The Loss of American Nerve

I have returned from Gettysburg renewed and refreshed in my patriotism and love of history.

Here was the site where 165,000 soldiers fought one another for three days, leaving 51,000 of them killed, wounded, or missing. In some parts of the battlefield, there were puddles of blood. After the fighting ended, thousands of bodies were strewn across the landscape. Gettysburg residents commented that the stench of death was everywhere. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was driven back to the South, never to invade the North again, and the Confederacy had reached its “high-water mark,” as later historians called it. The Army of the Potomac, meanwhile, under the leadership of General Meade, held back from pursuit to nurse its wounds. The War would never be quite the same again.

How, you may wonder, can such a thing refresh one’s patriotism? A bloody, three-day battle, brother against brother? Patriotic? Shameful, more like, you may be thinking.

Indeed, all wars are shameful compared to the fragile and elegant dance of Peace. But to me the Civil War stands in stark comparison with our own times. Here we are, a nation of fearful complainers, without the nerve to withstand a battle to liberate the ordinary people of Iraq—the ones who are just like us, and not the Islamic fundamentalists or pan-Arab nationalists—but we can look back to a time when our people were willing to fight a war, a most bloody war, often against their closest friends and relatives, in order to uphold those things in which they believed. Brutal? Yes. Disgusting? Perhaps. Impressive? Absolutely.

While I abhor the popular sentiment that we all just need to believe in “something,” no matter what, I also have trouble with the tendency of Americans these days to believe in nothing but themselves. We are not the only people in the world, but we are certainly the richest and the most powerful. To isolate ourselves with that power and those riches, and to pull back from the fight against tyranny in those places where we are able to flex our might in favor of freedom would be irresponsible and selfish. That is where the Americans of the 1860s differ most grossly with the Americans of today. Perhaps they fought for ignoble causes, but they at least had the nerve to believe and defend those things that formed the foundation of their society. If the Southern slave owners were wrong to believe in human bondage, they were certainly right to defend what they believed. Ultimately, their form of society was purged from our nation, but we must at least remember them for having the honor to defend their way of life. It is a virtue that modern Americans are sorely lacking.

We don’t all need to take up arms, but we all need to believe in our way of life, and to support those who work to defend it, especially in this world where our foes are so insistent on our destruction that they walk among us with wicked designs of malice.

So I come away from Gettysburg profoundly impressed by the nerve of our American ancestors, these people who were willing to fight, to make ludicrous maneuvers on the field of battle, to charge to their deaths, all from their sense of honor and courage and duty and loyalty to the cause. (There were, no doubt, plenty of shirkers and cynics, and protesters of the Civil War, but the fact that the war took place as it did is evidence that those folks were outnumbered considerably.) Meanwhile, early 21st century Americans complain of a relatively small number of casualties in Iraq, ignoring the great benefits that many of the Iraqis are now enjoying, thanks only to the American willingness to get involved. We might learn something from our ancestors.

An Atheist Patriot Makes a Pilgrimage

Well, in a couple hours I am off to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, site of a pivotal battle in Western history, and perhaps the pivotal battle in the American Civil War. In this battle, the troops of the Northern army, under General George Meade, clashed with the troops of the Southern army, under General Robert E. Lee. Up until the battle at Gettysburg, the South had been on an upswing of moral and military superiority. In fact, in 1863 Lee had his Army of Northern Virginia marching northward into Pennsylvania, hoping to capture a major city like Harrisburg or Philadelphia. He planned to use such a siege as leverage against Lincoln’s federal government, or as a sort of proof-of-concept that would get European nations to lend their support to the Confederacy. Unfortunately for Lee and the South, however, the Federal army soundly defeated the Confederate army at Gettysburg in a massive three-day battle that engaged 165,000 troops.

Had the battle of Gettysburg turned out differently, the whole of U.S. history since 1863 might have been sharply different. We might be living in a completely different world right now if not for those three days in July of 1863. That’s not to say the world would have been better or worse—there is no way to predict these things accurately—but it certainly would have been different.

