Ayan Hirsi Ali and the debate over Islam

Sorry about the delay between posts, but it's been an unusually busy day. Last night, my wife and I watched "Real Time with Bill Maher," and he had invited Ayan Hirsi Ali. On his show, she said what has now become her familiar message, namely that Islam is a fundamentally flawed religion, and that we cannot maintain both that we are fighting terrorists in the Islamic world, but that Islam is also a religion of peace. I then found this piece in defense of Ms. Ali by Anne Applebaum, which in turn referred me to articles (all avaiable either in links from Applebaum's Slate piece, or at signandsight) written by British authors Timothy Garton Ash, Ian Buruma, and Pascal Bruckner, all debating the basic issue of whether the "West" should accept practicing Muslims as a part of a new Western society, or whether Islam is in fact flawed and incompatible with Enlightenment ideals and should be jettisoned. I am not really going to engage that debate on its own terms. Rather, I want to talk about an underlying assumption that all of the participants seem to share that I find troubling, namely that the privilege of individuality only belongs to certain people, and that Muslims are not among those people.

What do I mean by that? Consider the following: Over the course of the past two thousand years, both the most charitable and the most grisly acts have been committed in the name of Christianity. Let me state at the outset that I do not intend to take a view on whether or not Christianity is good, bad, valid, invalid etc. This is simply a fact, that people have used its name to justify all kinds of acts that we deem unacceptable today. Included on this long list is the conquest of the Americas, the colonization of large chunks of Africa and Asia, apartheid in South Africa etc.. Many of the people to whom we are compelled to credit the creation of the modern world as we know it were driven by a sense of Christian superiority to conquer the world. Yet, we do not view those societies as monolithically "Christian." Rather, we think of 1) the national/cultural groups that engaged in these acts, and 2) individuals qua individuals. This latter category, examining individuals as being individuals, shaped by all sorts of forces, is what is so sorely lacking in the discussion of Islam. Instead, we have this focus on the collective identity of Muslims. One party is talking about all Muslims being "fundamentally same," whereas another is stressing the difference between Moroccan and Javanese Muslims. Has someone stopped to think about the notion that two Muslims from Morocco and Java respectively might share the same outlook on things, or that two Javanese Muslims may be completely different? This is not to say that there aren't ways of drawing distinctions between Sudanese and Pakistanis, the same way there were between French and German Christians. But the point is that we shouldn't let ourselves be blinded by group identity when it comes to understanding individuals. To do so is to deny such individuals their identity as human beings. To group them into categories and to ignore the fact that people behave differently, have different ideas, react differently to circumstances, is both to simplify and to belittle, and ultimately if such discrimination among people is drawn along racial, ethnic or religious lines, then those who draw such lines are racists and xenophobes.

Let me be more concrete. Osama bin Laden, the Saudis, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, and other demagogues claim to speak for the Muslim world. The reaction from Western intellectuals is to begin an investigation: What is a Sunni and what is a Shiite? What is the difference between them? Labels are sought, and applied. People are put into boxes. If you are Sunni, you must believe x, if you are Shiite, you must believe y. If you are Anglican, do you oppose the ordaining of gay priests? Clearly, the Anglican church is of two minds on this question. Does this mean all Anglicans are bigots, only some, or is the problem intractable? Are African Anglicans bigots, but American anglicans wonderful? The silliness of such categorization becomes apparent, and we would never engage in such simplistic reasoning about something so familiar, so "non-other" as the Anglican church. But we are perfectly comfortable taking claims made by individual religious leaders as representative of the whole. Why? Because we have an implicit, unspoken notion that there is an "Arab street," or more accurately, since only 12% of the Muslim world is Arab, an "Islamic street," and that they all rally around one of several discrete alternative platforms bearing the names of one or the other of these demagogues. Then, of course, we are very happy when the "moderate" Muslim comes along, our favorite standard-bearer, on whom we shower our gratitude (and our dollars). Thus, we have deprived them of their individual identities, and instead transformed them into followers of one "movement" or another. This allows us to indulge in comfortable abstractions, and narrows down the number of viewpoints from more than a billion to a mere handful. Of course, it also plays into the hands of the demagogues in question who don't want individual Muslims to think for themselves to begin with.

