Deep Assumptions about Power (4 of 7)

This is the fourth post in seven-part series called "A Pragmatic Case for Pacifism." For a link to the table of contents for the entire series, click here.

We have arrived at the halfway point in my blog series about pacifism. For the first three posts in the series, I argued that violence is ineffective. [E1] I cited a number of studies showing that it is not an effective tool for disciplining children, protecting oneself, reducing crime, or overthrowing oppressive governments. I offered an analysis as to why the threat of violence creates moreresistance than cooperation and why individuals and nations cannot seem to eliminate their enemies by killing them.

But that was the easy part of my project. Anyone can point out flaws in people or systems. However, for my blog series to have any value, it has to do more than that. I have to offer constructive alternatives to violence: nonviolent ways of disciplining children, protecting oneself, reducing crime, etc. that are plausible and effective alternatives to violence. The goal of this series is not to criticize those who make use of violence, [E2] but to make the case that there is a better way to fight for good in the world. [E3]

Unfortunately, I’m not ready to present these nonviolent alternatives to you yet. Why not? Because I fear they would fall on deaf ears. For those of us who have been immersed in the logic of necessary violence, [E4] every nonviolent solution or proposal initially strikes us as unrealistic. It doesn’t matter such a proposal has statistical support, scholarly backing, or a track record of success. One can always attribute the past successes of nonviolence to something else. The critics of nonviolence are fond of saying, “Just because nonviolence works some or even most of the time doesn’t mean we can rely on it all of the time. And it is in those cases when nonviolence doesn’t work that violence is most needed.” [E5]

Perhaps I sound defensive here, for I am anticipating negative reactions before I have even presented the argument. I shouldn’t presume to know how you, my reader, will react to what I am about to say, but I’m making an educated guess based on my own gut-reactions. The logic of necessary violence is so widespread in our society that I myself, as a committed pacifist, have a hard time accepting them.  Often times, when I hear a nonviolent solution to crime or oppression or war, I think, “How naïve! There’s no way that could work.” Now that I’ve been looking at this for a while, I have come to see that these gut reactions are not based on empirical evidence, sound reasoning, or even philosophical objections. Instead, my distrust of nonviolence is a result of the way I have been taught to think about power.

The deepest reason why most people have a hard time embracing pacifism is because they believe that violence is the ultimate form of power. To them, the call to nonviolence sounds like a call to become weak and helpless in the world, which no one is completely willing to do. After all, all of us seek power. Perhaps that sounds cynical, but I don’t mean for it to be. I’m not suggesting that power is a bad thing, or that everyone seeks power as an end in itself. I realize that not everyone wants to be in charge, and not everyone feels comfortable with power when they get it. Still, I would maintain that everyone seeks power, because power is the ability to influence people or events toward desired outcomes. In order to pursue any goal in the world, we must also seek the power we need to achieve that goal. For example, the kindest and humblest person you know might want nothing more than to make children happy, and so they will pursue training and credentialing that allows and enables them to make children happy. That is still a pursuit of power. Similarly, an Anchorite monk who wants nothing to do with society may run into the wilderness so that no one can disturb him. That is still seeking power – the power to live life undisturbed. Seeking power is not intrinsically good or bad, but it is inherent to the human experience. Consequently, all humans have developed beliefs early in our lives about what power is and how one can acquire it.

In Western society, we have been conditioned to believe that the most powerful force in the universe is violence. [E6] We are taught, in various and subtle ways, that violence created us, [E7] that violence is the glue that holds society together [E8], and that violence is the only weapon strong enough to save us from evil. [E9] [E10] These beliefs are not conclusions that we have deduced after careful study and analysis. They are the assumptions that we begin with. They are what philosophers call mythical beliefs. [E11]

I know that I promised to keep my argument for pacifism grounded in evidence, statistics, research, etc., but no amount of evidence can persuade us to adopt nonviolence so long as we are filtering that evidence through our mythical beliefs about violence. For me to persuade you to be a pacifist without challenging those beliefs would be like trying to purchase a car at a U.S. dealership with Japanese yen. It wouldn’t matter if I have enough wealth to afford the purchase – in the context of mythical violence, my arguments don’t have any currency.

Therefore, in my next post, I will offer an alternative "myth" about what constitutes true power [E12]. To do this, I will draw deeply from another tradition in the West – the Christian tradition – to show how it offers an alternative understanding of power. [E13] Indeed, I think that one way that we can frame the Christian gospel is that it is a revelation about what constitutes true power in the universe. [E14] After laying that foundation, I’ll actually present the nonviolent principles and practices to which I have been referring, and I’ll end the series by considering how Christian pacifists might respond in the face of the most ruthless kind of violence.

***

End Notes

[E1] – Just for the record, I also believe that the use of violence is “immoral,” but as my ethical philosophy has progressed, I have come to see concepts such as morality and effectiveness as interconnected. Besides that, it is hard to make the case that any action is “immoral” to a general audience in our pluralistic society, so I decided to approach it from the angle of effectiveness.

[E2] – Also for the record, I believe that most citizens of the United States are guilty of “making use of violence,” even if we ourselves aren’t the ones who carry it out. For example, when the general public “calls for blood” in response to a terrorist attack, that puts pressure on government officials to order military officials to launch airstrikes and invasions and other forms of institutionalized violence. Although soldiers often end up being the ones who “pull the trigger,” they don’t usually make the decision to shoot or kill, but are following orders given to them from officials who are elected by the general public. Thus, in a democracy, we all have to share some degree of responsibility for the actions by representatives of the U.S. government.

[E3] – Yes, you heard me correctly. I said there is another way to fight for good in the world. I am not one of those pacifists who avoids using martial or confrontational metaphors because they contain “violent language.” Instead, following the example of the New Testament, I want to appeal to the good impulses that can drive one to engage in warfare (justice, courage, sacrifice, etc.) and employ them in a more appropriate setting.

[E4] – The logic of necessary violence is my way of referring to all of the public dialogue, private conversation, entertainment and thought that flows from the uncritical assumption that the only way to protect yourself or do good in this world is through the use of violence. Hence, it is the logic of necessary violence. Whenever a presupposition like this is repeated often enough, even if it is implied more often than it is stated, we find ourselves believing it.

