A society of insane sympathies

Okay, I had this nagging concern that the Ocean’s movies—besides being drenched with gambling culture—encouraged us to root for criminals. With the release of previews for Public Enemies (it’s R, anyway, folks), I’m thinking, “You can’t tell me they’re not giving Depp a very ‘cool’ image there as John Dillinger.” Then something clicked:

There is a deplorable tendency among the people of this nation to sympathize with murderers, bank defaulters, evil adventurers, and a hundred other classes of criminals who are at large or who have been arrested or convicted for breaking the law. Such a tendency is not alone manifest among the people of the various states and territories of our nation, it is also apparent among the Latter-day Saints. This sympathy for criminals is entirely abnormal, and has a tendency to lower and destroy the moral sentiment of any people who indulge in it. For a Latter-day Saint to sympathize either with crime or with criminals, is a burning shame, and it is high time that the teachers of the community should stem such tendency and inculcate a sentiment that would make it extremely abhorrent to commit crime. Young men may please God by thinking right, by acting right, by shunning, as they would destruction, not only every crime, but the spirit either to see or sympathize with the criminal, or to hear or read the details of his damnable acts. It is an old saying, that we are what we think; then, to be a good Latter-day Saint it is necessary to think pure thoughts, to imbibe pure ideas, and to let the mind dwell continually upon the noble things, and the good deeds, and the exalted thoughts of life, discarding all sympathy or interest for crime and criminals, and all thought of evil. The man or woman who will resort to the court room, who will visit criminals with flowers, who will read and constantly discuss every detail of crime, should be condemned, frowned upon, and their actions should be made detestable in the eyes of the pure in heart. When a murderer is condemned, he should be detested, dropped, and forgotten; and so also should criminals of other classes who sin grievously against law and the commandments of God. (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine, 374-375)

President Smith also noted, “I wish . . . to say a word to guard the people from unwise sympathies. While we may have a great deal of love for our fellow beings, and especially for those who have been favored of the Lord in times past, we should exercise that love wisely. . . . It is impossible for me to sympathize with those who do wrong” (CD, 5:212).

As cheerful as the ever-widening spread of the balm of sympathy sounds, there are two flies in the ointment. First, there are few moral concepts as slippery as sympathy. At best, it substitutes indiscriminate niceness for goodness in human affairs. (Niceness is nice, but even a thief can be polite.) At worst, it embraces indiscrimination itself, and erases all boundaries between human beings and every other living thing. In trying to treat every living thing as part of one moral whole, it ends up inverting the entire moral order and the natural order along with it. The outcome is the animal rights activist who, overflowing with sympathy for the chimpanzee, destroys medical research clinics. (Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed up the World and 5 Others That Didn't Help [Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008], 94)

A few years after President Smith, Elder Reed Smoot also commented on this disease:

There are other things, it seems to me, that are sapping the life, at least the spiritual life, of the people of the world, and our communities are affected, somewhat, with the same evil. I have reference to the maudlin, half insane sympathy for the murderer, the unnatural, and the wicked, the desire for sensationalism, the mad rush for pleasure, the desire to become one of the idle rich, or a determination to join the idle poor. I simply have to refer you to a case which has filled the magazines and the press not only in this country but all over the world, and, as far as I can estimate, if the space had been charged for by the daily papers of this country as they charge the business men for the space for advertising, it would amount to a hundred million dollars, or more. I have reference to the Thaw case. Who was Harry Thaw? A man reared in the lap of luxury, a debauchee, a murderer escaping the gallows on the plea of insanity, a man reared in a home where all the luxuries of wealth were given him, but devoid of everything that makes man what God intended him to be. Wasn’t it a spectacle to deplore to see the crowds following him from place to place, from jail to the auto, while he was in Canada; ovation after ovation was given him; women presented him with flowers on every possible occasion, and young girls not out of their teens, stood at the jail begging “Harry” to come to the bars that they might see him. Oh God, have mercy on such deluded people. I remember one case here in Utah when a murderer, sentenced to die, was sent flowers by some of the women of our state. Thank the Lord there were but a few so foolish. I take it that such action can only be indulged in by a person having a diseased mind. There is surely something wrong with them. I do know that there isn’t a spark of the Spirit of God in them. (CR, Oct. 1913, 94-95)

How can we account for this madness? Robert H. Bork wrote, “A violent man in prison will not shoot you, rape you, or crack your skull. There is no reason to be sentimental about a person who commits even one violent or serious crime. Violence is not inflicted through negligence or inadvertence. If the man who was sentenced to ten years served ten years, at least seventy-two people would be spared death, rape, or other serious injury” (Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline [New York, New York: ReganBooks, 1996], 165). One political commentator, whose name and affiliation will go unmentioned (I myself finding him a tad overbearing) gives credit to the conservative camp’s retained values in an accurate assessment: “The justice system today is crawling with ‘experts’ eager to exonerate the most heinous criminals on the grounds that they’re ‘genetically predisposed’ to murder, rape, take drugs, or otherwise endanger the welfare of others; the media fills its airwaves with liberal advocates eager to sympathize with murderers on death row, instead of the families of the innocent victims.”

