Democracy

This whole business about the Christian Abdul in Afghanistan has got me thinking a lot about the nature of the type of democracy that the US is trying to support. Although I think that killing someone for their beliefs is cruel and inhuman, it did make me wonder if this was just one more example of hypocrisy. We ostensibly fight wars to give people the right to make decisions over their own lives. But when they make decisions we don't like, it's not okay - or example with the Hamas election victory, we're not pleased when these decisions lead to outcomes that go against our interests.

This case is different. And yet, it still raises questions. If say the court wasn't to kill Abdul but simply to jail him, would we seriously have the moral authority to complain about such a decision. In this case, the argument goes that there is an inviolable human right that's being violated. But if we can be abstract for a moment, consider this: From the governance perspective, laws maintain order in a society. In a democracy in particular, laws reflect the norms and mores that a society agrees upon (in an ideal situation). Now, if in their society, there was consensus that by becoming christian, he posed a threat to a way of life that the majority of people have chosen, don't they have a right to expel him?

I'm not trying to argue that this situation is either right or wrong, but the principle of choice is being violated here. We have examples of that at home. I've been watching Big Love and it's as enticing as it is gross. But what I'm saying is that these people and their way of life is illegal in the US. Aside from those 80 year olds that marry 12 year olds on compounds, there are people that make that choice. It's not the same as killing them for being polygamists, but it is the same sort of human rights infringement. Our response to claims that it's also a human right's violation is that these polygamists undermine the norm of the family which in turn undermines society. As a democratic society, we have a right to defend certain beliefs not on any irrefutable, air-tight scientific logical basis but on the basis of consensus that something is just not right. Will we give other people that right as well?

What's the point of being earnest?

Granted, being earnest and honesty isn't useful in many situations. In most professional experiences, it must be carefully applied.

But the value of honesty and being earnest in college is important depending on what you consider college to be. Many people view college as a pre-cursor to reality. But recognizing that it's merely a "pre-cursor" and not the actual thing makes a big difference. Didn't you ever wonder why the stakes seemed so high in mere college? Didn't it ever strike you as strange that an 18-year old kid, otherwise completely immature, unwise, inexperienced demanded respect merely because he could read homer in greek? To a real person in the real world, that's just snobby and childish because there's more to a man than the things he can pick up in books, just as there's more to people than the shiny cars and bling they flash around.

I tend to think of college as a training ground as well as a precursor to the real thing. Being guarded all the time is sort of frigtening in such an environment because to truly challenge yourself intellectually, you have to let your guard down, be stupid sometimes, be brilliant others. Because you don't learn by saying the judicious or diplomatic thing ALL the time. And that's what college is for - a place for you to learn things so that you can be a better human being. Memorizing and getting an easy or even a difficult A isn't enough. We learn in adversity but only if there's an environment accepting enough that we don't feel like we're always surrounded by sharks. I rarely felt challenged by my classmates who, as you say, were too scared to say something negative because you might have to walk past them everyday on the street. If you aren't challenged by the people around you, you don't grow. What I felt a lot of the time - not always - was an intense sense of wanting to get ahead without enjoyment of the process. And I think a lot of people at our school geniunely enjoy the process. It's just that the process is hard and our school environment is so unforgiving to weakness. As a result, everything was so gentile. Even our bi-partisan debates were so gentile. That's not the real world. That's the isolated world of elites who have too many roles to play.

College is supposed to be difficult but not in a way that makes you wary of people, distrustful, and sometimes uncaring. I would never wish college to be that for my children.