Thomas Sowell on "The Real History of Slavery"

It’s not like Alex Haley pictured it. At best the "Roots" portrait is incomplete. At worst the book and TV mini-series is mendacious.

I’m talking about the not-so-peculiar institution of slavery. The rest of the story (and the more accurate story) can be found in the extended essay, "The Real History of Slavery," in Thomas Sowell’s provocatively-titled book, BLACK REDNECKS
AND WHITE LIBERALS.

That fuller perspective may not come as a total surprise. Most of us have memories of ancient Greek and Roman society in the recesses of our minds--civilizations suffused with human bondage. Others may recall the Barbary pirates. What is surprising, however, is how most of our front-burner thoughts on the topic are at odds with this larger perspective.

Ideas that seldom inform top-of-the-head ruminations include the following: Slavery existed worldwide and throughout the history of civilization. Slavery wasn’t founded on racial differences but on disparities of power. Throughout most of history whites enslaved whites, blacks enslaved blacks, and other groups enslaved vulnerable neighbors. (The very word "slave" derives from "Slav"--an ethnic group subject to raids from various directions.) The British, more than any other national group, were responsible for outlawing slavery around the world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Finally, those English imperial efforts were met with great resistance in the Ottoman Empire and in parts of Africa.

These ideas are not the ones that typically spring to mind when the word "slavery" is mentioned. Instead, the Roots picture of white slavers going ashore in Africa and rounding up vulnerable natives is typical. This image is itself implausible. In
most cases slavers acquired their cargo from African tribes that, like peoples around the world, captured and sold neighbors who were not powerful enough to fend off adversaries. Indeed, Sowell notes that slavery flourished in the West African area from which Kunta Kinte was presumably abducted.

The "problem" with such facts is that they don’t conform to the "black and white" Hollywood paradigm that is required if one wants to use history as a political weapon. Having Africans enslave other Africans--only some of whom were sold to merchants docked at the shore--isn’t a stirring myth. Race-based indignation is further undermined by accounts that depict black slaveowners who supported the Confederacy or managed plantations in the Caribbean.

Also unhelpful for contemporary purposes is the fact that the British expended decades of effort and approximately 5% of their GNP in an effort to eradicate a practice that most nations accepted without question. (Even Thomas More’s Utopia included slavery in its vision of perfection.) Most disconcerting of all, at least for some contemporary groups, is the fact that Quakers and evangelical Anglicans like William Wilberforce provided the spiritual impetus that made his island nation willing to pay a steep price in lives and treasure for a cause whose reward was largely intangible.

Sowell’s discussion of the black family delivers another blow to conventional wisdom. The author points out that between 1890 and 1940 African-Americans actually had slightly higher marriage rates than whites--a distinction that, since 1960, has more than disappeared. These facts suggest the implausibility of using the "legacy of slavery" to explain social pathologies that only emerged a century after the fact.

History is what it is--warts and all. If major kudos go to the British for eliminating slavery, so be it--no matter how grating that fact might be for those who equate Western civilization with racism. More importantly, as Sowell notes, the shame and guilt that often poison race relations are actually mitigated by looking the facts about slavery square in the face. The truth, he believes, will set us free.

BLACK REDNECKS AND WHITE LIBERALS

A Cal State sociology professor recently convinced the education pooh-bahs in San Bernardino of the need to incorporate "Ebonics" into their curriculum--at least on a limited basis. By giving official linguistic recognition and respect to what most people consider street-talk, these officials hope to peak the interest of marginal students and to discourage them from dropping out of school.

Unfortunately, none of these lofty objectives were achieved by Oakland’s experiment in substandard English. And now Professor Thomas Sowell has written an extended essay--contained in the book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals--that helps explain why.

Ebonics, Sowell argues, is not a distinctive black language. Instead, it is a dialect with an undistinguished pedigree that includes Southerners of both races and extends back to the borderlands between Britain and Scotland. Terms like "yawl," "dis," and "dat" as well as verbal constructs like "I be" and "she ain’t" were common in the more primitive regions of those countries--areas which provided a substantial number of emigrants to the American South. Thus, what some academics have labeled "Ebonics" is really an Anglo-Saxon export associated with a pre-Enlightenment "cracker" culture.

Characteristics of that culture in America have been described by observers ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to W.E.B. DuBois: less interest in education, anemic entrepreneurial activity, undisciplined work habits, emphasis on immediate gratification, intoxication, ostentatious display, an exaggerated sense of personal pride, frequent duels, and lax sexual mores. These accounts focus, by and large, on white "redneck" culture. But the same traits naturally defined most of the non-white inhabitants of the South who had no contact with the African cultures from which they were s eparated by thousands of miles and several generations.

Significantly, not all black Americans (and not all white Southerners) were part of or remained tied to this culture that originated in foreign territories where lawlessness made an emphasis on long-range planning futile. Sowell points to blacks in the North whose manners and speech patterns were reflective of those found in the population among which they lived--at least prior to the unwelcome northern migration of Southern blacks in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Sowell also notes the impact of schools established in the South after the Civil War by religiously-motivated New Englanders. These "New England enclaves" not only produced a disproportionate share of black leaders, they also inculcated in their students an ethic that replaced the dysfunctional ethos in which they had been immersed from birth. DuBois himself praised these efforts as "the finest thing in American history."

West Indian migrants constitute a third group whose stunning accomplishments have been inversely related to their participation in "redneck" culture. These individuals, also exposed to the "legacy of slavery" in the Caribbean, became entrepreneurs in Harlem, comprised a huge percentage of black graduates at Ivy League schools, and in the 1930’s were actually less likely than whites to spend time in New York’s Sing Sing Prison.

The upshot of Sowell's analysis is this: Ebonics is more closely associated with a dysfunctional redneck culture than with any distinctive black identity. As the Swedish scholar Gunnar Myrdal observed, "the so-called 'Negro dialect' is simply a variation on the ordinary Southern accent."

The utter irony of the Ebonics fad is that while most whites and many blacks have escaped the clutches of this once-prevalent culture, some intellectuals seem hell-bent on perpetuating and even expanding its scope. By identifying the language of redneck culture with racial pride, academics succeed in linking racial identity with a world of violence, ignorance, and hair-trigger resentment--with values nowadays commercially disseminated via gangsta rap. No wonder Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. recently lamented that black youths commonly view educational accomplishment as selling out to "da man."

The KKK would be ecstatic with these results--not having the wit to see that they exist as cousins in the same cultural backwater. Misery loves company.

THE "DEEPLY RELIGIOUS" LITMUS TEST

Are a judicial nominee’s "deeply held religious beliefs" a legitimate area of exploration for legislators charged with the advice and consent function? During recent confirmation hearings New York Senator Charles Schumer began pursuing this novel line of inquiry --apparently based on the belief that the first amendment not only creates a wall of separation between church and state (words not found in the Constitution) but also establishes special hurdles for individuals who take their faith seriously.

Naive observers might think that the primary qualification for judicial nominees would be their ability and willingness to interpret the law fairly. But as courts increasingly take upon themselves legislative prerogatives, a candidate’s philosophical views loom ever larger to politicians charged with the responsibility of deciding who is and who isn’t "qualified" to sit on a federal bench.

