o we are to believe that Palestinians in Israel have the standing that blacks once had in the Apartheid days of South Africa.  This is what the University and College Union (UCU) of the United Kingdom would have us believe.  There are not many times in my life when I am going to be this blunt.  But I know from personal experience that this claim on the part of the UCU is nothing but lie.  This I can say without supposing for a moment that, with respect to Palestinians, things are perfect in the State of Israel. 

Here is the personal story.  One of my friends who was born and raised in Palestine but had relocated to Syracuse NY, flew to Tel Aviv with his family to visit family members that had stayed behind in Palestine.  Being in Israel at the time, I went to the airport to greet my friend and his family.  Indeed, an Israeli Jew drove me to the airport.  We talked about one thing and then another on the way to the airport, but the issue of my meeting a Palestinian never came up.  Indeed, the issue never came up with any of my Israeli friends who arranged for me to be taken to the airport. 

What is more, the manner in which my friend was treated at the airport was utterly decent and respectful.  I have gone through the Tel Aviv airport on at least 6 occasions.  And I know for a fact that my Palestinian friend was treated with no more suspicion than I was.  It is not as if I am some public figure and Israeli security was on “good behavior” in front of me.  And since I am very visibly black, it is not as if I just blend right in.

My Palestinian friend speaks a little Hebrew and spoke some Hebrew to my Israeli Jewish friend.  We all exchanged pleasantries, pictures were taken, and my friend and his family went on their merry way. 

As my Israeli friend and I were riding back to Haifa, I explained to him how I met my friend in Syracuse NY of all places; and he that thought my story extremely fascinating, because it pointed to how wonderful things can happen in quite unusual circumstances.  I encountered no gasps from anyone about associating with a Palestinian.

Now, there is nothing in what I have just said that sounds remotely like the experience of blacks during the Apartheid era in South Africa, a country which I have also been very fortunate to visit. 

Turning in a different direction: My trips to Israel have in most cases been to the city of Haifa.  I have lectured at Haifa University.  Indeed, I can even say that I am friends with the President of Haifa University; for he and his family hosted me on a kibbutz.  Moreover, I have shared meals with a very dear Israeli friend and his family, with 3 languages operating in the home during my visits: French between me and the parents; Hebrew between the family members, and English between me and the children.  That was exciting.  But not a word about "those Palestians" was ever blurted out by anyone.  By the way, no such utterances either from the President of Haifa University and his family; and I knew them long before he occupied that position.

At Haifa University there are many Palestinian students.  But on any given day, people got on with the business of learning.  Again, this all sounds nothing like what the experience of blacks was during the Apartheid era in South Africa.

Of course, drawing an analogy to South African Apartheid has enormous moral capital.  But when that analogy is wrong, it is also one of the most malicious things people can do in order to advance their political ends.  To the uninformed, the Apartheid analogy easily has an intuitive appeal, given the right images.  And make no mistake about it: images of destitute Palestinians abound.  No one denies that.  But few are interested in why there are so many destitute Palestinians. 

Might it have anything to do with the leadership of Yasser Arafat?  He is a man who acquired millions of dollars in support for his cause, no small amount of which was given to him by the European Union.  But what did he do with all that money?  Well, he did support a wife in Paris.  And there is something to be said for a man who is willing to support his woman, no matter what.  That has to be the reason why all the pro-Palestinian folks did not criticize him for this.

Did he try to establish a school for Palestinians or a Hunger Center?  Or how about Arafat University?  Had he established a university in his name, nothing would have ever been allowed to bring about its demise.  Had Israeli forces destroyed it: well, that would have been a public relations faux pas the likes of which this planet has never before seen.  But if there is anything I am clear about, I am clear that Israeli forces would have done no such thing. 

Arafat could have set up a university in his name.  But could South African blacks during Apartheid have set up a university?  Absolutely not. 

But there we are letting facts get in the way of a political agenda.  There is nothing like people so committed to an agenda that facts become irrelevant.  And this has become fashionable.  It is also a way of unwittingly committed evil.  And at some point the doing of evil is not so unwittingly insofar as people are more interested in the cause than they are in getting the facts right.

