As of yet no one knows the reason for the gunman’s actions.  People are quick to distance themselves, pointing out the lone, mentally disturbed individual.  If it is the act of a single, incoherent, person then, we do not have to think about our responsibility in this violent act. 

It is true that, as individuals, we can only take responsibility for things within our power.  We can’t be held responsible for the rain or events beyond our control.  That being said, there are very few people that are not influenced by society around them.  We seldom act within a vacuum.   It is true that Jared Loughner made the final decision to pull the trigger and he must take responsibility for that action.  But we as a society, especially our leaders, take on some of the guilt.  When people we respect constantly demonize and disparage groups that we don’t understand or disagree with, we not only legitimize the hate but we also become desensitized to it.  It is not only acceptable, it no longer shocks us.  When our leaders use violent images against the opposition they give credence to violent actions.  Once it is legitimized by our leaders it lowers our inhibitions towards violence. 

People forget that we live in a democracy.  We may disagree with our elected official’s views but they are elected by a majority of the voters.  By spouting the violent rhetoric, to imply that those opposed to us should be eliminated, is to subject the majority to the tyranny of the minority.  No one tries to foster an understanding of the other, or find solutions that work for the whole.  People forget that one can understand another point of view without agreeing with it.  As a democracy we vote to find solutions that represent the whole, we vote to change power without bloodshed, we vote for people to represent us. When we participate in a democracy we implicitly agree to abide by the outcome. 

It is a shame that the politicians who work hard to connect with the electorate, making themselves vulnerable, will be the ones most likely physically attacked.  If we want our representatives to truly represent us, we can’t chase them into some insular institution.  We need to create an atmosphere of open discourse, not vitriolic hyperbole.

My father wasn’t unique in this story telling. All of his hunting buddies would tell similar tales with the same attention to details.  The stories always talked about the type of gun, the weather, time of day, type of brush, whether they were tracking or on a stand, how they either outwitted the prey or how the prey outwitted them, the sighting, how many shots, and always with that surgical precision of the bullet’s trajectory.

 I don’t know if modern day hunters tell stories like my father and his old hunting buddies.  The attitudes seem different than theirs were.  For my father and his friends hunting wasn’t so much of a sport, although they enjoyed it, but it was a way of life for them.  Not going hunting every hunting season would be as bad as my mother not attending church service every Sunday.  He looked forward to it, planned for it; even if he was just going to hunt in our “back yard”. 

My father always thought that a few pennies for a bullet were cheaper than buying beef at the store.  When I was older I often wonder about that.  Most of the time he didn’t bag a buck; a good portion of the day was walking around in the woods, and spending money for hunting license, tags and the gas to get to wherever he was going.  He loved hiking, and sometimes I think that hunting was more of a pretext for tromping through the “puckerweeds”. 

My dad grew up during a time when there were no poaching laws.  There must have been a transition between hunting when he wanted to and when the police was enforcing the poaching laws, as some of his stories where of outwitting and near misses with the game warden.  But mostly, they were stories of hunting, the challenge of outthinking the prey, and the respect for them. 

Hunting was a way of putting meat on the table, it was his lifestyle.  I gather that he was a better hunter when he was younger, in terms of bringing home something to eat, than when I knew him as an older man.  In all the years that I knew him, I can only remember one deer and one elk; one a forked horn, the other a spike. 

Why was he not more successful when I knew him?  Did the world change that much?  Did he take on more family responsibilities?  Was he more respectable?  Or did he enjoy the journey more than the destination? 

Deer wasn’t the only thing that he hunted.  He was a Marine in WWII in the Third Marine Division.  The stories are few and seldom involved combat.  He was trained to fire rockets, at that time a top secret weapon.   But he would jokingly say that they remembered to send him to the Pacific but forgot to send the rockets, so they handed him a rifle and told him to “go get ‘em”.   

Of course “them” was the Japanese.  My father never passed down any racial prejudices, or at least none that I am aware of.  Although I always got the impression that he judged people not by the color of their skin but by their actions, always giving strangers the benefit of the doubt, generous to people in need. Still I never remember him ever referring to the Japanese as anything but Japs. 

