After the posting this morning over the controversy involving former Indiana Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox, I had an opportunity to discuss the allegations with him in detail. Cox makes an interesting free speech case over his treatment and later termination for comments that he made on Twitter and on his blog. I wanted to share some of those details and the concern over a termination based on a lawyer’s statements in his private life.
Here are the salient facts that Jeff Cox revealed in our conversation:
First, Cox confirmed that he never connected his statements to his position at the Indiana Attorney General’s office. After he created his blog, he corresponded anonymously. Later, he added his name but never identified himself with his office. Indeed, he told me that Adam Weinstein from Mother Jones first contacted him at his work e-mail. He responded to that e-mail from his personal e-mail. When Weinstein again replied using his work address, Cox said that he answered his questions using his personal account.
Second, Cox says that his superiors knew that he had the blog and did not discourage him. Indeed, he said that he started the blog Pro Cynic in 2004 as an experiment for the Indiana Attorney General’s Office, which was still unsure of how to use blogs. He began to use his real name only after he was assured that he could not be punished for blogging so long as he did not associate his office or his position with the blogs. He recounted how, sometime in 2006, he had discussions with senior staff and was told that there was no need to keep his blog posts pseudonymous. He said that he viewed the blog as personal, not representative of the office, because he never identified it with the office, blogged on his own equipment and time and did not talk any issues that related to the office or state matters. The office simply asked him to avoid discussing local or state issues. Ironically, that meant that Cox focused on international issues like Afghanistan and out of state issues like that of the strike in Wisconsin.
Third, Cox insists that many of these comments are taken out of context. He said that he made a great number of comments designing to start debates and often meant in jest. He is not anti-union and actually comes from a union family (his father is a union member and his family is composed of steel workers and coal miners). He said that he was bothered by reports that the Sergeant of Arms told legislators that he could not guarantee their safety but that the reference to live ammunition was meant as hyperbole. He insisted that he liked to spar on the blog and often used incendiary language to spur debates. That is why, he insists, his site was called “Pro Cynic.” “Pro Cynic” was short for “Professional Cynic” and was “always intended to be a mixture of seriousness and humor, ‘cynic’ being a synonym for satire, sarcasm or irony.” He stated that the office was aware of his often off-the-wall commentary on the blog, which would sometimes be the subject of office joking. He says that he would make fun of himself on the site, such as proclaiming that the site was “one small step for man …”
Fourth, Cox did not work in any area remotely associated with the Wisconsin controversy. He handled eminent domain cases and was a member of the transportation practice group.
Fifth, he was terminated by the Attorney General’s office after a brief discussion with his superiors. He was told that he could be fired for simply bringing discredit upon the office — even due to statements made as an individual.
Sixth, Cox had a good record with the office. In fact, in 2010, he earned the “You Rock” award – a painted rock – for going above the call of duty in serving the people of Indiana. He had worked with the office since 2001 when he began as a law clerk and continued after his graduation.
In my view, these facts (if proven) would make for a strong free speech claim. We have been discussing the trend toward increasing discipline for public officials based on actions or statements occurring in their private lives. We have seen this regulation of private speech in cases that involve disciplinary actions against students (here, teachers (here and here and here and here and here and here), police officers (here and here and here) and other public employees (here).
The connection made in this context to the office was not apparently made by Cox but by Mother Jones magazine. Cox has since closed his blog and regrets causing the controversy. The question is why he was not simply given a warning about such comments and how they reflect upon the office. Now that his name has been associated with the office, he would likely have curtailed or stopped such comments.
There is obviously a great deal of anger over these comments, but the real question is whether a public employee like Cox has any protection for comments made as a private citizen.
In 2006, the Court decided the case of Garcetti v. Ceballos, in a close 5-4 decision against a public employee. In this case, Justice Kennedy ruled that the First Amendment does not protect “every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job.” However, this was a case where the assistant district attorney was making the comments are part of his duties and the Court ruled that “when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.” In this case, Cox made no association with his office. Notably, even in a matter involving statements made in the course of one’s duties, the vote was a close call with Justice Alito deciding the case as the fifth vote.
In Pickering v Board of Education (1968), the Court ordered the reinstatement of a teacher who wrote a letter to a newspaper critical of the local school board. The Court found that a public employee’s statements on a matter of public concern could not be the basis for termination without more of a showing, such as knowing or reckless falsehoods or the statements were of the sort to cause a substantial interference with the ability of the employee to continue to do his job.
