Over the Edge

In 1990, I visited Marriott's Great America and rode on the ride called The Edge. It's a thrill ride designed around the notion of free fall.

The basic idea is that you get into a steel cage and they drop you on a track. Initially you just fall but the track is curved so it gradually takes your weight back and slides you down to where you end up landed on your back. The ride accelerates from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 1.8 seconds, hitting 3.5G, and then decelerating in 5 seconds back to a stop.

I'm not really a roller coaster person, so I'm not sure what was in me to do this. I'd usually be the one getting up to the door and then taking that conveniently placed exit for people who chicken out at the last minute. But that day I got in. And the door clanged shut.

Now the thing to note is that just about as soon as I was in, I was thinking “No, maybe not.” But the problem is that by that time you're locked into a steel cage and there really just isn't any backing out. At that point, there's just physics and destiny waiting. No more control. The cage was going down whether I liked it or not, and there was no more time to think.

It came out fine, as it happens. Since then I've had other chances to repeat the experience, but I don't do it any more. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, as they say.

Still, I'm glad I once did. Sometimes other things happen in my life, or in the lives of others, where there's very little control. It gives me a framework to understand the sensation I'm feeling, or to empathize with the feelings of others.

There are times where in an instant, life changes and there's no looking back.

Some years later I was sitting with a friend at her house when her dog decided, pretty much out of nowhere, to jump up and sink his teeth into my face. One moment we were just sitting there amiably chatting, the next I had a dog—a Jack Russell terrier, if you're curious—hanging off the front of my face, teeth sunk into my upper cheek. It was really kind of bizarre and disconcerting. I think it disconcerted the dog, too. He seemed kind of embarrassed about the incident after the fact. I remember thinking to myself that I was probably going to be disfigured for life, like the clanging of that door.

As it happened, we went to the ER and they didn't even want to do anything with it—they said it would heal on its own. It had by some amazing quirk of fate missed all the nerves he could have injured. One or two people have noticed there are some tiny scars but there really hasn't been any observed problem. Just lucky. Like the ride coming to a smooth glide at the end. That time, anyway.

Still, one never quite knows. Life always has new challenges waiting. And always the sound of that clanging door. One way only, please, just forward.

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Originally published May 28, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

A postscript, ten years later (May 24, 2019)...

I can explain now that I wrote this on the eve of a major surgery. At the time, I didn't want to worry friends about the surgery, so I wrote in metaphor and figured if something happened and the surgery didn't go well, at least people could figure out after-the-fact what I was thinking going in. Fortunately, it went well, and I'm a lucky cancer survivor, so I realized today I should add an annotation to connect the dots on the history of this.

I also wasn't sure at the time whether it was safe to talk publicly about my cancer. I talk more about that in my article The Big C. Health, privacy, and politics come together in complex ways. I might have wished that such an important and personal thing could stay private, but political change often demands the sacrifice of intimate information to sway minds. See that article for more detail.

Tags (from Open Salon): belief and religion, philosophy, belief, religion, health, family, deep breath, taking the plunge, diving in, head first, out of control, milestones, autopilot, cruise control, lack of control, loss of control, free fall, thrill ride, roller coaster, locked in

The Freedom to Hear

I have come to believe that the Founding Fathers blew it when they wrote The First Amendment. They shouldn't have spoken of “free speech” but instead should have spoken of unfettered access to information—that is, “the freedom to hear.” The two are similar rights, but the right to hear is the more important one.

As I see it, the right to stand on a soap box in the park is not a right to stop others who might pass by and hold them hostage, forcing them to listen to one's message. It is not a right of coercion. Rather, the power of the right is the opportunity to place oneself passively in a place where others, if they so choose, might elect to listen.

Democratic Need: The Fuel of Change

It's critically important in a democracy that the majority is able to hear about things that are not popular with that majority. That is how open-minded people change their minds. They take in information about less-popular ideas and consider whether to change their mind and admit new ideas.

In a well-functioning democracy, the status quo will represent the majority viewpoint. As a result, any possible change will occur due to a minority viewpoint taking hold. For that to happen, it's critical that the populace have access to unpopular views. On the other hand, forcing them to receive unpopular views would be tyranny by some minority. So the process must be voluntary, and must involve a conscious decision by enlightened members of the populace to hear what might change their mind.

Tie-Breaking the Golden Rule: Spam and Telemarketing

In some ways, one might think the matter symmetric and the choice of how to express it merely a variation of wording. Communication involves a speaker and a listener, so to say conversation is about speech is to say it's about listening. What's the big deal?

