n the rush to proclaim that women and men are equals in every single respect, radical feminists have gotten a lot wrong.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of sexuality.  There was a song that intoned that women want sex is as much as men do.  I have no qualms with that claim.  What is of importance is not whether women and men want sex to the same extent or not.  After all, any generalization in this regard must be adjusted to the particular woman and man involved.  The real issue is whether or not the ineliminable differences between the bodies of women and men have fundamentally different implications for the sexual experience of women and men.  

Radical feminism has made the mistake of suggesting that when it comes to sexuality the only substantive difference between women and men is that men have a penis whereas women have a vagina.  But this radically under characterizes the difference between men and women.

Even allowing that the sexual experience is vastly richer than vaginal penetration, what has to be acknowledged as well is that there is a vast psychological difference between women and men when it comes to the act of coitus.  During that act, women are penetrated and men are not; and that difference is absolutely profound.  For instance, it involves trust on the part of women that has no parallel whatsoever on the lives of men. 

Between couples deeply committed to one another and united by love, women have to trust men in a way that no man ever has to trust a woman during the act of coitus. 

Imagine, then, the very vulnerable position that hooking-up puts women in.  For the best analogy that I can think of would be that a man submitting to a rectal examination by anyone who walked through the door and claimed to be a physician. 

The very nature of hooking-up is that two people get together and have sex and if, per chance, they happen to learn anything about one another, including one’s another’s name, that is an unintended consequence.  Yet, women are supposed to have sex with a complete stranger with all that this involves in terms of making herself extremely vulnerable during the act of coitus.  And let us be brutally honest, any guy who is out to hook-up with a gal for sex wants there to be coitus at some point during that sexual encounter. 

This might explain why there is such a high correlation between women who drink and engage in hooking-up.  This is because the alcohol serves to numb women to the vulnerability that they take on in having coitus sex with a complete stranger. I regard the vulnerability to be so great as to constitute a form of psychological duress that will not go away, no matter what story of female-male equality that one puts forth.

It is this truth that radical feminists have ignored; and their doing so has caused young women great damage; for it has resulted in young women going against their better instincts.  After all, no self-respecting women can think it a good thing to make herself vulnerable sexually to a perfect stranger.

Changing gears entirely, another difference between women and men is that women become pregnant and men do not.  Of course, abortion is available nowadays.  Just so, there is the poignant fact that abortion is an operation.  It is not on the order of a manicure or a haircut.  This is surely yet another reason for hooking-up to be something that women find repulsive. 

Of course, the possibility of pregnancy underscores in a most dramatic way that women and men have quite different bodies.  On the one hand, from none of this does it follow that women cannot have or should not have an insatiable sexual appetite.  On the other hand, given the fundamental ways in which the bodies of women and men differ, why would anyone think it appropriate for women and men to be equally open to uncommitted sex?  Of course, men like the idea.  But that should come as no surprise.  For them, never has equality felt so good.  And I meant to use just those words. 

If before the era of hooking-up, it was a man’s world, radical feminism with its embracing of hooking-up has made things even more of man’s world. 

What I have argued?  I have not claimed that sex is wrong for women or that women should not be desirous of sex.  I hold no such view.  Nor, again, have I denied that women have been inappropriately excluded from positions of authority and power.  It seems to me obvious that they have.  But equality in the work place, which is as it should be, will never change the fact that women and men have fundamentally different bodies. 

Both women and men should take one another seriously.  And this means that genuine differences in the bodily configuration of women and men should be acknowledged.  A vagina is one kind of organ; a penis is an entirely different kind of organ.  Neither can be defined in terms of the absence of the other.  Accordingly, a body with a vagina and a body with a penis do not have an identical perspective on the interaction that takes place between these two organs.  No one thinks for a moment that the tongue and the hands should yield identical sensations of the same object.  And we expect people to have a concern for protecting their tongue that they do not have for protecting their hands.  Interestingly, we have more of an analogy here than not between the vagina and the penis. 