I have great problems with the scope of the Garcetti opinion. Yet, Kennedy did note that:
At the same time, the Court has recognized that a citizen who works for the government is nonetheless a citizen. The First Amendment limits the ability of a public employer to leverage the employment relationship to restrict, incidentally or intentionally, the liberties employees enjoy in their capacities as private citizens. See Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593, 597 (1972) . So long as employees are speaking as citizens about matters of public concern, they must face only those speech restrictions that are necessary for their employers to operate efficiently and effectively. See, e.g., Connick, supra, at 147 (“Our responsibility is to ensure that citizens are not deprived of fundamental rights by virtue of working for the government”).
This case would appear to involve matters of public concern and comments made as an individual citizen.
What do you think?
Jonathan Turley
Additional source: ABA Journal
Hugh,
“That said, he still shouldn’t lose his job over it.”
Seems at odds with . . .
“In general, I think it’s absurd to force somebody out on the basis of speech. But it is also the case that there is a difference between a person in a position of little or no authority — like Thomas, Rosen or Churchill — and someone who has the power to direct law enforcement to act.
To my knowledge, all of the incidents of police getting heavy-handed in recent years have involved liberal or progressives. I’m not aware of any case of police rounding up conservative protesters. (I am _emphatically_ not suggesting there are no such cases.)
Moreover, the history of this country is thick with brutal, conservative treatment of civil rights protesters, labor organizers, and other progressives.”
A DAG has the power to direct law enforcement. Much like King Henry II when he said in anger “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” Which famously led to four knights taking him that it was a legal command. Their consequent murder of Thomas à Becket nearly started a war. Henry wasn’t stupid. He knew killing Becket would martyr him and cause more problems. But because of his “excited utterance” and his power of law, people took him at his word.
Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
Would you feel better about Cox losing his job is there was a body count first?
Or perhaps removing the power to cause “accidents” by cavalier speech and creating one unemployed lawyer is better than dead citizens killed for simply exercising their Constitutional rights?
JNagarya nailed. This isn’t rocket science. Cox’s free speech is a right, but it is a right that comes with responsibilities and he was in an office and a profession that heightens those responsibilities.
Forty two years ago, I served as a medical officer in Vietnam, often visiting villages and refugee camps to bring Medical Civic Action to indigenous Vietnamese and Montagnards.
But nothing in civilian life had prepared me for the carnage that I encountered, thanks to the unspeakable ability of modern weapons to kill and maim.
Yes, I saw firsthand the devastating effects of live ammunition on humans, animals, property, and the Vietnamese countryside.
Nothing, and that includes our vaunted first amendment, can ever justify any sort of joking about live ammunition and deadly force.
BiL: “You are also mistaken about the nature of children. Conflict is in their nature as they are unformed and untaught personalities. Sharing and restraint are learned behaviors, not innate. There is no cruelty in children? There is nothing more cruel than children.”
Correct in half. Sharing and restraint as as inherent as cruelty. Some of the greatest acts of kindness you will ever see come from 2 year olds. 8 month old infants know how to share. As one who has taught children from 2 to 22 (I’ve taught pre-school, elementary, middle school and university), I can personally attest to this.
I am struck by the torrent of cases of people in some public position being forced out on the basis of expression of their personal views — often very off-the-cuff personal expression.
Some that come to mind: Helen Thomas, Nir Rosen, Ward Churchill, and now Jeffrey Cox…
I think it is safe to say that _most_ of these cases have involved liberals or progressives hounded out by the right. And now the chickens are coming home to roost. A number of conservatives have now been raked over the coals for their comments.
In general, I think it’s absurd to force somebody out on the basis of speech. But it is also the case that there is a difference between a person in a position of little or no authority — like Thomas, Rosen or Churchill — and someone who has the power to direct law enforcement to act.
To my knowledge, all of the incidents of police getting heavy-handed in recent years have involved liberal or progressives. I’m not aware of any case of police rounding up conservative protesters. (I am _emphatically_ not suggesting there are no such cases.)
Moreover, the history of this country is thick with brutal, conservative treatment of civil rights protesters, labor organizers, and other progressives. There is _nothing_ remotely comparable in treatment of conservative organizations.
So there is something more to be concerned about in someone like Jeffrey Cox advocating police crimes — even if he is saying it in jest and off the cuff. That said, he still shouldn’t lose his job over it.
