Looking at the photograph above, I cannot help remember earlier posts. You may recall that once the lockdown was being lifted, Quebec Premier François Legault urged Montrealers returning to the workplace to wear a face mask. The province was about to reopen, but the virus had not gone away. A lady, a journalist I suspect, stated that the Premier, monsieur Legault, was walking a fine line. He wasn’t. I believe the lady was referring to Quebec’s Bill 21, which imposes complete secularization. But the wearing of a mask is a health measure.
I once told my students that they had kept me awake most of the night and that they should know better. It was frosh (first year students) week. Someone objected that students were adults and that consequently they were free.
Free, I exclaimed? First, I said that since they were adults and therefore free, I would no longer telephone campus security, but the RCMP (the Royal Canadian Mounted Police). Second, I explained to them that one’s freedom ended where the freedom of others began and that this they had to remember for the rest of their life.
On 23 May, thousands of sun worshippers gathered in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park defying all regulations. They did not stand at a distance from one another and they did not wear a mask, which is now recommended by Canada’s top doctor. Premier Doug Ford had to extend the state of emergency.
When outbreaks of Covid-19 reached Canada, we were not prepared. But last Saturday, if a person did not know about aggressivity and transmissibility of novel coronavirus, that person had spent the entire lockdown in a coma. Therefore, it would be my opinion that these young people were engaging in reckless endangerment of human life, no less. There was a flare-up, une flambée, which forced Premier Ford to extend the state of emergency.
Canadians have received a great deal of information regarding Covid-19. At no point, did anyone say that the pandemic was over. On the contrary, Premiers and top doctors stated, in both English and French, that Covid-19 was here to stay and recommended the wearing a mask after the lockdown. It may be that Covid-19 will never go away completely. In Montreal, the situation is still critical, but I have not heard of violations of regulations. People wear their mask. In fact, persons using public transportation will be given a face mask and subways will not be crowded. It must end.
The Freedom we have …
It would be useful for people to look upon social distancing and the wearing of a mask as the freedom we have. The virus may linger, but if precautions are taken, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, doctors, opthalmologists, dentists, taxi drivers, etc. will be available. We need services. During the lockdown, nearly all services were closed. As well, thousands of people are now tested everyday.
The Armed Forces
Members of the Canadian Armed Forces were not doing what they do normally. But we could not have managed without them. They worked relentlessly in long-term care facilities, cleaning and sanitizing these facilities, and helping feed patients. Premier Legault will ask that they remain until September while CHSLDs are refurbished and air-conditioned. This is work that cannot be postponed. The province is also hiring healthcare givers for these nursing homes. The Armed Forces have now been called in Ontario where long-term care facilities are built like Quebec’s and are understaffed.
To my knowledge, no one in my building has been infected.
Ironically, as a Presidential hopeful, Donald J. Trump was endorsed by the National Rifle Association of America. He was also endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, a hate group who participated in the Charlottesville events. By accepting such endorsements, President Trump may have emboldened the killers. Stephen Paddock (9 April 1953 – 1st October 2017) was shooting from the 32nd floor of a hotel, which allowed him to kill or wound many people and complicated the work of the police. Fifty-eight (58) concertgoers are dead and some five hundred were wounded. Mr. Paddock had booked a room at the Mandalay Bay. So far, authorities are at a loss in determining a motive. Stephen Paddock is “unknowable.”
I wish to offer my condolences to the family and friends of the victims of both tragedies. The Last Vegas shooting was by far the bloodier, but although the Charlottesville events did not lead to numerous deaths, they were the more meaningful tragedy.
The Charlottesville tragedy is particularly significant because it is rooted in the American Civil War, the worst of American tragedies. Less than a hundred years after Americans fought the American Revolution, secession was unthinkable. Robert E. Lee attended West Point and served in the United States army.
Yet, on “18 April, he [Lee] was offered by presidential advisor Francis P. Blair, a role as major general to command the defense of Washington. He replied:
Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?
The Civil War (1861-1865) opposed the Union, the North, and the Confederates, or the South. When Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Presidency of the United States, in November 1860, slave states, the South, stood to lose “their way of life, based on slavery.”