Under Schumer’s view of jurisprudence, constitutional temperaments seem to be compatible with deeply held views of all types--just not with deeply held religious views. Thus, even though more than 90% of Americans claim to believe in God, as far as judicial reflection is concerned, only god-free logic is clearly acceptable.

Imagine, for example, a judge with deeply held positions that are at odds with the vast majority of Americans when it comes to the age of sexual consent. Imagine that the judge’s name is Ginsburg. Would the philosophical roots of her views make any difference to Schumer and associates? Apparently not. All that would matter is that she came to her "progressive" views without relying on any religious convictions.

Now consider a judge with deeply held religious views that are roughly congruent with ideas embraced by at least half the country. Imagine the judge’s name is Roberts. Does the religious basis of his moral convictions become a major issue? Apparently so--since his religious beliefs trigger concerns arising from an expansive rendering of the First Amendment establishment clause.

In sum, secular nominees are OK, theists are questionable, and true believers are out of court. Ironically, this rule makes the following premise judicially illegitimate: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

According to Jefferson, governments are founded to secure the aforementioned rights. But according to Schumeristas, judges in that government fall under a cloud of suspicion if they employ this traditional concept of natural rights when pondering the resolution of legal questions. (Over a decade ago Justice Thomas, in his confirmation hearing, was given grief by Senator Biden for subscribing to these same "self-evident" truths that undergird the Declaration of Independence.)

Judges are entitled, it seems, to reason based on penumbral emanations plucked from thin air. They are also entitled to patch together decisions under the philosophical banner "the greatest good for the greatest number"--a benign utilitarian phrase that Princeton’s Peter Singer employs to justify infanticide. But they are not entitled, by Schumer’s lights, to reason based on the axiom that life derives from God--at least not if the conclusion to that train of thought violates some "deeply held" abortion plank in his party’s platform.

This new approach to jurisprudence depicts people of faith as irrational, eccentric, and narrowly sectarian--persons whose aberrant ideas must be quarantined to prevent public contamination. Meanwhile, non-religious minds (or intellects that have been scrubbed clean of religious pollutants) are portrayed as legitimate jurists.

This view would come as a surprise to George Washington, whose Farewell Address contains these anti-Schumeristic observations: "Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.... And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."

Removing religious symbols and rituals from the public square was a giant first step on this slippery suppositional slope. That policy made it possible to stigmatize as theocratic all public officials with strong religious views--especially judges. If both these strategies prove successful, the only persons deemed qualified to rule in our still religious nation will be those who are indifferent or hostile to the beliefs held dear by a substantial majority of citizens. The secular sieve that cleansed the public square of vital religious expression will have accomplished the same feat in the halls of government.

EBONICS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Perhaps in response to Bill Cosby’s humorous critique of "Who you are? What you be?" linguistic deformations, a Cal State sociologist has convinced the education pooh-bahs in San Bernardino of the need to incorporate substandard English into the curriculum of that school district--at least on a limited basis.

Dr. Cosby, you may recall, had the temerity, the effrontery, da u-da-man moxie to declare that kids who speak like untutored street urchins are as unlikely to impress potential employers as baggy-pant adolescents who show up for interviews flashing four inches of underwear and sporting a backward-facing baseball cap. For this shameless violation of political correctness Cosby was excoriated by sensitivity monitors in the press and tarred with convenient accusations of moral impropriety--concerns that are never raised by MSM talking heads when Jesse Jackson pontificates about matters of race and culture.

Now the empire is striking back. The "we no Tomz" academic establishment --whose record of negative accomplishment rivals that of Democrat consultant and John Kerry campaign advisor Bob Shrum--is pushing not only the risible notion that Ebonics is a distinct language but also that the issue is a foregone scholarly conclusion.

Consequently, ideas that worked poorly with an honest-to-goodness language (Spanish) are now being shoehorned into a curriculum on behalf of speech patterns that reign supreme ("be top dog") in the world of rap. The rationale for this educational absurdity is that speaking in Ebonics will keep kids who are currently dropping out in large numbers more interested in school.

More likely what will happen is that marginal students will think they’re OK just as they are--since the desperate language of pop-culture will be accorded special recognition. Indeed, if Ebonics is a real language, why should members of this distinctive linguistic community learn to talk like "whitey"? As Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. has observed, the idea that educational accomplishment means selling out to "da man" already permeates black culture. Ebonics-based education only strengthens that notion by linking identify politics to poor speech. In this way anger, sloth, and racial pride are combined in a witches brew almost guaranteed to produce failure.

Needless to say, none of the sociologists or school board members got to where they are by using the language they seek to legitimize. Nor would these persons think twice about exiting a doctor’s office where the fellow with the stethoscope spoke in the cockneyesque dialect of the street (’aws ye bum, guv’nr!). Of course, no one has to make that decision because professional accomplishment requires serious dedication--a quality not exhibited by those of whatever race who cling to sloppy grammar and poor diction like a security blanket.

In many ways Ebonics advocates resemble jar-of-urine-as-work-of-art exhibitionists. Both fancy themselves part of a special group that is more creative, sensitive, and thoughtful than ordinary folks. Unfortunately, kids victimized by this avant garde educational project will lose out in a much bigger way than suckers who cede their aesthetic sensibilities to a few con-artists.

As Thomas Sowell’s book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, observes, these black pupils will be encouraged to identify more completely with a violent "cracker" culture that has nothing to do with racial identity and that undercuts their own success. They’ll certainly be worse off than Spanish-speaking students whose native tongue wasn’t invented by an academic in search of a tenured post.

Put succinctly, these children will be kept on the plantation--a plantation that benefits various shades of elites who constantly churn out bad ideas for which they themselves never pay a price: whole language, self-esteem curricula, culturally sensitive math, and now Ebonics.

LIVE 8: POSTURING VERSUS PRACTICE

"One swallow does not a summer make." The epigram reflects the heart of Aristotle’s ethical philosophy. Character isn’t the product of random acts of kindness or of good intentions as evanescent as the head on a mug of cold beer. Instead, practice and habit are keys to transforming good ideas into virtuous reality.

Live 8, the international rock concert christened by Coldplay’s Chris Martin "the greatest thing that’s ever been organized probably in the history of the world" flies under a different aphoristic banner--this one offered by the event’s producer, Bob Geldof: "Something must be done, even if it doesn't work."

Only the term "probably" reflects well on Mr. Martin’s sense of historical proportion. Not much more can be said of Geldof’s urgent plea that endorses opening windows in a house on fire under the theory that it’s better than doing nothing.

It isn’t surprising that Aristotle’s party-pooping point-of-view doesn’t generate much enthusiasm among the Pepsi X-Generation. After all, what could be more attractive than an eleemosynary approach that distracts from a group’s own moral failings, makes a show of concern for individuals living far away, and features puerile music that fans would pay to hear in any case--a pathological trifecta.

Such one-shot exhibitions of emotional solidarity amount to little more than sops to consciences sated with excess. They resemble Andie MacDowell’s character in the opening scene of Sex, Lies, and Videotape where she ponders for her psychiatrist the fate of a trash-filled barge cruising the high seas in search of a friendly port-of-call. That mental voyage steered her thoughts away from a troubled marriage.

