Insurrection: Participation by Police and Military

 The participation of police officers and active duty military personnel in the insurrection of January 6 is not entirely surprising, given what we already knew about the presence of racist, white supremacist, and pro-trump elements among their ranks. Nevertheless, it is a serious problem. People sworn to protect and defend the Constitution took it upon themselves to decide that the duly consituted legislative branch of the United States government was a "domestic enemy" of the government and that it was their right and duty to attempt to overthrow it by force and violence. They had no orders coming through their chain of command. They had only their personal belief. How did it come about, and how can it be prevented in the future? It seems to me that a large part of the problem may be a lack of education in civics. I could be wrong, but my impression is that most American schoolchildren do not receive the kind of education in civics which was commonplace sixty years ago. From the early years, they learned, in progressively growing detail, that America was founded on principles of God-given universal human rights, that our system of governments, federal and state, was designed to protect those rights by limiting governmental power and distributing it among different levels and institutions. Nevertheless, each element of government was authoritative within its own sphere. Our Constitution was studied as a work of genius, bakancing various interests in light of a keen awareness of human propensities to evil. In high school, the education was capped with a course specifically in American government, which presented the design and function of our constitutional system in detail. Such an education should prevent all but the most gullible from going rogue as far too many of our men and women in uniform seem to have done. Recently we have seen the 1619 Project proclaiming to all and sundry that racism and white supremacy are what it means to be an American — precisely what many of the insurrectionists seem to believe. I disaagree with that view of America. I say that America as a nation has always embraced the principles of the Declaration of Independence, even when we have failed to live up to them, when some Americans ignored or denied them, when others compromised them. I do not want future police officers and soldiers to be taught from their earliest days in school that America means white supremacy. We must overcome the deep mistrust of our system of government which allowed insurrection to flourish among people who were sworn to defend the Constitution but clearly did not understand what that oath meant. Certainly, the military and the police do not lose their right to have an opinion about what is best for our country and to vote for the candidates of their choice, but no citizen has the right to resort to force and violence to attempt to impose their opinion, much less one who has taken an direct oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Of course, a proper education in American history and civics is essential for the entire population.

Covington Catholic Students, Black Hebrews, and Nathan Phillips

Here's my take, after spending Monday and Tuesday, January 21 and 22, looking at all the videos I found of the incidents on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, reading some articles, and tweeting, retweeting and responding to tweets about them.

Nobody seems to have noticed that the lengthy video from the Black Hebrews begins with them engaging the Native Americans. They say that God took the NA's land from them and gave it to the white people because the NA's were worshipping idols and false gods. In other words, the BH's initial target was Nathan Phillips' group.

Boys from Covington Catholic High School arrived to wait for the buses to take them back home. At some point they began to heckle the BH's. The BH's then turned to the CCH boys and started accusing them of racism. They also used homophobic rhetoric. When the BH's said Trump is a homosexual and said the U.S. is a hypocrite nation because we give rights to "faggots," the boys booed loudly. The boys eventually started doing school cheers, one of which looked sort of like a haka by the boy who led it.

When the first video went viral, Nathan Phillips and his supporters claimed that the students had surrounded his group and blocked them as they were conducting a ceremony which they intended to complete by ascending to the top of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. When additional video showed that Phillips had actually walked into the midst of the students singing and beating his drum, and that there was plenty of room on the steps for them to get to the top without plowing through the students, Phillips gave the explanation that he and others were concerned that the confrontation between the Covington boys and the Black Hebrews was about to become violent, so he went between them with his chant to defuse the situation.

If defusing the situation was his purpose (or if they just wanted to go up the steps), the boys had no way of knowing that, since no one explained it to them. On several videos students can be heard asking themselves, "What's going on?" On another some are chanting, "What protest is this?" (or something like that).

Video shows Phillips walking up to Nick Sandmann singing and drumming, and getting in his face while continuing to sing and drum. Nick just stood where he was. Video shows room on either side of him, so that Phillips could have gone around him. Thus Sandmann was not blocking Phillips. Technically, it seems that Phillips assaulted Sandmann. At different points, videos show Sandmann smiling, with the expression widely characterized as a smirk, and looking slightly bewildered. One image shows him leaning slightly backwards as Phillips confronts him. At one point someone off camera says, "Be strong."