Well, for one thing, if the speaker and listener are not in agreement, there becomes the question of who should win. Those of us who believe that the Golden Rule is the dominant meta-rule that drives all politics find ourselves in an uncomfortable position when one person wants to, even has an articulated right to, speak while another has no desire to listen, and has no corresponding articulated right to assert. Something feels unbalanced about that. Tour right to speak pushes out at me and I need a corresponding force I can balance with. Saying my only right is to speak back, and not merely to assert a right of silence, seems unfairly coercive to me. At minimum there must be a balance of power between speaker and listener.

And yet even then, ties will still occur. In matters of telemarketing and spam, the answer seems clear to me, even before the imposition of rights and laws, just on the basis of common sense. In fact, I was first alerted to this issue at all by receiving email spam that contained a patriotic-sounding passage about free speech which seemed to have the purpose of saying “I have the right to send this and you don't have the right to complain about that.” I don't think that's so. I think the rights of the listener must dominate over the rights of the speaker. In the case of a conflict, the term “free speech” appears to give dominant power to the speaker, while an alternate phrase like “freedom to hear” shifts control to the listener.

Publishing and Censorship

There is also the matter of speaking generally, passively, to no particular person—the matter of publishing, if you will. Publishing speaks out, but with no identified listener.

But publishing does not intrude. Published material can sit patiently and wait, in a library or repository. This process is voluntary, and while it might seem an act of “pushing” information out, that's mistaking advertising for inventory. Inventory is the passive receipt of information to a waystation, awaiting a consumer who will tune in.

Publishing is curious, too, because it actually speaks not only to everyone now existing but to people who might not yet be born. It would be unrealistically difficult to poll everyone who now exists, but when you add those who might exist in the future, it's a definite impossibility. No one can know who might be interested and who might not. And yet publishing speaks to all such people.

And so when it comes to the possibility of censorship we find someone intervening in the wending, passive, voluntary path from speaker to would-be end-listener. But whose rights are denied? The speaker's? I would allege not. The speaker has spoken and even if the speaker's words might reach the intended audience, I've argued he has no right to impose them. It's the listener who has the ultimate right to receive the information. If the chain is broken, it is the listener who is infringed.

In fact, in the impossible situation that it could be shown in advance that there could not possibly be any person interested to hear, one might theoretically argue it was not only rightful but merciful to ask that the speaker desist. But given that no such argument could reasonably be constructed, because there is no science capable of predicting what future people will or won't want to hear, organized censorship has no place because it denies the ultimate rights of listeners, not the rights of speakers.

The Complexities of Public Speech

Recently in the news is the question of whether Obama should be permitted to speak at Notre Dame, given his position on abortion. Under my formulation, I claim it should be clear that this is the wrong question. The right question is not Obama's right to speak, it's whether there is any person at Notre Dame who wants to hear what he has to say, because it is the need of those who might be open to his message that is at issue.

Of course, Public Speech poses a particular difficulty if you assume that any possible reader should have a right to deny speech. Here there are two ways to break things down. One is to say that this argues that Free Speech is the core right and that in order to argue Obama's right to speak I have to go back to that. But I'm not trying to argue based on an ideology. I don't begin with the notion that he must have a right to speak and then bend all law to suit my Machiavellian end goal. Rather, I begin with the simple question: How will that one person in the audience who would hear Obama get the information if Obama is not allowed to speak?

Certainly, if Obama is invited he must be allowed to speak because that's in the nature of the contract. Let someone who doesn't want him to speak not invite him. So this beef by certain would-be audience-members and onlookers is not with Obama, it's with the conference organizers.

And, further, it seems clear that if someone trying to enlighten themselves at a university wants the information, they should have access to it. This goes back to the censorship issue. It seems clear that it serves the rights of the audience to permit controversial speakers. Such speakers' goals may be served by speaking, but in my view they ought enjoy no right to speak if there are no listeners who would hear.

What makes the issue of Obama a problem is not that he might attend and speak but that an audience who wants to be there for other reasons is put in an awkward position. Their choice becomes to attend an event where they would not voluntarily listen, or not to attend. But to not attend means missing an event that is significant for other reasons. This bundling of two unrelated events is the real cause of the difficulty. A structuring of the event to allow those who would do so to attend the main body of the event and then to leave, perhaps in protest, would probably have resolved this. So much the better if their leaving provided seats for others who would like to hear the lecture because I suspect there were not seats enough for all who had wanted to attend and that if those who don't want to hear the lecture were to leave, the gathering place would quickly refill with people who did want to hear.

