Essentially Contested America

Why is Mike Gravel running for President? Does he think there’s any chance he will succeed? Such questions have been asked of other interesting presidential candidates who also had no chance of winning. When they answer candidly, they usually say their campaign is designed to raise certain issues, which the other candidates avoid, issues having little or no currency in the popular political culture. That’s true of Mike Gravel’s candidacy also. But in Gravel’s case something greater is at stake. Mike Gravel has been associated with the National Initiative for Democracy. Here’s a statement of what Mike Gravel proposes straight from its website:

The National Initiative for Democracy is a proposed law developed by The Democracy Foundation, over the past decade, along with a plan to get it enacted by the people (not by the government) creating, for the first time, a government “by you, the people.”

The National Initiative includes a constitutional amendment and a federal statute that equips the people with the central power of government, lawmaking. As lawmakers, the people in every government jurisdiction of the United States become a new Check in our system of Checks and Balances designed to control the abuses of government. Representative government remains unaltered except for the partnership established between the people and their elected legislators.

There’s no doubt that Gravel has some quirky positions. But anyone committed to democracy should take Mike’s initiative seriously.

How in the world is James Taranto regarded as a respectable commentator? Consider what passes for intelligent commentary in his take on Markos “Kos” Moulitsas’s remarks below which, incidentally, he repeated on CNN Saturday. Keep in mind my focus is on the language Taranto quotes from Moulitsas nothing else. The first and fourth paragraphs are Taranto’s the second and third are Moulitsas’:

A small minority–call it the Democratic base–would actually like to see America lose in Iraq. To them, the enemy is their domestic adversaries, not their country’s foes. Markos “Kos” Moulitsas summarizes the attitude well:

I’ve got to say, of all the things that get me down about this job, there’s nothing worse than the people who want to quit the game and take their ball home every time we face a setback. It’s as if every word I’ve ever written about this being a long-term battle means zero. As if it’s instant gratification or nothing.

We face a multiple-front war–against conservatives, against an out-of-touch and corrupt beltway consultant class, against corporatist Democrats, or Democrats that long ago lost the fire in their belly, and against a compromised punditry elite. Those are tough opponents, and it’ll be a decades-long fight.

The voters who have switched sides, by contrast, have done so because they don’t want America to lose. Right now, they think America is losing, and they blame President Bush. If the Democrats “succeed” in actually bringing about American defeat, our guess is that the voters will blame–not credit–them.

Four remarkable features of these remarks are: (1) The United States’ occupation of Iraq has failed; the war is lost. (2) How can “[a] small minority” be “the Democratic base” unless, of course, the Democratic Party is “a small minority” Party or unless Mr. Taranto’s sarcastic wit has gone prematurely limp? (3) Where does Mr. Moulitsas say the Left wants the United States to lose the war in Iraq? (4) Any reflective member of the Left knows that progressive people committed to American ideals have two enemies: an infinitesimally small minority of jihadists who want to bring about the “American bleed,” a process of drawing us into conflicts in the Middle East which will drive us to bankruptcy, and an American elite of corporate and religious tyrants who want to capture the progressive ideals of the American experiment and permanently incarcerate them. Tarranto seems unable to distinguish between a commitment to American ideals and a commitment to a corrupt anti-American leadership like Mr. Bush.

But the problem is (3). Where in the quoted passage from Moulitsas can one find any k 9″ language saying, implying or remotely suggesting that Moulitsas wants the United States to lose the war in Iraq? I have no idea whether Mr. Moulitsas wants the United States to lose the war or not. That is not and should not be relevant to questions of truth in journalism. The point is simply that the quoted passage cannot substantiate Taranto’s incredible claim. When interviewed by CNN, Mr. Taranto repeated this contention. When the CNN interviewer tried to inject that the Left doesn’t want us to lose the war, Taranto with brazen confidence told her to check out Moulitsas’ word herself leaving millions of viewers to believe that Moulitsas wants the United States to lose the war. Honesty and integrity in journalism, please.