In a word, then, boycotting Israeli academics is morally fulsome simply because there is no analogue in Israel to South African Apartheid.  Not at all. 

This is true even if there various things that can be done by Israelis to improve the plight of Palestinians. 

Why there are lots of things that white Englishmen—those UCU folks, in fact—could be doing to improve the plight of their citizens of color.  Yet, England is a very long ways from anything remotely resembling Apartheid.  One might say the very same thing about France and the United States.  And so on.

No one wants to consider the fact that part of the problem with Palestinians is that they have been betrayed by their leaders.  Moreover, taking a page from black Americans apparently, Palestinians have been poisoned not to be critical of their leaders. 

Then there is the simple truth that ideological greed has gotten in the way.  Ideological greed?  What is that.  It has seemed to many in the Arab world that there is no reason to cooperate with Israel because it will be easy enough to destroy it. 

So where there could have been a rich spirit of cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians there has been next to none, precisely because Palestinians have been feed the belief that Israel’s demise is imminent or, in any case, fighting with Israel is morally superior to cooperating with them. 

Once again, the UCU does not want to hear any of this.  After all, scholars all worked up are running around with moral outrage.  Why, on earth let mere facts get in the way when there is a very easy target.

Well, I conclude with this observation.  It is the UCU that reminds me of whites in the Jim Crow south of the United States.  It was much easier back then for whites to blame an innocent black than trouble themselves with getting at the truth about a crime committed against a white person.  And many an innocent black was blamed and tried and found guilty.  Why?  Because the black happened to be in the vicinity when the crime was committed by a white.

Folks of the UCU: Your call for a boycott of Israeli scholars is painfully akin to the racist whites of the Old South in the United States.  Like them, you have merely fixed upon the most vulnerable target.  By contrast, there is simply no comparison between Israel’s general moral posture towards Palestinians and the bile that constituted South African Apartheid.  This is so manifestly obvious to the naked eye that the fact that you UCU folks are so intent upon ignoring this very differential supports the opening claim of this paragraph.

To the members of the UCU: Your moral outrage on behalf of Palestinians is a farce, since it is not about the facts.

hould Norman Finkelstein have been granted tenure at DePaul University?  I hold unequivocally that he should have been.  He is a most provocative scholar of international fame; and the evidence suggests that he is also a superb instructor.  However, I am quite distributed by what I have read by so many of those who defend him.  A pristine example of what I have in mind can be found at the blog entitled Dar Al-Hayat.  The essay in question is written by Jihad el-Khazen and is entitled “The [DePaul] University President is a Coward.  However, if I were Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, the President of DePaul University, my thought would be that the defenders of Finkelstein are doing him far more harm than good.  In what follows, I shall comment upon the apparent strategy of Finkelstein's supporters.  But first a word about the significance of his work from a scholarly perspective. 

Now, those who defend Finkelstein essentially make the following two claims: (a) Everything that Finkelstein has said in his criticisms of Israel is true.  (b) Everything that Finkelstein has said in his defense of Palestinians is true.  This is not just high praise.  It is utterly incredulous praise.  No one is that good, no matter how creative the person might be. 

From Plato to Kant to Einstein, people have had substantive criticisms to raise against the views put forward by these undeniable geniuses. 

On every conceivable account, John Rawls changed the face of moral and political theory with his acclaimed book A Theory of Justice (1971).  Yet also sorts of ingenuous criticisms have been made against Rawls’s argument.  Outside of philosophy, Erving Goffman comes to mind for his landmark work in sociology and C. Van Woodward comes to mind for his landmark work in black history and Robert L. Trivers comes to mind for his landmark work in sociobiology.  Yet, no one thinks that any of these people got everything right in the field. 

When it comes to a matter as controversial as the Israel-Palestinian conflict, nothing on the face of this earth would be more stunning than if one side were right in every conceivable way, and the other side were wrong in every conceivable way.  I cannot emphasize this enough: No side in this controversial matter is 100% right or 100% wrong.

