Blog: The Ethical Echo Chamber
A Week of Ironies — Iranian Hostages, Nikki Haley, and $1.5 Billion
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama patted himself on the back for making peace with Iran while, at that very moment, Iran held 10 American sailors in violation of international law and the Geneva Convention. The next day, Secretary John Kerry thanked the Iranians for not keeping the servicemen as hostages.
In the same speech, the president also lamented his failure to create an atmosphere of bipartisanship and cooperation, while passing up no opportunity to snipe at everyone who disagrees with him.
After South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley responded to the president’s address, the angriest voices loudly condemned her for condemning the angriest voices.
Hillary Clinton, who can boast the lowest national rating on trustworthiness since Richard Nixon, dismissed a new FBI investigation into her mishandling of classified information by declaring “that’s just not the way I treated classified information.” Transparency, at last.
However, none of this made much of an impression on an American public entranced by the dream of winning a 1.5 billion dollar lottery, even though about half of multimillion-dollar lottery winners eventually admit that sudden wealth proved more of a curse than a blessing.
Now that three winners are going to share the unprecedented payoff, they might want to take a page from the book of a middle-aged man in Atlanta who, back in the 1990s, won a $4 million dollar lottery – what was an exceptional amount for the time.
The winner had been working a double shift as a garbage collector. When asked what he intended to do after winning so much money, the man replied, “I’m going to quit one of my shifts.”
“Only one?” asked the incredulous reporter.
“A man has to have work,” replied the new millionaire.
Affluenza: Nothing new but the name
Some verbal atrocities are either too offensive or too absurd to ever be forgotten. Like Jonathan Gruber’s candid admission that “the stupidity of the American voter … was really, really critical for [Obamacare] to pass.” Or Brian Williams misremembering that he had been shot down in a helicopter. Or Al Gore’s claim that he invented the internet (although, in all fairness, that was not quite what he said).
But few violations of common sense and common decency compare to that of Jean Boyd, the judge who concluded that probation and rehab were sufficient punishment for Ethan Crouch — after he pled guilty to taking the lives of four people while driving drunk — because he was a victim of affluenza.
Now, two years later, after Ethan Crouch has violated his parole, fled to Mexico with his mother, and finally ended up back in custody, the Washington Post would like us to reconsider whether the diagnosis is really so ridiculous after all. Rallying experts to support his case, Post editor Fred Barbash suggests that affluenza may indeed be an authentic malady, citing ASU professor of psychology Suniya S. Luthar and Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College:
“High-risk behavior, including extreme substance abuse and promiscuous sex, is growing fast among young people from communities dominated by white-collar, well-educated parents. These kids … show serious levels of maladjustment as teens, displaying … marijuana and alcohol abuse, including binge drinking [and] abuse of illegal or prescription drugs.”[What also stands out] is the type of rule-breaking – widespread cheating and random acts of delinquency such as stealing from parents or peers among the affluent, as opposed to behavior related to self-defense, such as carrying a weapon, among the inner-city teens.”
“[What also stands out] is the type of rule-breaking – widespread cheating and random acts of delinquency such as stealing from parents or peers among the affluent, as opposed to behavior related to self-defense, such as carrying a weapon, among the inner-city teens.”
And finally: Serious depression or anxiety among affluent kids is “is two to three times national rates.”
No arguments from this quarter. But what does not appear in Mr. Barbash’s lengthy commentary is even the most meager attempt to identify why affluence produces teenage miscreants. What is it about growing up with every possible advantage that predisposes so many children to criminally irresponsible behavior?
The answer is quite simple.
State of the Union: Four Faces of Leadership
If we need another example of how upside-down our culture has become, we only have to look at the hype leading up to tonight’s State of the Union address by soon-to-be Former President Barack Obama. Even as the pundits all agree that the speech will be largely irrelevant and predictable, they can find little else to talk about.
Mr. Obama is expected to tell us how wonderful things are, how many of his goals he has achieved, and how much the quality of our lives has improved since he took office. The success of such an approach depends upon one of three factors:
- that his claims are actually true;
- that he can convince the people that his claims are actually true;
- that he can pound home the message (with the cooperation of an obsequious media) until people think there must be something wrong with them if they don’t believe it.