So, as a historically interested and patriotic American, I am off to see The Battlefield. It is the world’s most popular battlefield for tourists, attracting millions of people every year. (Remarkably, the town of Gettysburg itself is still quite small, with only about 8,000 people.) In the coming days, I shall join the throng. That means you may not see a post here for a while. (Depends on whether I feel like posting while I’m there.)

At any rate, I should like to take this time to point out the idiocy of those people who claim that patriotism and theism are inextricably linked for Americans. I am an atheist and a patriot, lover of my country, and supporter of our military (and their mission) in Iraq. Being an American does not mean you have to be a Christian. So I shall tour the battlefield, remember those fallen in battle on both sides of the Civil War, and proudly exercise my freedom to believe that neither side fought with the favor of any god.

Smackdown: Quakers vs. Puritans

One need not dive too deeply into Christian history to find a little lunacy. Last week, I brought up an instance of Christian theology stifling the humane impulse. This week, I have been reading Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Of course, one cannot discuss the shaping of the American republic without giving the Christian colonists their due, so Boorstin begins his book where he ought, and delves into the Puritans of Massachusetts and the Quakers of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Many times, I have heard Christians hearken back to the days of these religious colonists, and use them as ammunition against secularists. America was founded by Christians, therefore it is a Christian nation–or so the reasoning goes. (It would be wise to recall, however, that while Christians may have been the first ones across the Atlantic, we would have been hard-pressed to find many Europeans on either side of the ocean who were not Christians. That is, who else but Christians would have founded our nation? It is but a fluke of time and space. Were a group of modern European secularists to discover a new planet, emigrate there, and found a new civilization, we should not be surprised to discover that their new civilization is a secular one. To then claim that the fundamental basis of their civilization itself is then a direct result of their secularism would be ridiculous. Civilizations are not founded by belief systems, but by people, who have pragmatic concerns. As well, we should remember that at the time our independence was declared and our Constitution framed, the excessively religious nature of those early colonists had faded in favor of a more tolerant, secularist, and mercantile atmosphere.)

So it was with great interest that I read Boorstin’s account of the early interaction between Quaker and Puritan colonists. Apparently, the Quakers had a penchant for martyrdom. In fact, many of them actively sought to find themselves under the hand of persecution. Consider the following (from Boorstin’s book, pages 37-38):

One of the most persistent of the [Quaker] martyrs was Christopher Holder, “valiant apostle of New England Quakerism,” who had arrived in 1656 from England to preach the gospel of his sect. In Salem, one Sunday morning in September 1657, he was bold enough to speak a few words after the minister had done. He did not get very far before someone seized him by the hair, and “His Mouth violently stopp’d with a Glove and Handkerchief thrust thereinto with much Fury, by one of your Church-Members And Commissioners.” Although he had already been at least once expelled, he and his companion had continued their preaching. They were conveyed to Boston, where the exasperated Governor and Deputy-Governoer of the colony inflicted on them a brutal punishment which went even beyond all existing laws. Merely reading the account is strong medicine, but it contributes to our understanding of the price the Quakers sought to pay for their Truth. First the two Quakers were given thirty stripes apiece with a three-cord knotted whip, during which one of the spectators fainted. Then they were confined to a bare cell, without bedding, for three days and nights without food or drink. After that they were imprisoned during nine weeks of the New England winter without any fire. [Recall that the New England winter claimed over half of the 110 Pilgrims and "strangers" who landed at Plymouth in 1620.] By special order the prisoners were whipped twice each week, the first time with fifteen lashes and each succeeding time by three additional. Having miraculously survived this ordeal, Holder took ship for Barbados, where he spent the remainder of the winter before returning to Rhode Island to preach his gospel without molestation. But this did not satisfy him. In August 1658 he was arrested in Dedham, Massachusetts, and again taken to Boston, where one of his ears was cut off.

The New England Puritan leaders were not sadists. But they too were single-minded men; they had risked everything and traveled three thousand miles for their own opportunity. They wanted to be let alone to pursue their orthodoxy and to build Zion according to their model. What right had the Quakers (or anyone else) to interfere? The Puritans had not sought out the Quakers in order to punish them; the Quakers had come in quest of punishment. Why could not these zealots stay in Rhode Island where they were tolerated, and allow the Puritans to go about their business?