Now, it is simply an indisputable truth that one can learn much from a person with whom one disagrees mightily.  Indeed, one’s intellectual debt of gratitude toward the person can be enormous.  So it is not as if everyone and anyone has to think that Finkelstein got everything right in order to make the claim that his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has changed the terms of the debate, or that it has brought about a conceptual shift in how one should look at the conflict. 

But to go on and on and on about how it is that Finkelstein has only uttered truths in his criticisms of Israel and that those who defend Israel have only uttered lies is tantamount to nothing but vapid praise—praise so incredulous that it has credibility only with those who are ideologues regarding the issue. 

Therein lies the reason why I maintain that if I were Rev. Holtschneider, my thought would be that Finkelstein’s supporters are doing him more harm than good.  And the proof of this essentially lies in what they are asking Rev. Holtschneider to believe, namely that Finkelstein is right in every single respect in his critique of Israel and Alan Dershowitz is wrong in every single respect in his defense of Israel.  Well, how plausible is that?  Thus, if I were the President of DePaul University, I would quite naturally think that these people must take me to be a fool if that is what they are asking me to believe.  Accordingly, so my reasoning would continue, I have quite solid grounds to dismiss out of hand their support of Finkelstein. 

Even the highest praise fails if it is incredulous praise; and the claim that a person is right about every single thing is just that: woefully incredulous.  If the tenure letters written on Finkelstein’s behalf were of this genre, then his supporters unwittingly gave Rev. Holtschneider a way out in his decision to overturn the recommendation to grant Finkelstein tenure. 

I am beginning to get an inkling of an insight into what has gone wrong in Finkelstein’s career.  He has, in fact, polarized folks in ways that have done him more harm than good.  One has to be an ideologue to accept as every true every critical remark that he has made about Israel and the Holocaust.  Being a child of parents who survived the Holocaust may very well give him a unique moral status.  It does not, however, make all that he says true.  Nor, again, does it mean that he may criticize others in the most vituperative and venomous manner poassible, as he has in fact done, and yet expect his criticisms to be heard. 

Unfortunately, it would seem that Finkelstein has been too besotted with his standing as a child of Holocaust survivors to see this; and those hostile to Israel have been absolutely drunk with delight that he, a child of Holocaust survivors, should take the stances that he takes.  Thus, Finkelstein has allowed himself to become the darling of those who see Israel as the present day equivalent of Nazi Germany or, even worse, those who think Israel should be wiped off the map. 

Quite simply, this is an alignment, which Finkelstein seems to have fostered, that gets in the way of the critical truths that he has to make, regarding either Israel or the Holocaust mentality, being heard by those who do not think that the world would be better off without Israel.  I am not a university president, but if I were and Finkelstein were coming up for tenure, I must confess, in view of these considerations, that I might think twice about making the final decision to award him tenure.  There is something absolutely despicable about persons letting themselves be used in nefarious ways by others, even if such persons are Jews and the children of Holocaust survivors. 

As I have already said, and I shall say it again: Finkelstein deserves tenure.  And it is abominable, in so many respects, that he does not already have it.  But this requires looking beyond the facts.  For it is simply false to the point of being beyond the pale of reason that every critical remark Finkelstein has made of Israel and every supportive remark he has made of Palestinians is true.  And the fact that his supporters say this so blithely—as if they were merely noting that water is wet—reveals just how lacking in credibility his supporters are. 

For the record: I would think it just as implausible to hold that Israel is right about everything and that Palestinians are wrong about everything.  This is already implied by what I have said.  But someone will not make the inference.  Indeed, someone will insist that I am insincere here. 

At its best and most profound, Finkelstein's work is not just about Jews and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Rather, it is about the proper weight, regardless of the group of individuals in question, to be given to suffering across time.  To the extent that Finkelstein fails to grasp and to underscore and to keep in full view this significance regarding his work, he may be his own worse enemy.    

rom the fact that I am and should be entirely free to say certain things and to do certain things, what simply does not follow—not in the least—is that your disapproval of what I say and do is thereby out of order.  And, of course, it goes the other way around: from the fact that you are free to do and say certain things, it most surely does not follow that I am out of order in disapproving of what you say and do.  Modern democracies throughout the world seem to have lost sight of this truth. 

