{"id":112517,"date":"2025-08-24T16:52:57","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T22:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=112517"},"modified":"2025-08-24T17:56:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T23:56:33","slug":"de-mortuis-nil-nisi-bonum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/08\/de-mortuis-nil-nisi-bonum.html","title":{"rendered":"De mortuis nil nisi bonum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Das<\/a>
The memorial at Buchenwald, one of the National Socialist concentration camps in which people who had been deemed verminous pests to be eliminated were, in fact, eliminated. \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIf only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?\u201d (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, <\/span>The Gulag Archipelago 1918\u20131956<\/em>)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I continue to be hammered over at the Peterson Obsession Board for these two recent blog entries: \u00a0\u201cI Can Easily Imagine Worse Deaths\u201d<\/a> and \u201cIn which I once again object to certain rhetoric.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0Supposedly, I admired the recently deceased Dr. James Dobson because he was a culture-warrior political ally of mine. \u00a0They say, though, that I should have studied Dr. Dobson\u2019s works more carefully before I came to his defense because he was actually an evil man who ruined innumerable lives. \u00a0(Curiously, despite my supposedly deep affinity with him, I never actually read anything by him and I never listened to him.)<\/p>\n

Opinions vary wildly about Dobson\u2019s effect on families and parenting. \u00a0Some plainly hate him but, just as plainly, others respect him and consider his legacy a good one. \u00a0He was a controversial figure \u2014 more so than I had realized (because, as I\u2019ve said, I never actually followed him) \u2014 and it\u2019s quite easy to find opinions on either side.<\/p>\n

So why, being as ignorant about him as I am about everything else, did I rise up to defend him?<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t<\/em>, actually. \u00a0Neither Dr. Dobson\u2019s recommendations about marriage and parenting nor James Dobson himself were the principal focus of those two blog entries, any more than the principal impetus behind my slightly earlier post \u201cOn Dealing With \u201cScum\u201d Who\u2019ve Entered Our Country Illegally\u201d<\/a> was a sudden personal desire to expound on issues in United States border policy.<\/p>\n

My real concern was the use of dehumanizing words like scum<\/em>, bacterium<\/em>, imbecile<\/em>, monster<\/em>, toad<\/em>, and filth <\/em>for a human being. \u00a0My real concern was seeing people metaphorically invoke sexual violence upon a person who held a different opinion, rejoicing in his death, and hoping that, if there is a hell, he\u2019ll be tortured in it.<\/p>\n

One of my many areas of profound discomfort with the MAGA movement is its tendency to use extreme language for those of whom it disapproves (e.g., traitor<\/em>,\u00a0treason<\/em>, scum<\/em>, and vermin<\/em>, calls for imprisonment and even execution, and so forth). \u00a0I myself have strong social, economic, and political opinions. \u00a0In fact, I\u2019m a committed political conservative with long-held free market views and a tendency toward libertarianism. \u00a0Most social and political controversies, however, simply aren\u2019t battles between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, and it\u2019s extraordinarily harmful to view them in terms of total war.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Latin aphorism that comes to mind in thinking about some of the really vicious things that have recently been said about James Dobson: \u00a0De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est<\/i>. \u00a0Literally rendered, it means<\/span> \u201cOf the dead nothing but good is to be said.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s commonly abbreviated as Nil nisi bonum<\/i><\/span> and is often freely translated as \u201cDon\u2019t speak ill of the dead.\u201d \u00a0The notion goes back originally to the sixth-century Chilon of Sparta, who was one of the famous \u201cSeven Sages\u201d of ancient Greece:\u00a0\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03c4\u03b5\u03b8\u03bd\u03b7\u03ba\u00f3\u03c4\u03b1 \u03bc\u1f74 \u03ba\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd<\/span><\/span>, he is said to have advised. \u201cOf the dead do not speak ill.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sentiment probably goes too far \u2014 I\u2019m not at all reluctant to criticize people like John Wayne Gacy and Joseph Stalin and the leaders of 1930s and 1940s Germany, for example; they deserve no blanket pardon simply because they died \u2014 but there seems to be an intuitively obvious bit of wisdom in it for most ordinary cases. \u00a0After all, death puts an end to earthly character flaws and, anyway, the dead aren\u2019t around to defend themselves. \u00a0So a bit of charity is never out of place. \u00a0And a bit of self-interest, as well: \u00a0We should extend charity to others, where possible, because sooner or later we\u2019ll want it for ourselves.<\/p>\n

That is my issue. \u00a0I have nothing invested in Dr. James Dobson himself. \u00a0I neither encountered nor took his parenting advice. \u00a0Whether it was bad or good, overall, I do not know. \u00a0(I\u2019m inclined to doubt that it was so uniformly and catastrophically wicked as it has been portrayed in the more apocalyptic online comments about Dobson, both because the breathlessly angry comments that I\u2019ve read seem overdone and too partisan and because the praise of Dobson that I\u2019ve read comes from people who seem neither obviously insane nor transparently depraved.) \u00a0But I do heartily dislike the current fashion of demonizing those with whom we disagree. \u00a0(And not merely because, in certain quarters, I myself have been a victim of relentless demonization over the past couple of decades.)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Hale Centre Theatre, in Sandy, Utah, is (as I\u2019ve often said before and will certainly say again, barring unforeseen catastrophe) a local, state, and regional treasure. My wife is there at this very moment. \u00a0(Photo from the Hale Centre Theatre website)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My wife and I drove up to Sandy yesterday, at the southern end of the Salt Lake Valley, and took in a late-afternoon performance of the musical Footloose<\/em><\/a>\u00a0at the Hale Centre Theatre. \u00a0It\u2019s not my favorite musical or play, but we enjoyed the performance. \u00a0They always do a really good job. \u00a0This was our second attempt to see the play. \u00a0On the first occasion, our right rear tire literally blew up \u2014 presumably we had run over something on the freeway \u2014 and we spent the next two hours or so sitting on the right shoulder of I-15. \u00a0The folks at the Hale Centre Theatre box office were extraordinarily kind in giving us tickets for yesterday\u2019s matinee. \u00a0They didn\u2019t have to do that; the tire explosion wasn\u2019t their fault or their responsibility.<\/p>\n

Given my supposedly reactionary social and political views, by the way, I suppose that the fictional Footloose<\/em><\/strong> town of Bomont (prior, at least, to the arrival in it of Ren McCormack) ought to rank right up there with the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut, as my idea of an ideal utopia. \u00a0But it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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