Legalized Depravity

During the much publicized Q & A session (religious litmus test, really) with Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church on August 16, 2008, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain reflected on wide ranging issues such as morality, personal tribulations and their vision for America. (McCain who went second, by the way, was not in the cone of silence as was expected of a gentlemanly participant. He therefore may have heard Warren's questions and Obama's responses prior to his own turn at the table.)

During the interview, (watch the video here or read the transcript here) Warren asked both candidates the following question:

Does evil exist and if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it or do we defeat it?

Obama gave the following nuanced answer:

Evil does exist. I mean, we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil sadly on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who have viciously abused their children and I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task. But we can be soldiers in that process and we can confront it when we see it. Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil. But you know a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.

Here is McCain's response to the same question:

Defeat it. .. If I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do that. I will get that done. No one should be allowed to take thousands fo American --- innocent American lives. Of course evil must be defeated. My friends, we are facing the the transcendent challenge of the 21st century, radical Islamic extremists. Not long ago in Baghdad, Al Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace and by remote control, detonated those suicide vests. If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is and we're going to defeat this evil, and the central battle ground according to David Petraeus is in Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq. And we are winning and we are succeeding and our troops will come home with honor and victory and not in defeat and that's what's happening. We have - and we face this threat throughout the world. It's not just in Iraq. It's not just in Afghanistan. Our intelligence people tell us Al Qaeda continues to try to establish cells here in the United States of America. My friends, we must face this challenge. We can face this challenge and we must totally defeat it and we're in a long struggle. But when I'm around the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform, I have no doubt .. none.

How's that for a contrast in world views? I always worry when McCain begins a sentence with the words "My friends." They are usually followed by a statement that is either false or dangerous. While Obama recognizes evil outside the borders of the United States, he also acknowledges that our nation is not guilt - free. McCain on the other hand sees evil only outside the US - inside Iraq in particular. He makes no mention of our overcrowded prison system, social inequities, illegal torture of enemy combatants. He expresses no worry about sexism, racism, homophobia within our own society. McCain the Valiant is focused on only one evil - Al Qaeda. And he is going to fight it in Iraq, the unnecessary immoral war he is determined to "win."

Our upcoming presidential election ought to be about more than just the economy and jobs. It should also be about how we see ourselves as citizens of the world. Obama, despite his youth and inexperience, recognizes that vital aspect of leadership. McCain, on the other hand, appears to believe that following in the errant and belligerent footsteps of Bush-Cheney is the only way to lead America and "defeat" evil.

The recent Olympics opened up the doors for the world to focus on China's human rights abuses. China heard (and rightly so) from its many critics, George W. Bush among them. The quality of the leadership of a nation determines to a large extent its moral character. When the men and women in the corridors of power throw moral consideration and honest self examination into the dust heap of political expediency, we go down the rabbit hole of oppression and criminality. The morally bankrupt tenure of Bush-Cheney has surely dragged our law enforcement and bureaucracy down this slippery slope. Cheered on by "patriotic" pols and right wing blow-hards intent on fighting evil outside our borders, some of those trusted with keeping our nation "safe" may have lost their compassion, decency and even their common sense. Human rights abuses are the inevitable outcome of a cold hearted interpretation of law and order. How precious is our physical safety and how much coarsening of our national character is justified in safeguarding it? According to the following story, some intrepid warriors in the Department of Homeland Security may believe that no amount of depravity is too much to keep America safe from "evil" foreigners.

He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system.

Mr. Ng’s death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations and a lack of oversight in immigration detention, a rapidly growing network of publicly and privately run jails where the government held more than 300,000 people in the last year while deciding whether to deport them.

In federal court affidavits, Mr. Ng’s lawyers contend that when he complained of severe pain that did not respond to analgesics, and grew too weak to walk or even stand to call his family from a detention pay phone, officials accused him of faking his condition. They denied him a wheelchair and refused pleas for an independent medical evaluation.

Instead, the affidavits say, guards at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., dragged him from his bed on July 30, carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and legs, and drove him two hours to a federal lockup in Hartford, where an immigration officer pressured him to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation.

“For this desperately sick, vulnerable person, this was torture,” said Theodore N. Cox, one of Mr. Ng’s lawyers, adding that they want to see a videotape of the transport made by guards.

An editorial in today's Houston Chronicle  decrying the tragic fate of Hiu Lui Ng and other detained immigrants. 