Video also shows some of the boys jumping and imitating Phillips' song. One boy is seen doing the tomahawk chop. Of course, this is not respectful. On the other hand it is not nearly as disrespectful as it would have been if they had been told Phillips was performing some sort of sacred ceremony. Still, it would be good for the school to do something to teach to boys to be more respectful of other cultures.

One of the NA's is seen arguing with a student that his people have been here two or four generations while his have been here "millions." When the student says that the NA's came from Asia over a land bridge, he says that's nonsense and proposes another theory which is inaudible. The student smilingly shouts, "We should all go back to Africa!" Some people have mistakenly taken the words "go back to Africa" as directed at one of the groups confronting them. Nick Sandmann is seen looking briefly at that student and motioning him to quiet down.

Eventually the boys leave to go to their buses, some chanting, "Let's go home." One of the NA's says, "I got it." Nathan Phillips raises his arms, seemingly in triumph, while dancing and loudly vocalizing.

A few of the boys, including Sandmann, were wearing Make America Great Again hats. I saw maybe five or six in the crowd. Some people have tried to say that wearing MAGA hats proves that the Covington boys are racists. Apart from the fact that there were few of them, and it's wrong to attribute it to the whole group, it's not accurate to say that MAGA hats simply mean racism the way KKK hoods do (which some commentators have asserted. After Trump was elected, there were several articles attempting to explain why people voted for him. Prominent among those reasons were concerns about jobs and the economy. Another reason many people voted for him was his claim to be pro-life. Given that the boys had come from the midwest to a pro-life march, there are clear easons for them to support Trump without any racism involved.

I saw no explicit racism, or attempt to interfere with the NA's on the part of the Covington boys. It seems clear to me that Nathan Phillips singled Nick Sandmann out for confrontation, and I suspect that it was because hew was one of the few wearing a MAGA hat.

The NA's should have regarded the CCH boys and themselves as allies united in opposition to the positions of the BH's. Instead, the fact that a very brief snippet was originally posted with a false characterization of the event (along with the "I got it" and the "victory dance" by Phillips) suggests that the whole thing was a set-up by the NA's.

Edited to add:

See also this excellent article by Andrew Sullivan analyzing the way the matter played out and what it tells us about our current situation.

Matt Damon and the Boston Symphony — Sexist or Racist?

Not long ago, in the sweep of human history, Matt Damon suggested that there are degrees of sexual harassment and misconduct and that there should be different consequences, depending on the gravity of the offense. I don't have his actual words in front of me, but I think it amounted to suggesting, in the first place, that rape was worse than touching or even caressing buttocks, and that our and society's reactions should differ accordingly. To add my own gloss: for some things, one should be imprisoned; for some, loss of employment s appropriate; for some, disgrace is fitting. I'd also comment that in the case of some long past, minor offenses, the consequences should take account of the culture of the time in which they occurred.

The reaction was swift and furious. Denunciations rose to the level of suggestions that his appearance in an upcoming movie should be excised. The rationale seems to be that because he is a man he is not allowed to express an opinion on matters affecting women.  I don't recall any assertions that all offenses were equally grave, but there may have been an idea that attempting to grade them was irrelevant, since they were all offenses against women.
I think Matt Damon was right, and it was his right to say it. To deny his right to do so because he's a man strikes me as sexism.


More recently, some people complained to management of the Boston Symphony Orchestra that they are not playing enough music by women and minority composers. They pointed out that in this year's subscription series only one work composed by a woman is being performed.

The question that occurs to me is, "Who are the composers who deserve to have a place alongside Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Dvořák, Rachmaninoff, and others in the standard repertory?" The only female composers of any stature I'm aware of are Fanny Mendelssohn and Amy Beach, and I really doubt that there are others as good or better whose works have been suppressed. Similarly, the only "minority" composers I've heard of are the Chevalier de Saint Georges and T.J. Anderson (a black man who was a member of the Harvard Musical Association). It's not that simple, however. It won't do simply to say, "There are no female or minority Beethovens."

For one thing, the BSO performs works by second rank composers. This season, for example, we're being treated to compositions by Méhul, Adams, and Ligeti. There ought to be room for Fanny Mendelssohn and Amy Beach from time to time. In addition, the orchestra regularly commissions or co-commissions new works. This season, they are giving the American premiere of a new work by Jörg Widmann which they and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra jointly commissioned.