Avoiding the “Least Common Denominator”

The problem of public speech is also tricky for another reason. There is a temptation by some to manipulate the system in order to say that all public discourse must be a kind of “least common denominator”—permitting only the most conservative of speech, that speech which is acceptable to all. Or, at least, that speech alleged to be acceptable to all. Who even knows if there is any such speech.

The freedom to hear must not be confused with a right of the individual to control what others may say in a public venue by asserting their right against others' rights to publish. The recourse in that case must be a right of individuals to opt out of situations that will thrust arbitrary messages at them in unwanted fashion. I have some sympathy for someone not wanting to see offensive billboards in a public square, for example, since opting out of using certain public areas may be difficult. But the notion that a speech or an internet page must not exist because there is someone somewhere not interested in it misses the entire point of what it is for information to be passively conveyed.

As long as there is a simple, cost-free, rational way to opt out, that should be the final recourse of the party who wants to use their freedom to hear as a mechanism for stopping speech they do not like. Causing the speaker not to speak means potentially infringing another's right to hear. Better to just avoid the venue where the unwanted speech is ocurring.

Just Plain Noise

It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: At the point where you're playing your music too loud or blocking my path to a building or any of a variety of other so-called speech acts, you're not exercising what I see as free speech, since you're not entertaining my need to hear, you're just a force trying to invade my space. Making your message available to me is fine, but making it impossible for me to ignore your message is not fine, and certainly ought not be your right.

Sometimes in a society when there are injustices, one takes actions to get attention that are beyond the scope of their rights; but civil disobedience is not a right, it is a calculated sacrifice.

Information from Foul Sources

A particular case of interest is the question of whether murderers should be allowed to write books. Some would say these people have lost their rights and must not be allowed to speak. Perhaps. But I claim that the interesting question is whether the would-be readers of such things have lost their right to hear from a murderer. Do law enforcement officials, psychologists, and even just ordinary citizens sitting at home have no right to know what makes a murderer tick? I think not.

If necessary, cut off the convicted felon's right to the money or even to media notice or fan mail or other benefits of he publication. But if the murderer will offer useful information to those whose enjoy full rights in our society, I see no reason to keep a murderer from writing. The real victim will be a free society who will not be able to prepare for the next such murder.

In September 1997, Salon's Table Talk forum hosted an interesting extended discussion on one of its threads about the question of whether the reader of literary works should make a decision about what to read or not based on the moral character of the author. I was proud to participate. It was entitled “She boiled squirrel nutkin, he diddled girls -- does it spoil the message?” Alas, Salon has retired those pages and the discussion is no longer available as a cross-reference.

Summary

There are two parties involved in a communication. If both are willing, the communication should proceed. But when there's a dispute, who wins? Using terms like “free speech” appears to give the favor to the speaker, which I think is wrong. I prefer the term “freedom to hear” because it gives final say back to the person who would be receiving the information. In my view, the right to free speech ought not be a right to impose one's message on another, only about making messages passively available to others who would hear them.

Free speech is a way of guaranteeing that we in a democracy and in a free society have access to a free flow of ideas. It isn't supposed to be a way of forcing us to endure a free flow of noise or indoctrination. That's not freedom, it's slavery.

I'm not suggesting a Constitutional amendment, although if I were doing the Constitution over, I would ask for a balancing “freedom to hear.” However, even within our present society, with the Constitution as it presently is, I often find that reformulating problems of free speech as problems involving a freedom to hear yields important insights in how to think about those problems in fresh and empowering ways.

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Originally published May 21, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): politics, rights, Constitution, freedom to hear, right to hear, freedom to listen, right to listen, speech, free speech, freedom of speech, spam, censor, censorship, telemarketing, protest, civil disobedience, democracy, democratic society, information exchange, golden rule, publishing, speech, obama, notre dame, infringed, murderer, rights of felons, right to publish, publication rights, right to write, right to author, rights of felons, dumbing down, least common denominator, coercion, oppression, oppressive, controlling, noise

George

When I was around the age of five, my parents gave me a little stuffed bear, who I named George.

He was no ordinary bear, of course. He had eyes that seemed very deep and knowing, and for a while he had a felt red mouth, though that fell away at some point.

