Kylo Ren is an Angry Bastard

"Mr. Corleone, all bastards are liars. 

Shakespeare wrote poems about it."

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I

Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines

Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?

When my dimensions are as well compact,

My mind as generous, and my shape as true,

As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us

With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?

Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take

More composition and fierce quality

Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,

Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,

Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:

Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund

As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!

Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,

And my invention thrive, Edmund the base

Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Sherif Ali :

Al-Lawrence — 
Truly, for some men nothing is written unless they write it.

Kylo Ren :

Not Al-Lawrence. 
Just Lawrence.

Sherif Ali :

AI-Lawrence is better.

Kylo Ren :

True.

Sherif Ali :

Your father too, just 'Mr. Lawrence'?

Kylo Ren :

My Father is Sir Thomas Chapman.

Sherif Ali :

Is that a Lord?

Kylo Ren :

A kind of Lord.

Sherif Ali :

Then when he dies, you too will be a Lord.

            

Kylo Ren :

No.

Sherif Ali :

Ah! You have an elder brother. 
But then, I do not understand this —

Your Father's Name is ‘Chapman’.

Kylo Ren :

He didn't marry My Mother.

         

Sherif Ali :

I see.

I'm sorry.

It seems to me, that you are free to choose your own name, then.

Kylo Ren :

 Yes, I suppose I am.

Sherif Ali :

Al-Lawrence is best.

CUT TO: Michael’s office. 

Joey Zasa is in with Michael.

ZASA

The Meucci Association has elected you, their Italian-American Man of the Year.

Zasa hands Michael the award. Michael reacts to its heavy weight.

MICHAEL

Meucci -- Who’s Meucci?

ZASA

He’s the Italian-American who invented the telephone. 

He did it one year before Alexander Graham Bell.

MICHAEL

Oh… And this is the reason you’ve come to my home on this day.

ZASA (to The Ant, in Italian)

[something like "go feed the fish"]

(then, to Michael)

I umm, got a stone in my shoe, Mr. Corleone. 

A two-bit punk who works for me. The one who, thinks he’s related to you. 

A bastard.

Michael looks over to Neri.

AL NERI

He’s here. Vincent Mancini. 

He’s at the party.

MICHAEL

Well bring him in.

ZASA

I think it’s good we talk.

Zasa offers Michael a cigarette. Michael refuses and asks Zasa to sit down.

(then)

I have a problem; and I want to find out if it is my problem, or your problem.

MICHAEL

Joe, your business is your business. 

I have no interests or percentage – I’m out…

ZASA

Good. Then it’s my problem.

Vincent enters with Connie.

CONNIE

Michael, you know Vincent Mancini -- 

Sonny’s boy.

VINCENT

How you doin’ Mr. Corleone?

MICHAEL

How you doing?

VINCENT

I’m doin’ good. How you doin’?

MICHAEL

Good.

VINCENT

Good party.

MICHAEL

Oh you like it?

VINCENT

Yeah, I had to sneak in.

MICHAEL

Well, you’re dressed for it.

Vincent looks embarrassed, Zasa looks disgusted.

MICHAEL

So, what’s the trouble between you and Mr. Joe Zasa?

VINCENT

There’s trouble. 

I’ll take care of it.

MICHAEL

That’s foolish of you.

VINCENT

Foolish of ME? 

It’s a little foolish of this guy, don’t you think? Right? RIGHT?

MICHAEL (to himself)

Temper like his father.

(then, to Vincent)

Vincent. Mr. Joe Zasa now owns what used to be the Corleone family business, in New York. 

Out of the kindness of his heart he gave you a job in his family. 

Contrary to my advice, you took the job.

I’d offered you something, better, in the legitimate world. 

You turned me down. 

Now, you both come to me with this bad blood. 

And what do you expect me to do? Am I a gangster?

VINCENT

No, you’re not a gangster….

CONNIE (interrupts)

That’s was Papa’s neighborhood, now it’s a sewer. 

Zasa runs it like a disgrace that’s what the women tell me.

