In promoting the nation-building enterprises upon which President George W. Bush embarked the U.S. military, the most visible and loudest voices of the conventional right are forever reminding the rest of us of the need for interminable war against the dreaded \u201cIslamo-Fascist.\u201d\u00a0 Anyone who doesn\u2019t endorse the neoconservative vision of \u201cthe War on Terror,\u201d or anyone, like President Obama, who doesn\u2019t prosecute it with the neoconservative\u2019s zeal, is deemed weak.\u00a0 As neoconservative radio and television personality Sean Hannity typically says of his political opponents, they simply do not grasp \u201cthe nature of evil in our time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let us note, firstly, that inasmuch as the Islamic terrorist deliberately targets for death innocent human beings\u2014not just men, but women and children\u2014the neoconservative is correct that such a creature is indeed evil.\u00a0 Yet few people in the non-Islamic world, and doubtless not even all Muslims, fail to recognize this at least at some level of consciousness. And yes, the neoconservative is further correct that Islamic terrorism poses a threat to our way of life against which we must remain forever vigilant.<\/p>\n
Ironically, though, because of his singular focus on\u2014some would say obsession with\u2014Islamic terrorism, and his relative silence with respect to the crime with which America is plagued, it is actually the neoconservative who fails to reckon with \u201cthe nature of evil in our time.\u201d\u00a0 This is no exaggeration, for America\u2019s criminals pose a far greater threat to her than do Islamic terrorists.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of reasons for this verdict.<\/p>\n
First, a modern state is a legal <\/em>association.\u00a0 The members of a state\u2014its associates\u2014are citizens<\/em> related to one another through the laws <\/em>that constitute the association.\u00a0 This, I believe, is what Americans mean when they describe their beloved country as \u201ca nation of laws, not of men,\u201d or when they say that \u201cno one is above the law.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Since, then, as citizens we are held together by law, every instance of outlawry, <\/em>every crime, <\/em>is an assault against our association.\u00a0 And because the Criminal is as much an associate as the rest of us, he imperils his fellow citizens to an extent the likes of which the Islamic terrorist can only dream.<\/p>\n The second argument for my thesis is really a variant of the first. Another respect in which criminals undercut the thread\u2014the law\u2014that makes us citizens and binds us together pertains to the power <\/em>that they assume over their prey.\u00a0<\/p>\n The early modern philosopher Thomas Hobbes contrasted civil society\u2014life under government\u2014with what he called \u201cthe state of nature,\u201d a pre-political condition from which government was absent.\u00a0 In Hobbes\u2019 vision, life in the state of nature is most unpleasant, a \u201cwar of all against all,\u201d for in a state of nature there is no \u201ccommon power\u201d (authority) to which all individuals are bound, no law <\/em>to which they can appeal in adjudicating their conflicts.\u00a0 And because there is no settled law, there are no obligations: each individual has an absolute <\/em>right to appropriate whatever means he deems fit for the sake of preserving his always precarious existence.<\/p>\n It is precisely because of life\u2019s wretchedness in a state of nature that individuals agree to abandon it by creating government, an office of rule whose jurisdiction extends over all who consent to exchange their unconditional right to self-preservation for the peace that government\u2019s establishment and enforcement of law promises to secure.<\/p>\n Now, there is much to quarrel with in Hobbes\u2019 classic statement of the rise and justification of government, but it is not without more than its share of insights. The idea on which we should focus here is the idea that as long as individuals refuse to submit to one and the same system of law, as long as they remain determined to seek their own advancement regardless of the costs it imposes on others, they in effect repudiate the civil condition and, thus, reignite the war of all against all that characterized the state of nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is what the Criminal has done.\u00a0 In throwing all constraints to the wind, he becomes the predator to the law abiding citizen\u2019s prey.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, this isn\u2019t just a point of abstract theory. The Criminal has been exploiting and intimidating the law abiding for as long as he has existed. But when he joins himself to those who think as he does\u2014when he becomes a mobster <\/em>or a gangster\u2014<\/em>it is then that his power over others becomes truly invidious.\u00a0 To the old familiar objection that mobsters, especially Mafiosi, only bother one another, two replies are in the coming.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, insofar as it those victims specifically targeted for attack of whom we are concerned, this statement is generally\u2014<\/em>but only <\/em>generally\u2014true.\u00a0 For example, former head of the Gambino crime family, John Gotti, had a neighbor who accidentally killed Gotti\u2019s twelve year-old son with his car.\u00a0 The ever merciful Gotti had the poor man murdered.\u00a0<\/p>\n Second, momentarily putting to one side the main point of my argument\u2014which is that every law abiding member of our legal association is the Criminal\u2019s victim\u2014we can turn to the bulk of the residents of the Criminal\u2019s stomping grounds to see the immense power that he is able to wield over them.\u00a0 After all, how many law abiding blacks and Hispanics in the \u2018hoods and barrios of America have shown the will to cooperate with law enforcement officers in bringing the Bloods, the Crips, the Latino Kings, and other gang members to justice?\u00a0 And the fear that black and brown criminals have inspired in the law abiding members of their communities white criminals have been inspiring in the law abiding members of theirs, whether it is in America\u2019s \u201cLittle Italy\u2019s\u201d or anywhere else.<\/p>\n Neoconservative Republicans have been critical of \u201cmoderate Muslims\u201d for their alleged failure to speak out against the evil of the Islamic terrorist.\u00a0 Yet neither the neoconservatives nor, for all of that, most of us been outspoken when it comes to combating the evil of the Criminal right here at home.<\/p>\n In this article, I hoped to show why our domestic crime is the greatest evil with which we have to contend. In the next, I hope to show how each of us may do our best to combat it. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The\u00a0New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In promoting the nation-building enterprises upon which President George W. Bush embarked the U.S. military, the most visible and loudest voices of the conventional right are forever reminding the rest of us of the need for interminable war against the dreaded \u201cIslamo-Fascist.\u201d\u00a0 Anyone who doesn\u2019t endorse the neoconservative vision of \u201cthe War on Terror,\u201d or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n