Inside, he had a music box. There was a metallic key extending from his chest—the kind that's probably unsafe and illegal in the modern world where doubtless they must be made of fireproof, non-toxic, biodegradable, nerf-like sponge foam. But this old-fashioned key just jutted out harshly with a piece of metal like a penny that attached to the pole allowing you something flat to hold while you twisted it to wind him up. Thus armed, he would play a bit of the song Around the World in Eighty Days, which I came to like quite a lot.

One day the music box broke, though. I must have been in first or second grade and wasn't sure what to do. Twisting it didn't manage to catch something it needed to catch, and when you let go after twisting it would just play all the notes really fast in a kind of single quick metallic zing sound that took only a second or two to complete. It was quite disappointing.

So I did what kids do. I threw George against the wall. To my surprise, that fixed him, and the music box played again. I was thrilled.

Sometime not too long after, though, he broke again. But fortunately, I was now a skilled bear repairman. Or so I thought. Sadly, no matter how many times I threw George against the wall, and I tried it quite a lot before giving up, it just didn't seem to help and mostly seemed to be scratching up the wall with that bit of metal that stuck out.

Later in life, I'd had more school and learned that there were “best practices” for fixing broken things, and that bashing them against the wall mindlessly was not among them.

And yet, sometimes I look at the way certain people approach the world and think it sad that they never had a George to teach them this lesson. Failing to understand science and causality, they resort to mysticism and a belief that if something once worked, even by accident, it will somehow find a way to work again, even without knowing why it ever worked or whether that reason is still in play.

Periodically I hear people referring to Climate Change as a natural process, as if that implies it will fix itself. They say the climate has corrected itself before, and so they seem comfortable that it will happen again. They don't say how or why or even when this will happen, so I must infer they are expecting it to happen by magic—and just in time to avoid any inconvenience to mankind.

Maybe it's just my personal experience that leads me to say this, but ... I'm just not so sure we can rely on either repeated good luck or outright magic.

It's time for some serious science.

Footnote

I still have George. He's threadbare here and there, but still loved. My parents tried to get me to throw him away when they thought me too old for him, but I refused. I'm glad I still have him. His music box still doesn't work on its own, but if you help him by holding the key just right and refusing to let the key unwind faster than it should, you can still get him to play his tinny tune. It still makes me smile.

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Originally published May 16, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): politics, climate change, global warming, science, mysticism, engineering, best practices, mindlessly, koan, lesson, childhood memories, lessons learned, bear, teddy bear, george, teddy bear named george, hypothesis, test, growth, experience, trust

Haiku: Mom Watched Over Me

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This is a response to Just Cathy's post on Mother's Day Haiku.
She notes the original open call came from Texas Bubba.
The effects we have on one another are both direct and indirect.

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Originally published May 8, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): celebration, family, greeting card, greetings, haiku, i love you, mom, mom haiku, mother's day, open call, personal, social, thoughts, too cheap to send flowers, tribute, wishes

The Nature of a Hero

With the luxury of time to look back on the value that resulted, we endow our heroes with all manner of mystic qualities, such that our heroes, hearing themselves described as such, often don't recognize themselves.

Heroism is often not something you can plan or save up for. The need for it may come upon you suddenly. It must be done in the moment, which is often part of the sacrifice. If you knew the need was coming, you might have scheduled other events differently. The event may be something they were prepared to do, but the timing of the event may not have been.

A firefighter may be prepared to lose his life in a fire for another, but he doesn't get to choose a good day for it to happen. Every day could be that day, and yet the day it happens is never a good one. It may be the day he's had a fight with someone and wishes he hadn't, or it may be the week before that big trip he was going to take with a loved one.

It is rarely something where you get a second chance. Usually what you do is what you do. It is therefore messy, unfinished, not particularly artistic, “done in a single take.” And in the time just afterward, while everyone is singing their praises, our hero, if lucky enough to have survived at all, is probably lost in self-critical thoughts of “I should have somehow done it differently, better,” as if that were really an option.

The messiness of heroism is illustrated in the brilliant movie 1776, where the spotlight falls at one point on the awful dilemma of patriots committed to opposing slavery being told in a high-stakes game of intellectual poker that the new nation would have slavery at its core or there would be no new nation to later rise above slavery. Who would want to be the kind of hero who said yes to that deal? Bad enough you had risked your life daily just for the right to participate in a process you'd hoped would free all men, but in the end you realize your opposition to slavery will likely be forgotten by history and you'll be remembered instead for having enshrined it. For some of those men, signing their names to the Declaration of Independence on those terms must have been the kind of awful compromise faced by a doctor who saws off a man's leg to save him from death. Messy, but something one sometimes has as one's only choice. Our heroes sometimes make these choices just so we won't have to, accepting a shame upon themselves so that others will not have to.

