RSSNew York’s The Incorruptible lost his head
Spitzer has fallen. A tyrant in the making will have no political future. Good riddance!
Still, I cannot help but following the story of Governor Spitizer’s tragic fall without feeling a deep sense of pity and even empathy.
Here are my scattered thoughts on the events:
1. Like Robespierre, Spitzer created a public reputation as an incorruptible opponent of vice, crime, corruption. He showed little humility or grace when acting as New York’s Attorney General. He destroyed lives with his highly visible, dramatic arrests. The effect was to destroy lives and reputations long before a court proclaimed guilt. When he became Governor, he declared himself a “f*&#ing steamroller” and tried to govern like an Emperor. He will now be judged by the same merciless standard with which he judged.
There is a lesson here, one that Christians should be wired (re-wired) to understand. Playing the part of The Incorruptible opponent of sin is never pretty. If we judge by the law we will be judged by it. Surely, the role of a District Attorney is to judge according to the law, but a strong dose of humility, respect goes far. Total depravity is not a doctrine that applies only to the other guy.
2. When members of the Christian Right play the part of legalistic blowhards, we should be just as disgusted. Public policy must always generously take account of the fallibility of the individual.
3. It was heartbreaking to watch his poor wife suffer the humiliation of a press conference. He should of protected her but instead took advantage of her.
4. Governor Spitzer betrayed his wife. Better to betray with a whore than a girlfriend. A whore provides the opportunity for a physical betrayal but a girlfriend provides the opportunity for both physical and emotional betrayal. The emotional betrayal is the most devastating.
5. You have to find the story of “Kristin” to be heartbreaking. Only a really sad story can be the prelude to how such a beautiful and talented young lady became a high priced call girl.
6. The world of prostitution is a dark shadowy world of organized crime. Reports suggest that the international sex slave industry is involved. It is hard to imagine such things exist. They do. This is a dangerous world.
7. They say that prostitution is the worlds oldest profession. It is a utopian fantasy to think that the sex trade can be eliminated. Augustine and Aquinas both considered the trade a “necessary evil.” Only after the Protestant Reformation did the all encompassing nation state begin to try to unsuccessfully stamp it out.
Would it be better if we legalized prostitution? Regulated it? Taxed it? Brought it out of the shadows of organized crime? Take away the underground economy upon which the international sexual slave trade thrives? I tend to think so. Anyone else?
Thoughts?
C Brown
March 13th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Bill,
Welcome back, and what a return to the blogosphere you just made!
I heard a comparison last night to the Clinton/Lewinsky affair. It raises the question: Which affair was a greater evil? I say that Clinton’s was, because he took advantage of the girl and left her with nothing. At least Spitzer’s girl received something back in return. Why should Spitzer’s affair be illegal, while Clinton’s wasn’t? And I don’t think the solution is to make Clinton-type affairs illegal.
johnfielding
March 13th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Two Cheers for Hypocrisy
Ann Coulter recently remarked regarding the Elliot Spitzer matter that “It’s absurd to talk about Spitzer’s problem being “hypocrisy” — as if everything would be fine if only he had previously advocated legalized prostitution…. That was always the advantage Clinton had: We never expected any better. He went from Skunk Trot, Ark., to Skunk Trot, Ark. Spitzer fell from Fifth Avenue to Skunk Trot, Ark.”
Just so. In our relativistic world, there is no common standard of morality. Say what you will about the Victorian Era: those that had mistresses had them on the side, out of public view. It has been said that “hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” Bill clinton has shown us the end of all of that.
If that old saying about hypocrisy is true, let us fast forward to the relativism of the present time when all that matters is an individual’s definition of reality. We see it in the abortion battle: “The choice is a woman’s alone, in consultation with her doctor.” It doens’t not matter what scientific evidence is brought to bear on the individual status and existence of the unborn child, and any claims it might have a result of that status. The pro-choice culture has individualized every choice to the point that each individual can prescribe his or her own rules of science or morality. Be gone, scientific data! It has been whisked away by the greater reailty of what an individual women believes concerning the status of the unborn child. In consultation with an expert doctor to whom she cedes some authority to decide if, of course, she choses to follow the “expert scientific authority” that she has appointed.
Thus, any common standard of morality gets waved off and vanishes in the smoke of individual choice. Bill Clinton was the leading practioner of this. After all, if hypocrisy is acting in contravention of a voiced allegiance to a moral standard, then it stands to reason that the only standard for hypocrisy in this modern age is “to thine own self be true” or, in the words of Count Orlosky in Die Fleidermaus, “every man to his own taste.”