[E5] – This is a hypocritical argument, as the critics of nonviolence rarely apply this same principle to the “necessary” use of violence. After all, there are many circumstances in which violence has failed: attempted coups, botched assassinations, friendly fire, etc., and yet none of these failures are taken as evidence that violence only works some of the time. Instead, when violence fails, most people try to understand why it failed so that they can try to use it more effectively the next time. Why can’t this same principle be applied to nonviolence?

[E6] – “Western society” (i.e. the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) is not alone in thinking this way. In fact, I would argue that pretty much all of the nations of the world today are committed to the logic of necessary violence, partially because they have been influenced by the West. But that has not always been the case. Archeologists have discovered some ancient societies such as the Hrappan society in Ancient India and the Norte Chico civilization in ancient South America which seemed to have developed advanced societies without institutionalized violence. Apparently, as their communities sought power, it did not seem imperative to them to seek the power of violence. As it so happens, both of these societies have left written languages that have yet to be decoded, and I hope that we will someday decode them and learn a lot from them.

[E7] It is difficult to trace the exact origins of “Western Civilization,” but most people would identify the Greek city states as one of the places where it emerged. For the Greeks, violence or chaos was the fundamental substance of the world. According to Hesiod, the first substance to exist was Chaos, and out of Chaos came Gaia (the Earth), and from them came everything else. Their children had the Titans and then the gods, whose bloody battles spawned the world order in which we now find ourselves. (http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/CS/CSGaia.html) Similar accounts can be found in Babylonian, Assyrian, Sumerian, and Roman myths.

This may seem like a straw man in my critique of Western civilization today because most Westerners don’t believe in these stories. But I would argue that it still influence us – even after the story itself disappears, the ideas behind it manifest in many ways. For example, the modern account of evolution is often described as creation by violence. I don’t really want to get into an extended conversation about evolution in this post, but I do think that emphasis on violence as creative (via natural selective) rather than on life as the creative force (via mutation and adaptation) reveals something about our Western biases.

However you feel about creation in a big sense, there’s no denying that our national myths all point to violence as the source of our creation. For example, in the United States, we believe that the revolutionary war created our nation. We point to July 4, 1776 as the day that our nation was born, the day when we proclaimed our intent to rebel violently against the English government, and this proclamation is ritually reinforced through the national holiday of Independence Day, in which we shoot fireworks to commemorate warfare and sing battle hymns to the Republic.  

But why is July 4, 1776 considered the beginning of the U.S. nation? I would argue that June 21, 1788 – the day on which our Constitution was ratified and the 13 colonies decided to bind together as one nation in a legal document – would be a better marker of the beginning of the U.S. government. Or if you want to define a nation in terms of the identity of the people living here as Americans rather than British colonists, then you have to go back before the Revolutionary War. What I’m trying to point out is that these claims are not rational but mythical: we look to violence as the creative force that brings nations and perhaps even the human species into being.

[E8] The belief that violence is “the glue that holds society together” has been maintained in the West for a long time. It was perhaps most clearly by Thomas Hobbes in his famous passage from the Leviathan: “Hereby, it is manifest that during the time that men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a condition which is called war; and such a war as is every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known, and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war… In such a condition… the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  In other words, if there is not a government with enough power to keep all people too terrified to break the law, chaos would be unleashed and people would indiscriminately kill each other. I think it’s safe to say that this view has been disproven by the existence of several stateless societies in the world that do not devolve into sheer chaos. Even so, we find ourselves with this great fear that if the guns were removed, people would take the opportunity to do great harm to each other. (The Purge movies are a modern expression of this philosophy.)

[E9] Violence is also seen as the only tool that can save us from evil (which our favorite word for other people’s violence). Again, this idea has a long tradition in the west – dating back to the Pax Romana of Augustus at least – but it has manifested in our own time as the theory of deterrence. Thomas Schelling was one of the political scientists who developed the theory of deterrence, the more weapons that we develop (specifically, nuclear weapons), the safer the world will become, as the mutual threat of violence will keep nations from acting violently toward each other. This was an extremely formative philosophy during the 60s and 70s, but the leading political figures of that time – including Henry Kissinger – have since rejected it.

[E10] And so, we see Violence as Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. Are you picking up on the religious overtones yet?

[E11] By “mythical,” philosophers do not necessarily mean these beliefs are false or even that they are irrational, but that they are “pre-rational” – they are the formative beliefs as the base of all of our other beliefs.

[E12] Remember, I am not using “myth” to mean falsehood here. More like “foundational belief.”

[E13] Although you don’t have to be a Christian in order to be a pacifist, pacifism only makes sense when it is tied to a particular tradition. And so, at this point, I have to abandon my attempt to appeal to a general audience and make the case for my particular version of pacifism, Christian pacifism. Actually, even “Christian pacifism” is not a homogenous ideology. In his book, Nevertheless, John Howard Yoder identifies something like 20 different types of Christian pacifism, and I would only embrace a few of those myself. I mention this because I want to make it clear that I’m not speaking on behalf of all pacifists, or even all Christian pacifists.

[E14] Let me make one more point clear: I don’t think that pacifism (by itself) is the “bottom line” of the gospel. Instead, the bottom line of the gospel is that the world is being reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. However, I do believe that nonviolence is one of the implications of the gospel, and there are certain ways to frame the story that bring this to the forefront. If you want to read version of this story, you can see my previous post on the Biblical story of nonviolence here. 

Why We Can’t Kill Off the Terrorists... Or Anyone Else (3 of 7)

This is the third post in seven-part series called "A Pragmatic Case for Pacifism." For a link to the table of contents for the entire series, click here.

Many people believe that the best way to protect ourselves in this world is through the use of force [E1] and therefore that countries with the most powerful military shouldn’t have any trouble keeping their citizens safe. People who hold this view tend to be frustrated and bewildered by the fact that the United States cannot seem to defeat terrorist groups like ISIS. They wonder, what’s the problem? We have a better trained military, superior technology, and far more financial resources at our disposal. By all standards, we are far more powerful than the band of terrorists in Iraq and Syria. So they ask, can’t we just shoot the bad guys, bomb their bases, or nuke the whole area if necessary? For such people, it feels like it shouldn’t be this hard to win this war!