I have always wondered how he felt about the Japanese.  Once when I got the chance to peruse through his old high school annual from Gresham, I realized that Japanese students made up a significant minority of the student body.  Nobody talks about the many Japanese-American farmers that lived in the Gresham area; most of these third and second generation Americans were rounded up soon after Pearl Harbor and ship to internment camps during WW II.  Some returned after the war, most moved to the nearest town or city that was near the camps.  My father has never mentioned his Japanese classmates.

He wasn’t part of the operations for the more famous battles on various Islands in the Pacific.  He was in on Guam.  They would battle the opposition into submission and then go in and take out pockets of resistance before leaving to find the enemy again on another island. 

It seems that most of the major battles had definitive battle lines, which were absent in the mop up stage.  My dad and his fellow Marines looked for hidden groups in the jungle, in the mountains, holed up in caves, pill boxes, hiding and striking where they can.  I have no idea which is worse, facing an enemy across lines or looking for ghosts in the jungle. 

Although my father never talked about being involved in any major battles, according to the few stories about the war he must have been part of some initial attacks.  I remember him telling me about sitting in his fox hole, with the Navy guns firing overhead at the hillside in front of them.  He said the ground looked like the waves of the ocean from the percussions.

My sister, when she was around 10 years old, asked him what war was like.  He told her gruffly that it was a lot of noise and watching your friends get killed around you. 

He told me one story from the Pacific about combat.  As far as I know he has only told one other person aside myself.  I don’t know the circumstances or why he told my sister, or why he didn’t tell my brother.  I have no idea if he has ever shared this with my mother or not. 

It was one summer day when I was about 12 years old.  I was helping him dig the basement for our house.  He would raise the house with two old screw type house jacks, inching the house up, brace it, and start again.  Eventually he had the whole house up on stilts, with enough room to dig the basement and build the forms for the foundation.  We had taken a break and I still don’t remember what we were talking about for him bring up one of the few stories about WWII, and even rarer yet, a story about combat. 

They paired the Marines up in what my father called foxhole buddies.  These men would do many things together on the battlefield; eat, sleep, take turns at sentry, watch each other’s back and dig a hole in the ground to get below the bullets whizzing overhead.

My father never told me the names of his foxhole buddy.  I don’t know if he had many, did they switch, were they close?  Did they talk about home, sitting in the dirt, waiting for something to happen?  They were just known as foxhole buddies. 

During the mop up phase they would find a pill box, the fortified caves the Japanese built, taking one Marine from each pair of buddies to form a team to attack the pill box as the rest stayed back for support.  They would take turns, you on this pillbox, and then switch for the next one.  On this one occasion it was the other man’s turn to go.    I don’t know if only one Japanese soldier was left in that pill box or a group. He never said whether only one shot rang out, whether it was a gun fight, was it a rifle? or a machine gun?  In any case his foxhole buddy caught one of the bullets, jumped up and ran back to my father.  He caught him in his arms, his buddy was about to say something, and then bled out.  And in true hunter’s fashion, my father described to me the trajectory of the bullet, how it entered his buddy’s chest and clipped the aorta. 

At the time I was much too young to appreciate this story.   I was thinking ‘cool, just like the movies!’  But as I grew older I wonder what he was thinking of.  What would it be like to make friends with someone, live through bullets going both ways over their heads, sharing a desire to live, and then have them die in your arms, knowing that you face that same fate every day you are out there? How many years did it take to tell this story to his children? I remember him saying that he made a point to hate every place they sent him.  When he told my sister this story he mentioned the light going out of his friend’s eyes, just like the animals he had hunted.   Sometimes I wonder if the real reason he did not bring home as many deer as he once did, was maybe, he just wanted to hike in the quiet woods.

