Bush vs. Justice

Justice is to society what health is to the body. That is, justice is a kind of harmonious interplay between the various components of the social order that engenders optimum functioning. Philosophers, of course, have long inquired about the nature of justice. For a character named Thrasymachus justice is synonymous with the interests and advantage of the stronger, and attitude summed up by the notion that “might makes right.” When the tiny island of Melos resisted the unilateralism of the Greek Empire a forerunner of George W. Bush simply informed the inhabitants that you are either with us or against us. After all, as the official put it, fairness and justice only pertains to equals. And in disputes between non-equals, the sophistic official went on, “the strong do what they can and weak suffer what they must.”

This is a cynical and corrosive understanding of justice, needless to say, since it reflects the notion that justice is little or nothing more than one side imposing its will on the other, through force of arms, rhetorical sleight-of-hand, or whatever means happen to be at one’s disposal. On this account there are no objective standards, save one: winning is proof that one is right, as evidenced by the fact that the victors will get to write history.

In examining this notion, which extols power as the end all and be all, it is worth quoting the words of John F. Kennedy. He wrote on the pitfalls of power not tempered by a poetic dimension:

“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses”

Eight years of Bush’s unilateralism, zero-sum politics, and legal sophistry have convinced most Americans that the country could use a moral disinfectant to purge the taint associated with an administration that completely squandered the public trust. This was a president, after all, who insisted the United States did not engage in torture, illegal eavesdropping, or manipulate intelligence even though the administration’s own internal memos explicitly contradict his public assurances.

It is now abundantly clear that administration lawyers – particularly David Addington and John Yoo – contrived Alice in Wonderland type rationalizations to legitimize interrogation methods that were outside the U.S. military code of justice, international law, and the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, these logic-chopping legal sophists attempted to promulgate a perverse doctrine whereby the President supposedly had the inherent authority to ignore, interpret, or fashion the law in any way he chose to in his role as Commander-in-Chief. This so-called theory of the Unitary Chief Executive might just as well be called the Humpty Dumpty Doctrine, after the cracked character who tells Alice after she’s fallen through the looking glass that a word means just what he says it means – neither more nor less. After all, thanks to Bush’s signing statements a law means just what he says it means – neither more nor less.

A law that depends on the whim of a single individual, however, is a contradiction in terms. That is, just as the philosopher Wittgenstein showed that the idea of a private language is incoherent, so the idea of a single individual serving as the fount of what is permissible and not is the very antithesis of the law. Bush’s pursuit of executive omnipotence has in fact led to a form of schizoid irrationality – i.e., torture is not illegal if the president orders it or defines it in ways that makes even the most inhumane and degrading interrogation methods acceptable.

Wittgenstein, incidentally, is famous for saying that “ethics could be shown, but not spoken.” By the same token, it might be said that justice cannot be defined, but still we might find examples that exemplify it. I believe Mozart’s great opera, The Marriage of Figaro, contains a sublime illustration of justice. Here the story concerns a decadent aristocrat presiding over a disordered household. To distract himself from the decaying and dysfunctional state of affairs he governs, the Count in question pursues a series of amorous affairs with the household help. His wife, distraught by her husband’s unfaithful intentions, makes plans to exact her revenge: she will impersonate one of the servant girls that is the object of her husband’s lust. In other words, the Count thinks he is seducing a maid, but he is really pursuing the wife he has spurned.

When the ruse is revealed the Count realizes how much he loves his wife and he begs her forgiveness. The tables have been turned and the wife can now extract her pound of flesh, but in one of opera’s most sublime arias she orgives him. We in the audience immediately recognize the poetic justice in the way the conflict has been resolved. As the opera concludes order has been restored, love triumphs, and justice reigns. Life, alas, does not often imitate art, but perhaps it should. In any event, I believe Mozart’s opera provides an archetypal example of justice.

In contrast, the Bush administration’s conception of justice is nothing but a prosaic counterfeit. Everywhere one turns – Bush vs. Gore, Guantanamo, the trumped up case for invading Iraq – one finds only rhetorical sleights-of hand, ad hoc and post hoc rationalizations, and endless excuses and evasions. Deep dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, the decline of America’s moral authority, and the tanking of the economy are symptomatic of a country that is seriously out of order. There is a lesson here: the arrogance that equated brute force with justice is being undone by a far great power: poetic justice.

Sphere: Related Content