t is a truth that not everything is about race even when different races are involved.  Given what goes on in the United States these days, one would not know that this is a truth.  A most recent and flagrant example of someone who has racialized a matter although race was almost certainly not the factor that he has made it out to be is Father Michael Pfleger, speaking at the Trinity United Church for Christ on 25 May 2008.  His claim is that the reason why Hilary Clinton has been distraught is that simply that a black man, namely Barack Obama, has upstaged her in the race for the democratic nominee for the 2008 presidential race.  In particular, the charge is that Obama, a black man has deprived her of what she, as a white person, felt was hers by entitlement, namely the democratic nomination. 

Father Pfleger is, at once, so very wrong and so very right.  It would seem that he is absolutely right in his thinking that Hilary Clinton felt entitled to the nomination.  Indeed, a mere six months ago—December of 2007—it seemed almost certain that she would get it.  But this sense of entitlement on her part most certainly had nothing to do with her being white per se.  Certainly, the sense of entitlement she had did not operate only with respect to blacks.  Not at all. 

Hilary Clinton’s sense entitlement held across the board, regardless of ethnicity or gender or whatever.  Her credentials as former first-lady for 8 years and a current United States senator for the State of New York were thought to give her a lock on the nomination, no matter who any other candidate might be. Certainly, it would not have occurred to her or anyone else that someone manifestly junior to her in experience would be able to upstage her.  Once more, this line of thought held regardless of race or gender or whatever.

It is sheer nonsense; it is petty; and it is malicious to hold that it was only against blacks (or some other minority group) that she supposed that her lock on the nomination was utterly secure.  Indeed, insofar as she was thought to have a lock on the democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential race, she had to have thought that this lock held against white men as well. 

There is simply no reason whatsoever to think that had a white male upstaged her in an Obama-like fashion that Hilary Clinton would have thought “Oh my, I guess I was wrong.  I concede to Mr. White Male”.  Indeed, I suspect that she would have attacked Mr. White Male in a most vituperative manner precisely because the issue of race would not have been a factor.  She could have said any dirty thing she wanted about Mr. White Male without anyone supposing that her motives are racist. 

Not so with Obama, however.  The least critical thing said about him by Hilary Clinton is easily viewed as an expression of racism on her part at some level or the other.  And in a very real sense this is profoundly unfair to her; for if there is anything we know, it is that that the presidential campaigns becomes horrendously vicious, as each candidate does whatever it takes to undermine the credibility of the other. 

This I say—not because I support Hilary Clinton—but because it is the truth.  In the United States, a black can say with impunity just anything he damn well pleases against whites as a group (and so cases of legal slander and libel aside).  One would have to be socially naïve to the nth degree not to know this.  

It is beyond question that Father Michael Pfleger knows this.  It is beyond question that Barack Obama knows this.  It is also beyond question that this truth—namely the truth that blacks can criticize whites with impunity but not the other way around—gives Obama a very significant advantage over any white candidate.  It is disingenuous for anyone to deny this truth.  It is disingenuous for blacks to deny this.  It is disingenuous for Barack Obama to deny this truth.  Likewise for Father Pfleger.

Father Michael Pfleger has viciously and malicious racialized the sense of entitlement with which Hilary Clinton began the race for the democratic presidential nominee; and in so doing, he has done considerable damage to the American political landscape. 

An Uncle Tom is a black who, at the expense of his own moral self-worth plays to whites.  Alas, modernity has produced a white counterpart to the Uncle Tom.  Perhaps we should call such a white an Uncle Teddy!  Father Michael Pfleger is an Uncle Teddy. 

Speaking at the Trinity United Church of Christ on 25 May 2008, Father Pfleger made himself all but indistinguishable in style of delivery from any traditional fiery black preacher.  Just as whites used the Uncle Tom to legitimate their morally warped views of blacks, the blacks at the Trinity United Church of Christ used Father Pfleger, their Uncle Teddy, to legitimate their morally warped views of whites.  On behalf of blacks, Father Pfleger is playing the race card.

