Am I my brother's keeper? H. S. Bird

· .. . AID I Illy brother's keeper?" A Note on a Commonly Misunderstood Text HERBERT S. BIRD THE BOOK OF GENESIS informs us that Cain, Adam's first-born son, overcome by a delirium of jeal ousy, murdered his brother Abel. The account continues : "Then the Lord said to Cain, 'Where is Abel your brother l' He said, 'I do not know; am I my brother's keeper l' " The story, as it unfolds, indi cates that Cain soon became aw,are of some of the immediate, personal consequences. of his despevate act. And it iis likely that, as the years passed, he began to realize. that his treatment of Abel would in fluence, for the worse, the lives of many yet unborn. But it never occurred to him that one, almost minor, detail of the story of his crime and its punishment - his flippant alibi, "Am I my brother's The Reverend Mr. Bird has been a missionary of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ethiopia since 1952.

54 keeper 1" - was destined for a prominent place in the socio-theo logical moralizing of an age far removed from his own. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The words, or some allusion to them, ,are high on the list of say ings most frequently employed from the pulpit or in the religious press. And, along with more than a few Biblical texts, they are ap plied in a sense they were never intended to have. Here the mis understanding arises from the easy assumption that the only pos sible answer to this query is "Yes." To suppose any reply ap propriate other than "Indeed, Cain, you are your brother's keep er" would be, to many, unthink able. Hence, the expression is used to promote a wide v,ariety of causes, many of them worthy, some of them, without question, 1966 "AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?" 55 legitimate objects of religious or charitable interest. But a faulty exegesis never brings unmixed blessings. Thus, unfortunately, there is a use made of the words, "Am I my brother's keeper?" which is by no means innocuous. For many a speaker or wri ter employs them nowadays, not to promote causes which are the proper business of the church, but rather to enlist the Bible in support of any number of coer cive welfare schemes dear to the heart of the political liberal. A recent example of this very thing appears in a leading religious peri odical, in an article intended to demonstrate that an omnicom petent welfare state is not only agreeable to Christian theology but is required by it. The writer observes, "Justice means that all men shall be treated fairly and equally. In practice, justice means that the poor must be protected from the rich, the worker from the employer, the widow and or phan from those who would prey upon them, the minority from the majority."! (It may be of more th:ln p:lssing interest to note that this, for its one-sidedness, has nothing in common with the Bib lical idea of justice. Moses' words are: "You shall do no injustice in 1 Francis D. Breisch, Jr., "Why I Am a Political Liberal." Eternity, XVI, 10 (October, 1965), pp. 24 ff.

judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor." - Leviticus 19 :15.) The same article then goes on to 'assert, "In the world in which we live today, we are all responsible for each other. More than ever, I am my brother's keeper. And to fulfill our corporate responsibility we need social leg islation which w,ill guarantee jus tice to all." Murder Being the Most Uncharitable Act of All Wherein lies the fallacy of such an application of Cain's question? Such a misuse fails to recognize what Abel's brother was really saying. This is not to seek to rehabilitate Cain's reputation: his attitude-was indefensible, and be cause he knew that even as he spoke, his brother - through his fault - lay lifeless, his insolent disavowal of guardianship over him was sheer hypocrisy. But this consideration should not ,blind us to the real state of affairs when the question of the responsibility of one human being for another is before us. For clearly Cain was not ,asking whether he should show proper consideration for a fellow man, or whether he should refrain from doing violence to him. He was asking whether he was supposed to ,be his constant 56 THE FREEMAN May guardian: whether Abel was an swerable to him for his actions, whether he was required to keep Gain informed as to his very whereabouts. This was the intent of his question, and the answer to it is "No." For the Bible does not say that Cain was, in fact, Abel's keeper. It suggests, rather, that his delinquency consisted in his repudiation of the demands of brotherly love.

It may seem that to press such a distinction is an instance of that hairsplitting in which theologians ,are alleged to delight. "Very well," someone will obj ect, "admitting that there is a difference between being my brother's keeper and loving my brother, what does it matter? Whatever the semantics, the practical results are the 8ame." But they ,are not. For to be one's brother's keeper im'plies just wha,t Cain insinuated that it does - to supervise, in greater or leisser measure, another's life; to take it upon .oneself to determine what is good for someone 'else; to over ride his liberty, and even his per sonaHty, in the interests of a so ciial theory. To be one's brother's keeper is to control him. But the Biblical idea of brotherly love is something else again. It is a love free of constraint. It is also a love which, far from being self-defin ing, is carefully delimited in the way in which it is to be expressed.

