The Moral High Ground

I was in the fourth grade at Cedarvale Junior Academy the day Jimmy Newlon gave me the experience that later helped me understand the concept of the moral high ground.

The incident took place on the playground, where some recess infraction led Jimmy to punch me in the face.

I have no idea whether I deserved it or not. If I were an odds maker, I would guess that I probably made some smartass comment that earned me the eye-jammie.

The moment created a dilemma for me.

Do I punch this kid back, or not?

I opted for both.

First, I went inside to tell Mrs. Greene that Jimmy’d punched me.

As she grabbed her whistle to follow me outside, I headed back out to where he was sitting on the swings.

Of course by this point, he was calmly minding his own business and looked like the picture of innocence.

About the time the teacher rounded the corner of the school building, I’d reached the swings. I’m sure the sight of me walking toward him with the teacher in tow gave Jimmy a moment of internal peace. I obviously wasn’t injured, so he wasn’t likely to get in much trouble.

I shattered that calm with a rather lovely left hook that landed somewhere between his right eye, and his chin. It caught him off guard, and I don’t think he even tried to block it.

I don’t remember much, but I do recall following it up with a flurry of a couple more punches that ended just as Mrs. Greene reached our now burgeoning fistfight.

Of course, since stealth has never been my strong suit, I’d made no effort to camouflage the blows or pretend like I wasn’t trying to knock his ass off the swing, so Mrs. Greene had no choice but to watch the whole thing happen.

The premise of her lecture has stayed with me in the 30 years since.“Kenney, you started off by doing the right thing. Now, you’re going to be in trouble even though you started off right. You can’t tell the teacher, AND continue the fight.”

I’d lost the moral high ground in the altercation.

By ethical definition, the moral high ground is the status of being respected for doing the right thing against a universally accepted standard of right and wrong.

Keep in mind that it isn’t actually “doing” the right thing. It’s the external status that comes from the action.

From my vantage point, there is no intrinsic value to having the moral high ground. In fact, it only comes into play where others are concerned. Its companion, although I’d argue its inverse, is integrity.

As a rather enthusiastically aggressive training instructor taught me in boot camp, integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking. It allows you self-respect, but not necessarily the moral high ground.

In order to maintain the moral high ground, OTHER people need to be able to see and judge your actions.You only truly “need” the moral high ground if you’re the sort of person that likes to criticize.

If you’re from the laissez-faire school of thought, the moral high ground can be a wasted pursuit. But if as an individual you gain some sense of pleasure from commenting on, judging, or critiquing the actions of others, your skeletons must be safely locked in the closet if you’re planning to plant a flag on the moral high ground.

If your own behavior is publicly above reproach in a given category, you earn the right to comment on or judge the behavior of others. The moral high ground gives you a built-in soapbox that you can whip out whenever you feel the need to address an injustice or wrong committed by someone else.

Historically, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was one of the very best at exploiting the high ground. He perfected a technique pioneered by Mohandas Gandhi. By using the burgeoning mass media to provide a worldwide stage for civil rights activists to publicly demonstrate their willingness to not violently respond when attacked, he forced the public at large to cede the moral high ground to the movement he fronted.

The result is the possibility for me to have more options open to me, and millions like me, and a life less restricted by the color of my skin.

In later years, the product of illegal FBI spying revealed that the hero was just a man after all, and had a less-than-ideal relationship with the morality of monogamy. Fortunately for we millions of Americans, the information was never released in a setting contemporary with the man behind the myth.

It is an interesting “what-if” to consider the possible long-term impact an immediate public airing of Dr. King’s misdeeds might have had on the absolute stranglehold the wordsmith held on the moral high ground of his era.

Pop culture may give us a glimpse. His political progeny, Rev. Jesse Jackson, has seen his off-camera behavior erode his moral standing to make public declarations about the actions of others, almost immediately reducing his access to the moral high ground.

This in spite of an impressive domestic and international record that includes some successful hostage rescues, a series of corporate shakedowns, a respectable run at the Presidency, and a lifetime of VERY public service.

Society snatched his megaphone when they discovered that he, like many great and not-so-great men, was a slave to his penis more than his public ideology, had a long-term mistress, and fathered a love-child.