And, of course, if one sets the bar low enough, there will never again be a hypcrite. Bill Clinton has showed us the way. He traveled from “from Skunk Trot, Ark., to Skunk Trot, Ark.” And may I point out that despite Ms. Coulter’s rendition of Elliot Spitzer’s charmed life, it does not necessarily follow that “Spitzer fell from Fifth Avenue to Skunk Trot, Ark.” because for all of his education and breeding and living on Fifth Avenue, his moral life may have always lived in Skunk Trot. And in our individualistic and relativistic and, dare I say, Clintonistic, world, who are we to judge?
johnfielding
March 13th, 2008 at 10:20 am
“Therefore, I have not been chastened in my belief that the moral law as revealed in special revelation (Scripture) trumps (because of clarity) the moral law as revealed in general revelation. In fact, special revelation is always a necessary a necessary standard by which to judge the general revelation (rather than the other way around).”
“Would it be better if we legalized prostitution? Regulated it? Taxed it? Brought it out of the shadows of organized crime? Take away the underground economy upon which the international sexual slave trade thrives? I tend to think so. Anyone else?”
What is the present status of the law against harlotry?
W.H. Chellis
March 13th, 2008 at 10:53 am
In New York State? or in the Old Testament case law?
If you are asking about the OT case law, my answer is that harlotry remains a sin to be brought under the discipline of the church (if its members engage in it).
As a case law, its present status is defined by the WCF, “To them [Old Covenant Israel], also as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which EXPIRED [emphasis mine] together with the State of that people: not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.”
Does natural law demand that all sins be crimes? Clearly not. Does natural law (general equity) demand that this particular sin be declared a crime? I do not think so. Neither did Aquinas. High enough authority for me.
In heaven, harlotry will be forbidden. On earth it is inevitable. Toleration of sin is a hallmark of humane government this side of heaven. Society may stigmatize these sins but the state should tolerate them. Heaven waits for Christ’s second coming.
stevez
March 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Bill,
Much with which to agree here. The tie that binds on everyone’s side seems to be classic American over-realization. What led Spitzer to behave like an obnoxious crusader is the same thing that the fuels the equally obnoxious charges of hypocrisy against him: the sense of exact justice over that which is proximate. If it weren’t for my sense of God’s authority over my own time and place, I’d have been an American ex-patriot for some time now.
I’ll stay away from the questions about prostitution. Whatever else those sorts of questions elicit, they just make me feel all icky inside.
#4 is interesting though. If so-called “emotional betrayal” is the “most devasting” then why is it not grounds for divorce (secular) or discipline (sacred)? I don’t know, whenever I hear that argument (which usually comes from the fairer sex) it sure seems a lot less Pauline and more Platonic–there’s a reason we call them platonic relationships, you know: they really don’t add up to much. Like I tell the women who try to convince me that “emotional betrayal” is as bad or worse, there is a difference between really bad judgment and adultery. Hmmm, there’s that icky feeling.
Zrim
W.H. Chellis
March 13th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Thanks Steve. I agree with your conclusion on #4. I was not clear. My point was that extra-marital sex is worse when it is united to emotional betrayal. I was not saying that purely “platonic” relationships were worse.
I suppose it is possible to fall in love with a whore- didn’t Gus from Lonesome Dove?
More to the point, didn’t Christ when He was betrothed to us?
Let me be clear- what we are talking about is SIN. The question is whether we should expect the state to be in the business of policing it. I vote no… but admit that I might be wrong. What is the case for forbidding it?
stevez
March 14th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Bill,
(Re physical and emotional betrayal, I don’t mean to quibble unnecessarily, but I have a hard time with the idea that adultery can really be “worsened.” I get the sense that this might still be a function of just how triumphant the age of the therapeutic and relational really is. And, sorry, your example of Christ “falling in love” is way too Troubadourian for this Augustinian-Calvinist. Maybe that’s why I am so “harsh” on “Jane Doe’s” conversion story revolving around playing children and dancing butterflies?)
I think we tend very much to conflate sin and law as American religionists. We come by it fairly honestly. I tend to think the categories of law and gospel are highly useful. Just yesterday a Christian school teacher friend of mine was hit by a student. The principal muttered something about “we are all about forgiveness as Christians,” and rendered a weak-wristed verdict: the student was to decide his own punishment (which you can imagine was fairly easy-going) and all were supposed to let by-gones by by-gones. You hear the same tripe from believers who have lost their loved ones to a murderer: “We forgive and request that the defendant be shown utmost leniency.” Phooey. These are cases in which the categories of law and gospel have been quite confused. When I get robbed I don’t drop to my knees to pray for my violater, I get on the phone to my sheriff. This is why I get confused when you say that my W2K views are somehow about “grace swallowing up a damnable ethics.” I like law–a lot, I use it everyday–just in its rightful place is all.