Some lawyers can argue anything — especially when attempting to defend another lawyer. (Ever seen a case of legal malpractice which didn’t end up with everyone, and the judge, dumping all the responsibility onto a paralegal?) Other lawyers have ethics.
This isn’t actually rocket science:
1. Cox apparently got an education in law. That would include a course in Constitutional law, and the fact that the First Amendment protects the expression of views of which Cox disapproves from threats of violence intended to suppress that expression. That being the fact, he should know better; but I guess the education didn’t sink in. I guess he is more-patriotic-than-thou, therefore is above the law as concerns the rights of everyone who disagreees with his views.
2. Cox swore an oath to supprt and defend, among others, the Constitution and laws of the US. That includes the First Amendment. Either his oath was genuine, sincere, and in good faith, therefore he held to it 24/7 without any great effort. Or it only applied when he had no coice in the matter, for 40 hours per week.
3. Now Cox, an obvious bad-faith hypocrite, is rightly out of a job, and without a union to go his bail . . .
And he should be disbarred for launching a treasonous attack on our system of laws — directly contrary to said oath.
“I have the Bioengineering Ph.D. I successfully defended my dissertation. I am the Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer, a profession, in stark contrast with law, absolutely prohibits the use of deception in professional practice.
If your delusion demands of you that you deem hard science bioengineering of delusion, I shall fervently pray for you and for your eventual reconciliation with your infancy and childhood.”
No. First, what you are engaging in is not your professional practice. You are trying to practice law and sociology and failing miserably. Second, what I deem to be delusional is your concept of reality and your irrationally childish vendetta against imperfection in human built systems.
These examples of what courts prevent are quite clear, so clear a child could understand them:
For example, if you stole from me – the stipulated stronger party – without the courts? What is to prevent me from simply killing you and taking back my property? Nothing is what. And that would be tyranny of the strong over the weak.
What if you simply had something I wanted and took it from you? Without the courts, you could try to take it back, but as the stipulated stronger party? I would just kill you and take the remainder of your stuff. And that would be the tyranny of the strong over the weak.
Why? Because that is human nature without laws and courts for dispute resolution. That’s how cavemen did things, Brian.
If you cannot accept that is truly reality?
Then you must be delusional.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 24, 2011 at 9:06 pm
No, Brian.
I’m in quite objective touch with reality.
You, on the other hand, are living in fantasy land.
##################################
Your version of fantasy is my experience of reality.
I continue to inform you about our living in contrasting worlds, in which your world is the world of make-believe within “my” world.
Delusion is such as to delude, else it be not delusion.
I have the Bioengineering Ph.D. I successfully defended my dissertation. I am the Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer, a profession, in stark contrast with law, absolutely prohibits the use of deception in professional practice.
If your delusion demands of you that you deem hard science bioengineering of delusion, I shall fervently pray for you and for your eventual reconciliation with your infancy and childhood.
Dr. Harris:
The problem of freedom and safety exists in virtually every sort of social unit. Its root cause is always and everywhere fear. Fear in turn is a function of ignorance. No one can feel truly free without a sense of security. And no one can feel secure without the knowledge and understanding of one’s environment.
Virtually every rule, law, edict and decision which we skewer on a daily basis is a product of fear of the other. Indeed, it almost seems as though we are unable to live without it. If we merely removed the word “Muslim” from what passes for political debate and replaced it with the word “Communism,” we would see that the dramas being played out today are merely adaptations of plays from fifty years ago. Then we feared an ideology which professed to have no god. Now we fear an ideology which professes a god we do not understand.
I have always liked Matthew Arnold’s explanation in “Dover Beach”:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
There. That should make you feel better.
No, Brian.
I’m in quite objective touch with reality.
You, on the other hand, are living in fantasy land.
“Without the courts, you could try to take it back, but as the stipulated stronger party? I would just kill you and take the remainder of your stuff. And that would be the tyranny of the strong over the weak.”
Sorry. Bad typing. Bad bad fingers! Get under the house.