Accusing someone of wanting the United States to lose the war is journalistic recklessness unless of course one can prove it. But anyone contending that wanting to end the war is tantamount to wanting the United States to lose the war fails elementary logic 101. Such a view obscures the fact that fighting after a war is already lost is not only a logical possibility, but is unfortunately a historical fact. Thus, wanting to end fighting after a war is already lost says absolutely nothing about whether one wants the war to be lost. It simply recognizes an existent fact. I know no one who supports the insurgents, any terrorist group, or militia. Some deranged Americans may embrace such a view. But to tar the Left or the Democratic base with such lunacy is irresponsible in the extreme.

Taranto is not alone in using this tactic. Truth has no purchase it seems. Rather, if you so desire, distort anyone’s view that challenges yours, or truth in general for that matter, and let the inquirer figure out your charade. Journalism? Not likely!

Check out Glenn Greenwald’s piece on the Right-Wing blogosphere. Then check out and bookmark Larry Johnson’s Blog. Larry Johnson is a former CIA operative who from the beginning of this dreadful post-911 horror has been a voice of reason and information in a hysterical, incoherent, duplicitous, media ultimately bent on perfunctorily supporting–through commission or omission–precisely what the administration says. One wonders where we would be today in Iraq–or whether we would be there at all–had the media done its job simply to probe the administration’s claims about Iraq’s alleged WMDs, Iraq in Niger, Iraq’s role in 911, mushroom clouds as the smoking gun, and other such willfully false declarations. The media should confess its dereliction which helped a bad situation become infinitely worse. Iraq was transformed from the stable evil of a brutal dictator (not a good thing to be sure), Saddam Hussein, to a situation of violent instability, from a brutally evil tyrant to a deathly civil war, an insurgency that will not cease, and an invitation to Al-Qaeda and other terrorists to join the chaos, perhaps permanently. George W. Bush did precisely what the bad guys wanted him to do enabled by effete political leaders and a media gone limp. Where were the journalists when American foreign policy needed them most?

Following up on today’s earlier post, I just saw part of a Larry King interview with Kent Fisher of Fisherhouse. Mr. Fisher does honorable work in running a foundation which builds houses for the families of military personnel. When asked shouldn’t the government be doing this, Mr. Fisher paused and responded something to the effect. “I don’t know and I don’t want to get bogged down on what should or shouldn’t be done.” Well, I do. It is scandalous that we verbally praise our military personnel but are extraordinarily niggardly when it comes to providing the appropriate funds as partial payback for their remarkable sacrifices. Let that be a lesson to all those who follow the conservative mantra of reducing taxes. Every time one dollar of taxes is reduced that means one more veteran is deprived of a dollar’s worth of benefits. And that equation applies to every other benefit from defense to education, to repair of our infrastructure, to health care. So when people such as George W. Bush say that taxes are “your money” he is, of course right. But it is your money that goes to pay for your benefits. When you complain about taxes and governmental spending remember that when the government is not distributing corporate welfare, it is, at least in theory, paying for benefits that all of us want and need.

Posted: 2:45 PM

We honor, as we should, our fallen and injured heroes as well as the heroes still fighting. However, these are more than heroes; they are our neighbors, our moms and dads, our sons and daughters, our firefighters, grocers, physicians, and a myriad of different people whose vibrant lives are as inherently valuable and fragile as our own. They are individuals who have or had aspirations for wonderful lives until their fire was extinguished. We must stop and mourn their loss, our loss and appreciate the terror war imposed upon them. Even the victorious heroes who survive the war make sacrifices of unknown proportions. Why then are these veterans in need of private charity to assist them in paying for health problems war inflicted upon them? Shouldn’t grateful citizens, through government programs funded by taxes, provide for them. There is a terrible hypocrisy in revering these veterans on Memorial Day and other special occasions while at the same time ignoring them throughout the year. Wake-up “grateful” America. Do the right thing!

Democrats are, as they should, taking a lot of heat for collapsing in their battle with a virtually lawless executive. They can, if they choose, defund Mr. Bush’s war and nothing Mr. Bush could do–not even histrionic condemnation–can stop them. But that won’t happen. The only way to stop the war is for such leading Republicans as Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative John Boehner to do a “Barry Goldwater,” that is, to tell Mr. Bush unless he winds down the war, they will publically withdraw their support. Only if Mr.Bush faces veto-proof legislation which authorizes the beginning of withdrawing American troops from Iraq will the war end quickly, and here, unfortunately, “quickly” means before the next president election. Nothing short of that is possible.