 Mercantilism views wealth as bullion (gold, silver etc) and is finite.  Resources are used to create products used to trade for as much bullion as possible and as such, a nation needs to maximize every piece of land for production.  They wanted to maximize the resources into producing goods that they can sell to someone.  Consequently finding and developing a consumer base was essential.  Since world wealth was finite, if one wanted to gain, it was at someone else’s expense.  This lead to a concept of balance of trade, where whatever a business exports/imports, they had to get the better deal.  In other words there was a finite amount of wealth being transacted between the export/import and you wanted 51% or more of that transaction if it were to be a good deal.  There was always a loser and winner in every transaction.  This is also known as a Zero Sum Game.  The businesses involved the government into helping balance the trade in their favor.  This concept, best summarized by the quote from Pirates of the Caribbean movie “take what you can and give nothing back”, dominated European economic/political policy for centuries.  This policy leads to several continental wars, a race for colonies that culminated in two World Wars; all in an attempt to balance the trade in one countries favor and to create consumers to buy goods.  A country only cooperated with another country, or a business with another business, in order to compete and dominate a perceived adversary. 

This was the economic policy that Adam Smith argued against.  He argued that countries can cooperate in business transactions.  Each one has its strengths and talents.  He used English wool and Portugal wine (I think), where both could have a mutually beneficial transaction without a winner or loser.

Europe was not the only society with this Zero Sum Game attitude.  What differentiates Europe and other mercantile-like societies is being in a position to force this economics on other countries with the full backing of their respective governments. 

An interesting point, Adam Smith mentions that we developed Embassies and sent Ambassadors to other countries when they started trading with each other in earnest and needed someone, in each other’s countries, to negotiate the balance of trade. 

This paradigm explains so much the attitude and policies we have seen in the past.  It makes perfect sense then to colonize, enslave and kill over the resources.  If one wanted to succeed in life it was at someone else’s expense.  Not everyone can be winners and there had to someone who was a loser.  If you did not want to be a loser, you had to take advantage and exploit someone else to be a winner.  It explains a class system and later the social Darwinism the developed towards the end of the 19^th century. 

Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776, the same year that the US declared its independence.  It had some influence in English Government, especially since it justified the government relaxing some of its expensive protectionist policies.  US President John Adams was a merchant steeped in the mercantilism ideology and I don’t know if Adam Smith had any influenced on our second president’s policies or not. 

I don’t see a revolution in business practices since Adam Smith’s day.  In our early American history we see huge railroad companies, being subsidized by the government, linking America from coast to coast, making millions of dollars for the rail road companies yet exploiting the work force, both Chinese and European, leaving them with little but the experience.  We have fought many wars over business interest.  When Admiral Perry “opened” the doors to Japan, he did it by sailing the US Naval fleet, guns and all, into Uraga Harbor and demanded that Japan open its borders to trade. 

Mercantilism justified the view of the Great Plans, where the buffalo and Native Americans roam, was land not being put to productive use, thus spurring our great pioneer movement to make this land productive.  It justified exploiting the Appalachian Mountains, taking a tremendous amount of wealth in coal and timber, to fuel the industrial revolution, and leaving the inhabitants broke and ailing.  To this day those communities are some of the poorest in America.  It doesn’t take much of a leap for most 18^th and 19^th century Americans to accept the idea of enslaving a whole race, even with Adam Smith proving that owning slaves is not economical (not to mention immoral), because somebody has to lose and somebody has to win.

Like I said earlier, I don’t see a revolution in business practice.  There is no incentive for it.  If you go into business to make money then you don’t want Adam Smith’s free market system, you want the protectionist mercantile system, with its government subsidies and monopolies.  Mercantile is not a term that is popular now, mainly because Adam Smith pointed out its flaws, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t live under it.  The Mercantile system has been with us since the Renaissance and continues to this day.

People who criticize Adam Smith, and there are not very many of them, probably have not read all 362,400 some odd words.  I doubt if many of the people who support the free market place concept of economics has read all 362,400 words.  The biggest criticism is his reliance on deductive reasoning.  I have not found a criticism that reflects an understanding of Wealth of Nations.  I find it comforting that my impression of the critics and of people who think they know Adam Smith is similar to Noam Chomsky criticism of interpretations of Wealth of Nations.

