Each of us brings our own moral code into the larger cultural and national debate. There are, in fact no shortages of "moral codes." If one looks carefully, the common thread, the "TRUTH" (in my way of looking at it God's Truth) is always operating in the background. If you examine the faiths around the world all have, for example, some version of the "Golden Rule". The various faiths / believers may state them in such a way as is most understandable to their audience but God is incredibly versatile. He can find a way to couch His truth so that the greatest or the least of us can understand it.
The problem for human beings is when we feel the need to "legislate truth" based on our "righteous understanding" of God's "intention". God's intention is to the best of my understanding to be reserved for God. When we suggest as some have, for example, in the recent judicial confirmation debates that to be against the filibuster is to be against people of faith I have to suggest they are overstepping the bounds. Moral code is essential to order, peace, and safety but moral code imposed by a majority, even a well meaning majority, on a helpless minority is nothing more than despotic behavior against the very basis of most faiths. Certainly, Christianity is based on the least and the greatest exchanging place and value, so if we are trampling the minority in the name of our great "morality" we had better be careful that we aren't in fact violating our own "rules."
Speaking of rules and who makes them. First I should disclose that as a Christian I am a bit leery of "Rules" to begin with. It seems to me that when we want to set up rules based on our faith we run the risk of planting the seeds of Pharisaical behavior where we wander around accusing others of blasphemy and sins against "The Law". It seems more likely that we should be more followers of the "summary of the Law" where we love our neighbors as we would love God. In that to me is the answer to the last question in the comment, "who gets to pick the rules?" The answer in my view is that we all do in the time-honored American tradition of compromise. Remember compromise? It was that thing where I give up something important to me and you give up something important to you so that we both leave the table a little dissatisfied but far more likely not to come to blows. If nothing else, good compromise ends with all the parties feeling that at least the others lost something too. More often than not these days, to engage in compromise is to be seen as being weak. To me, that misses the mark mightily. If I give you something which is important to me and you do the same we are in fact, absolutely living our faith. We are sacrificing for the benefit of others and for humanity as a whole because we are encouraging peace and understanding. Living your faith in actions FOR others is the real place where the rubber meets the road of faith.
Who then, gets to make the rules? Short answer, we ALL do and my rules won't make you all that happy and your rules won't make me all that happy. That is precisely why I think we are in dangerous ground when we feel we need "moral laws". Yes civil, orderly society is a good and proper goal but it will be far more likely achieved with the change in behavior of citizens than by codifying their transgressions. Until a few scant decades ago "right thinking" individuals in this state felt it was "morally right" and Biblically justified to keep people of different skin colors segregated and they used laws for this purpose. Moral laws made by the majority are quite obviously not always morally correct. When I advocate not imposing a moral code I see that the imposition of the majority's moral code can in fact have a chilling and discriminatory effect. That discrimination against the defenseless or underpowered minority is in my way of assessing, the most immoral thing a civil society could ever conceive of attempting. If we keep our moral rules to a minimum and act toward one another in accordance with the best tenets of our beliefs and faiths, we will in fact create an orderly, peaceful and certainly civil society – by default.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Friday, April 08, 2005
Black and White
Black and White.
We are in a time of black and white. We have been in this place before. Sadly, it is not new. In the recent past one could either “love it or leave it” or they were a “good boy or an ‘outside’ agitator.” Surely if you were “one of US” you would have ALL of our beliefs. If you don’t believe in SOME of the same things you must be against ALL of OUR beliefs and you are trying to tear US down. Welcome back to the 1960’s. Actually, we may have never actually left the 60’s. After all, one of the biggest issues in the last presidential campaign wasn’t what our country’s future will be but what each candidate did or did not do in the Viet Nam era. Were you a protester? Were you a “loyal patriot?” Where EXACTLY were you in the 60’s. That question implies that where one stood on those issues tells US all we need to know.
This debate has not matured with age. We are still either “Hippies” or “Hardhats”, Liberals or Conservatives, For US or Against US. Just who is US is always a matter of what hackneyed label you want to paste over the subtleties of the opinions of the “other side”. In the final analysis, the black and white labels have been wrong for five decades or more, and counting. Being in the majority opinion has justified coarse treatment for the minority. The reactions from the minority de jour to rough treatment caused the next shrill reactionary response, guaranteeing escalation and retaliation.
The minority at the moment seems to be anyone interested in having some shred of the Constitution left once the current terrorist threats fade from the headlines. Recently, on C-SPAN, there was a lawyer defending the need for due process for the detainees at Guantanamo. Instantly the lawyer was set upon by a series of callers, who brandishing their 60's era label makers, were clicking madly and pasting labels anywhere there was open flesh upon which to stick them. Caller after C-SPAN caller responded with vilification of the lawyer's intentions and with personal attacks upon his integrity and veracity. One caller asked that the lawyer “reveal who he really was – an ultra-liberal Democrat who was out to bash Bush and let terrorists kill more Americans.” In the end this is how the math added up for most of the callers; due process justice for folks in Guantanamo = you want to let terrorists kill more of us. If you want due process – YOU are the enemy. This lawyer wasn’t some long haired William Kunstler defending the bratty Chicago Seven defendants. He was reasoned, restrained, respectful individual who listened to the callers and tried to explain that his logic and intent was not to “topple Bush." He was trying to communicate that all he sought was “due process” for the defendants. In other words he was not saying "free my innocent brothers." His only message was that they should be, in apparently soon to be forgotten words, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. In today’s discussion he was just “aiding the enemy.”