Aristotle, by contrast, asserts that there is no quick fix--not for individuals and not for societies. It takes more than "doing something" to produce an admirable result. What it takes is doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, over and over again. It’s not a formula that sits well with narcissistic entertainers or undisciplined fans.

As far as Africa is concerned, there are, indeed, "simple" answers--but they involve long-term practices unfamiliar to revelers who mindlessly parrot the musical mantra that self-indulgence is the highest form of integrity. Asian nations like South Korea and Taiwan, for example, have moved from poverty to prosperity because of policies that provide a stable legal framework, foster private enterprise, and encourage education. Absent such basic reforms, money sent to corrupt regimes will only subsidize failure.

In the age of advertising, silver-bullet solutions sell well. People are drawn to Hollywood endings where problems vanish after a single dramatic intervention. For these folks social liposuction is always the answer.

One concert, however, will not a continent remake. Indeed, based on the ideas articulated by Live 8 promoters, it’s likely to make things worse.

THE CLASSLESS SOCIETY

Bepeckled, gaunt, he stood erect,
then cocked his head to interject
and sprayed his syllables like bullets at the crowd.
"I am a Leftist," he avowed
--his dull and tainted teeth, projections
gravely cast against a bearded disposition.

"Power to the people," he implored
--praising Marx with jargon weighty,
lauding Castro, Che, and Warren Beatty.
"Revolution!" cried the man whose tenured post
was funded most
by porcine forces he deplored.

"Redistribution!" shouted harder,
he who sought with eyeshade ardor
to reduce to naught assessments owed.
"Comrades, comrades," droned
the frothy intellect
whose peers he held beneath contempt.

"Workers of the world, unite!
Discard your gilded chains!
What’s his is yours by right!"
Declared the well-fed orator
who never worker one employed
but lived, sans sweat, off others’ gains.

Venom-spitting lover of mankind,
Egalitaire--elite in his own mind,
Parasitic prole du jour,
This cogitating amateur,
Content to fill his acolytes with bilious rage
(and pants with cash)
Till hist’ry be as classless as its shabby sage.

NUANCE: THE WHITE LEFT'S BURDEN

If there is one mantra that leftists love to repeat, it is that their ideas are more "nuanced" than those of conservatives. Consequently, so goes the refrain, they face more daunting communication challenges than folks whose thoughts are so simplistic they can be placed on a bumper sticker--with room to spare.

This communication gap--call it the White Left’s Burden--explains why smarter-than-thous find it so hard to garner a majority of votes in this unsophisticated country. Most folks, it appears, lack the gray matter required to grasp their finely tuned arguments. This gap also explains why the national Democrat Party can only enact its legislative agenda via the least democratic branch of the government--the federal judiciary.

Take as an example that famous declaration, "I actually did vote for the 87 billion before I voted against it." It takes a New England preppy who graduated in the bottom third of his college class to fathom the complexity of that assertion. Dimwitted NASCAR-types would simply chalk up an about-face of this sort to the common political desire to have your cake and eat it too.

It also takes more acumen than middle America can muster to understand Howard Dean’s recent comments about "evil" Republicans--"white Christian(s)" who don’t care if children go to bed hungry and who’ve "never worked an honest day in their lives." A professional deconstructionist might be needed to explain to the hoi polloi whether the two senators from Massachusetts fall inside or outside the last of those artfully articulated demographic categories. This tutor might also explain how it is really the Republicans who are poisoning political discourse. (I suspect the words "dialectical," "post-modern," and "grinch" would be employed frequently during this pedagogical session.)

More recently the party of nuance has taken to employing terms like "theocracy" to describe the efforts of religiously-motivated Americans to resist aggressive secularization of the public square. Typical of such "crusades" (or are they "jihads"?) are unsuccessful campaigns to allow public high schools to engage in traditions of minimal piety that have been in place for a century or more.

One can sympathize with cognitive hair-splitters who are now burdened with the job of explaining to simpletons why a minuscule cross on the seal of Los Angeles County constitutes an "establishment of religion"--a task further complicated by the "living document" judicial philosophy that makes all appeals to the Constitution’s text either superfluous or mendacious. Fortunately for these brainiacs, most Americans already believe that the phrase "separation of church and state" is actually in the Constitution-- probably in the section where, simultaneously, senate filibusters are made inviolate and the Constitution infinitely elastic.

The piece de resistance of nuanced discourse has to be Senator Dick Durbin’s recent use of the terms "Nazis," "Soviet gulags," and "Pol Pot" in conjunction with his condemnation of abuses at the Guantanamo detention facility. Only a mind working at warp speed can appreciate the refinement reflected in this three-pronged allusion. An untrained ear might think Senator Durbin was comparing the penal practices of Hitler, Stalin, and the Cambodian tyrant to those employed at GTMO.

Au contraire! The senior senator from Illinois was in no way linking the actions of American military personnel at Guantanamo with the aforementioned regimes. Unfortunately, I’m unequipped to explain this faux comparison that juxtaposes genocidal regimes with the alleged discomforts endured by terrorists at Guantanamo. (Curiously, the word "alleged" seems to be missing from Senator Durbin’s vocabulary.) All I can say is that hinterland Neanderthals tend to hear his statement as an imprudent assertion that will give aid and comfort to linguistically-challenged enemies.

Maybe Ted Turner can explain Durbin’s comparison--or that guy whose definition of the word "is" varies to suit the exigencies of his legal situation. In the meantime we simple- minded, uncaring, luxury-sated, theocratic fascists will have to do the best we can, thesaurus in hand, to master the complexities of sophisticated political discourse.

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE FOLLIES: SHORTEN THAT TEXTBOOK

When is less, more? Answer: When it’s a California textbook. Just ask Assembly member Jackie Goldberg--sponsor of AB 756, the bill to ban the state from purchasing texts longer than 200 pages.

Honestly, folks, this is no joke. And not only does the former Compton teacher want new textbooks for California schools to be limited to 200 pages, her assembly colleagues actually agree with her.

By a vote of 42-26 the lower house in Sacramento recently went on record supporting the novel idea that fewer pages equals greater achievement. Never mind that no study establishing a "small is beautiful" correlation can be produced by supporters of the legislation or that an arbitrary numerical quota seems plain stupid. The important thing is that Goldberg and company have an idea about which they feel warm and fuzzy. And that, apparently, is all it takes for whacky educational policy to pass muster in the Assembly.

One can hardly imagine the amount of media scorn that would befall a Republican legislator who proposed a minimalist limit to textbook pagination. "Dumb and Dumber" jokes would flow from late night comics like vintage wine:

*"Did you hear that Assemblyman Yahoo wants all California texts to be shorter than 200 pages? --And to require no more than four crayons per page."

*"When asked what part of U.S. History should be deleted to keep within the 200-page limit, Rep. Yahoo replied, ‘How about the Constitution?’"

*"Yahoo’s other ideas for education include miniaturized desks, shorter teachers, 20 x 20 classrooms, and lower IQs."

Batta-boom-batta-bing!

Goldberg’s defense of her proposal is almost as funny. The world, she observes, has changed significantly in the last few decades, yet we’re still using big, bulky books to teach our kids. She also says that today’s workplace demands more than the ability to read page 435 on some manual and that a more "dynamic...learning process" is required.

