office and nearly suspended for having a 2-inch toy gun in his possession.  Like anyone, I hold that there is much to be said for students not having objects that can be easily mistaken for a weapon.  But that precept surely rules out the worry that a 2-inch toy gun is indeed a real gun.

I know extremely little about guns.  But it is inconceivable to me that I would mistake a 2-inch gun for an actual gun.  So one has to ask: What the hell was the teacher thinking in sending the fourth greater to the principal’s office?  Likewise, one asks: What on earth was the principal thinking?

Case 2: A 12-year old girl is hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk.  “What did she doodle on the desk?,” you ask.  The answer: her name.  Not profanity or some racial slur.  Not a nasty and vicious comment about some classmate.  None of these things.  No, she doodled her name.

Like any reasonable person, I concur with the judgment that students should not doodle on desks.  But taking the student out of the school in handcuffs for doodling?  That response is so ludicrous that there is nothing that can proffered as an explanation that would make sense of such a drastic measure.

Once upon a time, the idea was that adults were models for maturity of judgment and measured behavior—especially teachers.  The very idea was that children growing up learnt how to behave not simply by what they were told to do but also by the kind of behavior that they witnessed on the part of adults.  Adults were the standard-bearer of reasonable behavior.  And certainly there was the idea that teachers were.

Clearly things have changed.  And this change does not bode well for the future of our society.

With the case of either the boy or the girl, I am hardly suggesting that a reprimand of some sort was not in order.  But clearly the reprimand should be proportional to the offense.  If a handcuffing a child is seen as the appropriate response to the child’s doodling her name, then what on earth would be appropriate if the child doodled some vicious remark about a classmate?  Handcuffs and a noose?  Or merely handcuffs and ankle-cuffs?

Similarly if a teacher and principle reacts to a 2-inch toy gun as if it were a real gun, then it becomes rather difficult to imagine what would be the appropriate reaction in the face of what is in fact an actual gun.

The question that most obviously presents itself is the following: How is it possible that the idea of zero-tolerance came to be construed in such an inane and absurd manner?  The answer, I believe, has to do with the quite mistaken that such behavior is required by fairness and complete fairness precludes any exercise of discretion.  This, in turn, is no doubt thought to have the advantage of precluding any discrepancies in treatment owing to cross-cultural differences.

Alas, the problem is that such blanket uniformity turns out to be a form of injustice in and of itself has been moribund and there can be no justice when justice is shorn of reasonableness.

Suppose we have a student from France whose command of English is still crude.  So the student from France tries to express friendly feelings and says to a student “I kiss you,” which is the literal translation of “je t’embrasse,” a very common expression between good friends in France, be they female-male, female-female, or male-male.  Now a policy of zero-tolerance with respect to expressions of intimacy would entail that the student from France trying to express himself in English should be punished, which of course is absurd.

My example is born of a real experience when a good male from France was visiting the United States and we got together.  As we were parting ways, he said to me “I kiss you”.  I knew immediately that he was not making a sexual advance, but that he was offering a literal interpretation of a very warm expression in French commonly used between good friends.  In reacting to my friend’s utterance I used what goes by the name of commonsense.

It is the very use of commonsense that zero-tolerance precludes and therein lies the fundamental problem with zero-tolerance.  Let us allow that the policy that no one should have any sort of gun on school premises applies to all guns whether they are real or not.  This move obviously precludes the possibility of someone bringing toy gun to school that could easily enough be mistaken for a real gun by just about anyone.  Well, once one allows this point, then surely what follows is that it is silly to treat a 2-inch toy gun as if it might be mistaken for a real gun.  So it is even if the student is informed that he is not allowed to have that gun on school premises.

Doodling on a desk counts as defacing school property.  Still, precisely what we know is that children do precisely that sort of thing when they get bored.  To ignore the very character of what it is like to be a child is, in fact, to act contrary to common sense.

In a word, then, children are growing up experiencing their teachers, who are adults, acting in ways that are manifestly contrary to common sense.  This is a social configuration that is entirely inimical to the proper development of children.

We wonder why our children are dysfunction.  Alas, part of the explanation may very well be consequence of the implementation of the absurd policy of zero-tolerance.  For that policy is none other than a way of teaching, by way of adult modeling, that common sense does not matter.