Those who feel this way about ISIS join a great tradition of people in world history who have been shocked and surprised that their superior military have not been able to eliminate seemingly weaker opponents. The United States first experienced this bewilderment when we went to war in Vietnam half a century ago. Although our military was far more powerful than the Viet Cong, we couldn’t seem to defeat them. The British had the same experience about two hundred years earlier, when they couldn’t defeat a meager band of colonists in America, despite the fact that they had the most powerful military in the world at the time. The mighty Romans could never quite eliminate the Germanic “barbarians” (who eventually overtook their empire) [E2]. The ancient Chinese empire could never quite eliminate the steppe peoples to their north (ditto). For whatever reason, every Empire that has at one time held the title, “most powerful in the world” has run into this problem.

Why does this happen? Why can’t powerful nations defeat their enemies by killing them?

In a nutshell: the hydra effect. [E3] In Greek mythology, the hydra was a sea monster with several heads. If you tried to cut off any one of its heads, another two would grow in its place. The “hydra effect” is something that happens when your method for fixing a problem creates more problems while you are fixing the first one. For example, some people claim that the development of pesticides has a “hydra effect,” because while it eliminates some pests from agricultural fields, it makes room for greater and more damaging pests to fill their place. In the same way, extrajudicial killings have a hydra effect. For every person you kill, you create more enemies who weren’t your enemies before.

We see this happening with ISIS. Late last year, four military officers who were engaged in drone warfare wrote to President Obama, asking him to stop sending drone strikes, as this became a major recruitment tool for ISIS. [E4] Notice: This letter did not come from naive, liberal protesters who were opposed to drones for moral reasons, but from on-the-ground military veterans who saw that they were counterproductive to their supposed aims. Here’s what they observed: whenever the United States assassinated someone with a drone, that action enraged the friends, family members, and community members of the assassinated person, some of whom decided to join the fight against the United States (including its civilians) in response.

This is hard for us to understand when imagine the world as being divided between “good guys” and “bad guys.” Many of us picture the Middle East as having essentially two kinds of people: terrorists and dictators who do evil and cause harm, and innocent people who want nothing to do with the violence but are trapped there. [E5] But the truth is there is much more of a range. On one end of the continuum, there are people who openly support the United States, but when a drone strike occurs in their community, they go from being outspoken supporters to silent supporters, for fear of offending a community in grief. Next down the line, there were people who were already silent supporters of the United States, and a drone strike might move them into a position of neutrality, believing that both the U.S. and ISIS are evil, since both are involved in the business of killing. Drone strikes can turn people who are neutral into people who believe that the U.S. is worse, and ISIS is the lesser evil of the two. It can turn people who believe that ISIS is the lesser evil into people who believe that ISIS is justified. It can take people who believe that ISIS is justified and convince them to join ISIS. Et cetera. Every act of violence tends to move people one down one more rung on the anti-U.S. scale. And this range of positions exists not only in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS is centered, but to a lesser degree in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia, and less still in Turkey and India, and to a small extent in the United States and Europe. The entire human community is interconnected, so when you attack one group of people, the negative response ripples outwards across the whole world.

The same thing happens on an individual level. Let’s say that someone murdered my father and got away with it. Out of anger at the injustice, I decide to take matters in my own hands, so I hunted that person down and killed them. That makes it even, right? One murder for one murder. Nope, it doesn’t work that way. Because I didn’t just kill a person, I killed someone else’s son, brother, father, neighbor, etc. So that person will then make it their mission to hunt me down and kill me. This is the well-known cycle of violence that Mahatma Gandhi referred to when he said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” [E6] Violence, in attempting to eliminate one problem, always creates more.

And this is only one dimension of “the Hydra Effect” – the effect it has on your enemies. But let’s say that somehow, you are able to completely eradicate your enemy. You kill off everyone who poses a threat so that no one is out there seeking vengeance against you. Even in this unrealistic situation, you will still feel the effects of the Hydra Effect, because you created a standard in your own community that establishes violence as the key to power. Thus, if you don’t create enemies out of the friends of your enemies, you create enemies out of your own friends. This is what happened with the empires of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, those rare historical examples of people who seemed untouchable, who defeated everyone they came in contact with. Even in those cases, the Hydra Effect eventually destroyed their empires because their own people – in dedicating themselves to violent power – turned on each other.

We have not learned the lessons of history. The United States is right on track to be the next great empire that collapses under the weight of its own violence. [E7] And yet some people suggest that what we need is to invest more heavily in our military, despite the fact that we are already the world’s premier military power – by far!!! [E8] This blind addiction to violence resembles the gambling addict, who despite being in the lead, feels compelled to make more and more aggressive bets, until she loses everything she has. Our only hope for breaking this pattern is to “cash in” on the goodwill that still exists in the world and walk away from the cycle of violence. History teaches us that violence does not work over the long haul, and that you cannot eliminate the threats to individuals or nations by killing or incapacitating your enemies.

End Notes

[E1] I think the very phrase, “use of force,” is revealing. It is a euphemism for the appeal to violence. But people are uncomfortable saying that they appeal to violence, so they abstract it and call it “force” instead.

But “force” is much broader than violence, and there are many nonviolent types of force. Economic boycotts and sanctions are a force, peer pressure is a force, argument and persuasion are forces. The great pacifist Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for the use of “soul force.” Pacifists get ourselves in trouble when we accept the premise that “the use of force” is a bad thing, because it is often necessary and appropriate to use force. Instead, we should challenge the equivocation that people make between force and violence.

[E2] Technically, the Germanic invaders took over the Western portion of the Roman Empire, while the Roman state continued to exist (as the Byzantine Empire) until 1453. But I digress…

[E3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_effect

[E4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/obama-drone-war-isis-recruitment-tool-air-force-whistleblowers

[E5] Dividing the world into good guys and bad guys is one of the fundamental myths that justifies the use of violence. More on this later.

[E6] There is some debate about whether Gandhi himself actually said this or whether the quote originated from one of his biographers, Louis Fischer. Either way, it reflects Gandhi’s belief system well.

[E7] World War II is typically identified as the turning point when the United States emerged on the global scene as the world’s foremost superpower. We have been mired in war almost constantly since that war, and I think it can be attributed to the Hydra effect. Think about it: We defeated the Axis Powers in WWII in part due to our development of the atom bomb. But then one of our allies, the Soviet Union, acquired atomic technology and we entered the Cold War. After many decades of the Cold War, we eventually “defeated” the Soviet Union, partially through our proxy wars (such as the war in Afghanistan) and our espionage training and technological development. But these very resources equipped people like Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to engage in terrorist warfare against us. Then, in our struggle against Al-Qaeda, we have fought Middle Eastern regimes that offered them safe haven and made alliances with other groups (such as ISIS) that could help us gain power over those regions. Yet again, we find that our partners use the very violence that we equipped them with against us once the immediate threat is removed. We can’t seem to learn the lesson.

