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What the lead-up to the Fort Hood massacre reveals about our culture

Last month, Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and wounded several others in a massacre at Fort Hood. Newly revealed details depict an outrageously delicate handling of Hasan preceding the killings. For instance, Hasan’s superiors at Walter Reed Medical Center found him to be incompetent and a danger to his patients’ mental health. His peers worried about his “paranoid” and “belligerent” behavior. He openly defended suicide bombers and communicated with Jihadist websites and clerics. Officials even held a meeting to discuss the question of whether Hasan might be “psychotic” or capable of fratricide. In the end, nothing was done – Hasan was transferred to Ft. Hood in hopes he would change his ways. We now know the result.

This sort of evidence demands an explanation. Who could have been so negligent as to forgive and ignore this pattern of behavior? Why were these facts evaded and the situation passed off like a hot potato? Why didn’t anyone take responsibility and do something, anything that might have prevented these murders?

While it remains to be seen where the individual blame will be placed (if anywhere), there is something far more troubling: that those officials and everyone else who crossed Hasan’s path were all doing exactly what they should—according to conventional wisdom. That wisdom, as proclaimed by every dominant cultural, educational, religious, and political voice is: don’t judge. It takes many forms as we hear it: always give someone the benefit of the doubt—there is no black or white—to each his own—no set of beliefs or culture is better than another—avoid confrontations—don’t say anything that might offend someone.

Such tenets of multiculturalism and the rise of political correctness have been recognized and often criticized, but they are only the most visible ideological symptoms of an insidious disease that has infected our culture: the unwillingness to morally judge others. Thus, the officials at Walter Reed were not knowingly-immoral derelicts: they acted in accordance with what they’d heard countless times. Their willingness to continuously overlook Hasan’s glaring incompetency and dangerous character was perfectly in accordance with the widespread, accepted practice of turning a blind eye for the benefit of others and not causing a stir.

Limiting blame in this case (though blame is certainly due) to particular individuals would be an evasion of the actual philosophical culprit: our cultural fear of judgment. If nothing else comes from this loss of life, it should serve as a wake-up call to reevaluate this premise and an impetus to reassert its antidote: not an avoidance of judgment, but the recognition that it is vital, not only in day-to-day life, but in our very self-defense. Judgment entails recognition of facts, the acceptance that facts are what they are, and that they have real consequences. If the military had exercised proper judgment of Hasan by this standard, it is likely that the massacre may have never occurred. Though it’s too late for that, it is only by embracing the value of objective judgment that we will be able to prevent such acts in the future.

Health care reform vital for all Americans
Daily Illini
University of Illinois

Dear Editors,

In your recent editorial, “Health care reform vital for all Americans,” you applaud the proposed healthcare bill for its efforts to “reform the broken health care system,” but you never mention who broke it in the first place.

After all, it is the government that has prevented insurers from competing across state lines while mandating certain kinds of coverage. Insurance providers, therefore, cannot grow their businesses to cover more people, ensuring them a greater profit, or design packages with limited services aimed at particular classes of consumers, a move that could lower costs for consumers while increasing revenues. Institutions like the FDA regularly ban new medicines from entering the market; compel pharmaceutical companies to work with short-term patents, effectively forcing them to charge more to cover their costs; and stop foreign pharmaceutical companies from selling their drugs to Americans. The price of prescription drugs, as a result, remains artificially high. Even doctors’ purchase of malpractice insurance, its high price caused by the numerous frivolous lawsuits our current medical laws allow, contributes to their overhead, thus elevating the cost of medical care.

These are just three symptoms of the same disease: government’s violation of the rights of those working in the medical industry. To operate, the medical industry requires that rights be respected – the right of health insurers to set their own terms, the right of pharmaceutical companies to sell what drugs they choose, the right of consumers to buy them if offered, and the right of doctors to be free from irrational litigation. All men, whether they are doctors, businessmen, or day laborers, must have their rights protected by the government, with no exception. And as a corollary, to force anyone to comply with government edicts destroys their capacity to make their own choices and control their own lives. Instead of strapping down the medical industry like a government patient, we should be letting the physicians heal themselves. That is the only policy that can cure this disease because it is the only policy consistent with individual rights.

Sincerely,

Daniel Casper

Countless voices are claiming medical care is a right. Is it?

Throughout the health care debate, Republicans and Democrats have argued over many points, such as which kinds of reforms would most effectively give all Americans access to health care and how much we should be willing to spend on such programs. Very few, however, are actually stopping to ask if the government ought to be in the business of providing health coverage at all. There seems to be an unstated agreement that people have a right to health care. Barack Obama certainly thinks so, as do many of our other elected leaders. Obama himself said during his campaign for the presidency, “I think [health care] should be a right for every American.” The rest of the world seems to agree, given that the United Nations states in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights that, “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one's family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care.”

Do we have a right to health care? What is a right, and what do we have a right to? These questions deserve honest consideration given the far reaching implications of their answers. We might start by asking: Do we have a right to food? Do we have a right to a home, a big screen TV, or a decent car? How about a personal jet?