This week, comedians and pundits alike will have Representative Mark Foley (R-FL) to kick around. The six-term Congressman resigned his post almost a year after House leaders were made aware of a series of “raunchy” and sexually explicit e-mails between 52-year-old Foley, and a 16-year old boy who was lucky enough to land a summer job as a Congressional page, but unlucky enough to have to deal with one of the old guys who apparently has a hard-on for him.

Literally.

The Foley story could have been an irrelevant side note to this diatribe. But … I’ll give you one guess as to who was the Chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus.

Oh yeah, and one more guess to come up with one of the main proponents of cracking down on internet child pornography and making life MUCH harder for child molesters and sex offenders.

Turns out the moral high ground can be a “Double-black diamond” ski slope if your public profile or position is high enough.

Who’s ever even heard of Foley? It’s almost a shame that “pulling a Foley” might soon be as expressive a phrase as “giving a Lewinsky.”

But such is the etymological ether that is American English. I really should apply for the copyright now.

As a nation, it has always amazed me how completely and legitimately America has managed to control the moral high ground internationally. In spite of our youth (230 years just isn’t a very long time in a world where there are 8000 year old cities), and our less-than stellar ACTIONS with regard to treatment of the natives in America, slavery, the Salem witch trials, lack of universal suffrage, manifest destiny, being the first and only nation to ever drop an atomic bomb directly on an occupied city, Japanese internment during WWII, McCarthy, andonandon, we have legitimately earned the right to be THE gold standard on the subjects of human rights, religious freedom, capitalism, and democracy as ideals for the world to follow. (Amazingly long sentence. Don’t forget to breathe in there somewhere.)

That’s no small accomplishment. Warts and all, the American experiment is a resounding success. The fact that our early elites put enough thought into an ideal, practical society to write such a workable document as our Constitution, gave us a real leg up in the race to the moral high ground.And we’ve done plenty of “good” on the world stage.

Fighting over slavery—and ridding the nation of its evil, accepting the poor, tired huddled masses from England, Ireland, Russia and elsewhere, destroying the third Reich and restoring Germany’s Jews to society after the Holocaust, rebuilding Europe in the post-WWII era, saving Yugoslavia’s Muslims, donating billions of dollars to virtually every nation in the world, and fighting a 50 year was against our biggest philosophical opponent largely by proxy, rather than necessarily cluttering the empty spaces on our planet with weapons.

I’ll bet you’ve figured out where I’m headed with this by now. Most of the time, even our enemies have feared, or respected us. This is a little discussed benefit of having the moral high ground.

In war, having the moral high ground saves lives. It is a fact of military science and history that outmanned enemies are more likely to surrender than fight an enemy who publicly declares and backs up a philosophy of treating its captives like humans. And every weapon NOT fired, is potentially an American life saved.

And following the rules sometimes causes strange reactions from your enemies.Don’t believe “all” the hype about the bad guys not obeying the Geneva Conventions.

Most of them are shitbags. But ask Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Durant how it felt to get a visit from the Red Cross, after Somali militants captured him in 1993.

When the U.S. complained that although they weren’t a uniformed military force (because they were street thugs), and weren’t at war with the United States (they were embroiled in a Civil War that had nothing to do with America, but centered around who was going to be first to steal the dwindling supplies of foreign foodstuffs and money sent to relieve rampant starvation), they owed Chief Durant decent treatment under the Geneva Conventions, the thugs agreed.

After beating the shit out of him initially, they recanted and afforded him some of his rights under common article three of the treaty, even though they CERTAINLY weren’t signatories of said treaty.

That … is the power of the moral high ground. America doesn’t torture. That’s what makes us better than a LOT of the bad guys. We imprison our own by the millions, we had slaves, kangaroo courts, we dropped the bomb, we conned and murdered the Natives, we lied our way into Vietnam, we claimed Manifest Destiny so we could steal land from Mexico, we did some shady shit with Iran so we could fund Central American rebels, we’ve lynched, we rape our own, we wave guns around at each other like flags, we steal from the poor to fund the rich, but …If you were unlucky enough to face us on the battlefield, and surrendered—our reputation has always been that we’ll take you in, introduce you to the hamburger, give you a cigarette, show you the latest Hollywood movie, hook you up with some decent clothes, and let you go when the fighting stopped.

In World War II, we even let prisoners sign a promise to not rejoin the Nazis, and sent them home—taking them at their word.

But it’s never been our policy to torture. Until now.

Any guesses as to whether we’ll ski, snowboard, or sled off the heights of the moral high ground?

Peace,
--Stew