Sexual Assault, Ray Rice, and the Loss of Faith in our Legal System

Civic Virtue

Aristotle once said that man, at his best, under the rule of law, is the very best of animals; but man, separated from the dictums of law and justice, can become the very worst of all creatures in the entire animal kingdom. Look at history and the Holocaust to confirm all that.

If we owe a debt to ancient Rome it is in our inheritance of a prodigious legal system. The Pax Romana and the subsequent decline of the Roman Empire run parallel with the cultivation and the dissolution of Ancient Roman law. The aftermath, the “dark ages,” following the fall of Rome, some say, happened because the once civically-minded Romans turned away from the earthly rule of law in favor of a divine justice based on salvation, a higher law based on Christianity, which emphasized theology rather than civics. Fortuitously, it was the salvation of the intact Eastern Roman Empire (i.e. Byzantine Empire) and the revival of Emperor Justinian’s Codex Justinianus that brought about the resurrection of the rule of law in Western Civilization, a societal phenomenon for which we enjoy today.

The Fall of the Roman Empire

 

Or, I suppose to better say, we once used to enjoy.

In our postmodern age, it seems to me, we have lost our faith in the rule of law. Our society’s legal system no longer satisfies our quench for justice and action.

Several months ago, the vilified owner of the NBA’s LA Clippers said some egregious things about African Americans, which were made public by the tabloids and the like. To sum up the story, he was inexorably punished by the NBA’s commissioner Adam Sliver, who eventually forced Sterling out of the league. What was odd about it all was that the NBA didn’t rely so much on legal recourse to force him out of the NBA, but merely on its institutional powers, like “restricting him from NBA games for life” that really did him in. The litigation came thereafter between Sterling and his estranged wife, but with the NBA completely hands off. The NBA won in its battle against Sterling purely on peer pressure and institutional power, rather than by legal recourse. The owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, commenting on the Sterling controversy, hit the nail on the head when he said, “there is no law against stupid.”

And now on the heels of another NBA owner selling his team because of racist comments he made via email, one should ask: since when did peer pressure and institutional power usurp the rule of law?

The NFL has a propensity to steer towards controversy. Yesterday, TMZ Sportz released video of former running back of the Baltimore Ravens, Ray Rice, brutishly punching his now wife in an elevator, knocking her out cold, then carelessly dragging her out of the elevator. Both were immediately arrested after the incident. It should be noted that TMZ, being the salivating media moguls that they are, had previously released some of the video of this domestic violence incident, specifically the part where Rice drags his then fiancé out of the elevator. That in itself was enough to promulgate public outrage. Moreover, the NFL’s initial, tepid response of a two-game suspension fueled even more public outrage. It was not until TMZ released the video of the actual assault that the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens took action by releasing Rice from the team and indefinitely suspending him from the NFL.

But, keep this in mind, Ray Rice was still going through the legal system at the time of all this public outrage, TMZ’s histrionic coverage, and the NFL’s knee-jerk reaction. After being indicted for aggravated assault, Rice had refused a plea bargain and decided to take the charge to trial. That being said, Rice has yet to be convicted. And yet he has been convicted by the public’s outrage. The lack of legal conviction likely explains the NFL’s and Baltimore Raven’s initially tepid response. Unfortunately, “innocent until proven guilty” applies only in the legal realm, devoid of any putative meaning when peer pressure drives institutional power.

The NFL yielded to public pressure. Who would have thought that public relations would be more powerful than the rule of law?

Okay, so you’re likely saying: These are all sports teams and public figures/institutions, so your thesis on the demise of the rule of law is superfluous and does not apply. That is a valid point. I’ve used current events in sports first because they’re readily available and easy to expound on. Here is a more relevant and relative example of my thesis.

In late April 2014, President Obama announced a new initiative to tackle the issue of sexual assault on college campuses. He assigned a “task force” to assess and help remedy the issue. As Vice President Biden said, “colleges and universities can no longer turn a blind eye or pretend rape and sexual assault doesn’t occur on their campuses.” This is a bold statement to lay bare against higher education. The Obama Administration went further, presenting a list of universities and colleges who need to improve their sexual assault prevention programs and initiatives, to include instituting strict and harsh punishments.