Whether the president succeeds or not remains to be seen. But it’s illuminating to compare his style to other presidents and presidential hopefuls, past and present.
Sean Penn — the twelfth monkey?
It may be the real-world incarnation of 12 Monkeys, the cult flick in which Bruce Willis goes back in time to save mankind and inadvertently causes the holocaust he is trying to prevent.
Sean Penn has traveled far and wide to uncover the warm, fuzzy side of such political personalities as Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro. We can only speculate on the motives behind his latest adventure, an elaborately staged meeting with El Chapo, the infamous Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman, who was recently recaptured after escaping from his maximum security prison cell.
Irony of ironies, it was Sean Penn himself who inadvertently led authorities to Guzman’s location. And although Mr. Penn has had little to say about his role in the apprehending of El Chapo, it’s tantalizing to wonder whether he might seek help from Bruce Willis to travel back in time in hope of undoing what he has done.
Always Faithful
My son at his induction ceremony into the IDF.
May the Almighty watch over all those who put the lives of others before their own.
May we all find within ourselves the clarity and courage to stay true to the values that lie at the core of our humanity.
The Intern
Trans-Atlantic flying has gotten a little more tolerable with the almost limitless supply of movies on each passenger’s personal screen. All the more so when you come across one of those rare productions that provide everything you could possibly want from a movie.
The Intern, starring Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway, showcases Hollywood at its best. It’s clever, it’s clean, it carries you along effortlessly and leaves you happy and hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the world is not tottering on the brink of cultural implosion after all.
Robert DeNiro is eminently believable as a 70-year-old widower who finds himself working for an edgy, high-tech start-up and turns the business on it’s head with his old-fashioned work ethic and traditional, common sense values. Without sermonics or sentimentality, the film endorses the follow-your-dream mentality while simultaneously deflating the myth that you can have it all.
Loyalty, self-discipline, personal responsibility, and the wisdom of experience, all in a major motion picture. Who woulda thought?
The Second Amendment and the Oral Law
As president Obama embarks upon his latest unilateral campaign to repair the world, this time by expanding restrictions on gun ownership, it’s worth revisiting my article on the Second Amendment from 2010.
Perhaps the greatest danger to the Constitution is manipulating its words to validate predetermined conclusions. By doing so, we violate the talmudic admonition against making the law “a spade for digging,” i.e., a tool to advance our own ends.
To preserve constitutional integrity, we have to familiarize ourselves with the context of its times, then apply those observations to the times in which we live. That only works when we are committed to honoring the system, rather than exploiting the system to fit our own agenda.
Last month’s Supreme Court ruling affirming Second Amendment states’ rights (and coinciding with the predictable Republican grilling of Supreme Court nominee Elana Kagan over the same issue) has brought back into the spotlight the constitutional ambiguity regarding gun ownership in the U.S. of A.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. So states the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. At first glance, the stipulation seems clear enough. American citizens may own guns, plain and simple.
Or maybe not. The qualifying phrase that introduces the amendment appears to restrict constitutional protection to dependence upon a militia, or citizen army, to defend the nation. Accordingly, in times such as ours, when a standing army has assumed responsibility for the common defense, there may be no constitutional guarantee at all. And so, on second thought, the amendment seems to clearly limit the extent of private gun ownership.
Or, again, maybe not.
Perhaps the Founding Fathers meant that, since every citizen ultimately owns an equal share of the responsibility to defend his country, the right to bear arms is part and parcel of each person’s national duty to fight for the public welfare should the need ever arise. This would explain why the authors of the amendment might have mentioned a militia even if they never meant to restrict said right.
So what was the original intent of the Framers? If they were here, we could ask them. Since they are not, each side seems to have a fair and reasoned claim to support its respective position.
Is there any way to resolve the question of what was intended by men who passed away long before our grandfathers were born?
In fact, there may be.
THE REST OF THE STORY
Imagine that, as you pass by a window, you see a man wearing a mask raise a knife and plunge it into the chest of another man lying prone beneath him. You scream for the police, certain that you have just witnessed a murder.
Or, yet again, maybe not.
Now imagine that you were unfamiliar with the concept of open-heart surgery. Only after the police arrive and explain that the man in the mask is a surgeon working to repair the heart of the man on the table beside him will you understand that he is in fact saving a life and not taking one.