Father Pfleger could have truthfully spoken about Hilary Clinton’s sense of entitlement to the democratic presidential nomination without turning her into one who harbors deep racist sentiments against blacks.  One hardly needs the view that she is racist in order to make sense of her being tremendously disappointed.  Anyone in her shoes would be—including Obama himself.  If tomorrow, a Black-Latino lesbian were to upstage Obama, we can all be absolutely certain that he would be sorely disappointed.  It would make no sense at all to claim that his disappointment is owing to either his sexism or his heterosexism or whatever.  For he would be rightly disappointed for the obvious reasons, namely that the victory that he thought would be his was suddenly snatched away from him.  Obama would have to be other than human in order not to be extraordinarily disappointed. 

The only difference is that if the person were a white individual rather than, say, a Black-Latino lesbian, Obama and his supporters could cry racism.  And this is to turn the idea of racial equality into something that is very morally obnoxious and inherently unstable, involving three untenable theses: (1) whenever a black loses to a white, it is racism; whenever a white is disappointed in losing to a black it is racism on the white’s part.  By contrast, (2) whenever a black wins over a white, the only explanation is talent and none other than talent on the part of the blac.  Together, theses (1) and (2) entail another thesis, namely that (3) the black candidate is always better than, and so more qualified than, the white candidate.   Needless to say, not only is (3) false, it is absurdly false in every conceivable way. 

Accordingly, insofar as the idea of racial equality embraced by blacks sits upon these three theses, it is not racial equality at all.  Rather, it is an unvarnished claim to racial superiority.  Alas, the claim of racial superiority is not more palatable when blacks are the one who are claiming to be superior. 

American may or may not yet be ready for a black president.  The irony, however, is that one very poignant reason why America may not yet be ready for a black president is that there are both blacks and, as Father Michael Pfleger makes abundantly clear, whites who embrace theses (1) – (3). 

Now, it does seem that the Father Pfleger's projects have benefited financially from the good priest's association with Barack Obama.  Which unsavory alternative do we have here: racism as usual or business as usual? 

verything has its place.  While it is undeniably true that nothing in either heaven or on earth can replace parental love, it is equally true that that nothing whatsoever replaces public affirmation.  The respect that the proverbial little old lady used to receive from young people was none other than a form of public affirmation.  One politely said “Yes ma’am” even if one went right back to doing what one was doing as soon as she was out of sight.  Again, the pat on the head accompanied with a compliment that children used to receive routinely from adults who were otherwise strangers was none other than a form of public affirmation; and the child, of course, was instructed to say “Thank you” to the adult. 

In one sense, each of these moments of public affirmation was utterly trivial.  No adult or child needed any particular one of those moments of public affirmation.  No life would have been devastated in the absence of any particular instance of public affirmation.  Yet, the accumulative affect of each one of these trivial forms of public affirmation was in fact a tidal wave of affirmation that made a dramatic difference for the better in the life of each person who experienced them. 

Just because a single instance of this or that form of affirmation is trivial, what simply does not follow at all is that lots of instances of those forms of affirmation over time also turn out to be trivial.  Indeed, this is manifestly false.  The case of parental love itself reveals this to be so.

In the great scheme of things, no single kiss from a parent, as the child heads off to school, makes a difference in the child’s life.  No one is apt to even notice if, on a given day, the parent did not kiss the child as the child headed off to school.  Yet, if anything is clear, it is clear that the accumulative effect of all those trivial kisses reveals a depth of parental love that majestically affirms the child. 

Indeed, every teenage male who makes a fuss about his mother “slobbering” all over him with a kiss, would have a life of enormous emotional vapidity were his mother never to do such a thing.

Now, I hold the following very simple thesis: Lives shorn of deep emotional affirmation are lives that are ripe for unruly rebellious behavior.  This is because there is a kind of psychological tranquility, stemming from an unshakable sense of self-worth, that comes only in the wake of deep emotional affirmation; and deep emotional affirmation can only come from others.  Unruly rebellious behavior is not merely about challenging the status quo.  A defining feature of such behavior is that it is woefully self-destructive.

If all it took to have a profound and unshakable sense of self-worth is simply saying that one has self-worth, then blacks would be second to none in this regard.  From sayings like “I am black and I am proud” to songs like “I can be anything I want to be” to labels such as “African-American”, blacks have been remarkably creative in saying that they have self-worth. 