First, the slave trade was abolished in 1807 by an act of the British Parliament (see The Slave Trade Act of 1807, Wikipedia). Second, in 1833, slavery itself was abolished (see The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, Wikipedia). What had been considered morally acceptable when the slave trade began in the 16th century had become unacceptable. For centuries, captured Africans were packed like sardines in slave ships, the penultimate of which was the Wanderer. It sailed to Jekyll Island, Georgia delivering some 400 slaves.
Wanderer in U.S. Navy service during the American Civil War (1861–1865), after her days in the slave trade were over. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Besides, the economy of the South was an agricultural economy. The South was rich, but unlike the Union, its economy demanded the cheap labour that had long been provided by slaves. As for the North, the Union, its economy was developing into an industrial economy. Furthermore, the 1840 a World Anti-Slavery Convention was held in Exeter Hall, a Masonic Hall. Exeter Hall is a synonym for the Anti-Slavery Society. Freemasons played a significant role in the abolition of slavery. (See World Anti-Slavery Convention, Wikipedia.) To sum up, the South was doomed, but didn’t act.
Yet, to some extent, the South was a victim of history. Slavery had not been looked upon as a wrong when the Atlantic Slave Trade began, in the 16th century. Slaves were brought to the Americas, packed like sardines aboard slave ships. They were then purchased by plantation owners who probably believed the blacks were not human beings, at least not altogether. The impact of the Age of Enlightenment on the morally acceptable was enormous and it put slavery where it belonged, in the wrong. However, vested interests and an ingrained state of mind, not altogether American, stood in the way of abolition. Abraham Lincoln himself feared for the South’s economy.
For instance, Lincoln asked Giuseppe Garibaldi to lead an army, but Lincoln knew about an agricultural crisis.
“Garibaldi was ready to accept Lincoln’s 1862 offer but on one condition, said Mr Petacco: that the war’s objective be declared as the abolition of slavery. But at that stage Lincoln was unwilling to make such a statement lest he worsen an agricultural crisis.” (The Guardian, UK)
It remains that a right, slavery, had become a wrong and that it could not be made a right again. It violated the United States’ very own Declaration of Independence, whose main author was Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner:
But a black could not be transformed into a white. Once they were freed, former slaves were targeted by white supremacists. They became the victims of such groups as the Ku Klux Klan. After the Union won the war, Robert E. Lee himself could not see the blacks as equals. He thought the blacks should not be given the right to vote, which remained the case until the 1960s.
Slavery and Racism: the colour black
At this point, the necessity arises to distinguish between slavery and racism. One can assume that slavery is as old as the world and that slaves have not always been members of the black race. Arabs have enslaved white women. However, the blacks have long been held in contempt. In two former posts, I noted that Senator John C. Calhoun (18 March 1782 – 31 March 1850) did not favour the annexation of Texas by the “Union” because some Mexicans were métis (see Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia).
“We have never dreamt [sic] of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race.”
North-African philosopher Ibn Khaldūn (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406) did not consider the black race as equal to the white race. He saw them as “dumb animals” and, therefore, candidates for slavery.
“Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.” (See Racism, Wikipedia.)
Historically, the blacks have been considered the inferior race, “dumb animals,” and “submissive to slavery.” Had the whites and the blacks been put on an equal footing, there would not have been an Atlantic Slave Trade and plantation owners would not have grown very wealthy by making slaves do the work. French CountArthur de Gobineau (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882), a friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, also considered the black race as inferior to the white race. Gobineau is the author of An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, published in 1853. (See Related Articles #2)
The Abolition of Slavery
The Union won the war and slavery was abolished. By 1865, United States President Abraham Lincoln had already emancipated 3 million slaves. On the 1st of January 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order. On the 1st of January 1863. (See Emancipation Proclamation, Wikipedia.) However, slavery was not ended officially until the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed by the Senate, on 8 April 1864, and by the House of Representatives, on 31 January 1865. A total of four million slaves were freed and Abraham Lincoln paid the ultimate price. He was assassinated on 15 April 1865, six days after Robert E. Lee “surrendered his entire army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.” (See Robert E. Lee, Wikipedia)
But it had been a very bloody war:
Four years of intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers dead, a higher number than the number of American military deaths in all other wars combined.
