The Paris Hilton Hilton
That should be the new name for the Los Angeles jail where the monkey-faced blond socialite would have been spending time if she were not a celebrity. Taki once commented (ironically) on one of my pieces that I had failed to mention Paris Hilton. This is my attempt to make remedy the deficiency.
I cannot turn on the radio, pick up a newspaper, or go out to dinner without hearing about Paris Hilton, Paris Hilton. Yes, it is all true. She is ugly white trash. Ordinarily I would say of a spoiled young party girl that she deserves to be spanked, but I do not even like to think about getting that close--though Ozzy Osbourne's son is bragging about being among her thousands of casual--what shall we call them?--orgasm-exchangers. Yes, she needs to be punished--perhaps a fine of several million dollars would do some good--but jail? Nobody, but nobody except a child rapist belongs in jail.
If ever there were a cruel and inhuman form of punishment forbidden by our Constitution, it is incarceration. Of course, some prisoners must be held for trial, others for execution, but prisons as a form of punishment were invented by moral perverts (Quakers) who presumed the right to change other people's lives. The state has the right to exercise vengeance against evil-doers but not to change their character. Last weekend I was having dinner with some very nice people in Baton Rouge, and, after some initial joking, they agreed that jail time was too severe for Miss Hilton, but one of them balked at a mere fine: "I'd prefer Community Service, which might do her some good." First of all, I doubt that it would, but, more importantly, it is not our job or Los Angeles' job to do good to strangers. Let her pay, say, $10,000 per day for every day of her sentence she does not serve, and turn the money over to some unworthy cause like public education. (See, modern governments cannot do anything right..)
The appropriate penalties for white collar crimes are confiscatory fines; more violent criminals should be beaten and subjected to public ridicule. Crimes against the people, such as acting in Steven Spielberg movies, producing the Shawn Hannity show or promoting free trade and open borders, could best be punished with a sentence of exile. Capital crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping, and arson should entail (not necessarily in all cases) execution. A wife who kills her husband may deserve to die, but not to become the slave of bureaucrats and the sexual psychopaths who are taken care of in our state prisons.
Paris Hilton is a spoiled rich celebrity who has tried to stay out of jail. Who wouldn't? If we have to have prisons, at least let them be reserved for violent criminals who can rape and kill each other. Listening to the talkshow Jeremiahs gleefully predicting sex slavery and regular beatings for Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby, I begin to wonder what kind of people I am living among. The pat on the wrist given recently to the wife of Paris Hilton's prosecutor, who was arrested on a nine year old warrant for the same crime as Miss Hilton, has only made the conversation worse. Imagine, a man with political power does not want his wife treated the same way as other criminals! Yes, Mr. Delgadillo was wrong in all the other cases, but he is certainly right to protect his wife.
The populist rabble are calling for Paris Hilton's blood, the libertarian rabble are whining about Michelle Delgadillo. In the midst of the moral outrage two simple points are obscured. The first is one of justice: ordinary scofflaws who run up traffic tickets and library fines should not be threatened with the most degrading form of punishment ever conceived by totalitarian-minded religious fanatics. The second is one of humanity: Paris Hilton and Michelle Delgadillo are human beings, and to gloat over their misfortune or desire their degradation is to join the bigoted rabble that hate and kill the human fellows who belong to a different race or social class, practice a different religion, or simply have connections. When someone knows someone who knows someone who can get her out of jail, I say God bless you!
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"... the monkey-faced blond socialite ..."
Ditto.
You mean, it isn't a hotel in France?
Mr. Fleming writes : "The state has the right to exercise vengeance against evil-doers but not to change their character."
If one of the functions of the law is to make men good, then it follows that one of the functions of law is to change a man's character. Either simply by moving him to avoid pain, or by moving his will to become habituated to the good.
btw, I wonder if prisons fall under the category of banishment, the most severe of all punishments.
And lastly. To attack a women's appearance is beneath you, as it is beneath any man.
Paris Hilton is not as "all that" as she is made out to be, but she is certainly not ugly. Of course she is no Winona Ryder. Talk about a travesty of justice.
I do think all the people taking glee in her misfortune is a bit sickening. They raise her up by following her celebrity, and then glory in her downfall.
Most punishment should be restitution to the victims. The real victim is the person that was robed, beaten, etc. not the state whose laws were violated.
First, when people set out to make themelves infamous by their actions and then exult in that infamy, which shows like leprosy on their face, they add ugliness of character to the plainness they were born with. And, what is more, such celebrities of vice forfeit whatever immunity women are assumed to have. If people wish to be celebrities they have no right to complain, as, for example, Mr. Clooney so frequently does, that their privacy is intruded upon.
Part of the moralist's and satirist's job is to point out vice and its consequences, and though it is unfair to pick upon a private person, even the wife of a celebrity or a politician, Miss Hilton or Princess Di are quite fair game. In the case of Miss Hilton, who has willingly turned herself into a kind of media-prostitute, failure to mention her ugliness would be a lapse in judgment. In the same way, if in criticizing Harry Jaffa one were to fail to mention that, along with being evil he is also crazy.
