Journalists preach a lot about the need to modernise society, to rend the cobwebs of the past, to let in the fresh air. It’s not just columnists; it’s the editorial slant of at least three English-language Maltese news outlets.
But this idealisation of innovation and embracing what’s new isn’t novel; it’s as old as time itself. In our contemporary context, it’s a logical extension of a debate that started in the eighteenth century and then gained huge momentum in the nineteenth. The two antagonists were the partisans of “Law as a product of History and Tradition” and the partisans of “Law as a product of Reason”.
Indeed, the law is the lynchpin. For human nature doesn’t change – it’s the law that changes. And it changes because political circumstances change and allow the ideas latent in legal thinking suddenly to come to the fore and carry the day.
This has implications for the debate between “what is” and “what should be”. Human behaviour (“what is”) has always been the same – people have been fornicating, stealing, murdering, you name it, since antediluvian times! What changes is the “what should be”: the law. And the novelty almost always lies in the not-so-novel idea that “what should be” ought to reflect “what is” – rendering the two ideas equivalent and, therefore, meaningless.
Be that as it may. It’s obvious to the intelligent onlooker that in the debate between Law-as-History-and-Tradition and Law-as-Reason, the Conservatives will root for the former and the Liberals for the latter.
The intelligent onlooker will also notice that, all said and done, both positions are rooted in the Christian worldview. The idea of Tradition is Christian; ditto, the idea of Reason as our guide. So here we’re not discussing religion per se, but an argument that, because of history, is situated in a “religious” framework. The framework of all our reasoning – despite the relentless onslaught from secularists – remains Christian.
The supporters of Reason try to debunk the Traditionalists as irrelevant. It’s the typical stance of this group of (let’s call them) “thinkers”. They think that the “old” is necessarily wrong, while the “new” is ipso facto good. Whereas it sounds irrational to me, it is indeed the position embraced by those who see themselves as guided by Reason. They call those on the other side “dinosaurs”, “outmoded”, “outdated”, “expired”, “medieval”, and so on, in an attempt not to counter the arguments but to discredit the proponent.
Reason supporters seem unable to consider that, perhaps, certain rules created in the past were not, as they might think, mechanisms of oppression, but responses to threats. Instead of trying to analyse the possibly menacing circumstances that led to what we now see as “traditional rules”, they (the Liberals, the “children of Reason”) prefer to relegate everything traditional to expression of oppression, in a misguided application of Marxist theory.
As the late Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici argued in the book we wrote together, Il-Liġi, il-Morali, u r-Raġuni (2008), the problem with Reason is that Reason is always inherently arbitrary: what is reasonable to me might be most unreasonable to you, and vice versa. If it weren’t so, there would be no need for the State, a higher (theoretically impersonal) authority that regulates human relations and interactions.
Reason is abstract and therefore nobody can “see” it. It’s not a physical phenomenon, like the heat or the cold, say, two phenomena that everybody can experience through their senses. (Only somebody demented would claim that August in Malta is cold.) But Reason is different. Reason exists in the mind, not in the world of “facts”, and is therefore necessarily arbitrary.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, all proponents of Reason are aware that laws based on reason are ultimately arbitrary. Being aware of the arbitrariness underlying their apparently “reasonable” or, to be more precise, “reason-based” principles, they have to resort to coercion to ensure that their principles be applied.
This is very much a top-down approach, and as such conducive to indiscriminate application and therefore popular resistance. Its opposite, the bottom-up approach, is more democratic, as it allows diverse principles to co-exist.
And this is where the tensions between Radical Liberalism (the real name of the Reason party) and Democracy (the real name of the Traditionalists) arise. The deep-seated conflict between Radical Liberalism and Free Democracy originates from the vocation of the Radical Liberals to impose (their understanding of) Reason on everybody else, and imposition is the ultimate weapon of democracy destruction in the State’s governance arsenal.
The dictatorship of Reason leads to the beheading of Democracy. Several French revolutionaries discovered this first-hand, during the Great Revolution.
(Though the holiday season is indeed over, I enjoyed writing fiction so much that today I want to propose another Søren Farrugia story.)
The Tale of Guilty Eréndira
An Inspector Søren Farrugia story
The muscles in Inspector Søren Farrugia’s body and that of Sergeant Laus were sore after long hours spent in the surveillance car.
Several residents of 22 “Acacia Mansions” repeatedly reported suspicious activity on the sixth floor of their block of apartments. Most probably a brothel, run by the Colombian girls who lived at number 66.
So Inspector Farrugia and his men began keeping “Acacia Mansions” under surveillance. The traffic into the block was not insignificant. Men (and a few women) of all ages knocked on the girls’ door at all hours of day and night. Some were Maltese; many were foreigners. Malta’s foreign population had ballooned and biology is biology, irrespective of skin colour, cultural background, or religious ostentation.