The mistake of radical feminism lies in the presupposition that equality between women and men has meant eradicating all differences in social behavior between women and men.  Ironically, because the bodies of women and men are constituted quite differently, eradicating all differences in social behavior between women and men is possible only at the expense of the well-being of either women or men—or perhaps both. 

There is no doubt in my mind that women are the worse off for the attempt to eliminate all differences in social behavior between women and men.  And one bit of proof of this is that while men are now more demanding of women—expecting them “to put out sexually” from the very start, it is hardly the case that men are more respecting of women.  This constitutes a loss-loss situation for women.  The expression “bitches and hoes” has become a part of the lingo for referring to women.  That ought to have been a hint that what wss countenanced as progress for women was anything but that.  It is, though, the language of hooking-up.  Men go out looking for “some bitches and hoes” to lay.  And that is preicsely what men find. 

Amously, Plato held the thesis that a person could not knowingly choose to do that which is wrong.  Alas, contemporary society would suggest that, although Plato was no doubt an intellectual giant, he was sorely mistaken about this point; for if contemporary society bears witness to anything, it bears witness to the reality that people knowingly do what is wrong all the time.  Indeed, it happens with poignant frequency that people knowingly do what is harmful to their very own person. 

Now, if Plato’s claim is obviously false, what is equally problematic is the fact that people knowingly do what is wrong—even harmful to themselves.  I mean if people do not have the wherewithal to refrain from harming themselves, then it is all the more implausible to expect people to refrain from harming others.  And how on earth is it possible that people knowingly do what is harmful to themselves?

Significantly, and most importantly, the harm that people knowingly do to themselves is rarely a direct and immediate form of harm such as putting a gun to their head and killing themselves.  Out of the more than 6 billion people on the planet, comparatively few commit suicide.  So we mortals are comparatively good at avoiding direct and immediate harm to ourselves.  By contrast, we seem to be comparatively disastrous at avoiding embedded harms.  An embedded harm is a piece of harmful behavior that can be ostensibly characterized as pleasant behavior, but which in fact is known to be harmful. 

If listening to the Dr. Laura program is any indication, then romantic involvements are one of the paradigm examples of an embedded harm.  For instance, it is not uncommon for Dr. Laura to receive a call from a woman who dated, had sex with, and became pregnant by a man whom the woman knew from the outset to have serious anger management or drinking problems.  Dr. Laura invariably asks: How on earth did you let yourself become pregnant by a man whom you knew, from the start, to be so unsatisfactory as even a mate, let alone a father? 

The question is a very good one.  But if it is, then it would seem that there is something to Plato’s thesis after all.  A similar point can be made about any number of other activities such as people putting themselves into significant debt by gambling. 

The explanation for why numerous human beings subject themselves to embedded harms lies in one word: self-deception.  And it is the capacity for enormous self-deception that distinguishes human beings from all other animals on the face of the planet. 

One way of understanding Plato’s thesis, then, is as follows: (i) psychologically healthy individuals are not prone to self-deceptive behavior; accordingly, (ii) a psychologically health person will rarely if ever know the Good but go on to choose to do that which is bad for her or him. 

What is particularly of the moment here is that Plato held that only those who received the right kind of upbringing were apt to be psychologically healthy individuals and so not to be the kind of individuals prone to self-deception.  What on earth did Plato suppose was occasioned by the right sort of upbringing?  The answer, I suggest, is the ability to distinguish between (a) the intensity of desire for a given good and (b) the reality of that which has presented itself as satisfying that desire, but in fact does not—a reality impostor. 

In fact, one might argue that the move from infancy to childhood maturity is tied to making this distinction with sufficient finesse.  A properly developed adult is one who has the capacity to make this distinction to yet a much, much greater degree. 

We all have intense desires for all sorts of goods.  And if we are sufficiently fortunate the thing which presents itself as satisfying an intense desire for a given good does precisely that.  But is not uncommon for an intense desire that we have to go unsatisfied, and that all we encounter in terms of satisfying that desire is one reality impostor after another. 