All too frequently . . . the abolitionist's concern seems to be for the murderer rather than for the murderer's victims. And here it is a consideration of the utmost importance that the death penalty is an absolutely effective deterrent against the perpetration of more murders by the same person. . . . Van den Haag is forced to conclude that advocates of the abolition of the death penalty "think the lives of convicted murderers . . . are more worth preserving than the lives of an indefinite number of innocent victims." He perceives that such persons are not interested in deterrence so much as they are obsessed with the campaign for the abolition of capital punishment.

[quoted:] The intransigence of these committed humanitarians is puzzling as well as inhumane. Passionate ideological commitments have been known to have such effects. These otherwise kind and occasionally reasonable persons do not want to see murderers executed ever--however many innocent lives can be saved thereby. Fiat injustitia, pereat humanitas. [Van den Haag, "Collapse," p. 403.]]

Without the death penalty the unique and inviolable character of the human person is in effect denied, murder is reduced to the level of lesser crimes, and the life of man becomes cheap. (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Christian Ethics in Secular Society [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1983], 120-121)

This growing trend of enduring, pitying, embracing, and then turning on those who wish to remain innocent of wrongdoing is both insulting and harmful, as one Holocaust survivor wrote:

This mimesis, this identification or imitation, or exchange of roles between oppressor and victim, has provoked much discussion. True and invented, disturbing and banal, acute and stupid things have been said: it is not virgin terrain; on the contrary it is a badly plowed field, trampled and torn up. The film director Liliana Cavani, who was asked to express briefly the meaning of a beautiful and false film of hers, declared: “We are all victims or murderers, and we accept these roles voluntarily. Only Sade and Dostoevsky have really understood this.” . . .

I do not know, and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth. (Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal [New York: Random House, Inc., 1988], 48-49).

Statements from depraved artists like Cavani help bring our entire social structure nigher the abyss of association. (As an aside, notice how beloved Michael Jackson was, even when people can relatively freely admit to his abnormalities . . . all because he was successful, rich, and famous.) As for this queer idea of supporting murderers—the very premise behind secret combinations—present ever since Cain first gloried in his wickedness (Moses 5:31), allow me to say that very few actions could put you any farther from the presence of God. Yet even in Christianity there is confusion about one’s unenviable state in relation to grace upon committing the misdeed.

There are those who profess Christianity, who believe that even the murderer who has imbrued his hands in the blood of his innocent victim may, by saying the words, “I believe in Jesus Christ,” be ushered into the presence of the Redeemer of mankind. This is false doctrine and I am thankful that this people are not deceived by such teachings, but that on the contrary we are placed in a condition to know how we may obtain the blessing of Celestial glory, and not be disappointed. (George Albert Smith, CR, Oct. 1923, 71)

Lorenzo Snow said, “It is a noticeable feature in those who cherish a spirit of apostacy from the light of the Gospel, that they adopt the doctrine of Universalism and think none too wicked for a complete and unconditional salvation” (in Eliza R. Snow Smith, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow [rep. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1999; orig. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Company, Printers, 1884], 31). One can see this original apostasy resulting in the broader apostasy: “As to Redemption, Marcion taught a Gospel of love only. He represented the character of the Supreme God as one of pure benevolence—entirely without justice, a characteristic reserved to his second God. Irenaeus and Tertullian easily refuted this idea, explaining that the true God must possess both the attributes of goodness and justice, or cease to be God. . . . Marcion could not see this principle, nor comprehend the benefits of adversity upon Man. So he taught a gospel of universal love and forgiveness not unlike that taught in some Evangelical churches today” (Richard R. Hopkins, How Greek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God [Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers & Distributors, Inc., 1998], 166-167).

We dare not leave out the love of God and we dare not leave out the doctrine of Hell. Both are certainly true. Therefore they must be capable of reconciliation. The reconciliation must not come in ignoring Hell or believing in a kindly, good-natured God who does not judge severely about moral character and who only cares that His child should stop crying and be happy. We are having too much of this sentimentalism nowadays. It is a miserable misconception of that awful holiness which is “of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” It would never explain the need of Christ dying on the cross to put away sin.

