In fact, criminals too are moralists, and they believe in what Justin and other admirable advocates of morality and personal responsibility believe in. Further, criminals do not neglect to apply the notion of "desert" in their moral judgments. "Empathy, or the lack of it, is another...factor that must be taken into account. Where it exists, empathy with an intended victim may restrain someone from committing a crime....The sociologists Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1957) have dealt with delinquents' lack of empathy in terms of their 'techniques of neutralization.' Most delinquents, they argue, do not reject the moral dictates of respectable society that frown on violence and theft. If they wish to engage in these activities, they must find a way to 'neutralize' their moral inhibitions. They do this, not by rejecting society's norms and values, but by finding them inapplicable in a particular instance because of special circumstances. Among these rationalizations is the derogation of the victim. By representing potential victims to themselves as deserving suffering, delinquents can carry out crimes that inflict suffering and still think of themselves as morally worthy. Rationalization can be learned in face-to-face interaction or from the mass media" (_Crime and Capitalism_, ed. David F. Greenberg).
Moralism tends to inhibit empathy. Moralism tells us, "you get what you deserve." Criminals -- especially rapists, gay-bashers, racist lynchers, torturers of the homeless, murderers of abortionists, attackers of the aged, the disabled, etc., and, above all, violent cops & vigilantes -- are supreme moralists who volunteer to punish undeserving people. Empathetic identification with others (who, criminal moralists think, deserve all the punishments they get) is very much frowned upon nowadays -- it's a PC, multiculti, sentimental nonsense. The same idea fuels the War on Crime. We see the tragic result of moralism, working in tandem with the Hobbesian war of all against all, in American crimes and American criminal justice
Therefore, I argue that not only is it immoral to be a moralist in America but moralists give encouragement to _both_ crimes and harsh punishments for crimes, in an ever-expanding vicious circle that has already disenfranchised 3.9 million Americans due to their felony records (now, _that_ is anti-democratic). Truth is in the face of American moral philosophers like Justin, but I gather he thinks it best to have more debates to bury the truth: America is _the_ land of freedom and personal responsibility, and that is why it is so good at producing criminals and prisoners.
Rakesh wrote:
>That's King Leopold's Soliloquy, King Leopold's Ghost being by Adam
>Hochschild, no? Just thought I would suggest this correction because
>Twain's book had a tremendous impact on me--hope I have remembered its
>name.
Mark Twain was a kind man, and his moral outrage against moralism -- to which American lynchers and imperialists were committed -- made him write many stories and essays that tell us, again and again, that man "is such an unreasoning creature that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession....It is the Moral Sense which teaches the factory proprietors the difference between right and wrong -- you perceive the result. They think themselves better than dogs" (Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger"). I think that Twain was much more perceptive about morality than, say, Kant.
Yoshie