Can anyone in class, I wonder, define the term "non sequitur"? Or was that Latinism on page 201? More specifically, one might reply to Goldberg’s "weighty" arguments as follows: 1) Some people continue to wear pants that cover their rumps despite the fact that the world has changed. 2) The ability to read page 435 of a manual is not a sufficient skill for success, but it is necessary.

Excessive jokes aside, the philosophical basis for Goldberg’s legislation is the ubiquitous educational emphasis on "process." According to this school of thought, information itself isn’t nearly as important as learning how to learn. Thus, for Goldberg, essential data can be crammed into 200 pages--no matter what the subject. Internet references in limit-exempt appendices will then provide the dynamism that compensates for this textual downsizing.

In practice, process-education has tended to produce students too uninformed to know what puzzles they should be unraveling on the information superhighway. And it has had this effect because "learning skills" or the "love of learning" are virtually impossible to nurture in students who don’t know much about anything in particular. Superficiality begets couch-potatoes, not dedicated researchers.

A more constructive approach to California’s educational woes would involve loosening the death-grip of interest groups like the CTA on education policy, providing more flexibility to charter schools, and even revisiting the hated concept of vouchers. In a competitive educational environment, pedagogical idiocies like the above would not be met with silence by state employees whose very jobs rest on their effectiveness.

NOISE--AND THE DEATH OF DECORUM

Big brother has nothing on the cultural demigods that permeate American life. The fact that many businesses now afflict patrons with loud, grating, hippity-rap music is a testament to the power wielded by media mavens. At popular restaurants these piped-in projections are often so intrusive, conversation becomes impossible. Indeed, the din feeds on itself as hearing-impaired diners who passively accept this aural assault shout across the table like hikers communicating over a vast chasm.

Almost everywhere--airports, auto repair centers, high school basketball games, barber shops--electronic devices broadcast sound waves crafted by virtual conductors who, for the last four decades, have decimated civility and murdered vocal restraint. (Does anyone whisper anymore? And if the technique were employed, could listeners decipher the words?)

Not even the nationwide bookseller near me is exempt from this pervasive tribute to the deities of distraction. Occasionally, refined selections--like sheltered eddies by a raging river--interrupt the persistent percussive pounding. But even this "background" music is too loud. And the respite is brief. The dissonance commences again--punctuated by extended cell-phone conversations involving parties whose anvils and stirrups have doubtless been damaged by prior abuse.

If one has the misfortune of sitting within fifty feet of this store’s juvenile section, the high-pitched screams of unrestrained brats will be added to the mix. A menagerie of wild beasts don’t create the cacophony generated by these homo non-sapiens romping through an establishment once devoted to intellectual reflection. When even bookstores become purveyors of mind-numbing clamor, you know you’re in trouble.

What once would have raised howls of protest, is now meekly endured by milquetoasts too cowed to glare in unison at clueless parents or to inform the manager that his "music" is irritating and offensive. Instead, customers dutifully genuflect toward the Huns who shroud our sensibilities with emotional smog. These SNL, MTV, Leno-Letterman barbarians no longer pound at the gate. Rather, they own the portal key--the means of communication.

Incessant noise, crude humor, and shallow sensuality fills our public space--flooding into the street from boxes that blare similar messages in private homes. It is a fitting backdrop for lives devoid of depth--for nose-pierced pop-cultural clones, mall-rat rebels, and 9-to-5 commuters engrossed in the permutations of celebrity justice.

Amid this raucous decadence, tolerance is a one-way street. Principled individuals are asked to defer to the sensibilities of those who find the word "Christmas" offensive. On the other hand, when crude, insulting, and noxious material is broadcast in public, these same individuals are expected to "be open" to the expression of "alternate perspectives". In such a society, being a good sport is synonymous with moral cowardice. After all, only those with a conscience (or those with hearing intact) are obliged to leave their "hangups" at home.

Mel Brooks, as the 2000-year-old man, once made this reply to Carl Reiner’s question about the secret to planetary peace: "If everyone in the world ... would play ... a violin, we would be bigger and better than Mantovani." The effect of filling our ears (and souls) with virulent electronic emissions has had the opposite result--producing a culture where reflection, tranquility, and considerateness are increasingly rare.

This debilitating trend will only be reversed when Americans summon the courage to demand decorum in public. Each intervention creates momentum toward a decent society and makes it more likely that frustrated fence-sitters will also take up the challenge of calling brutishness exactly what it is.

The project starts with you.

THE "WHO'S TO SAY" ETHICS CON

I doubt that any cliché has been used more frequently to undermine ethical reflection than this one: "Who’s to say what’s right or wrong?" No discussion of morality can proceed very far before someone empties his philosophical quiver and unleashes this sophomoric rhetorical challenge.

The unstated implication behind the question is that ethical principles are nothing more than personal tastes. Given this assumption, the declaration that one type of behavior is better than another becomes equivalent to announcing that steak is good and broccoli bad. All ethical judgments are thus reduced to arbitrary acts of imposition. A thing is labeled ‘bad’ only because some high-handed dude has declared that it is.

It is worth noting that no one employs this shopworn challenge in the arena of science-- because within that discipline it is assumed that some answers are closer to the truth than others. Even in history and sociology, most folks would dismiss "Who’s to say" challenges with a sneer. The obvious response is that "evidence" and "coherence" are the standards for deciding whether a proposition is true or false--not the declaration of some disciplinary czar vested with absolute authority to impose his will on less-influential practitioners.

When it comes to ethics, however, all these considerations are ignored --as if everyone knows that no such thing as ethical evidence exists. Such an idea would come as a shock to Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas--as well as to more recent thinkers like Kant or John Stuart Mill. Heck, even Karl Marx spent decades cooking his economic books in order to convince readers that Communism was both morally superior and historically inevitable.

In addition to ignoring the possibility that ethical evidence exists, those who fling the "Who’s to say" ratchet into the cogs of ethical reflection also ignore something else--namely, that their rhetorical challenge presupposes the existence of a moral standard that it simultaneously denies.

The "Who’s to say" argument is only effective because it makes any possible answer to the question morally indefensible--since nothing is true simply because so and so says it is. But if nothing can be declared immoral, then there is no basis for rejecting the arbitrary imposition of one person’s values on another. Put succinctly, the "Who’s to say" argument presupposes two contradictory ideas: 1) All moral statements are arbitrary impositions. 2) Arbitrary impositions are immoral.

The clichéd interrogative requires the very morality it denies. And then it employs that sliver of moral indignation to undercut serious moral reflection. The fact that "immoralists" are reduced to blatant self-contradiction in their most popular logical offensive is a bit of evidence worth pondering. The fact that most people don’t recognize this logical con-game is a tribute to the intellectual and moral sloth of a culture that would rather let sleeping consciences lie.

ASSESSING EUROPE'S MORAL SUPERIORITY

"European morality" is a phrase that should rival "must-see TV" and "government budget" in the Oxymoron Hall of Fame. Yet among American elites there seems to be a consensus that Continental mores are significantly more advanced than those practiced in the United States. This novel assumption raises several questions:

Have circumstances changed so drastically from the time when America’s Founding Fathers looked askance at European decadence and saw in their new nation a city that would serve as a beacon to the rest of the world? More to the point, has Europe changed that much in the last five decades? After all, the continent held in such high esteem by many of today’s politicians and mainstream media types didn’t exactly have a century to write home about.

