![\"Al-Ahramaat\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/01\/All_Gizah_Pyramids.jpg\")
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I am entirely in favor of meting out severe punishment to policemen who abuse the power that society has entrusted in them in order to do unjustified injury, to exploit, or to oppress. \u00a0The death of George Floyd appears to represent such a case, and I will be happy if, the courts having done their job properly and the perpetrators having been found culpable, just penalties are imposed that will have a deterrent effect on others. \u00a0Moreover, if there are systemic problems that need to be addressed, I am entirely in favor of addressing and fixing them.<\/p>\n
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Demonstrations have their place, I suppose, although I now wonder how much good could have been done if all of the energy invested in the current round of demonstrations had instead been deployed elsewhere \u2014 e.g., in community clean-up, running errands for shut-ins, service at soup kitchens and food banks, and so forth. \u00a0(Such things could easily have been done in the name of George Floyd.)<\/p>\n
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But there is no<\/em> place for riots and destruction \u2014 destruction that often damages the very communities that can afford it least and for which the rioters claim to feel concern. \u00a0Supermarkets that are destroyed may not return. \u00a0Minority-owned businesses that have been torched represent the death of dreams and a real setback for minority economic progress.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But mobs, enraged crowds both literal and figurative, are often quite mindless. \u00a0Here are a few recent examples:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCancel Cancel Culture\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Really. \u00a0Read this one. \u00a0It will astonish you.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRe: Re: Re: The Disturbing Campaign against Tucker Carlson\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019m not, on the whole, a Tucker Carlson fan, but . . .<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cInsanity at the Poetry Foundation\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTwo of its officials resign after its formal denunciation of systemic racism provokes a furious demand that it do more.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSanders Dismisses Progressive Calls to Defund Police, Says Departments Need More Resources\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCamden Didn\u2019t \u2018Defund the Police\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I myself can easily see the point of weakening police unions, since they have often hindered reform and the firing of bad officers, just as teachers\u2019 unions have frequently blocked educational reform and the firing of bad teachers. \u00a0But that\u2019s not quite the same as the utopian anarchist fantasy of abolishing law enforcement altogether.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m a bit puzzled that these people managed to be admitted to medical school, and that my Utah state taxes are subsidizing their education:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cUniversity of Utah medical students call for school to cut ties with police:\u00a0<\/span>List of demands to administrators\u00a0also seeks acknowledgement that racism is a public health crisis\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n The demand that the University of Utah not merely reform its police force (which, to my knowledge, has no George Floyds in its record) but \u201cEliminate the police department budget and reallocate funds to programs supporting people of color and people in crisis\u201d is simply brainless. \u00a0Moreover, rather than acceding to the demand to \u201cIntegrate mandatory education in aspects of health equity and justice, including the history of racism in medicine, into the medical education curriculum,\u201d I hope that students in medical school will focus really, really hard on medical education. \u00a0I\u2019m sorry to see the University administration seeming to grovel before such thoughtless virtue-signaling. \u00a0Finally, I see in the demands of these students the beginnings of a campaign to strip the names of all leaders and prominent members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> from university buildings. \u00a0Just wait.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s already happening regarding an analogous institution to the south:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cChange the name of Brigham Young University\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTasi Young: \u00a0Time to Change the Name of BYU\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n My response: \u00a0No!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Once we start down this road, how can we ever stop? \u00a0The virtue police have proven themselves insatiable. \u00a0Christopher Columbus? \u00a0Check. \u00a0Robert E. Lee? \u00a0Check. \u00a0Thomas Jefferson? \u00a0Check. \u00a0George Washington? \u00a0Check. \u00a0Winston Churchill? \u00a0Check. \u00a0All of them reduced to one aspect of their lives, judged, and found not merely wanting but demanding condemnation and erasure.