Yet, no one can think for a moment that in point of fact self-worth is an abiding feature of the black community—“the hood”, in particular.  This is because if it were, then the enormous self-destructive behavior that is characteristic of the black community simply would not take place.  A defining feature of “the hood” is unruly rebellious behavior. 

If I am right, then the real lesson to be gleamed from the unruly rebelliousness that we see in “the hood” is not simply that blacks do not have their act together.  Rather, the lesson is that the horrendous behavior we see in the hood foreshadows what we as a society will become like in the absence of genuine forms of public affirmation. 

Modern liberal society is paradoxical in that, on the one hand, it proliferates rights while, on the other, it radically undermines the very idea of public affirmation.  Rights in modern liberal society have come to be a weapon—a way of forcing the “other” to cower.  Consequently, as rights are understood nowadays, rights have little, if anything, to do with affirming the humanity of all members of society.  And the proof of this is that talk of rights has become radically particularized. 

There are the rights the elderly claim to have and there are the rights that women claim to have and there the rights that gays claim to have and there the rights that each minority group claims to have.  And so on.  There is no general affirmation of humanity.  For these rights claims are in many respects fundamentally inconsistent with one another. 

In the meantime, goodwill is evaporating.  This should come as no surprise, since the language of rights nowadays is about little more than extracting things from others in order to serve the interests of groups.  We no longer affirm others. Rather, we merely accede to their demands. 

As goodwill goes, so goes public affirmation.  And that necessarily makes society a less desirable—nay, in due course, an undesirable—place in which to live.  It is just this sort of social reality that is fertile ground for unruly rebelliousness.  For in a most disturbing sense, society becomes just the opposite of what was characterized by John Dunne in the immortal words that “No Man is an Island”. 

Modern society has turned its citizens into islands.  We do not salubriously affirm one another’s humanity.  Rather, we begrudgingly acknowledge it.  And this is the context in which children now live their lives and grow up to become adults.  Indeed, it is thought to be good for children that strangers now give them wide berth.  One consequence of this is that children grow up less appreciative of the society in which they live.  Another is that the kind of regard for the other that has been deemed a natural extension of the self is well on its way to vanishing.  Today, it is mere simple modes of courtesy and politeness.  This, tomorrow, will transform into an utter disregard for others.  And this will do in the name of some right or the other that we just cannot live without. 

Tbe real problem, however, is that our lives will be shorn of what we really cannot live without, namely public affirmation; and we will be too far in the throes of unruly rebellious behavior to grasp this reality.  Either that, or we will be too far gone to do anything about it. 

Here may very well be formal reasons for why ultimately Evil will win over Good.  One reason is that an agent of Evil can at any time require people to what is egregiously wrong in order to advance the cause of Evil.  That is, Evil can proceed by any means necessary, coercing people into performing the most despicable acts even to innocent people.  By definition, however, the Good cannot triumph by forcing people to perform despicable acts.  Another reason is that Evil can employ the most duplicitous means imaginable in order to advance its ends.  Evil has no qualms cheating the proverbial little old lady out of her life’s savings.  Not so with the Good, however. The Good may not advance its ends by doing that which is evil. 

One way of succinctly putting the difference between Evil and Good is that courage is at best ancillary to the advancement of even horrendous forms of Evil.  By contrast, it would seem that Good can triumph over Evil only if the agents of the Good are tremendously courage—even to the point of being willing to put their life on the line.  And that, alas, might very well be an insurmountable problem.  For no one can be morally required to put her or his life on the line in order to advance the cause of Good.  And no one can rightly put another’s life on the line in order to do so.  Thus, where the hands of agents of Goodness are considerably constrained when it comes to advancing the cause of the Good; agents of Evil essentially have free rein. 

The only respect in which ordinary citizens can be morally expected to put their lives on the line for another human being would seem to be in the case of parents on behalf of their children.  And even here the children have to be young.  No one thinks that a 70 year old mother, for example, is morally required to put her life on the line to save any of her adult children.  Otherwise, ordinary citizens may morally excuse themselves from any and all activities that require them to put their very lives on the line.  And such individuals may not resort to duplicitous and coercive means in order to advance the cause of Goodness. 

From these considerations, it follows that Evil simply has the upper hand. 

It is in this light that the people of France’s small town, Le Chambon, stands as such a moral marvel.  In the endeavor to save the lives of thousands of Jews, the people of Le Chambon risked their lives by standing up to the might of Hitler’s military force. 