Adam Smith relies on deductive reasoning.  At the base of his reasoning, where the rest of the logic springs from, is the assumption that people are motivated by self interest.  Once this assumption is accepted, all else makes sense.  Can any argue that people will work harder for personal gain?  I would argue that self interest can be expanded to include non materialistic rewards, such as prestige in a community, or spiritual well being. 

Self interest as a motivator, explains the actions of people as they work, buy and sell goods and services. All these groups, interacting with each other, equally competing with one another, produces the best goods at the cheapest possible price.  The creativity of people is brought out as they strive to meet the needs in a supply/demand economy.  He continually argues that when one group organizes itself in such a way as to dominate the market, as in corporations or unions, it is very beneficial to those particular entities but does no good for society at large.  These entities end up consolidating the wealth into a few hands, as they charge exorbitant prices, and pay less for production, while quality of goods and services decreases. 

What is the wealth of nations?  Smith argues that it is labor, or the command of labor.  The value of a product or service is the labor that goes into it.  This makes sense.  If a person is sitting on a mountain of gold, or, more practical, they have 1,000 acres of wheat; if they cannot process the raw materials it is largely worthless.  The mountain of gold will remain in the mountain and the wheat field will go to seed and die out without ever feeding any one.  You need people to process the raw materials, deliver and sell the goods.  Each laborer needs to sustain themselves.  If they can’t, they will either look for work elsewhere or die of starvation. 

Labor, Smith would argue, is the base value of a product or service.  The profit is the extra on top of the base value and is subjective to the supply and demand of the markets.  Some would argue that it is the perceived value, or what a person is willing to pay for a product that is the value of that product.  This may be true of the profit margin, but there is not a business man in the world who will willingly sell their products for under the base value and stay in business for very long.  Not to say that the product will depreciate over time, as its value is diminished by use.  However the cost of it has already been paid for, the labor compensated and the product’s value is then associated with its usefulness. 

Adam Smith argues for a role of government in economics.  Not the of laissez-faire that so many attribute to him, but a responsible government that will take on the areas that individual and entities would be unable  to profit from but are greatly beneficial to society.  Areas like national defense, roads, education, and justice.  People may argue for the privatization of these areas but in all attempts to privatize these areas, the only way a company can make a profit is by the exclusion of non profitable members of society.  This means that for national defense, we will have protracted wars, for roads, only people who can afford the tolls will travel, not the marginal worker earning a subsistence wage or the small business transporting their products to market, for education only students that can guarantee a return, either wealthy or intelligent, receive education and for the Justice system only those that can afford to pay the court fees will receive a hearing. 

Smith’s views of government were to protect society, take on areas that benefit all of society, and create an environment where everyone had equal access to the market place. 

Very little has changed since Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations.  Large businesses still strive to monopolize the market with subsidies from the government.   Smith warned that unregulated banks will go bankrupt, and businesses self interest are not the same as society’s interest.  He felt that the free market, with the emphasis on competition, would be an equitable way of distributing the wealth to all members of society.

The only fault I found is Smith’s prediction that the American Colonies would fail if they broke away from England.  Smith was very sympathetic towards the colonies and felt the “current conflict” was largely the fault of mercantile economics the King supported, but because of infighting, they would not be able to form a stable government.  It was true, there was infighting between the newly formed states that almost dissolved the union, but to give credit to George Washington, the new country found a way to stay united.  But I can’t find fault Adam Smith that out of all the predictions in the approximate 362,400 words in Wealth of Nation there is only one that did not come true, everything else appears to describe our current economy, with all its problems, that Smith predicted over 200 years ago.

There are some tenets that I agree with, or at least my interpretation of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.  I can agree with reality being independent of human consciousness.  There does appear to be a reality that we have to conform to.  Does not matter how much we believe in something, there are certain physical factors, like food, air and water, that without we will cease to exist as a cognizant, living organism.  We can create many beliefs about our consciousness when we die, but without proof we will cease to be the recognizable individual that our friends and family had come to love. 