If I understand Plato correctly: he held the quite simple, but yet ever so profound thesis, that with the right upbringing an adult would rarely if ever accept a reality impostor for the real thing, no matter how intense the individual’s desire for the thing in question might be.  And, of course, living well is inextricably tied to exercising precisely this sort of self-command in our lives.  This, in turn, tells us something that we all know, namely that the real problem is not so much in having desires but giving into them we should not.  And precisely what is thought to distinguish human beings from animals is that, even in the absence of any kind of threat, we can choose not to give into our desires. 

This is the freedom of the self of which Plato wrote.  It is the only freedom that he thought worth having given that one is a human being: the freedom, and so the wherewithal, to refuse to do that which one knows to be bad for one.  Plato held that we cannot take ourselves seriously as human beings without taking seriously this kind of freedom.  Contemporary society is too busy ignoring the reality of its human to take seriously this truth about its humanity. 

here is an innate sense of right and wrong.  Or so it would seem.  Children would seem to have a very clear sense of when they have been abused even when they cannot put this into words.  Indeed, this would seem to be written in the very fabric of the each child; for children who have been the victim of sustained abuse typical grow up to be dysfunctional in a variety of ways; and the exceptions prove the role.  

I want in this essay to advance the argument of chapter 1 of The Family and the Political Self in a completely different direction. The argument owes much inspiration to the Dr. Laura Program.

Now, resentment is nature’s ever so natural response to the wrongs which we have experienced at the hands of another.  It is simply not possible to be psychologically healthy, and not be resentful of egregious wrongdoing.  And insofar as religious figures are the exception, they are the exceptions that prove the rule. 

If there is one thing that a child wants from her or her parents more than any other, it is parental love.  Punishments and chastisements are fine, provided that they do not overshadow the child’s sense of being marvelously loved by her or his parents.  And while no parent can be at a child’s beck and call every single time, there is yet a fundamental difference between neglect and not always being available. 

Most significantly, the absence of punishment and chastisement does not entail the absence of the abuse of neglect.  And it is this truth that is often lost on modernity. 

It would seem that many children feel profoundly neglected by their parents; and if this is right, then what one might naturally expect from children is a great deal of resentment on their part. 

No child asked to be brought into this world.  Accordingly, every child rightly resents parents who bring her or him into the world only to be too busy doing any and everything to be occupied with the very child whom they brought into the world.  It is not just that a child rightly feels resentment in this instance, I maintain that resentment is precisely what a child in fact feels in such circumstances.  Resentment is what a child feels even if she or he does not have cognitive skills to understand herself or himself as having such a feeling.  In this sense, resentment is very much a natural sentiment.

I am prepared to suggest that much of the horrendous behavior that we are seeing among young people nowadays can be explained in terms of resentment owing to the abuse of neglect by their parents during the most formative years of their children’s lives.

We know that world was far from perfect in years-gone-by.  Indeed, the prominence of corporal punishment once upon a time makes it painfully clear that it was rather routine for parents to treat their children in ways that we now deem woefully inappropriate. 

But here is what is most interesting.  In the vast majority of instances, corporal punishment was not an impediment to children of that era having a very deep and abiding sense of being wonderfully loved by their parents. 

The central argument of chapter 1 of The Family and the Political Self is that parental love at its best bestows upon children a sense of cherished uniqueness not tied to invidious comparisons.  It is very interesting, indeed, that corporal punishment as such is not incompatible with parental love doing just that.  By contrast, the absence of corporal punishment coupled with parents who are too busy to be present is, in fact, a recipe for children not coming to have a sense of cherished uniqueness not tied to invidious comparisons.