A clue to answering these questions lies in the Declaration of Independence, in which the founders of our country identified “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (emphasis added) as the rights which a proper government is supposed to protect. They did not assert a right to happiness itself, which would imply that the government should provide its citizens with whatever material items would make them most happy. Instead, they framed these rights as guarantees of freedom. Specifically, these rights guarantee freedom from things rather than a right to something. That is, we have a right to be free from interference by others, not a right to be provided the things we seek. Our rights to things like property, free speech, and association involve the freedom to pursue property ownership, to express our opinions, and to form relationships with others. They do not entail the government providing us a home, a radio station, or a friend.

A right to private property doesn't mean that someone must provide you with things like homes or TV sets. It merely acknowledges your right to act to acquire and keep private property in a way that does not violate another person's rights in the process. Similarly, a right to life does not imply that people must provide you with things to keep you alive, such as food, shelter, or health care. It means that each person can live according to his own decisions free from coercion, and that he may act to improve his own life as long as doing so does not interfere with anyone else.

Guilt is often portrayed as a “healthy” emotion – is it?

Does feeling guilty help make you a better person? This is a question universities have recently been attempting to answer through psychological experiments. The results, according to researchers, demonstrate that guilt is essential in helping “children become considerate, conscientious adults.”

While this study intends to answer a scientific question, it has philosophical implications. Namely, it seems to support a certain view of morality: that being a good person comes from steering clear of actions we would later feel guilty about. The good person, in other words, behaves as he does in large part because he feels the onset of the telltale “sinking feeling in the tummy”, and therefore exercises self-restraint. By contrast, the quintessential villain, as the article points out, would be the sociopath who feels no remorse.

This interpretation fits well with the commonly accepted moral ideas we encounter around us. Guilt plays a central role in how most of us are taught ethical behavior and proper values. As children, we are told to feel ashamed of ourselves for not sharing our toys, for leaving the water running when we brush our teeth, for not giving up our lunch money to the needy, for not doing what Jesus would want us to do.

As adults, we are routinely urged to accept guilt as penance for alleged wrongdoing. For instance, we are told by the left to feel guilty for driving cars and enjoying a comfortable standard of living while others around the world endure hunger. We are told by the right to feel guilty for sexual pleasure or even for the “original sin” of mankind. All around us – from our peers, parents, teachers, and other leaders – we encounter pressure to feel guilty for our successes and for many of the things from which we derive enjoyment.

But why? Why are such things wrong, and why should we feel guilty about them? Too often, such questions are either avoided or never asked. Rather than rationally analyzing whether a choice or action is moral, we are often told that the answer is simple: “if you feel guilty, you must be doing something wrong.” In short, we are supposed to be guided by our feelings which allegedly comprise our moral compass.

Take for example the case of “wasting water”, which induces at least a mild pang of guilt in nearly all American schoolchildren. “Be Water Smart!” urges “Gurgle” the water-saving dinosaur to 4th graders. “Take shorter showers!” “Water the grass, not the sidewalk!” Why? No clear answer is given. Rather, there are vague references to thirsty children in third world countries, to animals and the water cycle, and the like. As children we never come to understand what actual harm would result from enjoying an extra five minutes in the shower. We are simply told that it is wasteful and bad, and the resulting feelings of guilt seem to confirm the validity of those teachings. Henceforth, when we almost habitually reach to turn off the faucet, we do it not from a conscious, rational understanding of the facts and consequences, but rather to avoid the dreaded “sinking feeling in the tummy” that was instilled in us long ago.

The point here is not to debate the moral merits of conservation or any such belief about being good, but rather to call attention to the problem with this common approach to establishing what is right or wrong. While guilt is of course a natural and legitimate emotion, like any emotion it serves only to bring something to our attention – in this case, to alert us that we are violating one of our moral beliefs. But we must realize that as an emotion, guilt cannot tell us what those beliefs should be, nor does it validate whether or not they are correct. That is, feelings of guilt cannot in themselves serve as moral verdicts – only as clues to inquire further.

It is well understood that feelings of fear are often irrational and can be identified as such upon further thinking. For example, most everyone dreads public speaking, yet by recognizing that there is no real danger involved, we can eventually overcome it. Similarly, guilt is often objectively unjustified. Every day, there is a massive amount of guilt experienced by Americans and others around the world for no good reason at all. Ayn Rand called this “unearned guilt”, which ultimately comes from learning mistaken moral views in the same way as we are taught to conserve water.

But contrary to the cultural voices urging us to embrace guilt as a mark of moral virtue, it is an emotion we should properly shun, not by becoming unfeeling sociopaths, but by adopting moral views based on the certainty and clarity of reasoned conclusions. We should react with suspicion towards those who push their ideas using guilt as a weapon, and who view the good person as the one who lives life in a constant cycle of remorse and atonement. Instead, we should aim to achieve what Ayn Rand portrayed as the result of achieving moral success: a “face without pain or fear or guilt.”