It stands as something of a miracle that Hitler did not simply wipe this town out.  More importantly, and this gets to the very heart of the matter, had the people of Le Chambon refused to put their lives at risk, including the lives of their children, simply no one could possibly have blamed them. 

The lives of thousands of Jews were spared because the people of Le Chambon chose to do what no one could ever have rightly claimed that they were morally obligated to do.

Of course, there is lots and lots of morally decent behavior that does not require people to put their lives on the line and so which we are all rightly expected to perform.  Basic honesty and considerateness and kindness are an eliminable part of being morally decent.  However, it is exceedingly rare that it is moral behavior of this kind that will undermine the advances of brazen Evil.  Basic honesty and kindness would not have sufficed to save Jews from Hitler’s army.  In order to accomplish that, the extraordinary courage of the townspeople of Le Chambon—the courage to put their very lives on the line—was unequivocally necessary. 

It is not just that most people do not have that kind of courage.  What is most poignantly the case is that most people cannot be expected to have that kind of courage.  No matter how much we admire those who have such courage, it is true nonetheless that no one is open to moral criticism for not having such extraordinary courage. 

Unless I am missing something, what formally and inescapably follows these considerations is that Evil is favored to triumph over Good. 

Occasioning fear for our well-being, or the well-being of our loved-ones, is one of Evil’s greatest weapons.  And there are virtually no limits to what can be done to give rise to a deep and abiding fear on the part of individuals.  And where fear prevails, courage is easily vanquished. 

 Here is a final difference.  One does not have to be evil as such in order to be a pawn in the service of evil.  It suffices that one lacks the courage to stand up to evil because, for example, one is incapacitated by fear.  By contrast, there can be no pawns in the service of Good.  Either people are committed to doing the Good or, with very rare exception, the Good does not get done.  Or, to put the point another way: it is much easier for Evil to capitalize upon indifference and the like than it is for Good to capitalize upon indifference and so on. 

Indifference could easily have resulted in the people of Le Chambon not saving a single a Jew.  However, it is well-nigh impossible that indifference could have contributed to saving the life of a single Jew. 

The Good is rarely if ever advanced as a result of indifference; whereas Evil almost always is.

he ideal of free speech should not in any way whatsoever be a haven for purveyors of child porn.  And it is this very straightforward truth that animated Justice Antonin Scalia’s thinking in his opinion rendered in the case of United Stated v. Williams, which was a 7-2 decision against Williams.  Nor, again, should it turn out that commonsense modes of expression serve as a cover for the dissemination of child porn.  Thus, in allowing that a picture sent to the grandparents of 3-year old Cambria or Zephyr taking a bath is not pornographic, we do not want the social implicature of that truth to be that pictures of child pornography must also be permitted.  Justice Scalia’s opinion is infused with this level of commonsense. 

The reference here is to the Protect Act of 2003, where “protect” is an acronym for Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today.     

The Court’s decision here has a profound brilliance to it.  Effectively, the argument goes rather like this.  Suppose that Opidopo produces computer-generated images of children engaged in various acts of sex, where the computer generate images are utterly indistinguishable from pictures of actual children engaged in various acts of sex.  Well, as disgusting as we may find this, what is true nonetheless is that Opidopo knows beyond any reasonable doubt that the images are computer generated, and thus are not in any way real.  After all, he generated them. 

Now suppose that Jacob obtains these pictures from Opidopo.  How does Jacob know that he is getting solely computer-generated pictures from Opidopo as opposed to pictures that involve actual children?  The answer is a very simple one: It will take something far more substantial than a mere declaration that the porn is virtual porn and none other than virtual porn.  Jacob will need to get assurance that this is so; Opidopo will need to provide that assurance.  This is the essence of the Court's 7-2 vote upholding the Protect Act of 2003.

The Court did not get bogged down in the question of when is a picture pornographic or not.  The Court allowed that there will always be cases whose merits must be examined on their own.  This move allowed the Court to be responsive to plain commonsense, as with the example mentioned at the outset of a picture sent to the grandparents of 3-year old Cambria or Zephyr taking a bath.  It takes a very long and unobvious story to turn that sort of picture into any form of a sex act or sexual pose.

