Racism, Crime and Policing

It is difficult to be an American on the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, and not ruminate on the issue of race in America, especially in light of the tragic deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.  But it is also difficult to contemplate the complex issues of race and American history, and reach a simple answer, the way some might.

I would recommend the following article, which is a minority view of a report to the Department of Justice.  I recommend anyone interested in the issue of policing, and policing in minority communities a read, no matter what your political orientation:

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/121019.pdf

According to the article, racial segregation, racial disenfranchisement and legal segregation began in the North, not the South.  As functional matter, since the Blacks in the South were slaves, there was not any social question as to where the slaves lived.  On the other hand, in the North, there was a political question about where the Blacks could live, and it was solved by creating segregated housing districts, which spread South after emancipation.

As urban policing developed, it developed rooted in urban political machines supported by ethnic immigrants.  Blacks did not exist in sufficient numbers in the Northern cities in the late 19th century to wield political power, insuring that they had no real political clout in urban politics.  Police jobs were spoils that were handed out to political/ethnic loyalists, and given Black relative political power, there were not many Black policemen, and the Black officers were mostly consigned to segregated Black neighborhoods, often with legal limitations on their ability to arrest Whites.

I think one important point of the article is the historic relationship between the Black man and the police officer:  the existence of the Black man was a problem to be controlled.  Policing primarily meant driving the Black man into the segregated district and keeping him there.  To the police, the Black man was the Other, and to the Black man, the police were the Other.

After the turn of the century, the Progressives did what all real political progressives do:  they shut down immigration.  Part of their agenda was to clean up political machine politics, and to make police jobs subject to professional standards, and not simply hand outs to political supporters.  The other thing they did was to remove residency requirements from police work.  A cop could live wherever they wanted, and there was a disconnection between the community subject to policing and the community of the police man.  These progressive reforms helped to raise the professional standards of police, but it came at a cost.  Given educational disparities and racial discrimination, these Progressive standards did nothing to create more opportunities in the police force for Blacks.  The impact of the Progressive reforms had a long term impact on the Black community, in that by restricting immigration, job opportunities became available for Blacks in Northern cities that would have previously gone to immigrants.  This lead to the Northern migration, and the flourishing of Black neighborhoods and Black communities in the North.  Unfortunately, as Black people coalesced in numbers where they might be capable of exerting political power, civil service restrictions made it difficult to create a police force that had the same face as the community it policed.  Moreover, police resources, as is typical, were directed to protecting the interests of the powerful, and not a whole lot changed with respect to the Black community.

Under segregation, combined with policies such as the "Red Light" District, Blacks were confined to segregated spaces in anarchic conditions of crime, vice and disorder.  The main police directive was to keep the Blacks where they belonged, not to protect Black citizens from victimization.  The relationship between the Black man and the Police was adversarial.

This leads us to a side of the story that the liberal doesn't like to talk about:  Black street crime.  Black homicide rates are X 7 to X 10 (700% to 1000%) times higher than White homicide rates.  Similar relationships can be found with respect to robbery, and other street crimes.  We are not having an honest debate about the relationship between Black men and the police if we pretend that Black men are not 700% more likely to be arrested for murdering someone than the White counterparts.  (It is not likely a detection or reporting issue because you need a dead body for a murder prosecution.)  We can also look at issues with racial profiling--we can oppose racial profiling for egalitarian reasons--but racial profiling is not simply hate or ignorance, it can sometimes be based on rational guesses informed by statistics, resulting racial disparities in arrests.  While we can point out that Whites are more likely to engage in crimes like smoking marijuana, the crimes that Whites disproportionately commit are not those which create the same level of existential fear as murder or a mugging.  We are dealing with questions that are complex, and tangled, and do not have simple answers.

Here are some links: 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/21/family-secret-what-the-left-wont-tell-you-about-bl/

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls

 Although I cannot provide some metaphysical explanation for the data, and not one that all will agree with, I don't think that the relationship between Black street crime and the traditional policing of Black neighborhoods is an accident.  If you are not prioritizing the policing of Black neighborhoods, then someone else will, namely urban street gangs.  Moreover, because there is no real order over the gangs, the gangs will fight with each other, resulting in murders.  If the prosecution of Black on Black crime is not given serious law enforcement attention, then Blacks will prey on Blacks, and over time, a culture of criminality will emerge and reinforce itself.