I believe this is the most basic problem that the West has to face in its understanding of the Muslim/Islamic world. If we begin to treat Muslim individuals qua individuals, suddenly all this nonsense about whether Islam is compatible with the West will take on a very different light. Indeed, individuality is central to Islam. One of the most basic elements of Islam is that each person has his or her own unique relationship with God, and a pre-requisite for that relationship is that each person be permitted to form his or her own personality, a characteristic, distinctive self. Unfortunately, rather than acknowledging this basic fact and harnessing it to the benefit of a peaceful world, we are going in the opposite direction. After having badly mangled the war in Iraq, we now hear people talking about letting them be "tribes," the way they always were. We support dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and many other countries that specifically stifle the very idea of individualism, the notion that every man and woman must make his own destiny. If we don't end our support to such collectivistic groups, we are never going to be able to solve the problem of terror. But the work of repairing this problem must begin closer to home, in our own living rooms, blogs, and universities. Stop treating Muslims like little sub-groups governed by group-think, and think of them as human beings. After all, we are all human beings, individuals, first, and members of any group only as a secondary matter.

Let me end by saying that I am indebted to my wife, Shanze, for nearly all the original thoughts that made this post possible.

UW Hmong controversy

University of Wisconsin law professor Leonard Kaplan has faced mounting criticism for remarks he made in a lecture to students in his "Legal Process" class. A summary of his remarks and the following fallout can be found in this Insider Higher Ed piece. I am interested in a somewhat different angle, namely the topic of Professor Kaplan's lecture that day. Professor Kaplan's class does not have a course description, but I googled similar classes, and found the following useful description on the UPitt website:

"This course develops the student's understanding of the underlying assumptions of law, its processes and institutions, and the nature of legal rules and concepts. Among the topics covered are: the sources of legal rights, the different roles of courts and legislatures, and the division of authority between state and federal governments as it affects the work of lawyers. The course also examines the rules and alstrategic concerns that determine the place of trial, as well as ways of resolving disputes that do not involve the courts at all."

So, this looks like a catch-all type of course that examines legal rules at the most abstract level, sort of like a philosophy of law course in a law school. Now, let's get to the specific comments that Kaplan made. His comments about the Hmong community were made in the context of a discussion of what is commonly known as the "cultural defense," which one scholar has defined as "negat[ing or mitigat[ing] criminal responsibility where acts are committed under a reasonable good-faith belief in their propriety, based on the actor's cultural heritage or tradition." Martin Golding, "Cultural Defense," Ratio Juris Vol. 15, pp. 146-158 (2002).

Consider the case of People v. Muo (No. 315972-0 (Fresno County Super. Ct. Feb. 7, 1985), where a immigrant from Laos was charged with rape following an incident where he had practiced a tradition among the Hmong known as "marriage by capture." Muo asserted the common law defense of mistake of fact, whereby a defendant claims that although he/she has committed the actus reus (the required act) associated witht the crime, he/she did not possess the necessary mens rea (mental state) to be charged with it. In the context of rape, the whole crime turns on one single element of mens rea, consent. So, Muo claimed that since he believed, in accordance with the custom of marriage capture, that he was not in fact raping the victim. As a recent law review article explains,

"Moua was a recent immigrant and a member of the Hmong tribe from the mountains of Laos where marriage-by-capture is performed. In this ritual, "a man abducts the bride of his choice ... [and] takes the woman to his family's home where the union is consummated. According to Hmong tradition, the woman must protest and say, 'I am not ready.' She would not otherwise be considered virtuous and chaste. The man must persist in consummating the union, despite her protests, in order to appear strong and masculine."

Rosie Williams, Maine Bar Journal, Winter 2007 (27 Me. B.J. 36). So, it may be readily inferred that Professor Kaplan was in fact discussing this very problem of bride-kidnapping, and how it turns our own cultural assumptions about rape on its head. It is not that similar notions of "no really means yes" haven't been a part of our own rape jurisprudence over the years and still influences our discussions to this day, but surely this custom among the Hmong is qualitatively different.