To be sure, there is no doubt some “dirty old man” who will find such pictures arousing.  But then such a dirty old man is apt to find images of children arousing even when the children are depicted as fully clothed, to say nothing of actual children who are fully clothed.  After all, the typical pedophile goes after children who are fully clothed.

At any rate, the brilliance of the Court’s ruling in upholding the Protect Act of 2003 is that, from the standpoint of pandering and soliciting, mere declarations that the porn is virtual porn will simply not suffice.  Accordingly, someone who is interested in buying only virtual porn will have to be extraordinarily careful.  In effect, what the Protect Act of 2003 does is exploit the uncertainty that is characteristic of transactions involving actual child porn versus child virtual porn, where images of the former are often falsely declared to be images of the latter.  The Court upheld the exploitation of that uncertainty.

Free speech is important.  But it is not so important that, in the matter of protecting children, we cannot error on the side of caution in cases of uncertainty.  This line of thought animated Scalia's thinking. 

In the oddest of ways, what the United States Supreme Court did is point out that virtual porn has gotten too good for its own good.  As disgusting as it may be that a person is sexually aroused by images of children, where it is manifestly clear that these images are imperfect replicas of real children, we can rightly take consolation in the fact that no real children are involved.  Moreover, the pictures cannot be passed off as pictures of real children and pictures of real children would be unmistakably recognized as such.  This latter truth is far from being a trivial truth. 

One imagines, though, that purveyors of virtual child porn undoubtedly supposed that nothing would be better than virtual porn images that were utterly indistinguishable from actual images of children.  And therein was the source of the problem: virtual porn became too good for its own good.

On the one hand, the Court allowed for virtual child porn to be protected as a form of free speech in that a person who produced such porn for his own viewing could not be prosecuted.  This is very much in keeping with the idea that we do not have to like what a person says in order to hold the view that the individual has a right to say it and in order to be committed to protecting that individual’s right to say it.  So for those who generate their own virtual porn, the Court’s ruling is a genuine victory.  They can generate the stuff to their heart’s content.

On the other hand, if we think that images of real children engages in sex acts or sexual poses are morally repulsive, then it stands to reason that it has to be of the utmost importance that those who obtain images of children in sexual acts or poses know beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt that the images that they obtain from others are virtual and not at all real.  For the obvious reasons, it is not even close to being good enough that a panderer of such images declares them to be virtual and only virtual.  No one obtaining such images from another could possibly think that a mere declaration by the panderer that the images are virtual images provides him with all the reason that he could possibly want for believing that this is in fact the case.  It is in regards to this simple truth that the Court has proven to be very wise.

Insofar as a person can provide certifiable proof that images of virtual images of child porn are just that, namely virtual, then the Court does not object.  However, it places the burden of proof squarely upon the purveyor of such porn and the solicitor of such porn to provide ample evidence that this is the case.  And that is a very good thing for both society and children alike. 

From the standpoint of those trafficking in virtual child porn, the Protect Act of 2003 is a very powerful weapon in the fight against actual child pornography precisely because it places a most significant burden of proof upon these individuals to be unequivocally clear that either this is what they are distributing or this is what they are getting.  Uncertainty, especially insofar as children are involved, should favor the innocent and not the corrupt.  And this, in effect, is precisely what the Protect Act of 2003 does. 

The Free Speech Coalition should be more than able to live with this ruling by the United States Supreme Court.  Virtual child porn has not been banned.  Virtual porn remains ever so protected as a form of free speech, precisely because there are no real children involved.  In effect, the Court merely said that, because the images of children are involved, the panderers and solicitors of virtual child porn must be committed to it being certifiably the case the porn in question is just that: virtual.  Even in a free society that rightly places an extraordinary premium upon free speech, this restriction can hardly be considered too great a price to pay in order to protect innocent children.  Insisting upon clarity in this in order to protect children from that which is abominable is surely morally right, and is the very least that we can do.   

ecause bringing a child into the world is one of the most significant things that a person can do, a just society has to be one that accords enormous moral weight to parenting.  Or so it is if one holds, as I do, that how a society treats the most innocent and helpless among its members is a most substantial measure of the moral timbre of that society.  Unfortunately, the way in which so many citizens of modernity go on about the right to have children, one would very well think that a child is some sort of amazing toy that people are clamoring to possess—not a human being whose very life, upbringing, and well-being people would be responsible for. 