[E8] https://www.military1.com/navy/article/402211-how-much-stronger-is-the-us-military-compared-with-the-next-strongest-power/ 

Why Threats Can't Produce Good Results (2 of 7)

This is the second post in seven-part series called "A Pragmatic Case for Pacifism." For a link to the table of contents for the entire series, click here.

In my last post, I presented evidence that violence is not an effective solution to any major social problem. Evidence is good and all, but it doesn’t mean anything to us until we can make sense of it. So for this post, I’m going to begin addressing the question, “Why doesn’t violence work?”

But before we tackle that question, we have to ask a prior question: “Why do people use violence in the first place?” I realize that that’s a pretty big question, and that there are a wide range of reasons why people resort to violence, but for this series, I am focusing specifically on what I call justifiable violence [E1], violence which people claim is necessary for some greater good.

I believe that all of us use justifiable violence is used for one of two reasons: we either (1) seek to compel people to cooperate with us by threatening them with it, or (2) we seek to eliminate people who threaten us by killing or otherwise incapacitating them. Today, I am going to explain why threatening people is not an effective way to achieve cooperation. In my next post, I'll explain why individuals and societies can't get rid of their problem by killing the people who seem to be causing it.

Now, threatening people with violence sounds like a pretty negative and extreme action, but in reality, it is used by a wide variety of people in many different situations. For example, when parents calmly sit down and explain to their children that they will be spanked if they break a certain rule, this qualifies as a violent threat (although admittedly a mild one). When police officers give orders to civilians, they may not be explicitly threatening them, but the combination of their weapons and their uniforms convey the message that they are authorized and enabled to use "force" if such citizens don't comply. This too is a threat. And, of course, there are more blatant examples, such as when a bully threatens to beat someone up if he doesn't hand over his lunch money. All of these are threats of various kinds.

At first glance, threats seem to be very effective at achieving their goals. When an officer points a gun at someone's head and yells, "Freeze!", most people comply. Why? Because we don't want to get shot! For the same reason, children will at least appear to obey their parents to avoid getting spanked, and many students hand their lunch money over to bullies to avoid getting beat up. The same thing occurs on a bigger international scale as well. For example, one army will surrender to another when it realizes that it has been outmatched. [E2] 

Even I can't deny that in these kinds of situations, violence works. The threat of violence does produce results; it can get people to cooperate against their wishes in the short term. After all, most of us will do just about anything to avoid harm or death. But all of the evidence that I presented in my previous post demonstrates that in the long term, threats can't maintain these results. A citizen may comply with a police officer when a gun is pointed at her head, but the moment that threat is removed, she'll go right back to what she was doing before. In fact, she may feel so humiliated by the experience that it could double her resolve to break the law. Or she may decide that she needs to invest in weapons so that she can fight back against the police. Or she may work harder at finding ways to hide her behavior so that the police won't catch her the next time. However she responds, threats do not convince belligerents that their behavior is unwise, morally wrong, or intrinsically harmful. Consequently, the moment they feel like they can resume their behavior without experiencing harm, they will. [E3]

To summarize, I acknowledge that threatening people with violence can compel obedience, stop crime, and make people feel safer in the short term, but in the long term, invoking violence comes back to bite those who wield it. People who are threatened eventually find ways to rebel, and their rebellion is usually more fierce after they have been threatened than it was before. But defenders of violence might point out that there is a way to deal with this problem of escalation: what if you kill or permanently disable people who won't cooperate with you? Well, that doesn't work either. It will be the subject of my next post.

***

[E1] For example, some people hurt others to get revenge, even though they have nothing to gain by it. Other people lash out when they are feeling emotional, and their actions are not necessarily aimed at controlling people. And there are even a few people who find pleasure in harming others. None of these examples fit within my explanation about why people use justifiable violence. But none of these are examples are appropriate uses of violence by any standard, including people who argue that violence is sometimes necessary or good. So there is no need for me to spend time in this post explaining why vengeance, blind rage, and sadism are bad things.

Just to be clear, I call some acts of violence justifiable because I recognize that there are significant arguments that can be raised to defend them as morally appropriate. But I do not consider them to be justified – otherwise, I wouldn’t be a pacifist.

[E2] In a battle, at least. But I don't believe that military tactics (by themselves) can win a war. Our history books tend to mislead us about this, as they typically identify the end of wars with certain battles. For example, American history books often depict the Battle of Yorktown as the event that ended the Revolutionary War, due to the fact that the British were pinned between French troops and Washington's army. That is very misleading, to say the least. A closer look at the history will reveal that there were still several battles on land and at sea (especially in Virginia and the Caribbean). Moreover, it's not as though the British felt that the Americans had a stronger army then them and just gave up. They still had the strongest military in the world by the end of the American Revolution. Instead, they decided that fighting to maintain dominance over these colonies wasn't worth the cost. Leading thinkers like Adam Smith were arguing that it would be just as advantageous for the British Empire to have a free trade agreement with America than to maintain dominance over them, key British politicians like Edmond Burke were criticizing various aspects of British rule, and the morale of soldiers overseas was lowering, not just due to the fact that they weren't winning, but due to the fact that they were so far from home for such an extended period of time. I think that the Continental Army won the war, not through superior military skills but through superior resilience, which is a nonviolent feature. I would also argue that treaties, rather than battles, should mark the end of wars in our history books. Instead, they are treated more like epilogues.

[E3] That being said, I will acknowledge that there are situations in which violence is invoked, and it eventually leads to reconciliation. Children who are spanked don’t always resent their parents – sometimes, they come to see the wisdom of their discipline. Some criminals who were forced to go to prison because a police officer pointed a gun at their head have a transformative experience in prison, and they may even thank the officer. But in those kinds of cases, I would argue that the violence was not working by itself. What led to the positive results were the other factors paired with violence: the teaching that accompanied the spanking, the desire to please one’s parents, the time to reflect on one’s life, the positive encouragement one received in prison, etc. And since the other factors were ultimately what lead to the positive results, despite the negative impact that the violence has, that makes me ask – what would happen if we removed the violence from the equation and only relied on these more effective components that lead to change?   