How did Kaplan come to make his comments? Most likely, he was engaged in a legal hypothetical, a staple of legal education in this country. Law professors set up outrageous facts that allow them to identify problematic assumptions or gaps in legal reasoning and then talk about how an existing framework fails to take into account the legal issues presented by their hypothetical. Here, in a discussion of the assumptions underlying law, Professor Kaplan may well have been talking about how from the perspective of a Hmong immigrant like Mr. Muo, the notion that he was raping his future wife was silly to say the least, and that it may be difficult for such a person to adjust to the reality that he is in fact victimizing someone.

How Kaplan got from that sort of thing to making the outrageous comments he made approving the death of Hmong men and Hmong involvement in gang violence etc. is unclear. Such statements are outrightly racist, and should be rightly condemned as such. Nevertheless, it is interesting that the line between a hypothetical discussion involving very delicate subjects, including rape, ethnicity, and a custom that is peculiar to say the least, and which very likely is disavowed by a large number of Hmong in this country as contrary to basic human moral values, can spiral out of control into a racist diatribe. I have seen this fine line tread very carefully myself in a clasroom a few times (one particular class comes to mind, but naming names would not be helpful).

Anyways, this has gone way longer than originally anticipated. Maybe I can follow up on this tommorrow.

Harvard's Faustian bargain

After a weekend hiatus, we are back. (Aren't you glad we aren't blogging on the weekend? This may suggest we have something resembling a normal existence.) To start the week off, my colleage a. guess has an excellent piece about the new Harvard president, and the Faustian bargain that Harvard may have concluded in hiring "Chainsaw Drew." As an aside, Abovethelaw has a laugh-out-loud piece on Harvard Law School's plans to give names to their 1L sections (currently just 1,2,3...).

Are artists charged with contributing to collective wisdom?

Farid raises an excellent point when he questions whether artists have a duty to contribute to our collective wisdom. Strictly speaking, he is correct; we do not, and ought not, evaluate art solely based on its alleged contribution to collective wisdom. Ars gratia artis (art for art's sake) is indeed a perfectly defensible position. But I would suggest this justification does not fit in the current context.

I question whether the people who are engaged in depictions of this sort are truly engaging in art for art's sake. Rather, I think their purpose is solely to shock. To the extent that they realize that their depictions are not only not advancing the ball (see my prior post), and are having the additional effect of infuriating a very large number of people who find their depictions offensive, I think that it is reasonable for such artists to take a hard look at themselves. There is a certain glorification in our culture of people who do grotesque things just for the sake of being grotesque; it is considered "cool." It pushes limits, expands boundaries, etc. etc. And quite rightly, people worry about self-censorship, and a cultural climate where creativity is stifled because of a risk of stepping on other's toes. But the point is that there is such self-censorship all the time. Consider the examples I gave in my last post, or in prior posts. I realize that using the Holocaust can seem tiring, even offensive, but it is an extremely powerful example.
How many artists do we see who are mocking the suffering of Jews in the concentration camps? It possesses a great deal of shock value. Would we care if an artist did precisely that? Yes, absolutely. So, we have self-imposed limits on what is culturally tolerable, what we consider to be contrary to basic human tenets of respect. The real underlying problem here is, as I indicated in my last post, that the creators of Southpark and others want to send the message: "Get over yourself. Welcome to the 21st century. Get on with your "Reformation" already!" That approach is deeply flawed, for reasons I would be happy to talk about at another point. So, in conclusion, yes, artists should care about the impact of their work, the context in which it is placed. Again, we should be very careful to distinguish this from legal sanction. But the "slippery slope" argument is not enough to counteract the notion that such limits should, and do, exist.

State Judiciaries

The Washington Post, along with a million other outlets, is taking note of the weeping, blubbering, Larry Seidlin, the County Circuit Judge who is presiding over Anna Nicole Smith's afterlife here on Earth. Without any futher discussion of the Smith case at this point, I think this is a good opportunity to discuss the problems with our state judiciaries. Here is a quick summary of Florida's judicial system as pertinent to this discussion:

"The jurisdictions and qualifications for Judges in Florida are set by Article Five of the State Constitution. Some additional jurisdiction is conferred by general law. Judges in Florida are subject to election, with Circuit Judges having six (6) year terms..Circuit Court Judges have jurisdiction throughout the Circuit in which they were elected, and may preside in any County in that Circuit. They have jurisdiction over all felonies (crimes for which the maximum penalty exceeds one (1) year imprisonment), all family law cases, all civil cases where the amount in controversy exceeds fifteen thousand (15,000) dollars, cases involving juveniles, probate, guardianship, involuntary hospitalization, incompetency, appeals from County Courts, actions involving title and boundaries of real property, and injunctive relief."