Sorry, one html tag got away from me, reversing one of my intended meanings. I make mistakes, admit to making them, and do my best to rectify them, never using the Adversarial Principle in so doing.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 24, 2011 at 7:31 pm
I surmise that you are clinging in abject unknowing desperation to the nonsense that the world you believe you know and in which you believe you live actually exists other than as a phantasm of trauma-induced brain damage. Of course, unlike you, at least as your words make the slightest useful sense to me, I know that I am often met with mistaken forms of knowing and understanding, for my life has the gift of intense personal and situational doubts, so the perfect certainty you have that you are always perfectly right in your interpretation of my words as I use them in my effort to share my research and research findings with whoever may find them useful is leading me to ponder whether you really believe that your understanding of the world, yourself, and others is really as absolutely perfect as your words always seem to me to indicate.
How is it that you are able to claim human imperfection and yet claim perfection regarding someone you have never met, and, with blatant fortitude, falsely claim to perfectly understand.
Do you not recognize that your words contradict themselves as though they are your main adversary?
Again, your postulate about the a value of legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is both irrational and destructive as
1) legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is the alternative process to personal self-help adversarial dispute resolution which results in the tyranny of the strong over the weak and often violence and
As the Adversarial System has always acted toward me adversely, and in very damaging ways to my family, why on earth would I be so utterly stupid as to reward that which damages my family so the Adversarial System can damage my family even more?
You are the strong, I am the weak, and you have absolutely no tyranny over me, and the violence of the meaning of your words never reaches me. I do not need or use self-help, there is help always available to me that self-help can never come close to approaching.
Your theory about the strong and the weak is totally refuted by my actual life.
2) that such an alternative to self-help dispute resolution somehow creates adversity (adversity which in fact is caused simply by human nature, human interaction and circumstance) when what legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process does is remove the potential for violence from adversity and is thus a cornerstone of maintaining civilization over anarchy and tyranny.
Without exception throughout the whole of my life, the only effect of adversarial due process (to me, always undue process in disguise) has been the maximizing of adversity, and never, not ever, have I observed any exception to adversity generating more adversity. Yes, sufficient terrorizing coercion can generate the illusion and/or delusion of conflict resolution by driving people into forms of schizophrenic catatonic stupor, only doing that may pave the way for schizophrenic catatonic stupor decompensation rapid enough to lead someone like Jared Loughner to start killing people as his internalized, catatonic-stupor-suppressed rage finally builds until it becomes horridly uncontrollable because it overwhelms all available executive control.
You are also mistaken about the nature of children. Conflict is in their nature as they are unformed and untaught personalities. Sharing and restraint are learned behaviors, not innate. There is no cruelty in children? There is nothing more cruel than children.
You have finally given me the tragic truth about your life, that you were evidently so horridly coerced during your infant-child transition phase that your are rendered oblivious to the real nature of little children who have not been shattered by the terrors of catastrophically aggressive-passive parenting methods. You are virtually a poster child for the worthy efforts I make to prevent the sort of traumatic brain damage your espoused beliefs reveal. Your beliefs are not your fault, and I am inclined to believe that you fought against being deceived by whosoever took upon themselves the transactional parent role for your childhood until the effort broke you as though beyond all possible repair. I have counseled people about as shattered as I observe you to be, and done so with success when I have been able to work with such a person in person.
You remind me of the last hold-out juror in the original (starring Henry Fonda) version of Twelve Angry Men, of which the holdout was by far the angriest of all.
Oh, I do have the 9 hours of cassette tapes of Alan Dershowitz, “The Genesis of Justice.” Methinks Dershowitz has a view of children not in accord with your espoused view.
You obviously do not understand the work of psychiatrist Alice Miller, psychiatrist W. R. D. Fairbairn, psychiatrist R. D. Laing, and you obviously do not understand your own childhood.
Never in my whole life have I read anything so absurdly dastardly about children as your beyond-my-power-of-words-insanely delusional version of hatred of children. I worked for about 25 years at Cook County Children’s Hospital, and, until little children became sufficiently contaminated with the sort of hatred of children that you, to me, seem to exude with beyond dastardly egotistical pride, every little child I ever saw was much as little children have been described by Lillian Paley, in her book, “The Kindness of Children.”
Fritz Redl and David Wineman, sponsored by the Detroit Junior League, circa 1950, set up a “sanitary” environment for children who had developed the sort of hatred I find you telling about, and wrote of their research in two books, later combined into one, and published in one volume under the title, “The Aggressive Child”
Redl and Wineman wrote “Children Who Hate: The Disorganization and Breakdown of Behavior Controls,” The Free Press, 1951, and “Controls From Within: Techniques for the Treatment of The Aggressive Child,” The Free Press, 1952.