This should come as no surprise.  Why?  Because there is simply no other way to make a person feel that we love her or him than by spending time with that individual.  This is so obvious in the case of romantic love that it seems rather otiose to draw attention to the point.  If I may speak in the traditional mode: At the beginning of courtship, there is no better sign that a woman can have that a man really loves her than that he is prepared to move heaven and earth in order to be with her.  He can send her all the flowers in the world.  But if he is consistently too busy to spend time with her, then she rightly concludes that his love for her has serious limits.

In so many respects, the parent-child relationship is rather like an on-going courtship, where the adults have the role of suitor.  This is the natural order of things.  And when parents are too busy to spend time with their children "courting" them, I maintain that it is part of the natural order of things that children resent it. 

The account explains why there is such discord nowadays between parents and children—unlike yesteryear.  Children are given more material goods than ever before; yet, children wonder more than ever before whether their parents love them.  In times past, material goods were much fewer and further between; yet, children were so very secure in the conviction that they were loved by their parents. 

Where there is this security on the part of children vis à vis their parents' love, there is greater harmony between children and their parents.  By contrast, there is greater disharmony between children and their parents when this security is absent.  I hold that resentment owing to the absence of that security on the part of the children is what gets the disharmony off the ground. 

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I do not hold for a moment that children of yesteryear were masterfully obedient to their parents in every way.  That would at best make for a nice fairy tale.  Children of every generation have explored in ways that did not meet with the approval of their parents.  Alas, there turns out to be all the difference in the world between exploring but remaining ever so mindful of the love of one’s parents and exploring out of anger with one’s parents.  The former is a natural part of the generational difference between parents and children.  The latter is a consequence of the resentment owing to the abuse of neglect. 

Modernity has engaged in a marvelous form of self-deception—a most ignoble lie, if you will.  We have learned to trivialize the abuse of neglect by focusing upon the absence of corporal punishment and the absence of physical or sexual abuse and also focusing upon the material benefits that children enjoy all the while convincing ourselves that, given this constellation of factors, the amount of time spent with children does not much matter. 

Although this ignoble lie flies in the case of commonsense, as the example of courtship makes abundantly clear, it is stunning just how brilliant we have been in concocting explanations that contravene the deliverances of commonsense.  Going against commonsense has no equivalent in any other species.  So while human beings have no natural enemy, that may very well be good enough, precisely because, unlike any other species, the human species is quite capable of being its very own enemy, as its treatment of its young makes abundantly clear.

believe that women and men are different.  By this I do not mean that there are intellectual inequalities between women and men.  It is far too obvious that there are men who have turned stupidity into an art form and that there are women who, in the midst of merely being funny, can display more intellectual creativity than many a man could ever hope to display.  At a physical and emotional level, however, I maintain that there are important differences between women and men that should be embraced and sanctified. 

I believe in moral and social equality between women and men.  I do not believe that either form of equality requires that women and men be identical in all respects.  And, of course, it is obvious in the end that most others do not either, given the heterosexual orientation that most people not only have but fully embrace. 

In conversing with a 22-year old student yesterday whose biological father was absent, he spoke about how he wished that his father had been there.  Naturally, I asked him why.  His response was that he would like to have gone fishing with his father and to have wrestled with his father and to have talked about “manly things” with his father.  The presupposition of that response is that the male-female difference in fact makes a difference.  He understood that his mother could learn how to fish.  The point, though, was that fishing with his mom would not have been the same as fishing with his father.  As for wrestling with his mother?  Not happening ! ! !

The very idea of a son’s respect, love, and appreciation for his mother seems to have built into it that there are things that one does not want to do with or talk about with one’s mother.  If one is a male, then talking about appreciating women with one’s mom just has to have a different character to it than talking about appreciation women with one’s father.  Of course, the same points holds with regard to a daughter talking about appreciation men with her father. 

No woman, no matter how informed she might be can talk about manhood from a first-hand experience as a man.  Likewise, no man can talk about womanhood from a first-hand experience as a woman.  It strikes me as no accident that in many cases women prefer female physicians for certain things.  There is, after all, no amount of book knowledge that could be tantamount to experiencing the body of a female or male, if one is not, respectively, a female or a male. 