Which is worse? Being called a racial epithet (pick the one that most suits your ethnicity) or being betrayed by a dear friend, amongst whom I shall one’s spouse.  Contrary to what the norms of political correctness hold, I maintain that in the typical case being betrayed by a dear friend is much more morally traumatic than being called a racial epithet by a known-bigot.  A moment’s reflection should suffice to show that this is so.

When is the last time you can remember being the object of racial slur by a dear friend?  If you are like me, there have been no such instances.  And that, of course, is just the point.  Racial slurs invariably come from those who we are already know have deep racial biases (towards whites or blacks or Asians or Arabs or whatever).

Here is a simple way to put the point.  Suppose that you know that Sampson has rather strong KKK or Black Panther sympathies.  Well, would you be surprised if in the fit tremendous anger Sampson called you a kike (the KKK person) or racist (that Black Panther person) if you are Jew in one case or a white in the other?  Surely not!  And to get worked up over the fact that Sampson did would be rather like getting worked up over the fact that a propeller plane does not move through the air like a jet does.  No one in her or his right mind can expect a propeller plane to do that.

Well, to know that Sampson has strong KKK or Black Panther sympathies is to know that he has unreasonable and indefensible racial attitudes.  Thus, the more appropriate surprise should be that it took the person so long to utter a racial slur—and not that the individual eventually did so.

If someone presents herself or himself as bigoted, it is rather foolish to have expectations of that person with regard to racial attitudes that apply only to someone who is not bigoted.

The betrayal of dear friend is an entirely different matter entirely.  For one thing, a dear friend has presented herself or himself as someone who cares rather deeply about one’s well-being-even one’s flourishing.  A dear friend has presented herself or himself in ways that would give one every reason to believe that one can let one’s guard down.  One can talk about personal finances or one can share a very deep personal pain or quite revealing hopes or quite revealing moments of despair.  And so on.

For another thing, there is no such thing as revealing deeply personal information by accident.  Revealing personal information is not at all the analogue to the spontaneous utterance of “ouch” when unexpectedly experiencing great pain.  The utterance of “ouch” is a reaction.  Revealing personal information cannot be construed as a reaction.  This is something that one does intentionally and that one can only do intentionally.

Suppose that Smith tells me that he was sexually abused by his father.  I am simply unable to fathom how it could remotely plausible for me to have reason to tell someone else about Smith.  So it is even I am providing comfort to another person—say, Jones‑‑who has suffered the same misfortune.  For whether Jones knows Smith or not, my offering comfort and support to Jones does not require telling Jones about Smith.

Suppose, now, that the circumstances of Jones and Smith are parallel and Smith has indeed flourished in spite of the abuse.  Could this possibly excuse my telling Jones about Smith, because I want Jones to know that he, too, can overcome this?  I think not.  Certainly not without Smith’s permission.

What is more, there is no way to construe my telling Jones about Smith’s child sexual abuse as anything other than a deliberate and fully intentional betrayal of Smith’s trust.  There is no spontaneous “ouch” counterpart to telling Jones about Smith.

These considerations bring us to why violating a deep trust is so very much worse than a racial epithet from someone known to be a bigot.

By definition, a bigot has given us reason to believe and expect that he will have untoward views about us. He certainly has given us no reason whatsoever to believe that truth and facts trump unwarranted racial attitudes.

By contrast, a dear friend has given us every reason to believe that the information that we share with him is sacred and that this sacredness is secured by the rich bond of affection that the person has for us.  Needless to say, we do not expect a bigot (a KKK or Black Panther) person to have a bond of affection for us if we are of the right ethnic group (say, black in the first case or white in the second case).

Now, it is impossible to have a bond of affection for someone and do anything that comes remotely close to harming that person intentionally.  Indeed, there is a very natural inclination to the contrary.  Accordingly, revealing something utterly personal can only be construed as a form of intentional harm—intentional psychological harm, to be sure, but intentional harm nonetheless.  For speaking is definitive of what counts as intentional behavior.  What is more, it is an intentional harm which reveals that, contrary to one’s comportment around the person, one does not deeply care about the person.  Thus, the harm is tied to a deception that one has perpetrated with respect to the person.  And therein lies what is surely a most poignant difference between the bigot and the betrayal of a dear friend.

The bigot is bad.  But we know in the first place not to put our trust in a bigot.  A friend who betrays us, by contrast, has exploited the vulnerabilities that are part and parcel of being the object of another’s affection.  The appearance of good has been the platform for the so-called friend doing harm to us.  This scars us in a way that a racial epithet from a known bigot cannot possibly scar us.

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.