Literary Discussions

Here's how I imagine William Buell might think about liberal, moderate and conservative views of crime and punishment. For an extreme liberal 0% of the punished are guilty and 100% of the punished are innocent; For a moderate liberal 25% of the punished are guilty and 75% of the punished are innocent; for a moderate 50% of the punished are guilty and 50% of the punished are innocent; for a moderate conservative 75% of the punished are guilty and 25% of the punished are innocent; for an extreme conservative 100% of the punished are guilty and 0% of the punished are innocent. Am I right?

Here is my reply:

Aaron, I had to squint at this to figure out what it is and I am guessing that some rogue application has taken over your account and is programmatically posting these puzzles on people's walls. In answer to the actual question as to what I think, as a self-identified Agnostic Hindu-Buddhist I would have to agree with prophet Samuel that God is the only knower of hearts and sole judge. Also, I do not believe that people can really be neatly sorted into categories of thought along some kind of Mo's scale of conservatism. So, what is this strange application that has taken over Aaron's account and how many other walls has this been posted on? What did Einstein say about mathematics? To the extent that mathematics is perfect it has no connection to reality and to the extent that mathematics has an application in reality then it is imperfect. I am not certain I could even say something mathematically precise about Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

As I slowly awoke from my nap and my mind cleared I realized that I must Google search on some phrases to see if this post is a meme of some sort making its way about the internet but this seems not to be the case. Next I must ask myself how one defines and recognizes the varying degrees of conservative and liberal and to realize that these words have meant different things at different periods in history. Next we must ask what is meant by guilt and innocence. If all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and if there is such a thing as original sin then all are guilty and Apostle Paul is chief among them. Yet if all who accept Christ are mystically cleansed by Christs substitutional atonement on the cross then perhaps all are guilty but many are forgiven. So we must add notions of pardon, forgiveness, acquittal, mistrials with prejudice, etc. to our notion of guilt or innocence. The midwives Shiphrah and Puah who willfully disobeyed Pharaoh's order of infanticide, yet Shiphrah and Puah were examples of civil disobedience. Obviously Rosa Parks was technically in violation of the law when she sat in the front of a bus but ultimately she received a presidential award for her courage and civil disobedience.

Next I must inquire into the nature of punishment and also bear in mind the Constitution's notion of "cruel and unusual punishment." If notions of karma are correct then our very actions carry with then a karmic form of punishment and reward like Newton's Third Law. We divide the law into civil and criminal and there are punishments associated with both but in criminal the verdict of the jury must be "beyond the shadow of a doubt" while in civil cases it is only some majority vote of the jury necessary for conviction. Also, we must consider the function of punishments as either preventive measures to discourage misconduct and as instruments of reform to restore the criminal to a higher level of civic ethical consciousness.

Ever since I gave up tobacco and alcohol four years ago I personally see it as criminal for someone to needlessly abuse their body and jeopardize their health which such habits and yet I would not advocate passing laws to criminalize tobacco/alcohol use since we know from past experience with Prohibition that such laws create more problems than they solve. I suppose this sort of discussion leads to the Platonic/Socratic notions of what virtue itself is and how one ought to live one's life. In the parable of the five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins, they were ALL VIRGINS in the sense that they were not guilty of crimes and possessed some degree of purity BUT the foolish virgins LACKED sufficient OIL in their lamps to last until the coming of the bridegroom, and in Greek the word for OIL closely resembles the word for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleemosynary eleemosynary acts of charity and kindness. The same may be said of that fellow who buried his one talent until the master returned for that man was not dishonest or guilty of theft but he was guilty in the sense that he was not a good steward and did not strive selflessly to make the world better for others by creating increase.

I should have added that purity "virginity" is necessary but not sufficient for salvation/redemption. We must not simply avoid wrong doing but we must try wherever and whenever possible to do good and not that quid-pro-quo sort of good which comes with its own reward but a selfless good work which some might describe as the result of "causeless mercy."

One incredibly insightful person on Facebook once explained to me that a "conservative" is often someone who is less curious by nature and has some wealth or power that they want to conserve so they desire a status-quo or perhaps even a reactionary return to some former golden age in history. A progressive or liberal is more curious and wants to see if things might change for the better and they have less wealth or power to conserve so their concern is more for the lower and disadvantaged majority than for the elite and privileged minority. She also explained to me the theory that the two party (Democratic-Republican) system may simply be sock puppets to disguise the real power underlying the parties which is that industrial-military complex that Eisenhower spoke of in his parting address.

I realized that I should brush up on what Eisenhower said http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex

Military–industrial complex (MIC), or Military–industrial-congressional complex[1] (MICC) is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them. These relationships include political contributions, political approval for defense spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and beneficial legislation and oversight of the industry. It is a type of iron triangle.

A similar thesis was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government support to heavy industry. It can be defined as, "an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs."

I am reminded of Rabbi Abraham Heschel's remark in Volume one of "The Prophets" that "few are guilty but all are responsible."

Here is an interesting excerpt from the above Eisenhower link:

The phrase was thought to have been "war-based" industrial complex before becoming "military" in later drafts of Eisenhower's speech, a claim passed on only by oral history. Geoffrey Perret, in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that a draft of the speech the phrase was "military-industrial-congressional complex", indicating the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but that the third term was dropped from the final version to placate politicians. James Ledbetter calls this a "stubborn misconception" not supported by any evidence; likewise a claim by Douglas Brinkley that it was originally "military-industrial-scientific complex". Additionally, Henry Giroux claims that it was originally "military-industrial-academic complex". The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos.

The most constructive thing we can do is to step outside the stereotypical partisan box of Republican-Democrat-Conservative-Progressive and look beyond the straw-men of individual guilt so as to see the collective guilt of our failure as a society, for there is no "reward" for the innocence of the foolish virgins or the honest failure of the one talent stewards in the sense of Camus' poignant phrase "Posterity, that paltry eternity."  But there IS a punishment for our collective guilt as a world society and that punishment is economic and ecological collapse and extinction.