George Bush was not able to muster what it took to be the messy kind of hero. In the final days of his Presidency, when the economy was a mess, due in part to a war that should never have been fought, he could have made a useful sacrifice and drawn fire upon himself by taking responsibility and admitting it was his fault. Even if he didn't believe it, he could have said he did. That would have freed his whole party to move forward without pointing fingers at one another. But he couldn't do it, and so he condemned many to endure continued finger-pointing. The kind of heroism he wanted was the clean, pretty, photo-op kind of heroism of a scheduled landing in a pristine jumpsuit on a military-looking set that sat well out of harm's way.

Barack Obama, by contrast, was a hero when he apologized on behalf of the US for the economic mess that we as a nation pulled the world into. He didn't cause the problem, but he didn't make a big point of that. He had no reason to expect the world to applaud him for what he said. It wasn't completely true, but it was enough true, and saying it was just the right thing to do. He must surely have known that the Republicans would say he had somehow sold us out. But he took with grace the slings and arrows that followed.

Some heroism is big and public, while some is small and private. Some happens in an instant, perhaps under active gunfire, while some is the product of relentless small acts over time, like the aforementioned founding of our nation or the unheralded endurance of a parent raising a child.

My wife is such a private hero. I won't detail why here. The details probably matter, but saying them out loud will only arm her with ways to dismiss the accolade. Like the enigmatic referent in Carly Simon's famous song, but without all the unattractive vanity, she'll have to just know that if she can think up something about which she wants to say “but that was nothing,” the very fact that she knows what to disclaim is proof that she knows she did something worthy. And, anyway, I'll always know.

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Public domain graphic obtained from
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Author's Note: Originally published April 30, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): barack obama, bush, firefighters, firemen, first responders, founding fathers, george bush, george w bush, heroism, mothers, obama, police, policemen, politics, sacrifice, slavery, social, society, thank you, thankless, thanks, wives

Fresh Thoughts on Kissing ... and Beyond

I was pretty nerdy in my youth—unlike now, of course—and so my parents confronted the issue of sexuality with me by doing the obviously right thing: They handed me a four-volume encyclopedia on the subject and told me to read up.

I wish I could remember the name of the thing, but alas I don't. A lot of it was stuff that was boring to me at the time, like the details of reproduction. I skimmed it but didn't really care a lot about the details. I never really resonated to biology—it always seemed messy and imprecise.

There was a section on dating, though, and I read through that pretty thoroughly in case it had any useful tips. It did. It's funny the kinds of things that stick with you over the years, but this did because of the practical and specific nature of it. It defined the confusing term “fresh” (a sort of interjection that was supposed to get uttered just before you got slapped in some mysterious circumstances) in the only detailed, serious way I've ever seen anyone try to define it. I checked the dictionary just now and it merely says very vague things like these:

15. informal forward or presumptuous
Random House Dictionary

15. Informal Bold and saucy; impudent
The American Heritage ® Dictionary

12. improperly forward or bold; “don't be fresh with me”;
WordNet® 3.0

This encyclopedia, instead of offering just a word or two, offered a full description of how things were supposed to work and why the word was significant. It was highly specific in a way that I doubt people will readily agree with—many will quibble that the numbers are arbitrary, and I suppose they are. But I was able to read past that and to get the essence of what it was getting at.

The article just came straight out and said that it was permissible for a boy to try to kiss a girl on the second date and to try “petting” on the eighth date. I have no idea where they got these numbers. They seemed arbitrary and unmotivated to me, and I knew even at the age of 11 or 12 when I read this that they were probably not universally agreed upon. But the point was that there was some such number. What was interesting was that the article was very clear on the notion that you had no entitlement to succeed in these things. It did not encourage you to be pushy. It didn't say that someone must submit. What it seemed to imply was that there was a time at which it was not out of bounds to think it might be proper.

So, as the article explained, it might be that a girl will kiss a boy on the first date, but he ought not try. The relationship is too fresh. After the first date, he may try, but she may still decline. Likewise, it might be that the girl would engage in petting on the eighth date, but maybe not. The relationship was too fresh before that to really consider the matter.