Context is everything. It orients us in time, space, and circumstance, transforms isolated acts into links in a chain of connected events, none of which can be understood in isolation. And so, if the words of our forebears sometimes appear to us muddled or imprecise, the surest way to achieve clarity is to examine comments and opinions from the same thinkers and the same era.
Here are a few examples to provide historical context:
James Madison, on the principle of individual rights: [A bill of rights] should more especially comprise a doctrine in favour of the equality of human rights; of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury… of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.
Massachusetts Representative Fisher Ames: The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people.
Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, contributor to the drafting of the Constitution:The defense of one’s self, justly called the primary law of nature, is not, nor can it be abrogated by any regulation of municipal law.
Vice President Elbridge Gerry, signatory to the Declaration of Independence, on national defense: What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.
In the context of the times, the intention of the Framers becomes difficult to debate. Only in relatively recent times, when the concept of a militia has become an anachronism, has it become possible to question the true meaning of the Second Amendment.
PRESERVING THE INTEGRITY OF THE LAW
Is there any way for words to retain their clarity despite the persistent evolution of cultural references and values? Is there any method for protecting ideas from the ravages of changing times and sensitivities?
Indeed there is. It predates the United States Constitution by 31 centuries, and it is called the Oral Law of the Torah.
Consider these biblical commandments:
Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy… And this will be a sign upon your arm and a remembrance between your eyes … Slaughter your [livestock] in the manner that I have prescribed… Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
These precepts, as they are written in the Torah, are impossible to observe. What does it mean to keep the Sabbath “holy,” and what actions — if any — are required to “remember” it? What kind of sign are we to place upon our arms, if elsewhere the Torah prohibits the application of any tattoo, and how do we place a “remembrance” between our eyes? Nowhere does the Torah outline any prescription for ritual slaughter, nor does it imply what is commonly understood, that that the prohibition against cooking a baby goat in its mother’s milk extends to every mixture of meat and dairy products.
In spite of these and many other ambiguities, the basic practices of the Torah observant community have remained essentially unchanged for over 3300 years. The explanation is simple. Unlike the family encyclopedia which once gathered dust on the shelf and now gathers dust on the CD rack, the Oral Torah forces every committed Jew to see himself as custodian of a living tradition that connects him with the origins of his identity and enables him to live in the modern world without compromising the values of his ancestors.
No longer purely oral, the discussions and debates of past authorities have been recorded for their children in the writings of the Talmud and the commentaries that elucidate them. Unlike the records left behind by the Framers of the Constitution, however, these records have become canonized as part of the structure and process through which Jewish law is determined in each and every generation. Even when questions and disagreements arise, there is no debate within the Torah community over the methods through which answers and solutions are to be found.
Society changes, technology changes, and the values of human beings twist in the winds of time like a weather vane spinning before a storm. Electricity, automobiles, computers, cloning, and in vitro fertilization may have once been unimagined, but we have inherited a legacy that teaches us how those earlier generations would have resolved the problems of our changing world if they were here themselves today. And so the Torah Jew never loses his bearings, for he is guided by the words of his forefathers and finds comfort in the knowledge that the ancient wisdom of the Torah will never become stagnant, corrupted, or out of date.
As my teacher Rabbi Nota Schiller often says, the Oral Torah allows the Jews to change enough to stay the same.
Originally published by Jewish World Review
Justice in Oregon — Color Blind and 20/20
A broken clock is right twice a day and, gratefully, the justice department has found the sweet spot — at least for the moment — in Oregon.
Certainly, the armed occupation of a national wildlife refuge is cause for concern. But it is not cause for panic and, in light of past notorious government interventions, definitely not cause for military confrontation.
In both the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, incident and the 1993 Branch Davidian raid in Waco, Texas, the level of intervention was clearly disproportionate to the danger posed and the resulting bloodshed largely indefensible. This is not to say that the government did not have just cause; rather, it failed to employ that resource that is more endangered than any other: common sense.
3 people died at Ruby Ridge; 76 died at Waco.
It’s heartening, therefore, that authorities are approaching the current crisis near Burns, Oregon, with circumspection. Of course, they can’t ignore the occupation. But with no one in danger, a wait-and-see strategy is the best of all available options.