Time and time again, the response to criticism is the banal utterance “I have a right to behave in this way”, as if having a legal right to engage in the behavior in question thereby made that behavior acceptable or decent or immune to criticism. 

You will notice, for instance, that the idea of women dressing “slutty” is increasingly receding into the moral background.  Now, the explanation for this, surely, is hardly that women are no longer dressing slutty or that we now see that we were entirely mistaken in thinking that this was even a possibility.  Quite the contrary, there are respects in which things have gotten progressively worse.  Why, showing “Ass and Tits” to the point of being absolutely lewd has become the order of the day.  We fastly approaching the point where there is not enought wardrobe to have a wardrobe malfunction.

What has happened, of course, is that women started insisting that “They have a right” to dress this way.  A like line of reasoning applies to the use of profanity that has infiltrated the airwaves. 

Now, I wish someone would tell me just how it follows from the truth that women have a right to so dress precludes others from having the right to say that women who so dress themselves are dressing slutty?  There is no calculus of rights that yields that result.  The same holds for speech.

Philosophers are quick to invoke John Stuart Mill’s “No Harm Principle”.   However, the very man who asserted that principle, namely J. S. Mill, also thought that approbation and disapprobation played a fundament role in maintaining a good society. 

What he surely had in mind is that there are social ideals towards people should aspire but which society should not require of people.  This point is very easily seen with speech.  Suppose I make the egregiously ungrammatical utterance “Me ain’t not feeling good”.  You will no doubt have understood the point I am trying to convey; and surely it can be said that I have a right to speak that way.  But just as surely there are a number of ways in which I am open to criticism if I do speak that way; and it would be just plain absurd to suppose that you may not raise those criticisms.  Indeed, you ought to raise them notwithstanding the fact that it is unmistakably true that I have a right to speak as I did. 

Without soaring to the heights of Shakespearian eloquence, there is a vastly superior way of speaking; and you should remind me of this rather than give me the impression that what I have said is “Just lovely”. 

The same applies to dress.  Suppose I, a professor, were to lecture in jeans half-way down my buttocks, with the upper-half of my underwear showing while wearing a do-rag.  Do I not have a right to dress in that manner for my lectures?  Absolutely.  After all, I am not harming anyone; and my attire does not impact upon my ability to speak with precision and eloquence. 

But it goes without saying that my wearing such attire is inappropriate on a number of levels.  So it is, notwithstanding the fact that I act perfectly within my rights in wearing such attire.  More importantly, I very much hope that if I should ever show up to lecture thus attired, then all those who know me would find the wherewithal to express their disapprobation for my wearing what I unquestionably have a right to wear.  

The right to behave in a certain way does not preclude moral disapprobation, and so moral criticism, on the part of others.  Mill never supposed that it did, though one would not know that from the cavalier way in which his name is invoked in support of this or that form of outrageous behavior. 

Roughly put, rights reflect the baseline below which we should not fall.  They do not constitute either an excuse or a justification to be indifferent to or to ignore the zenith of excellence of which human beings are capable. 

Mill understood that excellence at its best has its source in the inspiration that we receive from others as opposed to some obligation imposed upon us by society.  Accordingly, Mill was not the champion of what passes for modern liberalism; for modern liberalism seems to have a disdain for excellence and anyone who would dare to expect it from others. 

It is striking that the call for excellence is invariably countenanced as imposing one’s values; whereas the insistence upon being utterly mediocre is always countenanced as none other than the exercise of one’s rights. 

Needless to say, the call for excellence is not an imposition of values.  Rather, it is a public challenge that a person should re-think her or his behavior.  Anyone who engages in this or that public behavior should not be threatened by the challenge.  Quite the contrary, she or he should take the challenge as an opportunity to make the case for her or his view.  By contrast, the sustained insistence upon mediocre behavior is certainly one of the ways in which the values of society change.  In both cases, then, the prevailing values of society are at stake. 