It is now time, for the anti-war movement, which in the final analysis is neither Left nor Right, to direct the attack on Congressional Republican leaders. In all likelihood, it will take at least nine months to a year to withdraw the troops if the decision were made today to do so. That’s why “surges” and doubling the number of troops in Iraq by Christmas shows that Mr. Bush has absolutely no intention to end the war. The only way he can be made to realize that the war must end is if leading Republicans convince him to do so.

What type of people would tolerate impeaching a President for perjuring himself about an illicit sexual relationship, but not for lying, spinning, and re-ordering reality in order to set the stage for a preventive war of choice? If the President in both cases was the same person, the scenario would hardly be intelligible. How could we describe it? “In January xxxx, President Jones was impeached, though not removed from office, for lying under oath about an illicit sexual affair. In December xxxx he lied again to the American people in order to initiate a preventive war of choice. No serious move to impeach Jones ever occurred.” Can it be seriously maintained that perjuring oneself over an illicit sexual affair satisfies the criterion of “high crimes and misdemeanors” but that manufacturing reasons for attacking another country does not.” What sense would this make? Jones finishes his term in a war costing tens of thousands of Iraqi and American lives, injuring an even greater number and destabilizing the Middle East for decades to come, all based on clearly duplicitous “reasons.” If this hypothetical seems inexplicable pertaining to the same president, is it any less inexplicable pertaining to two different presidents? I suppose intervening events between the two administrations (911 perhaps) could rationalize this scenario. But why would a nation impeach a President for perjury concerning an illicit sexual affair, but not for deceiving the electorate into believing that invading a nation in the Middle East–one that did not threaten us–was necessary to protect our national security? We profane 911 if we use it as a rationalization in such a manner.

Do reasons warranting impeachment exist? Initiating a war under false pretenses, not providing the required number of troops or supplying them with sufficient resources, instituting surveillance of American citizens, torturing detainees, abandoning the Fourth Amendment, will do for starters. Mr. Bush is now intent on doubling the level of American troops in Iraq by the end of the year. Serious speculation exists that he intends to attack Iran before leaving office. Word has it that Mr. Bush is keen on destabilizing Iran and has already authorized the CIA to engage in “black ops” in order to achieve this purpose. In short, he is willfully ignoring what the American people clearly want. The Democrats will not stop him, his own party cannot stop him; commonsense won’t stop him. Is there anything in American political traditions and practices that can stop Mr. Bush’s irresponsible and immoral commitment to embrace only those who agree with him and ignore those who do no?

With Mr. Bush’s New approval at an all-time low, Howard Zinn insists that “[t]he realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos.” And don’t forget the price we will pay in life, honor, and treasure for possibly the next thirty years. The Middle East has never been stable. But destroying Iraq as a buffer against Iran and Iran’s surrogates will have consequences about which we can now only speculate. More importantly perhaps, Mr. Bush’s soft dictatorial rule will give sustenance to other executives to engage to over the rule of law when the need for the rule of the few is required. Whether and to what extent such soft dictatorship is ever necessary will now be a permissible question; whereas prior to Mr. Bush’s reign it was not. For example, we’re now hearing much greater chatter about the war powers, broadly understood, inherent in the executive, powers enabling the executive to flout the rule of law. Indeed, Harvey C. Mansfield argues that given the exceptional situation in Iraq violating the rule of law is permissible. Yes, and who in a democratic society gets to decide when we’re in exceptional circumstances. The President? That clearly creates the president as a soft dictator whenever he thinks circumstances require it.

Nonetheless, neither the American people nor their representatives seem disposed to initiate impeachment proceedings. Unless a grass roots movement of government officials, media, leading Republicans and Democrats, members of the corporate and religious elite, and most important of all, the people themselves form a new coalition, and institution a new process, outside of formal government, we’re lost. This coalition, backed by big Republican and Democratic bucks can actually stage an impeachment trial, televise it, write op-ed pieces about it and finally, if Mr. Bush is found guilty, “remove him from office.” This process, call it “the Peoples’ Impeachment Process,” of “PIP” for short, is much more feasible than an actual impeachment process. Mr. Bush can, if he chooses, call this “political theater,” but it just might be theater that arouses a frustrated, weary, yet hopeful nation.

