Reining-in My Contempt for the Bad Guys?

Reining-in My Contempt for the Bad Guys?

Eric Paul Nolte

I was looking through my blog recently and noticed the title of a piece I wrote right after the presidential election of 2012, "Welcome to Looter-Moocher Land!" You may have noticed that the essay I just wrote, asking for whom one should vote in the mid-term elections, is clearly not the only place I hurl such ugly epithets at people.

I felt a little breeze of regret blowing past my face, that I would stoop to such name calling, but I came to my senses soon enough...

From my frequent denunciations of what I believe are bad ideas and actions purveyed by the bad guys I see in the world, one would never guess that I was reared in the Unitarian Church, where the first of their seven essential principles affirms their deep belief in "the inherent dignity and worth of every person."

(Footnote: Imagine a whole theology that can be published on a card the size of a book mark!)

There is a certain unwitting hypocrisy in this well intentioned Unitarian Universalist principle because they do single out for special castigation a whole class of people: social conservatives who campaign against abortion and gay marriage. While I too condemn social conservatives for those beliefs, this is not the point. The point is that the UUs uphold as their cardinal belief a principle that they do not practice, and I dare say should not be practiced.

I believe it is right to condemn those people who act on crazy ideas and do horrible things in the world. 

I do not believe it is right to attempt to be non-judgmental, and if one looks at their actions, neither do the UUs who say otherwise.

Maybe we should say it is right to be slow to judge. We certainly want to rein-in our confirmation bias! We surely want to rein-in this terrible tendency of all human beings to be deaf and blind to ideas which we do not already believe to be true and right. We should certainly work hard to be open to ideas that may not be familiar to us, which is the only way I know how to combat my own tendency to get stuck in my own intellectual echo chamber.   

As I think about it now, I believe it is hopeless to say that every person actually possesses an inherent worth and dignity. Why?

I believe that worth and dignity, like legitimate self-esteem, are the achievements of individuals who make of these concepts projects that require careful, intelligent, and thoughtful labor.

Think about this: where is the inherent worth and dignity of those parents who would dance in the streets with joy when their children strap on bomb vests so they can blow themselves up and murder random civilians on busses in Israel?

These are sick, blighted souls, murderers of twisted mind and heart, who are not worthy of respect, and are in fact stripped of any shred of dignity.

Still, many people believe that we should not be "judgmental." 

I say we should harshly judge those who do such bad things. Why? 

Absent such judgment, and efforts to restrain the bad guys, we will get more bad things. We should resist these destructive actions with enough force to protect ourselves. 

To be non-judgmental is rather like pacifism, which I believe is a thoroughly hopeless, misguided, and self-destructive ideal.

If you say I am forgetting about the successful campaigns of passive resistance by Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi, I would draw your attention to an aspect of this pacifism:

Consider Gandhi's non-violent, passive resistance. It worked very well against the angst-ridden, hand-wringing guilt of the morally and economically exhausted British empire, as it was in its dotage. Now, giving a moment's thought to how Gandhi would have fared against a more determined opponent, such as the Communist Chinese, it must be obvious that they would have crushed him with the ease of (forgive me...) taking Gandhi from a baby.

(Footnote: Forgive me twice here: first for the terrible pun, secondly, for using this formulation in my writing more than once before!)

So, far from reining-in my contempt for the bad guys, I believe I should be working to deepen my understanding of these crucial matters in the world, and to find more effective and persuasive ways to draw attention to both the good and the bad.

E   P   N

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Incidentally, here are the Seven Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association. You thought I was joking about a whole theology that can fit on a card the size of a bookmark! 

1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.