Sunday, January 1, 2017
As a scholar who studies human trafficking, I often find myself thinking about American antebellum slavery. Viewed from a contemporary perspective, it is incomprehensible to think that a person, let alone a society, could believe it permissible to actually own other human beings and consider them property. Yet, more people are enslaved today than at that time in history. Like many, I wonder what my position would have been on the issue if I lived in the 19th Century. Of course, I would like to think that I would have been an enlightened individual who saw slavery for the morally repugnant social structure it was and fought against it. However, I also recognize the social acceptance of this system for millions of ordinary people and the reality that many Catholics did not rise up in support of enslaved people, but accepted its normalization and engaged in whatever mental and moral gymnastics were necessary to condone or accept it as valid. This Spring I was fortunate to teach in CUA's American Law Program in Poland and toured the Krakow ghetto and other sites where events of the Holocaust took place. Similarly, I like to think I would have been brave enough to resist the antisemitism that later grew into acceptance of the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish people (as well as others). Again, however, the reality of so many Catholics accepting this evil system as legitimate or simply "the way it is" causes me to fear that I would have been far from extraordinary, but, rather, one of the masses.
With both of these examples, however, one can never know how one would respond. These eternal questions can thankfully only be answered with sincere gratitude that one has not been put to such a test. But as 2017 begins, it appears that this luxury is over.
Whether it is slavery, antisemitism, genocide, misogyny, racism – or any other similar evil, the roots with the masses are the same. They often begin with normalization. As despots rise to power, they often begin, not with extreme genocide or explicit anti-religious statements, but rather by pointing at other groups, often minority groups, and blaming them for the majority's problems. They begin with these smaller steps, building upon prejudices that may previously have existed. Sometimes this "otherness" is developed by assaulting these groups verbally and then claiming it was "just a joke," or not serious, or misinterpreted. But then it grows and grows until it is full blown scapegoating and a conscious effort to mislead the malcontent majority into a belief system which justifies the objectification and oppression of other human beings for a purpose that serves the establishment. In the case of slavery, it was the purpose of ensuring wealth. In the case of Nazi Europe it was to ensure power.
America appears to be facing such a test starting in 2017. The scene is set for the masses to excuse the normalization of the objectification of other human beings by those in power. We saw it clearly in the dismissal as "locker room talk" of explicit bragging of sexual assault, the minimizing of mocking a disabled person, or the implicit call for violence against a female candidate. We also saw it by threats to silence any dissention through lawsuits, name calling, or false allegations.
This realization of the impending test for all of us came to a head for me on the recent Feast of St. Stephen, the Church's first martyr. On December 26, the Church recalls how Stephen was living his life trying to be true to the Gospel by working with the people – all the people. When challenged by those in power, he had the courage to speak the truth to those in power and when he did so, they "could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke." Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59 And even when the societal leaders were manipulating the general population to objectify and oppress these new Christians and those they were serving, he had the courage to stand up to them and articulate publicly what he knew to be true. I wondered on Stephen's feast day whether I would have the courage to stand up to those in power, and the masses who feel emboldened by the legitimizing of their views, and defend my brothers and sisters (in this case women, Hispanics, refugees, former POW's, Pope Francis, etc.) for all these groups have dared to raise questions about those in power and have been met with ridicule and attacks. Such attacks are designed to silence.
As has been discussed here at Mirror of Justice, people voted various ways for various legitimate reasons. This was a difficult election for anyone of faith. All elections require compromise. Of concern now is what people were willing to overlook in order to achieve their preferred ends. We risk that this pattern continues to levels far beyond compromise and that we will not be like Stephen and recognize when those in power articulate what is simply too wrong.
In a recent piece published in the Dallas Morning News, Yale history professor, Timothy Snyder, offers a path to that courage. An expert in the causes of the Holocaust, Snyder wrote a piece that will help all of us to recognize when it is necessary to stem harmful efforts to silence debate on important issues such as the environment, religious freedom, data breaches, election interference, or freedom itself. In his piece, What You, Yes You, Can Do to Save America From Tyranny he offers 20 suggestion that can fortify each of us to resist the seduction of objectification of others seemingly for our own gain but actually for the gain of those in power. While all 20 are worthy of consideration, here are a few to highlights (edited for space) of relevance to lawyers in particular:
"Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.
Here are… lessons from across the fearful 20th century, adapted to the circumstances of today.
Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You've already done this, haven't you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.
Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.
Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.
Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges."
I think if St. Stephen were living today, he would offer us all some similar advice on how to remain true to our moral beliefs and not fall into rationalization to justify the objectification of others. I hope we can all face and pass this test.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Boston Magazine joins the post-election introspection with this cover article in its January issue, "How Liberal Professors Are Ruining College." (I was especially happy to see the cover centrally displayed while buying local honey in Whole Foods, not a grocer I visit frequently but that is always humming when I do.) From the article:
Long known as bastions of progressive thought, and home to the likes of Noam Chomsky and the late Howard Zinn, our region’s schools have always been suspected of putting the “liberal” in liberal arts college. Until recently, though, no one had quantified just how far left higher ed here had drifted. [EB: See note below re this muddled use of the term "liberal."]
Last spring, Samuel Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, in New York, decided to run the numbers. From the start, he certainly expected liberal professors to outnumber conservatives, but his data—25 years’ worth of statistics from the Higher Education Research Institute—told a far more startling tale: In the South and throughout the Great Plains, the ratio of liberal to conservative professors hovered around 3 to 1. On the liberal left coast, the ratio was 6 to 1. And then there was New England—which looked like William F. Buckley’s worst nightmare—standing at 28 to 1. “It astonished me,” says Abrams, whose research revealed that conservative professors weren’t just rare; they were being pushed to the edge of extinction.