Living at a time when Christians have been flocking to see Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, this account is particularly fascinating. While our modern breed of American Christians seem to think it’s their religious duty to watch the scourging of their savior, some of those early American Christians would rather seek a real scourging for themselves.

But more importantly, I think, is that these early American Christians, so often revered, behaved in ways that modern Christians would find reprehensible. While I suspect that most modern American Christians would rather revere the Quakers as seekers of persecution and revile the Puritans as providers of it, it seems to me no less brutal and nihilistic for a person to actively seek barbaric beatings for the cause of his religion, than for another zealot to perpetrate those beatings on another person. As a human being primarily, and a secularist secondarily, I am perplexed by the doctrinal views of both of these sects that were so rigid as to lead them into the kind of behavior that today we might expect from conflicted “developing” nations, e.g., Sudan.

I am not going to force modern American Christians to answer for the barbarity of their early American predecessors, or expect them to choose one or the other of these ridiculous theological perspectives. That would not be fair to people who are thankfully removed from responsibility by that inexorable flight of time’s arrow. However, it is precisely this kind of story (and it’s not the only one from the colonial era, or from the whole of Christian history) that requires skepticism when Christians claim that their religion automatically leads to the best morality, the best society, and the best government. Clearly, that is not true, and claims to the contrary are little more than wishful mythology. As I mentioned above, civilizations are built by people–not belief systems. Perhaps modern American Christians would do a better job if given the kind of chance that their colonial forebears had, but that’s not because they read a different bible, or worship a different god. It’s because their beliefs have been tempered by the pragmatic concerns of an ever denser population. We simply cannot get away with such behavior anymore, because it is detrimental society as a whole, which means it is detrimental to all people.

Christianity in the United States has tended to come in waves. There was a wave in the early colonial period, another wave in the early 19th century, and, I believe, we are in the midst of another wave. (Perhaps historians will come to call our time the “Third Great Awakening.”) Between these waves have been countervailing waves of secularism–in the late 18th century, the late 19th century, and the second half of the 20th century. I expect this oscillation will continue as long as our nation persists. However, I would like to see our historical perspective even out. Christians alone did not build our nation, but neither did secularists. The United States is unique in its metaphysical orientation precisely because it has always been a mixture of theological ideology and secular ideology, and a mixture of religious fervor and secular fervor. We are a nation that cannot make up its mind on fundamental issues. Ultimately, that may be the healthiest way to go. It means that we experience regular, periodic renewals of our great debates and compromises. Our “culture wars” keep us on our toes, and require a continual pressure on our level of social discourse.

Ug-Ug People

In the wake of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, everyone has something to say about our soldiers gone awry. (I have commented on this elsewhere, if you’re curious to see what an angry, quick-to-blog, two-weeks-ago version of me had to say.) Today, Chuck Colson has joined the fray and put in his two cents. Here is an excerpt from his comments:

As I’ve tried to figure out how this travesty occurred, I’ve considered my own experiences in the Marine Corp. Had I been in charge of the brig in a time of war and the intelligence officers ordered me to “soften these guys up for interrogation,” I would have made them sleep with their lights on all night; I would have awakened them every fifteen minutes; I would have played loud music, as we did in Panama to rattle the nerves of Noriega and his henchmen who were hiding out. I would have given them a rifle butt in the stomach if they gave me any sass. And I would have harassed them and made their lives so miserable they would want to tell us what we wanted to know.
But not in my wildest imagination can I conceive of ever doing what our National Guardsmen did to the prisoners in Iraq. Even if it had occurred to me, it would have been so repulsive I can’t imagine I would have acted on it. And I was no paragon of virtue in those days; that was before my conversion.

Why did it even occur to our soldiers today to molest and embarrass these prisoners sexually?

How about that list of Colson’s Preferred Interrogation Techniquesâ„¢? Of course Mr. Colson is careful to mention that this was “before my conversion,” so his friendly Christian followers wouldn’t go thinking he would do such things now. But why does he bother listing them? In this context, it’s clear that he’s not denying the prisoners need to be interrogated, nor is he denying that some rather unfriendly means should be used. He just doesn’t like the sex thing. Why not? Why is “a rifle butt in the stomach if they gave me any sass” okay, while having prisoners strip naked and pile on top of each other for a photo-shoot is not? If you ask me, there are far worse things that can be done to prisoners besides forcing them to pose for pseudo-porn.

