Fading Mendacity
Some folks argue that what us idealistic types call "progress" ain't progress at all, that actually, the more things change, the more they stay the same. But the Mouse -- having reached a certain age -- sees it differently.
Take for instance the shooting we had here last Saturday. Seems a guy shot a young lady twice, not fatally, mind you, just enough so she would know she was shot. The cops arrested the man in a matter of minutes. He's now in jail, awaiting the moving fingers of justice.
Okay. So, people do still get shot, and that proves it, the pessimistic types tell us: people never change. But I left out a few details of the shooting that, when you hear them, might make you think as I do, that people can, do, and will change.
You see, the man who pulled the trigger was black and the lady he shot was white. A century ago, the black guy's neck would already have been stretched, and his naked, mutilated body paraded around the town as a symbol of "Southern justice." Won't happen this time, probably never will happen again. People have changed.
Now, I don't propose that people have suddenly developed consciences. They always had them. I'm suggesting that maybe, just maybe, people are beginning to see that rule by law -- which is a different way of saying, "rule by reason" -- makes more sense than rule by rope.
Of course, we can't be certain that's the case. It could be that people today are restrained from taking the law into their own hands by their fear of retribution. But that's a beginning. In the "good old days" the law was complicit with the "church-going gangs of hooded murderers" (Mark Twain's words). If today we have a higher regard for the law and its enforcers as expressions of an awakened sense of true justice, then it wouldn't matter that the people privately cry out for blood. The rule of reason still prevails.
If respect for the law is the only thing that has changed, that's still something worth noting. In time, people may actually begin to understand what that fellow Jesus was talking about when he said that, because of him, not a tittle of the law would pass away, that he came to fulfill the law not to abolish it. He meant that in a perfect world, people would take the law into their own hearts, make themselves over into people whose behavior emerged, not from obedience to the law, but rather from their enforcement upon themselves of laws they have made their own.
It has taken a long time for that idea to take even a finger-hold. Maybe the growing respect for the law we're seeing right here in Madison County is the leading edge of a broader transformation.
We shall see.
[Incidently. We don't actually have a jail here. Not enough business to support one. We rent space as needed from the folks over in Orange County.]
Take for instance the shooting we had here last Saturday. Seems a guy shot a young lady twice, not fatally, mind you, just enough so she would know she was shot. The cops arrested the man in a matter of minutes. He's now in jail, awaiting the moving fingers of justice.
Okay. So, people do still get shot, and that proves it, the pessimistic types tell us: people never change. But I left out a few details of the shooting that, when you hear them, might make you think as I do, that people can, do, and will change.
You see, the man who pulled the trigger was black and the lady he shot was white. A century ago, the black guy's neck would already have been stretched, and his naked, mutilated body paraded around the town as a symbol of "Southern justice." Won't happen this time, probably never will happen again. People have changed.
Now, I don't propose that people have suddenly developed consciences. They always had them. I'm suggesting that maybe, just maybe, people are beginning to see that rule by law -- which is a different way of saying, "rule by reason" -- makes more sense than rule by rope.
Of course, we can't be certain that's the case. It could be that people today are restrained from taking the law into their own hands by their fear of retribution. But that's a beginning. In the "good old days" the law was complicit with the "church-going gangs of hooded murderers" (Mark Twain's words). If today we have a higher regard for the law and its enforcers as expressions of an awakened sense of true justice, then it wouldn't matter that the people privately cry out for blood. The rule of reason still prevails.
If respect for the law is the only thing that has changed, that's still something worth noting. In time, people may actually begin to understand what that fellow Jesus was talking about when he said that, because of him, not a tittle of the law would pass away, that he came to fulfill the law not to abolish it. He meant that in a perfect world, people would take the law into their own hearts, make themselves over into people whose behavior emerged, not from obedience to the law, but rather from their enforcement upon themselves of laws they have made their own.
It has taken a long time for that idea to take even a finger-hold. Maybe the growing respect for the law we're seeing right here in Madison County is the leading edge of a broader transformation.
We shall see.
[Incidently. We don't actually have a jail here. Not enough business to support one. We rent space as needed from the folks over in Orange County.]
posted by Benedict S. at 8:50 AM
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