I’m glad you posted this, Sarah.  Although this excerpt serves as a bit of a “straw man” (the more challenging arguments for violence come, by far, from the “might is right”, pro-empire people), I think Grossman expresses an ideology that is commonly held to be true.

Let’s see if I can reconstruct Grossman’s argument.  He says that there are wolves (read: “bad people”) out there.  The wolves like to feed on sheep.  Most of society is made up of sheep: people who are generally pacifist in nature, though not necessarily in ideology.  Though it would be in their best interests to be on the lookout for the wolves, sheep are docile and ignorant, and would rather pretend that the wolves don’t exist.  Sheepdogs are therefore required.  Sheepdogs are the police and military people who defend us from the bad people out there.  Sheepdogs must be well armed, well trained, and always ready.  Sheep, by the way, tend to dislike sheepdogs because they serve as a reminder of the existence of wolves.

I’m not really sure where to start in taking this apart, since most of it is fallacy.  Let’s start with the “wolves”.  Who are the wolves?  “Evil men…[who are] capable of evil deeds.”  Not very helpful.  Wolves are evil men, therefore evil men are wolves.  Argue with his circular logic, though, and Grossman will remind you that, “There is no safety in denial.”

Luckily for us sheep, Grossman gives a few examples: the 9/11 terrorists, the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre, and a mentally ill person who shot up a bunch of church people.  The latter two examples are unrelated freak incidents that do prove the need for police, but hardly excuse the massive industry of violence that we as a society have created.  Also, Grossman entirely steps over the fact that both these incidents were preventable.  He doesn’t mention our crumbling mental health system, nor does he explore the sociological and psychological factors involved in the Columbine shooting.

Grossman also fails to analyze the politics of the 9/11 terrorists.  Though Osama bin Laden is willing to kill indiscriminately, his reasons for doing so are crystal clear.  He has made very clear requests of the U.S.: 1. To stop supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and 2. To stop meddling in the political affairs of the Arab peoples.  You will certainly not hear this from the mouth of George W. (he benefits far too much from portraying bin Laden as an irrational, fanatical maniac who is incapable of making clear requests – a dangerous assertion to make about an ingenious enemy), but U.S. foreign policy has exposed us to danger.

The “wolf”, to people like Grossman, is a force of nature.  We are helpless to change its patterns, but we can protect ourselves from it by using “sheepdogs” as a heroic shield.

It is also notable that Grossman uses extreme examples as evidence.  The truth is that there are a whole lot of people that society relates to as “wolves”: petty criminals, poor people, youth, and people of color.  The “sheepdogs” are not just there for Osama bin Laden and Charles Manson.  If so, we’d only need a handful.  But you need a lot of dogs to protect you from all those dangerous poor people out there.

I spend most of my time with those whom society has labeled “bad people”.  (If you don’t believe that this is how the homeless are viewed, spend a little time on the Olympian comments page.)  I’ve shared soup with people that prowl cars.  I’ve offered my couch to heroin addicts.  Sometimes guests will come into my home who have black eyes from fistfights.  I’ve even welcomed sex offenders into my home.  I’ve actually made a life of doing all this for the last three years.  And, after all the experiences of the last three years, I find the notion that “bad” is like a blood type to be kind of funny.  We really don’t have many problems at my house.  At my home, people are, for the most part, respectful and even kind to one another.  But Grossman would argue that I ought to be armed to the teeth and ready to do combat with these people who are actually my friends.

Grossman’s generalizations about the “wolf” aren’t just fallacious, they are also irresponsible.  When I was working as an EMT, I responded to a number of calls in which someone had gone off their rocker and turned violent.  These were usually schizophrenics who were off their medications.  The standard procedure was to tie them down with soft restraints on all four limbs.  I remember one call in particular in which a Vietnam veteran experienced a horrific flashback and attacked his own family.  When we arrived, he was struggling with two police officers.  We worked hard to restrain him as one of the paramedics filled a syringe with sedatives (“chemical restraints”).  Was this man a wolf?  I certainly wouldn’t say he was.  In hindsight, the whole situation was horribly tragic.  You should have heard his family crying as he screamed and called us “VC fuckers”.  But several of the EMT’s and police officers treated him like a “wolf”.  I have no doubt (I’ll remind you that I have ample experience to back this up) that we could have restrained him without injuries to anyone.  But the fact is that the man was a bloody mess when we were done with him.  The EMT’s and cops were yelling epithets back at him and used unnecessary force.  They even bragged about it after the call was over.  This is shameful.  And it is a result of the very same inane worldview promoted by Grossman, the view that people who threaten us are inherently “bad”.  Honestly, I’d rather eat nails than hear any more ridiculous abstractions about “bad people”. 

Grossman is also wrong about the nature of us “sheep”.  I recently read a story about a priest who was executed by the Khmer Rouge.  Just before being shot, he begged his captors to “wait one more moment”.  They stalled, and he removed his clothing.  He then made his final request: “Please give these clothes to the poor.”  Then he bowed his head and allowed them to do their will.  Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers were repeatedly and horribly beaten by the police (sheepdogs?).  Rev. King also predicted his own death in the weeks before he died; he had no illusions regarding his fate.  Gandhi also willingly suffered beatings, and certainly didn’t try to deny the existence of violence.  Jesus, literally called the “Lamb of God”, willingly suffered humiliation, abandonment, and death as a result of his all-encompassing love.  And the most powerful empire of the ancient world, Rome, was conquered by Christian pacifists.  So much for pacifists as “docile sheep”.  All of these people left us a powerful legacy.

September 11^th gave us a powerful opportunity.  We could have shown how extraordinarily graceful our nation could be.  We could have showered kindness on the people and nations of the Middle East (even while pursuing bin Laden!), and attempted to overcome our differences.  That would have gone to the real heart of the problem.  Instead, we let our attacker slip through our hands as we made absurd ultimatums, such as “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists (read: wolves).”  We attacked Iraq, a nation that caused us no harm, and threatened other Muslim nations with our heavy-handedness.  When we could have shown grace, we instead showed ourselves to be brutal, barbaric, and arrogant.  No wonder Bush predicted unending war.

I think it is high time that we stop labeling our enemies as “wolves”.  This kind of bantering is petty, immature, and counterproductive.  It is harder, but far more fruitful, to interact with our enemies as people.

Phil,

Would you support an isolationist foreign policy?

I think it would be the answer to most, if not all, of our problems. You seem to lean that way, also.

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."

I think he was saying every person possesses evil in them. At the very core, I believe, we are evil people. We have to condition ourselves to do good. This is not to say we aren't capable of good, but we can't eliminate the evil from our natural urges.

For instance, the reason most people don't steal isn't because they don't want to steal. It's because they're afraid of the consequences (maybe a few hours in jail, employer finding out, neighbors finding out, religious consequences, and so forth).

Everyone has their weakness which will bring out the evil in them, it's simply a matter of whether one has trained themselves to resist the natural urge.

That's my response to the "wolf" (not to be confused with The Wolf).

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."