Vitanuova for 2002 June 26

Wednesday

I had the pleasure of seeing both Katy and Ben, the latter somewhat unexpectedly.

TCPA

I'm thinking and reading a lot about TCPA, after Ross Anderson's criticisms of that initiative and the related Palladium. This is a big deal; we're probably going to meet some people from Microsoft to get their side soon.

Wow

The Ninth Circuit held the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional (in particular, the 1954 "under God" amendment) as a violation of the Establishment Clause. (Newdow v. Congress; I haven't read the opinion yet.)

I am thrilled about this, because, as I wrote earlier today, I have long supported the theory that government uses of "In God We Trust", "under God", etc., ordinarily violate the Establishment Clause. In November, I wrote more about this issue.

I'd like to be able to write about the separation of church and state from the perspective of a respectable left-liberal, because there is so much which is comforting about respectable liberalism, which calls on people to support institutions rather than symbols, for example. So respectable liberal opinion will tell us that we are not supposed to honor the flag, but rather what the flag represents, and that various illiberal patriots have their hearts in the right place but are simply making a category error or mistaking symbols for institutions. After that, respectable liberals get to tell us about how they are actually very good patriots themselves because they actually protect the institutions in question, and you get statements like "the flag stands for your right to burn it", which are proper respectable liberal statements.

But I'm uncomfortable with this respectable liberalism, because even though it is altogether fitting and proper that respectable liberals should do this (proclaim their patriotism and contrast it with a less reflective and more unthinking patriotism), it never moves on to a deeper skepticism and a deeper criticism which would say not only that it is a category error to protect or honor or venerate symbols instead of the institutions they represent, but further that it is also a category error to protect or honor or venerate institutions instead of the values or principles or moral ends they represent.

Now in one sense, protecting institutions is not necessarily this kind of error, because maybe the institutions are effective institutions and are doing good things. So some people have said that it is a silly superstition to be inherently mistrustful of institutions, because you should always look at what they are actually doing. And maybe in fact the practice of an institution is to advance a worthwhile purpose. But on the other hand there is always a risk in forming an emotional bond of any kind with any institution, or in identifying one's self with any institution, because even if the institution was very virtuous at one time, it may change.

To make things a little more personal without bringing in political philosophy, let me talk about my high school. I love my high school's symbols; I love my high school's traditions; also I love my high school. As a result of an emotional process which I experienced, I even like things like my high school's colors, which are blue and red. (It was a funny thing for me to come to Berkeley, where one is expected to hate red on account of red being rival Stanford's color.) I like my high school's seal, which shows the lamp of knowledge, and I have it imprinted on my wallet, and I even refuse to discard that old wallet which is falling apart and which has holes in it and which looks ugly, because it has my high school's seal, and that is magical.

I love my high school's tradition. I was just thinking about the Rope Pull. I hope they are having Rope Pulls in eighty years, and in a hundred years, and in two hundred years. I even love my high school's songs, like Jerusalem, even though they are religious songs whose message I don't believe, founded in a powerful evangelical Protestant tradition which originally created my high school late last century. (I wouldn't want my high school to get rid of those songs, although I wish they would face up to the fact that they have a particular origin from which the school has subsequently moved away; they don't necessarily care to think all the time about where they really came from or how they came to be where they are now.)

I love the various other symbols, like the Spade (I was once the Spade Orator).

I also love the school itself, which taught me many things, and many other things.

It's a mistake to think that these feelings, which are reasonable and appropriate, actually get at what is really worthwhile about my high school, or provide deeply sound guides to action. It's also a mistake to think that other people have to feel the way I do or that there isn't anything important wrong with my school or that I somehow know its entire story.

Let me take these points one at a time. What is really worthwhile about my school is not its symbols or traditions, or even the institution of the school itself. What is really worthwhile about it are things like community, learning, and knowledge, which happened to be embodied in my school, or at least in my experience of it, when I was there. (It isn't purely co-incidence that those things came to be so embodied; it was the result of the long work of wonderful people, "sainted men with faith triumphant have upbuilt her walls in love", si monumentum quaeris circumspice, etc.) But the really valuable things are much deeper and much less tangible than either the corporate institution of this particular school or any of its outwardly visible symbols. So devotion shown to any of those things is in some way misplaced, because it isn't devotion to the really valuable things -- in some way it is superficial. (That's not to say that it's necessarily possible to show devotion directly to the ideals and values which were embodied there, but still in some sense they are the important thing, as of course are people.)

If you feel love for or devotion to an institution, you might be tempted to pay allegiance to the particular officers of that institution at a particular moment. And that might be a bad idea, because they might not deserve it. (I've been reading a few of Cory's comments about his own high school, to which he's very attached, and he and other alums are positively furious about what the people in charge up there at the moment are doing to the place. There is no reason to think that respect for the institution has to mean going along with what the people who are running it say they think is best, and of course respectable liberalism is perfectly comfortable with that conclusion.)