Nonviolence is More Effective than Violence (1 of 7)

This is the first post in seven-part series called "A Pragmatic Case for Pacifism." For a link to the table of contents for the entire series, click here.

Three years ago, I started writing a blog series that tried to explain why I am a pacifist. The arguments were pretty solid (in my biased opinion), but something wasn’t working about the series. It wasn’t persuasive. It wasn’t elegant. It was too… theoretical. Yes, that was the problem: it was too theoretical.  In the end, it didn’t matter how good I could make pacifism sound in theory. After all, the reason that most people reject pacifism is not because they question its philosophical foundations, but because common sense tells them that we need the threat of force in order to survive in this world. I mean, how else are you supposed to deal with criminals who have no regard for the law? How else can you defend yourself from “a bad guy with a gun”? How else can genocidal dictators be stopped? In all of these cases, common sense tells us that violent force is the only thing that can keep these evil people and actions in check.

However, common sense has been known to be wrong, from time to time. [E1]

Therefore, I am going to begin my rebooted pacifism series by attacking this issue head-on. Contrary to what common sense tells us, I am going to argue that nonviolent methods are more effective at resisting evil and encouraging good than violent methods are. [E2] I believe that there is a great deal of evidence that supports this. So, rather than arguing from religion or philosophy, I’m just going to appeal to facts: studies, surveys, statistics, and a few concrete examples that show that violent approaches to a range of social problems are not particularly effective:

1. Physical punishment (such as spanking) is not an effective way to discipline children. Many parents use physical punishment as a tool to keep their children from misbehaving. Now – hear me carefully – I don’t think this makes them bad parents. I was spanked a few times as a child, and when this happened, it wasn’t because my father was angry or wanted to hurt me, but because he hoped it would deter me from misbehaving again. And it can work – in the short run. A child who has been spanked will avoid repeating the behavior for a few weeks. However, there have over 80 studies that have shown that spanking does not work in the long haul. [E3] Some children get used to it, others focus on hiding their behavior from their parents, and a high percentage of children who are spanked are more likely to become violent themselves. For these reasons, the American Psychological Association recommends against using it. [E4]

Oh, and by the way, this doesn’t just apply to children. The most recent veterinary studies have shown that physical punishment is not even an effective way to discipline dogs! [E5]

2. The threat of violence is not an effective way to reduce crime. Many people believe that the most effective way for societies to prevent crime is by threatening to punish lawbreakers physically. The idea is that people will be less likely to break the law if they know that they could be hurt or killed for doing it. This is the kind of common-sense thinking that justifies the death penalty in the United States: many states are afraid that, if they were to remove the death penalty, crime would rise. However, study after study has shown that the death penalty does not significantly reduce the crime rate. [E6] On the contrary, the death penalty may contribute to the rise of crime because criminals are more desperate to resist getting caught. One study has shown that police officers are more likely to be killed in states that have the death penalty than in those that do not. [E7] And this is not just liberal propaganda either. Based on this information, about 88% of criminologists do not believe that the death penalty is an effective deterrent. [E8]

3. The threat of violence (via owning a weapon) is not an effective way to defend yourself. “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” This is the mantra of the NRA, which encourages people to buy guns in order to protect themselves. I certainly understand the logic behind this: If an armed psychopath walked into a school or a mall with the intention of killing strangers, I would feel much safer if I or someone I trusted had a gun in their possession to stop this person. Of course, these situations are very rare. In the meantime, during the 99.99% of the time when the average American is not confronted with a mass shooting, possessing a gun makes it more likely that children could get a hold of the gun, that a “good guy” with a gun will incorrectly identify someone as a threat or accidently fire the weapon, or that a non-lethal confrontation will escalate into a lethal one because of the presence of guns. One longitudinal study showed that for every 1% increase in gun ownership in a community, there is a 0.7% increase in homicides. [E9] And even in those rare cases in which a psychopath intends to kill strangers and a gun could be useful, there have been plenty of cases in which unarmed people have used nonviolent means to stop violent crimes from occurring. Consider, for example, the methods used by Antoinette Tuff and Howard Swick to stop school shootings. [E10]

4. Violent revolutions are not very effective at stopping oppressive governments. Surely, if there is any scenario in which violence is justified, it is when you have to use it to stop an oppressive government. I won’t deny that there are some truly evil dictators out there who have the intention and the power to commit horrible atrocities. [E11] When faced with this evil, several of history’s greatest pacifists have given up their idealism and accepted the necessity of using violence as a “necessary evil.”

But in the middle of the twentieth century, a nonviolent method for resisting dictators emerged which has proven to be more effective than engaging in battle. Most people have heard of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns in India, but they are not aware at this approach has developed, spread, and been successfully used in many of the most oppressive regimes around the world. In 2011, two political scientists analyzed all of the conflicts of the twentieth century and discovered – to their surprise – that nonviolent revolutions were twice as likely to succeed in their goals than violent revolutions were. [E12] Consequently, even in the face of evil dictators, nonviolence is more effective.

Conclusions

So there you go: I just presented a sampling of the massive empirical evidence which shows that nonviolent methods are more effective at solving a range of problems than violent ones are. Individually, these studies may seem to address various policy issues, but collectively, they make the case that there violence itself is an ineffective option. In my next post, I’ll start to move from evidence to analysis, explaining why I believe that violence is ineffective, without yet invoking my religious views.

Of course, I realize that if you weren’t a pacifist going into this post, you probably still have several questions and reservations. As everyone knows, studies and statistics can be flawed. And so I invite you to raise questions and critiques to the evidence I presented (in a respectful manner, of course). My goal for this post was not to convince you that pacifism is right, but to convince you that there is enough evidence for its effectiveness that it deserves to be taken seriously. If I’ve accomplished that, I hope you’ll continue dialoguing with me through the rest of this blog series.

****

[E1] Actually, common sense has proven to be wrong a lot. Just think about some of the major scientific discoveries that have disproven common sense: When Copernicus suggested that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the sun revolving around the earth, that defied the common sense idea that the sun was actually moving, which everyone thought they were observing every day. Many of our theories about time and space and matter defy common sense. For example, the concept that very solid objects such as rocks consist primarily of empty space (because they are made up of atoms, 99% of which are empty space), defies common sense. This is why Albert Einstein once said, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of 18.”

