Where Are We Headed? Part 9: Blame

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

So far, this series on “Where Are We Headed” has discussed 8 basic concepts — the nation, government, war-making, politics, lying, plagues, leadership, and fear. Each, as we saw requires a deep look. Typically, the word sparks a single definition, but when you look at it, there’s always more to it. And owing to 21st century facts of life, the old word may be very misleading.

Today’s topic is blame. There seem to be two uses for the word blame. One has to do with emotion “Because of your stupidity, I lost my investment.”  (Or “I hate you for what you did to our son.”). The other is more rational-minded, having to do with holding someone accountable, legally. “Congress is to blame for not repealing that bad law.” “You can sue her for that broken window.”

I am extremely interested in that second definition. Much of my published writing has to do with court cases and with urging citizens to hold government officials — and media persons — accountable. But let’s first talk about the emotion of blame. In 2016, philosopher Martha Nussbaum pointed to Aeschylus’s plays in which The Furies, who, she says, were anger personified, had eventually to be tamed to fit in with the rest of the ancient Greek democracy. Nussbaum wants less anger.

Weare, New Hampshire, February 1722 (Two and a Half Centuries Ago)

My position today is that we have too greatly tamed our furies. We are not angry, we are nearly comatose as far as that emotion is concerned.  Was I ever surprised to come across the following item yesterday (November 2, 2024), in a book edited by William Gardner in 1976, entitled “Towns against Tyranny,” page 259:

Parliament in 1772 had passed a law that white pine trees in the province of New Hampshire could not be cut down as they were to be saved for masting the Royal Navy. But the people had no other trees with which to build their homes, so they did cut down many trees. Benjamin Whiting was the sheriff who was assigned to arrest Ebenezer Mudgett of Weare for this. I quote:

“It was late in the day when they found him…. The sheriff went to [an inn] for the night. The news that the sheriff had come for Mudgett spread like wildfire. Scores of men said they would bail him.  … Mudgett went to the inn at dawn, woke the sheriff. … Whiting rose, chid Mudgett for coming so early…. Then more than 20 men rushed in, faces blacked, switches in their hand, to give bail.

“[Sheriff] Whiting seized his pistols and would have shot some of them, but they caught him, held him by his arms and legs up from the floor, his face down, two men on each side and with their rods beat him to their heart’s content. They crossed out the account of all logs cut, drawn and forfeited, on his bare back. …They made him wish he had never heard of pine trees fit for the royal navy….”

Ivermectin Wrongly Banned

So let’s think about that. The NH governor worked for King George III. He should have upheld the law about log-cutting, right? His sheriff should have arrested the wrongdoers and in fact the wrongdoers should not have cut the trees in the first place, right?  That’s what most people say today, about the US government’s immoral rulings. They say “Obeying is the right thing to do!”

Consider the very helpful drug, ivermectin. It’s a good drug for Covid, and it used to be a common prescription medicine in the US but when the Powers That Be wanted us to get sick, in 2020, they forbade doctors to prescribe it. (Another theory is that all such good treatments pr Covid had to be repressed in order that an “emergency use authorization” could be granted to Pfizer at al. I think both these re true.)

Even today, after 4 years of Covid, when doctors know damn well that they should prescribe ivermectin, it is legally banned. The mechanism of control is via the AMA which can cancel the license of a “naughty” doctor.

Have you noticed 20 men from the New Hampshire town of Weare, or any other place, bursting into the offices the American Medical Association and holding an officer of that profession upside down till he erases the ban on ivermectin? No.  So why not? This is a REALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION.

The Old Testament Replaced by the New

In the Old Testament, written maybe around 2800BC, we find justice being encouraged by means of revenge. Per Leviticus 24: 17-20:

¹⁷ “Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death. ¹⁸ Whoever takes an animal’s life shall make it good, life for life. ¹⁹ If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, ²⁰ fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. 

Then came the gospel according to Matthew, written around 150AD:

³⁸ Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

³⁹ But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

⁴⁰ And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

⁴¹ And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Pardon me, this bit is crazy: “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.” Huh? Wha? It can’t be a good idea to let evil flourish and be uncritical of it. Matthew must have been on some kind of high when he wrote that.

Still, I don’t think this part of the New Testament had major influence. Rather, the theme of “be helpful to the needy” came to be a hallmark of Christianity. At the very least it can be noted that Jesus was angry at the money changers in the temple and even got physical while dealing with them, overturning table and yelling “My house is a house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves.”