And part of parenting is about is bringing precisely that sort of experience to bear in interactions with one’s children.  Sometimes that knowledge is brought to bear through very explicit conversations.  Sometimes that knowledge is brought to bear through social modeling.  We forget just how much is learnt though ne’er a parental directive was issued saying “Learn this” and “Learn that”.  A very wonderful and quite neutral example is the native accent with which we speak.  No child is told: “Be sure to speak with a French accent or an English accent or a German accent or an American accent”.  And so on.  Yet, with exceedingly rare exception every child raised in the appropriate country will acquire precisely that accent.  Such is the power of modeling.  Such is the significance of witnessing the behavior of others.

When a mother in the home acts in the ways that a good mother should, then both the son and the daughter in the home learn a most valuable set of moral lessons about what good female behavior should be like that no lesson in the classroom could ever teach as effectively.

Likewise, when a father in the in the home acts in the way that a good father should, then both the daughter and the son in the home learn a most valuable set of moral lessons about what good female behavior should be like that no lesson in the classroom could ever teach as effectively.

To be sure, life goes on in the absence of one or the other.  But that truth does not detract one iota from the truth that when both mother and father are present, then the children learn invaluable lessons about womanhood in one case and manhood in the other.  Wrapped in parental love, this is the moral gift that parents give to their children.  There is, to be sure, society in general, but the interactive experience that comes by way of parental love on the part of the mother and the father has no equal in terms of both its richness and magnificence.

The behavior of women and men will never be completely identical; and there is no amount of social posturing or theorizing that will make it so.  Not even the idea of transgendered folks.  It may very well be true that the sexual identity of some cannot be tied to one sex or the other.  Just so, that identity is not at all independent of what counts as female behavior and what counts as male behavior.  After all, the transgendered do not in their goings about display the behavior of a non-human species.  To say that one’s behavior does not fit neatly into the female-male divide is not to say one’s behavior is not at all informed by both sides of that divide.

I do not hold that every biological urge must be given full expression.  Perhaps aggression has a biological basis; yet, it is arguable, surely, that we should do our best to rein in aggression.

However, there are fundamental differences between women and men that are inescapably tied to differences in anatomical structure.  Owing to the possibility of pregnancy: women are typically vulnerable in a way that no man can possibly be vulnerable.  Even a lesbian can be raped and become pregnant as a result of that horrendous moral wrong.  And it is not at all obvious that we can socialize away the significance of this anatomical difference—at least not without removing the possibility of pregnancy on the part of women as in the novel Brave New World. 

In my feminism class this semester, I noted that in the throes of sexual intimacy women typically trust men in a way that men do not trust women.  For it is the case that, with respect to bodily size, the man is stronger and larger than the woman, at least typically.  So even if we took away the possibility of pregnancy on the part of women there would still be a fundamental significance between women and men that remains.  

This last point perhaps brings us full circle.  At the level of bearing witness to life and to life’s experiences: There are things that children learn from their mother that they cannot learn from their father; likewise, there are things that children learn from their father than they cannot learn from their mother.  Sometimes through explicit directives; sometimes through mere modeling.  Significantly, this point holds regardless of sexual orientation. 

This, in turn, points to a most sublime conclusion: Our moral knowledge of humanity will not be complete unless we have knowledge of one another as females, in one case, and as males, in the other.  And no amount of theorizing or socializing will contravene this truth. 

And this truth, in turn, supports the view that what we want is equality between women and men rather than identical behavior between women and men.  We as human beings are diminished by imposing identical behavior between women and men rather than enriched by it.  Indeed, the result is a form of psychological and moral disfigurement that makes us all worse off.  And it is just so much cacophony that blinds us to this biological, psychological, and moral reality. 

here is a line of argument that goes like this: “They are going to have sex any way; so we might as well give them condoms or the pill”.  Needless to say, this argument is woefully problematic.  For instance, no one would think to argue “Well, they are going to murder any way; so we might as well give them a gun; otherwise, they will steal guns”.  Of course, there is a fundamental difference here in that there is nothing in principal wrong with sex; whereas murder is morally wrong, period.  But there is a most important respect in which either case raises a significant issue, namely the issue of condoning behavior.