The downfall of modern democracy is ineluctably tied to the mistaken view that criticism has no place with regard to behavior that people have the right to engage in.  This is the downfall of democracy because the widespread acceptance of this view makes the public valorization of excellence unacceptable.  Accordingly, with the widespread acceptance of the view that criticism of mediocrity is out of order the many oasis of inspiration to be excellent, namely the public valorization of excellence, invariably dry up. 

We miss this truth because we are brimming with satisfaction.  It is a truth, however, that Mill saw from afar.  After all, it was he who exclaimed that it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.  Modern liberalism, alas, takes issue with precisely that truth, suggesting that being a satisfied pig is, in the end, the one and only thing that we can all agree upon.  The idea of excellence, modern liberalism tells us, has no real claim to our assent because what counts as excellence is just someone's opinion. 

uite obviously, the three items mentioned in the title of this blog-entry are rather unrelated—unless, perhaps, one wants to say that each represents some sort of flaw.  That, however, is not the tactic that I shall take.  Indeed, I want to put American Slavery on one side and the other two—the war in Iraq and Paris Hilton—on the other.  This is because initial reflections regarding American Slavery some hundreds of years ago raise deep, deep questions regarding the way in which we think about the latter two.  As one might imagine, the issue of moral objectivity comes into play.

If American Slavery reveals anything, it reveals that moral right and wrong has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people concur with the view in question.  For time was when the majority of people throughout the world clearly supposed that there was nothing wrong with slavery in general or the enslavement of blacks in particular. 

Needless to say, we don’t look back and say “Slavery was all right back then, but it is terribly wrong now, because most people nowadays think that slavery is wrong unlike what most people back then thought”.  Surely, the right or wrong of slavery—like the right or wrong of rape or gratuitous killing—has nothing whatsoever to do with what most people think.  The issue of slavery, however, serves the discussion well precisely because an about-face did occur in the way in which people thought about slavery. 

It is, of course, absolutely wonderful that most people nowadays take slavery to be morally wrong.  But the point, obviously, is that it is not this fact that makes slavery wrong.  Not at all.

The relevance of these remarks to the war in Iraq and Paris Hilton is that many people seem to think that public opinion alone determines what is right about these matters. 

At the very height of American Slavery, the Quakers grasped the insight that slavery is wrong.  And they acted accordingly.  They did not take a poll to see whether or not they should revise their opinion.  It is most frightening to think that if we were fighting the issue of American Slavery today, where the sentiments regarding slavery were identical to those of yesteryear, a poll would be taken and it would determined that people with a Quaker-like mindset should simply be ignored as being out of step with the majority. 

We have been deluged with stories about Paris Hilton going to jail (just as we were deluged with stories about Anna Nicole Smith).  It is as if no issue in the world was more important than the news about Paris Hilton (or Anna Nicole Smith).  But surely that cannot possibly be right. 

Now, I have been informed by a most reliable source that the media focuses upon a Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith story because as a matter of fact that is what the public wants to hear about.  I do not dispute that assessment.  Rather, the assessment is a source of deep concern to me; for it is indicative of the fact that we as a Americans have a deep, deep problem with perspective in terms of our assessment of what is important. 

It is the very same public that generally thinks that the war in Iraq is morally wrong. 

Now, I am not going to argue the issue of the war here.  Rather, I merely wish to make the following observation.  Suppose that every time a person saw the slightest expression of affection between a couple (not heavy petting), but the sort of beautiful smile that only lovers can give to one another): suppose that every time a person saw such behavior, the individual stormed out of the room in disgust.  Needless to say, I would hardly put my trust in that individual’s assessment of social interaction between romantic couples. 

Accordingly, it would seem that if the vast majority of people in a society think that what happened to Paris Hilton (or Smith’s death) is the most newsworthy story for not merely an hour but for days and weeks to come, then surely there is reason to believe that their perspective in general regarding what counts as important is not to be trusted. 