We are a nation of do-gooders, always snooping under beds and telling people to curb their dogs and forbidding them to make ethnic jokes. The same depressing spirit of reform that infects our system of criminal justice--by which I mean a justice that is criminal--also inspires the Misses Grundy who would forbid us to mock where mockery is due. If, when I was a younger man, an acquaintance had presumed to instruct me on what was or was not beneath me, I would have told him, in the words of Nathan Bedford Forrest to Braxton Bragg, that on a repetiton I would slap his jaw and force him to resent it. Fortunately, I am an old man now. My only revenge these days is to remove the Misses Grundy from this blog.
The state does not exist to make people good, much less better. That particular delusion, so dear to Jacobins and Communists, is part of what is wrong with this frightening country we live in. It is the rationale for our entire system of public education. We must all find our own way to Hell or to Heaven, and neither prosecutors nor jailers have much to do with it. Nonetheless, as Aristotle and St. Thomas acknowledge, an important part of the commonwealth's duty is to create conditions propitious for a virtuous life, but this is quite a different matter from compelling people to be virtuous. The primary purpose of punishment is vengeance, not the protection of society nor the reformation of the criminal. In pre-liberall times, there would be no room for discussion on this point.
Restitution is another matter, but it is an aspect of vengeance whereby the state secures redress for the victim. I am all in favor of it and believe, for example, that robber baron businessmen who steal their employee's pension funds should be fined in excess of what they stole, from which fines the victims could be fully compensated. Nonetheless, every human community has a legitimate interest in punishing those who violate its laws. In some communities, it is up to senior members of the family or clan; in others there are inter-clan or inter-tribal mediators; in still others there are systems of law. If we set aside minor infractions of regulations, e.g. parking in a handicapped spot, and concentrate on murder, rape, robbery, etc., it is not merely the victim of the crime that is injured but the community qua community. Hence in simpler societies, like ancient Athens or early 20th century Montenegro, a crime of blood was felt as a bloodstain or pollution on the entire community that suffered until it was wiped away. This is a healthy moral response to a practical problem, and the practical solution is to kill the killer.
One of the functions of law is to teach men what is good, not to make them good. Law as the salvation of man is an ancient Hebrew concept as is the notion that in order to have certain laws not violated we need to erect walls of other laws which if not violated will guarantee that the original laws will not be violated. Our legal system is far too Hebraic. Too many of our laws also only serve, with their selective enforcement, to harass and intimidate behaviour which our elite finds annoying or embarrasing.
We also have far too many people in jail, with the US having the highest per capita prison population in the world.
Mr. Salzer seems to reference the utilitarianism of Bentham. Incarceration does not need to be just under that scheme; it only need further societal happiness. Morality is deemed irrelevant. The punishment does not need to be just nor do the "crimes" need to possess any element of malice whatsoever e.g. traffic offenses. The modern conception of all crime being a 'public offense' as opposed to a private wrong may be related to the nonsense about 'rehabilitating' offenders.
Mr. Giuliano,
Actually, I was thinking of St. Thomas
http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FS/FS092.html
Summa Theologica
Mr. Giuliano,
I was actually thinking back on St. Thomas
I II q92 a1
http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FS/FS092.html
As mankind has (most probably) made some (even most modest) progress over the last 5000 years (only), we do owe it to ourselves to deeply re-examine the entire subject of incarceration. Never-mind the ancient Hebrews, or the Quakers for that matter, we (so I flatter myself) have attained a higher level of social conciousness and jailing a person is exactly as Dr. Fleming puts either an overkill or a symbolic slap on the wrist. It no longer serves any good purpose. Laws will remain in the sphere of abstract thought - same as other elements of ethics and can not be equated with our pedestrian "implementation of justice" - which one among us is so all-knowing and all-wise (not to say omnipotent) to select an adequate jail sentence for this infraction or that infraction?
None. Exile is a great answer - the only problem there would be an exact location before we colonize the moon or Mars. But Canada comes to mind - it's dreadfully cold inhospitable and large enough to allow for undistrubed life of polar bears (in that case I'd be more concerned with polar bears than humans of this ilk).
Michael Giuliano writes : "Mr. Salzer seems to reference the utilitarianism of Bentham."
Actually I was thinking back on St. Thomas Aquinas I II Q92 A1 "Whether an effect of law is to make men good?"
Exactly. Richard Speck has spent his life sentence in a sex-and-drug orgy. He is honored by some fellow-prisoners for being a great celebrity killer. On the other hand, weasely little guys who cheat on their income tax are sent to places where they may well contract AIDS or killer-TB or pneumonia after being repeatedly sodomized. When I was a college student in South Carolina, a young out-of-state kid could not pay a speeding ticket and did 30 days in the County Jail. He was raped over and over, and when he smuggled out notes to the guards, they laughed. I would have no hesitation in handing out a death sentence to jailers who knowingly allow these things to happen.
The idea was absurd from the beginning and the initial experiments in solitary confinement penitentiaries--not the word--went mad. Instead of admitting the whole concept was wrong, penal reformers began the endless process of fine-tuning.
Perhaps we need to consider penal colonies as in the awful movie Escape from New York, a title I like because it goes through my mind the whole time I am in Manhattan.
