Yesterday Ricardo Portillo died in a Salt Lake hospital. He died from terminal brain injuries caused by a single punch to his temple. Why? Because he was a volunteer soccer referee and he had yellow-carded a seventeen year old for excessively rough play. While he was writing up the yellow card, the seventeen year old walked up and punched him in the side of the head. Portillo never saw it coming. I’d like to think that this sort of violence and anger is unusual. It’s not.
Everywhere I look, I see a growing anger at authority, whether it’s the referees in sports contests, the police, the government, parents, or children. And this anger is just like what happened to Ricardo Portillo, in the sense that it’s all out of proportion to what seemingly generated it. In Portillo’s case, the player wasn’t even ejected from the game; that takes a red card or two yellow cards. The soccer game wasn’t even in a tournament, just a routine local match. Week after week, there are stories about angry sports contestants, and even more often, stories about out-of-hand parents and fans. Referees in most sports take incredible abuse. Why? Why should they be targets? They’re doing their best, and, in almost all cases, especially on the professional level, they’re impartial.
Every day, there’s another incident of “road rage,” where someone goes berserk, because of another driver’s behavior. Sometimes, frankly, it’s understandable, especially when someone tries to cut in front of people who’ve been politely and patiently waiting, in order, but in both cases, that of the initial offender and that of the outraged offender, the individuals are over-reacting and wanting it “their way” regardless of the impact on others – and the results are often tragically out of proportion to the offense.
We see the same thing in politics and political rhetoric. Day after day, I read and hear the violence in the words of all too many gun owners, everything about how the government will have to take their guns from their cold dead hands, about how the government is out to take their freedoms and their guns. It’s absolutely senseless. The legislation about which they’re getting so enraged deals with banning one class of guns out of hundreds and limiting magazine size – and as many gun owners have pointedly told me, the magazine size makes little difference. Obviously, this rage is fueled by fear, but exactly what is there to fear? The politicians are so cowed by this rage that they aren’t about to do anything, and there has never been anything close to a national consensus, liberals notwithstanding, in the entire history of the United States, for outlawing all individual ownership of firearms.
This rhetorical viciousness is everywhere, and it often goes beyond rhetoric. The anti-abortion extremists have gone so far as to physically threaten and even murder doctors who perform abortions. Like it or not, there are two sides to the abortion debate, especially when the life of the mother is endangered, or she is a victim or rape or incest, if not both. Yet vitriolic absolutist rage isn’t going to solve anything. It’s just going to engender more rage.
The anger over health care is another example. The issue is two-sided. Failure to have health care destroys people and families… and some people simply can’t afford it. Likewise, many small businesses face crippling financial burdens. [I’ll admit I don’t have much sympathy for multi-billion dollar businesses like WalMart who hire tens of thousands of part-timers to avoid paying health care… and then cry poor.] But the vitriol in the rhetoric is astounding.
According to Theodore Roosevelt we need to struggle for “true liberties which can only come through order.” He also stated that “The first principle of civilization is the preservation or order.” There’s also the quote attributed to Jefferson – “Without order, there is no liberty,” but for all the truth behind it, I can’t find any evidence that he actually said it.
On the face of matters, it would seem evident that without order, societies don’t work, and establishing order requires a certain amount of civil authority, but more and more, Americans, as well as others around the globe, seem to take umbrage when that authority applies to us – or those we support. It’s all right to use drones against foreign terrorists, but not against American citizens. Miranda rights are absolutely necessary for American-born citizens [read WASPs], but not for immigrants or foreign-born citizens. It’s fine when the referee punishes a player on the other team, but not on “our” team, and especially not my son or daughter, and I can yell and scream and threaten the ref. Or, I can text safely while driving, so that there shouldn’t be any laws restricting my ability to use electronic devices while driving, and I’ll get really angry if I get a ticket for it. Or, if I’m a celebrity caught driving drunk, I can threaten the officer who arrests me.
Regardless of who said it or who didn’t, liberty and order are inseparable in any workable society. Without liberty, the most ordered society will fail, and we’ve seen that happen time and time in our lifetime. Likewise, without order, there is no society… and no way to protect liberties – except for the strongest and most ruthless.
So why are so many people so enraged at attempts to maintain order?