The Joy of the Truth » Justice

What’s the Best Direction for Iraq?

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:00:18 +0000

Many Catholics support Barack Obama because he has promised to put a timeline on troop withdrawal from Iraq. Election propaganda from both sides aside, Catholics should take some time to ask what is truly best for Iraq at this point in time. By removing Saddam Hussein America created a power vacuum. The ongoing war(s) in Iraq have been the result of that vacuum. If we pull out our troops now, will we leave Iraq in total chaos?

History should teach us a lesson. We pulled out of Laos and Korea during times of instability and the people suffered greatly. I do not know for certain how close the conditions in Iraq are to the conditions in these two countries during the respective military engagements, but the similarities are enough for us to be examining the connections.

Why do we want the war in Iraq to end? Are we considering what is truly best for the Iraqi people, or are we just sick of fighting? Are we perhaps being selfish because of the money being spent, the lives being disrupted and the lives being lost for the sake of the cause? Or are those who want to pull out of Iraq truly convinced that doing so would be best for Iraq?

I am not proposing an answer to the question of whether or not we should pull out. I am saying that it is time for reasoned dialogue, and that our decision has to be for the best of Iraq rather than for our own convenience. Like it or not, we now have a responsibility there and we should take it very seriously.

Since the election is tomorrow, I will make a statement about the presidential nominees. I have gotten some flack form Catholics who support Obama for stating that abortion is a more important issue than the war in Iraq. The fact is that whether you think the war in Iraq is just or unjust, there is room for doubt. If the war is just, then it is not evil. There is no room for doubt about the evil of abortion.

Barack Obama promised that his first act as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act which would abolish all of the restrictions currently placed on abortion at the federal level and within all of the states. How much or how little the Republicans have done to abolish abortion is beside the point. A vote for Obama is a vote for this act.

Do you believe that abortion is a valid solution to social problems? Do you believe that abortion is infanticide? How you vote will answer these questions.
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Cheaters Never Prosper

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:37:00 +0000

Ok, “cheaters never prosper” is a cliche. But so is “every law was meant to be broken,” yet we hear this saying much more often – in word or idea. Our country is currently suffering from the greedy cheating of people associated with the Annie Mae and Freddie Mac companies. In 2002 we heard about a number of scholars who had plagiarized or otherwise misrepresented themselves and their scholarly work. At that time, U.S. News and World Report carried the article, “Our Cheating Hearts.”

The article begins:

The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once claimed that “mutual cheating is the foundation of society.” For as long as there have been rules, it seems, there have been cheaters.

I would like to know the context of Pascal’s statement. He was, after all, a Catholic scholar and I find it difficult to believe that he was so defeatist. This statement, like “every law was meant to be broken,” indicates (with a wink and a smirk) that cheating is natural to human beings.

When we are faced with human depravity, we tend to defend our sensibilities in two ways. First, we try to shrug it off by convincing ourselves that it is inevitable or normal or inevitable. Second, we try to find a psychological explanation.

What’s going on here? Doesn’t anyone play by the rules? On Wall Street, the one-two punch of greed and competition is to blame, says journalist James Stewart. His coverage of the 1987 stock crash and insider-trading scandals earned him a Pulitzer and became the foundation of his bestseller Den of Thieves. All that money sloshing around, he says, “can drive people into a frenzy. . . . You’re thrown in that competitive situation at a very early age and exhorted to win at all costs.” And that win-at-all-costs ethic, critics say, is the foundation of the cheating culture.

In Hollywood, “you can get away with your embezzlements and your lies, and your murders, but you can never get away with failing,” according to Dominick Dunne, celebrated chronicler of the powerful and notorious. The pressure to succeed–and the fear of failure–Dunne says, is the perfect prescription for cheating. It may also be the root of widespread cheating among students. Consider: Seventy-four percent of high school students admitted to “serious test cheating” last year. That’s more than double the number who admitted this in 1969.

Certainly an overemphasis on success leads to cheating. I see this in high school students and their parents, or example. Sometimes we even get parents defending or even abetting the cheating by their children and offering the excuse, “Well, she has to get into college and she can’t do that without a good grade in this class.”