As we know, people can be right but for the wrong reasons.  Unfortunately, this is not very comforting.  After all, some people thought that black slavery was wrong because proximity to blacks tainted the moral character of whites.  This gets to the right conclusion regarding slavery but for a reason that is massively unsatisfactory. 

All the people who think that the news about Paris Hilton going to jail is the most important story to come along in weeks or even months could be right in thinking that the war in Iraq is wrong and utterly misguided.  But the problem is that their reasons for thinking that the war is wrong are likely to be massively unsatisfactory.  The right conclusion is not enough.  One also needs the right reasons for that conclusion.  And once more, as the case of American Slavery most poignantly reminds us: public opinion as such is not at all a measure of truth.

I have effectively said what we all know, namely that numbers as such are not a measure of truth.  A sentence like “Everybody thinks that” can rightly have its intended force only because it is elliptical for “Every right thinking or decent individual thinks that”. 

The proviso “right thinking” or “decent individual” puts very strong constraints on what counts as an acceptable reason.  Thus, the utterance “Everybody thinks that rape is wrong” has the force it has precisely because it is implicitly understood that we radically discount the views of those who think rape is wrong merely because "it takes too much effort while yielding too little satisfaction". 

We need moral objectivity.  We need it to make sense of the wrong of slavery and the wrong of rape.  We need for individuals to embrace the right reasons for why these deeds are wrong.

But something has gone frighteningly wrong.  I have heard people make the following utterance: “In my opinion rape is wrong”.  My question, of course, is always “What on earth is the point of saying in your opinion?”  And I am stunned by the number of people (including feminist female students among them) who, rather than immediately drop the words “in my opinion”, go on to talk about not wanting to impose their views upon others. 

Insofar as this counts as moral progress, it is extremely frightening.  It is moral progress that makes Paris Hilton the most important news story to break in months.  And it is moral progress that would have left blacks enslaved or, in any case, it would have left the existence of slavery subject to an opinion poll.  Against, this backdrop much of what people say regarding the war in Iraq is utterly meaningless to me.  And I trust that you now understand why.  This I can say without at all taking a stand on the war; and, indeed, I have very scrupously not done so in these remarks.

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.

t a lecture given at Syracuse University, Mr. Elie Wiesel made a statement that had a weight that only a person with his history could give it. He remarked that there was no excuse, let alone justification, for hatred.  This was a blanket statement that he made; there was not a single qualification that followed it.  One could hear and feel the sense of astonishment in the audience of some 1500 people.  No doubt I was among them; for I do not much remember what else he said that evening.  But I shall no doubt carry to my grave that one utterance. 

“What”, one might ask, “has any of this to do with the family?” 

My answer is twofold: One is that Mr. Wiesel was surely deeply loved by his parents.  The other is that his parents never taught him to hate; nor did they tolerate sentiments of that kind from him.  Thus, the argument of this entry shall push some of the views presented in The Family and the Political Self much further than I had originally supposed that they could be pushed.

Of course, precisely what made Mr. Wiesel’s utterance so weighty is the very fact that he was a man who had been through the Holocaust.  It has become rather fashionable to hold that having been a victim of sustained evil excuses if not justifies hatred towards members of the group who inflicted the evil.  The individuals hated not themselves have inflicted the evil.  They need only share the racial or ethnic or tribal group membership with those who did. 

Against this backdrop Wiesel’s remark about hatred had an absolutely unnerving poignancy to them.  For all of us in the audience understood immediately we could not possibly excuse, let alone justify, much of the hostility that we have over this and that.

But does parental love at its best protect us against being fertile soil for hatred?  Well, perhaps Elie Wiesel has a witness in history, namely Frederick Douglas.  Douglas’s autobiography is about his moral triumphs rather than his hatred as such for whites. 

Group hatred requires a deep internalization of the other as evil—and not just a passing unfortunate experience.  For all of us have had some unfortunate experience from one person and then another.  Indeed, we have all been harmed by people who belong to the very same group to which we take ourselves to belong and of which we are generally recognized as being a member. 