So I think the correct response is twofold. On the one hand, new works by women and minority composers should be as welcomed by the orchestra as those by white males. There may be proportionally fewer women and minority composers than their numbers in the population at large, but sex and ethnicity should not be limiting factors. On the other hand, the music of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries has all been composed, and it's almost all by dead white men. For the foreseeable future, that music will be a major part of the repertory of symphony orchestras, and that does not mean the orchestras are being racist or sexist.

Trump v. Kaepernick

As appalling as Donald Trump's statements about the protests in the NFL during the National Anthem have been, I'm more unhappy at the reactions of many who have commented on social media.

Although Colin Kaepernick spoke about the reason for his protest, many people ignore what he said and insist, contrary to what he said, that the protesters are disrespecting the flag and the country, some going so far as to insist that the protest was exactly the same as burning the flag or spitting on it. They are fabricating a straw man — possibly as a way of justifying their failure to deal with the real issue. At any rate, unlike many protests, this is peaceful, non-disruptive, and about as respectful as a protest can be (no signs, no chants, a genuflection). As I see it, the protest does not disrespect the flag or the country. It calls the country to live up to our professed values and principles, specifically in the way black people are treated.

Some people try to make the issue one of respect for our armed forces, past and present. Again, that is a fabrication. Not only is it clear that the protest isn't directed at our armed forces, but also it is an error to suppose that the National Anthem is specifically about the troops and veterans. It's about the whole country, "the land of the free," which promises "EQUAL protection of the laws" to all because "ALL … are created equal … with [the same] unalienable rights." (Emphasis supplied.) The protest is over a perceived failure of the country to deliver what it promises, and many veterans share the perception of the protestors.

Beyond the misrepresentations of the meaning of the protest, there is a denial of the validity of the protest on its own terms. People say, in effect, "What racism?" either they deny racism outright or they try to deny that it's a big problem. But even if the opponents haven't observed any racism that doesn't mean it isn't there. If they think it's not a major problem for black people — since clearly it wouldn't be one for white people — the question is how they could know that. One has to understand the experience and perceptions of black citizens. What has made the protests ring true to them? Until someone realizes that. one is in no position to dismiss the complaint of injustice. Any attempt to dispute the validity of the protest will fail to convince the protestors. Furthermore, it will not truly address the protest.

Some people do not dismiss the protest itself or misrepresent its meaning but still try to argue that, valid as the protest may be, kneeling during the National Anthem is the wrong way to make the protest. The editors of National Review, for example, said that there were "a dozen ways" in which the protest could appropriately be made. But they didn't offer any. If people want to say, do it differently, they need to give specifics about what form of protest would be acceptable. It seems significant that when one team knelt, not during the anthem, but before it, they were booed as if it were during the anthem, giving rise to the suspicion that for many, it's not about the National Anthem  — that what they really hate is these uppity black people protesting at all.

What Donald Trump has done is to confirm the misrepresentations of the issue in many people's minds, and he has done so in a way which once again shows that he is a boorish demagogue. His praise of NASCAR introduces a real irony with regard to the "disrespect for the flag" spin. It has been pointed out that NASCAR events are notable for people waving Confederate flags in the stands. It's a greater disrespect to the flag, to the armed forces, and to our country to proudly wave the flag of rebellion against the United States than to genuflect quietly during "The Star Spangled Banner."

I've heard it suggested that the protests were fading out of public awareness, and that Trump has blundered into making them a big issue again. Whether they will continue at the level of last weekend is doubtful, but at least many more people have been thinking about the protests than would have if he had kept quiet about them. But since he has misrepresented the issue, it has done nothing to promote the reflection which should be taking place. He did the country no service. Some people think he did this to take people's attention away from his failure to get a repeal of Obamacare or his terrible performance in dealing with North Korea. I doubt he is intelligent enough to plan such a diversion. But I have no doubt he's been paying attention to the protests to the detriment of fulfilling his real responsibilities.

The sooner he leaves office and is replaced by someone sane, intelligent, and competent, the better it will be for all of us, but it will take more than what has happened so far for the votes to be there to remove him from office. Meanwhile there is only a slender hope that he will decide he is tired of being President and resign.