MICHAEL

That’s The Past Connie.

ZASA

I earned that territory with my talent. 

Commission gave it to me, and you approved…

MICHAEL

Yes.

VINCENT

Uncle Michael, I came to the party here -- 

I’m not here to ask for any kind of help. 

I could just kill this bastard, he’s the one who needs the help.

MICHAEL

So kill him. 

What has all this have to do with me?

VINCENT

Well, he’s going around behind your back saying ‘Fuck Michael Corleone’ all time. 

That’s it, see, that’s one thing it has to do with you.

(then, to Zasa)

Right? Say it to his face, one time say it to his face, one time!

ZASA

Mr. Corleone, all bastards are liars. 

Shakespeare wrote poems about it.

VINCENT

What am I gonna do with this guy, Uncle Michael? -- 

WHAT AM I GONNA DO WITH THIS GUY?!

MICHAEL

Joey. If there’s some guy running around this city saying 

"Fuck Michael Corleone” —

What do we do, with a piece of shit like that? 

He’s a fucking dog, no?

ZASA (pauses, then)

Yes it’s True. 

If anyone would say such a thing, they would not be a friend. 

They would be a dog.

MICHAEL (to Vincent)

My interests don’t conflict with Mr. Joe Zasa’s…

VINCENT

Oh you don’t know how much your interests conflict with Mr. Joe Zasa’s, Uncle Michael.

CONNIE

Michael -- He needs your support, Michael.

VINCENT

Don’t let me work for this guy no more Uncle Michael, let me come work for you.

MICHAEL

For me?

VINCENT

Yeah.

MICHAEL

As what? Tough guy? 

I don’t need tough guys -- I need more lawyers.

Michael smiles at Joey who smiles back. Michael extend his arms to Joey in friendship.

MICHAEL (to Joey)

Since we have no conflicts, no debts, I accept your tribute. 

I wish you well.

Michael and Zasa embrace.

(then, to Vincent)

Vincent -- Make your peace with Mr. Joe Zasa. 

C’mon…

Vincent reluctantly goes to embrace Joey. As they do so, Joey mutters into Vincent’s ear.

ZASA (quietly to Vincent)

Bastardo.

Vincent retaliates by biting Zasa’s ear. 

The two are separated and ZASA is led bleeding and screaming from the room by The Ant.

MICHAEL

Oh, Jesus…

Vincent tries to explain himself as Connie leads him outside but Michael tells him to stay.

VINCENT (still explaining)

Uncle Michael, I told Connie it wasn’t the right time for this thing –

(then)

Uncle Michael, listen -- 

I know you’re into banks and Wall Street, but everyone knows you’re the final word, you’re like the Supreme Court.

All I want to do is protect you from these guys and your lawyers can’t do that.

MICHAEL

And you can?

VINCENT

Yeah, I can do that.

MICHAEL

And why should I be afraid of Joe Zasa?

VINCENT

Well, he knows you’re stopping him from rising up in the commission, Uncle Mike. 

I say we make him dead. 

You give me the order, I’ll take care of it.

MICHAEL

You’ll take care of it?

VINCENT

Yeah.

MICHAEL

Maybe you should, uhh, come with me for a few weeks. See what happens.

VINCENT

Okay.

MICHAEL

See if you learn. 

And, umm, we’ll talk about your future.

VINCENT

I won’t let you down.

Connie leads Vincent from the room.

CUT TO: 

The stairway where the family are getting a photo taken.

PHOTOGRAPHER

We’re just about ready .. no, it’s all right…

Vincent approaches his mother, Lucy Mancini.

LUCY

So what happened?

VINCENT

What happened? 

They put me in a room with Joey Zasa -- what’s gonna happen? 

I bit the guy’s ear off.

The photographer takes a photo. As he prepares for the next one, Michael fetches Vincent for the picture.

MICHAEL

Hold it…

(then, to Vincent)

Vincent –

VINCENT

Yeah?

MICHAEL

Take the picture with me – c’mon…

MARY (to Vincent)

Nice jacket.