I believe that certain principles could give rise to an improvement in Black communities:

1.)  Reconnect residency and police jobs, even at the cost of police professionalism.  An officer who has an existential dependency on a community will approach crime and disorder differently than an outsider.

2.)  Strive to create a police force that mirrors the population, even at the cost of police professionalism.  For members of a community to have an authority figure that they can identify with is valuable in creating positive alternative role models for youth.

3.)  Vigorously prosecute crime in Black neighborhoods, and make sure that criminal actions have serious consequences.

4.)  Leave sentencing decisions to local juries and judges, and abolish mandatory sentencing.  Let the local community decide the appropriate penalty based on the facts and circumstances of the offense.

4.)  Condoning lawlessness is simply a method for dragging a frayed civilization under the domain of the Lord of the Flies.  A verdict of a Grand Jury demands respect, not because it is necessarily fair or just, but because it is the best we can humanly do.

People who claim that citizens are entitled to break the law because of their ethnic or racial status are promoting criminal acts on the parts of minorities, which will result in state repression out of fear backed by the majority.  For example, if you look at measures of White confidence in the police in the wake of Ferguson, you find that support is higher: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/09/whites-are-more-confident-than-ever-that-their-police-treat-blacks-fairly/

I doubt this is some essential racial characteristic of the White man.  It is a human characteristic of any group that feels threatened by the lawlessness of another group.  If you were a Tutsi in Rawanda, and there was a Hutu riot in response to a case of excessive force carried out by a Tutsi police officer, you would likely find the same confidence in the police.  We have to live together, and the only way we can do that is through law.

This gets to my problem with the contemporary Left.  If you are a Communist, or if you are an ethno-nationalist, a White Supremacist or Black Nationalist, then this race mongering, good-entitled race/bad-privileged race rhetoric is exactly what you want.  But if your goal is the integration of the Black community into the greater National community, and if your goal is the empowerment of Black Communities, contemporary liberal rhetoric is both stupid and counter-productive.  Get the facts and talk the facts.  Stop pretending there are "good" racial groups and "bad" racial groups--both races contain their saints and their sinners--the problems of ethnic and racial relations are structural.  Moreover, the problem of human evil will never be solved through creation of the right ethnarchy--Hitler didn't fail to create justice because he was German and not Nigerian.  Rather, the only way to overcome evil nonviolently is through mutual repentance and forgiveness.  Look at Mandella's work in South Africa if you want a model of racial reconciliation.


For more suggestions on managing urban policing, you can link to this article by the late William Stuntz of Harvard Law School:
  

http://www.harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/stuntz_unequaljustice.pdf

Flannery O'Connor and the Cheap Grace of "Anti-Racism"

I was reading an article on Flannery O'Connor in Jezebel:

http://jezebel.com/5192628/judging-flannery-can-you-love-the-work-and-not-the-author

If you are not familiar with Flannery O'Connor, she was born in Georgia in 1925, died in Georgia (from Lupus) in 1964, was a professing Roman Catholic, and wrote some of the best works of fiction in the English language in the 20th Century.

However, it turns out from her biography that she committed two sins against political correctness:

1.)  When a friend of hers was kicked out of the army for engaging in a lesbian affair, Ms. O'Connor sent her friend private letters, not rejecting her friend, but condemning her for her immoral actions.

2.)  She also sent a friend who was very active in the civil rights movement a number of racist jokes in private correspondence.

But her real sin before the God of Political Correctness--please sit down before you read this--was her "zeal, sanctimony, and intolerance" which were "insufferable."  Political Correctness is a jealous and tolerant God, and will lash out in anger at the infidels who turn away to bow before the God of Israel.

What struck me about all this dithering about O'Connor's racism is the following:  has the author of the piece not, at some point, told a racist joke in her life?  Has anyone not told a racist joke at some time in their lives, excepting those, of course, who lack any sense of humor?  Moreover, isn't telling racist jokes a feature of, say, human existence?  Human beings break up into little arbitrary groups, and they tell jokes about the outgroups, and sometimes repeat jokes about themselves?  For example, people tell lawyer jokes that circulate stereotypes about lawyers--are these bad people?