[E2] The philosopher within me is squirming as I type this. I am aware that I am framing this as an objective claim which I can prove, but from a philosophical perspective, I recognize that the statistics and surveys that I am presenting are all theory-laden, and that you cannot completely resolve debates like this by appealing to “the facts.” Even so, I think “effectiveness” is a useful category, and there is enough overlap in different concepts of effectiveness that I can get away with using it now before I define it more narrowly (through an ideological lens) later.

[E3] http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/06/why-spanking-doesnt-work/

[E4] http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx

[E5] http://shibashake.com/dog/dog-discipline-punishment-beat-hit-dog

[E6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/30/theres-still-no-evidence-that-executions-deter-criminals/

[E7] http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1072&context=clsoc_crim_facpub

[E8] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-believe-death-penalty-effective-deterrent

[E9] The article is entitled, “Examining the relationship between the prevalence of guns and homicide rates in the USA using a new and improved state-level gun ownership proxy” from the journal Injury Prevention, first published on April 16, 2014. You can see a link to the abstract at http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/early/2014/04/16/injuryprev-2014-041187.full. I got the statistics from this link, which cited that article. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/01/good_guy_with_a_gun_myth_guns_increase_the_risk_of_homicide_accidents_suicide.html

[E10] Antoinette Tuff was the book keeper at a school in Decatur, Georgia in 2014, when a gunman walked in with the intention of shooting children in the school. She talked him down with words of love. You can see her story here.  http://www.npr.org/2014/01/31/268417580/how-one-womans-faith-stopped-a-school-shooting. Howard Swick was a pastor who was called into a hostage situation in Barbour County, West Virginia in 2015, and was able to convince a gunman to put down his gun so that he could give him a hug. You can see that story here. http://crimewatchdaily.com/2015/08/27/wv-school-shooting-averted-with-help-of-heroic-teacher-pastor-says-superintendent/

[E11] Perhaps the most famous of these is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist theologian who decided to participate in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

[E12] “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict” by Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth. http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/IS3301_pp007-044_Stephan_Chenoweth.pdf Chenowath also has a great Ted Talk on this subject, which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

What is pure democracy? A Thought Experiment

It’s election season, and as we get closer to establishing a Republican and a Democratic nominee, there are a number of people who are complaining that our process for selecting a president in the United States is “undemocratic”. The electoral college, through which we make these decisions, seems to be unnecessarily complex and gives too much power to the establishment. In my mind, that's a fair argument. But then many such people go on to say, “If only we had a direct democracy, in which each vote counted equally and they were all cast at the same time, this would resolve the problem.” I don’t think so. In my opinion, voting (by itself) is never a clear way to determine the will of any group of people.

To illustrate this, I’ve created a thought experiment: Imagine that someone is planning to cook dinner, and so they send out a blind email asking a group of 24 people what they would prefer to eat: beef, chicken, fish, or tofu. Everyone responds to the email individually, and then the cook replies to the whole group with the results: 8 people had selected beef, 6 people had selected chicken, 6 people had selected fish, and 4 people had selected tofu. So, he announces that he will be cooking beef, since that is what the group selected democratically.

The people who selected tofu were horrified. They would not, under any circumstances, eat beef. Had they known that the vote would go this way, they would have voted for something else. So they got together and sent a follow-up email to the group, responding that they had all decided to change their votes from tofu to fish. According to them, this created a new result: 8 people for beef, 6 people for chicken, 10 people for fish, and 0 people for tofu. They argued that the cook should therefore make fish, according to a democratic process.

But in response to this, several people from the beef group say that they would like to change their vote too. If they knew that people were changed their vote to sway the results, then they too might have voted differently. They couldn’t convince all of their fellow beef-lovers to agree, but they did get five people to sign their names on a third email, requesting that their votes be changed from beef to chicken. This makes the new count 3 for beef, 11 for chicken, 10 for fish, and 0 for tofu. Thus, they argue, the cook should make chicken, according to a democratic process.

Well, the cook doesn’t know what to do, so he calls a friend of his who is a mathematician to tabulate the total results. In the original email, he had actually sent out a survey that required people to rate their preferences from their first choice to their fourth choice. The mathematician assigned a value of 4 for each top choice, 3 for each second choice, 2 for each third choice, and 1 for each fourth choice. Using that system, beef got 58 points, chicken got 58 points, fish got 58 points, and tofu got 66 points. Of course, these rankings were created before anyone had knowledge of how anyone else would vote. Furthermore several people mentioned in their responses to the cook's survey that beyond the first choice, they really didn’t care what was served. So they just picked the rest at random. Even so, the mathematician concluded that tofu was what the cook should serve.

 
What do you think? Based on these results and the “democratic” voting process that everyone consented to implicitly by answering the survey, do you think the group should eat beef, chicken, fish, or tofu?

For anyone who is interested in debating this in details, here are the full results of the cook’s survey, as they were tabulated by the mathematician:

Adam: Beef (4), Chicken (3), Fish (2), and Tofu (1)
Brett: Beef (4), Chicken (3), Fish (2), and Tofu (1)

Christine: Beef (4), Chicken (3), Tofu (2), and Fish (1)
Demarcus: Beef (4), Chicken (3), Tofu (2), and Fish (1)
Ellen: Beef (4), Chicken (3), Tofu (2), and Fish (1)
Frank: Beef (4), Fish (3), Tofu (2) and Chicken (1)
Guadalupe: Beef (4), Tofu (3), Fish (2), and Chicken (1)
Hui: Beef (4), Tofu (3), Fish (2), and Chicken (1)
Isabelle: Chicken (4), Beef (3), Fish (2), and Tofu (1)
Juan: Chicken (4), Tofu (3), Beef (2), and Fish (1)
Karl: Chicken (4), Tofu (3), Beef (2), and Fish (1)
Lee-Ron: Chicken (4), Tofu (3), Beef (2), and Fish (1)
Mark: Chicken (4), Tofu (3), Beef (2), and Fish (1)
Nancy: Chicken (4), Tofu (3), Fish (2), and Beef (1)
Oliver: Fish (4), Tofu (3), Chicken (2), Beef (1)

Pam: Fish (4), Tofu (3), Chicken (2), Beef (1)

Quincy: Fish (4), Tofu (3), Beef (2), Chicken (1)

Rolando: Fish (4), Tofu (3), Beef (2), Chicken (1)

Susan: Fish (4), Tofu (3), Beef (2), Chicken (1)

Teresa: Fish (4), Tofu (3), Beef (2), Chicken (1)

Ushi: Tofu (4), Fish (3), Chicken (2), Beef (1)
Vanessa: Tofu (4), Fish (3), Chicken (2), Beef (1)

Wanda: Tofu (4), Fish (3), Chicken (2), Beef (1)

Xavier: Tofu (4), Fish (3), Chicken (2), Beef (1)

The Aftermath of a Roman Census

I haven't updated this blog in over a year, as blogging is something that I rarely have time to do, but Below is a Christmas skit that I composed for a Christmas banquet that we're holding at my church this year, with some additional background information about the significance of the census in Luke for anyone who is interested. It brings to focus an under-appreciated detail in the Christmas story, and also seeks to make some poignant connections with political climate in the United States, as we discern how to respond to terrorism.