Culture and Ethnicity

Recently I have seen been fair amount of discussion of issues having to do with race relations, Islamist violence, and Israel and Jews. There were the highly publicized police killings of black people last year, followed by discussions of white privilege. There have been the actions of ISIS, Boko Haram, and al-Qaeda. There have been the murderous attacks by Muslims on journalists and Jews in France and Denmark. In response to these and other events there was the PEGIDA movement in Germany, opposing Muslim immigration into Europe. There have been long-standing nationalist movements in various countries of Europe. Some people caution against Islamophobia. Others see a rise in anti-Semitism. Still others say that the Jews control events to a significant extent. Some people support multiculturalism. Some call for separation.


My Basic Position.  I see all this in the light of my Christianity, which tells me the the human race is essentially one, and that what is most important is the spread of the gospel, which tells us to love one another. That said, I recognize that within the one human race there are various ethnicities. I also recognize that different people have developed different cultures, some of which have seemed to incorporate the teachings of the gospel better than others, and some of which have produces higher levels of material comfort than others. Thus far in human history, it seems to me that Western civilization has done best in these regards.

On the other hand, there is a definite distinction between civilization and culture, on the one hand, and ethnicity on the other. There is nothing about Western civilization that makes it inaccessible to people of ethnicities other than European. For example, Japan is gradually adopting aspects of Western civilization and culture, and has been doing so since the 19th Century. And, by the same token, there is nothing about Western ethnicities that guarantees that they will always remain bearers of Western civilization. The peoples of the West are slowly abandoning the values of the civilization which developed among them. For me, the Judeo-Christian Western civilization is far more important than the ethnicity of its current bearers.

When I speak of the West, I mean Europe, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries whose culture is largely comparable to those I've mentioned. By Western civilization, I mean the civilization and cultures which developed in Europe under the influence of the heritage of ancient Greece and Rome and of Christianity and were spread since 1492 to the other regions that are now part of the West.


Contemporary Problems. The issues I mentioned at the outset present problems for Western civilization.

Muslim Extremism. It seems that most Muslims, both in the West and elsewhere, have been for some time and still are willing to live in peace with non-Muslims. It might have seemed to most observers that the era of Muslim expansionism by military means had come to an end. Within the post quarter century or so,* however, elements within the Muslim world have expressed increasing hostility to the West and have turned to violence against Western targets, both with Muslim countries and beyond. It should be noted, however, that the violence is not solely against non-Muslims. Many Muslim extremists also commit violence against Muslims whom they regard as heretics. Indeed, it is probable that many more Muslims than non-Muslims have been victims of Muslim extremists.

*Perhaps the first example of this violent hostility goes back a little farther, to the seizing of the U.S. embassy in Tehran when the Shah was overthrown, and the characterization of the United States as "the great Satan."

Multiculturalism. When I was growing up, the image we had of the United States was of a "melting pot," which would absorb people of various ethnicities and cultures and blend them into a single people with a single culture. The assumption was that the resulting culture would be basically Western. Now the notion of multiculturalism has replaced the paradigm of the melting pot with the paradigm of the salad or the mosaic, in which each ingredient or element remains unchanged, unassimilated, but the result is something better than the sum of its parts. It is part of a relativism which says not only that "all men are created equal," but that nothing any of them develop is superior to what others develop, and no ideas or beliefs are better than any others. Not only must we respect others, we must never make judgments about the validity of anything they say.

Where assimilation would tend to the creation of a common culture, multiculturalism prevents it and assures that different groups continue to see themselves as disconnected from the larger society within which they live. Thus, for example, multiculturalism provide the ground in which Muslim extremism can more easily grow among Muslims in the West.

Race Relations.  At one time many European countries were ethnically very homogeneous — although with  variations depending on their history of settlement and conquest. For example, England was ethnically more diverse — with its Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Norse, and Norman French elements — than Denmark or Lithuania. In the Americas, there has always been more tunic diversity. There were the aborigines, the European settlers, and the Africans, with considerable numbers of Asians added more recently. Ethnic purity has never been a reality, although the degree of intermarriage has varies, with a greater level in Latin America. In the United States, despite some degree of intermarriage, it has remained possible for most people to self-identify and identify others as White, Black, Native American, or, more recently, Hispanic — although the univocal identification could ignore the fact that in some cases the ethnicity was merely predominant.

