Force, Morality and Collegiate Date Rape

An old friend of ours in Greece, a child during the WWII Nazi occupation, likes to say, “What could we do? They had the gun. We had nothing.”  It is also his response to a lot of different current situations, like bank takeovers in the EU, as a kind of resigned recognition that Might, whether moral and legal or not, commonly justifies itself simply by its superior force - “Might makes Right.”   Victimhood becomes a natural outcome of weakness, whether physical or financial or military, and an acceptable social norm.  In fact, challenging that norm becomes a dubious revolt against nature and an act of social rebellion.

George Will has taken a lot of flak, and rightly so, for his comments on June 6 in the Washington Post criticizing the victims of collegiate date rape as glorifying victimhood and “being a survivor”; in effect, he labels them as whiners wallowing in the privileges of a rapidly shifting and nuanced moral scene on college campuses these days.  He seems to equate the problem with the misbehavior of children, best policed by the stern parenting of the college itself - by the way, has anyone seen “in loco parentis” around lately? I haven’t in years - and such campus shenanigans as beyond the interest of the law.  An excellent analysis of Will’s core argument was done by Alyssa Rosenberg on June 11 in the Post, and many other opinion pieces on the subject are busily unraveling the many other weaknesses in Will’s argument.  But the fact is that Will’s argument is perfectly consistent with his general libertarian principles.  He’s applying the same kind of logic to date rape as he would apply to the activities of Goldman Sachs, and in the process laying bare a fundamental social issue.

I’ve commented before that American Libertarianism is based mainly on a misty-eyed memory of a past that never existed, where solitary heroic figures struggled with gun and plow against nature, hostile Indians and outlaws.  Hobbes was referencing the early American frontier when he described life outside civilization as “short, mean and nasty” and that’s how the frontier was perceived from England.  In real life pioneers travelled, lived and struggled together in groups.  The town names of places like Syracuse New York, Rome Georgia and Athens Texas show that thoughts of civilization were never very far away.  My great-great-great grandfather, who migrated from Virginia to Georgia to Alabama, with mostly the same neighbors in each place, lived to 77 – a good age even by today’s standards.  I have a diary of the trip my family made along with a dozen others by wagon train from Alabama to Texas in 1868.  Pioneering was a community venture.  Our volunteer fire departments are a truer heritage from our pioneering forebears than Marlborough Man.  Libertarians who think they did it all themselves and owe nothing to others discredit both their neighbors and their ancestors. 

Deeper down, libertarianism as practiced by some is Cain’s rejoinder to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  It is a trained lack of empathy with the needs of others, self- justified by the excuse that you shouldn’t interfere with the lives of others and they shouldn’t interfere with yours.  Their problems are their own business and you shouldn’t intrude.  Sometimes, it is mere moral laziness. But, like Cain’s response, it is often a cover-up for having done harm to others that you are ashamed to admit.  You have used force of some kind, whether financial, legal or physical, in a way that you know is morally irresponsible.   And to excuse yourself and be consistent you have to excuse others for doing the same thing, and excuse the enabling things like laws stacked against the poor that allow it to happen.  Letting that predation go unanswered simply spreads the problem throughout the entire community.

That is what makes it a social issue.  We today have the same kinds of dangers as did our pioneering ancestors.  For raw nature, substitute climate change.  For building a town, substitute infrastructure development.  For battling French and Indians, substitute a wild and bewildering array of foreign policy challenges. And for outlaws, substitute individuals and institutions from big corporations to collegiate rapers that prey on the weakness of others, sometimes by getting the laws changed to enable doing it more easily. And community responses are required for community dangers. Things like “big government” are our community vehicle for exercising countervailing force against the dangers we all share.  The more complex the tasks to be done, the more complex the organizations to get it done need to be.  Ignoring the dangers doesn’t make them go away.  

 We live today in a social environment of religious differences, income inequality global economics and diverse life styles that drive us apart in ways never experienced by our ancestors.  Our greatest danger is the splintering of our own society.  A new Pew poll reveals that the majority of those polled would not want a family member of a different political party, and that liberals and conservatives don’t even like the same kind of housing.  Activists in each party regard a victory by the other as a national disaster to be avoided at all costs.  We’ve got to get past those dislikes or disregards of others or we will become victims of our own misdoings.

We need the same kind of community spirit that our ancestors had to get the many things done that desperately need doing.  And we need more effective, not less, government as a tool to do the job.  Cain’s rejoinder won’t get the job done.  And solitary battles against our own neighbors won’t either.