First there was World War I--a colossal stupidity whose causes are shrouded in national aspiration, colonial competition, and a prolonged history of diplomatic gamesmanship. Only U.S. intervention succeeded in dragging the Euros out of their self-destructive trenches.

Then there was the fascist era--with Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, and Adolf in Deutschland. It must have been a completely different breed of European that cheered il Duce’s invasion of Ethiopia (visions of imperial Rome dancing in their heads) or who dutifully carried out the Fuhrer’s solution to the continent’s "Jewish Problem."

During that period the other side of the political fence was largely defined by two words: "Munich" and "Czechoslovakia." Again, it was American intervention, along with British tenacity, that combined to save the continent from domination by Hitler or his double- crossed Soviet pal, Joe Stalin.

Today’s European apples must have fallen far from that ancestral tree to merit such admiration as they are accorded in the minds of America’s literati. But the closer I look, the more I see the same emptiness in the states of "Old Europe."

Germany, for example, legalized prostitution a couple of years ago--a sign of decadence reminiscent of the Weimar Republic. Elsewhere on the forensic front, a German court recently sentenced a man who killed and ate a voluntary victim to eight-and-a-half years behind bars. (With good behavior this Hannibal Lecterisch connoisseur could be hawking a rare book of Rhineland recipes by the end of the decade.)

Economically, Deutschland’s unemployment rate has grown to 12% amid a population decline projected to reach 10% by 2050. Both these trends spell disaster for generously- funded welfare programs and suggest less-than-vigorous health, culturally speaking.

Next door in the Netherlands, legislators are falling over themselves to draft more inclusive standards for killing sick, old, and depressed folk--with or without the patient’s permission. The protocols of the University Hospital in Groningen represent the cutting edge of progressive thought on this topic--ideas so reminiscent of Nazi justifications for euthanasia, they are verboten in Germany.

Meanwhile, in Sweden (bastion of neutrality in the fight against Hitler) illegitimacy has become the norm. Presently, over half of that country’s babies have parents who find the institution of marriage anachronistic.

Given these considerations, it seems likely that what appeals to Europhiles isn’t the region’s outstanding ethical record but rather its long-cultivated lack of moral conviction. It’s not that the leopard has changed its spots, but rather that American elites now identify with what most Continental intellectuals stood for throughout the last century-- accommodation, acquiescence, and moral lassitude.

Those on the other side of this "sophistication" argument can point to refined aesthetic sensibilities and copious cultural treasures that grace the land mass north of the Mediterranean. They can even tout a collective monetary unit that has appreciated in value over the last few years. The central question, however, is whether these facts represent more than a cluster of attractive specimens amid a moribund species.

My belief is that no European ethical epiphany took place in the last half of the twentieth century--an assessment whose value should become clearer as religiously-motivated immigrants increasingly replace a dwindling population of secularists whose utilitarian ideals inspire neither courage nor admiration.

RESPECT ME--OR ELSE!

"You can’t give respect unless you get it first from others." That’s the tough-guy philosophy that was articulated by a young man struggling to square some standard of decency with the rap lyrics that he and his peers invest with such authority.

I asked the adolescent standing in the school hallway to envision a room populated with individuals who embraced the sentiments he had expressed--and then to describe the verbal exchanges occurring there. When no answer was forthcoming, I supplied him with my own scenario: "You would have a room full of people all demanding that the other guy respect him first--‘You respect me.’ ‘No, you respect me!’"

The slogan seemed plausible enough at first blush, but when push came to shove, the dictum turned out to be little more than an unqualified demand for submission--a means for distinguishing top-dogs from their home-boy underlings. The latter give respect without getting it first. The former get respect by demanding it as a non-negotiable precondition. The reciprocity that forms the core of polite social intercourse is here illusory. In its place stands a hierarchy of intimidation.

This gangsta philosophy turns the traditional understanding of respect on its head. According to that discarded rule, one doesn’t merit respect without first extending it. Respect for oneself is earned based on admirable behavior. Respect for others, by contrast, is considered the default position for interpersonal relations--not an option contingent on prior recognition. By following these rules one creates a room populated by folks whose actions are the polar opposite of those presumed in the prior experiment--a room long on courtesy and short on attitude.

The new rapper rules for respect are popular because they provide a ready-made excuse for in-your-face behavior. If old fogies don’t express appreciation for anti-social slogans, low-rider jeans, and grotesque brow-piercings, "play’rs" are automatically given grounds for dissing these disapproving adults. Only those who kowtow to countercultural inclinations merit placement in the "respectable" category. Those consigned to the opposite bin have only themselves to blame.

"Me-firsters" have no obligation to defer to society--and presumably nothing to learn from it. Instead, society has an obligation to do obeisance to their dubious insights--or suffer the consequences! This "attitude" that transfoms the general obligation to act courteously into a jealously guarded prerogative isn't a formula designed to restrain youngsters from swinging bats at the heads of immature taunters.

Thanks to an industry whose corruption seems bottomless, the hard and desperate language of the street now springs glibly from the lips of impressionable youngsters--and passes for wisdom. It is a mindset promoted by entertainers and athletes whose bravado is inversely proportionate to the moral standing they have earned--a philosophy rooted in, and designed to perpetuate, failure.

THE ROTTWEILERS OF RELATIVISM

There’s been no honeymoon for a pope correctly perceived as too Catholic for the taste of secular critics. Instead, a wave of preemptive vilification has greeted the "archconservative" pontiff.

"God’s Rottweiler" is a phrase that expresses the antipathy felt toward Cardinal Ratzinger by those who gleefully point to his stint in the Hitler Youth. Such journalists fail to note that membership in the Nazi organization was mandatory and that, at the ripe age of eighteen, the future "Papa-Ratzi" deserted from the German army into which he had been drafted.

In addition to these youthful "offenses" Ratzinger’s stint as prefect of the Church’s office on Doctrine earned him the moniker "God’s Inquisitor." (Ironically, this stigma comes from a class supremely skilled at destroying political opponents. Were Benedict XVI as bad as his press, one might think a degree of professional courtesy would be extended by these practitioners of high-tech lynching.)

What makes Benedict even more odious to critics is the address he gave to his peers before ascending to the papacy. In that talk the German cardinal took aim at a dogma to which his secular opponents pledge fervent allegiance--the "dictatorship of relativism."

This oxymoronic label aims at relativism’s hidden duplicity--a duplicity suggested by the insults directed at a man who, by all first-hand accounts I have read, is a model of patience and self-effacement. Though tolerance appears to be relativism’s logical corollary, the linkage is illusory.

Behind relativism’s easy-going facade stands a rabid rejection of moral absolutes. Truth, they say, is relative--but relative to what? The honest response in most cases, "relative to me," explains the hostility directed by elites toward influential expressions of orthodoxy. It also explains why the statement "there is no wrong answer" has become so popular in recent years--especially in discourse about abortion, child-rearing, or "alternative lifestyles".

Thomas Hobbes gave serious thought to the shape of a world where egos rule and concluded that a political Leviathan was required to bring order to an otherwise brutish and short existence. Relativists aren’t far behind the English philosopher--except when it comes to candor.