Colson himself suggests one of those worse things:

[I]n Iraq, they don’t pull out the fingernails or set off loud radios to harass prisoners. Instead they strip them and make them pose in pretend sex acts—just like pornography.

Pull out fingernails? Yeah, I’m sure we would prefer to hear that our people in Iraq are pulling fingernails off their prisoners. Americans would really dig that, wouldn’t they? No, wait—I have a better one! Why don’t we get our guards to start beheading Iraqis? That would go over well, wouldn’t it? Better than taking pictures of stacks of naked Iraqis, right?

Really, it’s all relative. We Americans are getting the same kind of bad press over this that an African dictator would get for killing a bunch of people in his country. That’s ridiculous. I would rather be hooded, stripped naked, and have my picture taken than get a rifle butt in the stomach, or be roused every fifteen minutes during night. The ridiculous thing here is not that these prisoners were “abused,” but that the rest of the world is seeing it in such a harsh light. Here we Americans are, giving ourselves weeks of bad press over this issue, launching internal investigations, and calling ourselves on the carpet for something that, in most other countries, would probably go unnoticed. And we are the bad ones?

Colson, predictably, does not address this issue, but focuses on blaming someone. Specifically, he lays the blame for this type of prisoner abuse on our “pornography-soaked culture.”

Certainly, there is too much blatant sex in American culture. It’s annoying. It’s desensitizing. It makes real sex less meaningful. This is the deepest physical embrace between two people we’re talking about here. Should there be sex in every advertisement? Should elementary school girls be running around in slutty clothing with suggestive words printed in strategic locations? (Should any women be doing that? ) No!

If our “pornography-soaked culture” is so desensitized to sex, why is everyone universally offended by these photos? I would think that a culture desensitized to sex would see this kind of scandal and brush it off like it was nothing. But we have latched onto it, turned it into nearly an obsession, asking ourselves how our people in uniform could go so wrong.

No, the problem here is why Americans would probably have no trouble with prisoners getting rifle butts in their stomachs, but naked pictures are a no-no. This, I think, is because Americans are not as sex-crazed as we like to think. Instead, Americans have no meaningful understanding of sex. We are pornography-soaked because most Americans are too repressed to practice sexuality themselves, so they have to purchase an idealized, mediated version instead. Meanwhile, because we are so unthinking (and unfeeling) about sex, why should we be surprised that our soldiers are using sex to intimidate prisoners? Forced or simulated intimacy is the kind of thing I would expect from school children who don’t understand what sex is really about.

What I’m getting at here is that pornography is not the cause of the prisoner abuse, but a parallel symptom of the same problem: Americans are dolts at sex and intimacy.

Look around. Do you see Americans falling in love? Or do you see Americans in the throes of physical attraction, followed by the throes of divorce? Do you see Americans cultivating the values of solid relationships in their art and media forms? Or do you see Americans tossing off the meaning of physicality and of love between two people as if these things were meaningless?

I think this has to do with American religious views, at least in part. When you have people who believe more in the soul than in the body, people who focus on the hereafter instead of the here-and-now, what would you expect? Love is a deeply human thing, because it is rooted in our physicality. Relationships are built between two people who, ultimately, are separate individuals and who cannot connect, except by verbal and physical communication. Love and companionship together are a paradox that cannot be extricated from the fact that we are fleshy, mentally isolated individuals. But when you lose the biological basis of humanity and focus instead on a spiritual version of what we are, sex becomes intrinsically less meaningful. If souls can connect in an other-realm, why build relationships of communicative pathways and sexual embrace?

Then, once pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners make it back to the homeland in the press, the repression shows up and suddenly everybody gets offended. Should we be offended? Should we be seeing things more relatively, as I did above? Why do some Americans have no problem with stripping their prisoners naked and posing them, while others get offended at the pictures? First, we should have a problem with our soldiers doing what they did. Second, we should have a problem with Americans back home being offended by naked pictures. Third, we should be asking ourselves why certain cultures would find it shameful to display the human body. Fourth, we should be asking ourselves why Americans seem to be simultaneously sex-crazed and offended by “shameful” displays of the human body.