The broader relevance of the story arises from the inevitable accusations of racism by leaders in the black and Muslim communities. It’s only because the so-called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom are white, they say, that the government has not charged in with guns blazing.
Which is, of course, pure nonsense. Two dozen right-wing trespassers in the middle of nowhere is hardly comparable to Ferguson, Missouri, or San Bernardino, California.
The response is different because the situations are different. And in this case, stuck between the real fears that inaction will embolden extremists to further acts of defiance while over-reaction will provide the opportunity for martyrdom, wait-and-see offers the best possible compromise between unattractive alternatives.
It’s also arguable that the occupiers have legitimate grievances against government overreach, which has grown into a systemic malady, evidenced by a rash of executive orders and a culture of bureaucratic strong-arming. Compared with the nebulous jeremiads of the Occupy Wall Street crowd and, more recently, students at Yale and the University of Missouri, the very real plaints of the Oregon occupiers appear level-headed and downright mainstream.
Competent leadership is characterized by the ability to gauge every situation according to its unique combination of factors, risks, and potential consequences. One-size-fits-all solutions rarely prove effective, and accusations of inconsistency are childish at best, opportunistic at worst. What we need most in these troubled times is cool-headed calculation that looks to strike the sanest balance between principled action and pragmatic compromise.
When we start demanding that level of aptitude and integrity from our leaders, maybe we will find ourselves with leaders worthy of our confidence and trust.
Guest Post: No Good Deed…
A poor Jew finds a wallet with $700 in it. At his synagogue, he reads a notice saying that a wealthy congregant lost his wallet and is offering a $100 reward for it. He spots the owner and gives him the wallet.
The rich man counts the money and says, “I see you already took your reward.”
The poor man answers, “What?”
“This wallet had $800 in it when I lost it.”
They begin arguing, and eventually come before the rabbi.
Both state their case. The rich man concludes by saying, “Rabbi, I trust you believe ME.”
The rabbi says, “Of course,” and the rich man smiles. The poor man is crushed.
Then the rabbi hands the wallet to the poor man.
“What are you doing?!” yells the rich man.
The rabbi answers, “You are, of course, an honest man, and you say the wallet you lost had $800 in it. Therefore I’m sure it did. But if the man who found this wallet is a liar and a thief, he wouldn’t have returned it at all. Which means that this wallet must belong to somebody else. If that man steps forward, he’ll get the money. Until then, it belongs to the man who found it.”
“What about my money?” the rich man asks.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait until somebody finds a wallet with $800 in it…”
8 Choices for Making a Happier Life
I’m a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell. His particular genius for collecting data and weaving together fresh insights has produced a wealth of practical wisdom to help us improve the quality of our lives.
But nobody’s perfect.
I recently came across Mr. Gladwell’s 2004 Ted Talk, in which he recounted the career of one Howard Moskowitz, a psychophysicist whose market research for Pepsi Cola, Vlasic Pickles, and Prego Spaghetti Sauce — beginning back in the early 70s — changed the food industry forever. It might seem obvious to us with the wisdom of hindsight but, to make a long story short, Howard Moskowitz discovered that there is no perfect pickle, no ideal type of cola, and no universal favorite recipe for spaghetti sauce.
How big a deal was this? I’ll let Mr. Gladwell explain:
Everyone else in the industry looked at what Howard had done, and they said, “Oh my God! We’ve been thinking all wrong!” And that’s when you started to get seven different kinds of vinegar, and 14 different kinds of mustard, and 71 different kinds of olive oil. And then eventually even Ragù hired Howard, and Howard did the exact same thing for Ragù that he did for Prego. And today, if you go to a really good supermarket, do you know how many Ragùs there are? 36! In six varieties: Cheese, Light, Robusto, Rich & Hearty, Old World Traditional — Extra-Chunky Garden.
All well and good. Now we can all have exactly what we like all the time, without sacrifice, without compromise, without effort.
But then Mr. Gladwell continues, moving on from tomato sauce to mustard. And it is here that Malcolm Gladwell exits the highway of reason and turns onto the backstreets of phantasmagoria.
Yonason Goldson 