Obsession with success and the willingness to sacrifice integrity show a degradation of priorities and a false sense of happiness – a willingness to sacrifice transcendent goods such as honesty, truth and integrity for the sake of temporal, imperfect, and insecure goods such as money and success. Obsession with success brings constant dissatisfaction and cheating does nothing to alleviate the unhappiness caused by a disordered life.

Of course, there are other reasons for cheating as well:

But pressure to succeed isn’t a complete explanation. Undeniably, there is an almost romantic appeal to “beating the system”–particularly if the system, whether it’s the speed limit or the stock market, is perceived as rigged or unfair. Take the tax code, for instance. Nearly everyone thinks he or she pays too much or that others don’t pay enough. So Americans cheat to the tune of $195 billion a year, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That amounts to a whopping $1,600 per taxpayer.

While the first cause of cheating is a false sense of true happiness, the second is a false idea of the purpose of authority. “Sticking it to the man” has been in vogue since the 1960′s. Actually, it has been part of the American culture since the American Revolution when True Whigs held a philosophy that held all authority suspect. Americans hold that individuals need to grab all they can for themselves while authority attempts to keep them from it.

However, the truth is that authority is intended to lead us to authentic goodness, especially when our own weaknesses or ignorance would make attaining that goodness more difficult if not impossible. Often our attempt to “stick it to the man” or to “beat the system” are like my two-and-a-half-year-old’s stubborn refusal to wear pants.

And think about the reasons people give for cheating. We steal cable because “the prices are a rip-off.” We fudge insurance claims because “the rates are sky high.” We pocket office supplies because “the company can afford it.” All these rationalizations suggest people are perversely cheating to restore fairness. Is this tolerable?

Yes, sometimes the explanation of why we cheat is just that we’re selfish and whiny. We tend to think we are never getting enough because we are never satisfied with what we have.

So, whether we are revealing our messed-up priorities, our hubris, or our selfishness, we sacrifice much when we cheat. Cheaters destroy their personal integrity – the virtue of being who you were created to be. What’s more, since human beings are created to receive Truth, cheaters do great harm to justice between them and others, therefore isolating them from the bond of trust that creates a society. And what do we gain? A stapler? A few hundred dollars that we’ll spend foolishly anyway? A good grade that won’t even be remembered ten years from now? Even those people who rise to positions of power and prestige by cheating live with the constant fear that they will be found the fraud.

Furthermore, all sin does harm to society

No wonder many are now asking if there’s been a major shift in cultural standards–whether cheating and deceit have become accepted tools of the trade in the never-ending quest for success.

We have an innate sense that cheating is evil. U.S. News & World Report, the consummate supporter of bad science, explains:

Yet there is tension here as well. As great as the urge to cheat may be, we also have an almost hard-wired hatred of cheaters and a deep-seated urge to punish them. In fact, studies have shown people will go to great lengths to ferret out and punish cheaters, even when doing so is costly and offers no material gain. According to sociologists, this instinct to punish rule-breakers may date to hunter-gatherer societies, which were highly egalitarian–there were no hierarchical leaders. So when it came to sharing food, for instance, these minisocieties had to work as a group to punish any freeloaders.

It amazes me that everything can be traced back to the “hunter-gatherer” era of human history, as if this era (inexplicably) forever defined human nature. Truth be told, every time the “hunter-gatherer” era is used as an explanation for modern human behavior, the connection is based on a total guess. There is no evidence. This pseudo-scientific explanation is a “socially acceptable” alternative to the acceptance of natural law. We know that cheating is bad because human beings were created for Truth.

As Catholics, we know through Divine Revelation that human beings once knew the perfect life, but that Original Sin damaged our intellect and our will. Therefore we are tempted toward sin and deceit, yet we still hold goodness as our ideal. Cheaters never prosper – not because they are never successful but because they sacrifice the reality of who they are meant to be for the myth of what they wish they had.

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What Does It Mean to Vote Like a Catholic?