So in this aspect I can agree.  But I wonder about the rational self interest. Can self interest, even being rational, which can be a subjective quality in itself depending on your perspective, be a moral compass?  The idea goes something like this; when a person pursues their own selfish goals objectively then they would make choices that benefit them.  Those choices can be cooperation with the rest of society because that would be in the best interest of the individual.  This is a very comforting philosophy for people in power.  Rational self interest means you don’t have to care for everybody, just the people that can further your own interest. 

This may explain the criticism of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, in its inconstancy.  One would want the Government to take care of the public roads but do not want to pay taxes to support it.  It is a selfish view of the world, wanting everything for oneself but with little thought of supporting any endeavor. 

What about the consequences of one’s actions.  In the pursuit of one’s self interest are we to be held liable to other people who are harmed by our actions.  To take on this responsibility could be against our best interest, it wouldn’t do to lose your wealth because you were drinking and ran over someone. 

This is what I described on another post, as a top down approach to life.  Top down is a selfish view, where the individual is all important and all people and resources are extensions of the individual, to be used to promote one’s self.  The bottom up approach is viewing all society as individuals interacting with each other, cooperating to promote what is best for the group. 

In view of how our current economy goes it very much feels that the top echelons of business have this top down selfish view.  Many of our top business people, Alan Greenspan for one, are admirers of Ayn Rand.  One wonders at the prosperity of the few, as business make record profits, while many of the working people are either unemployed or underpaid.  The work force worked hard to provide the services and products that fuel these record profits.  Yet they remain underpaid or unemployed depending on where business cuts expenses to increase profits. 

I understand that to be competitive one need to decrease cost.  However it would seem obvious that if we are making record profits that would mean that our costs are well within the competitive stage.  There is no reason to insist on keeping people living below substance. 

We live in a consumer economy.  It is dependent on people buying goods and services.  As long as business continues to view wages as an expense to be lowered, wages will continue to fall.  It would seem that there would be a critical mass at some point where people will no longer earn enough to buy any goods or services. 

I can understand the brinkmanship that goes into business plans, “make hay as the sun shines” as the saying goes.  Although the platitude tells us to take advantage of the situation, work when there is work to be done, this is accompanied by an attitude that justifies exploiting resources and people beyond their capacity to regenerate.   By accumulating wealth, individuals can weather any downturn of the economy.  This constant maximizing of profits with no consideration for society as a whole will continue to lead the economy into perennial collapse, as the few leading business people reap the benefits and retire from the game. 

This top down approach is not sustainable.  It does leave the people motivated by rational self interest in an enviable position, those that were lucky enough to play the markets correctly.  But it leaves the rest of society in tatters; for no other reason than to make someone very wealthy. 

So how does one find common ground with people who are fully justified in their position of wealth and power and with those who hope to achieve those positions?  For society, these attitudes are not beneficial.  Unfortunately I don’t have the answers.

As individuals and as a group we make decisions in order to survive.  To ensure survival we have to have access to the resources and the means of production.  We live in a world of limited resources but unlimited population.  This is one of the greatest decisions that any decision making body has to make; is there enough resources for everyone and who gets access to them.  This leads to decisions about who belongs to the group and who is excluded.  If there are other groups that need the same resources we are now competing for our survival. 

Our proto social group along with the proto government will make decisions to ensure the survival of the group and to ensure that resources are available. There are many different ways to decide.  We can trade, we can steal, or we can dominate.  Many cultures are developed around those concepts. 

Because of limited resources our decision making body has to decide who are members of the group.  In a democratic society, everyone participating is members of the group.   In a stratified society, only certain members out of the participating society are considered important. All others are expendable to the decision making body. 

What does this mean in real life?  We are motivated to survive.  We can survive better in groups.  We choose a decision making body, or government, to help make decisions that concern everybody.  We survive by having access to the resources that enable us to survive.   Because resources are limited we decide who is eligible to access those resources.  The easiest way to ensure access to resources is to control them. 

From here we can add all of the ingredients that make us human.  Greed, generosity, cruelty, or compassion, all of the foibles of humanity come into play as we decide what is best for our survival and the perceived availability of resources.  Not all decisions are straight forward.  Women are the producers of future members of society.  The survival of the group depends on them. We have cultures, matrilineal, that decide that women have control over most of the resources and we have cultures, patrilineal, that decide that women are resources to be controlled.  Who decided?  At one point it becomes beneficial to make those decisions and over time they become institutionalized in the culture. 

