'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's Horses and all the King's Men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.'
Humpty Dumpty was and is an Egg. Eggs have served as the protagonists of moral tales, riddles and jingles since time began. Tolkien in fact chose an ancient Anglo-Saxon riddle as one of the subjects of the verbal contest between Gollum and Bilbo Baggins. The prize for winning was the One Ring. The riddle itself really does not touch upon social ethics but the One Ring certainly does.
'A box without hinges, key or lid,
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.'
Despite the lack of key, hinge or lid, the Golden Treasure entirely lacks protection as an Egg is one of the most fragile objects in the world. Perhaps there is a lesson in that as well.
There are many wonderful proverbs in which the Egg is featured. 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs' is one. 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' is another.
The ditty about Humpty Dumpty originally was not intended for children but generally is accepted to have been created as a political jingle. There is no agreement as to the actual situation it described originally but, as a modern Jacobite, I would favour the explanation that places it at the seige of Colchester in 1648 during the English Civil War. According to local lore, a large cannon on the city wall had been christened Humpty Dumpty. A shot from the thugs of Cromwell, aka Puritans, took down the wall at that point, causing the cannon to tumble to the ground. Although this might be the specific origin of the ditty, Humpty Dumpty always symbolised an Egg in the Nursery and as an Egg, has appeared in literature again and again through the years.
To members of the legal profession, Humpty Dumpty is one of the more interesting characters in 'Through the Looking Glass'.
One of the discussions is as follows:
'I don't know what you mean by 'glory',' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.
'Of course you don't -- till I tell you. i meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' '
'But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument',' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, 'It means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'Whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'Which is to be master. That's all.'
Alice was much too puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.
'They've a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs, they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
Which takes us back to the old Anglo-Saxon riddle of the Egg. Impenetrable, of course, until it is shattered!
Lord Atkin, inter alia, used the argument of Humpty Dumpty in his dissenting opinion in the case of Liversidge v. Anderson, a case that dealt with an Executive Order by Parliament that could be seen as a progenitor of the entire body of law that has been created both in the U.K. and in the U.S. under the sinister mantle of 'homeland security'.
The case of Liversidge dealt with a Regulation that allowed the Home Secretary to detain individuals if he had 'reasonable cause' to believe the individual in question had 'hostile associations'. As the Regulation dealt with matters of 'national security', the majority opinion chose to grant extraordinary power to the Home Secretary, claiming that all that was necessary was that he had acted in good faith.
Lord Atkin rightly argued that:
'In England, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which on recent authority we are not fighting, that the judges are no respecters of persons and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law.
'I know of only one authority, which might justify the suggested method of construction.'
He then proceeded to quote Humpty Dumpty's argument, then concluded that:
'After all this long discussion, the question is whether the words 'If a man has' can mean 'If a man thinks he has'. I have an opinion that they cannot and the case should be decided accordingly.'
To Lord Atkin, the fact that the words 'reasonable cause' had been used in the statute signified the need to apply an objective standard. Protection of the individual's rights should be of paramount concern to the judiciary irrespective of politics defining 'hostile associations' at any particular point in history!
From the vantage point of the early 21st century, whether the concept of 'Homeland Security' has be used and abused to incarcerate thousands of individuals both in the U.S. and in the U.K. without due legal process and without any requirement to proof or offer real evidence that those individuals ever committed ANY crime, Lord Atkin's obiter dictum gains further in significance.
Following Lord Atkin's august example, it therefore is apt to use Humpty Dumpty as an example in a discussion about contemporary politics.
I will leave the discussion of Homeland Security, real or imagined, however, for another time, in favour of that of 'Reparations'.
'Reparations' is a valid concept in Tort but as a political concept, it leaves a great deal to be desired.
For a start, the political idea of 'Reparations' appears to exist solely to benefit specific target groups in very specific circumstances, eg. the Jewish holocaust and the descendants of African slaves in the United States. Soon, any one who lived through the Second World War will be dead and no doubt, the concept of 'Reparations' then will be transferred to their descendants.
To me, this is utterly unconscionable. It is neither legally logical nor ethically sensible. In the first quarter of the 21st century, there are no slaves in the U.S., nor are there very many descendants of slaves who were not born with the same rights and opportunities as any one else. 'Affirmative action' and 'Diversity' are other political concepts designed to benefit specific target groups while perforce operating to the disadvantage of every one else.
Whatever the Third Reich did or did not do, it is completely past tense. There should be no right in Tort to create a cause of action for something that the individual did not experience personally for a start. Furthermore, there have been holocausts throughout history and genocide and ethnic cleansing were the order of the day to many invading forces. It is neither right nor just but it must not be allowed as a political weapon used to bludgeon any one unfortunate enough not to have been born into one of the 'Victim' groups. The deaths of any minority group cannot be perceived as somehow more heinous than the deaths of others. Furthermore, the entire business of the Jewish holocaust (and it is a business according to Norman Finkelstein and other Jewish writers) is a shield used to deflect criticism of the holocaust against the Palestinian people. The slogan that proclaims: 'This cannot happen ever again' applied to the Jewish holocaust becomes entirely hypocritical when viewed objectively from the standpoint of humanity in general. In fact, the word 'Holocaust', especially when capitalised, is a word defined according to the rules of Humpty Dumpty himself. 'It means just what I choose it to mean --- neither more nor less.'