Accepting One’s Place, One’s Social Class

Probably more influential in history than the Bible was the sorting of people into social classes.  Once civilization began — I mean ‘cities’ — competition was no longer between every man and every man. Later, during the long feudal period, when the lord of the manor had custody of his peasants, it would have been rare for the latter to do violence to the former.

In my lifetime I have seen America go from a society where everyone was theoretically equal before the law, to one in which we “new peasants” are gradually accepting the right of the lord to do as he pleases and never get punished. Really, it is astonishing how we just assume that this or that government official can perform all sorts of crime, in broad daylight, and emerge unscathed. This must stop.

In most instances there is solid black-letter law describing the appropriate punishment — say for suborning perjury. But these Bozos suborn (recruit) false witnesses all the time. I have written whole books about this and am sick of it.

I recently renamed one of my books, the one about the false case against Jahar Tsarnaev. Its former title was “The Boston Marathon Bombing: What Can Law Do?”  I’ve now called it “Stop Lying about the Marathon Bombing — Or Else.”

Hmm. When I get around to it, I may change my book about the suppression of cancer cures from its 2013 title “Consider the Lilies” to something more leviticus-esque. For example, “If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him.” I suppose librarians may think that title is too cumbersome. OK. How about “Eye for an Eye, Cancer for Cancer”?

My book “Deliverance,” about mind control, could be renamed “You Torture My Child, I’ll Gouge Your Eyes Out.” Shakespeare did it.  Remember in Richard III, the poor old king not only lost his eyes but his testicles?

But We Need Solidarity

This article aims to address the general question of blame. I believe we have an innate emotion that drives the blaming of the guilty party. As argued so far, that sort of emotion has to be guided where a whole group is involved. Recall the 20 men who beat up the sheriff in New Hampshire in 1772. They acted in solidarity on behalf of Ebenezer Mudgett.

Solidarity is the male trait that greatly assists large-scale works of labor and encourages the bravery of warriors in battle. In the early 20th century, labor union solidarity, not limited to males, came to the aid of workers who were treated unfairly. These persons sensed their power to demand better wages and conditions as, by sheer numbers, they could threaten the factory owners.

Let me quote the Encyclopedia Britannica on the Pulman Strike of 1894, in which Eugene Debs helped the workers prevent railway traffic, near Chicago. Solidarity had enabled a very large strike, but Government got in there on behalf of the owners, successfully:

“In Washington, D.C., a majority of the president’s cabinet supported Attorney General Richard Olney’s demand that federal troops be sent to Chicago to end the ‘reign of terror.’ On July 2 Olney obtained an injunction from circuit court judges Peter S. Grosscup and William A. Woods (both of whom had strong antiunion sentiments) that prohibited ARU leaders from ‘compelling or inducing’ any employees of the affected railroads ‘to refuse or fail to perform any of their duties.’ The injunction, which invoked both the Sherman Antitrust Act [!!!] and the Interstate Commerce Act,  also prevented ARU leaders from communicating with their subordinates. Thus, Debs, who had been trying to prevent violence, could no longer even send telegrams advising against it.”

Note: Such is our government that a ‘reading of the law’ can always be dished up in a way that supports the powerful.  But we can fix this.

Nannyism

During the 2024 presidential election in US, which is going on e’en as I write, the Left is hoping for a socialist victory. This is partly related to the Woke movement in which one’s condition of powerlessness is seen as a consequence of race or gender. But there is also an enthusiasm for an increase in government handouts (and involvement in medical care). Sounds attractive, but a nanny state undermines strong masculinity.

Maybe I am making too much of the New Hampshire 1772 incident, but it is a clear case of people seeing that a law (about cutting down trees) was unfair. This is what we need — to identify the laws that go against justice. And then repeal those laws!

By the way, it seems that the men who beat up Sheriff Whiting did not go entirely free. Ten of them were indicted for having “beat, wounded, and evilly treated him.” And for acting “against the peace of our Lord the King, his crown and dignity.” Fancy that. Still the judges fined the men only 20 shillings!  I’ll quote William Gardner’s book again, “Towns against Tyranny,” page 260:

“Such a light punishment for so great an outrage on the sheriff of the county when serving a legal process, seems to show that the court had more sympathy for the men who cut the logs, and for popular sentiment than for the sheriff and the odious pine tree law”  

I suggest we look forward to, and endeavor to establish, a situation in which blame is not a taboo subject. We have millennia of written law (Hammurabi was no slouch back in 1700BC) to make good use of. Now just think of how advantageous it would be to compare the law to the other elements that affect blame — the emotion of revenge, the habit of excusing the upper class, and the practice of solidarity.