Oh, I left out mutillation. Which would you rather lose, a finger or six months of your life, a left hand or 5-10 years. I do not even have to think, and yet the loss of a limb or part of one would serve as very effective reminder not to, for example, snatch purses.
Finally, it is often risky to cite Thomas out of context. Of course the purpose of enforcing a law is to carry out justice, and one effect of law and justice is that they improve the men they affect. This has absolutely nothing to do with the modern notion that the state exists, through its educational and penal and social agencies, to reform or improve the character of its individual citizens, though obviously we are all improved by being educated or by making restitution to our victims.
"prisons as a form of punishment were invented by moral perverts (Quakers)" The Bible, Shakespeare et al. indicate otherwise. The moral reasoning for incarceration is unassailable. Those who break the law devised for the citizens' mutual enjoyment of liberty are justly and commensurately deprived of thier own liberty.
Mr. Salzer-The possibility that you were thinking of Aquinas crossed my mind after I posted. The difference between the two may be that between deterrence (Aquinas) and the actual reforming of the offender's character that Dr. Fleming discussed. It was an interesting topic in any event.
The question is not whether societies should punish criminals but whether or not incarceration is a) appropriate and b) historically a common punishment in the West. Prisons were used commonly for debt in England and for holding people for trial or for execution, but it is simply not true that incarceration was a standard form of punishment either in Elizabethan England or in the period of history covered by the Old and New Testaments. Paul, for example, is incarcerated as part of a judicial process involving his trial and, presumably, his execution. Whenever anyone in a controversy says that a moral argument is unassailable, it is time to begin examining assumptions. We are back to Jefferson's lie that natural rights are a self-evident truth.
Until quite recently it has been generally assumed that incarceration was almost never used as a legal punishment--the Prisoner of Zenda and Man in the Iron Mask notwithstanding--though there is now an argument being made that there was some use. As a standard form of punishment, however, incarceration is a modern innovation.
Finally, I do not know how many errors to count--I'll take offers--in the unassailable argument: "Those who break the law devised for the citizens’ mutual enjoyment of liberty are justly and commensurately deprived of thier own liberty."
Here's a stab: 1) Whoever said that laws are made for mutual enjoyment of liberty? I don't recall this in the Twelve Tables or Solon's Laws or in the Code of Justinian nor do I see that a speeder is infringing on my liberty. 2) Indeed most criminals do not at all infringe on my liberty. When one gang-banger kills another, I am probably better off. 3) So, it is not at all commensurate to deprive a man of his liberty when I am not deprived of mine. 4) Besides which, our prisons are terrible places that do not properly punish or reform and which, in fact, do not protect the prisoners from each other. Is it really morally unassailable to arrange for a young dope-smoker to be sodomized and murdered?
Perhaps Mr. Tryon would like to think this through again, beginning with a little study of legal history.
I think Mr. Tryon is right but the question remains as to what type of "crime" justifies a prison term. Many of the offenses that send people off for years have little to do with an attack upon any "mutual enjoyment of liberty".
An interesting tidbit from the 12 Tables by way of Augustine:
Octo genera poenarum in legibus esse scribit Tullius: damnum, vincula, verbera, talionem, ignominiam, exilium, mortem, servitutem.
In other words Tullius (Cicero, presumably--I don't have a commentary) said there were 8 types of punishment: fine, wearing chains or fetters (this is used for debtors, though the offender may go home or be held by the creditor), eye-for-eye retaliation, public humiliation, exile, death, slavery.
Dr. Fleming, have you read A Brief History of Crime (or the newer expanded version entitled The Abolition of Liberty) by Peter Hitchens? If so, would you recommend either?
Nonetheless, every human community has a legitimate interest in punishing those who violate its laws. In some communities, it is up to senior members of the family or clan; in others there are inter-clan or inter-tribal mediators; in still others there are systems of law.
Do you see the institutionalizing of justice (with various powers delegated to the police, and so on) as an advance, one that is needed (for larger communities?) in order to maintain the impartiality of justice?
In those societies where there are no formal systems of law and the pursuit of justice is left to the aggrieved parties, is this usually understood as a private pursuit? Or are they in some way representing the community when doing so? That the seeking of some sort of satisfaction for some injustice, both for the injured and for the community, should be left to those who have been injured or those close to them makes some sense--I am wondering though how this sort of duty has been explained or justified in those societies.
(I know I am asking for a generalization, but I am interested in finding an answer to the question of whether certain powers or "rights," such as the power to apprehend a malefactor, could ever be justly circumscribed by the government, or whether they are "natural rights" in the sense ofbeing duties that all citizens share and the exercise of which can never be forbidden by the government.)
From what I have read about prison life, it is difficult for me to see how death penalty abolitionists can claim that it is a more humane form of punishment.
If I remember correctly, in Ancient Rome, an injured party (by theft, fraud, murder/assault of a family member, etc.) was expected to prosecute their case before a judge, either themselves or by hiring a counselor, and the injured party was also sanctioned to carry out the punishment, with the help of family and friends, ordered by the judge -- one of the 8 mentioned by Cicero. There were no public prosecutors, nor police. I don't know what the emperor did when his decrees were not followed, but I suspect he just dictated the sentence.