 The Aftermath of a Roman Census

A Christmas Skit by Brian Bither

Luke 2:1-5, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child."

Context: This skit follows Quirinius, the governor of Syria, one year after the census was issued that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem.

Quirinius:       [Sitting at a desk looking at census papers.] Oh this is much harder than I thought. Here I thought Caesar was bestowing an honor upon me, but I had no idea how complicated governing Judea would be.

Centurion:      [Arriving] Governor Quirinius, you called for me, sir?

Quirinius:       Yes. What news do you have about that Jewish terrorist group? Have we captured their leader yet?

Centurion:      Not yet, but we’re closing in on him. We know that Judas and his followers are hiding in the mountains. We don’t have their exact location at this time, but sooner or later, someone will be show up on our radar, and then we’ll have them.

Quirinius:       Oh, I just want this to be over. But at least we’ve driven them out of the cities. Are their any more reports of violence against our soldiers in Jerusalem?

Centurion:      Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped yet. It seems that Judas inspired a lot of people, who are now calling themselves “Zealots.” The problem is, they are religious extremists who don’t have a central leadership structure. So even if we take out Judas and his sons, there is nothing to stop a radicalized Jew from taking it upon himself to commit some act of terror against some of our soldiers.

 Quirinius:      That’s so crazy. Why are they even doing this? What have we ever done to them?

Centurion:      From the best I can tell, it all goes back to when you first became governor of Syria, and Caesar had you issue that census...

Quirinius:       I know that, but it doesn’t make any sense! Why would anyone object to a census being taken? Why do the Jews hate us Romans?

Centurion:      Well, to be fair, their Scriptures say that the Jewish God punished one of their own kings for taking a census, so I think that this is a little more complex than Jews hating Romans.

Quirinius:       Excuse me, are you defending them? Surely you don’t think these Zealots have any right to kill Romans!

Centurion:      Of course not, sir. Their actions are heinous, fruitless, and inexcusable. I just think it’s advantageous to try to understand their motivation.

Quirinius:       Ok then, so what’s the motivation? Why would the Jewish God be upset with a government for taking a census? We have to have documentation, records of citizenship, and walls in order to keep people safe and preserve the peace of Rome.

Centurion:      Sir, I am not an expert on these matters. But I had a conversation with a moderate Jewish priest who showed me the text in their chronicles when King David issued a census and was punished for it. According to him, God was rebuking this king because he tried to take matters into his own hands. Apparently, their Scriptures are insistent that the Jewish people must depend on God alone for security. By issuing a census, David seemed to be depending on the might of his military rather than the faithfulness of their God to get them through a national crisis.

Quirinius:       So let me get this straight: the Zealots are shouting the slogan, “God Alone is our King” and then they’re trying to prove it by fighting us with their own strength? Doesn’t that seem to contradict their point?

Centurion:      I certainly think so, and actually, so did the priest I was talking to.

Quirinius:       He did, huh? Well, I guess it’s good to know there are some reasonable Jews out there. What is his name? Is he pro-Roman?

Centurion:      His name is Zechariah, and he’s an intriguing person, but I wouldn’t call him pro-Roman. When I pressed him on the issue, he agreed with the zealots that we were wrong to issue a census. However, he didn’t agree with the way the Zealots were responding to the census. In his view, all that could come out of the zealot revolt was more violence. He foresees the Romans continually suppressing the Zealots, and the Zealots responding by continually terrorizing the Romans, and he fears that this cycle of violence could eventually lead to a full-scale rebellion, resulting in their temple being destroyed again. So, from his perspective, both we and the zealots are agents of violence.

Quirinius:       We are agents of violence? Are you kidding me? We’re the ones trying to stop the violence. You can’t have peace if you don’t stop the bad guys. What better solution does this Zechariah person have?

Centurion:      I don’t know; he wasn’t making a lot of sense at this point. He said something about God showing up right in the midst of violence and proclaiming peace. He said that peace wouldn’t come either from politicians or military leaders, but it would emerge from among the poor and the oppressed. He said something about a Messiah who would do things differently, he would conquer hate with love and overcome evil with good. He said that this Messiah would be able to turn the world inside out, so that even evil things – like the census that you issued – could be used for the glory of God.

Quirinius:       That's ridiculous. I’ll believe that when I hear it announced by angels.

This skit has no copyright, is free and is available for public use.

Additional Historical Information

This skit is what you might call a “historical fiction.” Of course, the actual conversation never happened, but the basic plot – in which Governor Quirinius had to deal with the zealot rebellion led by Judas the Galilean – is historical. (The primary source for this event is the Jewish Antiquities, Book XVIII, Chapter 1, by Josephus, which you can read online at http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/ant-18.htm. If you read this translation, note that Cyrenius = Quirinius.) Of course, the language the skit uses of “terrorism” and “documentation” is anachronistic, but it is used to highlight parallels between a crisis the Romans faced in the first century and one that U.S. government faces in the twenty-first century. I also tried to draw other themes and characters from the gospel of Luke for the sake of consistency.

When Biblical scholars analyze Luke 2:1-5, most of the discussion usually revolves around the historicity (or lack thereof) of the census. However, the mention of the census issued under Quirinius serves a greater purpose that just to assign a general date for Jesus’ birth. Instead, Luke is drawing a connection between Jesus’ birth and the zealot movement, describing them as parallel movements that went in slightly different directions. The census under Quirinius marked the beginning of the zealot movement, as well as the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. These parallel movements continue to intersect and diverge throughout the rest of Luke and even into Acts.