The second picture is taken and the band strike up the familiar Godfather’s waltz as Enzo the baker wheels in a cake for Michael.

‘Master Kenobi’ was My Father

The Child is Father to The Man

“No Arab Loves The Desert.

There is Nothing in The Desert —

And No-Man Needs Nothing.”

Han + Leia

Han Solo :

We had a responsibility beyond The Cause.

We had a Baby.

We were so consumed by our principles, that we abandoned our Most Fundamental Duty.

Princess-General Leia Organa, 

Founding Mother of The New Republic

Senator for New Aalderaan : 

We were doing our duty.

Mimi Lurie: 

The struggle doesn't end just because you got tired of it. 

Nick Sloan: 

I didn't get tired of it. 

I grew up. 

Mimi Lurie: 

Well, we promised each other we weren't going to do that. 

Nick Sloan: 

Yeah, but it happened.

I am not the one fooling myself, it was over!

It wasn't... over.

It's still not over.

Every single thing we said then, is true today.

And every single day, it's getting worse.

That's not the point.

Oh, it's exactly the point, Nick!

I won't give myself up to a system I despise.

I won't give up my freedom and accept their version of what life is supposed to be.

Mimi, how free are you? Really?

Well, I'm not in jail.

I don't expect you to understand.

They have you.

Oh, like hell.

A system that protects the super-rich, and the super, super, super-rich,

And fucks over everyone else, and the planet to boot.

Mimi... Mimi, would you just stop?

Everyone who's given up and given in, they're living at the expense of what they once believed.

It's so sad!

You understood this, I'm sorry you've forgotten.

I wish I had forgotten!

Because my problem is

I can't stop remembering.

So if you've built a wall so high, more power to you, you're stronger than I am.

I'm will turn myself in... the day the politicians and corporations turn themselves in for all they've done.

That's the day I'll hand myself in.

Scout's fuckin' honor.

Stop hiding behind your fucking revolutionary rant.

Oh, don't turn it on me.

You know what I see?

I see the same person.

I see it, kid.

I see it in your eyes.

You can hide from everyone else in the world, and be somebody else, but not with me.

What are your memories, Mi?

The ones you can't run away from.

Hey!

We had a responsibility beyond The Cause.

We had a Baby.

We were so consumed by our principles, that we abandoned our most fundamental duty.

We were doing our duty, Nick.

We made a plan, that if anything ever went wrong....

Never should have carried out that plan.

...we would know exactly what we had to do.

We both agreed.

We were wrong.

We had no choice.

We should have known that we were wrong.

We both accepted it, and we both had to live with it.

It wasn't a dream... it was a possibility, we could have made a reality.

We could make them stop.

Yeah, we could change things, if we could make a difference.

I still believe in that possibility.

Is that all you believe?

SQUID : The Architects of Fear

Paul Krugman is so frustrated by the lack of support for another round of stimulus spending that he's now calling for a fake alien invasion of the United States to spur a World War II-style defense buildup.

Krugman was a guest on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on Sunday. Speaking with Zakaria and Harvard economist Ken Rogoff, he made the same case he has been making for years--that deficits are not the top economic concern of the day. Krugman noted that the effort of World War II helped end the Great Depression, and joked that something similar was needed today.

"If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months," he said. "And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren't any aliens, we'd be better--"

"We need Orson Welles, is what you're saying," Rogoff cut in.

"There was a 'Twilight Zone' episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace," Krugman said. "Well, this time, we don't need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus."

EQUALITY

Equality

"Equality" is reprinted from The Spectator, vol. CLXXI (27 August 1943), p. 192

I am a democrat (1) because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. Whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

This introduces a view of equality rather different from that in which we have been trained. I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill, or clothes which are good because we are no longer innocent. I don't think the old authority in kings, priests, husbands, or fathers, and the old obedience in subjects, laymen, wives, and sons, was in itself a degrading or evil thing at all. I think it was intrinsically as good and beautiful as the nakedness of Adam and Eve. It was rightly taken away because men became bad and abused it. To attempt to restore it now would be the same error as that of the Nudists. Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

But medicine is not good. There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values -- offers food to some need which we have starved.