In ancient Greece I believe you had to prosecute your own case although you could get coaching from a rhetoricist.
Also, as far as "...every human community has a legitimate interest in punishing those who violate its laws", I have never been asked for or against the creation on any law, ever! Mel Gibson had a great line in the Patriot, something like: "What's the difference in being ruled by one tyrant 3,000 miles away or by 3,000 tyrants one mile away".
The author has made numerous points, some of them in a jesting tone, so it's unclear what he believes. I assume, from the last sentence, he thinks it would be good to get Paris Hilton out of jail (which I agree with) and that there's a God (which I also agree with -- or does he NOT believe there's a God? Not that I need to know . . .).
What I do want to address is the term "white trash." It's probably unkind to use against Paris Hilton, but would this designation be based upon her not following the Biblical principle of having sex only inside the bounds of marriage? If so, is the author Christian, Judeo-Christian, or what? If he thinks it is a bad idea to have sex outside of marriage -- and I agree with that, though I did not always believe so -- is he implying that the Bible is a good book? (I'm not saying it's not -- you see what a difficult article this is philosopically!).
But the gist of my concern, here, is that the term "trash" is ONLY applied to white people, in the term "white trash." Why doesn't the author -- or does he -- use the term "trash" the same way with the words "Hispanic," "Black," "Asian," etc.? Fear, right? Well, admittedly, if the author is white, he's "tuning in" to what the majority of those groups feel toward white people, and so his reluctance to use the term is well founded -- so why not give white people "equality" by ELIMINATING the designation? Now THAT'S talking!
Chuck Colson has a similar opinion about jail and prison, having been in one himself and having started a prison ministry after his conversion to Christianity. He points out that the Old Testament law code does not even mention prison. Property crimes were dealt with by restitution. Even accidentally killing someone was met by restitution to the victim's kin. Of course, the OT has a lot more capital crimes than we would think justified today. His idea was that it is just crazy to put tax evaders or thieves and burglars in jail with rapists and murderers and house them at taxpayer expense. It would be better for them to have to make restitution. Better for them and for their victims, who often get nothing. His idea was that only criminals who were dangerous to society should be imprisoned, violent criminals.
The most egregious miscarriage of justice I have heard about lately (besides Nifong's handling of the Duke "rape" case) is that two Border Patrol agents are languishing in prison for doing their job. One is in trouble for shooting a Mexican drug dealer who was trying to smuggle drugs into the US (the drug thug was not killed, only wounded). WTH???? Apparently, the agent didn't do the paperwork right. I mean, you can't make this stuff up! Why in the world would any right thinking person now want to serve as a Border Patrol Agent? What a thankless job!
The other egregious miscarriage of justice is sticking stoners and potheads in jail where they can be raped and get AIDS. I do not approve of using drugs, but the "War on Drugs" is idiotic in the extreme.
Martha:
How about something even more absurd---jailing someone for failure to make child support payments ? Ever since the Two Minutes' Hate over "deadbeat dads" in the 80s, it has become relatively common for family court judges to send men (and it's nearly always men---in 17 years of family law practice I have yet to see a woman sent to jail for non-support) to jail for failure to pay child support.
There are a few males who deliberately withhold payment out of spite against the woman or the child. Those sorts are often egotistical and self-centered creatures for whom a good pistol-whipping might be considered merciful treatment. Most of them, however, are working-class or unemployable males who impregnate a woman, part company from that woman (either through divorce or simply being left) and then find themselves hit with support awards they can't pay.
I'm not one for forgiving such creatures, but sending someone off to jail for a $ 20,000 arrearage strikes me as not tending to solve the problem. (In a more well-run universe, the woman's relatives would express their displeasure with the male concerned in a direct and painful manner, but there are few women with such tight-knit families in this day and age.) To coin a phrase, what's up with that ?
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Some of this thread is over the top in regards to crime and punishment. The traditional role of criminal law was to provide for those instances when an individual would exercise his will against the good of a community, the community would exercise its reason against the criminal's will.
Jerome Carcopino described in his work, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, what happens when the cultural basis is eroded to the point that the good becomes what Marx simply described as the oppression of the upper class aginst the lower. When every day behavior becomes regulated by Courts, the courts collapse. Our prisons have doubled in occupancy due to the war on drugs and the consequent incarceration of such a large percentage of women. The war on terror holds even more promise for the ultimate regulation of every day behavior. When hate becomes a crime, charity will be suspect too. As for punishments not mentioned, three days confinement to bread and water was the most efficacious penalty available aboard ship when I was in the Marine Corps, and I imagine it still is today.
From what I have seen of some of the lazy and fat Fathers and Mothers who refuse their children even the most basic support short of despair, I think it would suit them and their sloth right down to the ground.
I ask in my simple way, whose life did Paris Hilton take; whom did Paris Hilton maim or injure; whose liberty did she take; and whose property did she destroy or damage in all of this? What evil did she then do, save to get into the proverbial bladder contest with the state, which wins most of the time?
