Punishment is often just, and good for the maintenance of society. We have had the discussion before about the Christian understanding that mercy is superior, though I always provide the qualifier that mercy does not exist except upon a foundation of justice. We should not try to be more merciful than God.
But that is not today's subject. I want to contrast justice not with mercy, but with practicality and usefulness. When I worked with sexual offenders (or supposed sexual offenders) one of the difficulties was getting the staff to keep focus. Staff would want to punish them, or as the prisons do, allow them to be punished by the conditions and other inmates, because they were horrifying people who deserved no better. One difficulty of this is that when one staff member moves to punish, another will move to rescue. That will in turn set off balance/counterbalance effects, especially with personality disorders. From this comes shift wars, department competition, challenges to authority and other ills.
A speaker at a conference described the more important problem succinctly. Your first job is to protect the public. He went on to point out that if we punish offenders until we are bored or spent, and some rescuer intervenes to give them added freedom or even discharge and they reoffend, then we have failed in our primary task. I have heard nurses mutter about castration for child molesters. But even the castrated can still molest. The desire to punish may be just, but it may not be the best choice.
I am seeing a lot of this on the right in politics and culture these days. I understand it, and it is often just. People who deceived us, got rich off us corruptly, or insulted us deserve punishment. But the more important task is to get those agencies functioning correctly, so they do not do further damage. If we punish all the bad guys at the DOJ, the CDC, the ATF, and EPA but they just just lay low and start again - or their replacements capsize the boat on the other side, we will feel deeply satisfied for a while, but we are not better off. Sometimes punishment is the best choice. Sometimes not.
Keep focus. This is a Keep Your Eye on the Prize era now.
8 comments:
Well enough. At the same time, as Washington said, discipline is the soul of an army. When you moved from offenders to officers of the state, that was a key shift of category.
https://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings-and-interpretations/george-washington-discipline-is-the-soul-of-an-army-it-makes-small-numbers-formidable-procures-success-to-the-weak-and-esteem-to-all
(nods head)
There's a distinction between malefactors already identified and convicted, and those who are alleged to have abused their authority.
The state must act to correct abuses of authority, even if they do not prevail in court. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Both comments have been clarifying. Part of the practical effect is not just on the person receiving the judgement, but on those in similar positions who might also be tempted to abuse the public trust.
One of the things that bothers me enormously about our current society is that a great many people do not seem to understand (or believe, or accept) that certain things are just plain WRONG. Murder is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Lying under oath is wrong. I don't know why they don't understand this: not taught in the home, reduced religious instruction...? But for whatever reason, they seem to not know it.
So, I think society needs to make it abundantly clear that actions like this are not acceptable, and must stop. When we let people slide for murder, or for theft, or for lying under oath, with no consequences, then we are giving the message that these things are acceptable. And when we punish people for these things, we are showing that they are not acceptable to civilized society.
There is lots, lots more to say about this whole issue, but this is just one of the reasons that I think Comey needs to be publicly punished. So far, he has not only not been punished, he has profited handsomely.
Yes, he was invited to teach a course in ethics at my college.
They have a very different value system. If you haven't, I highly recommend that you read Marx & Engel's "The Communist Manifesto." It's less than 50 pages and it will show you some of their core values.
Here it is for free on Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61
Once you understand that they see capitalists as an oppressor class, then you'll see that, from their viewpoint, killing Brian Thompson or Charlie Kirk or Donald Trump is not murder. They are revolutionary blows against an oppressive system.
Another way to look at it is, to us George Washington is a hero, but to the British he is a traitor. That's the kind of worldview difference we're dealing with.
My fear is that, while discipline and consequences are important, I do think time is of the essence and I fear that too many conservatives (both in the administration and in the ranks) may have their heads in the weeds.
Historically, these periods where one party controls the House, Senate, and Presidency are short-lived. The Republicans will likely lose either the House or Senate next year and that means the Democrats can stall Trump for the last 2 years of his time in office. He has about 16 months to do stuff; I suggest big stuff is in order rather than small stuff.
At the same time, I also know that I don't really know what's big and small in many cases. I think Epstein is small stuff -- yes, there should be justice, but getting tangled up over it is counterproductive. I don't know about Comey, but he's bigger stuff than Epstein. I still have a lot of questions over stuff like Greenland and I wonder whether Trump is a master of 3D chess or is just a cat chasing a laser pointer.
I don't really know.
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