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget, but as an ideal, we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. 

That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked. 

The man who cannot conceive a joyful and loyal obedience on the one hand, nor an unembarrassed and noble acceptance of that obedience on the other - the man who has never even wanted to kneel or to bow - is a prosaic barbarian. 

But it would be wicked folly to restore these old inequalities on the legal or external plane. Their proper place is elsewhere.

We must wear clothes since the Fall. Yes, but inside, under what Milton called "these troublesome disguises" (2). We want the naked body, that is, the real body, to be alive. We want it, on proper occasions, to appear -- in the marriage-chamber, in the public privacy of a men's bathing-place, and (of course) when any medical or other emergency demands. In the same way, under the necessary outer covering of legal equality, the whole hierarchical dance and harmony of our deep and joyously accepted spiritual inequalities should be alive. It is there, of course, in our life as Christians -- there, as laymen, we can obey – all the more because the priest has no authority over us on the political level. It is there in our relation to parents and teachers – all the more because it is now a willed and wholly spiritual reverence. It should be there also in marriage.

This last point needs a little plain speaking. Men have so horribly abused their power over women in the past that to wives, of all people, equality is in danger of appearing as an ideal. 

But Mrs. Naomi Mitchison has laid her finger on the real point. 

Have as much equality as you please – the more the better – in our marriage laws, but at some level consent to inequality, nay, delight in inequality, is an erotic necessity. 

Mrs. Mitchison speaks of women so fostered on a defiant idea of equality that the mere sensation of the male embrace rouses an undercurrent of resentment. Marriages are thus shipwrecked (3). This is the tragi-comedy of the modem woman -- taught by Freud to consider the act of love the most important thing in life, and then inhibited by feminism from that internal surrender which alone can make it a complete emotional success. Merely for the sake of her own erotic pleasure, to go no further, some degree of obedience and humility seems to be (normally) necessary on the woman's part.

The error here has been to assimilate all forms of affection to that special form we call friendship. It indeed does imply equality. But it is quite different from the various loves within the same household. Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up – painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other -- that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut -- whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served -- deny it food and it will gobble poison.

That is why this whole question is of practical importance. Every intrusion of the spirit that says, "I'm as good as you" into our personal and spiritual life is to be resisted just as jealously as every intrusion of bureaucracy or privilege into our politics. Hierarchy within can alone preserve egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks on democracy will come again. We shall never be safe unless we already understand in our hearts all that the anti-democrats can say, and have provided for it better than they. Human nature will not permanently endure flat equality if it is extended from its proper political field into the more real, more concrete fields within. Let us wear equality; but let us undress every night.

(1) C.S. Lewis lived and wrote in England. Hence, his reference to "being a Democrat" had nothing to do with our (USA) "Democratic Party". 

(2) John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Book IV, line 740. 18 

(3) Naomi Mitchison, The Home and a Changing Civilization (London, 1934), Chapter I, pp. 49-50.

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment by C.S. Lewis

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment 

C.S. Lewis

In England we have lately had a controversy about Capital Punishment. I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make good on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later. I do not know whether the fear of death is an indispensable deterrent. I need not, for the purpose of this article, decide whether it is a morally permissible deterrent. Those are questions which I propose to leave untouched. 

My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.

According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.

My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.

The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. 

There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. 

We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.

The distinction will become clearer if we ask who will be qualified to determine sentences when sentences are no longer held to derive their propriety from the criminal’s deservings. On the old view the problem of fixing the right sentence was a moral problem. 