Farrugia had brought along a copy of García Márquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Most of the time, surveillance is boring.
As he was engrossed reading, Sergeant Laus nudged him, imperceptibly moving his head to indicate a man walking briskly but furtively toward “Acacia Mansions”.
The inspector immediately recognised him as one Minister’s person of trust, despite the cunning combination of mackintosh and dark sunglasses the man had put on certain he would pass unnoticed. Sergeant Laus took a couple of photos, and that was that.
* * * * *
As the days rolled by and the case file grew thicker, Inspector Farrugia decided there was enough evidence to proceed upon. With the search and arrest warrant in hand, he gave the go-ahead to raid the Colombians’ apartment.
They found two half-clad girls in the sitting room and another one, completely naked, in the main bedroom, and loads of stuff lying about that could be used in prostitution. And then – surprise surprise! – the person of trust came out of the bathroom, with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” yelled the man as Sergeant Laus handcuffed him. “Do you know who I am? Let me go, or you’ll pay for this!”
“Yeah, yeah,” quipped the sergeant. “The only one who’s been paying here seems to be you!”
As the squad was escorting the four manacled suspects out, the inspector spotted the girls’ passports. One of them was called Eréndira.
The thought crossed his mind of a heartless grandmother pushing this Eréndira into the business to repay her debts.
It then occurred to the inspector that since the Spanish for “grandmother” is abuela, his boss might get excited at the prospect of subterranean links with the high and mighty of the land. But he shrugged the naughty thought off with a smile and followed his men out of the makeshift brothel.
Next step: suspect statements.
* * * * *
That night Farrugia dreamt of Fragonard’s L'Escarpolette.
Farrugia was in Fragonard’s fenced garden, lying on the ground looking upward toward his boss’ secretary. She was swinging on a swing tied to a tree and behind her, in the semi-darkness, their boss propelled the swing with a pair of ropes. As the secretary swung, she stretched out her left foot and flung her shoe into the air, showing off her shapely ankle and allowing the inspector a glimpse of something else too.
Farrugia woke wide-eyed and panting.
Next morning at work he felt uneasy even though from the statements the four suspects had signed the evening before, there was enough evidence to ensure they got convicted.
He received a call from HR at HQ.
“It’s the grandmother, right?” Farrugia asked, sardonically.
“Beg your pardon?” said the voice on the other end. “Whose grandmother?”
“Never mind. Tell me, what can I do for you?”
His boss, Mr Zahra, wanted a word. Nothing urgent, no rush, but within the hour would be appreciated.
The inspector complied.
* * * * *
“Søren, Søren…” Thus spake Zahra.
“Sir?”
“You’ve arrested a person of trust.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“A Minister’s person of trust.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“So you recognised him?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And you still arrested him?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“What’s this country coming to?”
“Sir?”
“Anyway. What’s this grandmother business?”
“Sir…?”
“You said something about a grandmother. Whose grandmother is it?”
“Nobody’s, Sir. Just a literary citation.”
“We’re the Police, Inspector, not a book club.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Anyway, we have two problems on our hands.”
“Sir?”
“One, the guy you’ve arrested. Two, you getting married. My secretary is still waiting for you to take her out to dinner… Come on, Søren. That’s how things start. Dinner, a walk in a moonlit garden, and then… I’ll be your witness at the wedding!”
“Thank you, Sir!” and he darted out of the office.
* * * * *
Inspector Farrugia didn’t understand either of these problems.
The Court found Eréndira and the other two guilty and handed them suspended sentences. They had moved to Malta looking for legitimate work and ended up as prostitutes. That was their story.
The story of the Minister’s person of trust: Eréndira was his girlfriend and he had had absolutely no idea she plied the profession. They’re always innocent, mused Farrugia.
As he strolled along Zammit-Dimech Promenade, trying to dodge the crazy escooters, Farrugia ruminated on his dream and on Zahra’s insistence that his civil status was a problem. Why should it matter to his superiors if he was married or not? It was none of their business.
Or was it?
Farrugia stopped to reflect by the upside-down LOVE monument and its upright reflection in the sea below. Love is such a multiform phenomenon. You can rent it in a cheap makeshift whorehouse or conquer it on the battlefield of an expensive restaurant. It can also drown in a flood of suspicions of manipulation.
He looked around and admired the female specimens of the species, none of whom was uneasy on the eye. Plenty of fish in the sea, he thought to himself.
Once home, given the coincidence, he grabbed Gabo’s Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Heartless Grandmother and sank into his tufted armchair to re-read it.