Of course, this gets to the liberal theory of conflict, that conflicts occur because of irrational prejudice against outgroups.  I have tried to suggest the opposite in this blog--it is completely rational, in the absence of the rule of law, to fear outgroups.  Without a central government, the outgroup will kill or enslave you, unless you are more powerful than the outgroup, in which case you will probably kill or enslave the outgroup.  (One only has to study ancient history to see this pattern writ large in the world.)  The real irrational behavior is the trust of fellow members of the ingroup.

For example, if we look at the North and the South in the 1950's, we find lynchings in the South, and no lynchings in the North.  Why?  First and foremost, because the Southern States would not prosecute lynchings, and Southern juries would not typically convict white men for lynchings when the Federal Government attempted to prosecute.  That is to say, lynchings happen when a group can lynch people they don't like and get away with it.  But are we really to believe that the differences between the North and the South can be explained by the prevalence of racist jokes in that time period?  If you want to stop group-on-group violence, it is far more productive to develop a universal sense of respect for citizenship and the rule of law, than to try and root out nasty jokes.  The first goal can sometimes be attained, the second is an anthropological chimera.  You need to start over with a new species that has a different evolutionary history if you hope to succeed.  Perhaps a mollusk?      

If we look at Flannery O'Connor's politics, she was supportive of the civil rights movement, a minority position for mid-Twentieth Century white people in Georgia.  We find, that despite the fact that she told racist jokes, in public, she actively supported bringing an end to racial segregation in the South.  I would further suppose, albeit without evidence, that she opposed vigilante justice, especially if directed against ethnic minorities.  Last, I suspect that if I had the opportunity to sit down for tea with Ms. O'Connor, I highly doubt that her "zeal, sanctimony and intolerance" could hold a candle to our average social justice warrior.

Which leads me to another characteristic of Flannery O'Connor, which distinguishes her from the "zeal, sanctimony and intolerance" of the present moment.  Flannery O'Connor understood, in her heart, that human redemption is always purchased in blood.  Innocents will always have to die, their blood will have to cry out from the Earth, before an evil can be corrected.  If we accept redemption in blood, then we can understand that ugly jokes can neither impede nor foreshorten justice and redemption.  Today's social justice warrior is not willing to pay the true cost for justice, nor are they willing to accept its currency from those who have paid it forward.  They reject the true redemption in blood for a cheap grace founded in superficiality and hypocrisy.

Creating Trust and Scandal and Cover-Ups

We can understand what a religious community offers its members by considering Prayer, Fasting, Chastity, and Charity.  The first refers to individual and communal practice and ritual.  The second refers to restrictions on the consumption of food and drink.  The third refers to restrictions on the exercise of the sexual function, and the last refers to restrictions on the use of money.  A religious community with a rule of Prayer, Fasting, Chastity and Charity constructs a transpersonal order, and each person models a particular form of the community.  The community creates a system of collective discipline, whereby each person sacrifices, suffers, and is transformed through this process of discipline.  The end result is a community with a high level of social cohesion and interpersonal trust.  As I have suggested before, the mystery of human relationship is found not in mutual distrust and suspicion, but mutual trust, which is fundamentally irrational.  Why would you trust someone simply because you were both involved in a collective system of personal sacrifice?

None the less, a group organized along the principles I have suggested will begin to experience a high level of trust in the company of each other, and this sense of trust can be a very positive experience, particularly in a society as fragmented and alienating as the present.  We can also understand why religious groups, especially intense or fanatical religious groups, are so prone to scandals.  If you are a member of a group with a high level of interpersonal trust, then it is very easy to abuse that trust.  In fact, we should be surprised that there are not more scandals, given the level of opportunity presented.  In addition, we can understand the collective pressure to cover-up instances of abuse of trust.  The group is predicated on the experience of trust, and a scandal coming to light will undermine the collective sense of the group.  Perhaps better, in the eyes of some, to suppress the scandal and not damage the group cohesiveness.

I think we can understand certain features of the modern world.  Living in a world with strangers in which one has very low levels of trust in one's fellow men and women, one would likely find a group manifesting a high level of trust quite appealing, if one could adapt oneself to the discipline required.  Second of all, the group commitment to the discipline would likely inspire an individual to push themselves beyond what they thought possible, and allow for self-transformation in a way which might not otherwise be imaginable.  Third, to the extent that group discipline was watered down or eliminated, although the group might offer "community" it would not be capable of producing comparable levels of interpersonal trust or self-transformation.  Thus, we can see why modernizing and liberalizing religious groups invariably destroys loyalty to the group.