Accordingly, the judge who did it was a person trained in jurisprudence; trained, that is, in a science which deals with rights and duties, and which, in origin at least, was consciously accepting guidance from the Law of Nature, and from Scripture. We must admit that in the actual penal code of most countries at most times these high originals were so much modified by local custom, class interests, and utilitarian concessions, as to be very imperfectly recognizable. But the code was never in principle, and not always in fact, beyond the control of the conscience of the society. And when (say, in eighteenth-century England) actual punishments conflicted too violently with the moral sense of the community, juries refused to convict and reform was finally brought about. This was possible because, so long as we are thinking in terms of Desert, the propriety of the penal code, being a moral question, is a question n which every man has the right to an opinion, not because he follows this or that profession, but because he is simply a man, a rational animal enjoying the Natural Light. But all this is changed when we drop the concept of Desert. The only two questions we may now ask about a punishment are whether it deters and whether it cures. But these are not questions on which anyone is entitled to have an opinion simply because he is a man. He is not entitled to an opinion even if, in addition to being a man, he should happen also to be a jurist, a Christian, and a moral theologian. For they are not question about principle but about matter of fact; and for such cuiquam in sua arte credendum. Only the expert ‘penologist’ (let barbarous things have barbarous names), in the light of previous experiment, can tell us what is likely to deter: only the psychotherapist can tell us what is likely to cure. It will be in vain for the rest of us, speaking simply as men, to say, ‘but this punishment is hideously unjust, hideously disproportionate to the criminal’s deserts’. The experts with perfect logic will reply, ‘but nobody was talking about deserts. No one was talking about punishment in your archaic vindictive sense of the word. Here are the statistics proving that this treatment deters. Here are the statistics proving that this other treatment cures. What is your trouble?

The Humanitarian theory, then, removes sentences from the hands of jurists whom the public conscience is entitled to criticize and places them in the hands of technical experts whose special sciences do not even employ such categories as rights or justice. It might be argued that since this transference results from an abandonment of the old idea of punishment, and, therefore, of all vindictive motives, it will be safe to leave our criminals in such hands. I will not pause to comment on the simple-minded view of fallen human nature which such a belief implies. Let us rather remember that the ‘cure’ of criminals is to be compulsory; and let us then watch how the theory actually works in the mind or the Humanitarian. The immediate starting point of this article was a letter I read in one of our Leftist weeklies. The author was pleading that a certain sin, now treated by our laws as a crime, should henceforward be treated as a disease. And he complained that under the present system the offender, after a term in gaol, was simply let out to return to his original environment where he would probably relapse. What he complained of was not the shutting up but the letting out. On his remedial view of punishment the offender should, of course, be detained until he was cured. And or course the official straighteners are the only people who can say when that is. 

The first result of the Humanitarian theory is, therefore, to substitute for a definite sentence (reflecting to some extent the community’s moral judgment on the degree of ill-desert involved) an indefinite sentence terminable only by the word of those experts—and they are not experts in moral theology nor even in the Law of Nature—who inflict it. Which of us, if he stood in the dock, would not prefer to be tried by the old system?

It may be said that by the continued use of the word punishment and the use of the verb ‘inflict’ I am misrepresenting Humanitarians. They are not punishing, not inflicting, only healing. 

But do not let us be deceived by a name. To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of ‘normality’ hatched in a Vienese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors have succeeded or I grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success—who cares whether this is called Punishment or not? That it includes most of the elements for which any punishment is feared—shame, exile, bondage, and years eaten by the locust—is obvious. Only enormous ill-desert could justify it; but ill-desert is the very conception which the Humanitarian theory has thrown overboard.

If we turn from the curative to the deterrent justification of punishment we shall find the new theory even more alarming. When you punish a man in terrorem, make of him an ‘example’ to others, you are admittedly using him as a means to an end; someone else’s end. This, in itself, would be a very wicked thing to do. On the classical theory of Punishment it was of course justified on the ground that the man deserved it. That was assumed to be established before any question of ‘making him an example arose’ arose. You then, as the saying is, killed two birds with one stone; in the process of giving him what he deserved you set an example to others. But take away desert and the whole morality of the punishment disappears. Why, in Heaven’s name, am I to be sacrificed to the good of society in this way?—unless, of course, I deserve it.

