Mark Shea, ostensibly a moral person, in the course of discussing Andrew Sullivan and the prison abuse in Iraq:
He's right, of course, that we have to atone for it. And part of that atonement should be considering the possibility that trying to build a culture built on pleasure and absolute personal autonomy which rejects the moral norms by which Western civilization has lived since the ascendancy of Christianity--in short, the very sort of culture Sullivan is laboring to build--is exactly the wrong way to go about it and is, indeed, an excellent way of assuring more Abu Ghraibs in the future.
I haven't bothered to read Sullivan's opinion - I don't care about it. I'm more concerned with Shea's jump from personal autonomy to torturing prisoners.
He starts out with a classic statist error, conflating 'we' with our government. Perhaps he's just being lazy, and doesn't really mean to say that each of us are to blame for what happened in Abu Ghraib. I can assure you that I'm not to blame. Shea can atone for it all he wants, but I haven't even been a particularly enthusiastic supporter of the war, much less the torture of prisoners.
Personally, I'd rather see the perpetrators atone than Shea. He doesn't like personal autonomy, but it's precisely that which causes the torturers to be accountable for what they've done. We Libertarians are fond of saying that with personal freedom comes personal responsibility. I would hold those prison guards and their superiors personally responsible for what happened. It stands to Shea's reasoning that if people aren't personally autonomous then they are part of a collective, and the collective is responsible for the actions of any of its members. So, I suppose it makes sense that Shea do the atoning as well as anyone else.
Another mistake he makes is assuming that personal autonomy and "the moral norms by which Western civilization has lived since the ascendancy of Christianity" are incompatible. Perhaps it's true in his case, he couldn't be a moral person if left to his own devices.
What's most troubling about Mark Shea, who presents himself as a Catholic evangelist, is that he's a stranger to the basics of morality.
Posted by Walter at May 9, 2004 07:07 PMI agree with you here. I'd like to see the apologies come from the torturers. And I'd like to see an end to calls for apologies from anyone else.
Posted by: Jeff G at May 9, 2004 07:42 PM"I can assure you that I'm not to blame."
You'll disagree, but it's a general, true, and perhaps ugly, principle that you are, in fact, part of the collective, make money from the collective, benefit from the collective, and the only way to do otherwise is to leave the collective, including the territory.
Failure to recognize this is only denial. It might be remotely possible to stay on US territory and refuse to deal with US currency, refuse to ride on roads paid for by the collective, use only phone service now available from other collectives, and do much else, but you'll still be paying taxes for the collective, and otherwise not refusing.
That doesn't make you personally to blame for the war, particularly, of course. I'm just noting that there are major limits to the "I'm not to blame for my society, I'm an individualist libertarian" theme. You, and me, are at least colloborators. Refusal to acknowledge this is intellectually dishonest.
Posted by: Gary Farber at May 12, 2004 06:31 AMApologies. My last line could be taken to imply I was accusing you of intellectually dishonesty. That, of course, was not my intent. I think no such thing whatever.
Posted by: Gary Farber at May 12, 2004 06:33 AMNo surprise that we have a disagreement on this point. I participate in society, but that doesn't mean I'm a collaborator in the actions of any and all of its members. Part of my political aim is to break down the obligations that allow some to use usurp labor of others, because it's a matter of principle to me that a person shouldn't be forced to contribute to actions he doesn't support.
Posted by: Walter at May 12, 2004 12:49 PMGary, what makes a collective in your eyes? Here is my problem, I don’t believe there is such a thing as a collective. I believe there are only individuals, sometimes they share a common goal or purpose, sometimes not. If I go to Wendy’s for lunch and so does another 1000 people, are we all part of a Wendy’s collective? Was it the Wendy’s collective that built the restaurant? If an employee of Wendy’s does something bad, does that mean I as part of the Wendy’s customer base should be held accountable for the actions of one of the employees since my money in part employed this person, even though I had no say in the management or hiring practices or really any part of the restaurant? And if you would say that no I should not be held accountable for the actions of an employee at a restaurant I supported by purchasing food from, then why should I or anyone else in America feel as if I were partially to blame for the actions of someone in the government or military? Especially someone who I did not even willingly support and if they received any financial support from me it was through force and not freely given (unlike the restaurant, where I willingly gave them my financial support).
Posted by: severin at May 14, 2004 03:58 PMTwo thoughts: first, I don't think vocal opponents of the war deserve to be told that they need to "atone" like the rest of us. So, Walter, you're off the hook if you have been speaking against this war from the beginning.
Second, I admit to a fuzzy area where those who gaped and went along, who didn't speak out but wrung their hands saying "Oh dear, oh dear, I didn't know what to do" because they projected an image of a madman on those of us who did speak out should be thinking about how their behavior promoted this. They have less of an out: they failed to speak up against evil.
I take something of a middle ground when it comes to accountability. We are responsible for our own actions and we also should keep half an eye open on our neighbors. If we see our neighbor building a bomb in his garage and say nothing because we don't think it is our business, I think we share some accountability when the bomb is used to kill people.
Not every instance of accountability needs to be enforced by law: much of it is better handled informally.
Posted by: Joel at May 14, 2004 04:32 PM