A Matter for Men

FOUR

LEGALLY, I was already in the army. Had been for three years. Sort of.

You were automatically enlisted when you showed up for your first session of Global Ethics, the only mandatory course in high school. You couldn't graduate without completing the course. And-you found this out only afterward-you hadn't completed the course until you'd earned your honorable discharge. It was all part of the Universal Service Obligation. Rah.

The instructor was somebody named Whitlaw. Nobody knew much about him. It was his first semester here. We'd heard some rumors though-that he'd once punched a kid for mouthing off and broken his jaw. That he couldn't be fired. That he'd seen active duty in Pakistan-and still had the ears of the men and women he'd killed. That he was still involved in some super-secret operation and this teaching job was just a cover. And so on.

The first time I saw him, I believed it all.

He stumped into the room and slammed his clipboard down onto the desk and confronted us. "All right! I don't want to be here any more than you do! But this is a required course-for all of us-so let's make the best of a bad situation!"

He was a squat bear of a man, gruff-looking and impatient. He had startling white hair and gun-metal gray eyes that could drill you like a laser. His nose was thick; it looked like it had been broken a few times. He looked like a tank, and when he moved, he moved with a peculiar rolling gait. He rocked from step to step, but he was surprisingly graceful.

He stood there at the front of the classroom like an undetonated bomb and looked us over with obvious distaste. He glowered at us-an expression we were soon to recognize as an all-purpose glower of intimidation, directed not at any of us individually, but at the class as a unit.

"My name is Whitlaw!" he barked. "And I am not a nice man!"

Huh-?

"-So if you think you're going to pass this class by making friends with me, forget it!" He glared at us, as if daring us to glare back. "I don't want to be your friend. So don't waste your time. It's this simple: I have a job to do! It's going to get done. You have a job to do too. You can make it easy on yourself and own the responsibility-or you can fight it and, I promise you, this class will be worse than Hell! Understand?"

He strode to the back of the room then, plucked a comic book out of Joe Bangs's hands and ripped it up. He tossed the pieces in the trash can. "Those of you who think I'm kidding-let me disabuse you of that now. We can save ourselves two weeks of dancing around, testing each other, if you will just assume the worst. I am a dragon. I am a shark. I am a monster. I will chew you up and spit out your bones."

He was in motion constantly, gliding from one side of the room to the other, pointing, gesturing, stabbing the air with his hand as he talked. "For the next two semesters, you belong to me. This is not a pass-or-fail course. Everybody passes when I teach. Because I don't give you any choice an the matter. Most of you, when you're given a choice, you don't choose to win. That guarantees your failure. Well, guess what. In here, you don't have a choice. And the sooner you get that, the sooner you can get out." He stopped. He looked around the room at all of us. His eyes were hard and small. He said, "I am a very ugly man. I know it. I have no investment in proving otherwise. So don't expect me to be anything else. If there's any adapting to be done in this classroom, I expect you to do it! Any questions?"

"Uh, yeah-" One of the clowns in the back of the room. "How do I get out?"

"You don't. Any other questions?"

There were none. Most of us were too stunned.

"Good." Whitlaw returned to the front of the room. "I expect a hundred percent attendance, one hundred percent of the time. There are no excuses. This class is about results. Most of you use your circumstances as reasons to not have results." He looked into our eyes as if he were looking into our souls. "That's over, starting now! From now on, your circumstances are merely the things you have to handle so you can have results."

One of the girls raised her hand. "What if we get sick?"

"Are you planning to?"

"No."

"Then you don't have to worry about it."