But Americans do not think about these things. Americans think “Ug Ug, I wanna get laid.” Americans think “Ug Ug, Brad Pitt hot guy. Me want pecs held close against me.” Americans think “Ug Ug, J Lo hot. Me want boobs and butt to squeeze.” Idiots! That’s not love! It’s naked reproduction stripped of all humanity, stripped of all civility, stripped of all meaning, stripped of all that makes it beautiful.

That is why our soldiers are posing naked Iraqis for photo-shoots. Because they are imbeciles who don’t understand themselves, or the human psyche, or love, or sex, or anything civilized. They are just Ug-Ug people, and that is something that ought to scare us all.

Waiting…

If you’ve been waiting for a new post since last Thursday, sorry. I’ve been pretty busy, and writing up my rather elaborate thoughts tends to take a back seat when I get busy. Should be something new in a couple days, though.

Theologians Gone Wild

The history of Christianity is rife with lunacy. This evening, while reading the book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby, I discovered another example of this particular species of historical anecdote.

In 1795, the Reverend Timothy Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards (you know–”Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”–that guy), became president of Yale University. Dwight then proceeded to attack freethought in every corner of the university, even giving hundreds of sermons admonishing students against the dangers of heresy. But here’s the best part: He even went so far as to argue that the smallpox vaccine was immoral! Here’s an excerpt from Jacoby’s book (p. 49):

In a departure from the general eighteenth-century approval of scientific advances–a predilection of many orthodox believers as well as freethinkers–Dwight argued that if God had decided from all eternity that an individual’s fate was to die of smallpox, it was a sin to interfere with the divine plan through a man-made trick like vaccination.

Dwight’s theology on this one wasn’t exactly ironclad (couldn’t god have preordained the creation of the smallpox vaccine?), but when is theology ever ironclad? Never mind theology, though. The most troubling aspect of this little story is something that crops up even today with Christians.

How easily theology (bad or good) trumps goodwill and the humane impulse! But since one could just as easily argue theologically that the smallpox vaccine was a blessing from god (as I expect some people must have done), it’s reasonable to ask whether Dwight first disliked the vaccine, then created his theology accordingly, or whether his theology led him to such inhumane ideas. Neither situation is more desirable than the other, though. Why couldn’t Dwight have made an argument regarding smallpox vaccinations based on the concrete issues at stake? He might have discussed costs versus benefits, or the moral worth of working to preserve one’s fellow human beings and one’s society against the assault of disease.

I suspect that most people today, even most Christians, recognize the silliness of Dwight’s calling the smallpox vaccine immoral. Why is that? Has theology changed so much? Not really. But people today are more likely to let their goodwill and their humane impulse trump their theology. If theology says to let a person die while goodwill and the humane impulse say to help a person live, most people will choose goodwill and the humane impulse. It has become unfashionable to say that the lost are lost because god has intended them to be so. Personally, if I was going to worship a god, I would want to worship one with some kind of fore-ordaining power, instead of one who happily follows the trends of human enlightenment. What good is that?

However, I am an atheist, and free from such silliness, which is a relief. Theology won’t confuse my moral decisions (though I’m sure plenty of religious folks believe my moral decisions are confused by other factors), and for that I am glad. At least when I want to weigh my options, I have tangible, measurable factors to consider, and not just the opinions of dead theologians to line up on one side or the other.

The Christian Man’s Burden

Every time an election rolls around, Chuck Colson tells Christians to vote. Today he’s doing it again:

This fall Americans will go to the polls and elect a president — one who will influence the direction in which the country’s moral compass will point. But according to a recent report, only a third of evangelical Christians — those who ought to be most concerned with moral values — will actually vote.

He continues by exhorting Christians to go out and vote. Read it yourself here.