Why should young Germans carry the weight of spurious guilt for a government they never experienced personally? In point of fact, one of the reasons that Hitler came into power in the first place was because Germany had been brought to her knees by the Reparations forced upon them by the victors at the end of the First World War. Hitler promised a return to national pride and honour as well as an end to famines that had reduced the populace to a steady diet of turnips. Germans who lived through those hard times often still cannot abide the sight of turnips...
The sooner the concept of political Reparation is struck down by the highest judicial bodies both domestically and internationally, the better. Holocaust should be a word that is applied to any and every case of genocide from the dawn of time. All human beings are created equal, after all. There is no 'chosen people' with a value in International Law, Criminal Law or Tort that outweighs the value of any other human life. The sooner that the general populace repudiates the idea that it somehow should be forced to pay a price for the acts or sins of its ancestors, the better.
In fact, the concept of political Reparation is related to 'Political Correctness' and indeed, the concept of 'Hate Crimes' is yet another example of spurious reasoning that is designed to benefit specific 'Victim' groups rather than being valid in legal terms.
If a man or woman commits murder, he/she is guilty of a crime and the punishment determined by law can be exacted. If a racist commits a murder, he/she is guilty of the crime of murder and can be punished for it. Why should there be special consideration for the fact that he/she possesses attitudes that are repugnant to others in political terms? Murderers in general are not nice people. What difference does it make that the criminal is motivated by a political attitude rather than simple or complex Greed?
In the 21st Century, an unfortunate belief that people must be protected against themselves prevails in the West. The whole philosophy of 'Political Corretness' is a naive attempt to teach people to be 'good' according to arbitrary definitions of what is Good. Even if the motivations are positive (and it has been shown that, alas, they are NOT in most cases, but rather a method by which the legal profession can profit by engaging in lawsuits that have no real basis in common law), the results make very bad law.
Furthermore, 'Political Correctness' au fond should be nothing more than a matter of manners and good manners must be taught in the home, not in courts of law. Lack of common courtesy is at the heart of many of the negative trends that prevail in our Western civilisation. The idea of 'road rage', for example, would not be exist if people acted according to the dictates of common courtesy. One need not LIKE people in order to treat them with basic courtesy, after all.
You cannot make people good, nor can you make them 'nice' by passing laws that elevate certain forms of nastiness to legal prohibitions. Nor can you prevent people from despair and suicide by making the act of suicide illegal.
Recently, an article appeared in a local newspaper to urge the government to erect barriers on a high bridge that would make it difficult if not impossible for individuals to leap to their deaths. Go one step further and you see laws that make suicide a crime. The consumption of illicit substances is yet another crime. Freedom of the individual purportedly is one of the basic principles of so-called 'Western Democracy'. How is it then that Freedoms often are curtailed for no other reason than to 'protect' an individual against himself or herself?
The idea of 'Political Correctness' is one that is applied to humanity as if we all were children who must be forced to walk the straight and narrow path created by those political Ethicians who believe that their superior moral guidance (and power to administer punishment) is necessary in the pursuit of preventing the world from going to Hell in a handbasket. It cannot be justified by any one who truly believes in freedom of expression or freedom of thought. It is a sort of blanket censorship with teeth and unfortunately, a brand of censorship that has gained far too much political clout.
Name-calling may be a nasty form of communication but should it be punishable by law especially when it is only punishable in specific circumstances when practiced by specific individuals? The term 'nigger' for example is one that is at the top of any list created by the PC Police but only when used by those who cannot claim to belong to the group it describes. An African-American can use the term with impunity, whether as a tool in comedy, a verbal weapon in an altercation or as a term almost of endearment. Some one from any other ethnic group can lose his/her livelihood if the word passes his/her lips in public. At the same time, a word like 'Honky' or 'Redneck' which could pertain only to a different ethnic group can be used with impunity by ANY ONE. Any Political Correctness definition is riddled with double standards.
It is in the realm of social satire and comedy that the utter absurdity of our cultural obsession with 'labels' and 'political correctness' meets with the derision and contempt it deserves. In the States, Larry David entered the lists long ago against the PC warriors. In the U.K., Ricky Gervais has been fearless in his mockery of the concept. God willing, laughter will erode this absurd philosophy gradually and ultimately demolish it completely. In the meantime, laughter is the best medicine against the self-righteous and those who believe they possess a right to dictate to the rest of us either socially or literally.