I then ask, what do the reliable data - assuming that such exist, can be found and can be analyzed with a degree of accuracy and only a hint of bias - tell us about how many lives and how much property are saved through DUI laws and through their enforcement? If the data do not show that such laws and their enforcement really save lives and property, then why do we have them?
Even when there are deaths, injuries and/or damages resulting from a DUI, noting that what constitutes DUI is not an exact science, much of the restitution should be handled under tort law and through insurance.
It is interesting. One sins against God who takes sin very personally. His option is His wrath or His Grace provided through the blood sacrifice of the Christ. One commits a trespass against a person; there, one asks personally for forgiveness and makes what restitution one can. A legitimate function of the state is to assist in the latter. Finally, one commits a crime, an abstraction couched in legal jargon which no longer understands the suspect/criminal to be a creature of flesh, blood, spirit, intellect and emotion but a mere "person," another abstraction. Thus, the person - an abstraction - commits a crime - an abstraction for which a creature of flesh, blood, spirit, intellect and emotion is punished. Sin is not an abstraction for the Ontological Absolute. Trespass is not an abstraction for the victim. But, lo and behold, the state which pits and abstraction against an abstraction and punishes a creature in the process has all of the power while those truly offended, the Almighty and the victim, are marginalized, in the case of the former, to a swearing-in artifact in the state's courts and, in the case of the latter, to function as an emotional backdrop to placate revenge masquerading as justice and to put a "human" face on the brute police power of the state.
I’m not one for forgiving such creatures, but sending someone off to jail for a $ 20,000 arrearage strikes me as not tending to solve the problem.
Unfortunately it seems that slavery as a form of punishment is something our enlightened (or guilt-ridden?) society would never permit.
I have been wondering about the justice of having people imprisoned and fed at taxpayer's expense. Should they not have to perform some labor as a compensation, if not actually farm for themselves?
Yes, it is true that I have put on the cap and bells, as our friend George Garrett would say, in order to talk about celebrities. As for her being white trash, I will take the word of someone who runs in the same circles and knows the family, the inimitable Taki:
"Her vulgarity and crassness aside, Paris Hilton is butt ugly, tout court. With her, it was go from the very minute her white trash parents began to exhibit her in New York nightclubs. She has neither charm nor looks, lives in a drug and alcohol-induced haze and disguises her emptiness with impudence and nudity... Read the rest on Takimag.com.
There is poor white trash, as everybody knows, and then there is the rich variety, as everyone ought to know. This has not much to do with violation of the moral law. We are all sinners, and a man who is guilty of at least pride, sloth, gluttony, and drunkeness is in no position to point the finger at lechery. Why do we say white trash as opposed to black trash or just trash? Reason one: neither you nor I have made up the language and we use a language that has been handed down to us. Second, the expression came into common use in the South to designate people who were on the same level with lowclass blacks. There is an old saying one used to hear in the South, that there are four kinds of people: white folks and black folks, white trash and n--oops I almost had to fire myself from the website.
I don't actually think that huge fines are a solution either to prison overcrowding or to the injustice of incarceration. It is one of those rhetorical devices such as "I'd rather have a root canal than listen to ..." You fill in the blank. Fining is a legitimate punishment but fines should be commensurate with the crime. Fining CEO's who rob their employees is a good idea, but only if the employees who have been ripped off are the beneficiaries. As for the good Hitchens, I have only read his articles. He is generally sound, though I find that universal histories of anything usually get the details wrong.
Finally, there are Lee's and Mr. Chan's excellent questions which would take weeks to answer. Let me give a nutshell version of my conclusions.
1) Advanced societies simply develop principles and institutions existing or inherent in the most primitive; therefore, although there are great differences between, say, the Nuer of the Sudan 100 years ago and Great Britain, one can see how the arbitration system of Nuer chieftans contains, in embryo, principles that would be developed.
2) Society is not made up of individuals but of households, clans, neighborhoods, corporations, etc. In highly developed societies, lower-order conflicts can lead to vendettas and civil wars and it is necessary to have a means of controlling them. However, one must always strive to balance the autonomy of the subgroups with the need for public order. Hence, even 100 years ago it was difficult to punish a father for beating his son. It was felt, as one NC jurist put it, that to interfere in a father's jurisdiction would undermine society. This principle is as valid today as it was 100 years ago, though the application will always change.
3) Private justice is scarcely workable even in a small state today, but the principles of Greek and Roman law, which made criminals and victims adversaries and involved, for example, a murder victim's family, remain workable.
4) The fact that one does not vote or hold office or take part in legislation does not give one immunity to the obedience that is due to even a bad government. Although the social contract and all that goes with it are a myth, we are commanded as Christians to obey the ruler where it does not contradict the common teachings of the Church (this not include the Quaker refusal to swear an oath for which I would cheerfuly fine them, much less the refusal to serve in the army), and even as pagans we would have to ask ourselves whether we were better off in or out of society. If we choose "out" then we should go into exile. I am not at all defending the American system about which I have great difficulty finding anything good to say. I recommend the arguments that Socrates puts forth in the Crito. They are a devastating refutation of the false theory of civil disobedience.