We can also say that scandals, such as the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, do not per se discredit Catholicism:  such scandals would not take place unless the community had a high level of interpersonal trust.  The scandal is a consequence of that trust, and it is not necessarily the case that the world would be a better place if people did not trust each other, even if that would reduce the number of scandals.  Moreover, we can get a sense of what someone who is not affiliated with a strict religious community is missing out on:  a strong sense of belonging to a group with high levels of trust.  The more rootless and disconnected people feel, and the greater their sense of alienation, the greater the appeal of more strict religious orientation.  Anomie breeds fundamentalism one might say.

I suspect that the best path lies in the mean, between rootlessness and unquestioning fanaticism.  I think a group in which an individual can maintain an differentiated identity, and thus enough distance to report and to suppress abuse is desirable.  At the same time, being capable of submitting to a system of discipline, and developing a sense of belonging and trust is not ultimately a bad endeavor.  But others will likely differ in one direction or the other.

    

Fundamentals for a Future

I was reading an interview with Michel Houellebecq, which can be accessed here:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/02/scare-tactics-michel-houellebecq-on-his-new-book/

Mr. Houellebecq is a controversial person in France, and has been tried and acquitted on charges of racism based on his criticism of Islam.  

In the interview, he states the following:

"So the underlying idea, which may really upset people in the end, is that ideology doesn’t matter much compared to demographics."

This remark caused me to descend down a long train of thinking, because he is fundamentally correct.  Political power, to some extent, flows entirely from numbers, even in a non-democratic regime, given the dangers of revolt.  The future belongs to the children of today, and disproportionately to the families of today who have lots of children.  We see today across Europe a decline in birthrates, substantially below replacement, and increasing problems resulting from the need to bring in immigrant populations to keep economies working.  These immigrants, coming from different cultural backgrounds and competing against natives, are increasingly the targets of political enmity.  But the real problem in Europe is not with the immigrants, its with the natives not having sufficient children.

We can ask the demographic question:  what groups have lots of children, and I think we will find that religious families have many children, and secular households do not.  Moreover, the more fundamentalist/traditionalist the family, the more babies.  If we wanted to solve the demographic problem in Europe, which is creating the immigration problem in Europe, there is a simple solution:  promote religious fundamentalism.  At the same time, while we cannot be assured that Europe will not repatriate its immigrants, or even ethnically cleanse them, we are assured Europe will not embrace religious fundamentalism.  So we have to ask why won't Europe embrace religious fundamentalism?  The answer is because Europe is secular, and Europeans states are organized as secular ethno-nationalist states.  A secular ethno-nationalist state will deport or even execute its ethnic minorities, but it will not relinquish its political identity as secular.


There is another aspect of this issue, and that is the nature of religious fundamentalism.  Secular people often can be tolerant or accepting of religion, but they generally draw the line at religious fundamentalism.  What is wrong with religious fundamentalism, that France would rather deport millions of its French citizens of foreign descent rather than adopt it?  The common denominator in most forms of traditionalism and/or religious fundamentalism is an emphasis on traditional gender roles, family, and the importance of female commitment to the generation and care of children.  In other words, patriarchy.

A couple of links in support of this viewpoint:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/2010/12/22/gods-little-rabbits-religious-people-out-reproduce-secular-ones-by-a-landslide/

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-00128-4_8

Can there be any rational justification for patriarchy, for the idea that men have one role, and women another role, and that it is important for men and women to marry and have lots of children?  Likewise, given the increasing research on the adverse long-term health consequences of divorce and single parent families, isn't it time to re-think no-fault divorce?
 
It is obvious that a nation-state, in order to protect itself, must have healthy bodies available for conscription, and the same may be said for a modern economy.  But can the State restrict the choices of individuals, or dictate how they live their lives?  We can see that it does not matter whether patriarchal religion can be justified rationally.  If the State is secular and antagonistic to religion, the population stops having babies, necessitating importing foreigners following patriarchal customs.  Even if it seals its borders, it is a portrait of social collapse, inevitably incapable of protecting itself from its neighbors.  Fundamentalists will always tend push out secularism over a sufficient period of time.  It is similar to money:  if a State spends more than it earns, it must borrow money from a Lender which earns more than it spends.  It is clear that patriarchal religion can exist without secularism, but that secularism can only exist in a parasitic relationship with patriarchal religion.  A secular world can only be a dying world.

