Tag Archives: Obama

Is Hate Innate?

In the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, Barack Obama quoted Nelson Mandela in a tweet:

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

In addition, Nikki Haley issued an email to her staff condemning the hatred in that same event, noting that “People aren’t born with hate.”  These remarks are in response to President Trump’s failure to unequivocally condemn Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists generally, who are undoubtedly filled with hatred for blacks and Jews especially, but for anyone who is not white or not Christian.  But what caught my attention here is the fact that Obama and Haley were not content merely to condemn hate; they went further and insisted that we are not born with hate.

Presumably, they suppose that by denying the innate existence of hate, they are making some kind of case against hatred. However, as they do not explicitly make that case themselves, it is left to us to try to figure out what they have in mind and what they suppose it proves.  Hopefully, their point is not that babies do not emerge from the womb filled with hate for people of a different race or religion, for that would be a simpleminded argument against a position that no one has ever held. Rather, the only interesting question is whether people are born with a disposition to hate, an emotion that will become manifest under certain circumstances.  In other words, the question is whether people are born with a natural inclination to have feelings of enmity toward those who are different. Therefore, let us be generous and suppose not that Obama and Haley were making a case about what the newborn baby is thinking and feeling before the umbilical cord has even been cut, but rather that they are saying that there is no innate disposition to hate which may express itself as the child grows up.

Obama and Haley would seem to be of the same frame of mind as Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  In his book Émile, Rousseau averred that “all is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things, all degenerates in the hands of men.”  In an earlier work, Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among Men, he argued that it is civilization that has corrupted man; for in a state of nature, he is noble and good. For writing such things, Rousseau was accused of impiety by the archbishop of Paris, because his assertion that man is basically good contradicted the doctrine of original sin, which held that man was basically evil. The question as to whether man is basically good or evil is not the same as the question as to whether man has a natural inclination to love or to hate, but they are close cousins.

Given that Obama and Haley do not believe people are born with a disposition to hate, we do not know, unfortunately, whether they believe that people are born with a disposition to love.  But given the readiness with which a baby comes to love its mother and the universal tendency for people to fall in love later in life, hopefully they do accept that at least love is innate.  But to say as much for love, yet deny the same for hate would be bizarre.  In defending the doctrine of original sin, St. Augustine pointed out that if babies had the size and strength of adults, they would be monsters.  In his Confessions, he says:

Who can recall to me the sins I committed as a baby?  For in your [God’s] sight no man is free from sin, not even a child who has lived only one day on earth….  If babies are innocent, it is not for lack of will to do harm, but for lack of strength.

I have myself seen jealousy in a baby and know what it means.  He was not old enough to talk, but whenever he saw his foster-brother at the breast, he would grow pale with envy….  Such faults are not small or unimportant….  It is clear that they are not mere peccadilloes, because the same faults are intolerable in older persons.

It may be that Obama and Haley are trying to say in their incomplete way that while indeed people have innate dispositions to love and to hate, the object of their love or hatred is not inherited but acquired.  In the old days, when marrying well was an important goal for young women, it was often said that they went to college to get their MRS; for while no one can be taught to love one person rather than another, it is nevertheless true that we tend to fall in love with someone we are around a lot rather than someone we run into only occasionally.  Love, that is to say, cannot be taught, but it can be encouraged and abetted.

In a similar manner, hate cannot be taught, but it can be encouraged and abetted. But only up to a point.  My grandfather belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. My father never joined, but he would have fit right in.  And he used to say, regarding the Jews, that Hitler had the right idea.  Raised in the Jim Crow South, I was taught not to use the water fountains or restrooms marked “Colored.”  I observed the rule much in the same way that I used the silverware at the dinner table in the proper manner. But my heart was never in it.  I have often thought that many of us in the Jim Crow South really did not believe in segregation, but we went along with it in order not to incur the wrath of those who were filled with hatred for blacks. So when integration was finally imposed on the South, it met with no resistance from people like us. Had all whites hated blacks, the Civil Rights movement would have failed. But as the haters were in the minority, it succeeded.  The main point of all this, however, is that while I was taught to hate blacks and Jews, I never did. In other words, people are born with varying dispositions to love and to hate, and those dispositions can be stronger than the influence of education.

Presumably, then, Obama and Haley wish to emphasize the goodness of man and the importance of education in their remarks.  It is an optimistic ideology, for if hate is not innate and if education is efficacious, then we can all look forward to a future in which racism and other forms of discrimination no longer exist.  But I doubt that “love comes more naturally to the human heart than hate.”  It all depends on the heart. Hatred will always be with us, for many people are born with a natural disposition to hate those who are different, and that disposition can be easily reinforced through education and friendship.

The People Must Never Know

An essential ingredient of conspiracy theories is that those in power do not want us to know the truth.  Of course, some conspiracy theories are true, such as those behind Watergate, Bridgegate, and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, because government officials often collude to violate the law or the public’s trust and do not want us to know about it.  And the fact that some conspiracies are real is the basis for the fantastic ones like those that claim that the government knows about aliens from outer space but is keeping it under wraps because we can’t handle the truth.

There are, of course, legitimate reasons for the government to keep secrets, as when national security is at stake.  Information is classified so that our adversaries will not be able to make good use of it.  But sometimes the government’s secrecy does seem to be directed toward the American people rather than our adversaries.  David Sanger of The New York Times quoted President Obama regarding Russia’s attempt to influence our elections through hacking:

“Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us because we can do stuff to you,” he said. “But it is also important to us to do that in a thoughtful, methodical way. Some of it, we will do publicly. Some of it we will do in a way that they know, but not everybody will.”