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:00:20 +0000

Catholics care about many issues. However, because of our faith and our belief in human dignity, certain issues take precedence. There are some good guides to the most important issues out there. I particularly respect the Voter’s Guide For Serious Catholics from Catholic Answers. Here are a few issues I think are important for serious Catholics to consider when they cast their vote.

Respect for Life

Respect for life is a foundational part of Catholic thought & belief. Catholics must stand against abortion, embryonic stem cell research that destroys embryos, therapeutic cloning, and euthanasia.

War

War can be a life issue if the war is unjust or unjustly fought, and if a world leader is acting like a tyrant that leader should indeed be removed. Good Catholics disagree about whether or not the war in Iraq fully meets the criteria for a just war. However, even those who oppose the war rarely accuse the U.S. of tyranny or indiscriminate killing. Their main opposition is the fact that Americans are dying in the war. If we were murdering, raping and pillaging innocent civilians, then immediate action would need to be taken. Certainly having our soldiers sacrifice themselves for an unjust cause is a valid concern. However, the fact that war is sometimes morally acceptable and even sometimes morally compulsory along with the fact that the justness of the war in Iraq is validly debatable means that the war issue is not on par with other life issues.

Subsidiarity

The principle of subsidiarity is key to Catholic social teaching. It states that social decision making power should occur at the lowest possible level of social organization. Higher levels of social organization should do what is necessary to empower the lower levels without interfering until it becomes absolutely necessary. Neither of the major political parties seems to truly embrace subsidiarity. Democrats, traditionally the “big government” party, tend to seek solutions to social problems at the highest level of social organization first, and to take recourse to more local organizations as a last resort. Republicans, with their reliance on the free market, also do not seek ways to empower lower levels of social organization. This makes it difficult to choose which party is most in line with Catholic social teaching.

Do you doubt the importance and power of the Catholic vote? Check out this book from Ignatius Press!

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Let’s get the arguments right!

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:38:00 +0000

I heard it yet again. A Catholic radio host tells Catholics that they must vote pro-life and that Barack Obama is not pro-life. An angry Catholic listener calls in and proclaims that the host cannot be prolife if he supports the war in Iraq. The host responds that he does not support the war, but that abortion is the more important issue.

Then the host offers his reasoning. I have heard both Drew Mariani and Michael Barber (I believe it was him, anyway) say that abortion is much worse than the war because more babies are killed each year by abortion than innocent lives have been taken by the entire war. On Michael Barber’s show, the caller rightfully jumped on him for using proportionist reasoning in an inappropriate context. The killing of innocent human life is inherently wrong, no matter if one life is taken or a thousand. The caller was correct, but his conclusions were not.

What both caller and host don’t understand is that waging a just war and killing an unborn baby are fundamentally different acts. In a justly fought war, innocent life is only taken collaterally. Innocent life is never taken purposely or directly. We can argue all we want about whether or not we went into this war for a just cause, with right intention and as a last resort. However, I don’t think anybody could sanely argue that America does not fight its wars with just means. Our men and women do an outstanding job protecting innocent life, trying to attack military targets and keep innocent casualties to a minimum. Yes, innocent people do die while American soldiers try to defend themselves or to perform an offensive on an military operation in an urban setting. But this life is never the direct target.

Abortion is always the direct, intentional killing of innocent human life. There is no attempt to do anything except kill the baby. Even in the extremely rare cases when an abortion is performed to save the life of the mother, the innocent life is directly targeted. It would be analogous to soldiers shooting through innocent civilians in order to get at the enemies beyond them – something our soldiers would never do.

It would be ok to argue the proportionate number of deaths between war and abortion if all else was morally equal. However, things are not morally equal between war and abortion. If you compare a single abortion to a single innocent person dying in the course of a war, the abortion is more evil hands down. Both deaths are evil, but only in the case of abortion was the evil directly chosen. If only one abortion was performed each day and hundreds of innocent lives were lost in a war each month, abortion would still be the worse evil because those thirty lives were maliciously targeted for death every month.

Yes, it is fair (and important) to argue whether or not the war in Iraq is a just war. However, the war is not a comparable evil to abortion. This judgment has nothing to do with the number of lives lost. It is the judgment of the act itself. To support the war and oppose abortion can be a legitimate position. To support abortion and oppose the war is sheer hypocrisy.