I am not so apt to believe that a majority of colleges and universities mendaciously “turn a blind eye” to sexual assault and rape. Call me a fool for being optimistic and trusting in the goodness of human nature. Rather, I believe, universities and colleges, like the NFL, abide strictly to legal recourse first and foremost. That is, they would rather let the justice system play out first before exercising their institutional powers to execute punishment.

Unfortunately for institutions, the general public, the consensus gentium, does not accord with this belief. Justice should be swift and immediate if the crime is apparently obvious.

The problem, which is at the very root of my thesis, is our legal system is lugubriously and excruciatingly inefficient. Litigation is expensive and takes too much time. Indictments take months, and then actual trials can take years! The inflation of lawyers in our society and our dubiety of all lawyers’ intentions make the general public averse to trusting the legal system. In short, the bureaucracy of our legal system is a burden and thus seemingly untrustworthy.

And because the public has little faith in gaining justice through the rule of law, many have turned to the powers of institutions (e.g. sanctions, restrictions, banishments, etc.) to attain justice. Moreover, and more disconcertingly, peer pressure is driving this obligatory use of institutional power to reclaim justice.

Now, in my mind, this kind of public peer pressure is synonymous to what Tocqueville and J.S. Mill called the Tyranny of the Majority. Both of these erudite  thinkers warned in their writings about this kind of social phenomenon running rampant in a functioning liberal democracy, such as our own. The Tyranny of the Majority isn’t an abstruse idea too difficult to understand. We experience it as peer pressure in our young, adolescent years; we read about it in novels like The Crucible or the Scarlett Letter; we see it driving punishments in professional sports today.

Abraham Lincoln famously noted that with public sentiment, nothing can fail. That is absolutely true. Ironically, the extremity of that adage leads to the Tyranny of the Majority. Lincoln’s management of public sentiment in accordance with the rule of law defined his profound civic virtue during his presidency.

Granted, as a pragmatic individual, I deplore the taxing bureaucracy of our legal system and value how public pressure instigates action. Furthermore, and I truly believe this, institutions have a moral responsibility to exercise their powers for the sake of the public good. So, my own opinion, I somewhat laud the NBA’s punitive pressure on Sterling, but I’m against the vitriol and anger aimed at the NFL for being slow to action as they were likely waiting for the legal outcome to take institutional action.

Broadly speaking, though, we should be concerned about our disillusionment and lack of faith in our legal system. The rule of law for centuries has contributed to the survival of Western Civilization. Without the rule of law, the Fall of Rome left a void that consequently led to the dark ages of the early medieval period.

If we look all around us, from American Presidents’ preference for executive orders rather than going through Congress to create legislation, to the ever increasing use of the executive branch’s War Powers Resolution to enter conflicts while avoiding the legality of calling it a “war,” to watching the mainstream news media fuel the fervor of social crises to enact change by institutional edict rather than the rule of law– it seems to me that we no longer have patience with our legal system, and thus we depend on institutional power to enact change and reek justice.

The Romans wholly gave up their civic sense for the rule of law in favor of Christianity’s institutional promise of salvation. Look where that got them.

Aristotle, in his magnanimous Metaphysics, deemed man a rational animal. Without reason the rule of law is impossible. But as Bertrand Russell observed at the beginning of the 20th century: “Man is a rational animal. So at least we have been told. Throughout a long life I have searched diligently for evidence in favor of this statement. So far, I have not had the good fortune to come across it.” Is the rule of law therefore an illusion? A fallacy? Has the passions of our society driven away our right to reason?