Sorry, BiL, but your conduct with respect to me has been textbook perfect in terms of my understanding of the pioneering, not yet to my knowledge surpassed, work of Redl and Wineman regarding what your sort of passive-aggressive authoritarian personality structure appears to me to be like, with my understanding based only on the way you set out as though to smash me and my work.
Alas, I am weaker than you, and bend like bamboo in a light breeze when you blow your hatreds my way.
I find you completely innocent, for, in all of my life, I have never encountered anyone who tells the sort of story I observe you telling who was not the child of parents who, as children, had parents who, as children, had parents, who as children, had parents…(infinite regression)who as children had parents who were not shatteringly abusive because it was not yet possible for anyone to know or understand better because, if the universe began with the supposed big bang, it was so close to the big bang that the big bang really damaged those very first human parents.
I only have “The Genesis of Justice” on cassette tapes, perhaps I wisely buy the book. Perhaps, for those who have not yet read it, buying it would also be wise.
{pause}
Found a paperback copy of “The Genesis of Justice” for $0.99 plus shipping…
There is always hope, BiL. “Hatred will not cease by hatred; by love alone will it end.” –The Threshold Choir.
Brian,
“As the Adversarial System has always acted toward me adversely, and in very damaging ways to my family, why on earth would I be so utterly stupid as to reward that which damages my family so the Adversarial System can damage my family even more?
You are the strong, I am the weak, and you have absolutely no tyranny over me, and the violence of the meaning of your words never reaches me. I do not need or use self-help, there is help always available to me that self-help can never come close to approaching.”
First, anecdotal evidence and personal vendetta. If you think you are the only person ever screwed over by an imperfect system? You’d be wrong. I’ve been damaged by the imperfect system too. Irreparably damaged. The details are irrelevant and none of your business, but it has damaged both me personally and my family. The difference between you and me is that I don’t hold a grudge against imperfection. If you expect perfection out of a legal system – or indeed any human built systems – you will live a life of disappointment awaiting perfection that will never arrive. And hooray for you that you’ve got help. Most people don’t and as redress for the wrongs others have done to them have to either rely upon courts or do it themselves. The reason I do not hold an irrational vendetta – although I do have plenty of reason to – is that I have seen the system when it works and it is a thing of beauty. The bad guys eat it and the good guys get a just and equitable solution to the wrongs done to them. I will not throw out that baby with the bathwater out of my personal misfortune and desire for revenge. Unlike you.
As to tyranny over you? Like I’ve said before, it’s your idea that I loathe. I’ve never claimed you as property. To you the person I am as I am to all but my friends and few enemies – indifferent except in the abstract. But your idea sucks and I’ll kick the Hell out of it every time you mention it. Treated you like I would treat any propagandist spreading a bad idea? You bet. And with no apologies. If you don’t like it? Too damn bad. The survival of civilization is simply more important than your feelings.
“Without exception throughout the whole of my life, the only effect of adversarial due process (to me, always undue process in disguise) has been the maximizing of adversity, and never, not ever, have I observed any exception to adversity generating more adversity.”
First, that is anecdote again, not evidence of lack of systemic value to society. Second, you misunderstand adversarial process. It is not there reduce the adversity that arose naturally from human interaction and circumstance. Adversarial process is adversarial because it has to be to reflect the adverse nature of the parties and because it is adverse, it can and will be contentious. Adversarial due process is there to remove the possibility of direct violence or self-help as a solution so as to prevent a spiral of escalation that can and often would end in death of the weaker party. For example, if you stole from me – the stipulated stronger party – without the courts? What is to prevent me from simply killing you and taking back my property? Nothing is what. And that would be tyranny of the strong over the weak. What if you simply had something I wanted and took it from you? Without the courts, you could try to take it back, but as the stipulated stronger party? I would just kill you and take the remainder of your stuff. And that would be the tyranny of the weak over the strong. Why? Because that is human nature without laws and courts for dispute resolution. That’s how cavemen did things, Brian.
Your idea is not only simply wrong, it is rooted in the selfish and ultimately self-destructive motive of revenge. Do you know what the Chinese say about vendettas? The man who starts on revenge is best to dig two graves. Do you know what I say about the man who would remove legal dispute resolution in the adversarial mode from the equation of civilization? He is best to dig 6.8 billion graves.