Another girl. "What if we-"

"Stop!" Whitlaw held up a hand. "Do you see? You're already trying to negotiate a loophole for yourselves. It's called, `What if -?' `What if I get sick?' The answer is, make sure you don't. `What if my car breaks down?' Make sure it doesn't-or make sure you have alternate transportation. Forget the loopholes. There aren't any! The universe doesn't give second chances. Neither do I. Just be here. You don't have a choice. That's how this class works. Assume that I'm holding a gun to your head. Because I am-you don't know what kind of a gun it is yet, but the fact is, I am holding a gun to your head. Either you're here and on time, or I pull the trigger and splatter your worthless brains on the back wall." He pointed. Somebody shuddered. I actually turned to look. I could imagine a red and gray splash of gore across the paneling.

"Do you get that?" He took our silence as assent. "Good. We might just get along."

Whitlaw leaned back casually against the front edge of his desk. He folded his arms across his chest and looked out over the room.

He smiled. The effect was terrifying.

"So now," he said calmly, "I'm going to tell you about the one choice you do have. The only choice. All the rest are illusions-or, at best, reflections of this one. You ready? All right-here's the options: you can be free, or you can be cattle. That's it."

He waited for our reactions. There were a lot of puzzled expressions in the room.

"You're waiting for the rest of it, aren't you? You think there has to be more. Well, there isn't any rest of it. That's all there is. What you think of as the rest is just definitions-or applications. That's what we're going to spend the rest of this course talking about. Sounds easy, right? But it won't be-because you'll insist on making it hard; because this course is not just about the definitions of that choice-it's about the experience of it. Most of you aren't going to like it. Too bad. But this isn't about what you like. What you like or don't like is not a valid basis for choice in the world. You're going to learn that in here."

That's how he started out.

It went downhill from there-or uphill, depending on your perspective.

Whitlaw never entered the room until everybody was seated and settled. He said it was our responsibility to run the class-after all, he already knew the material; this class was for us.

He always began the same way. When he judged we were ready, he entered-and he always entered speaking: "All right, who wants to start? Who wants to define freedom?" And we were off

One of the girls offered, "It's the right to do what you want, isn't it?"

"Too simple," he countered. "I want to rip off all your clothes and have mad passionate intercourse with you, right here on the floor." He said it deadpan, staring her right in the face. The girl gasped; the class laughed embarrassedly; she blushed. "What keeps me from doing it?" Whitlaw asked. "Anyone?"

"The law," someone called. "You'd be arrested." More laughter.

"Then I'm not completely free, am I?"

"Uh, well ... freedom is the right to do whatever you want as long as you don't infringe on the rights of others."

"Sounds good to me-but how do I determine what those rights are? I want to practice building atomic bombs in my back yard. Why can't I?"

"You'd be endangering others."

"Who says?"

"Well, if I were your neighbor, I wouldn't like it."

"Why are you so touchy? I haven't had one go off yet."

"But there's always the chance. We have to protect ourselves."

"Aha!" said Whitlaw, pushing back his white hair and advancing on the unfortunate student. "But now you're infringing on my rights when you say I can't build my own A-bombs."

"Sir, you're being ridiculous now. Everybody knows you can't build an A-bomb in your back yard."

"Oh? I don't know that. In fact, I could build one if I had access to the materials and enough time and money. The,principles are well known. You're just betting that I don't have the determination to carry it through."

"Uh-all right. But even if you did, the rights of the individual still have to be weighed against the safety of the general public."

"How's that again? Are you telling me that one person's rights are more important than another's?"

"No, I-"

"Sure sounded like it to me. You said my rights have to be weighed against everyone else's. I want to know how you're going to determine them. Remember, all of us are supposed to be equal before the law. And what are you going to do if I don't think your method is fair? How are you going to enforce your decision?" Whitlaw eyed the boy carefully. "Try this one-it's more likely: I'm a plague victim. I want to get to a hospital for treatment, but if I even approach your city, you're going to start shooting at me. I claim that my right to medical care guarantees me entrance to that hospital, but you claim that your right to be free of contamination gives you license to kill. Whose rights are being infringed upon the most?"

"That's not a fair example!"