By the way, I'm recalling all of this from memory, but I don't recall it talking about discussing, only trying. It might be I was just reading selectively, but more likely they were just acknowledging the obvious truth that it's enough trouble having to be a bumbling adolescent without having to be articulate about what you're bumbling about.

And that was a lot of dates out—I don't think I ever got to that many dates. I did count, though, even knowing that my date probably didn't have access to my encyclopedia and that all my counting was probably for nothing. I wasn't going to feel emboldened after that time, more likely just like I was timidly missing out. Being a kid is rough. It's a wonder any of us survives to adulthood.

Anyway, I think my encyclopedia's definition of this obscure word highlights an important detail that is often lost in a lot of dialog between the sexes at any age. Lessons in interpersonal communication rarely distinguish between the correctness of a bid for doing something and the entitlement to do something. This leads to the magical and unrealistic notion that people will “just know” when it's right, and that if either party tries something when it isn't “just known,” that's wrong.

Great emphasis is placed in our society on how important it is for men to respect a “no” answer from a woman. And I agree. But equally great emphasis should be placed on giving respect to the fact that there will be questions that, in due course, need asking, even if the answer will ultimately be “no.” Whether by word or by wordless bumbling deed, the mere asking of those questions at the proper time and without attempt to pressure is not disrespectful, and the need to ask them must be respected in the same way that the answer must. Respect between caring individuals goes in both ways.

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Originally published April 26, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): language, linguistics, vocabulary word, usage, word usage, meaning, semantics, definition, terminology, fresh, dating, kissing, petting, caress, touch, felt up, feel up, felt out, feel out, getting to first base, get to first base, getting to second base, get to second base, encyclopedia, dating, social, advice, manners, etiquette, polite, politeness, impudent, bold, saucy, sex education, sex ed, first kiss, first time, sexuality, kissing on the first date, kiss on the first date, first date, eighth date, appropriate, inappropriate

Disobedience, Civil and Not-So-Civil

Disobedience of the Civil Kind

I have a beef with certain people who enagage in civil disobedience and then expect to be treated as if they did nothing wrong. Should they be treated with human decency and respect? Of course. But should they be treated as if they did nothing at all? No, I don't think so. I want to say why.

It's not the idea that people should be allowed to walk free that bothers me. There are reasonable arguments made about why we might sometimes not want to punish someone who commits an act of civil disobedience. We all know that's true. We tell people not to kill one another, but there are times when we all agree that it's legitimate to do so—certain cases of self-defense, for example. So my gripe here isn't about that.

“Non-violence, publicity and a willingness to accept punishment are often regarded as marks of disobedients’ fidelity to the legal system in which they carry out their protest.”

  —Civil Disobedience

(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

My gripe is that people who commit acts of civil disobedience seem to have come to expect to be let off. It's almost as if they see civil disobedience as a right, and they are morally indignant (not to mention surprised and terrified) if they are arrested.

When I was in college at MIT, I attended a meeting in which activists who were concerned about the Seabrook nuclear plant trained others on how to protest. (I think I was there as a reporter covering the event, by the way. I wasn't especially political back then.) Among the things they explained was how to behave if people wanted to be arrested. That wasn't the main thrust of the protest, it was like an extra credit aspect they said some might want to do. In fact, it was pretty carefully explained that not everyone should do this, that only people who really understood the consequences of being arrested and were willing to pay that price should do. They weren't planning anything violent, but they did think it was a legitimate choice to be more-than-average obstructionist if the person was willing to pay that price of being arrested and having a mark on their record. In fact, it was the price they would pay that made the action noteworthy.

Refusing to move when instructed by the police was not seriously going to keep the nuclear plant from being built. But their willingness to spend time in jail peacefully might get them time on the news, since it would arouse sympathy in the population, who might think it awful they'd had to make such a sacrifice just to be heard. But once such a penalty is removed, or routinely waived, why is it be noteworthy? Sacrifice is only sacrifice if you lose something, and if you're assured you won't, you're not making one.

Disobedience of the Not-So-Civil Kind

I want to turn now to another issue that I will ultimately tie in with the above, and that's the issue of ticking time bombs. And no, in case you're worried, I am not going to suggest that these are some good form of civil disobedience. But the discussion of their existence at all will set up something else that I want to talk about.