You will notice that in the preceding paragraph I said “amazing toy” rather than “amazing toy or amazing animal”.  This is because there is the very odd reality that there is almost more concern over what people do with animals than there is over what people do with infants.  I am not even sure if there is group which advocates for children that is as powerful as the one that advocates for animals, namely PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).  No doubt I am caricaturing things here.  Yet, the inescapable truth is that the caricature has quite a bit of force to it. 

When is the last time you heard a self-identified group of whatever persuasion arguing that we hold that children are so important that we hereby commit ourselves to achieving the following excellences before we bring any child into the world? 

Now, the headlines to a recent newspaper story for Great Britain read as follows: “Women Win Right to Children without Fathers”.  The old rule of a need for a father has been replaced by the new idea of a “need for supportive parenting”.  What is interesting here is that no group seems to argue that its members of are particularly good at supportive parenting.  The idea, rather, is not so much that any group is particularly good at supportive parenting, but that none is any worse at supportive parenting than any other group.  That, alas, is precisely the point.

The crux of the argument is not at all about promoting the well fare of children.  Instead, it is about the claim that a group is no less entitled to have a go at raising children than any other group, and so to commit whatever mistakes and horrors that any other group commits.  What more proof could one have that in a most important respect society has not taken the parenting of children much more seriously than it did hundreds of years ago. 

Indeed, the only argument that is offered about children being better nowadays is, from the standpoint of parenting, a most paradoxical one.  For that argument holds that children are far better off in day care than with being at home with their parents. 

Well, guess what: If children spend the vast majority of their most formative years in infancy in the care of a non-parent, then it only stands to reason that it does not much matter which group of people actually has a child.  This is because, in the first place, the day care argument already entails that parents are not the most valuable thing in a child’s life.  So of course studies about this or that making a difference are irrelevant, since the very lynchpin of the prevailing ideology in modernity is that parents themselves do not, in fact, make a difference.  After all, the real parenting is primarily done by the non-parents in day care. 

What follows from this is quite profound and most disconcerting.  What follows, in fact, is that we have stopped sanctifying parenting.  While the desire for children may very well be ubiquitous, the idea of parenting is not being seen as one of greatest moral tasks that a person may perform.  And guess what: All sorts of desires are ubiquitous.  So the ubiquity of a desire tells us nothing at all about the moral significance that anyone attaches to the fulfillment of that desire.  Indeed, precisely what we know is that no moral significance is attached to the satisfaction of many such desires; and in lots of cases, this is not at all a criticism.

But notice what has happened.  We have moved from the morally repulsive view that children are some form of property to the equally morally repulsive view that the parents do not really matter, since the proper place for children is day care.  Unless I am missing something, there is no part of this that even remotely amounts to moral progress.  Rather, we have merely replaced one morally obnoxious view with another morally obnoxious view. 

We have not sanctified parenting.  What we have done, instead, is turned parenting into none other than a form of social status, having entirely lost sight of the very beings most affected by it all, namely the children. 

And while we pay lip service to raising children, it is manifestly clear that what is far important from the standpoint of society is not that children be raised well but that no one be unjustly deprived of the social status of having children.  Insofar as children matter, it is only by accident that they do. 

Once again, I ask: When is the last time you heard a self-identified group of whatever persuasion arguing that we hold that children are so important that we hereby commit ourselves to achieving the following excellences before we bring any child into the world? 

It has always seemed to me that insofar as human beings have a claim to being like gods, it is in virtue of parenting that this is so.  For as I wrote in The Family and the Political Self:

. . . not even God’s love, nor therefore God’s law, can be a substitute for parental love (p. 41). 

Surely, a more perfect society would be a society in which one of the most important aims among on the part of its citizens would be to cultivate this extraordinary moral power.  Alas, it is manifestly evident that we all have some ways to go before we achieve that more perfect society.  To take seriously the moral power of parenting would be to do none other than to sanctify parenting. 

Written in honor of two families: the Rougemont (France) and the Saks (United States) familes—individuals whom I regard as more perfect parents. 

n a strikingly perceptive remark, Pope Benedict XVI made the following observation: "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires".  I shall defend his remarks from a rather unsuspecting perspective, namely the precept that goes by what we refer to as the Golden Rule.  The very idea behind that rule is that there basic precepts accessible to all if only the individual would give the matter some thought.