Christopher Hitchens is back with a mean-spirited, more accurately, vile attack on another one of his demon du jours. Consider his recent article in Slate.com on Jerry Falwell. Hitchens is not content to critically articulate and analyze the abundant evidence of Falwell’s negative impact on American society. No, Hitchens rails unrestrained against Falwell’s poisonous influence in American political and constitutional culture, especially Falwell’s relatively successful broadsides against the valuable constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state. Inexplicably, Hitchens seems compelled to smother his arguments in venomous rhetoric. Ultimately, Hitchens spews forth odious, vulgar bile overwhelming the senses of even those who agree sometimes with some of his substantive judgments.

In his Slate piece, one needn’t move much past the first sentence to experience an inchoate queasiness: “The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled “credulous idiot.” Hitchens, of course, deliberately used “carcass” rather than “body” despite the former image conveying nothing more than Hitchens bile. Further, Hitchens goes nuclear when discussing the term “reverend.” His depiction of an imaginary enemy “Rev. Jim-Bob Vermin” tars an entire subculture whom he considers to be unintelligent, culturally depraved individuals because either they use the term “Rev.” or name their kids “Jim-Bob.” How can America survive such dreadful vermin? Hitchens does consider the possibility that some of these incredulous idiots are “so stupid and uncultured that [they] may perhaps be forgiven.” Thanks for the absolution Reverend Hitchens.

When Hitchens is not demeaning those in our culture who favor such hideous (from Histhens’ perspective) names as “Billy Bob Thorton,” for example, he denigrates Falwell’s support of “the most thuggish and demented Israeli settler[s].” For Hitchens, I suppose, calling these Israelis settlers immoral is too weak, or perhaps disturbingly euphemistic. With religious vigor Hitchens piles the coals of intellectually empty phrases until their odious fumes makes one weary of ever muddling through his brief but, nonetheless cavernous, article.

Hitchens out does even his own religious bigotry as displayed in his tempered phrase “religious-fascism” in contradistinction to the more inflammatory barb “Islamo-fascism” when he insists “All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin.” What can that possibly mean? Perhaps it means that “bigots” and “frauds” are synonyms? No. Maybe he means that there’s a family relationship between all bigots and frauds? Thanks but no thanks Ludwig Wittenstein. Something stronger seems intended, but exactly what is unclear. Does Mr. Hitchens suggest that there are no distinctions to be made between the class of all bigots, on the one hand, and the class of all frauds, on the other, or between the two classes of bigots and frauds? Or does Hitchens portend something even more sinister? How do we break into Mr. Hitchens solipsistic fortification to even venture a guess? Maybe his radically implausible generalization is merely a rhetorical expression of Mr. Hitchens bile.

Ultimately, Mr. Hicthens condemns Reverend Fallwell for setting out “to puddle his sausage-sized fingers into the intimate arrangements of people who had done no harm.” Ouch! I just self-consciously glanced at the thickness of my fingers. That aside, asserting that homosexuals, if that is one of groups to which Hitchens refers, do no harm is question-begging in the extreme. According to which sense of “harm”? Legions of philosophers and public intellectuals going back at least to J.S. Mill and Sir James Fitszjames Stephen to H.L.A.Hart, Patrick Devlin and Ronald Dworkin, not to mention philosopher Joel Feinberg’s comprehensive, if somewhat ponderous, work of harm and offensiveness, have written thousands of words on the question of whether so-called “self-regarding” conduct” is subject to the same constraints as so-called “other-regarding” conduct and just what the relationship is between harming others, harming oneself, and the lesser damage of offending one or the other. But Reverend Hitchens can settle the matter with a mere seventeen words.

Whoops, my apologies for referring to Mr. Hitchens as Reverend Hitchens. How thoughtless of me! But if charged with using his hated term “reverend” against Mr. Hitchens I’d fall upon the mercy of the cultural court and simply say I sometimes have trouble distinguishing the closed-minded dismissiveness of certain religious types and Mr. Hitchens’ solipsism. Perhaps I can say all closed-minded people–religious zealots and irreligious ones–are “brothers under the skin.”