If you feel these things toward an institution, you might also be tempted to think that there is something inherently right about the institution. I don't think that belief can be justified. Something wonderful like a high school can become corrupt, or it can fail, or it can die, or it can suffer a profound discontinuity, or it can go obsolete. It's not necessarily straightforward to notice any of these things, and it might be particularly painful and undesirable if you really care about the institution. But it's no fair concluding that the institution did well in the past and so much necessarily do well in the future. I would not wish for any institution to be mortal, if I really cared for it, but neither would I wish mortality on people I really cared for.

It might be that my high school will fail or become wicked in the future. For all I know -- being out of touch here in California -- it might be that this has already happened. I don't want to believe that, and I want to resist that thought, but it is possible. With time and chance happening just as much as ever, it's hazardous to say that because my school was doing so well when I left it some years ago, it must still persist in that same state and condition today. There are institutional safeguards, but no ultimate safeguards, to assure that the school will represent and achieve good things in the future the way it did in the past.

(In fact, in the opinion of its founder, the school surely already failed a long time ago; surely, in his opinion, the safeguards he devised have long since been overcome, and the entire point and value of the entity is already demolished, and its current activities are a mockery of what it was meant to be. Moody founded my school to be a beacon of Christian doctrine, and it is not so today. There is a real change, a discontinuity, which means that different people have loved very different things in my school over time, even very contradictory things.)

My school also has flaws, and I don't know all of them. I know that it failed some people even at the same time it was nourishing and sustaining me. I know there were people for whom the school did not work, and who left it in anger, or in tears, or in shock with a letter of expulsion. I know there are people who must hate the red and blue, or laugh at the Spade, and people who have independent reasons to dislike the school from outside. Maybe some of them have been in a labor dispute or a professional dispute with it. (One employee had such a dispute, very publicly, soon after I graduated; it ended only with his untimely death.) Maybe some of them could not afford to attend and were not offered a scholarship, as I was. Maybe some of them hate what the school stands for, and maybe some of them think Moody's vision of religious education was correct and has been perverted terribly now, so that the school is a travesty. Maybe there are other objections I haven't heard about.

(We could also talk about drug use, or drug use and discipline; we could talk at length about discipline, how my friend was reprimanded wrongfully, how another friend was expelled...)

But the real point is that it is not enough to say that we have to go beyond our attachment to symbols and rituals. We also have to say that we have to go beyond our attachment to institutions and traditions and customs, which respectable liberalism can be reluctant to do. To be critical and independent thinkers and doers, we have to be prepared to keep on looking past layers of indirection, and saying that we value institutions for what they do and for what they can be, and not for a superficial reason.

I think that means making part of experience contingent, because you say that you love something, or honor something, when and if and because and insofar as the thing does well. Maybe that is troubling because it isn't the same as unconditional love.

I heard a cynical friend of mine ask a civil liberties lawyer whether the latter loved the United States. The cynical friend pointed out that the U.S. government had done many wicked things, repeatedly, and many of them were not popularly known, but were none the less wicked. And he added that the government continues to do terrible things. So my friend said "Do you love this country?"

The lawyer's answer was very interesting: "I love some things about this country. I've seen a lot of what this country is capable of, and some of it I love, and some of it I don't love."

I think that answer is well-taken (although it might have been, in context, a bit respectable-liberal for my taste). There is a subtlety to it, and there is a depth and a sophistication to it. The equivocal answer the lawyer did not give was "I love this country and I respectfully and passionately disagree with some govenment decisions and actions", which might be a purer respectable-liberal reply. It was actually much stronger and much more direct than that: "I love some things about this country". So in that I see a lot of promise and a lot of potential, because it says that to the extent that an institution can and will protect freedom, it can be honored for what it's done to protect freedom, and to the extent that it will not or does not protect freedom, it can be dishonored and ridiculed and despised. And there is no special pleading there, or evocation or vacillation, which tries to reserve or exclude something from criticism; there's no unconditional "but". There is no assertion that a school or a government or a constitution has an inherent virtue which prevents us from questioning it or from questioning the nature of our allegiance to it. Nothing is held outside.

It's very direct: "I love some things about this country". And because of the uncertainty to which it subjects everything, it is also very deeply subversive, from a certain perspective. If you say that people have to have certainty -- "without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion"! -- then loving some things about a country is clearly worse even than simply hating the country. If you hate the country, after all, you're an obvious enemy, or an obvious outsider, but if you love some things about the country, you're a weak and uncertain individual, perhaps untrustworthy, perhaps trying to claim an undeserved bit of patriotism or loyalty to which you aren't actually entitled. After all, you've tried to express love and admiration, tried to claim these things for yourself, while trying to retain the right to subject everything to your own judgment. (You won't accept the need for a sort of reference monitor which will scrutinize you but remain immune from your scrutiny.)

I think that line is remarkable in what it says about human freedom. Try saying it: "I love some things about this country." It's an interesting contrast with the Pledge of Allegiance, and it creates so many more opportunities for dialogue than the Pledge, which somehow seems a sort of conversation-stopper. But the shorter, allegedly weaker statement is genuinely interesting; it points to a whole world of experience, possibility, judgment, and nuance. I love some things about this country.

At the risk of veering uncomfortably close to respectable liberal territory, the Newdow decision today is one of those things. And the reaction to it, from what I've seen, is not one of those things.

Culture Time reveals that the CDA decision (ACLU v. Reno) was rendered on the same day in 1997.