We are in a very dangerous place indeed if we are all susceptible to guilt without evidence or civil justice. The message seems to be that these detainees were arrested so they MUST actually BE guilty of being enemies of the country. Why because the government said so. Did they say so in a court of law? Did they say so with evidence presented to a judge? Well no, why do you ask? The government said they were helping terrorists so therefore we need to lock them away. Well won’t that be convenient the next time anyone gets in the way of government policy. It doesn’t matter what they were actually doing, we won’t have to prove that any more. All we will have to do as government officials is SAY that they are doing something that threatens and we can just go round up the “bad guys”. So, chose up. Are you with US or against US? This begs the question, just when might YOU be considered a "bad guy" and how will YOU then defend yourself without the Constitution to protect you?
What's needed seems to be an immediate abandonment of the idea that there is ONLY black and white. The world is a kaleidoscope of color with myriad shades of gray including both black AND white. Our mutual rights are grounded in the concept of recognizing and respecting the guarantees in the process of justice. Without mutual respect we will US and THEM our way out of a civil society based on the rule of law to a Wild-West vigilante state. Tolerance, reason and the rule of law will turn many of our “enemies” into “fellow citizens” with a different point of view.
We are in a time of black and white. We have been in this place before. Sadly, it is not new. In the recent past one could either “love it or leave it” or they were a “good boy or an ‘outside’ agitator.” Surely if you were “one of US” you would have ALL of our beliefs. If you don’t believe in SOME of the same things you must be against ALL of OUR beliefs and you are trying to tear US down. Welcome back to the 1960’s. Actually, we may have never actually left the 60’s. After all, one of the biggest issues in the last presidential campaign wasn’t what our country’s future will be but what each candidate did or did not do in the Viet Nam era. Were you a protester? Were you a “loyal patriot?” Where EXACTLY were you in the 60’s. That question implies that where one stood on those issues tells US all we need to know.
This debate has not matured with age. We are still either “Hippies” or “Hardhats”, Liberals or Conservatives, For US or Against US. Just who is US is always a matter of what hackneyed label you want to paste over the subtleties of the opinions of the “other side”. In the final analysis, the black and white labels have been wrong for five decades or more, and counting. Being in the majority opinion has justified coarse treatment for the minority. The reactions from the minority de jour to rough treatment caused the next shrill reactionary response, guaranteeing escalation and retaliation.
The minority at the moment seems to be anyone interested in having some shred of the Constitution left once the current terrorist threats fade from the headlines. Recently, on C-SPAN, there was a lawyer defending the need for due process for the detainees at Guantanamo. Instantly the lawyer was set upon by a series of callers, who brandishing their 60's era label makers, were clicking madly and pasting labels anywhere there was open flesh upon which to stick them. Caller after C-SPAN caller responded with vilification of the lawyer's intentions and with personal attacks upon his integrity and veracity. One caller asked that the lawyer “reveal who he really was – an ultra-liberal Democrat who was out to bash Bush and let terrorists kill more Americans.” In the end this is how the math added up for most of the callers; due process justice for folks in Guantanamo = you want to let terrorists kill more of us. If you want due process – YOU are the enemy. This lawyer wasn’t some long haired William Kunstler defending the bratty Chicago Seven defendants. He was reasoned, restrained, respectful individual who listened to the callers and tried to explain that his logic and intent was not to “topple Bush." He was trying to communicate that all he sought was “due process” for the defendants. In other words he was not saying "free my innocent brothers." His only message was that they should be, in apparently soon to be forgotten words, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. In today’s discussion he was just “aiding the enemy.”
We are in a very dangerous place indeed if we are all susceptible to guilt without evidence or civil justice. The message seems to be that these detainees were arrested so they MUST actually BE guilty of being enemies of the country. Why because the government said so. Did they say so in a court of law? Did they say so with evidence presented to a judge? Well no, why do you ask? The government said they were helping terrorists so therefore we need to lock them away. Well won’t that be convenient the next time anyone gets in the way of government policy. It doesn’t matter what they were actually doing, we won’t have to prove that any more. All we will have to do as government officials is SAY that they are doing something that threatens and we can just go round up the “bad guys”. So, chose up. Are you with US or against US? This begs the question, just when might YOU be considered a "bad guy" and how will YOU then defend yourself without the Constitution to protect you?
What's needed seems to be an immediate abandonment of the idea that there is ONLY black and white. The world is a kaleidoscope of color with myriad shades of gray including both black AND white. Our mutual rights are grounded in the concept of recognizing and respecting the guarantees in the process of justice. Without mutual respect we will US and THEM our way out of a civil society based on the rule of law to a Wild-West vigilante state. Tolerance, reason and the rule of law will turn many of our “enemies” into “fellow citizens” with a different point of view.
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