But that is not the worst. If the justification of exemplary punishment is not to be based on dessert but solely on its efficacy as a deterrent, it is not absolutely necessary that the man we punish should even have committed the crime. The deterrent effect demands that the public should draw the moral, ‘If we do such an act we shall suffer like that man.’ The punishment of a man actually guilty whom the public think innocent will not have the desired effect; the punishment of a man actually innocent will, provided the public think him guilty. But every modern State has powers which make it easy to fake a trial. When a victim is urgently needed for exemplary purposes and a guilty victim cannot be found, all the purposes of deterrence will be equally served by the punishment (call it ‘cure’ if you prefer0 of an innocent victim, provided that the public can be cheated into thinking him will be so wicked. The punishment of an innocent, that is , an undeserving, man is wicked only if we grant the traditional view that righteous punishment means deserved punishment. Once we have abandoned that criterion, all punishments have to be justified, if at all, on other grounds that have nothing to do with desert. Where the punishment of the innocent can be justified on those grounds (and it could in some cases be justified as a deterrent) it will be no less moral than any other punishment. Any distaste for it on the part of the Humanitarian will be merely a hang-over from the Retributive theory.

It is, indeed, important to notice that my argument so far supposes no evil intentions on the part of the Humanitarian and considers only what is involved in the logic of his position. My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. 

To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better’, is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image.

In reality, however, we must face the possibility of bad rulers armed with a Humanitarian theory of punishment. A great many popular blue prints for a Christian society are merely what the Elizabethans called ‘eggs in moonshine’ because they assume that the whole society is Christian or that the Christians are in control. This is not so in most contemporary States. Even if it were, our rulers would still be fallen men, and, therefore neither ver wise nor very good. As it is, they will usually be unbelievers. And since wisdom and virtue are not the only or the commonest qualifications for a place in the government, they will not often be even the best unbelievers.

The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish. And when they are wicked the Humanitarian theory of punishment will put in their hands a finer instrument of tyranny than wickedness ever had before. For if crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call ‘disease’ can be treated as a crime; and compulsorily cured. It will be vain to plead that states of mind which displease government need not always involve moral turpitude and do not therefore always deserve forfeiture of liberty. For our masters will not be using the concepts of Desert and Punishment but those of disease and cure. We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to government, what is to hinder government from proceeding to ‘cure’ it? Such ‘cure’ will, of course, be compulsory; but under the Humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution. No one will blame us for being Christians, no one will hate us, no one will revile us. The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact as compulsory as the tunica molesta or Smithfield or Tyburn, all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ are never heard. And thus when the command is given, every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, and it will rest with the expert gaolers to say when (if ever) they are to re-emerge. But it will not be persecution. Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic. In ordinary medicine there were painful operations and fatal operations; so in this. But because they are ‘treatment’, not punishment, they can be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice.

This is why I think it essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. That is how it can deceive men of good will. The error began, with Shelley’s statement that the distinction between mercy and justice was invented in the courts of tyrants. It sounds noble, and was indeed the error of a noble mind. But the distinction is essential. The older view was that mercy ‘tempered’ justice, or (on the highest level of all) that mercy and justice had met and kissed. The essential act of mercy was to pardon; and pardon in its very essence involves the recognition of guilt and ill-desert in the recipient. 

If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned. 

How can you pardon a man for having a gumboil or a club foot? 

But the Humanitarian theory wants simply to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it. 

This means that you start being ‘kind’ to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which no on but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties. You have overshot the mark. 

Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. 

As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice; transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety. 

But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live. These are the ‘precious balms’ which will ‘break our heads’.

There is a fine sentence in Bunyan: ‘It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his House, he would sell me for a Slave.’ There is a fine couplet, too, in John Ball:

‘Be war or ye be wo; Knoweth your frend from your foo.’

WALK THIS WAY

The Man in Black :

You are like a dog, fetching a stick over and over.

You tell The Kid what happened to the old crew?

You tell him that everyone that walks with you dies By My Hand?

Chief Taqa Walker :

It's been good walking with you, Madison Clark.

Maddison Clark :

You too, Taqa.