Positive Liberty

The other day, I ran across a book called Rereadings, which is a collection of short essays by writers about books that they love. I flipped to the chapter on Lord Jim—by whom, I don’t remember—because it’s a favorite of mine. In it, the writer complains about Conrad’s portayal of the tribesman Dain Waris’ attitude toward doing justice—Conrad, the author claims, takes a paternalistic view of Waris on the theory that Waris can’t really be expected to rise to “Western standards” of justice, but is trapped within his primitive upbringing.

I thought that was intriguing, and it reminded me of President Bush’s oft-repeated line about the “soft bigotry of low expectations”: when we don’t demand the best out of people, and excuse them from standards applied to others, that can just as often represent bigotry as anything else.

Now I see this post from Tom Palmer, commenting on a similar attitude when it comes to wartime atrocities. Many very vocal critics of the war are so angry about wrongs committed (or, often, merely alleged to have been committed) by American troops and their allies—and yet are eerily quiet, or even lenient, when it comes to the beheadings, torturing, and other hideous barbarities committed by our enemies. For some of these people, I think the reason is simply that they think that the other side ought to win this war. These people, I think, make up the minority of the war’s critics. But for others, I wonder if it isn’t that they expect more from Americans, but don’t really expect anything more than brutality and barbarity from our enemies. Perhaps that attitude is understandable, given both the theory and the practice of our enemies. But it isn’t right.

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