Here endeth the lesson.
Whether you learn it or not is up to you.
Do not take this to mean that I will not attack your idea in perpetuity, because I will as long as you attempt to spread it here.
He suggested acts that could easily lead to serious harm or death.
And reiterated that suggestion.
The victems he or his readers would be envisioning as targets were and are unarmed citizens who are exercissian their rights and doing so lawfully.
They deserve to be able to do so without without being in fear of their lives.
His suggestion of lethal violence could easily serve as positive reinforcement, affirmation, and encouragement to some one who has violent tendencies.
His threats, and they are threats, also come in the context of many others, including the Governor, threatening various levels of force and violence against unarmed civilians.
I would think the total context of the moment does matter in determining how humorous his call to extreme lethal violence was.
Put it another way, it would seem that a great many normal people do not find the “humor” very funny.
Certainly, using such imagery in the aftermath of Tuscon shows extremely poor judgement, especially from a person connected with the legal community, and one who is an employee of the people who, where he in Wi are the targets he is seeing in his mind’s eye.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 24, 2011 at 7:31 pm
I surmise that you are clinging in abject unknowing desperation to the nonsense that the world you believe you know and in which you believe you live actually exists other than as a phantasm of trauma-induced brain damage. Of course, unlike you, at least as your words make the slightest useful sense to me, I know that I am often met with mistaken forms of knowing and understanding, for my life has the gift of intense personal and situational doubts, so the perfect certainty you have that you are always perfectly right in your interpretation of my words as I use them in my effort to share my research and research findings with whoever may find them useful is leading me to ponder whether you really believe that your understanding of the world, yourself, and others is really as absolutely perfect as your words always seem to me to indicate.
How is it that you are able to claim human imperfection and yet claim perfection regarding someone you have never met, and, with blatant fortitude, falsely claim to perfectly understand.
Do you not recognize that your words contradict themselves as though they are your main adversary?
Again, your postulate about the a value of legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is both irrational and destructive as
1) legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is the alternative process to personal self-help adversarial dispute resolution which results in the tyranny of the strong over the weak and often violence and
As the Adversarial System has always acted toward me adversely, and in very damaging ways to my family, why on earth would I be so utterly stupid as to reward that which damages my family so the Adversarial System can damage my family even more?
You are the strong, I am the weak, and you have absolutely no tyranny over me, and the violence of the meaning of your words never reaches me. I do not need or use self-help, there is help always available to me that self-help can never come close to approaching.
Your theory about the strong and the weak is totally refuted by my actual life.
2) that such an alternative to self-help dispute resolution somehow creates adversity (adversity which in fact is caused simply by human nature, human interaction and circumstance) when what legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process does is remove the potential for violence from adversity and is thus a cornerstone of maintaining civilization over anarchy and tyranny.
Without exception throughout the whole of my life, the only effect of adversarial due process (to me, always undue process in disguise) has been the maximizing of adversity, and never, not ever, have I observed any exception to adversity generating more adversity. Yes, sufficient terrorizing coercion can generate the illusion and/or delusion of conflict resolution by driving people into forms of schizophrenic catatonic stupor, only doing that may pave the way for schizophrenic catatonic stupor decompensation rapid enough to lead someone like Jared Loughner to start killing people as his internalized, catatonic-stupor-suppressed rage finally builds until it becomes horridly uncontrollable because it overwhelms all available executive control.
You are also mistaken about the nature of children. Conflict is in their nature as they are unformed and untaught personalities. Sharing and restraint are learned behaviors, not innate. There is no cruelty in children? There is nothing more cruel than children.
You obviously do not understand the work of psychiatrist Alice Miller, psychiatrist W. R. D. Fairbairn, psychiatrist R. D. Laing, and you obviously do not understand your own childhood.
Never in my whole life have I read anything so absurdly dastardly about children as your beyond0-my-power-of-words-insanely delusional version of hatred of children. I worked for about 25 years at Cook County Children’s Hospital, and, until little children became sufficiently contaminated with the sort of hatred of children that you, to me, seem to exude with beyond dastardly egotistical pride, every little child I ever saw was much as little children have been described by Lillian Paley, in her book, “The Kindness of Children.”