Ugliness and Evil?

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 20:51:00 +0000

A recent study showed that physical attractiveness is negatively correlated to criminal behavior. In other words, the uglier a person is, the more likely he or she is to perform criminal behavior. I discovered this study quite a while ago on “The Right Questions,” a radio show that used to be on Relevant Radio hosted by Sheila Liaugminas. Sheila’s problem with the study seemed to be mostly her objection to the idea of the researcher’s comment that “people who are below-average attractive” are more likely to commit criminal behavior. She wondered why the researcher couldn’t just come out and say “ugly.” Sheila was also piqued by the idea of ugliness – who sets the standard of attractiveness and ugliness? Sheila asked some great questions, such as “How did the researchers collect their subjects?” and “Who were the subjects?” I would like to take an even deeper look at this study and others like it (this is actually a very old idea) from a Catholic perspective.

Now, to be fair to Sheila, the segment of her show this story appeared on was the “news language” segment, in which she focuses on the way people use language. I’m not criticizing her coverage of this story in any way. Nonetheless, I think it is important to take a closer look at studies like this and apply some Catholic moral thinking to it.

First, let’s take a look at the implication of the study. There are two ways to read such a correlation. Throughout history, ugliness had been paired with evil and beauty has been paired with goodness. I don’t think anyone has translated this analogy to real-life in such a way that anybody with a big nose and a wart is assumed to be evil. However, a student of mine took issue with Mel Gibson’s use of the ugly = evil motif. The student did not think it was fair to use children who looked mentally retarded to signify Judas’ demonic tormentors. Where does this motif come from? Its roots are in St. Augustine’s definition of evil: a distortion or a lack of a good that should be present. How does an artist show evil defined in such a way? The artist depicts someone who lacks normal human appearance – it’s not even necessarily lacking beauty, but rather a distortion of “normal” human appearance. Is this motif unfair to those who do have birth defects or who are judged to be “ugly” according to societal standards? Perhaps. Yet, I think the motif is instructive and powerful.

Where we need to be sure we do not make the mistake is to reverse the motif and use it as a real standard. If anything can be said about physical ugliness in the real world, it is simply that due to Original Sin the body fails to truthfully reflect the soul. In Heaven, we believe that our bodies will perfectly reflect the soul – the core of who we are.

I think Sheila Liaugminas may have mistaken the point of the study. Why would anybody even bother to institute such a study? My suspicion is that the study was meant to draw doubt on a jury by one’s peers. The point of the study was probably that people are unjustly judged based on their looks rather than on their true guilt or innocence. On one hand, if this is a true problem and if there is a true solution being offered, such a study could prove to be very valuable. Perhaps justice should truly be blind, and a jury should hear the evidence of a case without seeing the defendant.

On the other hand, there is a problematic line of thinking among modernists that tries to prove that no truth can ever be known for certain. Modernists see courts as part of the power structure that attempts to force its version of truth onto the populace. Modernists cast doubt on all claims to objective truth. This study may be doing that in the area of justice. Does justice really exist? Are people really found guilty based on objective evidence, or are we just slaves to subjective perceptions with no basis in an objective reality that probably doesn’t exist anyway?

There are many questions that I would need to ask about such a study in addition to the very good questions Sheila asked. My first question would be, what’s the point? Why was this study done in the first place? Next I would have to ask what cause – effect relationship was actually discovered by this study. A correlation doesn’t necessarily mean a cause-effect relationship exists. There could be a shared cause or the cause-effect relationship could be indirect. For example, is it possible that people who are considered ugly find it more difficult to make it in society because of a cultural prejudice, and are therefore more likely to be poor and are therefore more likely to commit crime. Finally, I would have to ask what conclusions the researchers would like us to draw about this study.

Chances are pretty good that this study will fall into obscurity exactly because the researchers haven’t shown us why it is significant. I sure would like to know what is behind such a study, though.