And this has as little to do with the coercive welfare state as it has to do with the "love is every thing" approach of the so-called new morality. For it is a love which works no ill to its neighbor, whatever that neighbor's position in life may be. Such a love may, indeed, be compelled to take to task the rich man who defrauds, butit cannot say to him, "In the interest of a just society, and in the name of the poor, whom I am protecting against you, I hereby confiscate such of your possessions as seem to me to be more than you need." Again, brotherly love will often require that the poor be helped in a material way. But it may also, at times, demand that some of the poor be told that if a man will not work, neither should he eat. The forcible redis tribution of wealth, however, is not brotherly love (we do not speak of Orwellian "Big-broth erly" love). And to wish to be one's brother's keeper is as mor ally wrong as the liberty of the individual peaceably to order his own affairs is morally right. ~ DANIEL K. STEWART THE TRUE NATURE of a given gov ernment might well he considered within the context of individual freedom. Human freedom is max imized only where there exist gen uine choices between differing ideas. Human freedom, of course, applies to areas of human interest other than political affairs - to art, to economics, to science, and so forth. But it applies to politics, too, with government providing the physical conditions within which the exercise of a choice be tween different political ideas can be made. Such political freedom is thought to yield good govern ment and human happiness.

But physical conditions with re spect to political affairs do not just come about on their own ac count. They begin as ideas in the minds. of men. And in those cases where "the citizens at large ad minister the state, as Aristotle remarks, the "government is called .... a constitution." But we note Dr. Stewart received his degree from Michi gan State University in 1959, and is a former member of its faculty. Now in private in dustry, he is responsible for research in the sciences and arts pertaining to communication. The Principle of Political Polarity that constitutions are composed of laws, that such laws do not just miraculously appear, they are the consequences of ideas, and they indirectly prescribe the physical conditions permissible among the citizens of such a state. Thus, while the laws of govern ment aim to symbolize the good state and human happiness, it is quite apparent in the twentieth century that greater consideration must be given to what individual freedom means in general, and to what it implies for the true nature of given governments in particular.

And this implication might fruit fully be pursued by considering the very opposite of individual freedom, namely, the negation of it - restriction. In this manner, human freedom and restriction would stand as op posing end points ona continuum of ideas. They would be polar op posites. On the one end would be a maximum of differing ideas about a given subject, thereby providing a maximum of choices (freedom), while on the other end would be a minimum of differing 57 58 THE FREEMAN May ideas about that same subject, thereby providing restricted choices. And where this continuum of ideas is about politics, it is reflective of what I would like to call the principle of poliUcal polarity. A Matter of Choice The principle of political polar ity deals with the extremes of maximum choices between political ideas and restricted choices. Re strictions are represented by the laws of a government and, ideally, they are to be enforced without prejudice. In this way, as deter mined by their laws, governments will vary from complete freedom (i.e., allowing maximum choice) of the citizen to complete subser vience (i.e., no choice) of the citizen.

As an illustration of this point, it is educational to observe a reso lution introduced in the Michigan Legislature on February 3, 1965. It proposed that .a "Section 10" be added to Article 2 of the state constitution. Section 10 reads: "Any elector who fails to vote in any state or national election in which he is qualified to vote, un less ill or excused as provided by law, is guilty of a misdemeanor and punished according to law." Instead of any elector being free to vote or not to vote 'at any st:1te or national election, this resolution would declare, under penalty of law, that an elector is not free not to vote. His range of choice would be restricted. If a given government is actu ally determined by the sharing of ideas by the voting citizens of what government should be, then the principle of political polarity refers to the quality and quantity of ideas on the nature of govern ment possessed by these citizens.