Well, that’s just dandy. Certainly, everybody should vote, and Christians are included in that class of people we call “everybody,” so yes, Christians should vote. But what is this stuff about evangelical Christians being “those who ought to be most concerned with moral values”? Is he saying that atheists like me should not be concerned about moral values? Should I just give myself up to immorality? I suppose a lot of Christians would like that, because then they could make a connection between atheism and immorality. But I do care about how people behave, and it annoys me that people like Colson think Christians have some kind of burden to be the citizens “most concerned with moral values.” All citizens, regardless of what they believe about metaphysics, should care about moral values and behavior and whether or how well our people function under the rules of law and civilization.

What about Christians who don’t call themselves “evangelical”? Have they been thrown from the moral high horse? What makes the views of evangelical Christians so morally superior? Personally, I find the Bible morally inferior. This is the book that just gives lists of commandments, and then acts as if all moral behaviors are governed by divine fiat, and thinking critically about why one ought to be have as one ought never comes into the picture! Why should you honor your father and mother? Why is adultery bad news? Why is it wrong to murder people? I don’t raise these questions as rhetorical repudiation of those principles of filial piety, marital fidelity, and nonviolence, but to suggest that a person’s ethical understanding can only be improved by asking and attempting to answer the whys of morality. Where is that in the Bible? Maybe there are some good ethical principles in there, but if they are only commandments to be shoved down our throats, then they hardly improve our inner moral standing.

Christians always get upset when people criticize them–so upset that they tend to call it “persecution”–but who can blame us for getting annoyed and frustrated with them when they say things like Chuck says? I don’t care how noble you are, if you’re going to assume beforehand that I don’t care about morality, then I’m not going to invite you into the dialogue. That’s not persecution. It’s legitimate frustration with arrogance.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

“From where do we get rights and on what groundwork are they formed?”

That’s a question for me from Laurie. Here’s my answer:

Really, it’s pretty simple, in my opinion. Rights are human creation for human benefit, just like any other technology. Yes, you heard right, rights are a form of technology. See, out in the real world, which I’ll call “nature,” there are no rights. A zebra does not have the “right” to not be eaten by a lion. A lion has teeth and a zebra has legs. If the zebra can outrun the lion and its teeth, the zebra gets to live a little longer. Otherwise, well, we’re in that territory where life was once (and many times after) called “nasty, brutish, and short.”

The same rules apply to people, too. And, interestingly enough, we basically adhere to them when dealing with other animals. When a surfer gets his arm bitten off by a shark, nobody expects the shark to be put on trial for abridging the rights of the surfer. Instead, the event is listed as unfortunate and we all pause to remember that sharks are in the ocean and they like to eat flesh (with which we humans are richly endowed), hence, we ought to be careful in the ocean. If the shark has been particularly naughty, we just might go out and kill it, too, but that’s not what usually happens. The main point here is that nobody talks about shark attacks in terms of “rights.”

However, when dealing with other humans, suddenly our language changes. If someone wielding a chainsaw were to remove one of my arms, the fundamental legal issue would take on the language of “rights.” Suddenly I have a “right” to move through life unmolested, with both arms intact, and our hypothetical chainsaw-wielding maniac has abridged that “right.” This makes him a “criminal.” Furthermore, even though he is a criminal, we still say he has a “right” to a trial, and, for a crime of such relative non-severity, he would retain his “right” to remain alive (i.e., we will not kill him).

So, although an arm has been severed in both scenarios, we respond to them differently.

Where did those “rights” come from? Are they from “nature”? Nope. If they were, sharks would not have the “right” to eat our arms, and we would punish them as we punish each other. So what makes us different from sharks?

To put a shark on trial for eating an arm would be ridiculous. The shark would have no idea what’s going on. What good would it do? Could we deter other sharks by making an example of this one? Hardly! The same idea is at work in our practice of judging some people “incompetent” to stand trial. If an insane person were to cut off my arm, we would treat that person the same way we would treat the shark. We would call the incident unfortunate, and then do our best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. If the rights of myself and my arm came into play, we wouldn’t have a very good way to apply them, because there would be no one responsible for them. That is, there would be no one who made a rational decision that could be examined, judged, and penalized. Crying out for my “right” to have an arm would be useless and meaningless––just like the shark case.