Mr. Houellebecq is very pessimistic about the future of feminism.  I agree to the extent that the contemporary ideology of liberal feminism can only be viewed as a demographic anomaly.  Like a disease, it lacks within itself the ability to sustain itself.  At the same time, I do think that it is possible to develop a political viewpoint which addresses many of the political and social concerns of liberal feminism within the framework of a communitarian/traditionalist framework.  For example, there are clear differences between Evangelical Christians, traditional Roman Catholics, and Muslims, and these differences do include differences in their options for women.  If feminism is to survive, it must be a pro-natalist feminism, not a pro-choice feminism.  Further, what is required is not merely government benefits or support for fertility, but a cultural orientation based in a sense of reverence which necessitates its transmission on to future generations.

But it is important to note that just because you are diagnosed with a disease, it does not mean that you necessarily possess the power to cure yourself.  Likewise, even if we recognize that secularism in a political body is analogous to a disease in a body, it is not clear how this disease can be cured, other than to let it die out naturally, similar to Communism.  After all, one can live a perfectly good life within the framework of liberal feminism, you simply can't transmit it in sufficient numbers to make it a viable order for the future. 

The interesting thing in dialoguing with secular individuals is that they use science as the model for truth.  In the sense that if something makes reliable predictions about the future, it is true (or valid).  What is interesting is that evolutionary biologists increasingly are showing that revealed religious teachings are consistent in conferring beneficial evolutionary long-term advantages as well as  health benefits on their members, what we could call blessings.  Religion works, but its description of the world is not consistent with the mechanistic and reductionist assumptions of natural scientists.  Moreover, religion is based on revelation, and has never been justified based on evolutionary biology.  We are to suppose that just randomly, the prophets managed to get it more or less right?  What is wrong, empirical reality or the philosophical assumptions of naturalism? Or is the problem a disconnect between Reality and modernity?

The European Enlightenment

One way of viewing the European Enlightenment is as an attempt to escape from, or to purify, ordinary language through the construction of an ideal language with ideal definitions, so as to escape from politics and history.  Perhaps the Enlightenment succeeded, but if it did, it succeeded in constructing a language that could not be applied to human life without resorting to politics and history.

The Political Animal and Identity

I think the following article really gets at the fundamental problem of liberal political theory:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

Liberal political theory allows itself two characters:  the individual, and humanity.  As Fela Kuti noted, water has no enemies, likewise, neither does humanity.  Carl Schmitt noted that no war has ever been fought by humanity, only by one subdivision against another.  But maybe that is the point, if we just define the forms of real human conflict out of our political philosophy, then we solve the problem of war.  Hold that thought. . .

The individual qua individual is not a political entity either, only the individual qua interest group or qua voluntary association.  Individuals are all unique, of course, but in so much as we can say anything about an individual, we can only do so in general terms.  We can talk about an individual in as much as an individual has some resemblance to something else.

It is important to recognize that politics is related fundamentally to disagreement and group struggle.  After all, if everyone agrees about the answer to a certain question, then the question cannot be a political question.  One can probably look up the answer in a dictionary or an encyclopedia.  Political questions are about disagreements, and political identity is defined by which group one identifies with in the resolution of a political question.  The groups one identifies with are your political friends, and the one's you dis-identify with are your enemies.  Political struggle is ultimately a battle over meaning and definition.  The group that wins the struggle gets to define the meaning.

Thus, if we understand philosophy as an activity, an attempt to gain clarity about the nature of meaning, it is apolitical, whereas philosophy that is intended to "solve" philosophical problems by producing dogmas is political.  For example, the Friends/Enemies distinction reveals the general form of political disputes, but the distinction itself does not disclose the substance of who our friends and who our enemies ought to be.  The problems of philosophy cannot be solved but dissolved by understanding how they arise.  On the other hand, the problems of politics cannot be solved through autonomous reason, but through the seizure of power.  Dogmatic philosophy does not provide a means of seizing power, but it provides of means of legitimating power.  We define a rule--this is the language-game.