Legally, of course, the liberty to do something does not constitute condoning it.  After all, people should not drink if they have significant problems with alcohol consumption.  Yet, they nonetheless have the legal liberty to drink.  A legal liberty in no way constitutes a form of social condoning. 

In law, adults have lots of liberties and the idea is that they should bring to the exercise of each liberty the judgment that doing so is or is not a good thing.  Sometimes, we rightly conclude that we should never exercise a given liberty, as would be the case if we cannot at all handle alcohol consumption.  Sometimes, we rightly conclude that the exercise of a liberty is inappropriate only in this instance, as when we make the assessment it would better that we not make a given purchase at this point in time.

In the State of Maine, there are middle schools that have proposed giving the birth control pill to the female students who attend the school.  To be sure, the idea is to do this with the permission of the student’s parents.  But if that does not work, there are the so-called special circumstances that allow birth control to be administered to a child in the name of the child’s privacy.  I think that this is called undercutting parental authoritity, but let us set this matter aside. 

Now, bearing in mind that children in middle school are between the ages of 11 and 13 years of age, the first observation I want to make is that for children of this age permission to obtain the birth control pill is seen by them as none other than parental and school approval.  And there is the rub.  No parent should be approving of the pill for an 11 or a 13 year old.  No school should be doing so.

Besides, giving the pill to a 13 year old presupposes something that seems implausible at the outset, namely adequate maturity on the child’s part to administer the pill in the way that it is supposed to be administered.  Arguably, if a 13 year old had that kind of maturity, then the issue of using birth control would not be there in the first place. 

Then there is this matter.  One of the most important things that a parent can instill in their children, and schools should underwrite, is a measure of self-control.  By definition, to have self-control is to have the ability to resist strong desires the satisfaction of which would be harmful. 

If this is right, precisely what parental permission for an 11-13 year old to use the pill amounts to is telling the child to give in to her sexual desires.  This is not only the wrong lesson to teach a child a young girl, this is to prepare her ever so poorly for the future. 

No one has ever lived well who has not been able to exercise considerable self-control over giving into her or his desires.  And it is safe to say that no one ever shall. 

The issue is not whether sex is a wonderful thing.  Surely it is.  But there is a time and a place for it.  There is no respect in which 11-13 years old is the right time to be having sex. 

And if this consideration were not enough, what about the issue of failed birth control measures?  Do we just treat giving an 11-13 an old abortion rather like giving her a haircut?  It goes without saying that no one that age should be forced to have a child.  Absolutely not.  Assume, then, that abortion is the right option.  Alas, this assumption does not in any way trivialize the impact of performing the procedure of an abortion on girls between the ages of 11 and 13.. 

Measured fear and shame can be a good thing.  And modernity has lost sight of this truth.  The young have to contend with raging hormones and a multitude of desires the satisfaction of which seem ever so appealing.  Measured fear and shame can be a formidable dam in helping the young to resist a wealth of desires.  Measured fear and shame can work where reason alone does not. 

It is often the case that reason does not work for full-fledged adults.  So it is just plain silly to suppose that reason will readily work for 11-13 year olds. 

If at the age of 11 years old a child is a moral fortress-in-the-making, then parents and the school should be the moral moorings that buttress that fortress.  The very idea of distributing birth control pills to girls in middle school is tantamount to abandoning that role, be it the parents or the school who does so.

And if these considerations were not enough, there is this.  We are supposed to be teaching young girls that the value of their bodies is not simply a function of their ability to be pleasing boys.  I think that this idea goes by the name of feminism.  Accordingly, I would have thought that teaching young girls to feel good about themselves when they say “No” to the sexual advances of boys would have first priority. 