In the love of Christ,

Brother Thomas
See Also:
“The Ugly Face of Chrime” from the Washington Post
“Ugly Criminals” from Althouse

Who is to blame? Polemics vs Virtue

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 23:23:00 +0000

I have found that having an intelligent debate about the war in Iraq is nearly impossible. Any discussion is immediately overwhelmed by partisan polemics. Both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of fuzzy thinking and propaganda. However, once in a great while it is possible to find an intelligent dialogue that, if not reaching the perfection of objectivity, at least shows honesty in its biases.

One such article is in the winter 2005 issue of The Wilson Quarterly, one of the coolest secular scholarly publications on the market. The article is entitled “The Real World War IV” and is written by Andrew J. Bacevich. The theory that Bacevich forwards is that the war in Iraq is not a new conflict without precedent, but part of a greater ongoing conflict dating back to Jimmy Carter. Bacevich claims that this greater conflict is actually America’s fourth world war, the third being the Cold War. The main staging area of World War IV is the Middle East, and the main issue is American access to oil.

Now, oil is usually brought up as a motivation for the war in Iraq by political liberals who do not like George W Bush and believe that G.W. is more likely to go to war for oil because he has vested interest in the oil industry. I have to reveal some ignorance here, because I don’t understand this argument. You would think that someone in the American oil industry would not want foreign oil competing with American crude in a price war. Anyway, my first reaction to the claim that oil is the motivation for war is to write it off as a party line with no real foundation. However, this article got me thinking that perhaps there is some truth to the claim within a larger historical context that does not attempt to lay the blame at the feet of one man.

In fact, this was the point that President Jimmy Carter made before World War IV began. Seeing that American affluence meant a greater demand for energy, Carter warned that unbridled consumption of oil would lead America to dependence on foreign markets. Carter’s solution was to call American citizens to reduce their energy use, to restrict oil imports, to invest in alternative energy sources, to limit the use of oil by the nation’s utilities, and to promote public transportation. In short, Carter attempted to resurrect the ideal of Republican Virtue.

Bacevich does not use the term Republican Virtue. Nor does he explain its history. Republican Virtue is one of the ideals our Founding Fathers promoted for the health of our new nation soon after the American Revolution. It may come as a surprise, but to many of the Founding Fathers, “democracy” was a dirty word. If you doubt my word, read the Federalist Papers, and even many of the responses written by the “anti-federalists.” Since Democracy meant the direct rule of the common citizenry, it also meant a government and a society run by competing self-interests. The theory of democracy is that self-interest ensures a healthy state because everyone will look out for the well-being of the state for the sake of getting out of it what he or she wants. The democratic theory holds that self-interest will be kept from turning into tyranny by the competition of various factions, each fighting the others for the promotion of its own self-interest. In contrast, Republicanism held that the state is best run on behalf of the citizenry by those who are well educated, and who display the virtues that make a good leader. Citizens would choose government representatives, not based on party politics, but based on their judgment of a candidate’s virtues and qualifications. Republicanism demands self-sacrifice of its citizens at times. The ideal was that everyone would be looking out for the good of society, and would willingly sacrifice their own egocentric desires for the sake of the common good. The republican experiment did not go perfectly. There were many struggles and even some abuses of power. However, the ideal of self-sacrifice had obvious benefits to society. The republican experiment came crashing down with the election of President Andrew Jackson and the rise of the spoils system and the professional politician. By then, political parties had become entrenched and the balance of competing self-interests had replaced the ideal of self-sacrifice and self-denial.

Jimmy Carter’s attempt to resurrect Republican Virtue was a call for all of us to live out the ideals of self-control and justice. On page 44 of the Wilson Quarterly, Bacevich quotes President Carter: “ ‘There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice,’ he insisted, calling on citizens as ‘an act of patriotism’ to lower thermostats, observe the highway speed limit, use carpools and ‘part your car one extra day per week.’” Carter was not telling Americans to limit their affluence. He was simply telling us to curb our self-indulgence enough to keep America self-sufficient. Unfortunately, his plea fell on hostile ears. Americans had already gotten used to defining themselves in terms of unlimited pecuniary growth. Carter’s political enemies pounced on Carter’s words as narrow in vision and limiting of the American dream. Carter read the signs of the times a little too late. He changed his strategy midway through his presidential term, making the first moves to begin World War IV in order to secure for Americans the prosperity that they so desired. But he lost the next election anyway, and Ronald Reagan took up the cause of American opulence through the free flow of foreign oil into America.