If we understand myth as a collective action principle, we can understand that philosophy cannot be divorced from myth.  If anything, it is discourse on myth, or mythology, broadly conceived.  Clashes over meaning translate into clashes over myths, with philosophy serving to justify or criticize one myth or the other.  In this sense, liberalism must be equated with an anti-mythological process, a de-sanctification of the world.  Likewise, we hear sometimes about people creating their own myths for themselves, or their own sense of meaning.  This is all daft.  I can make up a story for myself, but I cannot make up a myth for myself.  A myth is an ordering principle, and myths order a people, and one person, in and of themselves, does not amount to an order, which by nature entails a plurality.

A person can make up a story, but for my story to serve as a myth, it would have to be adopted by some plurality of people, and in order to do so, it would be by nature of this fact inspiring.  I can, of course, write a story, and I can, of course, exert all effort to be as inspiring as possible, but for all that, my story is not inspiring.  Inspiration requires other people, and I can't make another person find my story inspiring.  In this sense, inspiration must always come from God (or at least from the gods if you are Pagan).  A story is a myth if it brings collective meaning to a plurality, in the sense of importance or value.  The myth reveals the Valuable in the world, and harmonizes the many.  The value does not come from the author, but rather is experienced by all.

Clearly, meaning is indeterminant so that there exist multiple myths, and myths are incommensurable with each other.  The myths have similarities undoubtedly, but also dissimilarities.  If a literary passage has two interpretations, then the interpretations cannot be reconciled with each other, only a third interpretation may be invented.  They can only be sorted out through inter-generational transmission, politics and war.  To banish war, we must banish myth, and banish identity.

But can the need for identity simply disappear?  The application of the indeterminacy of meaning to the human person means that I can never know another person's true intentions.  In the absence of central government, if one incorrectly surmises that the other is not hostile, one will end up dead.  On the other hand, if one incorrectly surmises that the other is hostile, the other will end up dead.  Thus, the cost of assuming the benevolence of the other is catastrophic.  This means that the default between two rational strangers, in the absence of central government, will be to assume the other is hostile and to attempt to kill them off.  Because numbers are power, it is necessary to develop a system of irrational trust between group members, and thus emerges human tribalism.  Xenophobia is rational human behavior, whereas trusting your own tribal group is the real irrational behavior.  Stamping out tribe does not root out fear and prejudice:  it totalizes them.  Family, religion, ethnic identity are irrational systems used to create irrational feelings of trust toward other members of the same group, because a highly unified group is safer and more protective than lone individuals.  Undoing identity groups leaves individuals isolated, afraid, alone, and unsafe, and further vulnerable to joining new identity groups.  Given that human natural history contains numerous instances of humans being eaten by wild animals, or killed by other tribes, alienation creates extreme conditions of mental duress, and probably adversely affects physical health.  Identity groups cannot be eliminated, if one category of identity disappears, a new category appears overnight. 

Rather than view racial, ethnic, and religious prejudice as an enemy that needs to be overcome, I have come to the politically incorrect opinion that these sentiments are for the most part socially beneficial, provided the excesses of these sentiments are tempered by respect for law and order.  The cause of violence and social unrest is not irrational hate, but rational fear, which only respect for law can overcome.  Ironically, a society with weak identity groups is a society that is mentally and physically ill, composed of citizens who feel alone, afraid and unsafe.  It is the very kind of society that welcomes the erosion of freedoms based on fear of the Other.  If you want to promote social conditions that favor the emergence of real fascism, then suppress racial, ethnic and religious identity in the name of anti-discrimination.

Human beings, as organisms, are united in their biology.  Human beings as anthropological units, that is, the human being within a collective group, are fundamentally divided into clans of friends and clans of enemies.  A group of progressives may be capable of overcoming racial and ethnic divisions, but they will quickly break down into warring factions over defining what it means to be a real woman.  Man is a political animal as Aristotle noted.