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Cancel Counter: Statue of Famed Revolutionary War General to Be Removed from Albany City Hall\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBoston weighs fate of statue of Lincoln, kneeling freed man\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPark Volunteer Outraged over Vandalism of Philadelphia Abolitionist Statue: \u2018He Was BLM Before There Was A Slogan\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s No Reason to Cancel Gone with the Wind<\/em>\u201c<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNew Jersey lawmakers try to ban \u2018Huckleberry Finn\u2019 from curriculum, again\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Mark Twain\u2019s novel humanizes<\/em> a black man in an era when that was somewhat revolutionary. \u00a0It\u2019s anti<\/em>-racist. \u00a0But so what? \u00a0Ban it!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Really. \u00a0Once we begin on this path, there\u2019s no limit. \u00a0Consider this<\/em> one:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHow Much Longer Will MLK\u2019s Statue Stand?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some years ago, I read Ralph Hancock\u2019s<\/a> translation of Alain Besan\u00e7on\u2019s A Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Horrors of the Shoah<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I believe it was in that book that I encountered this interesting observation:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Nazism, Besan\u00e7on wrote (if it was indeed Besan\u00e7on), had a finite goal. \u00a0At least in theory. \u00a0Once the Jews and the Gypsies were gone, the Slavs enslaved, and so on, the perfect Nazi society would essentially have been achieved. \u00a0Aryan supermen would be in power, and equilibrium would have been reached.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Communism, by contrast, would never<\/em> be done. \u00a0The most minute deviations from the Party line, whatever the party line happened to be that day, would be sought out and lethally punished. \u00a0And there were always deviations. \u00a0The slightest differences of opinion were criminalized; the slightest policy variations were deemed treason.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The history of the leadership of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and other such states \u2014 with their continual purges of previously favored leaders and apparatchiks, their endless heresy hunts and show trials \u2014 illustrate that fact in spades. \u00a0I recall the story \u2014 I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s true or not \u2014 of a\u00a0cabinet minister who once dared to suggest an alternative course of action during a meeting with Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania from 1944 to his death in 1985. \u00a0Hoxha, it\u2019s said, pulled a pistol, shot him in the head, and continued with the meeting.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Ideologues are always searching for heresies and heretics, and they tend to be unforgiving.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A passage from Hamlet<\/em> II.ii has been going through my mind as I watch calls to \u201ccancel\u201d or erase historical figures for their sins against the current party line. \u00a0In it, Polonius says that he will treat a group of traveling actors according to their merit. \u00a0Hamlet objects:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Polonius: \u00a0\u201cMy lord, I will use them according to their desert.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Hamlet: \u201cGod\u2019s bodykins, man, much better. \u00a0Use every man after his desert, and who would \u2018scape whipping? \u00a0Use them after your own honor and dignity. \u00a0The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It behooves us to view prior generations charitably, if only in our own self-interest. \u00a0They had moral blind spots. \u00a0But so do we. \u00a0Of course we don\u2019t see them. \u00a0That\u2019s what \u201cblind spot\u201d means<\/em>. \u00a0If we hope for charity from succeeding generations, we should extend it to those who\u2019ve gone before us.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here, though, is my favorite bit of recent idiocy, kindly brought to my notice by my friend Ed Snow:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBritish anti-racism protestors call for destruction of Giza Pyramids\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Given the context, I\u2019m reasonably sure that these poor, benighted souls equate the term slavery<\/em> with black<\/em> slavery. \u00a0But this is historically inaccurate. \u00a0Moreover, they plainly assume that the pyramids of Egypt were built by slave labor. \u00a0However, this was very likely not the case. \u00a0In any event, they\u2019re now proposing cancellation on a literally monumental scale.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I almost wish such buffoons good luck. \u00a0I think they have no idea how big, and how solid, the pyramids are<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [I\u2019m now credibly informed that it was opponents<\/em> of the current demonstrations who brought up demolishing the pyramids, as a reductio ad absurdum<\/em> argument. \u00a0At least two Egyptian news outlets, however, reported the matter as my link above does, and it was on them that I was relying.]<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On a brighter note \u2014 both in terms of intellect and in terms of mood \u2014 here are two very good and very balanced statements on our current controversy regarding race and policing, one an article and the other a video:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n