Some details have emerged about Larry Seidlin. He drove a cab to pay for night-law school. How did he make his way down to Broward, run for office, etc.? He obviously relishes the media attention. I think characters like these raise questions about the workings of the state courts. Would we have someone like this on the bench making ostensibly important decisions absent an elected state judiciary? In the legal world, there is an open secret that there is a world of difference between federal judges, who have life tenure provided good behavior under Article III of the US Constitution,and get alot of respect, and state judges, who are frequently lamented. Surely, it is time for states to get their act together and abolish the system of elected judges, and instead try to recruit more qualified people to the state judiciary.

Korean imperalism?

The Times has this piece on a modern version of mail-order brides, this time being exported from Vietnam to Korea. As someone fascinated by cultural geography ( I warmly recommend Migrations and Cultures by Tom Sowell in this regard), I wonder what is happening to the demographic ratios in Vietnam? Are the Koreans essentially plundering the women of Vietnam? The Times story is silent on this question. Watch out for anti-Korean riots in Hanoi. Aux armes, sex-starved Vietnamese bachelors!

Depiction follow-up

Let me try to respond to thoughtful comments that have appeared regarding this exchange.

Farid writes that "it is not the responsibility of any creator to contribute to the collective wisdom," but then continues to point out that he thinks that in fact these depictions are doing precisely that.

It is easier to rebut the second claim, so I will start there. Is there something inherently wise about the notion that no one is above caricuratization? I would challenge that assumption on its face. Let's be careful here. Nick seems to suggest in his comment that I am arguing for a ban on depictions of sacred persons. That is not the case; I am merely arguing that it is imprudent for respectable outlets to carry such depictions. I would suggest that there is in fact nothing inherently good or wise about the notion that no one is beyond caricature. Do we think that caricatures of children with Down syndrome are worthy because they will push the buttons of those whose loved ones suffer from it? Would we welcome caricatures of victims of genocide because it would push the butttons of those whom that offends? Again, I don't think that contributes anything to the conversation. Of course, the response is that this is different; sacred persons are not being victimized in the same sense. In fact, the notion of their sanctity is all in people's heads, it is just supernatural baloney. Operating on that assumption for a moment, one realizes that yet another assumption is buried underneath: By making a caricature out of someone whom someone else holds to be sacred but who the creator thinks is decidedly not sacred, the idea is to mock the belief in that person's sanctity as being irrational and stupid. That, I would submit, is not a valuable contribution either. But why shouldn't people who deny the sanctity of certain persons mock them in order to make the point that it is silly to hold them in such high regard? I would suggest that there is a basic tenet of respect for other's people holy things; it is a basic tenet of common courtesy, and eptiomizes the idea of tolerance. Now, tolerance doesn't mean blindness to oppression. But I humbly submit that depicting the holy figures of a faith has nothing to do with combating oppression; if that is the goal, there are many more straightforward ways to accomplish that. At the end of the day, the singular question is what end is served by the notion that no one is above caricature. So far, I see none.

Let me also deal with the inevitable "but people make satire out of Jesus all the time" response. I think that the most important thing to realize there is that such satire (whatever its merits) is part of an internal conversation within the Christian world about the legacy of Jesus, its meaning etc. By implication, one might respond, then what about newspapers in Muslim countries engaging in similar depictions? I think the merits of such depiction, if it should ever occur, deserve analysis on their own terms. I am running out of time, but at a later time I would be happy to explain further my distinction between "internal" and "external" conversations.

As to the first claim that Farid makes, stay tuned.

