The Pakistani Spectator

by Dan Tow

Here in the US, we watch far more television than is good for us, and an awful lot of that involves a combination of fictional crime shows and news shows focused on crime. As a result, most Americans have an emotional sense that the danger of crime is greater than it really is. One effect of this is that in many neighborhoods, people are afraid to walk alone (or, often, even in groups) at night. Since the residents in these neighborhoods fear to leave their homes at night, the sidewalks are largely deserted, except by a few criminals, who are not deterred. Since there are unlikely to be honest citizens nearby to witness and to help, anyone who chooses to walk these streets after dark is in some very real danger, just as they fear. In some city neighborhoods, however, the habit of fear has never taken hold, and the mainly honest citizens roam freely at night. Although they are more exposed to the risk of crime, citizens in these neighborhoods are actually safer, since the streets are too full of honest folk for the criminals to commit open crime.

A sort of “tipping point” operates, here, where as long as enough honest folk walk the streets, the streets remain safe and attractive to evening walkers, but below the tipping point, the streets are too dangerous, which keeps the honest folk indoors, which makes the streets even more dangerous, which keeps even more people indoors, and so forth. Once streets are lost to the criminals, it is hard to win them back, although some neighborhoods have made a deliberate effort, with events like “take back the night” walks, where everyone at once organizes to defy their fear and to offer each other safety in numbers, and in some neighborhoods tactics like this have worked. Once enough people get the habit of walking at night, getting past the tipping point, the “vicious cycle” of fear switches to a “virtuous spiral” of ever-greater safety with ever-greater numbers of fellow walkers.

A similar tipping point operates when it comes to habit and customs, and their effect on freedom. Formal rules of government are just half the equation, when we calculate the freedom of a nation’s people. In the old Soviet Union, as I understand it, there was apparently a fine guarantee of free speech and religion, amongst other freedoms, written into the constitution. Unfortunately, the habit of these freedoms did not take hold, and the government instead habitually ignored its own laws. Here, too, a tipping point operates:

Where courts are habitually acquiescent to repressive governments, it takes special courage to fight for increased freedom and honest rule of law. One particular judge may be sympathetic to the fight, but likely will fear that if she pushes the government too hard, she will lose what little power she has to restrain the worst of the government excesses. One particular citizen may wish to fight, to bring a case to court for greater freedom, but he knows that if he loses, as he probably will, he may bring unwanted attention to himself as an “agitator,” making himself a special target of repression. The more the habit of repression takes hold, the more courage it takes to fight it. On the other hand, when we pass the tipping point, and enough people get the habit of speaking out for what they believe, even a government that desires repression may find itself with too many “targets,” unable to quiet enough of the people to effectively repress the dialogue they want to silence. When Gorbachev officially “blessed” some open dissent with his policy of glasnost in the Soviet Union, he opened the floodgates of dissenting opinion. By August 1991, when hardliners tried to take control of the government and restore old-style repression, the habit of fearless dissent was too widespread and ingrained, and the military ultimately refused to follow repressive orders, to fire on the freedom fighters. The fateful difference between the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union and the Soviet Union of August 1991 was mainly not a matter of laws – it was a matter of habit!

Here in the US, we are not immune to suppression of freedom by habit. We’re free to advocate for the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, even while the other party is temporarily in control, but some ideas take special courage to espouse, at various times. (Whether these ideas are good or bad is not the point, here – freedom of speech applies regardless of how good the ideas are, and popular ideas don’t need protection!) In the 1950s, American fear of Communism was feverish. Government passed no law making sympathy and advocacy for Communism illegal – they could not, given constitutional restraints that remained habitual. However, any sympathy for any idea associated with Communism, or with any individual or group associated with Communism was persecuted nonetheless.

In spite of constitutional constraints, politicians looked for ways to persecute people who advocated for ideas they saw as “Communist.” Senator Joseph McCarthy lead the Anti-Communist attacks. First, here’s a little background: In general, even in the US, “free” speech is not an unlimited right – persuading someone to break the law is itself illegal, and you can be sued for libel if you make false statements that harm someone. There is a special exception to these restrictions, however – in the US Senate, senators can say anything, without facing legal consequences – by constitutional guarantee, their freedom of speech, while acting officially, is absolute. Senator McCarthy took advantage of this to accuse many people whose ideas he didn’t like of being Communists or “Communist sympathizers,” and of doing specific Communist activities, without bothering about proof. In the prevailing climate of fear, these accusations had serious consequences for those accused, often costing them their previously successful careers. (However free speech may be, it is always easy to lose a job for unpopular ideas, and the constitution provides no protection against this! Since life consists of more than just staying out of jail, especially if you have a family to support, career consequences can be as fearsome as legal persecution. In some areas, such as Hollywood and the legal profession, career persecution of suspected “Communist sympathizers” was systematic, with formal “blacklists” that made finding jobs in those areas almost impossible for blacklisted people. This, too, was an area where habit and custom restricted freedom more than law did.) McCarthy also had a practice of waving papers during his senate speeches, claiming they were long lists of Communists, likely spies, he claimed, working in or with the government, to whip up added fear, though he never actually produced these supposed lists for anyone to act upon.