A world where egos rule is, more accurately, a world where some egos rule over others. And the guiding principle of this governance must be the "gut instincts" to which those power brokers give deference. In a world devoid of absolutes, these instincts increasingly coincide with narrow self-interest. (Relativists, it should be recalled, need not and do not defer to majority opinion when the latter fails to echo their own "nuanced" visions of "truth".)

St. Augustine said that in his youth he yearned to become a law unto himself--to reject any authority outside his own will. This "I-did-it-my-way" cultural complement of relativism smacks more of the "will to power" than of tolerance. The same egocentric impulse generates venom toward Pope Benedict--a man capable of defending the notion that moral truth is more than putty placed in the hands of gurus who pontificate on God-knows-what from their mansions in Malibu.

A Pope who used the spiritual force of his office to bring down political totalitarianism in Eastern Europe has been succeeded by another who targets a different form of despotism. The "Rottweilers of Relativism" despise Benedict XVI in much the same way KGB operatives feared John Paul II. Dictators, whether political or cultural, hate answering to anyone except themselves.

PUSHING TV'S ENVELOPE TO THE MORGUE

"I see dead people." It’s not just a line proffered by a young boy with an exceptional range of vision, it’s now the case for all those working stiffs in search of emotional consolation who plump themselves down in front of the boob tube during prime time.

What the latter viewers are likely to see on network television has changed considerably over the years. "I Love Lucy" comedies and "Bonanza" Westerns morphed into "Laugh In" irreverence and Norman Lear commentary wrapped in domestic dysfunction. More recently viewers were treated to "Married With Children" cynicism--sit-com sleaze with a smirk. The question that then arose for TV moguls was this: Where do we go from here?

Having sated audiences with visions of firm flesh--and having convinced them that casual copulation after puberty is infinitely less important than inhaling second-hand cigarette smoke--the folks who regularly substitute shock-value for dramatic depth were perplexed. It wasn’t just a matter of where to push the envelope. It was a question of what envelope to push. As his "Crime Scene Investigation" programs indicate, producer Jerry Bruckheimer topped the long-standing industry obsession with sex with a clutch of shows featuring vivid images of death.

"Corpses R Us" might be an alternate title for these forensic dramas that exchange a fleshless Freddy Krueger for grotesque shots of bodies lying in various states of disrepair--either at the crime scene or atop an autopsy table. Close-ups of no-longer-vital organs being probed for admissible evidence prompts visceral reactions from viewers no longer aroused by gratuitous shots of animate mammary glands. Highlighted tissue isn’t distinguished by its beauty, but rather by its vulnerability to decay and displacement. Over against this vision of decomposition, the lyrical assertion: "All we are is dust in the wind," seems positively romantic.

On top of these haunting visual displays, CSI Las Vegas patrons are often treated to philosophical disquisitions that equate human life with the remains accessible during a post-mortem exam. "That’s all we really are," observed the bearded protagonist whose eyes gleam when discussing roller-coaster thrills but (like almost all the dramatic cast) has no room in his life for unnecessary chemical baggage--i.e. a wife and kids.

Donald Bellisario’s NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), joins Bruckheimer’s small-screen trio in exploring the commercial possibilities of pathology. Besides mortuarial moments that match anything displayed by CSI., NCIS adds to the scientific mix a brilliant, dark-haired woman who "just happens to be" a fan of BDSM. Her spiked necklace and Gothish appearance don’t make it clear whether Abby inclines more to the BD or the SM side of the erotic ledger. But her expertise and perkiness make one thing perfectly obvious--what once was considered perverse, is now just another day at the office.

It isn’t surprising that folks in the entertainment business--bereft of intellectual depth or moral insight--should grasp at any straw they can lay their hands on to get an emotional rise out of audiences. In lieu of dramatic intensity, they settle for envelope-pushing. For creativity they substitute titillation. Instead of works that give to virtue a local habitation and a name, they peddle spiritual pornography. Anything for an audience.

As snuff-films and "bug-chasing" erotic parties grimly testify, the last rung on the cultural ladder that leads to oblivion is a preoccupation with death--a desperate fascination born of the belief that only a random biological fluke distinguishes a living soul from a corpse.

A LESSON IN HOW TO DIE

The Terri Schiavo case has led some observers to conclude that people of faith have a morbid interest in prolonging life at any cost. If true, this position would be highly ironic--given the beliefs that most pious individuals hold about an afterlife. The passing of Pope John Paul II provides, by contrast, a classic example of death in the Christian tradition.

Overwhelmingly, what is crucial to believers isn’t "life at any price" but rather the much-reviled notion that life isn’t ours to do with as we please. Instead, it is seen as a gift whose proper uses are divinely circumscribed. John Locke articulated this view as follows: "Since all men are the creation of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker... they are his property, made to live for his, not one another’s, pleasure."

This grant of life doesn’t require a person to employ any means necessary to prolong it. Indeed, in one’s final days decisions are often made not to engage in heroic measures to postpone what seems inevitable. Comfort is offered, last rites may be administered, but no surgery or resuscitation efforts are contemplated. In the language of ethics this scenario is called "allowing to die"--and it is perfectly compatible with all the religious traditions with which I am familiar. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord," is the passage from the book of Job often cited on such occasions.

A more complex end-of-life scenario involves the removal of life-sustaining mechanisms from individuals already utilizing these devices. When patients themeselves request that "extraordinary" care be withdrawn, there is, by and large, no religious problem. These persons are simply choosing to suspend treatment that, within the "allowing to die" paradigm, is never begun. When, however, others take this decision upon themselves, questions about substitutive judgment and "playing God" arise--especially if doubt exists about the patient’s medical condition or the trustworthiness of a surrogate’s judgment.

Significantly, when life-support systems are discontinued, patients don’t inevitably die. Karen Ann Quinlan, for example, surprised doctors by continuing to live almost ten years after her breathing machine was removed. Such exceptions never occur, of course, when persons are denied not extraordinary care, but basic nutrition. Withholding food and water amounts to a death sentence whether one is sick or not. And when this act of deprivation is done without a patient’s consent, the result, morally speaking, becomes indistinguishable from homicide.

A final scenario occurs when someone actively brings about another’s demise by means such as lethal injection. In "mercy killing" the "angel of charity" becomes the immediate and active purveyor of death. Clint Eastwood’s character in "Million Dollar Baby" engaged in this illegal act for which, in real life, Jack Kevorkian now sits in a Michigan prison.

The religious objection to this option (as also to withholding nutrition) is that it clearly places ultimate responsibility for life in the hands of someone other than the One who created it. Both suicide and killing in the name of kindness are seen as acts of hubris by which individuals cross a bright line--a trespass that is even more flagrant when the coup de grace is unsolicited.

In a culture enamored with the notion of autonomy, religious concepts that highlight human boundaries seem outmoded. NBC’s Bryan Williams, commenting on the Pope’s passing, observed that the pontiff faced death "on his own terms." It was a singularly inept description--a self-inflating compliment employed to describe the final act of a supremely selfless life.

"My body is my own. I’ll do with it as I please," was a slogan common in the 60’s and 70’s. As those same baby boomers reach the age when bodies and intentions increasingly march to different drummers, the shortsightedness of that boast becomes more apparent. John Paul’s last years were an object lesson in bearing with grace the cross of physical infirmity.

