Should “reasonable and informed” people refrain from thinking freely?

The Public Order Emergency Commission and the book of Lamentations

On February 14, 2022, the government of Canada invoked the Emergencies Act to bring to an end the freedom convoy of truckers who came to Ottawa to protest against vaccine mandates and other COVID measures.  The Act gave the government extraordinary temporary powers that are supposed to be given only in response to a situations that “seriously endangers the health and safety of Canadians or that seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada.”

Unsurprisingly, the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC), which was required by law to inquire about whether or not the invocation of the Act was justified, concluded that it was indeed justified.  As such, the conclusion of the POEC catered to prevailing sentiments about the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa rather than to objective reality. Those negative sentiments were by no means universal—as many people in Ottawa and across Canada and the world had positive feelings about the convoy. But the negative sentiments were the dominant sentiments, and the social cues were clear: it was not considered “proper” to have positive feelings about the convoy.

The Freedom Convoy, however bold and however careless about parking rules, was in its essence a democratic phenomenon.   But if it felt menacing to the mainstream, then, according to the logic of justification, it was okay to freeze bank accounts and to arrest people. 

And when you know that your subjective feelings are in power, you can condescend to be magnanimous to those who disagree with you.  Thus Justice Paul Rouleau, the Commissioner of the POEC, acknowledged, “I do not come to this conclusion [that the invocation of the Act was justified] easily, as I do not consider the factual basis for it to be overwhelming. Reasonable and informed people could reach a different conclusion than the one I have arrived at.”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poec-report-released-friday-1.6750919

Rouleau’s apparently open-minded words seem confusing. If reasonable and informed people examining the factual basis could legitimately reach a conclusion that the invocation of the Act was unjustified, does this not mean that the Act, which is supposed to be an extreme emergency measure, was invoked based on essentially subjective and questionable grounds—in other words, that it was not justified? But there is an unarticulated and tacitly understood fact that helps to make sense of the reality in which we operate: it does not really matter what reasonable and informed people think because they are generally not in power.  The Convoy could have been resolved though negotiation and existing policing tools, but this does not matter if those in power feel that the protesters are not worthy of being negotiated with. In other words, the subjective reality of those in power is defined as objective reality.

Justification for punishment goes back to ancient times.

The question of disproportionate punishment and the need to inquire into the justification or lack of justification for it goes back to ancient times.

The Biblical book of Lamentation offers a multi-voice reflection about the suffering that resulted from the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE.  It also wrestles with the question of justification for what is viewed as divine punishment.

Some quotations from Lamentations are provided below to invite the following reflection: let us compare the understanding of “justification” implied in Rouleau’s ruling to the view of “justification” suggested in Lamentations.  This is done in order to ask: do reasonable and informed people in Canada today have a solid reason to be hopeful about the future of free thought and free expression?

Alas!

Lonely sits the city

Once great with people!

She that was great among nations

Is become like a widow;

The princess among states

Is become a thrall.

Bitterly she weeps in the night,

Her cheek wet with tears.

There is none to comfort her

Of all her friends.

All her allies have betrayed her;

They have become her foes. (1.1-2)

Justified punishment?

Lamentations repeatedly states that the punishment to the people of Jerusalem was justified.  The Babylonians who destroyed the temple are not mentioned by name because they are regarded merely as an instrument at the hand of God, who punished Israel for moral transgression (especially the moral transgressions of its elite):

Her enemies are now the masters,

Her foes are at ease,

Because the Lord has afflicted her

For her many transgressions;

Her infants have gone into captivity. (1.5)

Jerusalem has greatly sinned,

Therefore she is become a mockery (1.8)   

The Lord is in the right,

For I have disobeyed Him. . . .

My heart is in anguish,

I know how wrong I was

To disobey. . . . (1.18, 20)

The Lord vented all His fury,

Poured out His blazing wrath;

He kindled a fire in Zion

Which consumed its foundations.

The kings of the earth did not believe,

Nor any of the inhabitants of the world,

That foe or adversary could enter

The gates of Jerusalem

It was for the sins of her prophets,

The iniquities of her priests,

Who had shed in her midst

The blood of the Just. (4.11-13)

Our fathers sinned and are no more;

And we must bear their guilt.

Slave are ruling over us,

With none to rescue us from them. (5.7-8)

Disproportionate punishment?

