Note: Another article drawn from these blog posts has been published in the Philosophical Forum. ("Academic Freedom, Tenure, and the Unclouded Mind," Summer, 2018.)
Here's a point, made in the Saturday (6-22) New York Times by Shaila Dewan, that might color all the rest of the discussion of separating children from parents undergoing prosecution (as we are doing at the Mexican border): we separate children from their parents all the time, all over the country.
"A quarter of a million American children are estimated to have a
single mother in jail." That
was thirteen years ago. More have
been added. Every single parent
had to go through prosecution.
Separation began as soon as the parent was arrested. There were many
arrests from which jail time did not follow. Separations probably mount into the millions.
Dewan forces our attention from the crying child we can see on
our screens to the thousands of crying children we can't see, and count on our
imaginations to produce for us. "What are you going to do — or have your
representatives do — about them, aroused citizen? Do? Do? What? What?"
We're thrown into the usual sobering tank reserved for the
over-indulgent. "D0? Well I'd just....oh, oh." Have the children accompany the
parent? The whole way? In the holding cell? At the arraignment? Through the trial? Home each evening to the cell?
"Well, crossing the border illegally isn't as bad as the
crimes that got those people in jail.
And the consequences for the children are worse." Yes, but the crossing is still illegal
and the law says nothing about changes in enforcement according to degree of
severity of the consequences of the prosecution process.
"I say it's a bad law and it ought to be changed." By whom? You? Me? The good people? If you are good enough, if your heart
is touched deeply enough, are you entitled to change or make up laws? What do you mean by "the rule of
law"? The border-crossers who
bring with them these heart-breaking children are in the category of all the
others Dewan talks about: "lawbreakers."
"That's hard to refute but it, like a lot of irrefutable
things, is just plain wrong. A
system, a set of rules, an enforcement agency that results in suffering like
this can't be right."
Yes, my own heart makes me agree.
"So what's the remedy? So how will you avoid this heartless legalism you've been
expressing."
I see nothing we can certainly trust but I see something we can
probably trust and have successfully trusted in the past, the distribution 0f
superior imagination in the human race.
Put enough human beings in a tight spot — physically, morally,
intellectually — and a few of them are going to figure a way out.
Here it would be a way that saved the children without breaking the law
or ignoring established principle or flaunting practical need or opening the
door to license. After that it
would be coming up with the right ambiguous and evasive language to get the
whole bright idea past the opposition. In short, what you have to trust in a democracy.
"And, as usual, you come out with no clear victory."
No, and no clear lesson for the future. Your leaders just muddle through, and
it's very hard to draw from a muddle lessons that will be useful the next
time. The next time will be
different.
"Just one damned muddle after another. You don't see much."
No, but I do see a constant, the sobering-up tank. Whether you've been drunk on moral
outrage or dizzy with the weight of the legal club in your hand it's good to extend
your time there. Exercising your
own imagination. That will be a
help to you and your country no matter what the next tight spot is.
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