Perhaps in a different society, I would go and get revenge on the person who took my arm, regardless of his or her mental competence It wouldn’t matter whether that person understood, because revenge isn’t about that other person–it’s about me, and that means I have turned the other person into an object. This would not be a system of “rights” then, but of retribution. A system of “rights” doesn’t allow me to turn another person into an object just because I have been harmed or offended. It requires me to recognize that the other person really is a human being. Retributive “justice” still exists in some parts of the world. It works like this: If somebody kills my brother, then I go kill him, and then his brother comes and kills me, and so on, until some kind of accord is reached, or until we all get tired of killing each other. This has nothing to do with “rights,” and is another one of those cases where we might say that life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” When something bad happens to people, they want to get something back for it, some kind of compensation. This is not a right, but a desire. Everybody has this desire. What happens when those desires conflict?

That’s why we invented “rights” and their attendant laws. Then we built an arbitration and enforcement system to administrate those rights and the conflicts between us. That’s the government and the judicial system, whose job it is to mediate our collective interests in the form of “rights.” Here’s how it works: If we say that I have a right to both arms (or to, say, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”), then the converse is that a person who takes one of my arms against my wishes has abridged that right. Now, my natural desire to get revenge will always come into play, but rather than fighting it out between us, and initiating an endless cycle of retributive violence, we go to that arbitration and enforcement system and have the case decided. If it can be proven that the suspect did indeed take my arm, then the suspect is guilty of abridging my “right” to an arm, so we compensate by abridging his or her rights in a way that is fair (we hope).

Eventually, we decided that we ought to come up with a collection of “rights” for ourselves, so that we could have some goal by which to guide our government. One interesting factoid about the creation of the United States is that in our Declaration of Independence, we did not create any new rights, but instead alluded to rights bestowed by British law, and accused the Crown of abridging those rights. Furthermore, we decided it was high time that we be given the ability to administer our own arbitration and enforcement system, since the British government was clearly no longer operating in our particular interests.

Sure, we all know what the Declaration says, that we have rights because we were all “created equal” by some unnamed “Creator,” but we implicitly understand our rights to be ours because we are humans. If rights were bestowed by a Creator, then it would stand to reason that those rights would extend to all creation. But “all creation” does not behave as if it enjoyed “rights.” Nature, to borrow another famous phrase, is “red in tooth and claw.” There are no rights in nature––only powers. And human beings have a lot of power. We have come up with endless ways to harm, torture, and kill each other. And since most of us want to escape that redness of tooth and claw, and most of us want lives that are not nasty, brutish, and short, we devised these things called “rights” that help us smooth our interactions, and give us guideposts for our arbitration and enforcement systems.

To sum up, rights come from us. We give rights to ourselves, and then, as a society, pledge to protect those rights for each other via the government, the judicial system, and our “good” behavior. This is why we can create and destroy “rights” so easily. Once upon a time, women had no “right” to vote. Now they enjoy that right. Once upon a time, people had the “right” to enslave others. Now that right is gone. For the most part, “rights” have only expanded in the last couple hundred years. These days we are even bestowing “rights” on animals.

So, to answer the question (“From where do we get rights?”), we get them from ourselves. We create them to enable ourselves to achieve more and to have better lives. They are a form of technology. They do not come down from on high. They are not bestowed arbitrarily by some deity. Rights are the social codification of protection for all our individual desires to have “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” (I.e., we all just want to do what we want to do.)

At any rate, although I use the language of rights in the United States, the principles hold true for all people who enjoy rights.

More “repression”

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here is a list of ten (count ‘em, ten) forthcoming books that represent the voice of protest and dissent:

50 Ways You Can Show George to the Door in 2004 by Ben Cohen and Jason Salzman
“With creativity and insight, Cohen, a well-known activist and Ben & Jerry’s co-founder, and Salzman, former campaign director for Greenpeace and president of Cause communications, tells readers how to show President Bush ‘the door in 2004.’” ISBN: 0813342821

Axis of Deceit by Andrew Wilkie
“Wilkie explains how the case for war in Iraq was made in Washington, London and Can berra, and how the three governments routinely skewed, spun and fabricated the relevant intelligence.” ISBN: 0975076922