For persons of faith, the crucial issue isn’t "quality of life" but rather one’s willingness to acknowledge, up to the point of death, that we are in God’s hands. Practically speaking, this acknowledgment means maintaining an attitude of humility vis a vis the ultimate outcome. "Thy will be done."

As it was when we entered life, so it is when we leave. The life we "control" is vanishingly small. Our spirit springs from a source beyond ourselves and flourishes in a matrix of interdependence. For those whose beliefs continue to derive from the religious wellsprings of Western culture, death confronts us with truths that modern culture yearns to deny: Life is a gift, not just a right--and the measure of that life is not mere self-assertion, but gratitude and service.

SEEKING A POPE WE CAN IGNORE

"I love you, now change." A popular theatrical work employs a version of this emotional about-face in its title. A similar duplicity characterizes the comments of many Americans about Pope John Paul II.

They express admiration for the pontiff’s courage. They applaud his role in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe and Russia. They recognize his spiritual stature. But then they complain that he didn’t keep up with the times. "Why couldn’t he have been," they aver in tones reminiscent of Rex Harrison’s in ‘My Fair Lady,’ "more like us."

It is indicative of our cultural presumption that folks whose lives are virtually devoid of danger should cavalierly dismiss ideas refined in the crucible of Nazi atrocities and Soviet repression. It doesn’t cross the minds of theological prima donnas that random notions absorbed from episodes of "C.S.I. Las Vegas" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" might not measure up to the wisdom derived from decades of devotion to priestly duties within a religious institution whose roots go back to the beginnings of Western civilization. Indeed, it frightens them to think that John Paul was great precisely because he wasn't more like us.

To have a widely respected figure stand over against the spirit of post-modernity is disconcerting for Monday-morning Monsignors. The idea that something might be seriously wrong with an undemanding "be yourself" ethic is not a thought that go-with-the-flow spiritualists are inclined to entertain. Instead, their version of tolerance demands that all major institutions conform to the lax canons of secular orthodoxy--or else. Unfortunately for them, John Paul II was hard to vilify.

Aficionados of "The da Vinci Code" would have loved to slander this Polish priest as a cynical and intriguing "Godfather"--a hypocritical "Sin City" prelate whose fangs dripped with blood. Most critics would have settled for a pope whose pronouncements infallibly coincided with New York Times editorial sentiment on issues like abortion, homosexuality, female priests, and starvation-with-dignity. Instead, what they got was a vigorous defender of traditional church doctrine whose widespread influence made him a KGB assassination target.

It is hard to imagine such a desperate plot being hatched, much less carried out, to silence a vicar exhibiting the "progressive" traits so prized by the late pope’s unauthorized consultants. To what point? Why would the Kremlin want to muzzle a pope welcomed at Hollywood cocktail parties--a Neville Chamberlain in ecclesiastical drag whose prayers call for nothing more than political accommodation and moral acquiescence? Better he should be given a very large microphone and preside at all those fashionable forums cravenly dedicated to reducing international tension.

In the biblical book of Acts, Peter says to a lame beggar, "Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, I give to you. In the name of Jesus ... rise and walk." Several centuries later one of the apostle’s institutional heirs boasted that the Church could no longer say, "Silver and gold have I none"--to which comment a faithful critic replied, "But neither can it now say, ‘Rise and walk.’"

A similar fate will befall any church that heeds the advice of persons supremely devoted to worldly approbation--an attitude that arouses neither fear in the heart of enemies nor admiration in the eyes of disciples.

ROBERT BYRD’S RHETORICAL EXCESS

JUDGES, NOT SENATE RULES, THREATEN DEMOCRACY
There is no surer sign of intellectual bankruptcy (or senility) than the habit of comparing political opponents to Hitler. This type of metaphorical excess is par for the course on Air America and at MoveOn.Org. It is unusual for a Congressman.

Yet recently the very senior senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, compared a possible change in Senate filibuster rules for judicial appointees to the Enabling Act of 1933--the German law that concentrated absolute power in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Hitler, Byrd solemnly observed, always proceeded under "the cloak of legality." In this way the fiddling geriatric linked President Bush with the mustached Fuhrer and implied that any change in Senate rules (which Byrd himself modified as majority leader) would be tantamount to the suspension of representative government.

On the one hand we have complete concentration of authority in the hands of a dictator whose maniacal vision eventually led to a World War, at least forty million dead, and the near extermination of European Jewry. On the other we have a proposed revision of senatorial protocol. Hello, Bob! Is anyone home up there?

Let us be clear on the real issue that Byrd is addressing. Republican leaders, frustrated by unprecedented Democrat efforts to block votes on judicial nominees, now desire to revise the Senate’s rules in order to prevent filibusters on these appointees. We are not talking about changing the Constitution. We are not talking about subverting the right of Massachusetts residents to practice their unique brand of political masochism. We are talking about the "Rules of the Senate"-- which topic is covered by all of nine words in Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution: "Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings..." Had the Founding Fathers believed that democracy itself rested on this procedural point, they might have devoted at least a complete sentence to it.

What is a darn sight clearer than the superannuated senator’s hyperbolic historical analogy, is that the Founders of our country would be horrified by the way judges, in recent decades, have exchanged their limited interpretive function for the gratifying role of Philosopher-King. Thomas Jefferson in particular would be leading a new revolution to place the weight of self-government back in the hands of that branch closest to the people--the legislature.

With a finely modulated style that further miniaturizes the rantings of Senator Byrd, our third President observed: "The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary...working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."

Can anyone honestly doubt that Jefferson would conclude, in light of recent rulings on marriage, the pledge of allegiance, and capital punishment, that the judicial usurpation against which he warned is virtually complete? Would not Jefferson urge his countrymen to rise up and to reclaim sovereignty from these rapacious robed eminences? Would he not denounce these despots who delegate to the people the task of arranging deck-chairs on the ship of state while they sabotage the hull of self-government with that infinitely flexible and destructive tool: a "living Constitution"?

Were Byrd as insightful as he is loquacious and annoying, he would see that the true danger to republican government lies not in a revision of Senate cloture rules but in the continuing concentration of power in the hands of judicial elites. Indeed, the proposed change in Senate rules that Byrd portrays as Hitlerian is only a first, tentative step toward reigning in the power now capriciously wielded by Women and Men in Black. It is a step that Jefferson, if not Hitler, would heartily endorse.

CLINT'S MILLION DOLLAR MANIPULATION

Imagine a boxing movie whose plot belatedly shows the need for animal experiments because its badly injured protagonist is denied a crucial drug derived only from this banned practice. Can you imagine flick gurus like Roger Ebert failing to mention the film’s political agenda? More to the point, would you assume that the sacred duty not to reveal climactic plot twists would prevent the sedentary Chicagoan from blasting the production for totally misrepresenting the facts? I doubt it.

Yet such is the case with Clint Eastwood’s poignant “Million Dollar Baby.” The professional obligation not to spoil the public’s viewing experience apparently trumps everything else, even blatant falsification, when it comes to discussing a typically Hollywood take on assisted suicide.