In 1954, the US Army began to fight back, when it accused McCarthy of attempting to exercise improper influence over its internal operations by exploiting people’s fear of him. McCarthy’s counter-accusation was that the Army was protecting Communist sympathizers within its ranks. To sort it all out, the Senate held the “Army-McCarthy hearings.” For the first time in senate history, these hearings were televised, and they were watched by tens of millions. The Army’s attorney at these hearings, Joseph Welch, showed great courage and intelligence in his counter-attack on McCarthy. In one famous exchange, Welch challenged McCarthy to turn one of his bogus “lists” of subversives over to the Justice Department so they could act on the dangers he claimed were everywhere. McCarthy counter-attacked, saying that if Welch was so concerned to find Communists, he should look in his own law firm, where one of his fellow lawyers (whom McCarthy named) had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild, which years later the government was considering labeling as a “Communist front organization.” This violated a pre-hearing agreement specifically not to bring this issue up, ruining the man’s reputation on national TV. Furious, Welch responded:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness….”

McCarthy tried to fight back, but Welch cut him off:

“Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator…. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

With those courageous words, in defiance of the habit of fear of fighting back against anti-Communist persecution of common citizens with unpopular ideas, Welch broke the nation’s spell of fear. McCarthy’s fall from power was swift. Anti-Communist persecution, such as forcing suspected “sympathizers” in the movie business to testify before Congress, forcing them to name their friends who also held upopular beliefs, under oath, continued for several years, but this persecution became steadily less popular and habitual. Ultimately, by 1962, most of these tactics were ruled unconstitutional, and were forbidden by the courts, though it remained (and remains!) likely to be harmful to one’s career to admit publicly to some unpopular ideas.

Habits, customs, and traditions all constrain our lives in some way, and all constraints are in some sense a loss of complete freedom. I do not claim, however, that this is always a bad thing! For example, during my own lifetime it has become customary, in most of the US, to avoid jokes that ridicule people of other races or nationalities. Such jokes, which were popular in my childhood, are now seen in most groups as being “in bad taste,” and most Americans know that if they tell such jokes, they will make themselves look foolish, rather than the group targetted by the joke. The custom to avoid such jokes restrains our freedom of speech, a bit, but the jokes themselves made large groups of people look ridiculous, subtly restricting their freedom to compete fairly for jobs and housing.

Soon, Ramadan will end (Eid Mubarak!), and with it will end many challenging, traditional constraints that most Muslims choose to accept during that month. I am told by close Muslim friends and relations that these restraints are challenging, but they are also spirtually rewarding, and the fasting gives useful insight and sympathy for the very poor.

The trick, I think, is not blindly to accept habit, custom, and tradition, nor always to reject these in favor of utterly unrestrained freedom. Instead, I think that each individual should examine his or her habits, customs, and traditions, and think with an open mind whether these give more than they take away. Where fear is the main reason why habit restricts freedom, this is often a sign that the habit takes more than it gives, and courage can break the habit. If enough people defy a habit (for example, a habit to avoid justified speech that the government wishes to suppress) that lives through fear, then there is security in numbers, and defiance of that habit becomes routine, and relatively safe, regardless of law. Another important question to ask, I think, would be whether the habit, custom, or tradition would be useful to begin, today, even if it did not already exist.

There is a sort of inertia to custom – once established, it is hard to imagine life without it, and hard to break. The first people who break the custom (such as the Americans who entered then-uncustomary inter-racial marriages before these became fairly common) have to show special courage, because they stand out in the crowd, but where the custom restricts freedom wrongly, we would not choose the custom if it did not already exist, and we do future generations a service when we fight the custom.

Another clue to when customs do more harm than good is to think about whose freedom the custom restricts. South Africa claimed that Apartheid was their custom, and none of the rest of the world’s business. Southern whites, in early-American slaveholding states made similar claims. Who claimed this? It was surely not the people whose freedom was most restricted by Apartheid or slavery! When men defend a custom repressive to women’s freedom, I ask how do the women feel about the custom?! Often, even the women may defend such customs. They may love the men (sons and husband) in their lives, after all, and not wish to admit even to themselves the ways they may be repressed by custom. What I would have them ask themselves is whether they would choose the custom for their daughters if they had not grown up, themselves, with the custom? Do women who didn’t previously follow the custom, elsewhere, choose it, often? Many women in the US were quite accepting of not having the vote, in the 1800s, but you would have to look hard, today, to find even a single American woman who would say that women’s votes should be taken away!

In a government that has often formally favored Americans’ freedom, American custom and habit has often lead us to surrender precious freedoms that would otherwise be guaranteed. I surely have no ambition to criticize cultures other than my own. I do believe, however, that people in all cultures who aspire to freedom can examine for themselves which of their habits, customs, and traditions restrict their own freedom in ways that are unjustified by the benefits, and which habits, customs, and traditions give net value, enriching and protecting their lives. (This may perhaps be a topic for your own comments to this article!) The first people who recognize and defy harmful habit, custom, and tradition must often show special courage, but they can win precious freedom to future generations, regardless of government actions.