If this is right, then there is a fundamental respect in which parents reveal themselves to be unfit in signing the permission for their daughter in middle school to receive birth control pills.  This is rather like giving one’s child permission to walk across a field replete with landmines.  It is impossible for parents to do that and really be concerned with the well-being of their child.  For the 11-13 old girl, having to be concerned with taking the pill is none other one fundamental concern too many. 

There will always be under-aged children who have sex.  But this is hardly a reason for either parents or schools or society in general to condone such behavior, or even to give the impression that they condone it.  After all, there will always be children who drop out of school or who take drugs, from which it most surely does not follow that we should merely be accepting of it. 

There is a difference between excoriating condemnation and strong disapproval.  There can little doubt that in the past some parents went overboard and that social scorn overshot the mark.  The corrective here lies not in withdrawing disapproval entirely when children do wrong.  Quite the contrary, even in adulthood it turns out that shame and disapproval play a significant role in buttressing our moral fortress. 

Over the years, I have been blessed to forge some wonderful ties.  And while I take myself to be an extremely strong person, it does not bother me at all to acknowledge that my will to do what is right has been mightily strengthened by my wish not to disappoint those who have believed in me.  From a public radio figure such as Dr. Laura Schlessinger, with whom I once communicated on a regular basis, to my Ph. D. and undergraduate students: I am not worse off given that I would not want to be the object of their disapproval.  Quite the contrary, I have found succor and strength in precisely the fact that they have all had very high expectations of me. 

Nothing is more corrosive of the life of those in their formative years than low expectations on the part of parents and schools.  How on earth will children ever have high moral and intellectual expectations of themselves, if those raise and train children (that is, parents and teachers) do not have high expectations of children?  The simple truth is that distributing the pill in schools, with or without the permission of parents, is rather like taking a bull-horn and announcing in the school yard that one expects the females to become sluts.

None of this requires having a puritanical regarding sex.  Rather, it requires that adults, be they parents or teachers, accept the responsibility of inculcating in children those values that will underwrite the reality of children becoming wholesome adults.  If, as many would suppose, society is going to hell in a hand-basket, the explanation might very well be that we have paved that very road with the lives of children by failing to be morally and intellectually responsible in raising them.  The motto of the day, then, might be this: To fail the children of a society is to destroy that society.   

ffhand, being neutral can easily be countenanced as a form of moral cowardice: not having the wherewithal to defend the right side and so to criticize the other.  Neutrality, thus serves as none other than a ruse for inappropriate moral inaction, a way of masking weakness by giving the appearance of strength; for the claim is that one is strong enough not to take either side.  Yet, it is manifestly clear that there is a side that one should take.  This last remark explains why neutrality is typically seen as a form of moral cowardice; for it is extremely rare that there is not a clear right and wrong to a situation. 

Now being neutral is not exactly the same thing as not getting involved.  To be sure, being neutral can be a way of not getting involved; however, it is perfectly possible not to be at all neutral and, at the very same time, not get involved.  Here is an example.

It may obvious to everyone who knows all the parties involved that I think it most inappropriate for parents not to send their children to the best schools that they can afford.  Yet, this is precisely what the Jones-Smith family does.  And guess what: I never comment upon the matter, either to the parents or to anyone else.  There is no neutrality on my part here, although it is manifestly the case that I do not get involved.  Indeed, the parents may be rather mindful of the fact that I take the moral stance of not commenting upon the fact that they prefer spending their quite handsome income on material goods rather than the education of their children.

Within limits, it seems that not getting involved is required by the principle of having respect for the freedom of people to conduct their personal lives in the way that they wish (given the usual rider of not causing others harm).  It seems to me that politeness is meant to cover cases of just this sort.  Thus, when I know a married couple, the only thing that I ever say about how the wife dresses constitutes an obvious compliment: “You look lovely today”.  In general, politeness is not about sincerity.  It is simply a social lubricant, the classic example of which is the utterance of “Congratulations” by the loser of a match.  No one in her or his right mind—not even the winner—thinks that the loser of the match wanted the other person to win. 