     

Mill's On Liberty Part III: Liberty and the Evils of Moral Relativism

            Beyond Mill’s three principles of civil liberty, which remain good general principles in a modern, pluralist democracy, but terrible universal principles, we get to Mill’s central vision of individual choice:

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it.  Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

Once again, I can get behind Mill in general.  I believe it is desirable to have a society where people have the ability to determine and pursue their own ends.  But once again, I cannot uphold this principle as a universal value, for two reasons that are related to one another.  Society, as it stands, is not a social contract but a social covenant.  All morality is premised on acting in a manner that harms the individual but helps the social order.  For example, one is expected to tell the truth, even if telling the truth causes great harm to befall the individual.  Moreover, if lying or cheating becomes widespread, it dis-incentizes others from not lying or not cheating, creating the old “everyone is doing it” phenomenon.  Whether one considers adultery, theft, conscription, the use of violence, the fact is that individuals will have to forego an individual benefit in order to build a better, safer, more trusting society.  If individuals perceive their fellow citizens as immoral, citizens will behave immorally themselves.  If everyone gets to define their morality for themselves, and pursue their own version of morality, then individuals seeking to justify their lying, cheating, stealing, adultery, or the use of violence (for themselves) will define their actions as morally justified.  After all, morality imposes individual costs while promoting collective benefits.  If individuals get to draw the line, strategic individuals will draw the line in a way that entitles them to behave in a way which confers on them the benefits of morality and will impose the cost on their neighbors.  Likewise, their neighbors will similarly define their moral code in a way that benefits them at the expense of the others.  Soldiers want brothels, the wealthy want weak penalties for tax evasion, the poor want weak penalties for shoplifting, students want weak penalties for academic dishonesty.  Moreover, these people pursuing these radically different visions of morality will each perceive their neighbors as immoral.  And when people view other members of society as immoral, they then feel justified in behaving immorally toward their neighbors.  Mill’s viewpoint, if widely accepted, literally sets up a vicious circle, undermining social cohesion and morality broadly.  The problem with Mill’s vision of each individual defining morality for themselves is that it empowers free riders and promotes a general sense of moral anarchy and immorality.  Does it matter that a society embraces an ethos that will lead to widespread lying, cheating, stealing and sexual immorality?  We can see from the following link what happens to colonies of yeast with widespread cheating:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130430194259.htm

The point is that while cheating benefits individuals at the expense of other individuals, colonies of cheaters die off against colonies of non-cheaters.  A society in which everyone defines their own morality will be relatively speaking, more immoral, than one in which there is an agreed upon moral code based on existing tradition.  Moral relativism is a recipe for social disintegration and destruction.    

Morality can never be defined individually, it must be defined collectively, because it amounts to a system of rules, essentially a tax on private behavior, that all the individuals must follow or be punished.  Individuals behave morally because they fear being punished or subjected to social shame, and because they view other individuals as submitting to the same system of rules.  Unless a society has an existing system of moral rules (based in relatively non-negotiable customs) and unless it is considered justified for society to enforce those rules, the moral system which provides collective strength breaks down.  Moreover, where can the system come from, except custom?  If individuals are left to decide, they will choose to legitimate their own immoral conduct, and to regulate the immoral conduct of their neighbors.  Thus, although I support liberty, liberty can never exist in a healthy way unless it is directed toward actualizing a collective system of laws and morality.  A nation must define for itself a system of moral rules, as reflected in its laws, and individuals must be punished if they violate those rules, and more importantly, held to general social approbation for not following those rules.  Groups maintain these rules because they are protective of the welfare of the entire collectivity, and a decline in morals threatens the welfare of all.

There can be no doubt that societies have differences in their views of morals, or that societies can come to have new views on issues of morals, as the United States did with respect to slavery during the Nineteenth Century.  But at the same time, as the Biblical Prophets pointed out, immorality endangers the survival of the Nation, and morality cannot be a simple matter of individual preference.  Morality confers significant evolutionary survival value to a group, and morality can only be defined by the group, and based on historical customs, in order for a system of morality to be effective. 

Mill's On Liberty, Part II: Culture and Barbarism

It should be noted that I am not being entirely fair to Mill, who unlike our current liberal theorists, does not indicate that his ideas have general or universal application.  He does believe that the state can regulate the lives of children, and prevent children from self-harm.  This exception is generally accepted by most purveyors of Mill-style liberty.  But more interesting, he notes:

For the same reason we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.  The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great that there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them:  and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end perhaps otherwise unattainable.  Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with Barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually affecting that end.