Fritz Redl and David Wineman, sponsored by the Detroit Junior League, circa 1950, set up a “sanitary” environment for children who had developed the sort of hatred I find you telling about, and wrote of their research in two books, later combined into one, and published in one volume under the title, “The Aggressive Child”
Redl and Wineman wrote “Children Who Hate: The Disorganization and Breakdown of Behavior Controls,” The Free Press, 1951, and “Controls From Within: Techniques for the Treatment of The Aggressive Child,” The Free Press, 1952.
Sorry, BiL, but your conduct with respect to me has been textbook perfect in terms of my understanding of the pioneering, not yet to my knowledge surpassed, work of Redl and Wineman regarding what your sort of passive-aggressive authoritarian personality structure appears to me to be like, with my understanding based only on the way you set out as though to smash me and my work.
Alas, I am weaker than you, and bend like bamboo in a light breeze when you blow your hatreds my way.
Again, your postulate about the a value of legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is both irrational and destructive as
1) legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is the alternative process to personal self-help adversarial dispute resolution which results in the tyranny of the strong over the weak and often violence and
2) that such an alternative to self-help dispute resolution somehow creates adversity (adversity which in fact is caused simply by human nature, human interaction and circumstance) when what legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process does is remove the potential for violence from adversity and is thus a cornerstone of maintaining civilization over anarchy and tyranny.
You are also mistaken about the nature of children. Conflict is in their nature as they are unformed and untaught personalities. Sharing and restraint are learned behaviors, not innate. There is no cruelty in children? There is nothing more cruel than children.
Every time an attorney unwittingly validates my research findings regarding the nature of mistakes, I a saddened for a while because no one who might really benefit from a gently dialogue with me appears to have the courage to contact me to explore the real possible value of the work I am doing.
From Sidney J. Harris, “Majority of One,” Houghton Mifflin Co, 1957, page 17:
“Ancient Greece is dead, but its problems remain: especially the one problem that great democracy could not solve — how to achieve both freedom and safety at the same time. Learning why Greece failed may help us find some happier solution.”
Methinks that learning why the United States of America is also always failing in finding both freedom and safety at the same time, I suggest, may yet help us to find a happier solution than has ever happened in the past.
I live that happier solution, live it now, and understand how and why it works and why nothing else will ever work except the direct honesty of children uncorrupted by the adversarial principle.
Why do people keep messing up their lives and the lives of others? Because the adversarial principle is adverse even to lives not messed up, because the adversarial principle is the grand poombah mess up of all possible eternities?
8)
Wow rafflaw,
I said it first and you gave everyone else credit…..8:)
Tony,
I don’t think anyone is attacking his right to say it. He can say what he likes. However, given the nature of his position as a defender of peaceful legal process, the stupidity of his remarks are naturally going to have consequences for him. Would you want a cop on the job of enforcement who blogs about how it’s a good idea to “roll queers” and “beat down some spics and niggers”? Of course you wouldn’t. His remarks show he doesn’t have the proper disposition of temperament and respect for the law. Equally, Cox’s comments show a shocking disregard for the law and that he is not the kind of guy you want responsible for handling legal matters for the State of Indiana as a DAG. As mespo pointed out, his lack of respect for others rights calls into question his very fitness to practice. But no one is saying he cannot say what he said. Unlike Cox, we respect his 1st Amendment right. Also unlike Cox, we recognize – especially given his professional capacity – that rights come with responsibilities.
“What he doesn’t enjoy is a right to his employment in a responsible position.”
Well, I disagree with you guys. How about the teacher fired for criticizing the school board? If people can be summarily fired by their employers for their free speech, then they don’t have free speech. Their employers own their lives.
What if employers fired employees that openly declared they were Democrats? Or Atheists? Or Muslim? Saying somebody has a “freedom” but better not exercise it for fear of punishment is just patently ridiculous. Saying I have free speech as long as I don’t mind losing my job, and I should remember never to embarrass or criticize my superiors, that is a pretty empty “right.”
The Supreme Court got it right; the speech of a person speaking as a private citizen is protected and should be protected, no matter how distasteful it may be, and especially so if the person works as a public servant.
I am pro-union and I hate Republicans with a visceral passion, but I love civil liberties even more than that. The Wikileaks issue is already watering down freedom of speech and freedom of the press; these kinds of chilling actions only exacerbate the crumbling of our civil rights in favor of the corporatist agenda. Because if the government employers can chill the free speech of their employees, why can’t the corporations make their employees shut up and toe the line?
(Yes, toe. Look it up.)