Individuals band together in organized groups for survival.  Not all decisions can be made at an individual level so a decision making body (government) is created.  The government is responsible to the group for the group’s survival.  Individuals give up their freedom to conform to the needs of the group and the decision making body.  In its purest sense it is a partnership between individuals and government and its worst it is competition between individuals and with government for survival.

(From my friend Diana, don’t know where she got it)

If availability of our basic needs is the restriction of our access to them then our decision making body decides who and how access to these needs are to be met.  For the most part we are lucky in that the most crucial need, oxygen, is so abundant that there is no direct need to make decisions as to who gets access to it or not.  However, just because we are not buying bottled oxygen, think of land values compared to proximity to smog inducing factories. 

Water, food and shelter are another matter.  Water is more abundant than food and although most cultures developed around both we tend to define our cultures based on food production than water access.  Even though water can be regulated and billed,(how many water bureaus do you know?), water is seldom denied to anyone yet. 

Food is probably the single universal need that all cultures develop around. The main activity for hunter/gathers, as the name implies, is the procurement and processing of food.  The responsibility of any government is to ensure that the group has access to food.  Farming technology has created surpluses, and with those surpluses society can support people who do not procure nor process food.  This is probably the single greatest reason for modern, urban societies. 

Shelter is more amorphous but just as important.  Earlier we defined shelter as protection from the elements.  But we can further define shelter as protection from anything that can deprive us of life.  Threats can be real or perceived, proven or suggested.  Access to shelter from the elements can be an individual decision, unless there is a limit to the space available.  Then, as a group, there are decisions as to who gets to live where.  What about protection from an outside force? Like wild animals or an aggressive group? 

We have earlier mentioned that when working together, people can do great things.  This can be a decision by the group to organize for protection.  This could be viewed as a higher form of decision making, since obtaining food can be done as an individual and thus an individual can choose to conform to the group or not. To protect oneself from forces greater than you, banding together as a group provides protection from those forces and an individual cannot choose self destruction by protecting themselves from a greater force.  This then becomes one of the most sacrosanct obligations, one often violated to freedom of the individual or group, of the decision making body, to protect the group.  The individual often has no choice but to conform to the group for protection.

With our bottom up view of the government we can view the government as an extension of the group, rather than the top down view which views the group as an extension of the government.  With the bottom up view we can see that the government has an obligation to ensure the survival of the group by creating access to our most basic needs or in other words, protection from destruction.

We have to survive.  Like I said before, without access to air, water, food and shelter we, as a group or as individuals, will cease to exist.  Our most basic decisions are to obtain access to our most basic needs.  The most basic responsibility of any decision making body is to ensure access to these needs.  Because we have moved from an individual to a group, the decision making body is responsible to the group for the decisions it makes. 

Decision making bodies, or governments, can fall into two models; Top down governments and bottom up governments.  Top down governments will view the group as extensions of themselves.  Their decisions are made to ensure the survival of the decision making body.  Tyrants, dictatorships, absolute monarchy/oligarchy, emperors are examples of the top down models.  Society is organized and allowed access to their needs only so far as they benefit the government. 

Bottom up government, the group makes decisions, either in consensus or momentarily giving up their decision making roles by electing leaders.   The group views the decision making body as the collective “head” of society.  Their decisions are made to ensure the survival of the group.  Republics, democracy, constitutional monarchies/oligarchies fall into this group.  Society is organized for the benefit of the whole group. 

Top down governments are created when individuals or groups of individuals wish to ensure their own survival and will convince the society at large, either by persuasion or by force, that their vision is best.  Bottom up governments are created by group consensus, often influenced by individuals that will choose the best decision for all. 

Both models are influenced by the need to survive.  Motivations for both will be similar.  The only difference between the two is, for the top down model, the decisions will be made to maximize the survival of the decision making individuals, while the bottom up models, decisions will be made to maximize the survival of the group. 

