On the Killing of Citizens

From 1999 until 2010, I was interim head of eight independent schools – that is, I came in on short notice after the sudden departure of a school head or a failed search for a new leader, and ran the school for a few months to two years, until the board could find a new leader.

Knowing that, as the transition specialist William Bridges says (there’s a name that foretold a career), change challenges people’s confidence, making them unsure of their place in the new order, I always tried to assure them that I had not arrived as a hatchet wielder.  My favorite quotation at times like these was Samuel Johnson’s observation that “I have adopted the Roman sentiment that it is more honorable to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.”

Reading the news lately, it seems that for many Americans, it is not only more honorable to kill an enemy, but to kill a citizen.  To cite just a few examples:

·      The Republican debate at the Reagan Library where the audience cheered Rick Perry for his record of 234 (now 235) executions.

·      The subsequent debate where the audience applauded a shout of “Let him die,” referring to a Ron Paul staffer without health insurance.

·      The New Hampshire legislature’s 251-111 vote to override the governor’s veto – and ignore the views of the entire state’s police community -- and allow the use of deadly force anywhere in the state (rather than only in the home, as common law had always held).

·      The Arizona legislature’s vote, three months to the day after the Gabby Giffords shooting, to amend the state’s gun laws to override local wishes and allow open and concealed weapons on college campuses.  (Governor Brewer shocked the law’s advocates with what its sponsor described as a “very rude veto letter.”)

Today’s New York Times brings an analogous position regarding a symbolic form of killing. Over two-thirds of the states have recently introduced laws requiring state-issued voter identifications for voting, and several have cut back on the number of days on which voting can take place.  The argument, of course, centers on whether there is enough voter fraud to make such laws necessary, and on whether the laws will unfairly penalize certain groups.

But in another way, these laws echo exactly the “save a citizen, kill an enemy” concept.  A person who votes illegally does a fractional harm to the voting process. This harm  has an almost infinitesimal chance of affecting the outcome of any election with a sizable number of voters (read Charles Seife’s Proofiness Chapter 5: “Electile Dysfunction” to see how flawed the voting and vote counting process is aside from any deliberate malfeasance).  On the other hand, a person who is disenfranchised by the law is effectively “killed” as a citizen, since the right to vote is one of the  essential distinctions between citizens and non-citizens.  Weighing the two harms, it seems impossible to argue that such laws will not “kill” more citizens than its benefits might ever warrant.

P.S. In an outstanding case of what Alan Dershowitz called : “not passing the giggle test,” under the Texas law, licenses to carry concealed handguns would be an acceptable form of identification to vote, but not student ID cards.