I say “typically Hollywood” because caricatures replace complex portraits whenever the switch is needed to promote a help-me-pull-the-plug political agenda. Thus, realistic relatives of the fallen fighter are scratched for a gaggle of trailer park hicks who’d tempt even healthy folks to pull the trigger--one direction or the other. Similarly, incompetent care, unlikely medical scenarios, and even an unsympathetic priest are trotted out to make clear to aficionados of “Cider House Rules” that a single grim option is available to Maggie's (Hilary Swank) doting manager.

The film’s most egregious manipulation puts Eastwood in the same class as that past master of mendacity, Oliver Stone. “Million Dollar Baby” would have us believe that a lucid quadriplegic totally dependent on a respirator cannot legally refuse medical treatment. This state of affairs is as palpably false as my fantasy that animal experimentation has been banned.
Diane Coleman, President of Not Dead Yet, should be aware of the law in such cases. After all, she suffers from a debilitating spinal disease and has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of eleven. At night she even uses a respirator. Coleman noted that, contrary to script, Swank’s character could have refused treatment at any time. After all, she was conscious, verbal, and clearly competent.

For those unwilling to believe the word of an advocate--or loath to think that a filmmaker would grossly mislead his audience--a glance at California law might help. Specifically, I direct skeptics to a 2001 ruling by the state Supreme Court (Conservatorship of Wendland) that reiterated (rather than established) the right of lucid patients to refuse heroic medical treatment.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law. The reason for this adage is that laws are necessarily general--made to cover a variety of circumstances, not tailored to fit worst-case scenarios. The same could be said of “easy” cases--those in which factors that usually complicate things all point in the same direction. “Million Dollar Baby” not only goes out of its way to make things as easy as possible, it lies to do so.

It’s a shame that critics, reflecting the lawless ethos of the industry they cover, don’t see that telling the truth about matters of life and death is vastly more important than knee-jerk loyalty to a fraternal code of silence. I strongly suspect that these same critics would be eager to proclaim the truth--any time, any place--if the themes being misrepresented were ones to which they gave an enthusiastic thumbs up, politically.

TSUNAMIS: NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL

"We must live differently in the world, according to these different assumptions: (1) that we could always remain in it; (2) that it is certain that we shall not remain here long, and uncertain if we shall remain here one hour. This last assumption is our condition." Recent events in Asia put an exclamation point on Blaise Pascal’s concluding sentence.

Few contrasts are more jarring than the juxtaposition of scenes from Indonesia and Sumatra with typical television fare in America. The absurdity of reportorial excitations over toppled trees or flooded streets is obvious when placed alongside the massive destruction caused by walls of ocean water that traveled hundreds of miles to unleash their fury. Next to this awesome display, the breathless promos hyping "The Amazing Race" or "Desperate Housewives" are embarrassing.

Indeed, most of our everyday concerns are ruthlessly exposed as trivial diversions when viewed through the lens of an event that ripped the life from thousands of human beings and is draining the vital force out of thousands of survivors.

Tragedies, whether manmade or natural, have the bitterly redeeming virtue of focusing our attention on what is important--if we choose to pay attention. But for most of us, so much of our time is consumed with petty activities that we are tempted to reimmerse ourselves, as soon as possible, into concerns that could only be justified if our lives lasted forever.

One way to deflect attention from what stands grimly before us is to smother the event in political or ecological quibbles: Did the Bush Administration miss an opportunity to show its concern for victims of the tragedy? Has America’s response to the disaster been stingy? Has Western consumption of shrimp and the lure of luxury vacation spots led to the destruction of lagoons that might have buffered populated areas from deadly waves?

Such questions are sophisticated ways to avoid the obvious. They are reminiscent of Ivan Ilych’s focus on the terms a medical specialist used to describe his worsening condition--"vermiform appendix" or "floating kidney." What Tolstoy’s self-absorbed character finally came to realize, amid constant pain, was that Death was starring him in the face.

By all means, let us aid those who suffer and set up warning devices and study ecological patterns that might mitigate future disasters. But let us not lie to ourselves about the larger truth revealed by this event. Our lives are short, fragile, and uncertain. No government can guarantee even seventy healthy years. We ought, therefore, to live in a way that acknowledges these facts--not fritter away our hours mired in sleaze, partisanship, and mindless consumption.

To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God are the bare essentials set forth in the Old Testament book of Micah. It is a trinity whose actualization rests in large part on the realization that Asia’s mourning is also our own.

Of Gerasim, the servant who served Ivan so cheerfully in his last days, his master said, "How easily and well you do it all." To these comments the strong peasant replied, "We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?" The tawdry popular cultures of America and Europe cannot survive an insight of that magnitude.

BOSTON LEGAL: REPRESENTING HOLLYWOOD MORALITY

Boston Legal is a prime example of the World According to Hollywood--even more reflective of the industry’s mindset than the show’s sleazy domestic partner, Desperate Housewives. At least the latter program acknowledges the existence of children.

By contrast, the Shatner-Spader-Bergman production proceeds with a cast devoid of marital devotion. As was true on Captain Kirk’s starship, sons, daughters, wives and husbands are virtually absent from the scene. Only alien civilizations and criminal defendants, it seems, exhibit the bonding patterns and rituals that once characterized planet Earth.

In lieu of characters with familial attachments, we are given promiscuous professionals--rutting barristers whose personal standards of deportment are as low as their political ideals are high. What matters in this forensic free-for-all is not what happens, as Barbara Bush noted, "in your house," but what happens in the courthouse. James Spader is the show’s number one amoralist--pursuing every willing skirt in the workplace, living in a hotel suite, exhibiting contempt for traditional standards of civility, yet heroically advancing any political cause that can be stuffed into his hyperactive legal briefs.

One wonders what familial carts all these legal superstars fell off of. Were they raised by wolves--or on alien planets and transported, Star Trek style, to the home of the bean and the cod? Did they reach puberty under the care of Father Flanagan’s abusive successor and then bolt to the big city--a scenario that would explain their visceral aversion to Catholicism?

What is clear on Boston Legal is that neither promiscuity nor civility have anything to do with morality--nor, for that matter, do intact families or children raised by dedicated parents. Instead, what matters is one’s position on political issues--the environment, the FDA, homosexual relationships, civil rights, big business, and so on. This way of ordering things has the benefit of excluding from evidence all those habits that would dispose the public to look unfavorably on the Hollywood set--to render negative judgments on folks whose not-so-private lives regularly display all the moral dignity of drug traffickers.

What counts in this Brave New World is not how parents raise their children but whether one supports "reproductive (i.e. non-reproductive) rights." Marriage isn’t considered that important--unless it concerns the legal standing of partners biologically incapable of producing a child. Nor is civility a trait that requires vigorous defense, since all that really matters is what transpires under judicial auspices.

The philosophers Andrew Oldenquist and Daniel Callahan have noted that law inevitably fills the breach created by a crumbling social order. Do’s and don’ts increasingly become functions of legal decree and less matters of cultural stigma. A corollary to this shift in ethical emphasis is the tendency to view the Supreme Court as a deus ex machina--an institution whose statutory authority keeps things from falling apart while putting its stamp of approval on acts that, absent such endorsement, would generate debilitating pangs of conscience. In such a society it’s easier to derive a sense of rectitude from the presumed virtuosity of legal arguments than from personal character or time devoted to raising one’s offspring.