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| Socrates |
Are Good Manners Necessary?
“The problem with bad manners,” Bill Buckley told us “is
that they sometimes lead to murder.”
No scholar in Connecticut has yet produced a study showing a
correlation between bad manners and murderers once on Connecticut’s death row,
abolished several years back by a well-mannered State Supreme Court. Scholars
and prison records and even the personal testaments of prisoners
have led us to believe that prisons, as a general rule, are schools of bad
behavior.
One of the prisoners set free from death row by
Connecticut’s over-compassionate State Supreme Court in 2015 was Frankie “The Razor” Resto, a
candidate for a death penalty and an ill-mannered character.
The abolition of the death penalty in Connecticut was a three-step
process. In 2012, the State House of Representatives voted to repeal capital
punishment for future cases, choosing to leave past death sentences in
place. The Connecticut State Senate had already voted for the bill, later found
unconstitutional by the same state Supreme Court that had found the death
penalty unconstitutional, and on April 25 it was signed into law by then
Governor Dannel Malloy. In the same year, the State Supreme Court, unsurprisingly,
ruled that applying the death penalty only for past cases was unconstitutional,
and capital punishment in Connecticut was promptly shown the door.
Resto, who burned his mattress while in prison and dealt in
drugs, was called “The Razor” because he was known for shaking down drug
dealers on the street with a straight edge razor. He was paroled early owing to
a newly created program, separate from the usual parole process, devised by
former co-chair of the state judiciary committee Mike Lawlor, then a prison
czar appointed to the newly created position by former Governor Dannel Malloy,
that awarded “get out of prison early credits” to deserving prisoners.
Immediately following his early release from prison, Resto
easily acquired a gun, despite Connecticut’s stringent gun laws, and held up an
Easymart store in Meriden, Connecticut.
When the co-owner of the store handed over the cash, Resto
shot and killed him, without so much as a “thank you very much.” This is not
the kind of well-mannered behavior one expects of Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood.
When I attended high school way back in 1962, honorifics
were very much in vogue. We addressed teachers as Mr., Mrs., and Miss. The fear
that, caught out in some deplorable indiscretion, intelligence might be shared
with our parents made us toe a straight line, at least in school. In the
close-knit world of the neighborhood, eyes were everywhere and police far less
necessary than they presently are in the postmodern period. Boys loved,
respected and feared their fathers.
When my father asked me at the supper table, “How did your
day go?” he knew beforehand exactly how my day had gone, particularly if it was
spotted with delinquencies I had overlooked. No one in the family ever thought
of lying to him, whether the lies were black or white lies.
“You know,” he told me once – and only once – “if you lie,
your word will never be trustworthy.”
All manners are related to moral obligations, and all moral obligations,
Immanuel Kant tells us, are related to duties – not convenient private
moral codes. This whole system of Kantian morality – enforced by fathers and
mothers in intact family structures and aunts and uncles and sometimes nosey
and mischievous neighbors -- has collapsed in the postmodern period. Morality
is now related to power and force.
My wife Andrée, legally blind since birth, was among the
first visually impaired persons to teach in public schools in Connecticut.
Getting there was a fierce battle. Today, more than four decades after she had
left teaching, she still receives notes
from some of her grateful students, all bearing the same moral stamp – “You
were the toughest teacher I ever had, but thanks to you...” and here followed a
series of personal accomplishments.
Andrée’s most memorable teacher was an accomplished Jesuit
priest who taught a course in Aesthetics at Fairfield University, where she had
gone to acquire her Masters in American Studies, in order to convince then
Governor John Dempsey that, having graduated at the top of her college class,
and having taught with distinction for three years in two separate Catholic
schools, and having appeared with special notice in Who’s Who in American
Colleges and Universities, and having now acquired her Masters, with honors, in
a new discipline, she was perfectly capable of teaching sighted students in
public schools. Letters had gone back and forth for about two years, the
Governor claiming he could not overrule college administrators. But finally after
much clarifying correspondence a letter appeared from Dempsey that said, “OK Andrée,
you win,” and she was certified to teach in public schools.
The priest was big man in a flowing robe, in appearance
somewhat like G.K. Chesterton. We became friendly and one evening over our
meager supper he said that Socrates was a moral man.
“How do you know?” I asked him.
“Socrates’ last word, after he drank the hemlock,” the
priest explained, “was an instruction to one of his disciples to pay for a
rooster he wished to sacrifice to Asklepios.
Socrates’ last words to Crito were, “Don’t forget to sacrifice a rooster to
Asklepios,” whose father was the god Apollo. Asklepios had special powers of healing; indeed, he had the
power to bring the dead back to life.
The instruction, credible scholars believe, was a code to
his followers. One scholar commented on “what
Socrates means as he speaks his last words. When the sun goes down and you
check in for sacred incubation at the precinct of Asklepios, you sacrifice a
rooster to this hero who, even in death, has the power to bring you back to
life. As you drift off to sleep at the place of incubation, the voice of that
rooster is no longer heard. He is dead, and you are asleep. But then, as the
sun comes up, you wake up to the voice of a new rooster signaling that morning
is here, and this voice will be for you a sign that says: the word that died
has come back to life again. Asklepios has once again shown his sacred power.
The word is resurrected.”
The conversation – the splendid dialogue -- may now
continue. New roosters crow eternal truths from the housetops. Though the
messenger of truth had died, the truth and the means of conveying the messages were,
for all practical purposes, eternal.
The postmodern world has left very little of all this
intact. Manners are bad and getting worse. Courts rule, in many cases, in favor
of social anarchy. Fathers, especially in major cities in Connecticut, have
fled their familial obligations. Honorifics have become as numerous as they are
meaningless. Teaching, once considered a calling – like the priesthood – has become
a grinding chore. And college graduates, armed with degrees in Yeti Hunting or
Tree Climbing or Lady Gaga or Zeitgeist Science, almost certainly do not
know who Asklepios or Socrates was.
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