A key trouble for the article's author seems to be the potential radicalization of conservatives if they are pushed further and further underground while at college. (Conservatism is treated as yet another potential personal identity more than a philosophy of education or even of government.) But he is also (somewhat) attentive to the more essential trouble: that in becoming so ideologically monolithic, colleges have abandoned their raison d'etre. Quoting Abrams: “The goal of college is to give you multiple viewpoints and to grow your mind, not to just be comfortable in your own bubble. The real world is not full of progressives.”
The article hardly provides the sort of introspection offered by Columbia's Mark Lilla in the New York Times just after the election [interesting post-article interview with Villa here], but it does present research and anecdotes that are worth the quick read. Readers are of course offered an easy out in the form of a response provided by the NYT's Paul Krugman: "professors actually haven’t become more liberal, but rather that the meaning of conservatism has changed and the Fox-ification and now Trump-ification of the Republican Party has pushed highly educated members of the right over to the left." Still, it is something that Boston Magazine is trying to make sense of it all.
NB: For an excellent essay exploring the distinctive classical and progressive/revisionist understandings of how liberal arts education ought to "liberate," see "Liberalism, Liberation, and the Liberal Arts" in Robbie George's masterful Conscience and Its Enemies. Just a taste of what I think is the book's most important chapter, offering essential insight into the current troubles in the ivory tower:
Formally, the classical and revisionist conceptions are similar. Both propose the liberal arts as liberating. Both promise to enable the learner to achieve a greater measure of personal authenticity. But in substance they are polar opposites. Personal authenticity, in the classical understanding of liberal arts education, consists in self-mastery--in placing reason in control of desire. According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires--it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, slavery to self...
According to the classical liberal-arts ideal, our critical engagement with great thinkers enriches our understanding and enables us to grasp, or grasp more fully, great truths--truths that, when we appropriate them and integrate them into our lives, liberate us from what is merely vulgar, course, or base. These are soul-shaping, humanizing truths--truths whose appreciation and secure possession elevate reason above passion or appetite, enabling us to direct our desires and our wills to what is truly good, truly beautiful, truly worthy of human beings as possessors of a profound and inherent dignity. The classic liberal-arts proposition is that intellectual knowledge has a role to play in making self-transcendence possible. It can help us to understand what is good and to love the good above whatever it is we happen to desire; it can teach us to desire what is good because it is good, thus making us truly masters of ourselves.
Friday, December 30, 2016
This interview with Michael Wear (a former staffer for President Obama), over at The Atlantic, has been getting a lot of attention -- in particular, this anecdote:
Some of his colleagues also didn’t understand his work, he writes. He once drafted a faith-outreach fact sheet describing Obama’s views on poverty, titling it “Economic Fairness and the Least of These,” a reference to a famous teaching from Jesus in the Bible. Another staffer repeatedly deleted “the least of these,” commenting, “Is this a typo? It doesn’t make any sense to me. Who/what are ‘these’?”
This observation, by Wear, strikes me as accurate:
[T]here’s a religious illiteracy problem in the Democratic Party. It’s tied to the demographics of the country: More 20- and 30-year-olds are taking positions of power in the Democratic Party. They grew up in parts of the country where navigating religion was not important socially and not important to their political careers. This is very different from, like, James Carville in Louisiana in the ’80s. James Carville is not the most religious guy, but he gets religious people—if you didn’t get religious people running Democratic campaigns in the South in the ’80s, you wouldn’t win.
Another reason why they haven’t reached out to evangelicals in 2016 is that, no matter Clinton’s slogan of “Stronger Together,” we have a politics right now that is based on making enemies, and making people afraid. I think we’re seeing this with the Betsy DeVos nomination: It’s much easier to make people scared of evangelicals, and to make evangelicals the enemy, than trying to make an appeal to them. . . .
"When that martyr was about to suffer before the altar in the Church, as has been said, before he was attacked, when he heard himself asked for by the soldiers who had come among the crowd of clerics and monks for this purpose shouting 'Where is the Archbishop?' he came to them from the steps he had almost ascended, saying with a fearless countenance, 'Here I am; what do you want?' One of the murderous soldiers answered him in a spirit of rage, 'Only that you die, for it is impossible for you to live any longer.' The Archbishop replied with no less courage in his speech than in his heart (for, with due respect for all martyrs, I will confidently state as my own opinion that none of them seemed to be more courageous in their suffering than he), 'And I am Willing to die for my God, and for the defense of the justice and freedom of the Church. But if you week (sic) my head, I forbid you on behalf of Almighty God and under threat of anathema to injure any other in any way, whether he be monk or cleric or layman, great or small; but let them be as free from punishment as they were from its cause; for not they, but I am to be held responsible if any of them has taken up the cause of the suffering Church. I willingly embrace death if only the Church will attain peace and freedom by the pouring out of my blood."
Thursday, December 29, 2016
In a recent opinion piece, Michael Gerson noted:
[C]onservatives believe that a just society depends on the moral striving of finite and fallen creatures who treat each other with a respect and decency that laws can encourage but not enforce. Such virtues, often rooted in faith, are what turn families and communities into the nurseries of citizenship. These institutions not only shape good people, they inculcate the belief that humans have a dignity that, while often dishonored, can never be effaced. In the midst of all our justified skepticism, we can never be skeptical of this: that the reason for politics is to honor the equal value of every life, beginning with the weakest and most vulnerable. No bad goal — say, racial purity or communist ideology — outweighs this commitment. And no good goal — the efficiency of markets or the pursuit of greater equality — does either.
Well said.