The state should be in the business of policing lawbreakers, not sinners. The question isn’t so much THAT the state should be in the business of policing, but HOW. (This is my standing point about that ill-fated national debtate called “abortion.” It’s ill-fated because everyone assumes the question to be “may she or mayn’t she?” when it should be “who gets to decide?” My sense is that those who are on the conventionally conservative side of this debate [i.e. "pro-life," etc.] are really about policing sin). The state shouldn’t be policing sin anymore than the church should be rendering verdicts about who can serve in the military or what non/reproductive laws should be.
But I don’t think the answer is to legalize a certain thing (in this case prostitution). I don’t think this gets us away from the law/sin conflation very well at all.
johnfielding
March 20th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
“further than the GENERAL EQUITY thereof may REQUIRE.â€
Did not realize that Aquinas held that kind of authority for you.
What is “general equity?” In the Oxford English Dictionary the word “equity” is dealt with thus: “equity of a statute according to its reason and spirit so as to make it apply to cases for which it does not expressly provide.”
The original WCF (before the 1788 revisions) seemed to include the supressiion of blasphemies and heresies among the understanding of “general equity.”
Gentry notes that “That which is “expired” in the judicial laws are those elements that structured it for Israel as a nation (the particular land arrangements which allowed for cities of refuge, blood avengers, elders in the gates, stoning [as typological of God's crushing judgment], levirate marriages, and the like) or are applicable to the peculiar ancient circumstances, the accidental historical and cultural factors of Israel (fences around rooftops, goring oxen, etc.).”
Now. Assuming that adultery is something that strikes at the heart of the family structure by (1) introducing a potential rival into the security of the husband/wife relationship and (2) introducing the same insecurity into another covenant head’s household, how is it that harlotry is something that disappears with “expiration of the sundry judicial laws” as a distinctive of Israelite polity, since there are specific sanctions applied to it and, as you admit, it is a universal sinful and , shall I say, distablizing, activity.
To be sure, Aquinas had many useful things to say. This would not be one of them.
W.H. Chellis
March 20th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Let me see Gentry or Thomas… yeah, I will take Thomas.
Or, to be more Reformed, I will take Samuel Rutherford who reminds us that all the sanctions of the Old Covenant judicial laws were of particular equity and pointed to Israel’s unique theocratic status.
W.H. Chellis
March 20th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
More interesting to me is your statement that prostitution is a “destabilizing activity.” Of course, in some sense this is true but you would have to prove it to me. It appears to me, and I do not have proof of this, that in a fallen world stability may in fact be promoted by recognizing that a certain amount of sin must be tolerated.
I cite here the American experience of legal “prohibition” of alcoholic drink. By trying to eliminate the sin of drunkenness the state destabilized society further by creating economic opportunities for criminal behavior much more serious than a few too many drinks.
General Equity and Eliot Spitzer « Heidelblog
March 21st, 2008 at 11:50 am
[...] March 21, 2008 in Two kingdoms, natural law Tags: eliot spitzer, general equity, natural law Bill Chellis weighs in thoughtfully. [...]
johnfielding
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
I will take Rutherford, too, who endorsed the continuity of the laws that had penal sanctions attached. Harlotry would be one.
By the way, since the “sin” of drinking had no corresponding crime (penal sanctions) attached, I am tempted to say that it is only natural law thought that would impel the state to legislate where no biblical crime exists.
johnfielding
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 am
BTW, I endorse Gentry’s reasoning and cite him to give credit. I am not really interested in the rabbinic “polling of theologians,” living and dead, of which Presbyterians seem so fond.
stevez
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:56 am
Bill,
I am not so sure using Prohibition to make the case for legalized prostitution works very well (some seem to also turn to it to make the case against the public bans on smoking to relatively little avail, if you ask me). The two phenomenon seem much too different. The driving out of drink came and went quickly as a failed experiment, but keeping the flesh trade underbelly has endured. Keeping prostitution illegal is not an effort to eliminate the sin of illicit sex as Prohibition was an effort to eliminate drunkeness. Some things are just good laws for a civilized society (i.e. prostitution being illegal), some are moral crusades done disguised as such (Prohibition). Please find another reference to make the case.
I would still think that a dose of localism might help here. I have no problem with legalized prostitution anymore than I do legalized abortion–I just think the local authority should decide. And were I the local authority, I’d say no hookers and no abortionists…the county down the road does though, if you’d like.
W.H. Chellis
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:30 am
John- can you site Rutherford on that one. My reading of Rutherford is that the penal laws have all expired.
W.H. Chellis
March 22nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Steve, I would expect John to oppose legalizing prostitution but am surprised by your position.
The Apostle Paul says that it is good for people to marry so that they do not burn with lust. Of course he is speaking to Christians. Now every community is going to have a large number of unbelievers some of whom will not get married for various reasons. Some because they are really awkward, ugly, deformed, ect. Of course, a visit to the “chicken ranch” will be sinful for these people but might it not be the case that such a visit could be less sinful than possible other alternatives?
Might this sin, at least sometimes, have social advantages in a fallen world.