17 November, 2018
I probably don’t like Roy Moore. I don’t know, but I expect that, like many officers of various courts, he has condemned more than a few peaceful potheads to involuntary prison romance. Like many of his ilk, he might protest that his “hands were tied” by mandatory sentencing guidelines. I don’t care; if he purports to be a decent human being then he is obliged to resign such a phony judgeship and recognize that he is merely a robed administrator. If you are forbidden to use judgment, then you are not a judge.
And that’s not even the defense part. I point out how awful I think he could be, just as I have elsewhere detailed how awful Submariner, the wicked wicked step-father, was.
I cite their awfulness up front, BEFORE their defense, to illustrate a very important point: I care more about WHAT’s right than WHO’s right. If the Judge or the Submariner incidentally adhere to actually decent principles or can narrowly be defined as not an overt jerk in one regard or another, then that’s laudable in spite of other failings.
Roy Moore first entered my world a generation ago, when, as an elected judge, he chose to erect a monument to The Ten Commandments (at his own expense) in the lobby of “his” courthouse. I haven’t read the relevant County or Municipal charters, nor Alabama’s constitution, so I don’t know if his act was in breach of any of those agreements, hut I suspect not. None of the shrill complaints surrounding his act of historical citation ever mentioned such, but fully focused on his alleged violation of the First Amendment’s fictional “wall of separation” between church and state. The First Amendment has no application to the Moore case, unless it is to protect HIS freedom of expression. As a militant atheist myself I consider about half of The Ten Commandments to be offensive bullshit (the jealous god stuff), but all of it, like the mythology from which it springs, to be hugely significant, historically AND culturally. It is, for good AND ill, the cornerstone of our contemporary theory of jurisprudence — don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t insult petulant gods (or popular sensibilities). A modest monument to legal history, on the Judge’s dime, does not seem worth getting overly exercised. If I don’t like it, maybe I should vote for a different judge.
Years later he makes the scene again, this time amid a flurry of accusations of “pedophilia” and “molestation.” The charge of pedophilia was both base and baseless. It was cruel and inaccurate, to the judge himself, because pedophiles prey strictly on the prepubescent, and that’s not Roy, and to actual victims of pedophilic predation, because the dilution of such charges diminishes and denigrates real victims. Attempts to distort and dissipate such specific concepts as pedophilia and privilege ill serves justice as it waters down precise notions and diffuses legitimate anger. “Molestation” may enjoy a narrow, legalistic, and technical accuracy, but it withers under objective scrutiny. Molestation implies an imposition, but Moore’s history doesn’t bear that out.
As a thirty-something bachelor, Moore dated teenagers, with the blessing and permission of their parents. In the broad historical context his behavior could be described as correct, courtly, and courteous, Protective parents likely looked on young professional Moore as an “up and coming” good catch, To many today, that may sound creepy, but too many have been warped by a century of progressive infantilization. Adolescent apprenticeships have been squeezed out of the market to make life easier for Union Bosses, while hapless students have been sentenced to longer and longer terms of government “education.” It’s no wonder that so many reactionary do-gooders imagine that a 26 year old “child” would be helpless without Mommy’s insurance. The invention of the “teenager” was a serious mistake, the residue of which continues to misinform our horror at the thought of historic dating habits or twelve year old drug mules.
I was a twelve year old drug mule, and I was delighted to do it. During my thirteenth year the Submariner was stationed at the New London Sub Base. When his boat was in port, he spent most of his Sundays on the couch watching football. Every so often he would summon me, hand me a buck, and send me to the local QuikkStopp® for two packs of cigarettes plus whatever I wanted with the change. He and I had our “issues,” but I do not fault his great and assiduous respect for property and agreement. He soon learned that I shared that with him, so he trusted me with his cash and his smokes. My older brother, the Thug, he did not, as the Thug had developed a taste for both nicotine, and larceny. But for me and the Submariner, it was a good deal; he got his fix without stirring from the couch, and I got the latest minty fresh twelve cent issue of Adventure Comics or X-Men or Detective. Again, what we shared was respect for property. (The trouble was, he seemed to consider his wife and daughter to be property, but that’s a different and much uglier story.)
During my regular duties as a drug dealer, I will often commiserate with customers who are obliged to show ID before scoring their stash. I never apologize because I consider myself to be just as much a victim of the regime as are they. Depending on my mood, I might point out that were it up to me I would cheerfully sell a fourteen year old all the beer, ammunition, and heroin that she could afford. Or I might relate that story above about the Submariner’s smokes. Once they get over their shock many might reflect that the world has changed a lot since their own childhoods as well, and not just in the price of cancer sticks and funny books.
How do we make babies? Your parents should already have filled you in. Let’s move on. How do we make grown-ups? Give children responsibilities. When they measure up, give them more. How do we make large hairy children? Deny smaller children responsibility, shield them from the consequences of their own misbehavior, and “protect” them from disappointment. Eventually you’ll get a generation of discourteous jerks and ignorant savages who believe that the beginning of a request sounds like “I need” or “I want” or “give me.”
Let’s get back to the Judge. We left him with one charge standing, that of “molestation.” But does it stand? Was it an actual case of a grown-up creep “preying on children?” I’d hoped to have dismissed that “helpless child” nonsense by now, but I can still sense heels digging in across time and space.
Still not buying it? Dig out that old family bible, the really really old one that your Granny got from her Granny. Go to the genealogy section and go back four or five generations. Check the birthdates of respective pairs of ancestors. I’d be willing to bet real money (Au or Ag) that you’ll find a few fifteen or sixteen year old brides with husbands who are twice or even three times their age. Chances are your teenaged G’G’Great Gran was G’G’Great Grampop’s third or fourth wife. The earlier models were all likely teens at their weddings, too, and they probably expired during childbirth (for centuries one of the major killers of women.) Was G’G’Great Grampop also a child molester creep? You owe your existence to his (mis?)behavior. That’s YOUR history. Dare you change it?
For millennia, thirteen year old boys would stand before their families and communities and declare, “Today, I am a man.” (or, in the original Klingon: “Eye-yew’ muh-ni’ geh-vill’.”) They meant it, and the community believed it, and held them to it. They may not have been as fully respected as their gray headed elders, but they were on their way. They had stepped into manhood and renounced the excuses of childhood.
How to we make children? That’s too easy. Stop it! How do we make a man? Treat him like a man. Hold him to account like a man. Reward him, or condemn him, as a man. As a parent you love your child, and may wish to be his friend, too. Probably you are, and for years you will likely be the best friend that kid has, but you DARE NOT be his buddy, Your job is NOT to “raise children” (there are already far too many superannuated children in the world), your job is to transform infants into adults.
update 200425: correspondent EW writes, “[Your story] made me think of how I got EXCORIATED by my wife, in-laws, and even a bit by my parents when I allowed my 7 year old son to walk to the store by himself which was only half a mile away and had 1 big street to cross. When he came back he felt really proud and all that jazz till my wife and his mother convinced him that he was LUCKY that he was still alive. We still can’t even talk about that to this day.”
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