I love when the NYT descends into self-parody. Here they seem to lament the fate of Bashir Noorzai, a Taliban ally and heroin distributor, who has apparently lost weight in the John Gotti Suite in the Manhattan Federal pen. And his guards don’t speak Pashto! Worst of all, he was lured to New York under false pretenses: he thought he was attending a “political meeting,” and the Feds had the nerve to arrest him instead for trying to sell $50 million in heroin to U.S. consumers!
Two unwittingly funny things about the article:
1. This dimwit Islamofascist is being represented by a lawyer named “Goldenberg.”
2. Mr. Goldenberg complains that his client “did not know that the [Bush] administration had publicized his name as a most-wanted drug dealer.” If he did, “it might have affected his travel plans.”
Here’s a serious ethical question, though: is it morally permissible to deceive a criminal? I think it is under limited circumstances, because a criminal doesn’t have a right to the truth, if revealing the truth means he will get away with his crimes, or commit other evils.
That is (roughly) Saint Thomas Aquinas’ teaching. Saint Augustine took the strict view that speaking an untruth was ipso facto sinful. Your thoughts?
Author: Eric Johnson
Property rights are civil rights are human rights
Many misguided people, particularly those who have spent too much time in university classrooms, think that economic rights are for the rich and powerful. The opposite is true: in the absence of a legal system that safeguards private property, the rich can always protect their interests by hiring muscle and buying influence. (That’s how organized crime was born.)
Jews and Christians agree that private property is divinely sanctioned, which is why God explicitly forbade theft in the Seventh Commandment. But the right to property is a natural right, and thus accessible to anyone with a functioning intellect. Ancient civilizations, East and West, prohibited thievery and often prescribed death as a punishment. Indeed, besides preserving the lives of its members, a mark of a functioning society is the ability to keep one man’s hands off another man’s goods.
The United States was founded on the ideal of private property. Our forefathers were so incensed with practice of housing British soldiers in private homes that they outlawed it in the Bill of Rights. They affirmed this fundamental right by only allowing a citizen’s property to be taken under two circumstances: if he was convicted of a crime, or if the public good demanded it.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court, without asking the people’s permission, has authorized multi-billion-dollar corporations to steal people’s houses, as long as the corporation can pay more taxes to the city government. You’d roll your eyes if a screenwriter came up with a plot that involved a major drug company commissioning a city council to destroy people’s homes in order to build an office park, but that’s pretty much what’s going to happen in New London, Conn. Here are some of the little people whose homes are going to be demolished:
Petitioner Wilhelmina Dery, for example, lives in a house on Walbach Street that has been in her family for over 100 years. She was born in the house in 1918; her husband, petitioner Charles Dery, moved into the house when they married in 1946. Their son lives next door with his family in the house he received as a wedding gift, and joins his parents in this suit….
Big corporations are essential to modern life, as they are the best instruments for doing big things like creating new medicines, building airplanes, or running communications networks. But they’re also made up of sinful human beings who can commit evils, and they should be restrained by the law appropriately.
This ruling represents a failure of justice at all levels of government. Theft is theft, whether it is performed by a burglar in the dead of night, or by a city council’s decree, duly ratified by our unelected judicial tyrants.
Hurting the innocent
Paige is still in the hospital with Molly, so I just watched a violent movie I knew she wouldn’t see: “The Passion of the Christ.” Though I wrote about it here several times last year — or more specifically, I wrote about the hysterical reaction to it — I hadn’t seen it until tonight.
I was surprised at how much the movie didn’t surprise me, probably because I had already read so much about it. It was so transparently grounded in the Faith that I experienced it more as a simple visual representation of Jesus’ suffering and death than as an art object. There was no effort to convince, or even to teach. If you didn’t know who Jesus was, or what he did prior to Holy Thursday, “The Passion” will not tell you because those things lie outside its scope. The images are so stark and the plot so barren of any narrative tricks that the subtitles were almost superfluous.
It’s too much to hope, but perhaps other filmmakers will take up related projects. They needn’t be believers; Robert Bolt wrote “A Man for All Seasons” and “The Mission” and he was not a praticing Christian, though he was sympathetic to those who are. Gibson did excellent work in fleshing out the characters of Pilate and his wife, and clever artists could take other biblical characters (Barabbas, Thomas, Paul) and turn them into protagonists of other movies.
It did surprise me that “The Passion” didn’t make me pity Jesus’ suffering as much as I thought I would, but perhaps that is a good thing. It seems to me that pity is a very dangerous emotion, capable of belittling its object. Pity puts the focus on the one who pities, not the one who has suffered misfortune. I felt the same way when I saw my fellow Marines injured. I helped them to my utmost, but I wouldn’t have expected anyone to feel sorry for me if I had been wounded. We were Marines — we were supposed to suffer. It would have been ignoble to consider one’s own suffering as more important than someone else’s.
Similarly, I have never been disturbed by movies with scenes of battlefield violence, but I find it extremely difficult to watch the innocent and helpless suffer. I don’t know how I made it through “Schindler’s List,” vowing never to watch it a second time. That is why, more than Jesus, it was Mary’s pain that grieved me deeply. God is impassible and immutable; my personal sins cannot injure him in his divine nature. But seeing my sins contribute to a mother having to watch her son tortured to death is horrifying. I understand why God suffered for our salvation, but her? Why her? At least Joseph died a quiet death before the Crucifixion.
The answer, as “The Passion” explicitly shows, is that God wanted Our Lady to help guide and nurture the infant Church, just as she held baby Jesus to her breast after his birth. Yet we are all still culpable for piercing her sinless heart with the results of our sins, something I first contemplated when I wept in front of the “Pietá” in St. Peter’s, long before I took the Faith seriously.
We try to ignore it, but the effects of our misdeeds careen around the world, affecting people who aren’t directly involved. Happily, the converse is also true: our good deeds spill out and cascade through others’ lives. I pray that for myself, and for all of us, the latter deeds outweigh the former.
Molly Colleen Johnson says hello to the world
This is the newest member of the Johnson family, Molly Colleen, who was 4 hours old when her picture was taken. She was born today at 10:32 a.m., and her mother is doing just fine. The kids can’t wait to meet their new baby sister.
Molly weighs slightly under 8 pounds and she is 19 inches long. She is very good at crying already, and came into the world hungry, so I’m sure she’ll be fine. Mother and child will probably be back home on Monday, barring any complications.
Nine days and counting…
The newest member of the Johnson family is scheduled to be delivered on Friday, June 17. We’re starting this novena tonight. Novenas are a big endeavor, but if you want to throw some random prayers our way for Paige’s health and the baby’s, feel free.