On Being an Equal-Opportunity Offender

A tangential point is that in Europe, where the cartoon controversy raged, the laws do not treat offensive images equally. If you say, depict or publish something that disparages Jews, you could end up in jail. If you say, depict or publish something that disparages Muslims or Arabs, you become a free-speech martyr. This obvious double standard was laid bare in Iran's cartoon contest, which duplicated Europe's cartoon charade but made as its object Jews. To the extent that protesting Muslims made this point, they were entirely correct.

Ideally, the law would make no "hate crime" exception, for Jews or Muslims or any other "protected" group. What is allowed by law, however, does not equate with what is right.

Imperialism against sanctity

To further elaborate on the last post, I think that there is something deeper at work here. There is a certain sense among some people that we need to "reform" people in the Islamic world; the cartoons, and other depictions of similar sort are an effort to push buttons, and at bottom the point is the following: "Why are you offended? This isn't anything to be offended about. Grow up already." This stems from a view of the world which doesn't recognize anything as sacred. Nothing is off limits, and if some things are off limits for some people, they are regarded as deficient.

Now, there is a very important distinction between attempting to exercise this form of cultural imperialism, and a recognition that there are certain values which are universal. Rule of law, due process,freedom of speech, press, and worship are universal values. But that package of values does not include telling people that they shouldn't hold anything sacred, that they should not take offense at things that offend their deepest sense of what is sanctified.

Depiction Problem

I think that the distinction you draw is useful, but I also think that any depiction of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is deeply offensive to Muslims. You are quite right that I introduced you to Super Best Friends; my views on the subject have changed since then, and today I am offended by that depiction. In other words, I think that it was wrong for me to find that depiction acceptable, even humurous. The reaction is visceral; it has to do with the core belief held by Muslims that the Prophet was the Perfect Man, in fact the reason the universe was created. Hence, any depiction of him, forbidden by Hadith, is wrong.

This brings us to the far more difficult question of what, if any, the permissible limits of free discourse are in a society such as ours, and what, if any, response Muslims should have to depictions of the Prophet. I will start with the second question, since that is the easier one to answer. As far as I am concerned, there is no need to take any affirmative steps to rectify such depictions; the honor of the Prophet is God's concern, and no amount of energy I or any other Muslim can expend will do any good. Unfortunately, this is not the tack taken by alot of Muslims; hence, the protests, effigy burnings, attacks etc. As for the first question, I think that creators of entertainment shows should consider the impact of their art on other people's faith. Should they not be allowed to do things that offend people, no matter how deeply? No. Should they boast about pushing people's buttons when doing so seems to serve no purpose beyond giving offense? I don't think that contributes anything to our collective wisdom. Is it funny? That is certainly in the eye of the beholder.

On the other hand, floats with burqas or mullahs, while they may be offensive to some, because people will invariably be offended by things, are different in kind. One cannot simply say that all "religious" things are the same, that there is no line to be drawn because some nutjob will always be offended by some things. There are a core of things for which a certain amount of respect is appropriate, and that line can be drawn fairly narrowly. Is there a fuzzy area? Surely, but that does not militate against the line-drawing exercise per se. We will all be better served by a conversation where we recognize that there is something between all or nothing.

Mocking Muhammad

My like-minded colleague Mahmood stated in his last post that mocking the Prophet Muhammad is "univerally [sic] offensive to all Muslims and entirely lacking in any substantive goal besides causing such offense." That's a hard statement to disagree with or to disprove.

But I'll try anyway. Any responsible newspaper would never consciously try to offend a segment of its readership. In the case of Jyllands-Posten in late 2005, the goal of printing cartoons featuring Muhammad was clearly to test how offensive to Muslims they could be and still get away with it. But what about a television show whose entire purpose is to mock, ridicule, and disturb -- relentlessly and indiscriminately? Can the Prophet claim immunity against equal-opportunity offending?

Of course, the show is South Park. But for all the press about last year's two-part episode that was intentionally designed to test the limits of Comedy Central's censors, there's been a key oversight. A well-known episode of the show five years ago prominently featured Muhammad and not a peep was heard, from religious groups or otherwise. There's a great interview with Matt Parker & Trey Stone in Reason magazine a few months ago, and it's worth quoting at length:

Trey Parker: ... This is what happened. I was on my honeymoon in Disney World. I turned on the television, and there were thousands of rioting Muslims, and the caption said, "Muslims enraged over cartoon." And I said, "Oh, shit. What did we do?"

