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Tuesday, March 29, 2005

The Banality of Evil - And Family Values

I had an interesting conversation with an intelligent and thoughtful associate today and came away baffled. He was convinced justice had been done in Terri Schiavo’s case because of “family values.” The longer I though of this, the more bizarre it became.

This question before the house is: what are “family values?”

In my humble opinion, family values were a Cleaver family thing: mother and father in a monogamous relationship … a couple of kids. You know - the family unit standing together, passing along from one generation to the next a shared heritage. Meeting brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews at family get-togethers. Sharing family stories; supporting each other even though we may have differences because we are “family.”

By what strange chemistry are family values defined as anything that a spouse does to his or her mate? Is spousal abuse a family value? Is infidelity? Is having serial girlfriends when your wife is disabled a family value? Is having a new family including several children with your long-term “girlfriend” a family value? Is deciding that your wife needs to die by starvation and dehydration – under armed guard so that she cannot receive nourishment – a family value?

Well, I suppose it can be stated that it happens …in families … and that it reflect the values (or lack thereof) of the participants. But to claim that getting a court order to starve your wife to death is a “family value” strikes me as not simply bizarre, but to render the term incomprehensible.

The person I spoke to is a decent man. He is, I think, opposed to starving Terri Schiavo to death. But he has a childlike faith in “the system.” And once the courts have spoken, he will conform. Many younger people do. They are not aware of the ability of “the system” to create a great evil via simple expedients.

Seeing the police in Terri’s hospice actively preventing her from receiving food and drink - enforcing her death via starvation and dehydration – is a chilling example of that Hanna Arend called the Banality of Evil.

Bethania Assy says in her review of Arend’s analysis of Adolf Eichmann:

“Eichmann had always acted according to the restrict limits allowed by the laws and ordinances. Those attitudes resulted in the clouding between virtues and vices of a blind obedience. In fact, it was not only Eichmann, as an isolated person, who was normal, whereas all other bureaucrats were sadist monsters. One was before a bureaucratic compact mass of men who were perfectly normal, but whose acts were monstrous. Behind such terrible normality of the bureaucratic mass, who was able to commit the greatest atrocities that the world has even seen, Arendt addressed the question of the banality of evil.”

We picture the prison guards in the gulag or the concentration camps as a special case … sadistic brutes who relished their role. Suppose they were like the police keeping Terri Schiavo from receiving food or water: just doing their assigned jobs; following their orders and intent on keeping their jobs until retirement? They have the force of law, the entire majesty of the justice system on their side. All the I’s have been dotted and the T’s have been crossed. The legal system has spoken and Terri (or the Jews, the Gypsies, the Christians or the Kulaks) must die. Her husband has said that it is her wish. The judges concur. The people want “the vegetable” to die so that they can get this incessant whining off their TV screens.

Let’s get on to something entertaining: March Madness.

If you ever wondered how it could happen there, pay attention … it’s happening here. In the US, it’s done in the name of family values.

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