As you probably know, the ticking time bomb scenario involves the notion that there will be imminent harm to many people very soon, that you are the one who must interrogate a suspect, and that everyone is depending on you to avert a catastrophe. “What would you do to get the needed information?”

And, indeed, here on Open Salon, DJohn posted such a question just the other day in a thread to which I responded. I've lifted my response to him into this post here (with very light editing) to make sure my thoughts on the matter didn't get lost in the shuffle.

The fallacy here is that you think this problem is unique to torture. It is not. Consider any law we have. There are laws against driving fast on highways, against breaking into buildings, and against killing people. We know, for example, that there are sometimes extraordinary reasons why good decent people need to drive beyond the speed limit, break into buildings, and even kill other people. And we do not say, therefore, that there must not be laws against driving beyond the speed limit, against breaking into buildings, and against killing one another. Rather, we expect brave souls to do in extraordinary times what needs to be done, consequences be damned. In some cases, we will exonerate them afterward for breaking a rule because we agree that circumstances warranted it. In some cases, we will not, and we will hold them accountable and they will console themselves knowing that they sacrificed themselves for something they believed was more important.

The situation of national security is no different. Were there really a case where millions could die and there was a chance torture might work, I expect someone would try the torture. If it worked, I imagine he'd be found a hero and forgiven. If it failed, I imagine he'd be court-martialed for his foolish notion. That's not much reassurance, but it ought not be. That's what it is to be illegal, to say that the risk of doing the thing is entirely to be engaged at a personal level. It's what we heard every week in Mission Impossible growing up: Should you or any of the IM Force be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge.

It's an uncomfortable truth but an honest one. It doesn't just give a wink to someone saying “it's ok, we know you'll need to do this and we'll forgive you later” it says “if you think this is your only option, you'd damn well better have examined every other one and it better really be because this is not one we'll forgive lightly.” For things that are truly (rather than merely rhetorically) one's only option, who asks for permission?

Anyone who tortures should never do it as a matter of process. He should do it as a last resort knowing that he is potentially sacrificing his life or freedom. That's a nice high bar that I'm comfortable won't get misused. Anything less, I'm not so sure.

Kent Pitman
April 19, 2009 01:22 AM

Checks and Balances

The traditional argument goes that “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Fair enough. That's a theory that goes quite a ways back in history, well before its recent formulation in words. But it was always about “above board” (pardon the unfortunate waterboarding pun) action. The problem isn't that the Bush administration wanted to change the policy, the policy is that they did so without informing the public and without subjecting themselves to trial. Having seen the need to do it, they should have done what they needed to and then marched straight to court demanding a trial. In the worst case, they should have told the public what they were doing so that the public could decide.

The claim by Bush echoed claims made by Nixon, who in turn quoted Lincoln when he was interviewed by David Frost: “Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional, could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation.” I don't even propose to debate that here; it might well be right. Let's assume it is. The critical difference between Lincoln and Nixon on this point is that Lincoln's actions were public and subject to scrutiny by the electorate. Nixon was secretive, and so was Bush.

Secrecy matters a great deal because the Constitutional foundation of allowing the Executive this much power is not that we like trusting the Executive with this much power, but rather we understand that some decisions must be made quickly, before the populace or perhaps even Congress could offer advice. And some decisions must be made coherently to avert the effect of Congress tearing our nation limb from limb by each Congressperson going in a different direction. A President must know when he acts on his own that he is still doing so at some risk of being judged harshly, and if he does it in secret, that risk is averted. The essential check on Presidential power is the option to impeach or at least not to re-elect. And even for those who will not be re-elected, we have the option to publicly discuss with new candidates for the office whether they subscribe to such doctrine. We are robbed of all of that when such actions are taken in secret, and we end up making decisions about the Presidency without critical information that would allow us to make good decisions.

Summary

And so I'll close with the point I opened with, that there is a relationship between civil disobedience as it has become and this kind of not-so-civil disobedience. In both cases, the actions have become so comfortable that the high bar of sacrifice has been removed. With that bar removed, the acts in question are too easy to do and too hard to later judge. We must repair that.

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Author's Notes:

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Originally published April 26, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): recourse, impeachment, impeach, informed electorate, re-election, election, democracy, we the people, democratic rule, checks and balances, dick cheney, cheney, george w bush, george bush, bush, frost/nixon, frost, nixon, lincoln, abraham lincoln, 24, time bomb, ticking, torture, ticking time bomb scenario, war, co, conscientious objector, unjust law, civil disobedience, politics