The Civil War left profound traces. It ended slavery, but racism grew and it intensified the discussion about the nature of the American federalism. After the Civil War, “power shifted away from the states and towards the national government.” (See Federalism in the United States, Wikipedia.) Several Americans fear their government.
Labour unions remembered Lincoln, which is also significant.
Flyer distributed in Lawrence, Massachusetts, September 1912. The Lawrence textile strike was a strike of immigrant workers.
President Trump was criticized for stating that there was violence on “both sides:” a hate group, who protested “legally,” and counter protesters. There was indeed a mêlée, but a permit to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee (19 January 1807 – 12 October 1870) cannot justify the killing of Heather D. Heyer. Besides, there is violence and there is violence.
In other words, a hate crime was perpetrated in Charlottesville. Although the neo-Nazi group had a permit, twenty-year-old James Alex Fields drove a motor vehicle into a group of counter protesters killing 32-year-old Heather D. Heyer, a paralegal from Charlottesville, and wounding 19 other counter protesters. James Alex Fields killed, which is a crime.
May you rest in peace, Heather Heyer.
Conclusion
No permit can justify murder. The President of the United States therefore blundered by suggesting that a permit lessened James Alex Fields’ guilt. Words such as “permit” and “legally” were uttered by white nationalists to excuse their crime. One wonders whether a hate group should be provided with a permit to protest. In Charlottesville, a permit could and did invite disorder including murder. Freedom is not a free-for-all. Freedom and a free-for-all are poles apart.
It may be judicious for the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.) to reëxamine its position regarding the Charlottesville events. Everything has its limits including liberty. Liberty cannot be put into the service of criminal conduct. The Charlottesville events border on Thomas Hobbes‘ view of man “in a state of nature:”
“in a state of nature each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a ‘war of all against all’ (bellum omnium contra omnes).” (See Related Articles #9)
As for the Las Vegas shooting, there is a sense in which Stephen Paddock also acted “legally.” In the United States, civilians are permitted to carry firearms. What could Stephen Paddock do with his collection of firearms? I suspect that when a President such as Donald J. Trump is in office, a person who has a collection of firearms may shoot and kill. It would be in the best interest of a Presidential hopeful to refuse an endorsement from the National Rifle Association and the Ku Klux Klana fortiori. Deaths by gun are far too numerous and too many victims are blacks. The right to bear arms makes it difficult for a police officer to know whether he or she is addressing a person bearing arms. Not that police brutality is acceptable, but that in the United States police officers are caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s “a war of all against all.”
(Please allow me to allude to the United States in my praise of Nelson Mandela.)
We often use the word “hero” somewhat frivolously. But Nelson Mandela was a hero, a genuine hero. He rose above years of imprisonment serene and forgiving. Nelson Mandela served 27 years of a life sentence because he could not accept the domination of one race over another race. He fought Apartheid, or the segregation of the Black population of South Africa from its White population. There was no equality, which means there could be no justice.
“The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake’s work. Here, the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a series of illuminated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the Continental Prophecies.” (Caption and photo credit: Wikipedia)
Apartheid remains an evil. It is the plight African-Americans had to endure after they were ‘freed’ and it is a plight they still endure. Slavery ended 148 years ago, officially, and segregation has also ended, officially. However, all too often African-Americans are considered by many as an inferior race. United States citizens do not even spare President Obama, a good man. They claim wrongly that he impoverished America. They also claim that he does not know the Constitution. President Obama knows the Constitution. Because they are false, such accusations suggest a degree of racism.
Whatever the color of their skin, human beings are “created equal” and they constitute a ‘brotherhood.’ Yet, 148 years after the abolition of slavery, there are voter purges and white supremacists. The Ku Klux Klan is still active. That is Apartheid. So, did the Union win the war? Well, it did and it didn’t. Winning a Civil War is not easy. The issues that underlie the war stem from within. But the Civil War freed the Black and that was just, despite the losses suffered by slave owners. Therefore, it is everyone’s duty to abide by the principles the Civil War upheld: freedom and genuine equality, not a mere facade.