As any self-respecting solipsism, Hitchens’ solipsism knows no bounds. I recall the following incident when Hitchens still understood what rational argument was, if only barely, or so it seemed. On CNN’s Crossfire, Hitchens made some interesting, but controversial point and assured his hosts and the audience that he could back it up with evidence if anyone in the listening audience had an interest. I should have known better, but I took the bait. I wrote to him and asked for the “evidence. ” He sent me a raft of opinion pieces by guess who? Christopher Hitchens. Great sense of evidence! Hitchens can provide evidence for his opinions by appealing to–you guessed it–more of his own opinions. Wittgenstein must have had Hitchens in mind when he warned against trying to support claims in today’s newspaper by appealing to another copy of the same paper. One supposes that in Mr. Hitchens’ solipsistic delusion only his own pronouncements have any conceptual or epistemic value. And so it goes. But why does Slate, a fabulous online journal, need to regularly impose his delusions on us?

There are public intellectuals such as Robert Bork, Noam Chomsky, Ronald Dworkin, Richard Falk, Stanley Fish, Richard Posner, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Roberto Unger, Alan Wolfe, Cornell West, Gordon Wood, and Howard Zinn, to name some of my favorites who are, for the most part, bile-free. They present forceful, thoughtful arguments, often in noticeably different ways, concerning important issues in law, politics and culture. You will agree with some things they say and not others. And I doubt that all readers will agree on which things to agree with and which to discard. What distinguishes them from Hitchens, is that his overflowing bile, as illustrated in the Slate piece, seeps through every word he pens. As someone such as myself, determined to see political and cultural discourse exorcise gratuitous contentiousness and an assortment of other impediments to civilized conversation, I cannot fathom why Hitchens prefers expressions of bile to powerful arguments. Just what makes Hitchens the way he is?

In the film Tombstone–check it out, if you’re partial to myths about the law man Wyatt Earp’s clash with the gang called “the Cowboys,” one of the first instances of organized crime in the West–Wyatt Earp asks the ailing Doc Holiday what makes Johnny Ringo, a notorious, accomplished, murderous gunslinger, the way he is. Holiday replies “Revenge.” Incredulously, Earp presses Holiday “Revenge, for what? Cryptically, Holiday whispers “For being born.”

What explains Hitchens predilection for demonization, his intense despising anger, and his exaggerated rudeness? Why do vitriol, invective, and ad hominen attacks replace solid, reasoned, if less sensational, arguments? Why is Hitchens more disposed to ranting tirades than a cooperative effort to understand the full dimensions of the issues that divide us? Wild speculation is unhelpful here. No one, but Hitchens and maybe not even Hitchens, knows for certain. But former admirers of Hitchens, of which I count myself one, can only implore him to reform, if that is still possible. If he continues to choose insult and denigration over analysis, his once powerful intellect will be transmogrified into little more than a marginalized curiosity. Rather than delight at a new Hitchens piece, readers will quickly turn the page.

One wonders why fabulously talented athletes, earning more money than anyone deserves, cannot exhibit a modicum of good sense and responsibility. Atlanta Falcons quarterback, Michael Vick for instance, is under investigation for conducting dog fights in his Virginia home. It appears that, though inordinately wealthy, Mr. Vick lacks the character of appreciating that dog fighting is cruel to the animals and a distortion of the kind of responsibility NFL players should berecruiting other NFL players into to the exhilarating realm of dogs ripping each other’s throats out. Apparently, Vick is not alone. CBS sports reports that other NFL players are equally psychopathic when it comes to animal rights and welfare. One notable example is Pittsburgh Steeler’s linebacker Joey Porter whose pit bull and mastiff killed one of his neighbor’s miniature horses. Don’t blame the dogs. That’s what they are bred to do.

required to exhibit. More sinister is the possibility that Vick is These are not isolated instances of dogs attacking small horses or ponies; yet they are difficult to prosecute. Why? Typically, there are no human witnesses willing to terstify. More important, prosecutors are loath to invest their valuable time in prosecuting the death of a pony when their career goals are rarely advanced by such litigation. The irresponsibility of the dogs’ owners, like Porter, are what needs to be addressed. When dogs who are bred and trained to bring down four legged prey are not properly confined, inevitably, they will invade someone’s territory and are then llikely to maule to death a small horse peacefully grazing in a pasture. The dogs’ owners need to pay, not only financially, but by some jail time. In general when these wealthy, but morally impoverished super-athletes, treat animals inhumanely, sympathy should be reserved for the animals. The penalty for these miscreants should be severe.