"Huh? Why not? It's happening in South Africa right nowand I don't care what the South African government says about it, we're talking about rights. Why isn't this a fair example? It's your definition. Sounds to me like there's something wrong with your definition of freedom." Whitlaw eyed the uncomfortable boy. "Hm?"

The boy shook his head. He gave up.

"So, let me give you a hint." Whitlaw turned to the rest of us again. "Freedom is not about what you want. That doesn't mean you can't have what you want-you probably can. But I want you to recognize that going for the goodies is just going for the goodies, nothing else. It has very little to do with freedom." He sat down on the edge of the desk again and looked around. "Anyone have another?"

Silence. Embarrassed silence. Then, a voice: "Responsibility."

"Eh? Who said that?"

"I did." A Chinese boy in the back of the room.

"Who's that? Stand up there. Let the rest of the class see what a genius looks like. What's your name, son?"

"Chen. Louis Chen."

"All right, Louis. Repeat your definition of freedom for the rest of these louts."

"Freedom means being responsible for your own actions."

"Right. You have your A for the day. You can relax-no, you can't; tell me what it means."

"It means you can build your A-bombs, sir, but if you aren't taking proper precautions, then the government, acting on behalf of the people, has the right to take action to guarantee that you do, or shut you down if you don't."

"Yes-and no. Now we have something else to define. Rights. Sit down, Louis. Give someone else a turn. Let's see some hands." Another boy in the back. " `Rights: that which is due a party by just claim, legal guarantee, or moral principle.' "

"Hm," said Whitlaw. "You surprise me-that's correct. Now close the book and tell me what it means. In your own words."

"Uh . . ." The fellow faltered. "That which is rightfully yours. The right of ... the right to ... I mean, it's what you're entitled to...... He became flustered and trailed off.

Whitlaw looked at him with a jaundiced expression. "First of all, you can't use a concept to define itself. And secondly, nothing is rightfully anyone's. We've already covered that one, remember? There's no such thing as ownership; there's only control. Ownership is just a temporary illusion, so how can there be any such thing as rights? You might as well insist that the universe owes you a living." Whitlaw grinned abruptly. "As a matter of fact, it does-but it's a lifetime job to collect."

He resumed his machine-gun attack. "Look, I'm going to make this easy for you. All that stuff that we call rights-that's just a lot of stuff that politicians say because it sounds good, so people will vote for them. They're actually ripping you off because they're confusing the issue, putting a lot of stuff in the way between you and the source of it all. So I want you to forget for a moment all of that stuff that you believe about rights. Because the truth is, it doesn't work. In fact, you can even forget about rights in the plural sense. There's only one right-and it isn't even a right in the traditional meaning of the word at all."

He was in the center of the room. He turned slowly around, meeting the eyes of all of us as he spoke. "The defining condition of adulthood is responsibility. So what's the one thing you need to experience that responsibility? It's so simple you won't get it -it's the opportunity. " He paused a moment to let it sink in, then repeated, "The opportunity to be responsible for yourself. That's it. If you're denied that one, then you're not free, and all of the other so-called rights are redundant. Rights are opportunitiesthat's the definition. And opportunity demands responsibility."

A hand went up. "What about people who can't take care of themselves?"

"You're talking about the insane and the immature. That's why we have keepers and parents-to watch out for them, to clean up their messes and paddle their behinds and teach them not to make any more messes-and not turn them loose upon the world until they learn. Part of the responsibility of adulthood is seeing that others also have the opportunity to reach adulthood and be responsible for themselves too. Mentally as well as physically."

"But that's the government's job-"

"What? Somebody call the asylum-one of the lunatics is loose. Surely you don't mean that, son."

The boy looked stubborn. "Yes, I do."

"Mm; okay," said Whitlaw. "Justify yourself."

"It's the government's responsibility," he said. "By your definition."

"Eh? No, I said it's the people's responsibility."

"The government is the people."

"It is? Not the last time I looked-according to the book, the government is the representative of the people."

