Frostian thought for the day: on justice vs. mercy
Anyone who’s read this blog for a while is well aware of how much I admire both the poetry and the thought of Robert Frost.
For example, there’s this [in the excerpt that follows, Frost uses “justice” in the traditional sense rather than in the leftist “social justice” sense]:
Frost was convinced that the conflict between justice and mercy in human affairs is an eternal and universal moral problem of humanity, and not merely a contemporary political partisan concern…
With these facts in mind Frost’s criticism of the New Deal as “nothing but an outbreak of mass mercy,” is clearly more than mere partisan politics. In 1936, in the midst of attacks on [his collection of poetry] A Further Range by the political Left, Frost wrote to Ferner Nuhn, a young New Deal acquaintance and friend of Henry Wallace, that “strict justice is basic” for a free society, and freedom implied that some people succeeded and others failed. The winners reaped the rewards of their talents and efforts, but what about the losers? Frost acknowledged that government “must do something for the losers. It must show them mercy. Justice first and mercy second. The trouble with some of your crowd is that it would have mercy first. The struggle to win is still the best tonic. . . . Mercy . . . is another word for socialism.” Frost believed that what was commonly called “distributive justice,” the attempt to spread the wealth of society to the masses, through graduated in-come taxes and other such devices, was really distributive mercy misnamed. Frost drew out for Ferner Nuhn the logical consequences of a system of socialistic mercy:
“The question of the moment in politics will always be one of proportion between mercy and justice. You have to remember the people who accept mercy have to pay for it. Mercy means protection. And there is no protection without direction. A person completely protected would have to be completely directed. And he would be a slave. That’s where socialism pure brings you out.”
Fine essay linked, about Pritchard’s favorable biography on Frost compared to that by anti-Frost author Thompson who wrote a big, authorized biography.. This jumped out as extremely relevant:
Thompson’s habit of attributing despicable motives to Frost is clearly exposed as based upon some dubious speculations. Time and time again Pritchard shows that a perfectly innocent motive, or none that can be ascertained, lay behind many of Frost’s comments or actions.
The Dems have long been attributing despicable motives to Reps doing or not doing some. Demonization usually seems to start with the assumption of bad intentions, and the Dems always seem to assume the Reps have bad intentions.
The lie about the bad intentions is the demonization that seems most relevant, most scary, and the one causing the most doubt in my mind about the future of America.
Completely O/T, but I can’t resist passing it on. Please forgive.
An e-mail I got today states that of the Dems that
Pro-Choice is a poor quasi-religious/moral (“ethical”) philosophy for a stable civilized society, because it is internally, externally, and mutually inconsistent, and a first-order forcing of progressive corruption. That said, social justice (e.g. appeals to empathy, selective and opportunistic) anywhere is injustice everywhere. Charity in heart, in mind, and in service, is good. Principles matter.
I have been a fan of Frost since before the Kennedy inauguration made him a famous man. I have even visited his house in New Hampshire.
Mike K:
Two houses in NH. Did you see the one in Derry or the one up north, in the mountains?
Chesterton:
“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race– because he is so human.”
A little-known Frost poem seems relevant here:
A Case for Jefferson
Harrison loves my country too,
But wants it made all over new.
He’s Freudian Viennese by night.
By day he’s Marxian Muscovite.
It isn’t because he’s Russian Jew.
He’s Puritan Yankee through and through.
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens:
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it all made over new.
Robert Frost, 1947
Thank you, Neo, for this. Thanks for keeping the Frostian light in the tower. We live in the age when giants are ignored. They can’t be seriously confuted, so there is a concerted effort to ignore them.
There were people living in Morocco 330,000 years ago, who, if you gave them a haircut, shave, bath, some dental work and a nice suit of clothes could walk down a Main St. USA today and would blend in nicely. They were H.sapiens but probably didn’t have the gracilis modifications. What rules-to-live-by allowed then to survive all these years? The psychologists all seem to say that a sense of fairness is hard-wired. Removing heretics from the tribe is probably another. But egalitarianism was probably not in there…I’m guessing. So, I guess Frost’s justice is the same as fairness but I don’t think mercy corresponds to egalitarianism or equality. Mercy may have been displayed between family but in the tribe or outside the tribe…??
I am, or was some years ago, friends with Henry Wallace’s grandson. He, too, is a Communist, although he would doubtless prefer to call himself a “democratic Socialist.” The fruit, however, is what its red skin warns us it is, and has not fallen far from the tree.
I thought for a long time that American Communists were a rare breed and gradually withering away. The current crop of Democrat wannabe Presidents are proving me wrong.
Daniel Moloney placed an engaging article in First Things about 20 years ago arguing that mercy was an elaboration on justice, or justice adapted to the situation of each person, and thus not attainable in this world.
As for Frost, he was a producer of verse, not a student of business cycles.
Art Deco:
The legal system attempts to dispense justice in terms of “equal under the law.” Mercy, which is a different principle entirely, can be applied within the legal system and the decisions under that system, particularly in the sentencing phase. But justice and mercy are different principles.
And, although I haven’t read the essay to which you refer (by Moloney), it sounds as though when he says that mercy is “justice adapted to the situation of each person, and thus not attainable in this world” he is talking about what Thomas Sowell calls “cosmic justice,” which is still another thing entirely.