Political restriction, in this case, would refer to the voter not pos sessing certain ideas. This fact would prevent him from consider ing certain ideas together, and, in consequence, prevent him from forming certain judgments other wise possible. And to the extent that this situation prevails for other voters, such citizens will con stitute a voting block exercising restricted political judgment. The point is that a given voter's mind possesses a limited quantity of political ideas as compared to the totality, class, or universe of political ideas. But, if certain ideas are not there, they cannot possibly be considered in conjunction with other ideas which are. Presumably, all of us have had experiences wherein if we had only known additional facts, we would have made different judgments. What this condition implies for political freedom is this: to be free, man must have a truthful ex1966 THE PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL POLARITY 59 posure to opposing ideas. Where there exists a restriction (Le., absence) of certain ideas, the pos sibility of forming certain idea tional relationships is prevented, and, in consequence, certain judg ments otherwise possible simply cannot occur. Freedom has been denied because the scope of man's reason has ,been restricted.

Maximizing the Alternatives The principle of political polar ity has immediate consequences, therefore, in understanding the nature of government and in pro viding a criterion by means of which given governments can be evaluated. It implies that the la bel any given· government happens to wear from time to time in his tory is not necessarily a truthful description of its actual operation. Whether the government is called a "republic," or, to use Aristotle's analysis,l a "royalty," "aristoc racy," "constitution," and their respective perversions, "tyranny," "oligarchy," "democracy" - these names bear no necessary relation ship to the reality of existent polit ical freedom. The test is whether the majority of laws are truly rep resentative of the ideas of individ ual freedom. In their restrictive role, do the laws maximize the ex ercise of genuine choice without prejudice? 1 Aristotle, Politica, 1279 a-1279 b • Moreover, in any country where the citizens elect their g·overnment officials, the principle of political polarity implies the extreme im portance of politically balanced mass communication media and educational institutions. And the far-reaching consequences of this implication cannot be over emphasized. Because it is primari ly over such media and in the classrooms that themaj ori ty of present and future voters obtain such ideas as they do possesls re garding political affairs. Political judgments can only be based on those ideas the citizens possess, and it is these judgments which determine the type of government a country exhibits.

It is for this very reason that totalitarians habitually strive to gain control of a nation's mass communication media and educa tional institutions. By controlling the kind and nature of ideas pre sented to present and future voters, they control their scope of judg ment. It is noteworthy, moreover, that the ideas which dominate the ·mass communication media are related to the ideals and beliefs (ideas) held by a society and taught with in its public institutions of higher education. In the United States, the governing boards of state uni versities are occupied by men who are nominated by political parties, 60 THE FREEMAN May and voted on 'at state-wide elec tions. An imbalance in the mass communication media of a given state will oftentimes be reflected in the political philosophy (ideas) held by the individuals on these governing boards. This fact, in turn, determines their type of ad ministration, their deans and de partment heads, and their faculty.

Balanced communication media, political freedom, and higher edu cation are very much rel'ated to each other. With respect to politi cal philosophy, each one of these can be evaluated in terms of the principle of political polarity: a maximum of political choice (freedom) vis it vis minimum of political choice (restriction). In conclusion, political freedom is here understood as the existent choices between different ideas re garding the nature of government. All ideas of this kind can be thought of as belonging to a class of ideas about political affairs. When some of the ideas of this class are not possessed by the vot ers, then their political freedom is restricted beeause their political judgments-and the resultant gov ernmen t - are based only on those ideas which they do possess. The Ideas Men Hold Governments will vary, there fore, according to the variety of political ideas held by their peopIes. Assuming that no one willing ly chooses serfdom, where the ideas about the nature of govern ment are generally widespread, the people will choose those ideas (and make those judgments) which will lead to the good state and corresponding happiness.

Where the ideas about the nature of government are not generally known, the available choices are thereby restricted. This condition has been described in this paper as representing a kind of political polarity. Some countries reflect a high degree of political sophistica tion, some do not. Corresponding ly, some reflect a high degree of civilizational order, and some do not. It depends on the kind of po litical ideas the majority of voters are acquainted with. One such political idea is that government, if it serves without prej udice, can provide freedom and happiness to its people only indirectly by fulfilling its negative function. Its polar opposite is the idea that government can provide freedom and happines,s directly. When the latter idea is widely dis"" seminated in the mass communi cation media and educational in stitutions to the general absence of its polar opposite, the political consequence is a government which attempts to legislate human free dom and happiness~ ~ A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN ~~Education and the State"