In Luke 4, the crowds with whom Jesus spoke were supportive of Jesus when his words indicated that he would bring healing to Israel, but they turned on him when he indicated that Gentiles would be saved. This indicates that the crowds who followed Jesus had zealot leanings. In Luke 6, when Jesus calls his twelve apostles, they include “Simon who was called the Zealot” and “Judas Iscariot.” Simon was clearly affiliated with the Zealot movement, and it’s quite likely that “Iscariot” indicates that Judas was affiliated with the Sicarii, a particularly violent offshoot of the Zealot movement. In Luke 23, when Jesus is brought before Herod, he is presented to them as another Zealot agitator: the chief priests say that Jesus was perverting the nation, forbidding the people to pay taxes, and describing himself as a king, which were all things that Judas the Galilean did. And even after Jesus had risen from the dead, in Acts 5 (which was also written by Luke), the high priest Gamaliel reflected on how to respond to his movement by explicitly comparing it to the zealot movement, noting, “Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got the people to follow him.” These connections can’t be coincidental.

By putting these two movements in parallel, Luke was able both to compare and contrast them. Yes, Jesus wanted to invoke the year of the Lord’s favor in Luke 4, but he also wanted to include Gentiles. Yes, he included zealots among his disciples in Luke 6, but he taught them to love their enemies in that same chapter. Yes, he was the Messiah, as mentioned in Luke 9, but he would be turned over to the Gentiles. He foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem in Luke 21, the result of the zealot movement, but he noted that this would not mark the end. Unlike the zealot movement, which would fizzle out and die after 70 C.E., his would last to the end of the age.

Ex-Cons May Finally Have a Real Shot at Jobs in Indy

I know, I know... I fell off of the blogging wagon. I was 2 parts into a 7-part series on pacifism, and then - wham! - life hit hard (in a good way) and my blog faded into the background. I feel like I'm starting to get my bearings so maybe I will pick that series up again shortly. In the meantime, I wanted to update all of my friends who live in Indianapolis - and especially those who have a felony on their records - about an important change in our city's policies that just happened tonight. Through the leadership of IndyCAN, Indianapolis has now joined several states in "banning the box" that keeps ex-felons from getting jobs.

Before I explain what this means, I want you to think back to the last time that you applied for a job. For some of you, it's probably been a while, but anyone who has had to do this in the past few years remembers how vulnerable and inadequate you feel whenever you fill out the application form. For me, one of the last jobs I've had was at a "fast food" restaurant where I was working just one year ago. Now, I had gotten my first job ever at a fast food restaurant when I was 17 years old and I had a decade of education and experience since then, so you would think that I would go into an interview like that with 100% confidence, but I didn't. Those applications have a way of making you doubt yourself. You're supposed to name your qualifications, list the schools where you've attended, describe your employment history, etc. You only have the space of a few lines to try to convince an employer (whom you may or may not have even seen in person) that you are worth hiring. That is hard enough in itself.

But for many people, there is one question that looms over all of the rest of them: "Have you EVER been convicted of a felony?" Now, imagine for a moment that you had convicted a felony. Perhaps it was something you did when you were 19, and now you're 45 - much older and wiser than during your teenage years. Well, even in that case, you would still have to check, "Yes." Or imagine that you were convicted of a felony more recently but, by the grace of God, came to see the error of your ways and decided to turn your life around. Since then, you have sought help and have dedicated yourself to never committing another crime again. Well, even in that case, you would still have to check, "Yes." And if you check yes, your chances of getting that job DRAMATICALLY reduce. 70% of employers admit that as soon as they see that question answered, "Yes," they throw the application in the trash without giving it a further thought. Of the remaining 30% of employers, studies show that the likelihood of a person getting hired who has a record drops by 50%. Any college grad can tell you how hard it is to get a job when you came straight out of the university and don't have any work experience. Just imagine how hard it is if you have a record!

In response to this problem (which is just one aspect of the greater problem of mass incarceration), an organization called PICO has spear-headed a movement to "Ban the Box" on applications like these in order to make it plausible for ex-offenders to successfully reintegrate into society. PICO's local chapter here in Indianapolis, an organization called IndyCAN, has been working to bring these kinds of reforms in our own city, and our City-County Council just voted to implement them tonight.

This is what they decided to do. The City-County Council oversees all city-government organizations (Parks & Recreation, Waste Disposal, Indianapolis Power & Light, etc.), and they decided that they will no longer ask anyone applying for a job in one of those organizations whether they have committed a felony on their initial application. Note: these organizations can and most likely will still do a criminal background check later in the interview process, but they can only do that after they have decided whether or not they want to hire you first. If something turns up from your criminal background check, they can't just revoke the offer. Instead, they have to prove that it meets the following four criteria to revoke the offer: (1) that the crime was directly related to the kind of work you're applying to do, (2) that the crime was serious, (3) that the crime was recent (or that you have not shown signs of progress), or (4) that you were actually convicted and not just arrested or even tried for the crime. So, if you got in trouble for embezzlement last year (e.g. stealing money from a cash register), and you applied for a job where you have to handle a lot of money this year, then a red flag would pop up on their screen and they would have legitimate reason not to hire you. However, if you applied for a job that didn't involve handling money or if it happened 20 years prior, then the employer would still have to hire you, even though you have a felony on your record. And that is a HUGE improvement over the current situation. For those of you who find yourself in this situation, this new policy will start taking effect in 90 days. By June of 2014, you should have a much easier time finding a job.

However, I want to make one more clarification: This does not apply to every job in Indianapolis. If you're applying for jobs in the summer, you'll still find that most restaurants and factories ask the question, "Have you EVER been convicted of a felony?" on their applications. The City-County Council did not pass a law making this question illegal. Instead, they decided that they themselves would no longer ask this question. However, they did go one step further with it. They decided that they will only subcontract to companies that also refuse to ask this question, which includes a lot of business. So, for example, you may be a privately-owned construction company that the government decides to hire to build a new building. If you have the question, "Have you EVER been convicted of a felony?" on your applications, then the city government will no longer be able to work with you, starting in June.

What does this mean for my friends with felonies? You should apply for government jobs, and if you come across any company that asks about your record on its initial application, you should report it to the government. They're not doing anything illegal, so it won't get you the job and you can't sue them for it, but it may make them lose business, which will inspire more companies to drop that question from their applications in the future.