And as far as what Frost was a student of, the answer is “a great deal.” See this, for example:
“Justice first and mercy second. The trouble with some of your crowd is that it would have mercy first.” – Frost
Frost might appreciate this Rabbinic wisdom:
“He Who is Compassionate to the Cruel, Will Ultimately Become Cruel to the Compassionate”
http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/06-issue/shochetman-6.htm
Contemporary Lessons from an Ancient Midrash
FWIW, here is a kind of “rebuttal,” but I think the author simply misunderstands the proverb’s meaning, and completely misses the boat on who is being cruel to whom.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-the-lines/201008/few-words-in-favor-compassion-the-cruel
IMO, the Midrash is using “compassion” the first time to mean exacly what the writer says he also eschews (“I am NOT advocating putting the “perpetrator’s” needs and welfare before that of the person or persons who were harmed”): the kind of soft-headed emotionalism that refuses to enforce justice on wrong-doers, freeing them to continue their depredations against other people who are authentically compassionate and become prey to the cruel.
But the real thrust of the proverb, as we have seen in the craziness of the Left, especially in California, is that this kind of compassion to the cruel always ends by requiring the government to be explicitly cruel to its normal citizens, usually via regulatory tyranny, in order to prop up its own grandstanding virtue-signaling.
Examples are left as an exercise for the student.
Neo: Frost looks better and better, to someone who only knew him through his more popular poems.
Could we get some kind of time-machine and put Frost, Hayek, Sowell and a few like-minded thinkers in charge of the country?
can be applied within the legal system and the decisions under that system, particularly in the sentencing phase.
Disagree. Sentencing should be pretty mechanistic, and leave judges little discretion. We employ judges because of their legal training, not their exquisite sensibilities. If the mechanistic sentence looks asinine or absurd, the solution is executive clemency. The problem you have there is (1) for many states, the traffick in the penal courts is so large that the Governor will never have sufficient time to review sentences and (2) few governors take their responsibilities here seriously; Mike Huckabee did (which didn’t free him from making some mistakes). A possible solution might be for constitutional provisions which would allow governors to commission county executives to act in their stead.
Moloney’s article wasn’t a riff on any of Sowell’s work. The idiom and framework are explicitly Catholic.
And as far as what Frost was a student of, the answer is “a great deal.”
The statement you quote is not a response to the phenomena he was witnessing. His problem was that he didn’t know that, because macroeconomics was not his book.
So Frost correctly discerned that the New Deal was our American version of the leftist utopian politics sweeping the world, from Russia to Europe to us, and continuing even further westerly until triumphing in China in 1949. These national phenomena don’t operate in isolation, they are part of a larger trend. And then, as day follows night, the consequent waves of leftist failure and defeat have been running from Russia to Europe to the western hemisphere, where leftism is screaming in its death agonies, IMO — what I believe we are seeing in the U.S., though it remains to us to deliver the stake to the heart. That leaves China, which will undoubtedly be the last of the Communist failures and the end of an era of utopian dysphoria. And let us hope more than one or two generations will have learned something lasting from our acquaintance with the night.
Now I see why Frost has been belittled by academia.
So Frost correctly discerned that the New Deal was our American version of the leftist utopian politics sweeping the world, from Russia to Europe to us, and continuing even further westerly until triumphing in China in 1949.
He didn’t and it wasn’t.
Two houses in NH. Did you see the one in Derry or the one up north, in the mountains?
\Derry. Didn’t know about the other. The Derry house did have a nice two holer.
That leaves China, which will undoubtedly be the last of the Communist failures and the end of an era of utopian dysphoria.
California may be the last as it has more billionaires to loot at the end.
Mike K:
The other’s in a much nicer setting. See the photos at the top of the page.
Art Deco:
That’s your opinion, but our legal system is based on the idea that mitigating circumstances (that is, mercy) can enter into it in the sentencing phase, which is quite separate from the verdict. Without it, justice would be untempered by mercy, and something like the problems of the three strikes rule would ensue in many cases. Judges have discretion, and they should. They are not meant to be automatons. The legal system is administered by human beings.
Art Deco:
And I did not say that his article was a riff on Sowell’s work. I am assuming it is not, actually. However, they are both discussing the same thing, it sounds like, in different ways.
Judges have discretion, and they should.
They’re not trustworthy, which is why legislatures take discretion away from them. The problem with three strikes laws is that they’re crude. The objects of these laws can be achieved with properly constructed sentencing formulae, but the laws are written by lawyers. People go to law school because they’re bad at math.
However, they are both discussing the same thing, it sounds like,
Moloney wasn’t discussing social policy or the historical evolution of social problems, which is a concern of Sowell’s.
Art Deco:
Any stats to back up this kernel of profundity and wisdom?
“People go to law school because they’re bad at math.”
Any stats to back up this kernel of profundity and wisdom?
No stats, just rough personal observation (and the admission of one Th. Perez, once our odious Secretary of Labor.
Art Deco:
Are you THAT obtuse?
Apparently, you are.
Of course I don’t mean they were both discussing the same thing entirely. I mean that, it sounds like (by your description, anyway) when Moloney was discussing “justice,” what he was actually discussing was the same thing Sowell meant when Sowell was discussing “cosmic justice.”
“People go to law school because they’re bad at math.”
I can give counter-examples, but anecdotes are not data from either perspective.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/punishment-and-personhood-12528.html
Punishment and Personhood
America’s legal system has forgotten that equality also means holding people equally responsible.
The Honorable Clarence Thomas
Autumn 1994