Bill Nye “The Science Guy” vs. Ken “The God Man” Ham — ready, FIGHT! An Analysis on the Reviews PART I

The Battalion, Texas A&M University
April 23, 2009

When I was president of the Philosophy Club at Texas A&M University, I partnered with a religious Apologetic organization on campus to host a debate. The Christian organization was called “Ratio Christi,” which stands for “Rational Christians” in Latin. When planning the debate, I butted heads with them at times on certain aspects of the debate, but in the end we were able to come to an agreement and host a debate on the campus of the University; a University renowned for its conservative religiosity, which, nevertheless, garnered a huge crowd to the debate. I can happily say that this is one of the proudest moments of my life. I’ve always endeavored to try to communicate the beauty of philosophy to people, and here was an occasion in which I had an opportunity to do so. I truly believe all human beings are philosophers, or “lovers of wisdom”; it’s all really just a matter of getting the gears in our brains going to become one. This debate was one such opportunity. Sadly, the debate didn’t turn out exactly like I envisioned.

In my opening remarks to 200-300 people, on behalf of the Philosophy Club, right before the debate, I began with Voltaire’s infamous quote, “If God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to create him.” (I fought tooth and nail with Ratio Christi to allow me to say that because they were offended and wanted to censor the quote when we advertised the debate, which I grant the quote was biased against God, but I was cognizant of the fact that I represented an organization that was the foil to the religious Ratio Christi folks; I had to come across as “fair and balanced,” but in fact I really needed to be the counter to the religiosity and look like I favored atheism, so to show the audience the debate was truly fair and balanced. Of course, this reasoning was way too complex in my head and even more convoluted for Ratio Christi to understand.) So then the debate began. And then it ended. And I was profoundly disappointed. Ratio Christi brought in these debaters: on the atheist side, a computer scientist and a physicist vs. the Christian side of a philosopher and a Ratio Christi founder (if my memory serves me right). I was disappointed at the outcome of this debate because all these guys were not speaking the same language! It would be one of the debater’s turn to speak and he would say something, then the next debater would go up and say something completely different. Except for the religious dudes, all of them were not speaking the same language. And the religious dudes could speak the same language only because they were freely able to quote the Bible, and because of that, they came across as the stronger side, and thus one could say that they “won” the debate.

The debate we hosted had no consensus. There was no stasis. Stasis is a rhetorical concept that stretches back all the way to Aristotle. In short, it’s a mechanism a speaker uses in order to clarify points or issues by means of questioning. It’s essentially the socratic method in relation to disagreeing parties who argue over a particular subject. More abstractly, as I believe Aristotle really understood stasis, it is the essential ability to mutually understand in discourse, to reach consensus, by which two or more disputing parties are able to speak to one another using the same language.

So, if the subject for debate is about what makes an Apple delicious, but one debater is talking about green apples, and the other debater is talking about red apples, and if both of them don’t notice that they are talking about two different types of apples — there is no stasis. Now, if the green-apple debater realizes that they are probably not speaking the same language, and asks clarification of what type of apple they are debating about, and to her own chagrin realizes that the other debater is talking about red apples — that is creating stasis.

Stasis is imperative for understanding and consensus in dialogue. Debates ought to transcend into dialogues. Sadly, our debate at Texas A&M never transcended into dialogue. It started and ended as an arbitrary debate.

I was philosophically infuriated at Ratio Christi and the debaters they got because there was no stasis, and thus no consensus on what to debate about. They were all talking in tongues, but there was no interpreter there to decipher for them! As St. Paul tells the Corinthians — speaking in tongues is cool and all, but if there is no one there to understand it, it is a problem, so stop it or I will shank you (NVT *New Voltaire Translation* Bible).

Nevertheless, as a staunch pragmatist, I was pleased with the thought that people cared so much to show up, and to think and ruminate on this magnanimous question about GOD, in an indifferent philosophical manner as opposed to a prejudiced and politicized manner. Of course, we all have our staunch opinions and beliefs, but when one is able to philosophically suspend those beliefs and opinions for the pursuit of knowledge that will likely never be achieved — oh what a beautiful thing! So in an idealistic sense, I considered the debate at the university a success because it got people to think that much more. And it was also fantastic as a PR tool to recruit members to the Philosophy Club.