Whatever reconciliation we find here or hereafter it must have at bottom God's unutterable hatred of sin but also God's unutterable love and pain over every sinful soul which He has made. (J. Paterson-Smyth, The Gospel of the Hereafter [New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1910], 188)

A vicious sentimentalism is poisoning the wells. It is in the universities and colleges, the churches, the entertainment industry generally -- movies, television, newspapers, magazines, popular songs—in the wells from which we get our spiritual drink, from which our whole cultural life is irrigated. . . . Sentimentalism is not just a weakness, and is certainly not a virtue—it is confused with mercy—but a crime; and vicious sentimentalism is ordinary sentimentalism raised up in place of principle. . . .

It is not really capital punishment that bothers sentimentalists, though they use it as the cutting edge of their argument. They object to punishment itself; and that is because they deny the existence of justice; and that is because they deny that man is free, that man is responsible for his acts. (John Senior, The Death of Christian Culture [New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1978], 107-108, 110)

Those who constantly invoke the sentiment of “who are we to judge?” should consider the anarchy that would ensue if we adhered to this sentiment in, say, our courtrooms. Should judges judge? What would happen if those sitting on a jury decided to be “nonjudgmental” about rapists and sexual harassers, embezzlers and tax cheats? Without being “judgmental,” Americans would never have put an end to slavery, outlawed child labor, emancipated women, or ushered in the civil rights movement. Nor would we have prevailed against Nazism and Soviet communism, or known how to explain our opposition.

How do we judge a wrong—any wrong whatsoever—when we have gutted the principle of judgment itself? What arguments can be made after we have strip-mined all the arguments of their force, their power, their ability to inspire public outrage? We all know that there are times when we will have to judge others, when it is both right and necessary to judge others. If we do not confront the soft relativism that is now disguised as a virtue, we will find ourselves morally and intellectually disarmed. (William J. Bennett, The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals [New York, New York: The Free Press, 1998], 121).

Paul indicated that love without dissimulation will “abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” (Romans 12:9; see Alma 13:12, 2 Nephi 4:31, Amos 5:15). Charity itself assuredly does not extend its suffering long to movie screenings depicting every species of wickedness, for it “rejoiceth not in iniquity” (Moroni 7:45), and it certainly will not deprive man of his accountability or others of freedom from sin and all its practitioners.

Remnants of pre-apostate Christianity, with which I’ve been acquainting myself further this past year, testify to this: “We consider the looking on at a murder to be nigh to murder itself and forbid ourselves such spectacles” (Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians, trans. Joseph Hugh Crehan [New York, New York: Newman Press, 1955], 76). “Who would fail to be horrified to see at the chariot races the frenzied brawling of the mob, to see at the gladiatorial contests a school in murder? At the theatre, too, this raving madness is undiminished, and the display of indecencies is greater; at one time an actor of farce may describe or represent acts of adultery, at another an effeminate pantomime may stimulate lust by simulating it—he even dishonors your gods by investing them with lovers' sighs, discords, and debauchery; he even induces your tears by feigning suffering with senseless gestures and signs. We can only conclude that murder is what you demand in fact and what you weep at in fiction” (Octavius, the Christian, in Marcus Minucius Felix, The Octavius, trans. G. W. Clarke [New York, New York: Newman Press, 1974], 122-123).

The Roman theater was borrowed from the Greeks, and the favorite dramatic themes were crime, adultery and immorality. . . . Lactantius wrote, “I am inclined to think that the corrupting influence of the stage is even worse [than that of the arena]. The subjects of comedies are the deflowering of virgins or the loves of prostitutes. . . . Similarly, the tragedies parade before the eyes [of the audience] the murder of parents and acts of incest committed by wicked kings. . . . Is the art of the mimes any better? They teach adultery by acting it out. How do we expect our young people to respond when they see that these things are practiced without shame and that everyone eagerly watches.”

Tertullian added, “The father who carefully protects and guards his virgin daughter's ears from every polluting word takes her to the theater himself, exposing her to all its vile language and attitudes.” He asked rhetorically, “How can it be right to look at the things that are wrong to do? How can those things which defile a man when they go out of his mouth not defile him when going in through his eyes and ears?” (Matt. 15:17-20) (David W. Bercot, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up: A New Look at Today's Evangelical Church in the Light of Early Christianity [Henderson, Texas: Scroll Publishing Co., 1989], 39-40).

As for sentiments in relation to lesser (yet grievous) sins than murder, I really squirmed at the sheer volume of inserted grotesqueness in Transformers 2. One individual informed me how uncomfortable they’d felt watching that with their parent present. (One may hope that wasn’t the only reason.) It has also dawned on me that perhaps we have slid so far because in many cases parents themselves are not embarrassed by it, or by having their children see it. I have largely cited material which was not LDS for four reasons: (1) I am not currently with my books; (2) to expose our nation’s recent accelerated apostasy in the arts from a heritage they are denying by their own actions; (3) to keep this shorter than it’d otherwise be; and (4) I'd like to go eat now!