It is clear for Mill that Liberty, as he understands it, is only fit for a race of Victorian Englishmen, and whoever might resemble them.  The Barbarians can and should be subject to no less than despotism.  Within Mill, there is a clear belief in a progressive historical process of Progress.  Man begins a savage barbarian, and over time develops in ever increasing levels of moral improvement, until the world reaches perfection.  This belief goes toward why Liberty is important to Mill:  so that smart fellows like Mill can continue develop moral and intellectual developments that will further the development of mankind.  Political repression will retard this process of improvement.  But because Mill conceives of this progress as taking place almost mechanically, he does not consider the possibility that all the liberty he seeks to grant to citizens could possibly backfire, making people more barbaric.  Supposing history to be a series of cycles, of civilization, collapse, and barbarism, we can have little faith that people will use their liberty for good ends, or whether they will simply become decadent and the social order will collapse.  Perhaps it is custom and tradition that makes a nation or a culture great, and failure to preserve that culture in the name of “progress” is first step toward destruction?  These are question that Mill never addresses, because he uncritically believes in progress, and he uncritically accepts that all change must be for the good.  We must ask: what historical evidence is there that supports Mill’s belief?  If this belief is rejected, does it not call into question the whole basic assumptions of Mill’s thought?

            Mill lays out three basic freedoms characteristic of a free society:  freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.  With respect to the first freedom, I have previously discussed my support of liberalism in such matters as freedom of conscience and the rights of parents to educate their children as they see fit, which is directly related to freedom of conscience.  People in a pluralistic democracy should have a broad right to practice their religion, and transmit their traditions to their children.  But the justification for this right, as I noted, was based on bloodshed generated in the attempt to homogenize a modern society under one religious tradition, not based on a belief in the inevitable progress of the human race.  It is a good rule, in the current day and age, to maintain order and to prevent people from killing each other.  On the other hand, freedom of conscience cannot be absolute, I would not extend it to a tradition that practiced human sacrifice, polygamy and child marriage, ritual suicide like sati, female genital mutilation, or honor killings.  Unlike Mill, I would not simply label these traditions as barbaric, but I would have to look to the differences between the practitioners of these customs and myself, which is based on culture.  My cultural framework is Western, and influenced by modern secular liberalism, which is itself simply a watered-down version of Liberal Protestant Christianity.  I would ban these traditions out of a desire to protect my own cultural forms, as would probably Mill.  But my embrace of freedom of conscience is not general or universal, it is an operative historical fact in modern America.  Clearly, a country like England has an established church, and other societies and political systems have had different relations between religion and the state.  I would not condemn these societies, provided civil order and peace could be maintained amongst classes of citizens.

            Freedom of Speech is an interesting issue, which Mill acknowledges is fundamentally different from freedom of conscience, as freedom of speech is about the attempt to influence or persuade others to one’s point of view.  Invisible in Mill’s analysis is any awareness or acknowledgment of the possibility of civil war, insurrection or revolution.   That is to say, any existing political order, by virtue of its existence, has enemies.  For example, the Soviet Union during the Cold War financially supported individuals seeking to foment a violent revolution in the United States, and the replacement of a democratic system with a dictatorship.  Can a democracy or a free society protect itself against foreign governments seeking to overthrow or weaken a democratic system of government, or must democracy afford its enemies a free reign to operate?  After all, if these attempts were successful, the result would be an end of liberty.  Can liberty protect itself?  If it cannot, it is clearly decadent and politically irresponsible.  Likewise, speech maybe free, but mass media companies and printing presses are not.  The principle of Free Speech puts mass culture into the hands of concentrated financial interests, who are not disinterested political actors.  Although Hollywood and the Corporate Media are not clearly the enemies of the Nation-State, like the Communist Party was, they clearly have a political interest, and their interests can diverge from the National Interest.  There is at least a potential for a conflict of interest here.  Can we really support a rule that completely ties the hands of the government to protect itself from the power of money?  Apparently, our Supreme Court believes we cannot.  Although I support the concept of Free Speech generally, I don’t see issues with exceptions to that rule, to protect against sedition, corruption in morals, to protect the integrity of elections and the legislative process, and to protect against reputational harms in the case of libel or slander.  As an absolute rule, as Mill formulates it, it is indefensible.  The same principles apply to the right of voluntary association.  If a group of Neo-Nazis gets together and begins plotting to bomb Synagogues, I don’t see why our government should have its hands tied up until the point that bombs are actually planted.  Clearly, a political process of line drawing will need to take place, and the line should favor public safety.