I am not sure what to make of that last sentence.  We will do something to the Russians, and the Russians will know that we did it, but “not everybody will.”  By “not everybody,” Obama must surely mean the American people.  It is important, apparently, that we not know.

Perhaps the best explanation why the American people cannot be allowed to know what the Russians will know was given by David Pertraeus, according to the same article:

“Is there something we can do to them, that they would see, they would realize 98 percent that we did it, but that wouldn’t be so obvious that they would then have to respond for their own honor?” David H. Petraeus, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Mr. Obama, asked on Friday, at a conference here sponsored by Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “The question is how subtle do you want it, how damaging do you want it, how do you try to end it here rather than just ratchet it up?”

This is like getting into a fistfight with someone and thinking, “I’d better not hit him too hard, because then he might knock my teeth out.”  Furthermore, if 2% doubt would be all that stands in the way of the Russians retaliating in a manner we might regret, then the prudent thing would be for us not to do anything. Besides, if they might strike back to defend their honor, then they might strike back even if their honor is not at stake, but just to make sure we understand that they can hurt us more than we can hurt them.

In the end, the safest thing would be for us not to retaliate at all, but simply to improve our cyber security so as to minimize the threat of future interference from foreign adversaries.  But admitting that there is nothing our government can safely do to punish the Russians would be politically disastrous.  And so, we are told that our government may do something that only the Russians will know about, but not the American people.

The Lies That No One Believes

The main purpose of a lie is to deceive.  And thus it is only natural to suppose that a lie will fail to accomplish its purpose if the person being lied to does not believe it.  There is a certain species of lie, however, that manages to be successful even though it is not believed and the liar has no expectation that it will be.  A good example would be that in which a husband emphatically insists to his wife that he has not been cheating on her even though she knows he has.  Another would be the man who declares under oath that he does not remember something he could not possibly have forgotten.   And an excellent example was provided recently by President Obama when he stated, “We are determined to realize a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Now, by way of contrast, just imagine if Obama had said, in a very different context, “We are determined to realize a nation free of handguns.”  Such a remark would have caused a frenzy of political backlash by defenders of gun ownership, and that for two reasons:  First, they would believe that Obama really meant it had he said such a thing; and second, they would believe that he might actually take steps to try to bring it about.  After all, we have been reading for some time in the right-wing hysterical press that Obama is coming for our guns, causing gun sales to skyrocket.  If the Republicans really believed Obama when he said he wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons, the uproar would be overwhelming.  Donald Trump is presently accusing Hillary Clinton of wanting to abolish the Second Amendment.  But we don’t hear him saying that Hillary, like President Obama, wants to get rid of nuclear weapons. Trump believes a lot of crazy things, but he is not crazy enough to believe that.

Obama does not believe there will ever be a world free of nuclear weapons.  Furthermore, he knows that we do not believe him when he says that we need to rid the world of nuclear weapons.  In fact, it is because this lie is told with no expectation of its being taken seriously that it is bipartisan.  Ronald Reagan said pretty much the same thing in his 1985 inaugural address, and no one believed him either, nor did he expect them to.

The truth is, the world is a better place with nuclear weapons, but no politician dares to say so.  Without nuclear weapons, the world have undoubtedly fought a major war sometime in the last seventy years on a par with World Wars I and II.  “World War III” has always been understood to mean a war where America’s and Russia’s hydrogen bombs are unleashed.  But a conventional World War III would have undoubtedly been fought by now, possibly on American soil with widespread devastation, had not the existence of nuclear weapons kept such hostilities in check.  Who knows?  We might even have lost that war and our whole way of life with it.

Let’s face it.  To utter the truth, which is that we have no intention of ever giving up our arsenal, but we want to keep other countries from enjoying all the benefits of possessing nuclear weapons, would be a crude assertion of the will to power.  Instead, presidents are obliged to say that all nuclear weapons are bad, even ours, and that we look forward to the day when there are no more nuclear weapons in this world.  No one believes us, of course.  But this lie must be functional in some way, or presidents would not keep saying it.

A similar kind of lie was told by the Bush administration regarding plans to build a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect them from an attack from Iran.  You see, if Iran is ever able to develop long-range missiles with nuclear warheads, they will send those missiles flying right over Israel and hit the countries of Eastern Europe, because Poles and Czechs are the ones they really want to destroy.  Needless to say, the Russians did not believe this lie.  Putin knew that plans for the missile shield were being made with Russia in mind.  The American people did not believe that lie.  Our allies did not believe it.  And the Iranians just snorted.  Moreover, George W. Bush had no expectation that anyone would believe it.  I mean, our opinion of Bush’s intellect may be pretty low, but we know he was not stupid enough to expect anyone to swallow that whopper.  And yet, the lie must have been functional in some way or else his administration would not have bothered to insist on telling it.

In part, the functionality of such lies is akin to religious utterances like “He’s gone to a better place” and polite expressions such as “We’ll have to get together sometime.”  We know they are baloney, but somehow they make us feel better anyway.  But another function of the lie no one believes is that it stops things from proceeding to the next step.  If you insist on a lie, no one can make you confront the truth and all its implications.