Of course, we must judge. We must judge the truth. We must judge whether our government is behaving justly. We must judge ourselves. And we must judge others. Judgment is the basis of identity. We judge who we are, and we judge who we (and others) are not. By defining what we are not and what we won’t do and won’t accept in others, we are made human. Because the human being, in contrast to other life, is distinguished by not being able to rely solely on rude nature and instinct. He must make rules; it is this absolute necessity of practical and moral judgment that distinguishes man from animal more than any other factor. It is from this that he comes into the political, rather than merely social life. It is from this that he has the capacity not merely to fulfill a biological destiny, but also to transcend it.
And we judge in different ways. The law makes its judgments: precise, practical, and often unyielding. It can only probe the complexity of life by narrowing its purview. If it were to ask the broader question not just of whether a wrong act had been done, but if someone were truly evil, it would find itself soon outpaced by the complexity of life.
I am reminded by a number of recent events of this distinction between the law’s final (but limited) judgments, and the need in life (as citizen or student) for more open-ended judgments that are by necessity less final. First, the recent decision of PFC John Jodka to accept a plea deal in the Hamdania incident. After loudly proclaiming his innocence, his father and his defense team have necessarily accepted that something criminal took place, both by Jodka and his squad-mates. The exact contours of this event, of course, must be refracted through multiple lenses: the words of the accused, the character of the victim, the stress of the squad stationed in forlorn Iraq, the numerous other squds that did not perpetrate such action, and the effects of peer pressure on the younger members of the squad, such as Bacos and Jodka. At another extreme, I am also a bit awed and confused by the combination of evil and victimhood in convicted serial killer, Danny Rolling, who will soon be sent to death row in Florida. Terribly abused, he abused in turn. Only God can truly know the extent of people’s capacity for self-control and the nature of their demons; truly, few among us are event tempted to kill, let alone perpetrate the horrors of a Danny Rolling. Likewise, few among us have to deal with the daily stress of combat, where the moral injunction on killing becomes more and more muted and harder to observe by the tide of events.
The law can reach final judgments, but it can only do so by excluding the numerous mitigating and aggravating factors and ancillary actions that make up the details of any individual’s life, criminal or otherwise. This is why the question of guilt or innocence should be closed and technical, while the question of punishment (and even the propriety of an executive pardon) should be more open-ended and inclined towards mercy.
John Lukacs penned in Historical Consciousness the following discussion of Lord Acton’s dictum that “The maxim that a man must be presumed to be innocent until his guilt is proved was not made for the historian.”:
Thre reason for this is that whereas the judicial process is closed with a definite judgment, the historical process is not: it is always subject to revisions. The historian, it may be said, specializes in multiple jeopardy. Moreover, while legal justice by necessity deals with the infraction of already existing (and usually codified) laws, the sphere of historical judgment is infinitely greater, embracing the entire moral sphere of human actions. There are many human acts that are not susceptible to proper judicial investigation (to some extent this is true of the war crimes trials) which does not at all suggest that they are not condemnable. The ultimate purpose of legal knowledge is justice; the ultimate purpose of historical knowledge is truth.
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One of the problems with Russell Kirk style “conservativism” is the tendency to look at things through a ivory tower philosophical muddle, entirely divorced from reality, not much more relevant to reality than ideological liberalism or even communism.
It was hardly a surprise that Jadka would be either indicted, or manipulated into accepting a plea bargain, as the Military, and especially this noxious President with his administration of neo-communists and radicials that equate anyone who mention facts that conflict with their utopian visions as traitors.
Out of this right-wing equivalent of ivory tower liberalism comes such arguments as “other soldiers didn’t comitt crimes” and other such nonsense. Of course,
Rather then condemn Jadka and company, you ought to more concerned about the political party that put these boys—yes they are boys, not men—into the impossible situation of forcing a western style “democracy” on people who don’t want it or don’t even possess the value system to even understand it.
I don’t think it’s much of a muddle to say: the law does its business by looking at things in a stylized way, whereas the rest of us have to evaluate and re-evaluate things from a broader perspective when we consider (a) what does this say about America (b) human nature (c) the war, etc.
I am concerned about the war and its overly ambitious premises. I’m also concerned about the tedency on the right to excuse horrors of this war with a kind of militaristic moral relativism, which is damaging to the country and the military as well.
To which war are you referring? Bush declared victory in the war against Iraq while wearing a flight suit in late 2003.
There is no such thing as a war on “terror.” Terrorist acts were already abundantly covered and addressable by criminal law.
Wars can only involve sovereign nations with recognized leaders who can sign a peace treaty to end the war.
How can we know when this war on “terror” is over? We can’t, and it is not a war.
If you’re referring to the ongoing Iraq civil war, then I, too, am concerned.
As the above commenter implied, the primitive Islamo-animals in Southwest Asia are approximately 800 to 1,000 years behind the west and their primitive animal brains literally cannot comprehend the style of liberty we have tried to impose.
The Islamo-animal men need to do one thing: eat dirt and die.
Plus, Iraq is 3 nations forced together. That should be okay, except, again, the Islamo-animals can’t begin to understand separation of church and state or notions of “equal protection” or equality of opportunity as a matter of fact–they’ve got 800 years to go.