As to Paris Hilton, I can only recall the common belief of respectable people in the days of my childhood, which was that a lady's name appeared in the newspaper on three occasions: her birth, her marriage, and her death. Of course aristocrats and plutocrats had their peccadilloes, then as now; but at one time they were discreet about them. La Hilton has made a career out of being indiscreet, and has done very well at it. Reportedly she will be paid $1 million for a post-jail television interview. This could not happen but for the degraded and prurient demand of the mass market, which our so-called "news media" both cater to and encourage.
As for prisons, I have to agree with TJF that they are a cruel and unusual punishment. It is probable that they exist in their present form only because our society is too squeamish to punish people who have committed serious crimes capitally or corporally. Many (though not all) of these people are sociopaths. They cannot be allowed to run free, which would only guarantee that they would victimize others; so the only alternative is containment, which prisons provide.
Ms. Hilton is a jaded little tart with more money than sense, not a sociopath. A sane society would not incarcerate her, it would simply treat her as a pariah.
Now this is classical justice. I completely agree with the sentiment of Fleming's article. Prisons, by and large, were created for social engineering. Only read about the panopticon, created by Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian par excellence and archetypal liberal reformer.
Doesn't the state or a jury of our peers or a judge elected by the people or appointed by a person elected have an obligation to keep those who would drive recklessly and (willfully or unintentionally) threaten to kill or maim fellow citizens from driving recklessly and threatening to kill or maim fellow citizens? Punishments/sentences are deterrents, and perhaps a few days imprisonment along side the dregs of society is the antidote that curbs undesirable behavior, no? I do not see what is so wrong with that justification for incarceration. How many young men (or women) need only to spend a few hours or even a night or two in the county jail to thereafter abstain from certain undesirable behaviors?
Paris Hilton need not spend an excessive amount of time in jail, but it seems to me that it might be a wakeup call for her. And if she is bettered, ultimately, by this "experience" we ought to not heap scorn on her. She isn't worth the time, to be honest, but to echo a recurring them of TJF, she is a flesh and bone mortal and we as Christians ought not cast stones.
"Punishments/sentences are deterrents, and perhaps a few days imprisonment along side the dregs of society is the antidote that curbs undesirable behavior, no? I do not see what is so wrong with that justification for incarceration."
Dr. Fleming has granted that peope may need to be held for trial, and that fits perfectly with your argument of restraint. I think what he means is that holding someone for twenty-six years, during which time he will join either Aryan Nations or Black Muslims, contract some STI and get out on parole with a vendetta, is hardly a means of "protecting" society.
I wish if there are black or hispanic intelectuals who can distinct their own "trash" as TJF distincts his own.
I say give Paris Hilton a one-year subscription to Chronicles and The American Conservative. Together they cost less than $100, far cheaper than paying for her incarceration. Either she'd be totally confused, bored out of her mind, and resentful (the likely outcome) - and that would be her punishment - or she'd see the light, become Hollywood's chief paleoconservative, and start using her money to benefit Western Civilization. Either way we win! But in the latter case we'd still have to keep her away from Dr. Fleming at John Randoph Club conferences. No lady takes kindly to being called "white trash" and something tells me Paris would be one fierce paleocon broad capable of some jaw-slapping herself! Might not Ann Coulter have a new (genuinely) conservative rival?
(OK, OK, it's very late at night and I'm simply being silly..)
Evan:
Paris Hilton is a "celebrity"---someone famous simply for being famous. As such, she thrives (certainly in terms of psychic income; she doesn't need the monetary income) on any sort of publicity. Even an attack, if word of such reaches the celebrity's ears, provides that which the celebrity needs most of all. Certainly the sort of media treatment she has been receiving is something she is accustomed to, ever since the days of her "accidental" release of her pornographic video.
I am given to understand that she recently made statements about having to change her act, the better to change her image. Apparently she was even spotted carrying a Bible in a recent photo. Her pronouncement should not come as a surprise. She is, after all, entering her later twenties, an age where a woman may be seen as beginning to descend from the heights of her sexual desirability. She is no longer the latest, hottest thing. In order to remain in the limelight and keep "earning" that psychic income (which is based on her blatantly displayed sexuality and simian public antics) she may feel that she needs to reinvent herself (just as Madonna did) in order to keep a fresh image before the eyes of her public.
By incarcerating her, the authorities may well have played into her hands and given her exactly what she wanted. As they used to say, she will be "dining out" on this for years. This will not be a "wake-up call" for her; it will be another shot of an emotional/mental narcotic. She knows what she is; she knows she's putting on an act, and she knows what it gets her.
Miss Hilton comes from a badly warped environment; excessive media visibility, parents that evidently failed to provide restraint or guidance as to what is proper behavior; parents modeling extremely odd behavior in their own lives (recently even trying to arrange a sale of an interview with Paris to at least one television network) and being surrounded by people constantly egging her on to newer and stranger behavior. Under such circumstances, it is evidently nearly impossible for any Human being to emerge mentally healthy.
Like politicians, con men and other practitioners of the so-called "performing arts", she lacks a healthy moral core. She deceives for a living, and she is apparently adequate at it. This does not bode well for her doing anything other than changing her act every few years, until she becomes the mid-21st century's Nora Desmond.