When I was interviewed by the University paper, it quoted me saying:

“A&M is considered a conservative school, and this kind of discourse is good for everyone whether you are an atheist or a Christian. Everyone is inclined to ask these kinds of questions.”

I don’t remember saying so many words, but the essence of what I wanted to communicate was accurate. I truly believe, still, on principle, as pondering human beings, we all have an insatiable inclination to wonder about a GOD or the Universe or something higher than us or whatever you want to call it. But sadly, some let their prejudices and beliefs dilute their thinking. And others simply enter into bad faith, as I often do, and simply fall into denial about our innate inclination to wonder about Heidegger’s question: why is there something rather than nothing?

I’m pleased to see, after several years removed from graduating, that Ratio Christi still exists, and they still team up with Atheist and Agnostic organizations to host these kinds of debates. Like this one.

Now, how is this all related to the Bill Nye and Ken Ham debate? First, I believe that debate transcended into dialogue whilst mine did not. How? Because there was stasis and thus consensus on what they were talking about: Is Creationism a legitimate science? Second, I was absolutely ecstatic about this intentionally grass-roots debate meant for the lay people and not for academics; the very same intention I had for the debate at Texas A&M on the existence of God. And third, how the “debate” went viral on social media and in the Press — a nice reprieve from the regular news of the ghastly stuff occurring in Syria or the regularly contentious squabbling amongst politicians.

What simultaneously excited me and disappointed me, though, were the reactions that some people had, not on the substance of the debate, but on the very happening of the debate. I am first a philosopher, and then a politically-inclined individual, so I found some people’s parochial attacks on allowing this debate to happen and gain notoriety, irrational.

To be continued……….

For Empathy

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” – Albert Einstein

I must admit, I’m an avid reader of the National Review, despite being a young, Hispanic male; I suppose I’m a prized outlier from a demographic usually foreign to the National Review. I do tend to have conservative inclinations and sometimes nod my head in agreement with their articles. I like reading well-thought-out, intellectual articles, set apart from the usually vulgar journalism you see in the news media. What can I say? I’m weird.

But I came across this one article in the National Review that utterly infuriated me. It’s called, “Against Empathy.” I had to restrain my utter contempt for his antagonistic approach in explaining what he thinks constitutes empathy.

I thought his political conclusion was sound: President Obama feigns empathy to perpetuate his political agenda etc. Sure, I can see that, whatever. But en route to that conclusion, Mr. Williamson unjustly disparages empathy for the sake of glorifying sympathy.

First, just because he gives etymological elaboration from whence empathy arose does not mean that empathy is some tawdry, irrational feeling.

Secondly, in his glorification of sympathy, he fails to recognize that sympathy is very much akin to hubristic pity, which itself should be put up on a pedestal for criticism. I’m not a fervent adherent of Ayn Rand’s thought, but she did have a reasonable critique on pity (echoing Nietzsche): “But this was pity – this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling – his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect.” (in The Fountainhead)

*** Quick sidebar: I once had a philosophy professor who met and conversed with Ayn Rand. His description of her? She was a feisty, angry, and mean woman. But, boy, was she intelligent… ***

As Mr. Williamson puts it, sympathy is feeling with the person. But in “feeling with the person” you make the audacious and arrogant presumption that you know exactly what that person is personally feeling. Sympathy demands arrogant consideration, presumptuous thought, and contrived analysis – empathy wisely precludes them. 

The Ancient Greeks understood sympathy very differently from how we understand it today, something that Mr. Williamson fails to note.

Anyways, that is my opinion on the article. I believe empathy is a far more authentic disposition than sympathy. I think Daniel Goleman does justice to both empathy and sympathy in his seminal book, Emotional Intelligence. One sentence in Mr. Williamson’s article gave me hope however: “And that is why President Obama and those in sympathy with him prize empathy. Empathy, or the imitation of empathy, entirely negates the need for etc.” His article would have been interesting in my eyes if he had refrained from persecuting empathy itself and instead focused on his argument that what President Obama and his supposed cohorts are really doing is an “imitation of empathy.”

But I hate politics and I don’t really care about that part.