But despite these repeated justifications and the humble acceptance of guilt of the Jerusalemite speakers, Lamentations also wrestles with the idea that the punishment seems disproportionately harsh.  The descriptions of suffering—especially of children—makes the punishment seem unnecessarily cruel and raise implicit questions about divine justice. In this way, Lamentations is in the tradition of Job, critically questioning the judgement and actions of God and possibly trying to hold him up to higher levels of empathy and fairness:  

All her inhabitants sigh

As they search for bread;

They have bartered their treasures for food,

To keep themselves alive—

See, O Lord, and behold,

How abject I have become (1.11)

Is there any agony like mine,

Which was dealt out to me

When the Lord afflicted me

On his day of wrath? (1.12)

The Lord has acted like a foe,

He has laid waste Israel,

Laid waste all her citadels,

Destroyed her strongholds.

He has increased within Fair Judah

Mourning and moaning. (2.5)

My heart is in tumult,

My being melts away

Over the ruin of my poor people,

As babes and sucklings languish

In the squares of the city.

They keep asking their mothers,

“Where is bread and wine?” (2.11-12)

The Lord has done what He purposed,

He carried out the decree

That He ordained long ago;

He has torn down without pity. (2.17)

See, O Lord, and behold,

To whom You have done this!

Alas, women eat their own fruit,

Their new-born babes! (2.20)

My foes have snared me like a bird,

Without any cause (3.52) [If the foes are merely instruments in the hands of God, is this then possible criticism of a senselessly cruel God?]

Little children beg for bread;

None gives them a morsel.

Those who feasted on dainties

Lie famished in the streets; (4.4-5)

Hope

The implicit acknowledgement that God may have punished his people disproportionately comes hand in hand with the hope that, following this punishment, He will forgive them and restore them. The right to think freely and to criticize God awakens the love upon which the covenant with God is founded:

But this do I call to mind,

Therefore I have hope:

The kindness of the Lord has not ended,

His mercies are not spent.

They are renewed every morning—

Ample is Your grace!

“The Lord is my portion,” I say with full

heart;

Therefore will I hope in Him.

The Lord is good to those who trust in Him,

To the one who seeks Him;

It is good to wait patiently Till rescue comes from the Lord.

It is good for a man, when young,

To bear a yoke;

Let him sit alone and be patient,

When He has laid it upon him.

Let him put his mouth to the dust—

There may yet be hope.

Let him offer his cheek to the smiter;

Let him be surfeited with mockery.

For the Lord does not

Reject forever,

But first afflicts, then pardons

In His abundant kindness. (3. 21-32)

But You, O Lord,

are enthroned forever,

Your throne endures through the ages.

Why have You forgotten us utterly,

Forsaken us for all time?

Take us back, O Lord, to Yourself,

And let us come back;

Renew our days as of old!

For truly, You have rejected us,

Bitterly raged against us. 

Take us back, O Lord, to Yourself,

And let us come back;

Renew our days as of old! (5.19-22)

How does Lamentations compare to us?

The worldview of Lamentations might be schematically summarized as follows: the people of Israel (especially the elite) sinned; they received harsh and cruel collective punishment that affected many innocent people as well; God might have gone too far; however, God loves his people, and they have reason to hope for a better future. Despite the emphasis on obedience to God, the trajectory from punishment to hope also encourages free thinking and questioning of divine justice.

In comparison, this is our own moral landscape: Many people in power had negative feelings about the Freedom Convoy; the Emergencies Act was invoked; the Act was deemed to be justified, but those who justified it also acknowledge that there is a reasonable and evidence-based basis to say that it was not justified. But is this genuine critical thinking that should inspire hope?

Even though our predicament is infinitely milder and more comfortable than that of 586 BCE Jerusalemites, there is something that is cynically missing from the present equation: the hope that comes from deeply trusting that the authority in charge is benevolent and that justice will be restored. In our case, we can rather expect that more arbitrary “justice” that reflects the subjective interests of those in power will be done.

The “gods” who currently rule over us are on the surface a lot nicer than the wrathful Old-Testament God.  They politely acknowledge that different people might legitimately hold different opinions.  But everybody involved knows that if these other reasonable perspectives are powerless to lead to a fair ruling, then the disproportionate reaction that happened before will quite possibly happen again.  So is this essentially a polite way to give “reasonable and informed” people the following message: if you are smart, please do not disagree with us again?

Source for Biblical quotations: Adele Berlin; Marc Zvi Brettler. The Jewish Study Bible (Kindle Locations 97981-97992). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Source for photo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/tree-surrounded-by-snow-698275/