Let me return to neutrality, I have claimed that neutrality can be seen as a moral power.  I should make good that claim.

Crucial to my viewing neutrality in this way is the fact that disputing parties can be simply interested in dominating or having their way rather than doing what is right; and to this end, they will employ any means available to them, and so are more than willing to invoke the moral stance of someone who has a measure of gravitas.  Family members often play one another in this way.  Certain forms of racial pressure also take this form as well.  What exactly does one say to the mother who insists that unless one takes her side, then one has no appreciation for all that she has done for one?  Or, suppose that one is an X (pick your group).  What exactly does one say to Adrian (also an X) who chimes to one that unless one takes Adrian’s side against Joe the non-X, then one is not really an X?  We have a term for this sort of thing.  It is called: manipulation. 

Now, when both sides to a dispute are more interested in manipulation than doing what is right, we have case where taking a stance of neutrality constitutes a moral power and often an exercise of courage.  Many a child has acquiesced to a mother’s wishes in order to silence the mother’s claim “You don’t really love me”.  Many a member of group X has acquiesced to the wishes of Xs rather than have to endure the public ridicule of not being seen as a member of the group. 

It is in precisely these instances the publicly not taking sides typically constitutes an exercise of great moral strength—a steadfast and public refusal to bow to inappropriate moral pressure.  One declares to all sides that one is not taking sides; and then one does precisely that: One does not take sides. 

The public declaration of neutrality is very important because it makes it very difficult for anyone to distort one’s neutrality, in that one has stood up against everyone at once and this is known.  Living well, I believe, sometimes requires nothing less than a public declaration of neutrality to all parties involved, thus serving notice to all that one will not be manipulated.  While taking such a stance can require considerable moral courage, it is also the case that doing so typically gives one considerable moral leverage.  This is because one has drawn a line in the sand; and it typically suffices to remind people of just that fact. 

Experience shows that those who do not respect that line in the sand are merely interested in dominating one; and this, too, is a point that one make explicit, be it to a parent or to a friend of one’s ethnic group or whomever.  Do you want me (a) to say what is right or (b) merely to agree with whatever it is that you say?  There is no way for anyone to give (b) as an answer. 

Neutrality can be countenanced as a way of being polite when thrust between dueling parties who not interested in doing what is right but gaining domination.  For politeness, as I have already indicated, is a social lubricant and it is not about truth as such. 

The suggestion, then, is that neutrality can be an exceedingly powerful social lubricant when faced with “warring factions”. 

Neutrality can also be countenanced as marvelous form of maturity; for it is the recognition that not disputes can be settled by the weight of reasons, precisely because the weight of reason is the last thing on earth in which the disputing parties have interest. 

Taking the stance of neutrality, then, can be a very profound way of calling attention to just this fact. 

As with many things in life, the intentions with which one performs the behavior make all the difference in the world.  It is true, as I noted at the outset, that sometimes people are neutral because they are afraid of taking a stand. 

Of great significance, however, is the fact this need not be the case at all.  Neutrality can be an exercise of considerable moral courage—a reminder to all involved that one will not be a party to a debate where the aim of doing what is right is utterly irrelevant.  Thus, neutrality can be a most powerful way of calling into question the moral commitments of the parties in question.  A very hard “moral slam” if you will.  Sometimes, moral slamming is very much in order.  The mistake lies in thinking that moral slamming is about yelling this or that from the roof-tops.  Quite the contrary, sometimes the most effective moral slamming that we can do consists in the public refusal to be party to the debate.  It is no doubt true that yelling from the roof-tops has its place.  But so does deafening silence.  Neutrality at its best is silence surfeited with meaning.  It is deafening silence, if you will, that is hollowed by an unfailing commitment to integrity and righteousness.  Neutrality is often the most powerful and effective way to avoid being morally sullied.  At its best, neutrality is not for the weak, but the strong.