What she did led to a consequence: incarceration. What she received was what she wanted: publicity. What she needs is exile: a few years out of the limelight for her to put herself back together.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
While Dr. Fleming may be going a bit too far in rejecting imprisonment other than to hold someone for either trial or execution, I don't think it can be seriously disputed that the US vastly overuses imprisonment. If it's being used appropriately here, then Americans are the worst people in the world. The overwhelming majority of prisoners are POWs of the war on drugs, put in the slammer either for repeated personal use offenses or low level street dealing. Almost invariably they emerge from incarceration worse than they went in; more of a menace to society due to gang training and lack of personal prospects outside the world of crime. And this is just another no-win war; decades of bombing South America with herbicides and assassinating "cartel" leaders has just brought about cheaper and more widespread abuse. This is another war we should opt out of, not because there is a right to vice, but because the cure is worse than the disease.
Mr Higdon,
You wrote : "The overwhelming majority of prisoners are POWs of the war on drugs "
No doubt about it. Prisons are also not drug free. Any declaration of war, "on poverty," "on children", "on drugs," "on terror" etc.
always leads to a loss of freedoom and an increase of the State.
I did not mean to intimate in my post that Dr. Fleming was over the top ( he breathes at different altitudes from most mortals anyway, which is why we love him) but that some of the punishments suggested should not be put in the hands of the state. I would trust my father, my neighbor and perhaps even my local judge, to impose the appropriate sanction, but not the federal govenmnent. The American prisons in Iraq are evidence of this truth.
Incaraceration is, as Bede observed, a form of social engineering, and he cited the nightmare plan of Jeremy Bentham of a prison with 24 hours surveillance. The cruel and unusual nature of incarceration can be seen in the fact that in myth and literature, it is something tyrants do, whether Henry IV, before murdering Richard II, or Richard III before murdering Clarence or the Man in the Iron Mask.
I am not proposing an immediate shift in our punitive system, only a shift in thinking. We have to give up such pernicious folly as the delusion that in locking up a DUI offender we are protecting the public. This is extremely funny in the state of Illinois where illegal aliens bribed the then Secretary of State and future governor George Ryan, received licenses, and killed people on the highway. Just as the state does not exist to make people virtuous, the criminal justice system does not exist to protect the public but to punish criminals once they have committed a crime. Of course there are exceptions, but honest policemen will tell you the truth, namely, that crime prevention is more in our hands than in theirs.
Finally, to punish a DUI offender who has not harmed anyone is to punish a physical or moral condition. Adultery in the heart may be as sinful as one carried out, but we punish the act and not the state of mind. Some people can have high blood alcohol levels and function far better than most other drivers. Admittedly, there are many people, legally drunk, who should be taken off the highways, if only for public drunkenness, but the whole idea of sending someone to jail for a condition that may or may not cause an accident gives the state more power than it can exercise justly. These blood-alchohol crimes are the equivalent of thought-crimes.
What a dumb post Thomas Felmming. Do you really believe the nonsense contained in your post?
DWI first offense, one year in year. The number of familes slaughtered by drunk drivers will go down significantly.
I don't buy into the libertarian propaganda that the goverment can do good. Computers,internet browsers..THE INTERNET, all came out of big govermet programs. This is the tip of the iceberg.
The best high schools are the most heavily subsidized by property taxes. What would be wrong with a level playing field?
I do gloat in Paris Hilton's misery. She is a parasite. If I were alive during Sherman's march I would have gloated in the misery of the lazy Southern "men" of means whose property Sherman burnt. I suspect that your stupid comments reflect a general symapthy for the greedy cheating class.
Thomas, you are becomming intellectually flaccid as you age.
Taki, another trust fund "kid" parasite.
You can always count on Thomas Flemming to defend wealth and privelige.
Afghanistan, a shinning example to the world of a paleoconservative experiment.
I'll try and make it a simple as I can for the paleoconsevative pinheads. Driving drunk turns a four thousand pound vehicle at any speed into a dangerous weapon. Wielding a dangerous weapon in public is a crime. It its not a thought crime. It is a crime in deed.
Ok, now you can go back to your comfortable pull out chair, ancient texts,cigars and gin Thomas Flemming.
I'll let Mr. Nally rant this one time. The point, as he would know if he could read (or spell1), is not to defend either Paris Hilton nor drunk driving but to use the case as an example of where our "thinking about crime" has gone wrong. In the first place, not everyone with blood alcohol over the legal limit is drunk or dangerous. In the second, it is always better to punish acts rather than conditions. A drunk--or cellphone user-- who causes an accicdent should be treated as if he committed the crime deliberately. The first offence might be treated with some leniency but a drunk driver who has caused damage to property the first time and then has a second accident in which someone has been killed should be tried for first degree murder. Yes, there may be extenuating factors, but there is no reason not to execute a career-drinker who gets behind the wheel of a car and kllls someone. The threat of such a penalty--as opposed to losing a license or spending a few months in jail--might prove to be a more serious deterrent.
Goodbye, Mr. Nally. This conversation is not for children.