Bush Must Go by Bill Press
“Press highlights his ten most important reasons why he says Bush doesn’t deserve to be reelected, including chapters on the war in Iraq, the economy, the deficit, crony capitalism, civil liberties, and how the Administration made the U.S. less safe from terrorism.” ISBN: 0525948406

Citizen You! by Randy Ostrow, et al.
“Two leading Onion writers and a film producer lampoon the Bush administration, in words and pictures. Loaded with illustrations, pie charts, and informational graphics, this easy-to-read manual will set Americans of all ages on the path of proper patriotic behavior.” ISBN: 1565849159

Hoax by Nicholas von Hoffman
“Best-selling author von Hoffman reveals how the American people have been gulled into cheering for a gigantic hoax by the Bush administration, and therefore, supporting the invasion of Iraq.” ISBN: 156025582X [i.e., Americans are all a bunch of gullible idiots, veritable cattle, waiting to be pushed around into whatever frenzy]

A Hole in the World by Jonathan Schell
“Drawing from historical precedents to comments on the current U.S. political and cultural situation, Schell presents compelling arguments against America’s imperial ambitions, explores the dangers of nuclear proliferation, and argues that the public must hold their leaders accountable for their actions.” ISBN: 1560256001

In Pursuit of Justice by Ralph Nader [always a favorite with the dissenting crowd]
“In this insightful new collection of more than 100 articles spanning three decades, the consumer advocate addresses corporate abuse, the latent dangers of nuclear energy, water and air pollution, consumer safety, and more.” ISBN: 158322629X

Inventing the Axis of Evil by Bruce Cumings, et al.
“Three renowned experts set the record straight on North Korea, Iran, and Syria–the countries caught in the crosshairs of the Bush Administration.” ISBN: 1565849043

Iraq by Slavoj Zizek
“Zizek analyzes the logic behind toppling Saddam Hussein despite no evidence of WMDs and questions the actual ideological and political stakes of the attack on Iraq.” ISBN: 1844670015

Sleeping with the Devil [eek!] by Robert Baer
“In his powerful new book, Baer reveals how the U.S. government’s cynical relationship with Saudi Arabia and its dependence on their oil make the country increasingly vulnerable to economic disaster and further acts of terrorism.” ISBN: 1400052688 [subtitle: "How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude"]

My, my. Look at all the repressed voices of dissent. Look how these people are marginalized! Their books are being printed by mainstream publishing houses and sold in mainstream bookstores!

Okay, I’ll go now, and wait for all those federal officers with guns to come storming into my house to marginalize and criminalize me for daring to point out the voices of dissent and protest in American life. While I’m waiting, maybe I’ll listen to Pacifica radio. . .

Help, help! I’m (not) being repressed!

In my line of work, I see a lot of books. Many of them I would love to read, but I don’t have the time. Others, from the first glance, do nothing but push me away by their apparent inanity. Take, for example, this excerpt from the promotional description of a new book called Gag Rule by Lewis Lapham:

Never before, argues Lewis Lapham, have voices of protest been so locked out of the mainstream political conversation: they are criminalized, marginalized, and muted by a government that recklessly disregards civil liberties and by an ever-more concentrated and profit-driven media, in which the safe and the selling sweep all uncomfortable truths from view.

Pardon me, Mr. Alarmist Pundit, but isn’t your book getting published? And I’m sorry, but I see anti-establishment books, letters-to-the-editor, blogs, rallies, and other forms of dissent every day. All across the U.S.A. people are whining and complaining and disagreeing and alleging and hollering and raising a ruckus over the stuff they don’t like. But I don’t recall any stories I’ve heard about these people being “criminalized, marginalized, and muted.” (In fact, they’re so loud that most of the time they annoy the heck out of me–not so much for the validity of their arguments, but from the fact that their arguments don’t offer enough substance to judge their validity in the first place! It’s all bluster!)

Mostly, though, I am sick and tired of people writing books and articles and letters and blogs to claim that they’re muzzled. Sorry, people, but if you were being muzzled, we wouldn’t be hearing from you, and my local newspaper wouldn’t be printing a whole page of letters of dissent almost every single day. So just keep speaking up, and stop claiming that you’re not allowed to speak up, because you are.