Our Incompetent Civilization. Sometimes we have to choose between evils [Bret Stephens]

... But a civilization becomes incompetent not only when it fails to learn the lessons of its past, but also when it becomes crippled by them.

... Our deeper incompetence stems from an inability to recognize the proper limits to our own virtues ...

Thus we reject profiling on the commendable grounds that human beings ought not to be treated as statistical probabilities. But at some point, the failure to profile puts innocent lives recklessly at risk. We also abhor waterboarding for the eminently decent reason that it borders on torture. But there are worse things than waterboarding—like allowing another 9/11 to unfold because we recoil at the means necessary to prevent it. Similarly, there are worse things than Guantanamo—like releasing terrorists to Yemen so they can murder and maim again (and so we can hope to take them out for good in a "clean" Predator missile strike).

Put simply, we do not acquit ourselves morally by trying to abstain from a choice of evils. We just allow the nearest evil to make the choice for us.

And so it goes. We can be proud of how deeply we mourn the losses of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a nation that mourns too deeply ultimately becomes incapable of conducting a war of any description, whether for honor, interest or survival. We rightly care about the environment. But our neurotic obsession with carbon betrays an inability to distinguish between pollution and the stuff of life itself. We are a country of standards and laws. Yet we are moving perilously in the direction of abolishing notions of discretion and judgment.

One of life's paradoxes is that we are as often undone by our virtues as by our vices. And so it is with civilizations, ours not least.

Nailed It!

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A very good article. Thanks for the ping.

The author, however, is either a bit misguided or merely being conciliatory in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. For instance:

Thus we reject profiling on the commendable grounds that human beings ought not to be treated as statistical probabilities.

Statistics tell us nothing about themselves. It is up to us to determine, as best we can, why those in a particular statistical group behave as they do. While at one time this may have been a difficult task with regard to muslims, today it has ceased to be so - especially when muslims themselves announce their intention to become statistics and explain their reasons for doing so.

We reject profiling not because it treats human beings as statistical probabilities, but because it treats individuals as stereotypical members of groups - e.g. young black men up to no good, people of Japanese ancestry with divided loyalties, illegal alien Mexicans leeching off our labor, muslims with blood in their eyes.

America's hyper-individualism makes it easier for a young black man to escape the life he was "born and bred for", for instance, and we cherish the ideas which provide such an avenue of escape.

Our mistake, though, is in not demanding reform of the group itself. We didn't make that mistake during World War II. Instead, we treated the group as a whole, and interned those whose membership made them suspect. As a result, many of that group accepted the challenge and took on the task of proving the group's loyalty to the United States.

This is entirely as it should be. I am of the opinion that other groups will do the same, if we will but demonstrate a conviction that our culture is indeed the best, and demand that foreign groups adopt our principles and conform to our way of life. I'm convinced that they will either (A) en masse reform and police themselves or (B) oppose us so openly as to leave no doubt that their entire group is our enemy (which would great simplify the situation as well).

Do we still have confidence and pride in our culture and principles sufficient to this task?

When our actions or experiences are purely random, yes.

In other words, if strapping a bomb around one’s belly and detonating it in a shopping mall happens purely by chance, by factors outside one’s control, then terrorism can be understood only in light of statistical probabilities, and submits to no other analysis - much like getting struck by lightning while walking one’s dog.

If we don’t understand islam any better than that, we deserve to be ruled by muslims.

And another thing... :-)

We are a country of standards and laws. Yet we are moving perilously in the direction of abolishing notions of discretion and judgment.

One of life's paradoxes is that we are as often undone by our virtues as by our vices. And so it is with civilizations, ours not least.

It is not our virtues which threaten to undo us - unless we consider laziness and cowardice to be virtues. To subsitute standards and laws for discretion and judgment is the essence of "zero tolerance". We are either too lazy to investigate each case of supposed wrongdoing, or we're too cowardly to punish ONLY those who're guilty of wrongdoing and stand up against the inevitable backlash (often in the form of charges of "RACISM!").

Cowardice and laziness are once again the culprits in our refusal to take to task foreign cultures which threaten our very existence. From the early days of our country - from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Civil War to the WWII internments - we have confronted boldly threats both real and suspected.

Freedoms which were jealously guarded in peaceful times were temporarily sacrificed when the nation was threatened by one group or other - not unthinkingly or without debate, not lazily and without using our discretion and judgment. Whatever our present conclusions about our past decsisions, America could not be described as lazy in the way we addressed these threats.

That seems to have changed, for whatever reason, in the 1960s. Perhaps we forgot the price of a healthy nation. Crime began to soar. Communism assaulted us from within and without. Areas of America's own culture seemed to turn on her like a pit bull. And the nation took a nosedive.

"But we have the Constitution to save us!" (Or, as quoted above, "We are a country of standards and laws.") As though America, or representative democracy, or the free republic, were a wind-up clock that would never need tending. As though it were an unsinkable ship that never needed to be steered clear of icebergs or toward safe harbor.

No, laziness and cowardice are not virtues. Prudence is. But we've neglected that one, and we're suffering for it.

When we Americans tire of the restrictions and abridgments of our liberties in the name of security, we'll sing a different tune viz. the freedom of foreign cultures in our land. Or if we instead tire of the slaughter of our people and degradation of our way of life by foreign cultures, we'll sing a different tune viz. our liberties, and submit to any old dictator who promises to restore us to greatness and security.

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