The responsibility of the top down decision making body to the group is minimal.  They are the proto individual in our pre proto social environment.  Their only responsibility is to themselves and no one else.  All resources are theirs to manipulate to their best advantage in obtaining their most basic needs.  We can understand their motives but there really is little discussion on responsibility to society, because they have none.  Whereas discussing the responsibility of a bottom up decision making body has merit.  The decision making body of a bottom up model have placed themselves in a position to make the decision that will ensure the survival of the group, and have therefore taken on the responsibility.

By Ronald Woodbury

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Confronted with the reality of sexual abuse of children in their charge, the Boy Scouts and the Roman Catholic Church have stone-walled, claimed primary concern for the victim and then for their organization, claimed to be a victim, transferred and even promoted perpetrators, and finally, covered it all up.

What they have still not faced up to is the fact that they committed crimes, first in the acts themselves and then in the failure to report the crimes to civil authorities. Why the abuse occurred is an important question. What has been hardly talked about, however, is why the abuse was covered up and never reported according to the laws which are supposed to apply to us all.

I would suggest that in both institutions, moral isolation led to self-perceived moral superiority.

One of the astounding aspects of the Boy Scout fiasco is that they kept meticulous records of offenders in what they nicknamed “Perversion Files” dating back to the early 20th century. Victims have tried unsuccessfully several times in other states to get judges to open these files.
Now, for the first time, in Oregon, a victim, in a civil suit, has succeeded in getting a court to open the files and won a judgment against the Scouts. The Scouts claim they used the files to “weed out” offenders and covered it all up to protect “confidential information.” But if they tried to weed out offenders, they did not do it well.

And in the meantime, they didn’t tell parents. They didn’t turn offenders over to the authorities. They allowed offenders to go on to other scout troops and summer camps to molest other boys. The Scouts have set themselves up as special guardians of moral leadership, faith, and patriotism, yet relish exclusionary policies -what they call the “3G’s” of “gays, girls, and the godless [agnostics and atheists].” It is the kind of moral isolation which can lead people to think they are above the law.

The Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal became public earlier and has spread more widely, but followed a similar pattern. Again and again, the hierarchy learned of priests abusing children -mostly but not always boys -ignored it, covered it up, and then moved the offenders on.
Finally, in January 2002, the dam broke. The Boston Globe reported that the Boston archdiocese and Cardinal Bernard Law had covered up almost 40 years of sexual abuse by Father John Geoghan. Confronted with hundreds of reports of fondling, nudity, assault, and even rape, the archdiocese had moved him around from parish to parish and put him in short-term therapy.

Only in 1991 did the Church forced him to retire and not until 1998, after even more incidents, did it defrock him.

While Geoghan was at last indicted in 1999 and convicted in 2000, it was not until the 2002 Globe report that Cardinal Law turned over the names of dozens of other Boston priests who had been similarly accused. The Catholic Church inherits a medieval tradition of its own courts to try its own people. Celibacy was established to reinforce the separate purity of the priestly class. Catholic policies on abortion, sexuality, birth control, and women are now widely regarded as extremist in even the most conservative Catholic countries of Western Europe (i.e. Ireland and Spain).

Benedict XVI’s March 20, 2010, letter to the Irish Bishops has been much praised by insiders but still admits no understanding of the idea that the church is subject to civil law, including the requirement that it report crimes to the police. There’s the rub. At the very heart of Western Civilization is the idea that all institutions, no matter how separate from “the State,” are still subject to its standards of justice and universal rights. It’s what makes us neither Iran (one religion dominates all government) nor China (government dominates all religion). It is likely no coincidence that both institutions are male-run. Both have stepped over the narrow lines separating moral separation from moral isolation and moral isolation from self-perceived moral superiority above the law.

Ronald Woodbury has a Ph.D. in history and economics. Following a career in college teaching and administration, he and his wife retired to Pendleton where their daughter lives
with her husband and four children. Ron is an Elder at First Christian Church and Coordinator of Elder Mediation for Blue Mountain Mediation.

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