The ancient Roman philosopher, lawyer and statesman, Cicero, is attributed with this cutting opinion: “Politicians are not born; they are excreted.” Two thousand years later, the American political commentator, H. L. Menken, wrote: “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a moron.” (The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920, page 8.)
Cicero’s opinion and Menken’s prediction frequently come to mind with news reports of overflowing sewage, boil water notices, and suspended garbage services, not to mention those about the gas leaking out of Washington. It seems there’s excrement and moronity everywhere.
I am an old man and a grandfather. So, I took special notice when I learned last week that grandparents who live in a nearby neighborhood were robbed at gunpoint by two likely citizens of Jackson. The couple were watching toddler grandchildren play in their home’s front yard when the stick-up occurred. This incident only made the neighborhood news and not the capital city’s progressive newspaper of record. But frightening encounters of that kind make people, especially seniors, live in constant anxiety, an uncomfortable concern for themselves and their loved ones. “Be aware of your surroundings,” we are told by law enforcement and advice-giving media. To which we respond, asking in disbelief: “In one’s own yard in daylight with little children present?”
Criminals lack moral sensibility and show unconcern for the victims from whom they wrongfully, often violently, take property or even life. In my opinion, it’s clear that American cities including Jackson are being destroyed from within by home-grown criminals and those who follow an ideology of tolerance for them.
I practiced criminal law a short while: initially in the District Attorney’s Office as an intern in my last year of law school and, on graduating, one year with a general practice law firm after receiving my license. I was no Clarence Darrow. (Look up the name.) However, that first year I was able to defend at trial two brothers who had been charged with aggravated assault while allegedly shooting into a Hinds County honky-tonk.
For purposes of my opinion here, it’s unimportant how I came to represent the two boys. And they were boys, merely 18 and 19 years old, respectively. One had recently graduated from high school and the other would do so at the end of the next school year. Their father was deceased. Their mother worked a toilsome job in a service-industry plant. She barely earned enough to keep her family going. And she often worked into the night for overtime pay. The family’s house trailer sat beside a gravel road, only a hundred yards from the cheap nightclub. Because a witness claimed to have seen two people running along the road after the shots were fired, and because the family’s trailer was the closest structure on that stretch, investigating county sheriff’s deputies went there first. An old shotgun was recovered, voluntarily handed over. Its gauge matched that of a single spent shell that had been found outside the establishment. On that slim evidence, arrests were made.
Evidence showed that it was a dark night; that the bar was dimly lit; and that the strongest light came from atop a single pole in the parking lot. Standing outside, the assailants had fired through the club’s open doors. They were two black figures with the light shining behind them. Still, a patron who had been slightly wounded by one of the bird-shot blasts fingered the young accused defendants in a line-up.
After a two-day trial before Judge Francis Bowling, the jury came back with a unanimous verdict: Not Guilty. In those days the burden of proof for a criminal conviction required a jury’s finding of “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.” Venires for Hinds County juries were majority male and white. We managed to retain a black female minister on the jury. And she was selected to be the jury foreman. I can still see her smile as she nodded when I declared in closing argument, “The state hasn’t proven its case ‘to a moral certainty.’”
Clients and attorneys, including my fellow associate, were very relieved by the verdict. As we were walking down the front steps of the courthouse, the defendants’ mother stopped, looked skyward, and unpretentiously prayed aloud: “Thank you, God! Thank you, God! Jesus knows that one day we will pay our lawyers!” (my paraphrase). I left that firm not long afterwards, but I’m sure that she probably did eventually.
Which brings me to the point of my opinion. Statistics for this city, and a national trend, show it’s very likely that the two who robbed the neighbor-couple at gunpoint came from a home lacking the presence of a father. But it’s unlikely that theirs are widowed mothers. Unwed motherhood in this part of Mississippi accounts for over 80% of births. Unlike the client-family I’ve described, it’s apparent that much of today’s population hasn’t been brought up with set standards, ethical or moral. They don’t go to church, or even believe in God. The family I represented fifty years ago had been broken by the untimely death of a faithful father who had left behind a devoted mother. Families today are broken by the carnal liberties attendant the whole irresponsible culture of “my truth,” of which instant gratification seems to be in the course. A result of that failure is undisciplined people who, for lack of training or good example, have little sense of right and wrong to the degree of criminal behavior.
But even for those regularly exposed to religious faith, it appears too often that preachers now teach victimhood and moral relativism in place of personal obligation and moral certainty. Christ’s words that were in the Bible fifty (and 40 times 50) years ago are still there today. To-wit: “From the mind stem evil designs – murder, adulterous conduct, fornication, stealing, false witness, blasphemy. These are the things that make a man immoral.” (Matthew 15:19-20). But words from “the Way, the Truth, and the Light” have been obscured. And, among others, no party (individual or political), witness, or juror can be confidently believed on the sole basis of a sworn oath. Where truth is relative, an oath is unreliable.
Almost inevitably, affected children grow up misguided for knowing neither a loving father nor a loving Father. Some are so misguided as to become uncivilized and criminal. Their parents are irresponsible at best or uncaring and unloving at base. For lack of conviction or courage, many of the cloth have failed to teach foundational beliefs and offer spiritual guidance. In my opinion, until this moral and social corruption is stopped, our state of affairs will only grow worse. I believe reversal has to begin with family and faith. But the pagans and nihilists, such as Cicero and Menken, might argue for a general evacuation – a political enema, if you will.
Chip Williams is a Northsider.