And the idea was that there is no better indication of how we should treat others than how we would like to be treated by others.  My sense is that the moral force of the Golden Rule is on the verge of entirely vanishing from modern society.  In just about every area of society, we can see people treating others in that surely they would not like to be treated.  Here is a very simple example.  Time was that when a group of people were walking down the sidewalk engaged in conversation, while taking up the entire sidewalk, and there was a single person walking towards the group from the other direction, then some members of the group would step aside so that the single member would not have to move off the sidewalk in order to continue walking.  This was something that a group of people naturally did without giving the matter a second thought.  Not any more, however.  Time and time again: I have watched a group a people engaged in conversation continue to take up the entire sidewalk leaving the person walking towards them no choice but to move off the sidewalk in order to continue keep advancing along. 

One form of relativism is none other than the view that what counts as decent in how people should treat me does not hold in terms of how I should treat others.  Another version goes like this: “I can do whatever I want, but you owe it me to treat me decently”. 

It was not too long ago that people subscribed to the view that they had a moral obligation to treat others with a certain level of respect.  And this meant that there were things that one did not do to a person or in front of a person even if one could easily get away with doing them.  And, of course, moral excellence has to be just that, namely that there are things that one should feel profoundly moved to do even when one could get away with not doing them.  Or, conversely, there are things that one is absolutely disposed not to do even if one easily get away with doing them. 

We have none other than relativism in any society where a modicum of moral excellence, such as I have just described it above, no longer prevails.  And I take the very substance of Pope Benedict's point to be precisely the fact that this modicum of moral excellence no longer prevails.  Perhaps the most poignant way to make the point is that never has so much wrong been done and yet so few people have done anything wrong.  By contrast, when far fewer wrongs were committed in society, there were far more people who acknowledged admitting wrong. 

Or, to the point a very different way, a sense of moral contrition still prevailed in society.  Not everyone expressed the contrition in exactly the same way.  Some were public; others made meaningful gestures in the right direction. However, our sensibilities were such that we understand that those gestures were typically born of a contrite heart. 

Given the modest assumption that everyone wants to be treated rightly, what is the explanation for the fact that so few seemed inclined to treat others as they would like to be treated?  That is, why has the Golden Rule lost so much of its efficacy? 

The explanation, I believe, is owing to what I refer to as the O & T factor: anonymity and transiency.  There is an inverse correlation between the pull of the Golden Rule and the cloak of anonymity and transiency: as one goes up; the other goes down.  And interestingly, there can be considerably anonymity and transiency even if one person is not anonymous and transient.  It suffices that everyone else is. 

This tells us something quite sublime, namely that for most people, the moral sentiments require a rich social network in order for them have secure place in our lives.  Otherwise, most of us naturally revert to egoism.  A society of egoists is none other than hell on lots and lots of two feet.  By contrast, a society of individuals in whom the moral sentiments have a secure footing, owing to a social network, is one in which the Golden Rule naturally expresses itself. 

It may be that what distinguishes homo sapiens from all other animals is the extraordinary capacity that human beings have for rational reflection.  What is also true, however, is that what we regard as the rational thing to do can be very much tied to what we feel.  And we regard people as merely bits of flesh and bones, we simply do not have the same sentiment towards them as we do when regard them as a member of our social network. 

Putting words in Pope Benedict’s mouth: The problem of modernity, then, is how to keep altruism alive as a sentiment in an anonymous and transient world, and thus a world which by its very nature favors an exceedingly egoistic sentiment.  One thing is for sure, namely that the solution does not consists in merely reminding ourselves that we are rational creatures.  For what it is rational for any one person to do can, as game-theoretic arguments make abundantly clear, be inextricably tied to what others will do.  In this respect, egoism feeds on itself just as a society with the sentiments of the Golden Rule well in place feeds on itself. 

Anonymity and transiency were not genuine problems until the last 50 years of human existence.  It is, then, no accident that we have been so unprepared for these, and so the damage that they have wrought, namely the undermining of the basic sentiments of the Golden Rule.  Where egoistic sentiments loom large, the dictatorship of relativism prevail.