Prisons as replacement for he sadistic punishments of the past are commendable; however, the system has exceeded reaon. There are too many life sentences without parole ( a cruel and unusual punishment). There should be more fines and non-crippling corporal punishments and fewer prison sentences. Prison sentences for violent offenders who are deemed too dangerous to be at large should keep them incarcerated through the prime criminal years (say age 40, when the proclivity for crime drops sharply). We may be forced into this system willy-nilly, since the government is broke and the prisons are full.
Dr. Fleming, As usual, you hit the nail on the head. Law enforcement does not mean preventing anticipated crimes but punishing real ones. Of course, in a society that mistakes comfort and security for freedom it's not at all surprising that laws should be created prohibiting something as nebulous as "drunken driving".
People who are afraid to take responsibility for their own actions are also afraid to confront actions taken by others against themselves. So they slavishly hand over more and more authority to everyone's enemy the State. Thus we get the Mr. Nally's of the world who believe that simply the possibility of injury should be counted as a crime. In that case we all should be arrested the moment we wake up.
Apart from the amusing/sensationalistic subject of Ms. Hilton, Chronicles raising the question of the moral legitimacy of incarceration (not simply its utility) would be a fascinating subject for a future magazine. I have not seen a discussion of such in a periodical. Indeed, even death penalty opponents seem to agree on the propriety of incarceration as a punishment.
I once heard that "white trash" was a label given to poor white folks by plantation slaves.
Apropos of "thinking without crime," it may be worthwhile to note that traditionally, in common law, "mens rea" or "malice aforethought" in most cases had to be present for a crime to have been committed. Simply having the potential or possessing the means to commit a crime was not, in itself, properly the subject of the criminal law.
Similarly, there used to be a sharp distinction between equity and common law, which were administered in separate courts. While there were many aspects to each of these apart from this point, one in which they differed was that common law offered remedial or retributive justice (damages awarded to the victim of a tort, punishment for a criminal) whereas equity offered preventive justice (injunction against future actions). The loss of this equity/common law distinction has introduced the idea of injunctive prohibitions into the criminal law.
Thus the possession of certain articles has become prima facie a crime. Merely owning, without the special permission of the state, certain classes of firearms, or a quantity of explosives, narcotics, stimulants, or miscellaneous chemicals that belong to none of these categories, but which can be used to make those that do, is now considered an offense. In the state where I live, even to buy something as innocent as certain over-the-counter hay fever pills, one must now show one's photographic identification document and sign a register that is available for some bureaucrat to examine - all because some people use them to make methedrine, another forbidden substance.
Criminalizing inanimate objects rather than wrong acts allows the modern sensibility, which is averse to stigmatizing anyone's behavior, to make an end run around the uncomfortable necessity of making moral judgments.
No one disputes that drunk drivers or methedrine addicts or some people using guns or explosives do terrible harm to themselves and/or others. However, the question is whether or not more harm has been done overall by abandoning the concept of mens rea and passing laws that destroy civil liberties, dangerously expand the power of the state, and still do very little to impede the offenses of criminals against the peace and order of society.
"Capital crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping, and arson should entail (not necessarily in all cases) execution."
Long time Chronicles subscriber needs some schoolin' here, Dr. Fleming. For further study, can you point to classical and/or Christian readings regarding this other than the Romans 12-13 thing (enough of a conundrum for me)?
Thanks.
Indeed, even death penalty opponents seem to agree on the propriety of incarceration as a punishment.
It's not clear to me that they could support the application of anything else, other than fines. Corporal punishment? "Cruel and unsual."
>>It’s not clear to me that they could support the application of anything else, other than fines. Corporal punishment? “Cruel and unsual.”
>>Its not clear to me that they could support the application of anything else, other than fines. Corporal punishment? Cruel and unsual.
The DUI laws are a form of anarcho-tyranny. If I'm not mistaken, Dr. Fleming has made this point in the past. Even in high school, when we were constantly hit over the head about the evils of drunk driving, it always struck me intuitively as overblown. It takes Chronicles to flesh out that intuition.
It seems to me that the per se drunk driving laws are in line with other laws we have, designed to catch the lowest common denominator, such as majority (age of consent) laws. I've often said, if you can't drive on .08 BAC, then you probably shouldn't be driving at all.
Relatedly, per se drunk driving laws, regardless of the maximum BAC level, are efficient administered: causation be damned! We often read stories about the "alcohol-related" accident over the weekend but we're seldom told whether intoxication was in fact the cause of the accident. I can be distracted from the road independent of my intoxication, which could be the cause of the accident. And yet, it will inevitably be categorized as an "alcohol-related" accident. The per se laws assume causation and when they are used to prosecute the poor guy driving the speed limit in the right lane who was pulled over for a broken tail light and given a breathalyzer, the per se law assumes recklessness that manifestly wasn't there.
On the other hand, I can't agree that we can go back to a strict "mens rea" criminal law system. The reality is that we have a vast criminal underclass that could menace society with a strict mens rea requirement. It's like the immigration debate: enforcement first. If you want strict mens rea, we're going to need to re-institute the criminal justice system Dr. Fleming advocated and re-arm the populace to engage in some level of criminal law enforcement. I think we're past the point of no return.