Any morally sensitive individual must try to understand cultures that, in certain respects, seem unintelligible. We must learn to appreciate, respect, and tolerate conduct, norms, and values that seem pointless, harmful, and even downright wrong. However, there are some forms of cultural aberration that should be beyond the pale. One such form of conduct is the practice of so-called “honor killing.” Honor killings are crimes against women (and sometimes, but rarely, against men) by members of the victim’s own family. According to some cultures, a woman may put her family’s honor in jeopardy by refusing to commit suicide after being raped and impregnated by her brothers, by rejecting arranged marriages, by marrying out side of her clan, by seeking a university education, by using a cell phone, and a plethora of similar abominations. It has been reported that these “so-called honor killings among Muslims are a phenomenon across the Middle East.” Here is a recent example from Iraq, the region where our children have died or been mutilated in the name of democracy.

In a town near Mosul, seventeen year old Du’a Khalil Aswad was murdered. Aswad died after being stoned to death when male family members claimed she had shamed the family. The men in her family and hard core religious leaders pulled the teenager out of a house and into the street. With a crowd watching, several men hurled rocks and stones at the unprotected girl for thirty minutes before she finally died. Reports indicate security personnel were in the crowd, and failed to make efforts to stop the attack teenage love story ends tragically. Aswad’s “honor killing” resulted from a relationship with a Sunni Muslim boy. Her family disapproved of the relationship because of religious differences. The Aswad family belong to the Yezidi, a Kurdish religious organization. It has been reported that the young Miss Aswad had left her family and religion behind, and perhaps converted to Islam. Her boyfriend’s whereabouts are unknown as he is currently in hiding, fearing for his life.

Her murder was videoed and shown on CNN. Over one thousand men surrounded the girl while a handful stoned her for over thirty minutes. Observers photographed her on their cell phones to capture a rather morbid celebratory atmosphere within the view of the police who did nothing to save her. Because this child “dishonored” her family, the male members had two choices. They could do nothing and simply live with the stain of dishonor permanently. Or they could remove the stain by publicly stoning their helpless relative. Apparently, these Kurds were blind to the myriad of alternatives that would strike any reasonable person. Ultimately, well after the murder, the police arrested four men, two of whom are members of the victim’s family and they are currently pursuing four other men. However, it is difficult to convict perpetrators of honor killings because the witnesses are often the perpetrators own relatives. Ingrained intimidation almost always prevents even willing witnesses from coming forth.

What should our stance be? When in Rome do like the Romans? This mistakenly conflates cultural relativism with moral relativism. Appreciating, respecting, and tolerating the unique ways different cultures resolve the problem associated with social and political organization hardly means abandoning one’s own reflective moral perspectives, especially when death is the result. On the contrary, cultural relativism means sincerely giving each culture a fair hearing. Distinguish between three categories of cultural values: (1) ritualism, (2) substantive moral commitments to which members of a foreign culture reflectively consent, and whose consequences are reversible, and (3) norms unconsented to whose consequences are irreversible. Cultural relativism requires tolerating (1) and perhaps some forms of (2), but not (3). Committing oneself to reflective moral values means knowing how to distinguish between these three categories. Further, it means restraining oneself from interfering with ritualism even when the rituals denigrate human dignity and integrity. However, it also means being prepared to act in certain instances of category (2) and in almost every case in (3).

In our rapidly shrinking global village, we must learn to appreciate, respect, and tolerate the different cultural structures developed as experiments in organizing human interactions. We must also challenge our own norms no matter how fundamental we think they are. But just as we must challenge our own norms we must also challenge the norms of others when these norms make short shrift of life and liberty. The best way to do this is through an inter-cultural conversation about religion, politics, and morality. Surely, if we cannot reach consensus on the culpability of honor killings, it is doubtful we will agree about the culpability of any form of human conduct.

Although absolutes are rarely helpful, if honor killings aren’t evil, it is difficult to appreciate how morality stands a chance. Honor killings treat people as far less than fully human. The victim’s “crime” derives from a longing for freedom and desire to be treated as an equal. The sentence derives from a barbarism that the human community must put to an end once and forever.