"That's not fair, sir-you wrote the book."

"I did?" Whitlaw looked at the text in his hand. "Hm, so I did. All right, point for your side. You caught me begging the question."

The boy looked smug.

"-But you're still wrong. No, you're only half wrong. The purpose of a government-the only justifiable reason for its existence-is to act on behalf of the member population in a delegated area of specific responsibility. Now, what's a `delegated area of specific responsibility'?" Whitlaw didn't wait for someone to guess at it-he bulldozed on. "It works out to be anything that enough people are committed to-whether it's right or wrong. Get this! A government, acting on behalf of the member population-and in their name-will do whatever it is delegated to do, regardless of any defined morality in the matter. If you want proof, read a good history book." He plucked one off his desk. "A good history book is one that tells you what happened. Period. Forget the ones that explain history to you-they're ripping you off of the opportunity to see the whole picture."

He sat down on the edge of his desk again. "Listen, the government does what you want it to. If you say that you don't make a difference, you're guaranteeing that you won't. The fact of the matter is that anyone who is committed enough to enroll other people into the same commitment will make a difference. I want you to know that it does not take a majority. Some of the games that specific segments of this nation's population have enrolled the rest of us into include an extensive military organization, a space exploration agency, an interstate highway system, a postal service, a pollution control agency, an economic management bureau, a national education standard, a medical insurance service, a national pension plan, a labor management bureau and even a vast and complicated system of taxation so that each of us can pay for his or her fair share of those services-whether we wanted them or not in the first place."

Whitlaw stabbed at us with one long bony finger, making his points in the air like a shrike impaling its prey on a thornbush. "So the conclusion is inescapable. You are responsible for the actions of your government. It acts in your name. It is your employee. If you don't properly supervise the actions of your employee, you're not owning your responsibility. You'll deserve what you get. Do you know why the government is in the shape it is today? Because you aren't doing your job. After all, who else's responsibility could it be? I mean, can you imagine anyone in his right mind deliberately designing such a system? No-no one in his right mind would! The system is continually falling into the hands of those who are willing to manipulate it for short-term gain-because we let them."

Someone raised his hand. Whitlaw waved it down. "No, not now." He grinned. "I'm not through `brainwashing' you. I know that's what some of you think this is-I've seen the editorials in the newspapers too, the ones calling for the end of `political indoctrination classes.' Let me just say this about that: you'll notice I'm not telling you what you should be doing. Because I don't know what that is. It's your responsibility to determine it for yourselves-you get to create your own form of participation. Because that's the only real choice you ever get in your whole life -whether or not you're going to participate. You might want to notice that not participating is also a decision-it's a decision to be a victim of the consequences. Refuse to handle your own responsibilities and you will get the consequences. Every time! You can count on it.

"So here's the punch line-pay attention. `Let George do it' is not just the slogan of a lazy man-it's the credo of the slave. If you want to be taken care of and not have to worry, that's fine; you can join the rest of the cattle. Cattle are comfortable-that's how you recognize them. Just don't complain when they ship you off to the packing plant. They've bought and paid for the privilege. You sold it to them. Now if you want to be free, then get this: freedom is not about being comfortable. It's about seizing and using opportunities-and using them responsibly. Freedom is not comfort. It's commitment. Commitment is the willingness to be uncomfortable. The two aren't incompatible, but there are damn few free men on welfare.

"The free man, class, doesn't just survive-he challenges!" Whitlaw was right, of course. He usually was. If he'd ever been wrong, none of us had ever caught him at it. And after a while, we'd gotten pretty good.

I knew what he would say. The choice was mine. Even if I could have asked him for advice, he would have only said, "I can't answer that question for you, son. You already know the answer. You're just looking for agreement."

Right.

I couldn't depend on the good will of the universe any more. Five big plagues and a score of little ones had seen to that. My coffee had gone cold.

So I went looking for Shorty.