We actually did an episode five years ago with Muhammad in it. It was an episode called "Super Best Friends," and Muhammad had super powers and turned himself into a beaver and then killed Abraham Lincoln. I thought, "They finally just saw it, and they're all pissed off." But no, it was those other cartoons that they were mad about.

So Matt and I were like, "This is great; we have our first episode." Comedy Central kept saying, "We're not going to broadcast a Muhammad episode." And we said, "You totally have the right, it's your network, but we're going to make one, and it's going to be one of the seven you pay for."

Given some of the details from the Danish cartoon conflagration, of course, this isn't all that surprising. It was months after the cartoons were first published that opportunistic leaders in the Middle East finally decided to use them to incite violence -- months during which no institution in Denmark, government, press or otherwise, listened to any of the legitimate Muslim grievances from groups within the country.

And a Wikipedia-inspired glance through history shows that there are several schools of thought on this issue; Muhammad has been depicted in Muslim art before, and different people have different standards as to what should be acceptable.

But Parker's quote above highlights a key distinction we need to make: between mocking Muhammad or just plain depicting Muhammad. During the cartoon controversy, we were told endlessly that depicting Muhammad was absolutely offensive to Muslims, and that this was different from mocking Jesus or other religious figures (last year's South Park made this point by juxtaposing a censored image of Muhammad and a defecating Jesus Christ).

Obviously, mocking any religious figure is intended to offend adherents to that religion. If done in the context of a series that offends both for its own sake and to make larger points about society, I don't see the big deal. In the context of a newspaper intended to serve the public good, the argument against it is obvious. But again, both of these scenarios are different from a prohibition on merely depicting Muhammad -- something any liberal society should reject.

Mahmood, in his post, referred only to "mocking." My guess is that he believes depictions of the Prophet in other contexts are fine, since he did introduce me to the "Super Best Friends" episode some years ago. Your move, sire.

Of Cartoons and Floats

As Germans ready to celebrate Carnival once again, the topic of provocative floats about the topic of Islam came up again. Over at neocon-infested Pajamasmedia, I found a link to this Der Spiegel piece about the great Jacques Tilly, who is shepherding Dusseldorf to its place in the sun alongside Cologne in the carnival pantheon. After the cartoon scandal last year, apparently a float with a bunch of Muslim women in burqas was pulled out of sensitivity. This year, however, the organizing committee, in an act of Germanic courage, approved a float that was "right on the edge." It turns out that the float depicted two mullahs (see this piece), one carrying a sign saying "cliche" and the other saying "reality."

So, what to make of this? First, I have to say that I don't think that criticism of mullahs is criticism of "Islam" per se. As a Muslim, I welcome such criticism, given that mullahs are hate-mongering fanatics who have most of the Muslim world in their shackle. Second, I think that the debate is missing a fundamental point, namely the distinction between mocking the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)and making fun of burqas or mullahs (the former is univerally offensive to all Muslims and entirely lacking in any substantive goal besides causing such offense). Third, I wonder why Germans (and anti-Muslim Americans) are cheering this whole thing on. Have we forgotten that Germans have done some pretty nasty things to gypsies, Jehovah's witneses, gays,and yea, Jews? How about a depiction of an Israeli dressed in a SS uniform standing over a Palestinian child with two signs "cliche" and "reality"? Mabye Jacques Tilly could finally surpass Colgone next year.

Torture follow-up

In connection with yesterday's post about the nature of evil, here is this Times piece about the upcoming HBO documentary about Abu Ghraib:

"The HBO film raises those issues indirectly. It focuses on the way men and women assigned to serve as prison guards at Abu Ghraib so quickly fell into behavior that one soldier describes in the film as “Lord of the Flies.”

The interviews with low-level soldiers who were court-martialed for prisoner abuse are striking because some of the subjects are obviously intelligent, well-meaning people. But sadly, their lapses are not really so difficult to explain. The documentary is framed by clips from Dr. Stanley Milgram’s infamous “obedience” studies in the 1960s, which showed how easily ordinary, law-abiding citizens could be persuaded to inflict pain on strangers with what they were led to believe were high-voltage electric shocks."