White prejudice against non-Whites, punctuated by segregation and by KuKlux Klan terrorism, has contributed to Black feelings of estrangement from White people and to the growth of a culture of contempt for White people. Mutual suspicion has grown, to the point that Black people are often viewed with suspicion and fear by White people. Thus the experience of being stopped by police for "driving while black" is considered to be commonplace, and Black parents consider their sons to be in such heightened danger of violence at the hands of police officer that many try to teach them how to avoid saying or doing anything which could provoke a police officer. By contrast, White people do not assume that they are likely to be stopped when they are not violating the law or behaving suspiciously,nor do they take it for granted that any encounter of their sons with police contains a high risk of violence being inflicted on those sons. In short, White people fear Blacks, Blacks fear the police, and the police fear Blacks.

It may well be that 100 years ago, Black people felt themselves part of the predominant culture of the United States, and that ongoing prejudice and segregation,legal or informal, has led to current feelings of alienation, which have fostered the rise of Islam, as well as the distinctive ghetto culture. The delight most Black people seemed to take in the acquittal of O.J. Simpson seems to have had a large element of  pleasure in "sticking it to the man," as well as a measure of belief that the system was railroading him because he was Black.

Despite the fact that Spaniards and Portuguese are European, most non-Hispanics in the United States seem to think of Hispanics in general as non-White.

Since the ethnicities in the United States are irretrievably mixed, racial purity is an impossibility, even though some fantasize it. Instead, the problem is to achieve a rapprochement among those who are more or less White, Black, Hispanic, and Native, so that we can all be bearers of the Western civilization to which we are heirs as a nation, and live without endemic suspicion, fear, hostility, and contempt.


To be continued.

I wrote the above almost a week ago, with the intention of saying more about the problems I've outlined in the light of my basic position. But since I haven't got around to it yet, I'm publishing this part for your consideration and comments. Hopefully, I will write more on the subject soon.

Ruminations on Martin Luther King Day, 2015

The American Declaration of Independence asserts that "all men are created equal" and that their Creator has endowed them all with the unalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires all States to give the equal protection of its laws to all.

The enforcement of segregation against black citizens was clearly contrary to the meaning of equality as set forth in these documents. While debatable questions may be raised about specific legislative proposals intended to recognize and enforce that equality, it is certainly contrary to the meaning of America to seek ways of subordinating an ethnic group or of making an ethnic group superior to others.

Martin Luther King, jr. opposed the laws and customs which treated black citizens differently from white citizens. In this, he was simply claiming the promises of the Declaration and the Constitution. At its most fundamental level, the civil rights movement of which he was a leader was a call to America to be true to itself.

Yesterday I went to see a film called "Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible." (The link goes to the first part of it. The rest can be reached through further links.) It is uneven. A couple of the things that people were troubled about in their lives struck me as pretty trivial and perhaps not even race-related. But even so, it does illustrate the existence of both racism and white privilege. Some people object that their families never owned slaves, that their ancestors immigrated after slavery was ended, that neither they nor their ancestors had ever oppressed people of other races, that they are poor and powerless. That may be true, but it is beside the point. White privilege really means that white people are not subject to the indignities black people suffer: being followed by security in stores, being stopped by police for "driving while black" or admonished by police for walking in white neighborhoods, needing to make sure that their eight-year-old son is known to every member of the suburban police force as a resident of the 97% white town.

The ending of white privilege does not require any loss for white people; it only requires that people of color be treated no differently from white people. But this is not an easy thing to accomplish. Attitudes are formed over years and decades. For example, if we are aware of crimes committed by young urban black men, it is natural to associate crime with young black men, forgetting that criminal elements arose from other ethnic groups of urban poor. Meanwhile, black people are perfectly aware of the fact that they do not get treated as equals in American society, despite the Declaration and the Constitution, and it is only natural that this leads to resentment. We end up with a situation in which crime by urban black people is partly fueled and exacerbated by the resentment of the inequality which is partly brought about by the crime.

I used to be more optimistic about the future of racial equality in this country, but I am discouraged as I come to realize the degree to which people of color are still not regarded (consciously or unconsciously) and treated as equals. Still I do not consider it possible that we will be forever divided along racial lines or that there will be some kind of race war. But I think progress will be gradual and that true equality is still a generation or more away.