The point here is that the internalization of a group as evil is not so much based upon experiences as it is upon the values that our parents have instilled in us or an ideology that fully engulfs us.  The proof of this comes from a rather unexpected quarter, namely the reality of rape itself.

No one doubts the depth of the pain of rape.  Yet, there are comparatively few women who sustain a hatred of men on account of having been raped.  And if that single horror does not regularly occasion hatred, then it is rather unlikely that our psychological make-up is such that most other unfortunate experiences will do so.  But on my view, it is easy enough to explain why rape does not typically occasion sustained and abiding hatred of men on the part of women. 

Men are typically valorized in the home and in society, college campuses being the exception rather than the norm.  There is almost no context for the sustained of hatred of men to obtain a purchase upon the lives of women.  Hatred of a group requires not just being hurt by this or that member of a group but a kind of re-conceptualization of the group as vile.  This does not require that the members of the group do anything but only that they exist. 

I have picked the family as the center of this sort of thing for two reasons: (a) children at birth are absolutely oblivious to racial and ethnic differences.  (b) It is an unvarnished truth that a wealth of internalization takes place in a child’s life before she or he ever uttered a word.  Accordingly, much of the internalization has to be through non-verbal behavior in addition to expressions of likes and dislikes or approval and disapproval regarding what goes on around the child.  Indeed, expressions of interest and disinterest make all the difference in the world.

It should not surprise anyone that an awfully lot of hatred is communicated in the privacy of the home.  To be sure, no one ever quite uses the verbal rhetoric of hatred.  But we get the functional equivalent of hate by the time sum up the expressions of approval and disapproval, and by the time we sum up the things that are countenanced as interesting and uninteresting. 

By the time the parents get finish with all of this the result is an emotional imprimatur that is next to impossible for most of us to shake.  If that imprimatur is of the right kind, then nothing even remotely akin to hatred is apt to obtain a purchase upon our lives.  If that imprimatur is of the wrong kind, then it takes next to nothing for hatred to do so. 

Aside from massive ideological situations like Nazi Germany the seeds of sustained hatred are sewn by the family more than any place us.  As I have already indicated, the problem cannot be the paradigmatic bad experience; for rape is such an experience and the rape of women does not intractably lead to the hatred of men.  It never has.   

On the other hand, with the wrong kind of imprimatur in place, it turns out to be true enough that all it takes is a sufficiently bad experience. 

My view, then, is that the moral imprimatur of our lives starts with the family.  And if things go terribly awry there, then fertile soil for group hatred has been put in place.

Let me be clear here.  There are lots of things that can go wrong in the family that have nothing whatsoever to do with paving the way for group hatred.  For families can be dysfunctional in a myriad of ways that make no reference at all to hatred of any form. 

The profoundly interesting point is that families make all the difference in the world in terms of genuine acceptance.  That has to be right.  Hatred has been going on for centuries now and it shows no sign at all of abating.  Hatred has mounted even as the biological evidence of our equal humanity has become all but irrefutable. 

From an evolutionary point of view, the most important difference between a child and an adult is size.  It is we who are adults who make other factors equally relevant.  And that, too, starts in the family. 

Nothing perpetuates moral excellence like a family that is morally excellent.  This we all seem to accept.  The problem, alas, is that we have a symmetry here in that it is equally true that nothing perpetuates evil like the family.  As with truths in general, this latter truth about the family will not disappear because we do not like it or because it makes us uncomfortable.

In a sense much larger than most of us would dare to imagine: We have met the enemy and it is, indeed, us. 

Of course, it is possible to make things better.  That is always possible.  However, that requires one terribly small admission, namely the admission that something is wrong.  And the rush away from objectivity has effectively derailed that.  “It is all good” nowadays.  Not good for the family, not good for the children in the family, and not good for society.  But terribly good for the continuation of evil itself.

Thank You Mr. Wiesel for an inspiration that I never saw coming.