Comments

[Elatia Harris]

Great post, Ruchira. The simple-mindedness of McCain's unrehearsed -- ahem! -- answer to Rick Warren's question and the treatment received by Mr. Ng are indeed intimately interrelated. I am ashamed that a man who thinks and talks so stupidly, panderingly and recklessly may follow one just like himself to the presidency. Would the Saddleback audience have heard with shame the story of Mr. Ng's death? Or would they have considered him a form of collateral damage in the necessarily messy thrust to defeat evil? I mean, Evil. If only these people could be swept up, just as they imagine, into a place apart where those of another kind are forbidden to go, then perhaps the rest of us could create peace on Earth. Thanks for a marvelous essay.

[Bill Bristow]

What confuses me in this exchange between Pastor Rick Warren and the candidates for President on the existence of evil is that, clearly, the correct answer to the litmus test, insofar as this question contains one, for the Evangelical Christians in the audience, is the answer both candidates in fact gave: "yes, evil does exist." But, isn't Christian belief founded to a significant extent on the opposite answer: "no, evil does not exist; evil is nothing but the privation of goodness." This is perhaps the key discovery Augustine makes, as reported in his Confessions, in his path to becoming a Christian. If evil genuinely exists, then God and goodness are limited by their Other. McCain's posture here seems particularly antithetical to the Christian one: "not only does evil exist, but it exists outside of us, in our enemies, our others." For the audience, for the pastor, this is the correct Christian answer to the question, and the answer couldn't be more distant from authentic Christianity.

[Aaron Preston]

"But, isn't Christian belief founded to a significant extent on the opposite answer: "no, evil does not exist; evil is nothing but the privation of goodness.""

Perhaps -- although I'm not sure that the doctrine that evil *is* non-existence entails that evil doesn't exist. That's like saying that holes don't exist because they are privations of being, but clearly holes do exist in some perfectly familiar sense of the term "exist".

But that matter aside, surely in posing this question Warren didn't have the metaphysical nature of evil in mind so much as something closer to the concerns of ordinary Evangelicals, like maybe the existence of moral absolutes. Don't you think that what he meant by "does evil exist?" was something more like "do you acknowledge that some things are absolutely wrong, or are you a moral relativist? And are you therefore someone who is willing to take a moral stand, or are you going to just say "I'm okay, you're okay" and roll over?" than it was like "is evil a positive property or the lack of a property?"

[Chris Schoen]

The very idea that evil can be either "contained" or "defeated" is misguided, but that's Warren's fault for failing to offer Bill Bristow's more accurate definition of evil as a negative quality--that is, an insufficient engagement with goodness (which is always available to us), rather than a countervailing force in conflict with goodness. In Warren's palette of choices only Manichaeism lies. And Fatalism.

I'm also slightly troubled by Obama's suggestion that it is "God's task" to erase evil. Aside from perpetuating the idea that evil is a positive substance to be eradicated, it raises the question of when He will get around to it, or why He has waited so long.

However I do prefer Obama's choice of the word "confront" over McCain's ridiculous and juvenile insistence we will "defeat" it. I guess to be fair we should note that Obama seemed to be responding to the abstract notion of evil, where McCain seemed to be responding to the specific examples of evil the opposition to which he believes will win presidential campaigns.

But, after Mr. Obama is elected, I hope we will learn that he is able to connect his message on "being the change we seek" to confronting the evil in ourselves, primarily by recognizing that fear is a terrible motivator for anyone seeking a good life in this world.

[Dave2]

Chris Schoen, I seriously seriously doubt Obama's answer indicated anything about the metaphysical status of evil in a neo-Platonist or medieval Aristotelian framework. In particular, I doubt he wished to address (much less call into question) the view that evils are privations and are therefore merely accidents inhering in substances as opposed to genuine substances.

[Chris Schoen]

Dave2,

Obama was obviously speaking off the cuff here, and I probably shouldn't attribute too much into a throw-away remark about erasing evil being God's task. You're right that his intention here is to focus on what is morally and politically possible for mortals, and not align himself with a particular ontological position. It's also noteworthy that he rejects Warren's choice between defeat and contain, both of which externalize evil and I should have mentioned this in my comment.

[Peter Weldon - A.K. A - Facilitator Peter W]

Eliminating Evil is Man's Job, not God's Task. God has amply provided for Man to created a heaven on Earth, as it is the only place it can and/or will be created, also Hell for that matter.

If you are born into one Country, you are born into a potential Heaven, if born into another Country, you are born into a potential Hell.

God provided for man to evolve, thus it was necessary to give man choice, unfortunately many choose Evil, because man has not accepted the responsibility to make it unprofitable.

Further Religion has not taught Man to recognize either God's Punishment or rewards, thus people are not impressed with God's Punishment or Reward. Neither are people taught that although God's Punishment and Rewards are emotional. This emotional reward or punishment always leads to physical rewards or punishment.

www.thechurchofthelivingwordofgod.net