So, here we see an endorsement of the view that people are fundamentally well-meaning. This is obviously attractive, since we don't want to think about our troops as being fundamentally rotten. Along the same lines, Scott Horton of the New York Bar Association says that there's "no chance" that these people were "self-actuated," and that everything they were doing was part of "precisely described techniques" used at Abu Graib and brought to Gitmo.

So, there are two distinct issues here. First, are we all "well-meaning"? Second, are we susceptible to manipulation extraordinarily easily? If the answer to both is yes, we have to ask ourselves, why are we so easily persuaded? Surely, if Rumsfeld & co. decided that the army should eat feces, the same officers would be a bit less inclined. There is someting particularly appealing about inflicting pain on others; it appeals to some base desires that people, at least some people if not all, have. If so, let's go back to the first question. Is it plausible that people who only require a slight bit of "conditioning" to turn into willing torturers are fundamentally well-meaning? Doesn't that make some mockery out of what it means to be well-meaning? I would be interested in seeing whether there were dissenters, people who didn't go along with this insanity.

Back to class. More on this later.

New York "Behind the" Times Watch #1

The NYT is carrying an "Essay" about what happens when people email first and think later. This gives me the opportunity to start what I fear will unfortunately be a recurring feature, namely instances of the New York Times demonstrating its hopeless outdatedness. I have found that when the Times runs a piece about a current trend/development/phenomenon, it is usually a sign that the trend has long since gone out of fashion. As I am sure everyone is aware, the "oops, I hit reply all" problem was new under the sun once upon a time, but what purpose is served today by a story like this?

P.S. Any Times story that starts with a quotation from a 14-year old should be a flashing warning!

Is evil banal?

This will hopefully be a regular blog. More about me in a later post, but I thought I would hit the ground running. Over at Slate, Clive James has this piece on Terry Gilliam (part of a series about 20th century lives), and his movie Brazil. James argues that contrary to the "bland malevolence" portrayed by Michael Palin's character, who plays a torturer in the movie, real-life torturers are in fact not mere technocrats following orders, but relish their work with great joy. This hearkens back to an age-old debate about the nature of evil, and whether some human beings are naturally evil, or whether they are merely driven by circumstances to do unspeakable things. Hannah Arendt famously argued that Adolf Eichmann was just a bureaucrat in her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem." James takes real-life examples from Argentina, Cambodia, and more recently Iraq, to demonstrate that torturers are in fact not victims of some soulless tyranny, but that any regime that wishes to torture is never short of a healthy supply of volunteers.

Of course, torture is all over television these days, most prominently in "24", where Jack Bauer could be seen torturing his own brother a couple of weeks ago. The creators of 24 seem to be members of a third school of thought, which actually considers torture morally acceptable (maybe even good?) in some circumstances. Using a traditional utilitarian calculus (which is awfully appealing), they follow the lead of the Israeli government in arguing that when millions of lives are at stake, torture may be necessary to elicit important information. It's all part of the new "war on terror." Of course, there is a fourth school, which argues that torture, regardless of its moral acceptability, simply doesn't work, and instead tends to produce false information. Not having the data in front of me, I am still inclined to think that while this may be true at the tactical level in say Iraq where you are interrogating suspects about locations of munitions depots etc., that logic works less well when the cost-benefit analysis weighs so heavily in favor of torture that even the risk of false information seems acceptable (suitcase nukes are a prime example.)

But this raises the interesting question of whether such torture, conducted by agents of the US government, can be analyzed in the same terms as the torture that Clive James is talking about. Does the fact that the torture is being conducted in aid of a goal that many would consider completely morally legitimate foreclose an analysis of the psyche of those who engage in it? This is a classic problem, well-known in the context of riot police who tend to be violent by nature. When we recruit people to our intelligence agencies, armed forces, police, are we going to be attracting those people who cherish torture? If James is right, the fact that we live in a democracy rather than a dictatorship should have no significant impact on the number of people who are willing executioners. If so, the existence of procedural safeguards may curb their disgusting appetites, but aren't they the same people at bottom?