Fortunately, many descendants of individuals who ‘lost’ the war have since ‘won’ the war. They have grown to realize that human beings cannot be sold like cattle, tortured, executed and raped because they are a possession. We are born free. Racism is a form of Apartheid.
Ready to Die, but not to Kill
When Nelson Mandela left prison, he did not bear a grudge. I am sure there were times when the past leaped from behind, causing him anger and pain. But he retained his princely conduct. He was a royal among his people, the Thembu people, and a prince among humans. He was a good person and goodness is the supreme achievement. Nelson Mandela did not blame anyone in particular for being convicted of treason. He attacked a wrong: Apartheid. He was ready to die for his cause, but he was not ready to kill.
In this respect, he resembled Mahatma Ghandi. He battled an injustice choosing a passive form of resistance. Like Ghandi, Nelson Mandela sought equality, without recourse to violence. He sought respect for colonized Africans, but he was not disrespectful of white Africans. That would have been wrong.
Values
The garments one wears may show difference: a different culture or a different religion. But values are not garment-deep and they are not skin-deep. They come from the heart and from the soul.
The people I honour do not bear grudges. They treat others as they wish others to treat them. They remain compassionate despite the pain they have suffered. They see humankind as a brotherhood. They are not warriors or terrorists. They are not arrogant. On the contrary, they are humble. And they most certainly do not shutdown a government at a price that could feed millions and do so in an unjustifiable attempt not to pay taxes. If paying higher taxes allows the implementation of a safety net for a nation, one pays higher taxes.
Revenge is not justice
Revenge is not justice. We seek justice because there has to be justice. Human beings have rights and the attendant duties. There has to be justice and there has to be a degree of equality. We cannot possess another human being. And if one has caused great losses, one’s duty is to undo the wrong that has been perpetrated to the extent that it can be undone. But there cannot be revenge. It mustn’t be an “eye for an eye.” If it is, hatred persists. It passes down from generation to generation and efforts at reconciliation are forever futile. Bad faith sets in.
Nelson Mandela did not seek to be avenged. He did not seek to punish those who had caused him to be imprisoned for 27 years for seeking justice for his people, which was his crime. He was much too caring a man to strike back in an ignoble manner. But he had a just cause. After leaving prison, he led his country. He was elected President of South Africa. He served one term and then lived in privacy.
—ooo—
When he died, Nelson Mandela was a “shadow of himself.” But not that he has left his earthy robe, he stands tall again and he smiles. This is how he will be remembered.
In a version of this blog, now erased, I said that once some of my first-year students said to me that, since they were now adults, i. e. away from parental guidance, they were free to scream at the top of their lungs, during initiation. My response was that their freedom ended where mine began. And I also said that, henceforth, I would treat them as adults. When they were in a drunken stupor and screaming as loudly as they could, I would not phone Campus Security, but the local detachment of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police (RCMP).
However, in my next blog, I stated that many of these same students had matured and that, as adults, they had not ceased to amaze me. For instance, they had learned that, although they were individuals, they lived in a collectivity and that, under acceptable circumstances, they had to respect members of that collectivity.
Occasionally, those students would ask for my opinion on various topics. I did not like giving my opinion. They had to adopt their own values. As a result, the only comment ever offered when we discussed thorny issues, was that, in my view, morality ended where inhumanity began. This, I would add, had often been my beacon when making decisions. There are so many murky areas and shades of grey galore.
I also told my students that there were times when a rule had to be broken in the interest of justice or some higher value. Justice, I would explain, can be a Procrustean bed as is also the case with bureaucracy. Greek mythology’s Procrustes, had an iron bed. If a person he laid on his bed did not fit it from end to end, he would stretch that person. Conversely, if the person was too tall, Procrustes resorted to an amputation.
In other words, I would tell them that one cannot rearrange reality to fit a theory. Certain things change, others remain. Certain things are right and others, wrong, but what about the rest? The meaning of a word can change if the word is used in a different context: denotation vs connotation i.e, “mistress” and “to record” vs “to throw away old records.”
Similarly, the notion of freedom has fluctuations. It is relative. However, I would add there are times when a crime is a crime is a crime.
Life can be a labyrinth. I hope my students got an education that is useful to them. I loved them and I miss them.
© Micheline Walker
8 December 2013