I am not an apologist for George W. Bush. I do not believe that he is incapable of being wrong. However, I do not respect partisan polemics that fail to see the big picture. America’s greed for foreign oil is not a one-man problem. We Americans voted Republican Virtue out of our foreign policy in a perfect example of representative government. And we cannot escape the ultimate conclusion of republicanism and democracy both: the ultimate responsibility for our government’s choices lies squarely on our shoulders.

In the love of Christ,

Brother Thomas

O.J. Simpson & Justice

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 21:01:00 +0000

Ok, so I’m a backissues reader. My wife cringes every time I subscribe to a new magazine or journal because it means that magazines will pile up only to slowly diminish during periods of vacation. I rarely get any publication read before the next issue arrives. I usually don’t even get one opened before the next issue arrives.

So, today’s commentary is in reaction to a story in U.S. News & World Report from June 14, 2004. On page 78 I found an open letter about the anniversary of the O.J. Simpson trial entitled “A case that may life forever” by Betsy Streisand. I didn’t really take issue with the author’s main ideas. However, my emotional hackels arose when I read a few specific lines.

Ms. Streisand quotes Earl Ofari Hutchinson: “If you were to poll people today, the results would be just what they were 10 years ago: Whites thought O.J. got away with murder. Blacks either thought he was framed or that he was guilty but they didn’t care.” Ms. Streisand follows up with a quote from Desiree Gill: “We all know he did it, but we’re glad he got off. Finally a little justice for the underdog.”

Apparently, the working definiton of justice according to these statements is: “to be judged innocent, even if one is guilty.” Compare this definition to the classical definition of justice: “to give to each person what is due to him or her.” If O.J. was guilty, justice would have been for him to pay restitution for his crime. Gill’s quote might more accurately be: “Finally a little revenge for the underdog.” Revenge and justice are not the same thing. Justice is balm for the wound. Revenge is poison.

Now, I am well aware of the racial injustices of our past. Our history is littered with court cases, such as the case for the murder of Emmett Till, in which white people who murdered black people were found innocent. It is also littered with cases in which black people were erroneously found guilty for murder or rape. These cases were travesties of justice because politics, perceptions, prejudices, and stereotypes replaced facts, reasoning, and honest search for the truth.

Is justice served just because the roles are reversed? Have we sacrificed one fundamental human good for the sake of another? Like Alan Paton says in his book Cry, the Beloved Country: “I am afraid that once the Whites finally learn to love, we will have learned to hate.” Have we sacrificed justice for the sake of human dignity? We need to work for the recognition of human dignity for all people. However, if we sacrifice the virtues of our dignity we will find that in the end we also sacrifice our dignity.

The coup de gras to my emotional vulnerability was a quotation from Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. Ms. Streisand begins: “And with a criminal verdict in favor of O.J. and a civil one against him, the case also proved what lawyers have long known: ‘that a trial is not a search for the turth,’ says Dershowitz. A search for truth is exactly what a trial is supposed to be. In fact, the discipline of reasoning has its roots in law trials.

We need to start thinking again. While I never advocate the skeptic credo of “ask questions for the sake of the challenge,” we definitely need to begin asking the right questions. What role does justice truly play in our legal system? Why is it not playing that role? How can we fix the system to ensure that it does?

Pessimists say that there is no way to change a system gone wrong. However, any system can be changed once we realize that the system is made up of individuals. Any change to a system must begin with a change of hearts and minds of the people that form the community. Let’s apply our God-given intellect and reclaim true justice!

In the love of Christ,

Brother Thomas

The Joy of the Truth » Justice

What’s the Best Direction for Iraq?

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Cheaters Never Prosper

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What Does It Mean to Vote Like a Catholic?

Respect for Life

War

Subsidiarity

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Let’s get the arguments right!

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Ugliness and Evil?

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Who is to blame? Polemics vs Virtue

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O.J. Simpson & Justice

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